“This morning has been so much to the good,” he said. “I had thought that perhaps we might scarcely meet again this year. I shall become absorbed in hops and you will no doubt go away. You will make visits or go to the Riviera--or to New York for the winter?” “I do not know yet. But at least I shall stay to watch the thorn trees load themselves with coral.” To herself she was saying: “He means to keep away. I shall not see him.” As she rode off Mount Dunstan stood for a few moments, not moving from his place. At a short distance from the farmhouse gate a side lane opened upon the highway, and as she cantered in its direction a horseman turned in from it--a man who was young and well dressed and who sat well a spirited animal. He came out upon the road almost face to face with Miss Vanderpoel, and from where he stood Mount Dunstan could see his delighted smile as he lifted his hat in salute. It was Lord Westholt, and what more natural than that after an exchange of greetings the two should ride together on their way! For nearly three miles their homeward road would be the same. But in a breath's space Mount Dunstan realised a certain truth--a simple, elemental thing. All the exaltation of the morning swooped and fell as a bird seems to swoop and fall through space. It was all over and done with, and he understood it. His normal awakening in the morning, the physical and mental elation of the first clear hours, the spring of his foot as he had trod the road, had all had but one meaning. In some occult way the hypnotic talk of the night before had formed itself into a reality, fantastic and unreasoning as it had been. Some insistent inner consciousness had seized upon and believed it in spite of him and had set all his waking being in tune to it. That was the explanation of his undue spirits and hope. If Penzance had spoken a truth he would have had a natural, sane right to feel all this and more. But the truth was that he, in his guise--was one of those who are “on the roadside everywhere--all over the world.” Poetically figurative as the thing sounded, it was prosaic fact. So, still hearing the distant sounds of the hoofs beating in cheerful diminuendo on the roadway, he turned about and went back to talk to Bolter. CHAPTER XXXVII CLOSED CORRIDORS