nted his horse, passed through the gate which
Grace held open for him, and ambled down the steep bridle-track to the
valley.

She closed the gate and watched his descent, and then his journey
onward. His way was east, the evening sun which stood behind her back
beaming full upon him as soon as he got out from the shade of the hill.
Notwithstanding this untoward proceeding she was determined to be loyal
if he proved true; and the determination to love one's best will carry
a heart a long way towards making that best an ever-growing thing. The
conspicuous coat of the active though blanching mare made horse and
rider easy objects for the vision. Though Darling had been chosen with
such pains by Winterborne for Grace, she had never ridden the sleek
creature; but her husband had found the animal exceedingly convenient,
particularly now that he had taken to the saddle, plenty of staying
power being left in Darling yet. Fitzpiers, like others of his
character, while despising Melbury and his station, did not at all
disdain to spend Melbury's money, or appropriate to his own use the
horse which belonged to Melbury's daughter.

And so the infatuated young surgeon went along through the gorgeous
autumn landscape of White Hart Vale, surrounded by orchards lustrous
with the reds of apple-crops, berries, and foliage, the whole
intensified by the gilding of the declining sun. The earth this year
had been prodigally bountiful, and now was the supreme moment of her
bounty. In the poorest spots the hedges were bowed with haws and
blackberries; acorns cracked underfoot, and the burst husks of
chestnuts lay exposing their auburn contents as if arranged by anxious
sellers in a fruit-market. In all this proud show some kernels were
unsound as her own situation, and she wondered if there were one world
in the universe where the fruit had no worm, and marriage no sorrow.

Herr Tannhauser still moved on, his plodding steed rendering him
distinctly visible yet. Could she have heard Fitzpiers's voice at that
moment she would have found him murmuring--

"...Towards the loadstar of my one desire
I flitted, even as a dizzy moth in the owlet light."

But he was a silent spectacle to her now. Soon he rose out of the
valley, and skirted a high plateau of the chalk formation on his right,
which rested abruptly upon the fruity district of loamy clay, the
character and herbage of the two formations being so distinct that the
cal