mistrusted me?"
said Hyde in his soft voice. "But why should the Gentile maiden
trust a Jew?"

CHAPTER XIX

Riding back from Liddiard St. Agnes in the low September
sunshine, Val became aware of something pleasantly pictorial in
the landscape. It was a day when the hills looked higher than
usual, the tilt of the Plain sharper, the shadows a darker umber,
the light clearer under a softly-quilted autumn sky. When he
crossed a reaped cornfield, the pale golden stalks of stubble to
westward were tipped each with a spark of light, so that all the
upland flashed away from him toward the declining sun.

In his own mind there was a lull which corresponded with this
clear quietness of Nature: a pleasant vacancy and a suspension of
personal interest, so that even his anxiety about Laura was put
at a little distance, and he could see her and Bernard, and
Lawrence himself, like figures in a picture, hazed over by a kind
of moral sunlight--the Grace of God, say, which from Val's point
of view shapes all our ends:

I do not ask to see
The distant scene: one step enough for me,

this courage came to Val now without effort, and not for himself
only, which would have been easy at any time, but for Laura in
her difficult married life, and for those other beloved heads on
which he was fated to bring disgrace--his father, Rowsley,
Isabel: come what might, sorrow could not harm them, nor fear
annoy. How quiet it was! the quieter for the wrangling of rooks
in the border elms, and for the low autumn wind that rustled in
the hedgerows: and how full of light the sky, in spite of the
soft bloomy clouds that had hung about all day, imbrowning the
sunshine! far off in the valley doves were grieving, and over the
reaped and glittering cornstalks curlews were flying and calling
with their melancholy--shrill wail, an echo from the sea, while
small birds in flocks flew away twittering as he rode up, and
settled again further on, and rose and settled again, always with
a clatter of tiny wings. Evening coming on: and winter coming
on: and light, light everywhere, and calm, over the harvest
fields and the darkened copses, and the far blue headlands that
seemed to lift themselves up into immeasurable serenities of sky.

It was lucky for Val that he was able to enjoy this quiet hour,
for it was soon over. When he crossed the turf to the diningroom
window, the fire had burnt down into red embers and not much
ligh