The Squire heard the news of Peignton's engagement at the County Club, and carried it to his wife on his return to lunch. He found Cassandra on the terrace, where she had spent what was perhaps one of the happiest hours of her life. An hour before she had opened one of the long windows of the morning room, and had stepped bareheaded, in her white morning dress, into a bath of sunshine and warmth. Hitherto though the sun had shone, east winds had prevailed--making it necessary to put on wrappings for even the shortest excursion, but this morning the "nip" had departed; what wind there was blew balmily from the south, and the temperature without was warmer than that in the house. There is always a special thrill attendant on the first breath of summer, a special consciousness of freedom and escape, when for the first time it becomes possible to leave the house and wander bareheaded under the skies, but never, as it seemed to Cassandra, had a springtide been so wonderful as this. She looked downwards over the terraced gardens, and everywhere the world seemed new. Green branches on the larches, shimmers of green on oak and ash, swelling of buds on the great chestnuts, and through the bare brown of the earth the shooting of living things. Everything was new and pregnant with joys to come, and from her own heart came an answering song of joy. It seemed in mysterious fashion as though the stateness of custom had been left behind, with other drearinesses of the long winter, and the coming spring had vivified her life. The air breathed hope and expectation, and although she could not have said to what special event she was looking forward, she knew that there was hope in her heart also, and an expectation which gilded the coming days. It was good to be alive, to wander bareheaded in the sunshine inhaling the fragrance of flowers, to behold reflected in the long windows the graceful glimpses of one's own form, to look around the fair domain lying to right and left, and be able to say, "This is mine!"