It was Hubert Eldon, just home for the long vacation.

Once or twice subsequently the girls had met Hubert on the same spot; there had been a picnic here, too, in which Mrs.Eldon and Mrs.Waltham took part.

But Adela always thought of the place as peculiarly her own.

To others it was only a delightfully secluded corner of the wood, fresh and green; for her it had something intimately dear, as the haunt where she had first met her own self face to face and had heard the whispering of secrets as if by another voice to her tremulous heart.
She sat here one morning in July, six months after her marriage.

It was more than a year since she had seen the spot, and on reaching it to-day it seemed to her less beautiful than formerly; the leafage was to her eyes thinner and less warm of hue than in earlier years, the grass had a coarser look and did not clothe the soil so completely.