“And it hurts you to say this!” she said.  “Yes, it actually hurts you.”

“What else could I say?”

Her face softened as she looked and heard.  It was not that he was cold of blood or did not care.  There was more than discomfort in his voice, there was a very real distress.  And in his eyes his heart ached for her to see.  Something of her pride was restored to her.  She fell at once to his tune, but she was conscious that both of them talked treacheries.

“Yes, you are right.  It wouldn’t have been possible.  You have your name and your fortune to make.  I too—­I shall marry, I suppose, some one”—­and she suddenly smiled rather bitterly—­“who will give me a Rolls-Royce motor-car.”  And so they rode on very reasonably.

Noon had passed.  A hush had fallen upon that high world of grass and sunlight.  The birds were still.  They talked of this and that, the latest crisis in Europe and the growth of Socialism, all very wisely and with great indifference like well-bred people at a dinner-party.  Not thus had Stella thought to ride home when the message had come that morning that the horses would be at her door before ten.  She had ridden out clothed on with dreams of gold.  She rode back with her dreams in tatters and a sort of incredulity that to her too, as to other girls, all this pain had come.

They came to a bridle-path which led downwards through a thicket of trees to the weald and so descended upon Great Beeding.  They rode through the little town, past the inn where Thresk was staying and the iron gates of a Park where, amidst elm-trees, the blackened ruins of a great house gaped to the sky.

“Some day you will live there again,” said Thresk, and Stella’s lips twitched with a smile of humour.

“I shall be very glad after to-day to leave the house I am living in,” she said quietly, and the words struck him dumb.  He had subtlety enough to understand her.  The rooms would mock her with memories of vain dreams.  Yet he kept silence.  It was too late in any case to take back what he had said; and even if she would listen to him marriage wouldn’t be fair.  He would be hampered, and that, just at this time in his life, would mean failure—­failure for her no less than for him.  They must be prudent—­prudent and methodical, and so the great prizes would be theirs.

A mile beyond, a mile of yellow lanes between high hedges, they came to the village of Little Beeding, one big house and a few thatched cottages clustered amongst roses and great trees on the bank of a small river.  Thither old Mr. Derrick and his wife and his daughter had gone after the fire at Hinksey Park had completed the ruin which disastrous speculations had begun; and at the gate of one of the cottages the riders stopped and dismounted.

“I shall not see you again after to-day,” said Stella.  “Will you come in for a moment?”

Thresk gave the horses to a passing labourer to hold and opened the gate.