It was dark before she reached home. Jim was angry with her for being late, and for having driven all the way without a servant. She paid no heed to his upbraiding; but told him shortly that Alec was still in great danger. He muttered some perfunctory expression of regret, and went off to the stables to order a bran-mash for the horse. His insensibility to the importance of the tragedy she had been witnessing, exasperated her: she felt bitterly mortified that he could not divine all that she had been suffering. * * * * * The last of the winter months went, and life in the valley swept its sluggish course onwards. The bleak, spring winds rollicked, hooting from hill to hill. The cattle waited for evening, huddled under the walls of untrimmed stone; and before the fireside, in every farmhouse, new-born lambs lay helplessly bleating. On Sundays the men would loaf in churlish groups about the church door, jerk curt greetings at one another, and ask for news of Parson Burkett. It was a curate from Cockermouth who took the services in his stead--one of the new-fangled sort; a young gentleman from London way, who mouthed his words like a girl, carried company manners, and had a sight of strange clerical practices. Alec was slowly recovering. The fever had altogether left him: a straw-coloured beard now covered his chin, and his cheeks were grown hollow and peaky-looking. But by the hay-harvest, the doctor reckoned, he would be as strong as ever again--so it was commonly reported. Mrs. Parkin declared that the illness had done him a world o’ good. “It’s rested his mind like, and kept him from frettin’. He was alus ower given to studyin’ on his own thoughts, till he got dazed like and took na notice o’ things. An’ noo,” she would conclude, “ye should jest see him, smilin’ as free as a child.” So, day after day, floated vaguely by, and to Alec the calm of their unbroken regularity was delicious. He was content to lie still for hours, thinking of nothing, remembering nothing, tasting the torpor of dreamy contemplation; watching through the window the slow drifting of the shadows; listening to the cackling of geese, and the plaintive bleating of sheep.... By-and-bye, with returning strength, his senses quickened, and grew sensitive to every passing impression. To eat with elaborate deliberation his invalid meals; to watch the myriad specks of gold dancing across a bar of sunlight--these were sources of keen, exciting delight. But in the foreground of his mind, transfiguring with its glamour every trivial thought, flashed the memory of Ethel’s visit. He lived through the whole scene again and again, picturing her veiled figure as it had stood by the bedside, wrapped in the red, fur cloak; and her protesting words, her passionate tears, seemed to form a mystic, indissoluble bond between them, that brightened all the future with rainbow colours.