Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/113



HEN she left the Manoir a little later, having promised the old lady that she would soon come again, Jill took the rocky hillside path and descended to the highroad. Standing there to lean on the wall and look down at the view, she felt that even without the promise of a new friendship one could hardly repine at a way of life that kept one in such places.

As she leaned there, her hand idly playing with the lichen-stained stones that crumbled on the parapet, Jill felt herself lifted and enfranchised by a sense of mysterious significance that came to her as much from the splendid scene before her as from the story of love and suffering she had just listened to. Life was like that, she mused, half consciously, while her gaze followed the grave, deliberate curve of the great river; it might break one's heart; but it was beautiful.

Her eyes, returning from the blue immensities of the horizon, rested on the island, and after that sweep round the universe it had a nested loveliness. It was a place for tranquil thought and compassed pacing, and Jill passed on through the gap in the parapet and down the rocky ledges of the little path till the bridge was reached and she found herself once more on the rich meadow-lands. She would explore the meadow