Some hints of autumn are in the soft, warm airs that blow through the smoke and heat of London. The fashionable season is over, and the gay butterflies of fashion have begun to seek "fresh fields and pastures new." Lady Clive begins to think of flitting with the rest.
It has been settled that the Countess of Fairvale shall remain with the Clives for the autumn and winter months at least. She is in mourning for her father, and is quite settled in her mind at first that she will go home to her ancestral castle and spend the period of retirement in strict seclusion with a proper chaperon. But the Clives will not hear of it. Lady Clive is afraid that she will mope herself to death.
"Besides, I shall be so lonely," she declares. "Philip is going back soon to his own home, and we shall have no young people with us at all if Lady Vera leaves us, too. My dear, do say that you will stay. We are not going to be very gay this season. Sir Harry and I want to take the children down to our country home, where they may roll in the grass to their hearts' content. Let us invite two or three sweet young girls, and as many young men, to go down with us, and we can have such a charming time, with picnics and lawn tennis, and simple country pleasures. Then, after awhile, we will go to Switzerland and climb the Alps. What say you, my little countess?"
Lady Vera, so ardently pressed, yields a gentle assent, and the party of "sweet, young girls" and eligible young men is immediately organized, Captain Lockhart promising to go down with them and remain a week before he returns to America.
So in the late summer they go down to Sunny Bank, as the Clives call the large, rambling, ornate pile of white buildings that is the sweetest home in all Devonshire.
The children go mad with delight over the fragrant grass and the autumnal flowers. The young people begin to pair off in couples, and one day Vera goes for a walk with the American soldier.
She is looking her fairest and sweetest. A dress of soft, rich, lusterless black drapes her slender figure superbly, and the round, white column of her throat rises lily-like from the thin, soft ruche of black around it, her face appearing like some rare flower beneath the shade of her wide, black Gainsborough hat. No wonder that Captain Lockhart's dark blue eyes return again and again to that delicately lovely face.
"It is no wonder," said the lords,
"She is more beautiful than day."
They walk slowly down the green, country lane, bordered with oak and holly. The flowers are beginning to fade, and the air is sweet with their pungent fragrance. The sky is deeply blue, with little, white, silvery clouds sailing softly over it. The sun is shining sweet and warm as if it were May. Little birds are singing blithely for joy as if the spring-time had come again.
"Do you know that this is the first time I have walked by your side since that day last spring, when you were so cruel to me?" he asks, breaking a long interval of silence that has been perilously sweet.