The walnut-trees had still something left of their spring freshness, while in the hedges along the roads, covered, all of them, with a soft coating of thin white dust, the wild-roses and the feathery grasses suggested the heart of the year’s prime. It was about eight o’clock, in the evening of a day towards the end of the second week in this unusual month, that Mr. Hugh Clavering emerged from the entrance of the Old Vicarage with a concentrated and brooding expression. His heart was indeed rent and torn within him by opposite and contrary emotions. With one portion of his sensitive nature he was craving desperately for the next day’s interview with Gladys; with the other portion he was making firm and drastic resolutions to avoid it and escape from it. She was due to come to his house in the afternoon--less than twenty-four hours’ time from this actual moment! But the more rigorous half of his being had formed the austere plan of sending her a note in the morning begging her to appear, along with the other candidates, at a later hour. He had written the note and it still remained, propped up against the little Arundel print of the Transfiguration, on the mantelpiece of his room. He went up the street with bowed, absorbed head, hardly noticing the salutations of the easy loiterers gathered outside the door of the Goat and Boy,--the one of Nevilton’s two taverns which just at present attracted the most custom. Passing between the tavern and the churchyard wall, he pushed open the gate leading into the priory farm-yard, and striding hurriedly through it began the ascent of the grassy slope at the base of Nevilton Mount. The wind had sunk with the sinking of the sun, and an immense quietness lay like a catafalque of sacred interposition on the fields and roofs and orchards of the valley. A delicious smell of new-mown grass blent itself with the heavy perfume of the great white blossoms of the elder bushes--held out, like so many consecrated chalices to catch the last drops of soft-lingering light, before it faded away.