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With the full daylight Sir William rode over to Dr Rowland’s strange dwelling, which he had some difficulty in finding; he had indeed to pause several times to ask his direction, once from a woman standing scouring a bowl at the door of a solitary cottage, and once from a shepherd, sitting on a knoll covered with wild thyme, watching his sheep.

It was a very fair, pure day, and there were larks singing in the upper air, and as Sir William rode across the fields and the hedgerows and out on the open ground that skirted the lower marsh he could discern in the distance, the shimmer of the blue sea. But for all that he no longer felt the ease and harmony which had been his for the last few days. That state of expectancy had been, indeed, too perfect to last. He was even touched by a certain fear and frequently looked behind him as he rode, though all around him was so clear and open that no one could have followed him nor lurked at his side, for there was nowhere for anyone to hide.

When he reached the oasthouse Dr Rowland himself came at once to the door and greeted him with the same emphatic courtesy he had used when he had met him at the Dower House.

Without any explanation of or excuse for his lack of service, Dr Rowland himself took Sir William’s horse to the small stable, and then returned and conducted him to the room underneath the laboratory, which was reached by a ladder stairway and from which came faint fumes of chemicals.

Dr Rowland wore an ancient coat, stained and scorched from his various experiments. His hands in places were dyed with bluish patches, an overworn ribbon caught back his mane-like hair, and large spectacles disguised his piercing eyes.

Courteously he bade the young man be seated. Without any sign of haste or curiosity he waited for him to disclose his business, and Sir William came to this without any preamble.

‘I want to know,’ he asked, ‘what you can tell me of Miss Julia Roseingrave.’

Dr Rowland answered at what appeared a tangent.

‘Ah, of course, you are the young baronet, are you not? You own the whole estate and others beside. Those three creatures live on your charity.’

Sir William was angered at this, which was spoken in a tone of contempt, for he had never been ungenerous in these matters.

‘I do not name it charity,’ he answered dryly. ‘Had they the whole Grange and all the estates for their pleasure, it had made little difference to me. I am not as rich as I was, but I have still sufficient not to miss the gift of Holcot Grange.’

‘Ah, you boast, as the young and the rich and the well-favoured always do,’ smiled Dr Rowland. ‘No doubt it does not show much kindness in you to spare a house you do not want. I have thought before that you might have made some little provision beyond the Dower House for their poverty is very keen.’

‘I did not even know of their existence and now I know very little about them.’

‘What does their history really matter?’ interrupted Dr Rowland, pointing his finger in the direction of the young man’s heart.

‘Nothing, indeed, to me, nothing, but—Madam Julia? You seem to be her only friend. What do you know of her?’

‘The same as you know, Sir William, that she lives in that house in the middle of your park and tends her mother and her sister, and goes to church when she can be spared. She is very neat in her ways and she is dutiful in her behaviour.’

‘I think all that,’ said Sir William, lowering his voice, ‘which I have remarked to be a delusion or even a snare. I do not consider this woman to be what she seems.’

‘Why?’ asked the Doctor coolly. He took off his glasses and wiped them on his sleeve, his eyes seemed to be heavy, bloodshot and weary.

‘I think of my own life and I think of hers,’ said the young man earnestly. ‘I remember how I have lived all my days. We are much of an age, and she, I would swear, is no saint cut in marble on a tombstone, or in stone above a church door. She is flesh and blood. She has lived alone like that, without company, without love, without excitement? What is her secret? What is her charm?’

‘You must find that out for yourself,’ replied the doctor, ‘for indeed I do not know it.’

‘I thought,’ confessed Sir William sullenly, ‘that she would find some diversion in my company.’ He hesitated, he seemed half likely to tell his adventure in Ballote Wood, but he held his tongue about this, partly because he thought he played a ridiculous part in the tale, partly because there was something about it he wished to keep as his own secret.

He then related how he had waited day after day for Miss Roseingrave to come to the Grange and how he had expected her after the storm. Dr Rowland laughed in a way that the young man found very little flattering.

‘If you want her you must go after her. She is not a woman to come to a whistle. Nay, I do not think you would be able, were you to search for ten years, to find a spell strong enough to lure Julia Roseingrave to you.’

The young man caught at the word ‘spell’.

‘Do you know any charms?’ he asked, half mocking, half earnest. ‘Is there some potion that I could bribe Goody Cloke to put into that pale tea she drinks, that would make her come to me when I beckon? Any incantation I can mutter the next time the moon is full to make her walk through Ballote Wood or a meeting-place I should appoint?’

‘I know of none,’ said Dr Rowland. He looked at him straightly with his exhausted yet brilliant eyes, ‘and, Sir William, you disturb me. I have my crucible on the furnace above. I am now, as always, on the verge of some strange, some golden secret.’

‘Alchemy?’ asked the young man, not without interest; he had, in his time, made his experiments.

‘Hermetic Philosopy,’ corrected Dr Rowland.

‘And what have you discovered, my learned philosopher?’

‘Enough to keep my lips sealed, Sir William.’

‘I would pay you very well for some of this secret knowledge of yours.’

‘There is nothing you could give me, for I have all that I want.’

‘You have found then the secret of making gold?’

‘I have more gold than suffices my needs,’ parried Doctor Rowland.

‘Then you might have helped those three women with whose poverty you have reproached me.’

‘Perhaps I have done so,’ said the Doctor gravely. ‘How do you know that they had not starved were it not for my help?’

‘As poor as that,’ said Sir William, not without a malicious pleasure, ‘then surely I have been too cautious, too timid. She can be bribed, if you may not be.’

‘How could you bribe her?’ asked Dr Rowland cautiously, staring at the blue stains on his hands.

