Jeffray flattered the surgeon by acknowledging his authority, and by straightway deciding to join the Lady Letitia at The Wells for one month. He was glad of the excuse to commend himself to Jilian by letter, pleading ill-health and Surgeon Stott’s advice. He imagined that his absence might prepare Miss Hardacre for a possible parting, and at least he would gain leisure to face the future calmly and without haste. He rode out that same evening, and found Bess in the valley of yews, a dusky fiord that ran from the green levels about Thorney Chapel into the towering gloom of Pevensel. Hundreds of yews were crowded about piled-up rocks that looked like the broken towers and battlements of a ruin. A path ran amid the trees, leading to a little glade where a pool covered with the white stars of the water-crowfoot glimmered before the old, rock-cut hermitage. She started up on seeing him, the blood in her cheeks, sunlight in her eyes. Jeffray was as red as Bess, the sense of her nearness adding the charm of strangeness to the meeting. “So you have found your way?” She held out her hands, and Jeffray took them, brown and rough-skinned as they were. They seemed to smell of new mown hay and milk to him, and of the pots of musk that grow in cottage windows. “I rode here last night, but you did not come.” “No, I could not get free from Dan.” They stood looking at each other awhile in silence, as though letting the subtle consciousness of love steal in upon their hearts. All about them the brown trunks of the yews broke into sheaves of dusky pinnacles and slender spires. The silence of the place was as the silence of some sacred wood. The grass grew green and deep in the glade, while the thickets above seemed dusted with lapis lazuli, so thick were the bluebells. Bess seated herself on a stone beside the pool, Jeffray lying in the grass at her feet. The happy abandonment of children was theirs, for the sordidness of life seemed far from them for the moment. Bess’s eyes darkened a little when Jeffray told her of Surgeon Stott’s warning to him that morning, but there was no distrust upon her face. Stott’s month at The Wells was dwindling to vanishing point in Jeffray’s mind as he talked to Bess, and watched the play of feeling on her face. It was then that Bess spoke for the first time to Jeffray of Miss Hardacre. She had thought often of the great lady in her silks and brocades queening it in the stately house guarded by its ancestral trees. Bess wished to hear Jeffray speak of this woman whom he was to marry, and to watch his eyes to see whether they lit up like a lover’s eyes. Jeffray’s face and mood changed on the instant; he was no longer the dreamer watching the sun sinking behind the yews. “Why do you ask me about Miss Hardacre?” Bess saw that the thought was bitter to him, and yet felt glad at heart. “I know,” she said, slowly, “you are to marry her.” “Who told you that?” “Miss Sugg, before—” “Before you married Dan?” “Yes.”