river was trapped into docks, spanned by low bridges and made into the
glistening part of a patchwork of water, brick and iron. Red-roofed
old houses, once the haunts of fashion, were clustered near the water
but divided from it now by tram-lines, companion anachronisms to the
steamers entering and leaving the docks, but by the farther shore, one
small strip of river was allowed to flow in its own way, and it
skirted meadows rising to the horizon and carrying with them more of
those noble elms in which the whole countryside was rich.

Her horse's hoofs sounding hollow on the bridge, Rose passed across,
and at the other toll-house door she saw the thin, pale man, with
spectacles on the end of his pointed nose, who had first touched his
hat to her when she rode on a tiny pony by the side of her father on
his big horse. That man was part of her life and she, presumably, was
part of his. He had watched many Upper Radstowe children from the
perambulator stage, and to him she remarked on the weather, as she had
done to the red-faced man at the other end. It was a beautiful day;
they were having a wonderful spring; it would soon be summer, she
said, but on repetition these words sounded false and intensely
dreary. It would soon be summer, but what did that mean to her?
Festivities suited to the season would be resumed in Radstowe. There
would be lawn tennis in the big gardens, and young men in flannels and
girls in white would stroll about the roads and gay voices would be
heard in the dusk. There would be garden-parties, and Mrs. Batty, the
wife of the lawyer, would be lavish with tennis for the young, gossip
for the middle-aged and unlimited strawberries and ices for all. Rose
would be one of the guests at this as at all the parties and, for the
first time, as though her refusal of Francis Sales had had some
strange effect, as though that rejected future had created a distaste
for the one fronting her, she was aghast at the prospect of perpetual