The river meadows blazed with buttercups; the river itself, when Constance occasionally caught a glimpse of its windings, lay intensely blue under a wide azure sky, magnificently arched on a great cornice built of successive strata of white and purple cloud, which held the horizon.

Over the Lathom Woods the cloud-line rose and fell in curves that took the line of the hill.
The woods themselves lay in a haze of heat, the sunlight on the rounded crests of the trees, and the shadows cast by the westerly sun, all fused within the one shimmering veil of blue.

The air was fresh and life-giving.

Constance felt herself in love with life and the wide Oxford scene.

The physical exercise delighted her, and the breathless sense of adventure.
But it was disagreeable to reflect, as she must do occasionally, that the sphinx-like groom knew perfectly well that she was going to the Lathom Woods, that he had the key of the nearest gate in his pocket, that he would be a witness of her meeting with Falloden, whatever they did with him afterwards, and that Falloden had in all probability paid him largely to hold his tongue.