‘I should think—with anything! Surely she would be pleased enough to leave the woods, the park. Why, she has never been more than a few miles from where she lives since she came here twenty years ago.’

‘You would no more move her than you would the foxgloves,’ said Dr Rowland. ‘They die when they are transplanted, you know.’

‘Has she no ambitions, no desires?’ asked the young baron impatiently. ‘Come, you must know her heart if anyone does. Does she never sicken or weary of that wretched idiot, that paralysed woman, for company? Does she never want gay gowns nor jewels nor a festival nor a lover?’

‘Go and ask her that yourself,’ answered Dr Rowland indifferently.

‘Aye, and so I will. But I have ridden here for your judgment, for your opinion.’

‘Why should I give it you, Sir William?’

‘Oh, I grant that you are not interested in me, nor my fortunes, but, say, for the sake of Miss Julia Roseingrave, so that I may know how to approach her without offence.’

Dr Rowland had gone to the ladder which led to his laboratory above. He paused there with one hand on the wooden rungs and looked back over his powerful shoulder as he answered:

‘I would say that her dreams suffice her. That it were better for you and for her if you left her with those same dreams.’

Sir William was disappointed and angered. He left the old house and fetched his horse and rode back to Holcot Grange, not to the mansion, but straight through the park and under the chestnut trees to the Dower House. He fastened loosely the bridle to one of the lower boughs and entered the little garden, still stocked with pinks. The flowers seemed to last longer here than in any other place he had noticed near by, he thought as he passed under the fruiting bindweed and knocked on the porch.

It was she who opened to him, and immediately, as if she had been waiting for him behind the door.

She had on a thin dress of fine old silk, cowslip coloured and furbished, of a design of black violets on the sleeves and at the bosom. Her black hair was fastened with silver bodkins, she appeared to have prepared herself carefully for some extraordinary occasion. He came swiftly across the threshold and asked her why she had kept him waiting so long.

‘For what?’ asked she, and closed the door on him.

They stood close together in the narrow passage. Phoebe, from an upper room, was singing, plaintively, it was not a disagreeable nor a disturbing sound for a lovesick man; he took her by the arms.

‘You were expecting me?’ she asked, without fear, but not, he thought, without a certain edge of triumph to her voice, and he sacrificed his pride.

‘Yes, and in particular on the night of the storm. How was it you did not come?’

‘Was there a storm?’ she asked drowsily. ‘I must have slept, I did not hear it.’

He now longed for her so intensely that he trembled with impatience. Her coolness inflamed his desperation.

‘How can you be so cruel, Julia, and waste so much time?’

‘I have never wasted a second’s time,’ she said, entering the parlour, speaking over her shoulder. ‘I enjoy every moment of my existence. I told you before that you did not enter into it. Have you come begging and pleading for my favour?’

A last flare of pride made him deny this. He tried to go, but his feet were like lead and his spirit sank into a very woe of despondency at the thought of leaving her. There had been an ecstasy to wait for her when he was sure of her, but now that she so perpetually denied him, and he could see no good end to his delay, the thought of the loneliness of the Grange became insupportable.

He began to offer her high and reckless bribes. ‘I will give you anything you ask for. You can have no idea, living as you do, what I am able to offer you.’

‘I only want one thing,’ said Miss Roseingrave, looking at him steadily, out of those black eyes whose glance he never could meet with complete composure, ‘and that, I think, you are in no mind to tender me.’

‘You do not know me,’ he protested. ‘I am never minded to cheapen a woman’s favours.’

‘I perceive,’ she said, ‘that you misconceive me utterly. You will never get as much as a smile from me until I am your promised wife.’

He was, at this, amazed to the swallowing up of all other possible emotions, and then he laughed, and opened his mouth as if to speak, then changed his mind. She stood very coolly waiting for his answer, but her glance was not indifferent.

‘My wife. Now that’s a strange request. Now that’s a curious wish.’

‘It is my request and my wish. There are no other terms on which you get anything from me.’

He was silent for a while and seemed to listen to the song of Phoebe coming from the upper room.

‘I had not thought of it, but, as you will. My wife, then, and how soon?’

Julia Roseingrave strongly shuddered, as if his abrupt surrender brought more distress than delight.

‘We will go away from here,’ she said. ‘I shall pay someone to look after my mother and Phoebe. We will go far away across the sea.’

He shook his head.

‘No, my dear, you belong here, to Holcot Grange. I should not care to see you transplanted. Dr Rowland said you were like the foxgloves that died as soon as they were plucked or removed.’

‘Did you see Dr Rowland, then?’ she asked, very sharp.

‘I rode over today and asked him if he knew of a spell to get you for me. But it seems that you are not so difficult. A mere wedding-ring—I might have thought of that myself.’

‘You’ll take me away,’ she repeated. It was more like a command than an entreaty.

He shook his head again. For him she was one with Ballote Wood and the park and chestnut trees and the deserted Grange. He would not dare to break the spell by taking her away. He, too, had his commands to give.

‘You will marry me within a day or so and come and live with me at the Grange. You will do as I wish or I am like to prove an ill husband. And you must like me a little, too,’ he added, ‘for I will make no hollow bargain.’

She answered, her voice was heavy with passion:

‘Oh, William, I shall like you well enough.’

He stepped towards her, but she raised her hand and such was the force of her gesture that she seemed to shut gates between them. ‘I am going upstairs to give my hour’s reading to my mother. You can go to the church and have the banns called. Remember, when we are married I shall belong to you entirely, we can afford to wait.’

Thus dismissed he left her, at once in an ecstasy and raging with deep pain.