“Yes, Will, I know you’ve always praised him.”

“And since you make the remark, I’ll admit its truth.  I do verily believe that Mr. Bates is fond of me.”  Then he laughed bitterly.  “I’m not aware of any one else I could say it of.”

“Oh, Will—­there’s lots are fond of you.”

“No—­none.  That was one small part of my lesson last month in London.  I got that tip, straight, at the G.P.O.”

“Will!”

They were driving now through the woods, and Mavis, glancing from time to time at her husband’s face, saw that it had become fearfully somber.  She guessed that this indicated an unfortunate turn of thought, and she talked incessantly in the hope of rendering such thought difficult, if not impossible.

After crossing the bridge over the stream that runs serpentining through the Upper Hadleigh Wood on its way to join the Rod River, they were soon at the Abbey Cross Roads.  Here, as they turned into the highroad by the Barradine Arms and the cluster of adjacent cottages, they had a splendid panoramic view of the Abbey estate rolling downward on their left in wide, sylvan beauty as far as the eye could see.  From this higher ground, the park showed like an irregular pattern of lighter color on a dark green carpet, and a few of the main rides were visible here and there as truncated straight lines that began and ended capriciously; but all the houses and buildings lay hidden by the undulating woodland.  Mavis turned her eyes toward the point where North Ride Cottage shyly concealed itself, and then she glanced back at Dale.  He was staring straight in front, not looking to left or right, as if focusing the roadway between the horse’s ears.

“It’s uphill now, Will, all the way, isn’t it?  Oh, that’s a new cottage.  How red the bricks are!”

They had left all the trees behind them now, and, going up the slope through the last strip of fields, they soon emerged on the open heath.  For a mile or two the landscape was wildly sad in aspect, just a waste of sand and heather, with naked ridges and boggy hollows, one or two wind-swept hillocks that bore a ragged crest of blackened firs, and in the farthest distance massive contours of grassy down rising as a barrier to guard the fertile valleys of another county.  It was here that the riderless horse had galloped about and been hunted by the people from the cross road cottages.

“You have driven well.  I think it’s wonderful, considering what a little practise you get....  Look, I believe that’s a hawk.  Must be!  Nothing but a hawk could stand so still in the air.  He can see something down under him, I suppose.  Rabbits, perhaps.  Though I don’t suppose he’d strike at anything as big as a rabbit, would he?”

Mavis chattered vigorously, to prevent her husband from brooding on painful things; but, even while talking, she did not obliterate her own real thoughts.  Inside her there seemed to be a running chorus of unuttered words, and she listened to the inner voice even when at her busiest with the outward sounding voice.