Had he been less infatuated, he might have divined in this omission one of those unconscious revelations of character--the selfishness of a spoiled and petted woman, who has come to assume that the convenience of others must necessarily coincide with her own. But Leigh saw only a hint of something confidential between them. He experienced also that peculiar intensity of interest which attends a lover's first glimpse of his mistress's handwriting. Even if it were commonplace, it would seem to him like no other in the world; but here there was really something distinctive. The letters were almost microscopically small, and crowded into the centre of the page with the effect of a decorative panel. He carried the epistle about with him all day, and observed the weather with solicitous attention, but no change occurred. The turquoise sky remained without a cloud. Fires from burning leaves sent up sluggish pillars of smoke, that spread out equilaterally above the trees in the windless air. It so happened that he had the afternoon to himself. The prospect of inaction was intolerable, so he went down into the cool vaults below the Hall to take out his wheel for an afternoon of exploration. In these subterranean regions, perhaps more here than elsewhere, the imaginative appeal of the Hall was still present. As he prepared his wheel for the trip, which he meant should be a long one, he glanced up at the arched windows, down whose wide, slanting sills the sunlight poured in a flood of dusty gold. The walls of these foundations were five feet in thickness, built as if to keep out an invading host. Even in this unfrequented place, each stone was carefully cut, and fitted with exact nicety in its place. There was no rubble, no mere filling. Here was a lavishness of expenditure, a conscience in building, rare in modern times. Leigh looked down the long succession of massive archways, dwindling into the distance, with vague thoughts of the Castle of Chillon and the Man with the Iron Mask. When he ascended again into the warmth and sunlight of the open air, he had a passing sense of having emerged from a brief incarceration. He pushed his bicycle through the maple walk to the brow of the hill from which he had first looked over the valley toward the west. There in the distance the village he had noted sparkled like a handful of white dice thrown carelessly down against the earth. He fixed upon this point as the terminus of his ride, and began to coast down the long slope, leaving a trail of grey dust to mark his flight. There was a peculiar exhilaration in the dry heat of the October afternoon. Flocks of crows passed over his head with raucous cries. The cornstalks were stacked in serried array, like Indian wigwams, and heaps of apples, red and yellow and russet brown, lay ungathered in the orchards.