The day was a thorough March day--changeable in mood--now brightened by a sudden glimpse of the sun, now grey and threatening, dull and colourless as the life which lay before Isabel Gilbert when _he_ should be gone, and the sweet romance of her existence closed abruptly, like a story that is never to be finished. The Doctor's Wife shuddered as she went out into the lane, where the dust was blowing into eddying circles every now and then by a frolicsome north-easter. She closed the gate safely behind her and went away, and to-day for the first time she felt that her errand was a guilty one. She went into the familiar meadow pathway; she tried to walk slowly, but her feet seemed to carry her towards Thurston's Crag in spite of herself; and when she was far from Graybridge, and looked at her watch, it was only one o'clock, and there were two long hours that must elapse before Roland Lansdell's coming. It was only a quarter past one when she came in sight of the miller's cottage--the pretty little white-walled habitation nestling low down under big trees, which made a shelter even in winter time. A girl was standing at a door feeding chickens and calling to them in a loud cheerful voice. There was no sorrowful love story in her life, Mrs. Gilbert thought, as she looked at the bouncing red-elbowed young woman. She would marry some floury-visaged miller's man, most likely, and be happy ever after. But it was only a momentary thrill of envy that shot through Isabel's breast. Better to die for Roland Lansdell than to live for a miller's man in thick clumpy boots and an elaborately-stitched smock-frock. Better to have lived for the briefest summer time of joy and triumph, and then to stand aloof upon a rock for ever afterwards, staring at the wide expanse of waters, and thinking of the past, like Napoleon at St. Helena. "He has loved me!" thought Isabel; "I ought never to be unhappy, when I remember that."