"Nothing," I said desperately. "Nothing."
She looked at Cheneston; Cheneston laid her down very gently.
"You are worn out, dearest," he said. "You must rest now."
She did not refer to it when I saw her the next morning. She looked frailer than ever by day, a wraith woman with jewelled eyes.
I breakfasted alone; a thin, fine rain drove against the windows like sea-spray. In the garden I could see the michaelmas daisies bowed, great clumps of amethyst, the chrysanthemums gleamed tawny red. Autumn was later here, but in the rain gold leaves kept falling, and the pearly white of the jasmine from the front of the house strewed the path, and here and there the petal of a passion-flower, like an exotic beetle's wing.
I put on my little rainproof coat and sou'-wester and went out.
I walked through the orchards, where wet apples gleamed like jewelled fruit wrought in ruby and emerald, where yellow plums hung like waxen fruit, and the late pears like amber ornaments. I walked through little spinneys where the wet gold made your eyes ache. I saw the red fields waiting for ploughing and fields heavy with the late crops through the rain like a soft coloured map: and I saw the sea, queer and grey as an aged woman, through the trees—and as far as I could see it all belonged to the Cromers, and the words of an old poem came to me, something about "a goodly heritage, bound by the sea and netted by the skies."
I stopped to speak to a little child, and it answered me in the soft up-and-down of the Devonshire dialect; and I knew I could have been happy with Cheneston here—not with the satisfied happiness of those who possess a chippendale drawing-room suite, a parlourmaid, and a car, but happy as those who inherit the earth. I could have been happy with a glorious, keen, swelling happiness.
I turned home. It smelt as fresh as if all the earth had been newly turned that morning, and as I turned a sunbeam struggled through and flickered uncertainly.
I found a letter waiting for me—two letters, one from mother and one from Grace Gil pin.