She nodded her head, although she had not caught the words; and presently he shouted close to her ear.
"Moving now, aren't we? Doesn't she run smooth?"
"Yes, yes. Capital."
The wind, breaking on the glass screen, sang as it swept over them; hedge-rows, telegraph poles, and wayside cottages hurried towards them, rising and growing as they came; long stretches of straight road, along which Mr. Young's horses used to plod for half an hour, were snatched at, conquered, and contemptuously thrown behind, almost before one could recognize them.
That pretty country-house which she had always admired passed her; and, passing, seemed like a faintly tinted picture in a book whose pages are turned too fast by careless hands. Naked branches of high trees, broad eaves and nestling windows, weak sunlight upon latticed glass, and pale smoke rising from clustered chimneys—that was all she saw. A few dead leaves pretended to be live things, scampered beside the long wall; a few dead thoughts revived in her mind, and swiftly she recalled her old fancies, the dream of the future, Enid and herself living together so quietly beneath the grey roof;—and then the pretty house with its pretty grounds had been left far behind. It had lost its brief aspect of reality as completely as a half-forgotten dream.
"There, we'll go easy now." They were approaching a village, and he reduced the speed. "You're a good plucked 'un, Jane;" and he glanced at her approvingly. "You don't funk a little bit of pace."
They stopped at an inn, thirty miles from Mallingbridge, and drank tea—that is to say, Mrs. Marsden drank tea and Mr. Marsden drank something else, for the good of the house.
Then, after a cigar, he lighted his lamps, and drove her home through the greyness, the dusk, and the dark. And for the three hours or so that she was with him, for the whole time that this outing lasted, she was almost happy.