folds and fantastic shape, some in small half-transparent wisps like
sunlit ghosts, were driven rapidly across the blue. Hurrying shadows
flecked the swelling bosom of the downs, and where the grass was long
it rippled like a green sea, making rustling music. Overhead the larks
fluttering upward, ever-diminishing specks to the empyrean, carolled
their joyous song, and a thousand perfumes filled the air. It was a
morning to live in, to enjoy, to take into one's lungs in deep,
intoxicating draughts, until the sorrows of life and its cares were
forgotten; a morning that lent strong wings to ambition, filling the
future with hope and the promise of realized desires.

Something of the aspect of the morning was reflected in the face of
the man who stoutly climbed the downs against the wind. He was above
the average height, but did not give the impression of being tall. His
frame was well knit and muscular; strength and power of endurance above
the common were evident in every movement; and there was a quiet
determination in his face which proclaimed him one of those who would
be likely to succeed in anything he undertook, no matter what dangers
and difficulties might stand in his path, one who would march straight
forward to his object even as he breasted the downs this morning. Most
men would have pronounced him handsome, judging, as men ever do, by
build and muscle; women might have hesitated to give an opinion in
spite of the well-cut, clean-shaven face, and the dark blue eyes which
never looked away from a person with whom their possessor talked.
Perhaps there was a want of sympathy in the face, a certain lack of
that gentle deference which so appeals to women in a man, that silent
recognition of the woman's power which is so pleasant to her.

Desmond Ellerey had had little to do with women. He did not pretend
to understand them, and it had never occurred to him that there was