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The park was very

There was a scent of sap and new buds in the February haze, a glireen on southern slopes, a distant bird note, tentative, then confident, rippling frole of naked thickets Here and there in hollows the tips of amber-tinted shoots pricked the soil's dark surface; here and there in the sparse woodlands a withered leaf still clinging to oak or beech was forced to let go by the swelling bud at its base and fell rustling stiffly in the silence

Far away on the wooded bridle-path the dulled double gallop of horses sounded, now round, nearer, heavier, then suddenly checked to a trahtening in her saddle, raised her flushed face to the sky

"Rain?" she asked, as Quarrier, controlling his beautiful, restive horse, ranged up beside her

"Probably," he said, scarcely glancing at the sky, where, above the great rectangular lagoons, hundreds of sea-gulls, high in the air, hung flapping, steale unfelt below

She walked her ulls; he followed, uninterested, imperturbable in his finished horsee, whether on the box of break or coach, or silently controlling a spike or tande-li without effort the very essence of form Here he was at his best, perfectly informal, informally perfect

They had ridden every day since the weather per through the rotting ice and snow, galloping over the frozen, gravelly loam, amid leafless trees and a winter-slimpse of the avenue's marble and limestone façades and the vast cliffs ofabove the west and south

On these daily rides together it was her custo their future; and it was his custoestion, an assent, or a reply

Sparing words--cautious, chary of self-co to assume the initiative--this was the surface character which she had conise and acquiesce in; this was Quarrier as he had been developed from her hazy, preconceived ideas of the man before she had finally accepted him at Shotover the autu from others the orderly precision which characterised his own dealings; a , of attaines, formal, intensely sensitive to ridicule, incapable of humour