For a few seconds, as they stood so, his look held her—­their eyes involuntarily and strangely held each other.  Something softly glowing in the sunlight falling on them both, something raining down in the song of a rising skylark trilling in the blue a field away, something in the warmed incense of blossoms near them, was calling—­calling in the Voice, though they did not know they heard.  Strangely, a splendid blush rose in a fair flood under her skin.  She was conscious of it, and felt a second’s amazed impatience that she should colour like a schoolgirl suspecting a compliment.  He did not look at her as a man looks who has made a pretty speech.  His eyes met hers straight and thoughtfully, and he repeated his last words as he had before repeated hers.

“That you were Life—­you!”

The bluebells under water were for the moment incredibly lovely.  Her feeling about the blush melted away as the blush itself had done.

“I am glad you said that!” she answered.  “It was a beautiful thing to say.  I have often thought that I should like it to be true.”

“It is true,” he said.

Then the skylark, showering golden rain, swept down to earth and its nest in the meadow, and they walked on.

She learned from him, as they walked together, and he also learned from her, in a manner which built for them as they went from point to point, a certain degree of delicate intimacy, gradually, during their ramble, tending to make discussion and question possible.  Her intelligent and broad interest in the work on the estate, her frank desire to acquire such practical information as she lacked, aroused in himself an interest he had previously seen no reason that he should feel.  He realised that his outlook upon the unusual situation was being illuminated by an intelligence at once brilliant and fine, while it was also full of nice shading.  The situation, of course, was unusual.  A beautiful young sister-in-law appearing upon the dark horizon of a shamefully ill-used estate, and restoring, with touches of a wand of gold, what a fellow who was a blackguard should have set in order years ago.  That Lady Anstruthers’ money should have rescued her boy’s inheritance instead of being spent upon lavish viciousness went without saying.  What Mount Dunstan was most struck by was the perfect clearness, and its combination with a certain judicial good breeding, in Miss Vanderpoel’s view of the matter.  She made no confidences, beautifully candid as her manner was, but he saw that she clearly understood the thing she was doing, and that if her sister had had no son she would not have done this, but something totally different.  He had an idea that Lady Anstruthers would have been swiftly and lightly swept back to New York, and Sir Nigel left to his own devices, in which case Stornham Court and its village would gradually have crumbled to decay.  It was for Sir Ughtred Anstruthers the place was being restored.  She