grey sky in a kind of agonised
appeal. John liked the sound of the wind sweeping over the hills, rending
the trees, and filling the horizon as with a crowd of shadows in pain,
twisting and bending with every fresh sweep of the breeze. Sometimes
such sounds and sights give a relief to the mind. He liked it better
than if all had been undisturbed, lying in afternoon quiet as might have
been expected at the crown of the year--but the winds had always to be
taken into account at Windyhill.

When he came in sight of the gate, John was aware of some one waiting
for him, walking up and down the sandy road into which it opened. Her
face was turned the other way, and she evidently looked for him by way
of the combe, the scrambling steep road which he had avoided in despite:
for why should he scramble and make himself hot in order to hear ten
minutes sooner what he did not wish to hear at all? She turned round
suddenly as he knocked his foot against a stone upon the rough, but
otherwise noiseless road, presenting a countenance flushed with sudden
relief and pleasure to John's remorseful eye. "Oh, there you are!" she
said; "I am so glad. I thought you could not be coming. You might have
been here a quarter of an hour ago by the short road."

"I did not think there was any hurry," said John, ungraciously. "The
wind is enough to carry one off one's feet; though, to be sure, it's
quiet enough here."

"It's always quiet here," she said, reading his face with her eyes after
the manner of women, and wondering what the harassed look meant that was
so unusual in John's cheerful face. She jumped at the idea that he was
tired, that his bag was heavy, that he had been beaten about by the wind
till he had lost his temper, always a possible thing to happen to a man.
Elinor flung herself upon the bag and tried to take possession of it.
"Why didn't you get a boy at the station to carry it? Let me carry it,"
she said.

"That is so likely," said John, with a hard laugh, shifting it to his
other hand.

Elinor caught his arm with both her hands, and looked up with wistful
eyes into his face. "Oh, John, you are angry," she said.

"Nonsense. I am tired, buffeting about with this wind." Here the
gardener and man-of-all-work about the cottage came up and took the bag,
which John parted with with angry reluctance, as if it had been a sort
of weapon of offence. After it was gone there was nothing for it but to
walk quietly to the house through the