But now, as the days passed at Seddon, his irritation thrived. Women were all the same. They _seemed_ obstinate enough, but there was nothing like brute force to bring them to heel. He was growing surly--cross with the servants and the animals. He didn't sleep. His discontent made him silent so that, when they were alone, instead of talking to her and interesting her and winning her, perhaps, in that way, he would sit and look at her and answer her in monosyllables, and, afterwards, would be furious with himself for behaving so absurdly. This trouble sent him out of doors and away over the Downs on his horse. Fiercely he hurled himself into his fields and lanes and farms, getting up sometimes very early and riding out to some distant place, thinking always, as he rode, of Rachel and what he was to do. His devotion for the country round Seddon, a devotion that had stirred his heart since his first conscious sight of the outside world, nobly now rewarded him. The land seemed to understand that he was suffering, and drew closer to him and watched him with gentle and loving eyes, and soothed his soul. Before Christmas there came some sharp, frosty mornings; he would go out very early and would see, first, the garden, the lawn crisp and white, the grey jagged wall that divided his land from the sweeping Downs, the grey house behind him so square and solid and comfortable. At the end of the garden away from the road there was an old iron gate with stone pillars, and upon these pillars sat old stone gryphons. These gryphons had been there since long ago and he liked the friendliness of their faces, the strength of their crouching bodies and the way that they would look out so patiently, over a great expanse of fields and hedges, until their gaze rested on the white chalk hollows in the rising hills away behind Lewes. Roddy, standing with the Downs so immediately behind him and this green spread of land in front of him, was always conscious of happiness. Here he was at home. He knew those fields, the streams that ran through them, the farmers, the labourers, the horses and dogs that lived upon them. No fear here that "one of those clever fellers" would wonder at his stupidity, no sudden "letting you down" or "showing you up." Behind him was his house, before him the land that he had always known; here he was safe.