He spoke somewhat in that strain, either to relieve Cecilia or prepare the road for Nevil, not in his ordinary style; on the contrary, with a swing of enthusiasm that seemed to spring of ancient heartfelt fervours.  And indeed soon afterward he was telling her that there on those downs, in full view of Steynham, he and his wife had first joined hands.

Beauchamp sat silent.  Mr. Romfrey despatched orders to the stables, and Rosamund to the kitchen.  Cecilia was rather dismayed by the formal preparations for the ride.  She declined the early cup of coffee.  Mr. Romfrey begged her to take it.  ’Who knows the hour when you ’ll be back?’ he said.  Beauchamp said nothing.

The room grew insufferable to Cecilia.  She would have liked to be wafted to her chamber in a veil, so shamefully unveiled did she seem to be.  But the French lady would have been happy in her place!  Her father kissed her as fathers do when they hand the bride into the travelling-carriage.  His ‘Good-night, my darling!’ was in the voice of a soldier on duty.  For a concluding sign that her dim apprehensions pointed correctly, Mr. Romfrey kissed her on the forehead.  She could not understand how it had come to pass that she found herself suddenly on this incline, precipitated whither she would fain be going, only less hurriedly, less openly, and with her secret merely peeping, like a dove in the breast.

CHAPTER XXXV

THE RIDE IN THE WRONG DIRECTION

That pure opaque of the line of downs ran luminously edged against the pearly morning sky, with its dark landward face crepusculine yet clear in every combe, every dotting copse and furze-bush, every wavy fall, and the ripple, crease, and rill-like descent of the turf.  Beauty of darkness was there, as well as beauty of light above.

Beauchamp and Cecilia rode forth before the sun was over the line, while the West and North-west sides of the rolling downs were stamped with such firmness of dusky feature as you see on the indentations of a shield of tarnished silver.  The mounting of the sun behind threw an obscurer gloom, and gradually a black mask overcame them, until the rays shot among their folds and windings, and shadows rich as the black pansy, steady as on a dialplate rounded with the hour.

Mr. Everard Romfrey embraced this view from Steynham windows, and loved it.  The lengths of gigantic ‘greyhound backs’ coursing along the South were his vision of delight; no image of repose for him, but of the life in swiftness.  He had known them when the great bird of the downs was not a mere tradition, and though he owned conscientiously to never having beheld the bird, a certain mystery of holiness hung about the region where the bird had been in his time.  There, too, with a timely word he had gained a wealthy and good wife.  He had now sent Nevil to do the same.