Maud knew perfectly well that this was a mere diversion to save her from the confusion of a thoughtless speech and turn Desvoeux's attention from her. It seemed quite natural and of a piece with Sutton's watchful, sympathetic care to give her all possible pleasure and to shield her from every shade of annoyance. A thrill of gratitude shot through her. There was a charm, a fascination, in protection so prompt, so delicate, so kind, compared with which all other attractions seemed faint indeed. That evening Maud went to bed with her heart in a tumult, and wept, she knew not wherefore, far into the night--only again and again the tears streamed out--the outcome, though as yet she knew it not, of that purest of all pure fountains, an innocent first love. CHAPTER XIV. TO THE HILLS! However marred, and more than twice her years, Scarred with an ancient sword-cut on the cheek, And bruised and bronzed,--she lifted up her eyes, And loved him with that love which was her doom. Summer was beginning to come on apace; not summer as English people know it, the genial supplement to a cold and watery spring, with just enough heat about it to thaw the chills of winter out of one; but summer in its fiercest and cruellest aspect, breathing sulphurous blasts, glowing with intolerable radiance, begirt with whirlwinds of dust--the unsparing despot of a sultry world. The fields, but a few weeks ago one great 'waveless plain' of ripening corn, had been stripped of their finery, and were now lying brown and blistering in the sun's eye. The dust lay deep on every road and path and wayside shrub, and seized every opportunity of getting itself whirled into miniature siroccos. More than once Maud and Felicia had been caught, not in a sweet May shower, stealing down amid bud and blossom and leaving the world moist and fresh and fragrant behind it, but in rough, turbulent clouds of rushing sand, which shut out the sunshine and replaced the bright blue atmosphere with the lurid glare of an eclipse. Felicia's flowers had begun to droop, nor could all her care rescue the fresh green of her lawn from turning to a dingy brown. Already prudent housekeepers were busy with preparations against the evil day so near at hand. Verandahs were guarded with folds of heavy matting, to shut out the intolerable light that would have forced a way through any ordinary barrier; windows were replaced by fragrant screens of cuscus-grass, through which the hot air passing might lose a portion of its sting; and one morning, when Maud came out, she found a host of labourers carrying a huge winnowing-machine to one side of the house, the object of which was, Vernon informed her, to manufacture air cool enough for panting Britons to exist in.