“The blacks don’t penetrate in your case,” said Edmund.

“I’m afraid they do,” she murmured, “but now I won’t think of them.  Easter Eve and this place are enough to banish worries.”

“Our hostess contrives to have some worries here.”

“Ah! dear Mary, I know; she can’t help it; she has always been so very prosperous.”

“Oh, it’s prosperity, is it?” asked Edmund.  He had turned from the view to look more directly at Rose.

“Yes, I know it does not have that effect on you, because you have a happier temperament.”

“But am I so very prosperous?” The tone was sad and slightly sarcastic.

“It is quite glorious:  one seems to breathe in everything, don’t you know, and the smell of primroses; and it is so sweet to think that it is Easter Eve.”

Mrs. Delaport Green was coming forth on the terrace, preceded by these words in her clear staccato voice.

“Do you think,” said Rose very gently to Edmund, “that we might go down into the wood?”

Presently Molly fell behind Lady Groombridge and Mrs. Delaport Green as they walked along the terrace, and leant on the wall and looked at the view by herself.

The Castle stood on the last spur of a range of hills, and there was an abrupt descent between it and the next rounded hill-top.  Covered with trees, the sharp little valley was full of shadow and mystery; and then beyond the great billowy tree-tops rose and fell for miles, until the brilliant early green of the larches and the dark hues of the many leafless branches, already ruddy with buds, became blue and at length purple in the distance.

This joy and glory of her mother earth nobody could grudge Molly, surely?  But the very beauty of it all made her more weak; and tears rose in her eyes as she looked at the healing green.

“I am tired,” she thought; “and, after all, what harm can it do me to meet Lady Rose Bright?  And if Sir Edmund Grosse was annoyed to see me here, what does it matter?”

Presently Lady Groombridge and her admiring guest came back to where Molly was standing.  In the excitement of arrival and of meeting Lady Rose, and the little shock of Sir Edmund’s greeting, Molly had hardly taken stock of the mistress of the Castle.  Lady Groombridge was verging on old age, but ruddy and vigorous.  She wore short skirts and thick boots, and tapped the gravel noisily with her stick.  She had almost forgotten that she had ever been young and a beauty, and her conversation was usually in the tone of a harassed housekeeper, only that the range of subjects that worried her extended beyond servants and linen and jam into politics and the Church and the souls of men within a certain number of miles of Groombridge Castle.

She stood talking between Molly and Mrs. Delaport Green in a voice of some impatience as she scanned the landscape in search of Rose.

“Dear me, where has Rose gone to? and she knew how much I wanted to have a talk with her before dinner.  And I wanted to tell her not to let our clergyman speak about incense and candles.  He was more tiresome than usual after Rose was here last time.”