exercise, and air, and movement. The ignorance of all
these people dazzled her as if it had been a new science. It had seemed
something wonderful and piquant to Elinor to find people who knew so
much of subjects she had never heard of, and nothing at all of those she
had been trained to know. And then there had come a moment when she had
begun to sigh under her breath, as it were, and wish that Phil would
sometimes open a book, that when he took up the newspaper he would look
at something more than the sporting news and the bits of gossip, that he
would talk now and then of something different from the racings and the
startings, and the odds, and the scrapes other men got into, and the
astonishing "frocks" of the Jew--those things, so wonderful at first,
like a new language, absurd, yet amusing, came to be a little tiresome,
especially when scraps of them made up the bulk of the very brief
letters which Phil scribbled to his betrothed. But during this day,
after his unexpected arrival, the joy of seeing him suddenly, the
pleasure of feeling that he had broken through all his engagements to
come to her, and the fervour of his satisfaction in being with her again
(that very fervour which shocked her mother), Elinor's first glow of
delight in her love came fully back. And as they wandered through the
pleasant paths of the copse, his very talk seemed somehow changed, and
to have gained just that little mingling of perception of her tastes and
wishes which she had desired. There was a little autumnal mist about the
softening haze which was not decay, but only the "mellow fruitfulness"
of the poet; and the day, notwithstanding this, was as warm as June, the
sky blue, with only a little white puff of cloud here and there. Phil
paused to look down the combe, with all the folds of the downs that
wrapped it about, going off in blue outlines into the distance, and said
it was "a jolly view"--which amused Elinor more than if he had used the
finest language, and showed that he was beginning (she thought) to care
a little for the things which pleased her. "And I suppose you could see
a man coming by that bit of road."

"Yes," said Elinor, "you could see a man coming--or going: but, unless
you were to make believe very strong, like the Marchioness, you could
not make out who the man was."

"What Marchioness?" said Phil. "I didn't know you had anybody with a
title about here. I say, Nell, it's a very jolly view, but hideously
dull for