Mrs. Lane uttered a faint cry and Mrs. LeGrand rose from the sofa. CHAPTER X GILEAD BALM The March winds shook the rusty cedars and tossed the pink peach branches, and carried a fleet of clouds swiftly overhead through the blue aërial sea. They rattled the windows of Gilead Balm and bent the chimney smoke aslant like streamers. The winds were rough but not cold. Now and again they sank into the sunniest of calms, little periods of stillness, small doldrums punctuating the stormiest sentences. Then with a whistle, shriller and shriller, they mounted again, tremendously exhilarated, sweeping earth and sky. On the ridge back of Gilead Balm the buds of the cucumber tree were swelling, the grass beneath was growing green, the ants were out in the sunshine. Up in the branches a bluebird was exploring building-sites. Hagar came wandering over the ridge. The wind wrapped her old brown dress about her limbs and blew her dark hair into locks and tendrils. Luna followed her, but Luna in no frolicsome mood. Luna was old, old, and to-day dispirited because Captain Bob had gone to a meeting of Democrats in the neighbouring town and had left her behind. Depression was writ in every line of Luna's body, and an old, experienced weariness and disillusionment in the eye with which she looked askance at a brand-new white butterfly on a brand-new dandelion. Hagar stood with her back to the cucumber tree and surveyed the scene. The hills, scurried over by the shadows of the driven clouds, the river--the river winding down to the sea, and the ditch where used to be the canal; and away, away, the white plume of a passenger train. She was mad for travel, for wandering, for the open road; all the world sung to her as with a thousand tongues in the books she read. Pictures, cathedrals, statues, cities, snow on mountains, the ocean, deserts, torrid lands, France, Spain, Italy, England--oh, to go, to go! She would have liked to fling herself on the blowing wind and go with it over land and sea. She looked with hot, sombre eyes at Gilead Balm. It was the home she had always known and she loved it; it was home,--yes, it was home; but it was not so pleasant at home just now. March--and the Colonel had withdrawn her from Eglantine, ordered her home, the first of January! January, February, a part of March--and her grandfather still eaten with a cold anger every time he looked at her, and her grandmother, outraged at her suddenly manifested likeness to Maria and Maria's "ways," almost as bad! Aunt Serena gave her no sympathy; Aunt Serena had become almost violent on the subject. If you were going to rebel and disobey, Aunt Serena told her, if you were going to be forward and almost fast, and rebel and disobey, you needn't look for any sympathy from her! Colonel Ashendyne had been explicit enough back in January. "When you send about his business that second-rate person you've chosen to entangle yourself with, then and not till then will you be 'Gipsy' again to me!"