Jeffray rode through the woods that evening, and heard the birds singing in the thickets, and saw the gloom creeping up over the mysterious hills, the gray sky cracking in the west to let through the red and molten lava of the setting sun. Thrush challenged thrush on many a glimmering spire, blackbirds piped it mellowly, linnets twittered in the gorse. Soon the plaintive chiding of the wryneck would be heard amid the meadows and the thickets. The wild woods seemed full of sound, of all the joyous outpourings of life, the massed chantings of the forest choristers. The gorse glimmered, wind-flowers shivered in the shade, the cuckoo-flower was unfolding its finials of lilac and white. Overhead the great trees breathed and murmured, tossing their hands to the setting sun. Jeffray’s whole soul was filled with melancholy delight. Was not this black-haired Bess akin to all this beauty, this starting forth of colors, this uprushing of sound? The light in her eyes, surely it had set his soul on fire. And the sweet scent of her clothes, like hay on a June morning, should he forget it to the day of his death? He slept but little that night, tossing to and fro—and thinking of Bess. Even when he slept he dreamed of her, and waking—seemed to catch her face looking out at him from the gloom. Ever and again, with a rallying of his loyalty to Jilian, he strove to put the thought of the girl out of his head. It was but the old battle betwixt nature and the sentimental but very jealous ordinances of civilization. On the one hand, romance pleaded, on the other, prosaic proprieties of life propounded the doctrine of peace and respectable monotony. Richard came from his bedroom feeling feverish and heavy about the eyes next morning. It was but a just judgment on the physical part of him, he imagined, for the emotional debauch of yesterday. He ate his breakfast in solitude, staring morosely out of the window, and watching the clouds move across the sky. Depression had followed on exaltation, and he was moved to regard the passion of yesterday in a somewhat more stern and moral light. No, he would not meet Bess on Thursday. If she were in trouble she could come to him at Rodenham and he would help her. Heavens, if his escapade came to Miss Jilian’s ears there would be excitement enough for him in the home of the Hardacres! He would go and see Jilian that very morning. Her presence would chasten him and enable him to realize more acutely the disloyalty of his attraction towards poor Bess.