“I told the coachman, Aunt Marcia, I should ride for an hour or so after tea. If I take the Lawley road, does that go anywhere near Flood?”
“It takes you to the top of the moor, and you have a glorious view of the castle and all its woods. Yes, do go that way. You’ll see what the poor things have lost. You did like Douglas, didn’t you?”
“‘Like’ is not exactly the word, is it?” said Constance with a little laugh, vexed to feel that she could not keep the colour out of her cheeks. “And he doesn’t care whether you like him or not!”
She went away, and her elderly aunt watched her cross the lawn. Lady Marcia looked puzzled. After a few moments’ meditation a half light broke on her wrinkled face. “Is it possible? Oh, no!”
It was a rich August evening. In the fields near the broad river the harvest had begun, and the stubbles with their ranged stocks alternated with golden stretches still untouched. The air was full of voices—the primal sounds of earth, and man’s food-gathering; calling reapers, clattering carts, playing children. And on the moors that closed the valley there were splashes and streaks of rose colour, where the heather spread under the flecked evening sky.
Constance rode in a passion of thought. “On the other side of that moor—five miles away—there he is! What is he doing now—at this moment? What is he thinking of?”
Presently the road bent upward, and she followed it, soothed by the quiet movement of her horse and by the evening air. She climbed and climbed, till the upland farms fell behind, and the road came out upon the open moor. The distance beyond began to show—purple woods in the evening shadow, dim valleys among them, and wide grassy stretches. A little more, and she was on the crest. The road ran before her—westward—a broad bare whiteness through the sun-steeped heather. And, to the north, a wide valley, where wood and farm and pasture had been all fashioned by the labour of generations into one proud setting for the building in its midst. Flood Castle rose on the green bottom of the valley, a mass of mellowed wall and roof and tower, surrounded by its stately lawns and terraces, and girdled by its wide “chase,” of alternating wood and glade—as though wrought into the landscape by the care of generations, and breathing history. A stream, fired with the sunset, ran in loops and windings through the park, and all around the hills rose and fell, clothed with dark hanging woods.
Lady Connie held in her horse, feeding her eyes upon Flood Castle and its woods