oak, very much admired
by the experts. But of them and their excellence she had no thought.
She did not care to let her thoughts up to the surface just then.
Adventure beckoned her.

When she returned Nugent had withdrawn himself to the smoking-room,
and James was talking to Vera Nugent about people one knew. Neither of
them was for nightingales. "You are very foolhardy," James said. "I
can't help you with nightingales." Lord Considine, in a black Spanish
cloak, with the staff of a pilgrim to Compostella, offered his arm.
"We'll go first to the oak Spinney," he said. "It's rather spongy, I'm
afraid, but who minds a little cold water?" Vera assured him that she
did for one, and James added that he was rather rheumatic. "Come
along, Mrs. Macartney," said the lord. "These people make me sorry for
them." So they went down the steps and dipped into the velvet night.

It was barely dark skirting the lake. You could almost see the rings
made by rising trout, and there was enough of you visible at least to
send the waterfowl scuttering from the reeds. Beyond that again, you
could descry the pale ribbon of the footpath, and guess at the
exuberant masses of the peony bushes, their heavy flowers, when they
were white, still smouldering with the last of the sunset's fire. But
once in the woods you had to feel your way, and the silence of it all,
like the darkness, was thick, had a quality which you discovered only
by the soft close touch of it upon your cheeks and eyes. It seemed to
clog the ears, and made breathing a deeper exercise. The further in
they went the greater the guesswork of the going. Lord Considine went
in front, to keep the branches from her face.

Upon that rich, heavy silence the first birds' song stole like a
sense of tears: the low, tentative, pensive note which seems like the
welling of a vein. Lucy stayed and breathlessly listened. The
doubtfulness, the strain of longing in it chimed with her own mood,
which was one, perhaps, of passive wonderment. She waited, as one who
is to receive; she was not committed, but she was prepared: everything
was to come. The note was held, it waxed, it called, and then broke,
as it were, into a fountain of crystal melody. Thereafter it purred of
peace, it floated and stopped short as if content. But out of the dark
another took up the song, and further off another, provoking our first
musician to a new stave. Lucy, with parted lips, held her heart. Love
was in this place, ov