Theodore winced at the words. Yes, she had been so happy, and he had despaired because of her happiness. The cup of gladness which had brimmed over for her had been to him a fountain of bitterness. It seemed to him as if he had never realized how fondly he loved her till he saw her by her husband’s side, an embodiment of life’s sunshine, innocently revealing her felicity in every look and word. It was so long since he had ceased to hope. He had even taught himself to think he was resigned to his fate, that he could live his life without her. But that delusion ceased yesterday, and he knew that she was dearer than she had ever been to him now that she was irrevocably lost. It was human nature, perhaps, to love her best when love was most hopeless. They drove along the level road towards Cheriton, in the dewy freshness of the summer morning, by meadow and copse, by heath and cornfield, the skylarks carolling in the hot blue sky, the corncrake creaking inside the hedge, the chaffinch reiterating his monotonous note, the jay screaming in the wood, all living creatures revelling in the cloudless summer. It was hard, awful, unsupportable, that he who was with them yesterday, who had driven along this road under the westering sun, was now cold clay, a subject for the coroner, a something to be hidden away in the family vault, and forgotten as soon as possible; for what does consolation mean except persuasion to forget? Never had the way between Dorchester and Cheriton Chase looked lovelier than in this morning atmosphere; never had the cattle grouped themselves into more delightful pictures amidst those shallow waters which reflected the sky; never had the lights and shadows been fairer upon those level meadows and yonder broken hills. Theodore Dalbrook loved every bit of that familiar landscape; and even to-day, amidst the horror and wonder of his distracted thoughts, he had a dim sense of surrounding beauty, as of something seen in a dream. He could have hardly told where he was, or what the season was, or whether it was the morning or the evening light that was gilding the fields yonder. The lowered blinds at Cheriton told only too surely that the ghastly announcement in the telegram was no clerical error. The face of the footman who opened the door was pale with distress. He conducted Mr. Dalbrook and his son to the library, where the butler appeared almost immediately to answer the elder man’s eager questions. Not on the highway, not in the woods or the Park, but in the drawing-room where the butler had seen him sitting in a low arm-chair by the open window, in the tranquil summer night, absorbed in his book.