In her heart Lacrima was conscious of an unusual sense of foreboding and apprehension. Surely there could be nothing worse in store for her than what she already suffered. She wondered what Maurice Quincunx was doing at that moment. Was he thinking of her, and were his thoughts the cause of this strange oppression in the air? Poor Maurice! She longed to be free to devote herself to him, to smooth his path, to distract his mind. Would fate ever make such a thing possible? How unfair Gladys was in her suspicions! She liked James Andersen and was very grateful to him, but he did not need her as Maurice needed her! “I see them!” she cried suddenly. “But how odd they look! They’re not speaking a word. Have they quarrelled, I wonder?” The two fair-haired amorists appeared indeed extremely gloomy and melancholy, as they sat, with a little space between them, on the fallen tree. They rose with an air of relief at the others’ approach. “I thought you were never coming,” said Gladys. “How long you have been! We have been waiting for hours. Come along. We must go straight back and dress or we shall be late for dinner. No time for good-byes! Au revoir, you two! Come along, girl, quick! We’d better run.” She seized her cousin’s hand and dragged her off and they were quickly out of sight. The two brothers watched them disappear and then turned and walked away together. “Don’t let’s go home yet,” said Luke. “Let’s go to the churchyard first. The sun will have set, but it won’t be dark for a long time. And I love the churchyard in the twilight.” James nodded. “It is our garden, isn’t it,--and our orchard? It is the only spot in Nevilton where no one can interfere with us.” “That, and the Seldom Arms,” added the younger brother. They paced side by side in silence till they reached the road. The orchards, left to themselves, relapsed into their accustomed reserve. Whatever secrets they concealed of the confused struggles of ephemeral mortals, they concealed in inviolable discretion. CHAPTER XI ART AND NATURE The early days of June, all of them of the same quality of golden weather, were hardly over, before our wanderer from Ohio found himself on terms of quite pleasant familiarity with the celibate vicar of Nevilton, whose relations with his friend Gladys so immensely interested him. The conscientious vicar had sought him out, on the very day after his visit to the mill copse and the artist had found the priest more to his fancy than he had imagined possible. The American’s painting had begun in serious earnest. A studio had been constructed for him in one of the sheds near the conservatory, a place much more full of light and air and pleasant garden smells, than would have been the lumber-room referred to by Mrs. Romer, adjoining the chaste slumbers of the laborious Lily. Here for several long mornings he had worked at high pressure and in a vein of imaginative expansion.