rurality was upon him, an air of landowning, law-dispensing, sporting
efficiency; and if, in the fitness of his coloring, he made one think of a
fox or a pheasant, in character he suggested nothing so much as one of the
deep-rooted oaks of his own park. His very simplicity and uncomplexity of
consciousness was as fresh, as wholesome, as genially encompassing, as full
summer foliage. One rested in his shade.

He was an inarticulate person and his eyes, now, in their almost seared
solicitude, spoke more of sympathy and tenderness than his halting tongue.
He ended by repeating a good many times that he hoped she wasn't too
frightfully pulled down. Mrs. Upton said that she was really feeling very
well, though conscious that her sincerity might somewhat bewilder her
friend in his conceptions of fitness, and they sat down side by side on a
small sofa near the window.

We have said that for the first years of her freedom Mrs. Upton had been
very gay. Of late years the claims on her resources from the family across
the Atlantic had a good deal clipped her wings, and, though she made a
round of spring and of autumn visits, she spent her time for the most part
in her little Surrey house, engaged desultorily in gardening, study, and
the entertainment of the friend or two always with her. She had not found
it difficult to fold her wings and find contentment in the more nest-like
environment. She had never been a woman to seek, accepting only, happily,
whatever gifts life brought her; and it seemed as natural to her that
things should be taken as that things should be given. But with the
renouncement of more various outlooks this autumnal quietness, too, had
brought its gift, discreet, delicate, a whispered sentence, as it were,
that one could only listen to blindfolded, but that, once heard, gave one
the knowledge of a hidden treasure. Sir Basil had been one of the reasons,
the greatest reason, for her happiness in the Surrey nest. It was since