“I do not know anything of Wordsworth.”

“’I’ve heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds With coldness still returning; Alas! the gratitude of men Hath oftener left me mourning.’”

“I do not quite see what he means.”

“May I recommend you to think about it?  You will be sure to find it out for yourself, and that will be ten times more satisfactory than if I were to explain it to you.  And, besides, you will never forget it, if you do.”

“Will you repeat the lines again?”

I did so.

All this time the wind had been still.  Now it rose with a slow gush in the trees.  Was it fancy?  Or, as the wind moved the shrubbery, did I see a white face?  And could it be the White Wolf, as Judy called her?

I spoke aloud: 

“But it is cruel to keep you standing here in such a night.  You must be a real lover of nature to walk in the dark wind.”

“I like it.  Good night.”

So we parted.  I gazed into the darkness after her, though she disappeared at the distance of a yard or two; and would have stood longer had I not still suspected the proximity of Judy’s Wolf, which made me turn and go home, regardless now of Mr Stoddart’s DOUGHINESS.

I met Miss Oldcastle several times before the summer, but her old manner remained, or rather had returned, for there had been nothing of it in the tone of her voice in that interview, if interview it could be called where neither could see more than the other’s outline.

CHAPTER XIII.

Young Weir.

By slow degrees the summer bloomed.  Green came instead of white; rainbows instead of icicles.  The grounds about the Hall seemed the incarnation of a summer which had taken years to ripen to its perfection.  The very grass seemed to have aged into perfect youth in that “haunt of ancient peace;” for surely nowhere else was such thick, delicate-bladed, delicate-coloured grass to be seen.  Gnarled old trees of may stood like altars of smoking perfume, or each like one million-petalled flower of upheaved whiteness—­or of tender rosiness, as if the snow which had covered it in winter had sunk in and gathered warmth from the life of the tree, and now crept out again to adorn the summer.  The long loops of the laburnum hung heavy with gold towards the sod below; and the air was full of the fragrance of the young leaves of the limes.  Down in the valley below, the daisies shone in all the meadows, varied with the buttercup and the celandine; while in damp places grew large pimpernels, and along the sides of the river, the meadow-sweet stood amongst the reeds at the very edge of the water, breathing out the odours of dreamful sleep.  The clumsy pollards were each one mass of undivided green.  The mill wheel had regained its knotty look, with its moss and its dip and drip, as it yielded to the slow water, which would have let it alone, but that there was no other way out of the land to the sea.