He brushes rather hurriedly past his friend. But his friend forgives him. He stands, indeed, in the middle of the avenue, staring after Wyndham’s vanishing form.
‘And to think he doesn’t know he is in love with her!’ says he at last. ‘Any fellow might know when he was in love with a woman. Well,’—with a friendly sigh of deep regret—‘I am afraid it will cost him a good deal.’
CHAPTER XLVIII.
‘What a rich feast the canker grief has made!
How has it suck’d the roses of thy cheeks,
And drunk the liquid crystals of thy eyes!’
Autumn is dead. It has faded slowly and tenderly away, with no great sudden changes, no desperate looking back towards the life departing, no morbid rushing towards the death in front. Delicately, but very sorrowfully, it went to its grave, and was buried almost before one realized its loss.
And now winter is with us; chill and still chiller grow the winds, and harsh the biting frosts.
‘The upper skies are palest blue,
Mottled with pearl and fretted snow;