MRS. MERRICK sent a cart for her niece’s box next morning, and Felicia set out in the afternoon to walk the two miles to Trensome Hall, happy in the buoyancy of a sunny, breezy day. She responded easily to sunshine and buoyancy, and, in spite of her pessimistic education, easily expected happiness. Sometimes it seemed that it might be waiting for her behind every bush, for youth and an ardent temperament are more potent mood-makers than rational reflection. And, indeed, it did lurk, smiling, behind all the bushes to-day, for Felicia’s mood was happy. She saw it in the blue and white of the high summer sky, in the sun-dappled woods, in the wild-flowers of the hedge-row; she heard it in the mazurka-like song of a bird hidden in green mysteries of shade; she felt it in the warm, fresh breeze that swayed light shadows across the road. It was only an intensifying of the sense of response when, at a turning of the road, she met a young man, who seemed quite magically to personify the breeziness, the brightness, the mazurka-like element of the day. Coming thus upon each other, both smiling to themselves, both looking, listening, and, as it were, expectant, it seemed only natural that their eyes should dwell upon each other with frank interest. Their steps slackened, a mute, pleased query passed between them, and the young man, doffing his hat, and giving Felicia as he did so a vivid impression of sunlit auburn hair, said, “I beg your pardon, but I am sure that you are Miss Merrick.”
“And you are Mr. Wynne,” said Felicia, for she was quite sure he was not the ambitious politician. Their certainty about one another was as natural as all the rest.
“I came to meet you,” said Mr. Wynne. “I heard that you were arriving this afternoon, and that you lived on top of a hill and had a wonderful garden; and as I love gardens and hill-tops I thought I would try to meet you as near them as possible.”
Maurice Wynne was also telling himself that he loved meeting Miss Merrick.
Felicia on this day was dressed in white. Her hat had a wreath of white roses, and, tying under her chin, shaded her thick, smooth hair—hair the colour of sandal-wood—and her pale face. He would have climbed any number of hills to see the face—so significant, so resolute, so delicate.
Her small, square chin, narrowing suddenly from rounded cheeks, her wide, firm lips, her nose and forehead, and the broad sweep of her eye-brows, had all this quality of resolute delicacy. In the pale yet vivid tints of her face her clear grey eyes seemed dark, and her eyelashes slanted across them like sunshine on deep pools of woodland water. Maurice was seeing all this, delightedly,—and that through the child-like moulding of the cheek, the lips’ sweetness, the eyes’ tranquillity, ran a latent touch of mischievous gaiety—a dryad laughing a little at her own new soul.
“You have missed the climb and the garden in meeting me,” said Felicia, “unless you follow this road straight on, and that will lead you to them——“
“Perhaps you will show me both on some other day,” said Maurice, “since I haven’t missed you.” He had turned to walk beside her, and Felicia, also making inner comments, reflected that a person so assured of his own graceful intentions could hardly be anything but graceful. His looks, his words, implied happy things with as much conviction as the bird still sang on behind them.
“It isn’t in any way an unusual garden, though the view from it is unusual.”
“I am sure that your garden is unusual—just as this first stage of my journey towards it has been. It is very unusual to meet a Watteau figure in a Watteau landscape.”