But gradually the morning and the freshness worked; and her spirits,
emerging from their half-dream, began to dance within her. When she
sprang up to throw the window wide, there below her was the sparkling
river, the daffodils waving their pale heads in the delicate Westmoreland
grass, the high white clouds still racing before the wind. How heavenly
to find oneself in this wild clean country!--after all the ugly squalors
of parade and lodging-house, after the dingy bow-windowed streets with
the March dust whirling through them.

She leant across the broad window-sill, her chin on her hands, absorbed,
drinking it in. The eastern sun, coming slanting-ways, bathed her tumbled
masses of fair hair, her little white form, her bare feet raised tiptoe.

Suddenly she drew back. She had seen the figure of a man crossing the
park on the further side of the river, and the maidenly instinct drove
her from the window; though the man in question was perhaps a quarter of
a mile away, and had he been looking for her, could not possibly have
made out more than a pale speck on the old wall.

"Mr. Helbeck,"--she thought--"by the height of him. Where is he off to
before seven o'clock in the morning? I hate a man that can't keep
rational hours like other people! Fricka, come here!"

For her little dog, who had sprung from the bed after its mistress, was
now stretching and blinking behind her. At Laura's voice it jumped up and
tried to lick her face. Laura caught it in her arms and sat down on the
bed, still hugging it.

"No, Fricka, I don't like him--I don't, I don't, I _don't!_ But you and I