‘My dear, you’re horribly thin,’ interrupted Hester.

‘Oh, not too thin!’ said Nelly, complacently.

Then she lifted up her eyes suddenly, and saw the lake in a dazzle of light, and Silver How, all purple, as of old; yet another family of wild duck swimming where the river issued from the lake; and just beyond, the white corner of the house where she and George had spent their few days of bliss.  Slowly, the eyes filled with brimming tears.  She threw off her hat and veil, and slipping to the grass, she laid her head against her friend’s knee, and there was a long silence.

Hester broke it at last.

’I want you to come a little way up the fell, and look at a daffodil field.  We’ll leave a message, and Cicely can follow us there.’  And then she added, not without trepidation—­’and I asked her to bring William, if he had time.’

Nelly was silent a moment, and then said quietly—–­’Thank you.  I’m glad you did.’

They left the garden and wandered through some rocky fields on the side of the fell, till they came to one where Linnaeus or any other pious soul might well have gone upon his knees for joy.  Some loving hand had planted it with daffodils—­the wild Lent lily of the district, though not now very plentiful about the actual lakes.  And the daffodils had come back rejoicing to their kingdom, and made it their own again.  They ran in lines and floods, in troops and skirmishers, all through the silky grass, and round the trunks of the old knotted oaks, that hung as though by one foot from the emerging rocks and screes.  Above, the bloom of the wild cherries made a wavering screen of silver between the daffodils and the May sky; amid the blossom the golden-green of the oaks struck a strong riotous note; and far below, at their feet, the lake lay blue, with all the sky within it, and the softness of the larch-woods on its banks.

Nelly dropped into the grass among the daffodils.  One could not have called her the spirit of the spring—­the gleeful, earthly spring—­as it would have been natural to do, in her honeymoon days.  And yet, as Hester watched her, she seemed in her pale, changed beauty to be in some strange harmony with that grave, renewing, fruitful heart of all things, whereof the daffodils and the cherry-blossom were but symbols.

Presently there were voices beneath them—­climbing voices that came nearer—­of a man and a woman.  Nelly’s hand begun to pluck restlessly at the grass beside her.

Cicely emerged first, Cicely in white, very bridal, and very happy.  Very conscious too, though she did not betray it by a movement or a look, of the significance of this first meeting, since Sarratt’s death, between her brother and Nelly.  But they met very simply.  Nelly went a little way down the steep to meet them.  She kissed Cicely, and gave Farrell her hand.

‘It was very good of you to come.’

But then it seemed to Hester, who could not help watching it, that Nelly’s face, as she stood there looking gravely at Farrell, shewed a sudden trouble and agitation.  It was gone very quickly, however, and she and he walked on together along a green path skirting the fells, and winding through the daffodils and the hawthorns.