In the farther distance, beyond the confines of the manor park itself, Jean could catch glimpses of cultivated fields--the red Devon soil glowing jewel-like through filmy wisps of morning mist that still hung in the atmosphere, dispersing slowly as though loth to go. Here and there a little spiral of denser, blue-grey smoke wreathed its way upwards from the chimney of some thatched cottage or farmhouse. And back of it all, adumbrated in a dim, mysterious purple, the great tors of Dartmoor rose sentinel upon the horizon. Jean’s glance narrowed down to the sloping sward in front of the house. It was all just as her father had pictured it to her. On the left, a giant cedar broke the velvet smoothness of mown grass, its gnarled arms rimmed with hoar-frost, whilst to the right a tall yew hedge, clipped into huge, grotesque resemblances of birds and beasts, divided the lawns from a path which skirted a walled rose garden. By craning her neck and almost flattening her nose against the window-pane, she could just make out a sunk lawn in the rose garden, and in its centre the slender pillar of an ancient sundial. It was all very English and old-fashioned, breathing the inalienable charm of places that have been well loved and tended by successive generations. And over all, hills and valleys, park and woodland, lay that faint, almost imperceptible humid veil wherewith, be it in scorching summer sunshine or iron frost, the West Country tenderly contrives to soften every harsh outline into something gracious, and melting, and alluring. To Jean, familiarised from childhood with the piercing clarity of atmosphere, the brilliant colouring and the definiteness of silhouette of southern Europe and of Egypt, there was something inexpressibly restful and appealing in those blurred hues of grey and violet, in the warm red of the Devon earth, with its tender overtone of purple like the bloom on a grape, and the rounded breasts of green-clad hills curving suavely one into the other till they merged into the ultimate, rock-crowned slopes of the brooding moor. “I’m going to love your England,” she told Nick. They were making their way down to the lake--alone together, since Blaise had curtly refused to join them--and as she spoke, Nick stopped and regarded her consideringly. “I rather imagine England will love you,” he replied, adding, with the whimsical impudence which was somehow always permitted Nick Brennan: “If it were not for a prior claim, I’m certain I should have loved you in about five minutes.” “I’m sorry I happened too late,” retorted Jean. “But I can still be a brother to you,” he pursued, ignoring her interpolation. “I think,”--reflectively--“I shall like being a brother to you.” “I should expect a brother to fetch and carry,” cautioned Jean. “And to make himself generally useful.”