sympathetic associate. Her eyes had their lost light in them, her step
was brisker; she challenged him to former games of conversation,
excursions in blank verse here and there, as the mood dictated. They
amused themselves, and Emma too. She revelled in seeing Tony's younger
face and hearing some of her natural outbursts. That Dacier never could
have been the man for her, would have compressed and subjected her, and
inflicted a further taste of bondage in marriage, she was assured. She
hoped for the day when Tony would know it, and haply that another, whom
she little comprehended, was her rightful mate.

March continued South-westerly and grew rainier, as Redworth had
foretold, bidding them look for gales and storm, and then the change of
wind. It came, after wettings of a couple scorning the refuge of dainty
townsfolk under umbrellas, and proud of their likeness to dripping
wayside wildflowers. Arthur stayed at Copsley for a week of the crisp
North-easter; and what was it, when he had taken his leave, that brought
Tony home from her solitary walk in dejection? It could not be her
seriously regretting the absence of the youthful companion she had parted
with gaily, appointing a time for another meeting on the heights, and
recommending him to repair idle hours with strenuous work. The fit
passed and was not explained. The winds are sharp with memory. The hard
shrill wind crowed to her senses of an hour on the bleak sands of the
French coast; the beginning of the curtained misery, inscribed as her
happiness. She was next day prepared for her term in London with Emma,
who promised her to make an expedition at the end of it by way of
holiday, to see The Crossways, which Mr. Redworth said was not tenanted.

'You won't go through it like a captive?' said Emma.

'I don't like it, dear,' Diana put up a comic mouth. 'The debts we owe