All nature seems lovely, and, in coloring, intense. To look upon it is to have one's heart widen and grow stronger and greater as its divinity fills one's soul to overflowing. Yet to Georgie the hour gives no joy: with lowered head and dejected mien she goes, scarce heeding the glowing tints that meet her on every side. It is as though she tells herself the world's beauty can avail her nothing, as, be the day
"Foul, or even fair,
Methinks her hearte's joy is stainéd with some care."
Crossing a little brook that is babbling merrily, she enters the land of Hythe; and, as she turns a corner (all rock, and covered with quaint ferns and tender mosses), she comes face to face with an old man, tall and lean, who is standing by a pool, planted by nature in a piece of granite.
He is not altogether unknown to her. At church she has seen him twice, and once in the village, though she has never been introduced to him, has never interchanged a single word with him: it is Lord Sartoris.
He gazes at her intently. Perhaps he too knows who she is, but, if so, he makes no sign. At last, unable to bear the silence any longer, she says, naïvely and very gently,—
"I thought you were in Paris."
At this extraordinary remark from a woman he has never spoken to before, Sartoris lifts his brows, and regards her, if possibly, more curiously.
"So I was," he says; "but I came home yesterday." Then, "And you are Dorian's wife?"
Her brows grow clouded.
"Yes," she says, and no more, and, turning aside, pulls to pieces the flowering grasses that grow on her right hand.