Before her lay that same shallow cup of ploughed land stretching from her father's big wood to the downs, on the edge of which Hurd had plied his ferrets in the winter nights.

But to-day the spring worked in it, and breathed upon it.

The young corn was already green in the furrows; the hazel-catkins quivered in the hedge above her; larks were in the air, daisies in the grass, and the march of sunny clouds could be seen in the flying shadows they flung on the pale greens and sheeny purples of the wide treeless basin.
Human helplessness, human agony--set against the careless joy of nature--there is no new way of feeling these things.

But not to have felt them, and with the mad, impotent passion and outcry which filled Marcella's heart at this moment, is never to have risen to the full stature of our kind.
* * * * * "Marcella, it is my strong wish--my command--that you do _not_ go out to the village to-night." "I must go, papa." It was Thursday night--the night before the Friday morning fixed for Hurd's execution.

Dinner at Mellor was just over.