CHAPTER XV.
On a perfect summer afternoon in mid-July, Lady Mary sat in the terrace garden at Barracombe, before the open windows of the silent house, in the shade of the great ilex; sometimes glancing at the book she held, and sometimes watching the haymakers in the valley, whose voices and laughter reached her faintly across the distance.
Some boys were playing cricket in a field below.

She noted idly that the sound of the ball on the bat travelled but slowly upward, and reached her after the striker had begun to run.

The effect was curious, but it was not new to her, though she listened and counted with idle interest.
The old sisters had departed for their daily drive, which she daily declined to share, having no love for the high-road, and much for the peace which their absence brought her.
It was an afternoon which made mere existence a delight amid such surroundings.
Long shadows were falling across the bend of the river, below the wooded hill which faced the south-west; whilst the cob-built, whitewashed cottages, and the brown, square-towered church lay full in sunshine still.

The red cattle stood knee-deep in the shallows, and an old boat was moored high and dry upon the sloping red banks.
The air was sweet with a thousand mingled scents of summer flowers: carnations, stocks, roses, and jasmine.

The creamy clusters of Perpetual Felicity rioted over the corner turret of the terrace, where a crumbling stair led to the top of a small, half-ruined observatory, which tradition called the look-out tower.
Flights of steps led downwards from the garden, where the bedded-out plants blazed in all their glory of ordered colour, to the walks on the lower levels.