The country was early June at its best.  The river meadows blazed with buttercups; the river itself, when Constance occasionally caught a glimpse of its windings, lay intensely blue under a wide azure sky, magnificently arched on a great cornice built of successive strata of white and purple cloud, which held the horizon.  Over the Lathom Woods the cloud-line rose and fell in curves that took the line of the hill.  The woods themselves lay in a haze of heat, the sunlight on the rounded crests of the trees, and the shadows cast by the westerly sun, all fused within the one shimmering veil of blue.  The air was fresh and life-giving.  Constance felt herself in love with life and the wide Oxford scene.  The physical exercise delighted her, and the breathless sense of adventure.

But it was disagreeable to reflect, as she must do occasionally, that the sphinx-like groom knew perfectly well that she was going to the Lathom Woods, that he had the key of the nearest gate in his pocket, that he would be a witness of her meeting with Falloden, whatever they did with him afterwards, and that Falloden had in all probability paid him largely to hold his tongue.  All that side of it was odious—­degrading.  But the thought of the green rides, and the man waiting for her, set all the blood in her wild veins dancing.  Yet there was little or nothing in her feeling of a girl’s yearning for a lover.  She wanted to see Falloden—­to talk with him and dispute with him.  She could not be content for long without seeing him.  He excited her—­provoked her—­haunted her.  And to feel her power over him was delightful, if it had not been spoilt by a kind of recurrent fear—­a panic fear of his power over her.

What did she know of him after all?  She was quite aware that her friends, the Kings, had made some enquiries at Cannes before allowing her to see so much of him as she had done during his stay with the rich and hospitable Jaroslavs.  She believed Colonel King had not liked him personally.  But Douglas Falloden belonged to one of the oldest English families, settled on large estates in Yorkshire, with distinguished records in all the great services; he was heir presumptive to a marquisate, so long as his uncle, Lord Dagnall, now past seventy, did not take it into his head to marry; and there was his brilliant career at Oxford, his good looks and all the rest of it.  Constance had a strong dash of the worldling in her mixed character.  She had been brought up with Italian girl friends of the noble class, in whom the practical instincts of a practical race were closely interwoven with what the Englishman thinks of as Italian “romance” or “passion.”  She had discussed dowries and settlements since she was fifteen; and took the current values of wealth and birth for granted.  She was quite aware of her own advantages, and was not at all minded to throw them away.  A brilliant marriage was, perhaps, at the back of her mind, as it is at the back of the minds of so many beautiful creatures who look and breathe poetry, while they are aware, within a few pounds, of what can be done in London on five thousand—­or ten thousand—­a year.  She inevitably thought of herself as quite different from the girls of poor or middle-class families, who must earn their living—­Nora, for instance.