“That’s nice,” said Mrs. Martin comfortably; “it will be nice for me to have you at home in my old age.” Henry let this remark pass; he hated inflicting disappointment, and there would be plenty of time in which to make his plans clear to his mother. In the meantime she was so obviously happy; a pity to throw a shadow over her first day. They reached the top of the path and the clump of firs. Mrs. Martin’s heart was beating hard, and a little pink flush had appeared on her cheeks. It was not, after all, every day that one reached a moment one had anticipated for nearly five years. She wished she had had the strength of mind to wait until the following morning before bringing Henry here, for the country was lovelier under the morning mists than now in the cruder light of the afternoon; but she had been too much excited, too impatient. They stood there looking down over the valley, across it to the Downs. She let him look his fill. “Better than the Argentine, Henry?” “By Jove, yes, I should think so: better than the Argentine.” She gave a chuckle of happiness. She dealt her secret out to him in small doses, like the old Epicurean she was. “Isn’t it nice to think, Henry, that those fields and woods belong to you?” “But they don’t,” he said, “they belong to you.” “Well—doesn’t that amount to the same thing?” “Oh, no,” he said, “not at all the same thing,” and the difference in his mind was that whereas she loved and wanted the fields and woods, their possession would have bored him. “Dear Henry, that is just an evasion. You know that it amounts to the same thing really. Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that they belong to us both.” “All right,” he said, humouring her. “Do you remember,” she went on, “we used to say, how nice it would be if our property went down as far as the river?” “Did we?—Doesn’t it?—No, I don’t remember,” he said absently. “But, Henry! Think, darling! Well, it does now: right down to the river.” “How splendid!” he replied, feeling that he was expected to say something of the sort. “But didn’t it always?” VII She went into no explanation; she did not remind him of the three hundred acres required to round off the estate, nor did she make the confession which she had been saving up, like a guilty child, of how she had got round the obstinacy of Mr. Thistlethwaite. She made some quiet reply to his last remark, and went on talking of other things. He was perfectly oblivious to the moment that had come and gone. And she, in her mind, was already making excuses for him; he had been away for so long, he had grown accustomed to such vast districts where three hundred acres must seem paltry indeed! When they had looked sufficiently at the view, she returned down the path beside him, her hand still slipped into the crook of his arm, without the slightest resentment. Henry! she could never harbour resentment against Henry.