interests were centred in John, and Kitty took the foremost place as an engaged girl.  After dinner young men arrived, and tennis was played unceasingly.  At six o’clock, tired and hot with air and exercise, all went in to tea—­a high tea.  At seven John said he must be thinking of getting home; and happy and glad with all the pleasant influences of the day upon them, Kitty and the Miss Austins accompanied him as far as the farm gate.

“What a beautiful walk you will have, Mr Norton; but aren’t you tired?  Seven miles in the morning and seven in the evening!”

“But I have had the whole day to rest in.”

“What a lovely evening!  Let’s all walk a little way with him,” said Kitty.

“I should like to,” said the elder Miss Austin, “but we promised father to be home for dinner.  The one sure way of getting into his black books is to keep his dinner waiting, and he wouldn’t dine without us.”

“Well, good-bye, dear,” said Kitty, “I shall walk as far as the burgh.”

The Miss Austins turned into the rich trees that encircle Leywood, Kitty and John faced the hill.  They were soon silhouettes, and ascending, they stood, tiny specks upon the pink evening hours.  The table-land swept about them in multitudinous waves; it was silent and solitary as the sea.  Lancing College, some miles distant, stood lonely as a lighthouse, and beneath it the Ada flowed white and sluggish through the marshes, the long spine of the skeleton bridge was black, and there, by that low shore, the sea was full of mist, and sea and shore and sky were lost in opal and grey.  Old Shoreham, with its air of commerce, of stagnant commerce, stood by the sea.  The tide was out, the sea gates were dry, only a few pools flashed silver amid the ooze; and the masts of the tall vessels,—­tall vessels aground in that strange canal or rather dyke which runs parallel with and within a few yards of the sea for so many miles,—­tapered and leaned out over the sea banks, and the points of the top masts could be counted.  Then on the left hand towards Brighton, the sea streamed with purple, it was striped with green, and it hung like a blue veil behind the rich trees of Leywood and Little Leywood, and the trees and the fields were full of golden rays.

The lovers stood on a grassy plain; sheep were travelling over the great expanses of the valleys; rooks were flying about.  Looking over the plain you saw Southwick,—­a gleam of gables, a gleam of walls,—­skirting a plantation; and further away still, Brighton lay like a pile of rocks heaped about a low shore.

To the lovers life was now as an assortment of simple but beautiful flowers; and they passed the blossoms to and fro and bound them into a bouquet.  They talked of the Miss Austins, of their flirtations, of the Rectory, of Thornby Place, of Italy, for there they were going next month on their honeymoon.  The turnip and corn lands were as inconceivable widths of green and yellow satin rolling through the rich light of the crests into the richer shadow of the valleys.  And there there was a farm-house surrounded by buildings, surrounded by trees,—­it looked like a nest in its snug hollow; the smoke ascended blue and peacefully.  It was the last habitation.  Beyond it the downs extend, in almost illimitable ranges ascending to the wild golden gorse, to the purple heather.