I remember too, so that I must have noted it and felt it then as a thing perceived for the first time, the large dignity of the room, the tall windows and splendid rich curtains, the darkened Hoppners upon the walls. I noted too the quality and abundance of the table things, and there were grapes and peaches, strawberries, cherries and green almonds, piled lavishly above the waiting dessert plates with the golden knives and forks, upon a table in the sunshine of the great bay. The very sunshine filtered through the tall narrow panes from the great chestnut trees without, seemed of a different quality from the common light of day.... I felt like a poor relation. I sympathized with Anarchists. We had come out of the Park now finally, both Mary and I--into this.... "Mr. Stratton I am sure agrees with me." For a time I had been marooned conversationally, and Lady Viping had engaged Sir Godfrey. Evidently he was refractory and she was back at me. "Look at it now in profile," she said, and directed me once more to that unendurable grouping. Justin again! "It's a heavy face," I said. "It's a powerful face. I wouldn't care anyhow to be up against it--as people say." And the lorgnette shut with a click. "What is this? Peaches!--Yes, and give me some cream." ... I hovered long for that measuring I had been promised on the steps, but either Mary had forgotten or she deemed it wiser to forget. § 11 I took my leave of Lady Ladislaw when the departure of Evesham broke the party into dispersing fragments. I started down the drive towards the rectory and then vaulted the railings by the paddock and struck across beyond the mere. I could not go home with the immense burthen of thought and new ideas and emotions that had come upon me. I felt confused and shattered to incoherence by the new quality of Mary's atmosphere. I turned my steps towards the wilder, lonelier part of the park beyond the Killing Wood, and lay down in a wide space of grass between two divergent thickets of bracken, and remained there for a very long time. There it was in the park that for the first time I pitted myself against life upon a definite issue, and prepared my first experience of defeat. "I _will_ have her," I said, hammering at the turf with my fist. "I will. I do not care if I give all my life...." Then I lay still and bit the sweetness out of joints of grass, and presently thought and planned. CHAPTER THE FOURTH THE MARRIAGE OF THE LADY MARY CHRISTIAN § 1 For three or four days I could get no word with Mary. I could not now come and go as I had been able to do in the days when we were still "the children." I could not work, I could not rest, I prowled as near as I could to Burnmore House hoping for some glimpse of her, waiting for the moment when I could decently present myself again at the house.