He left Pond Cottage soon after lunch, explaining that he would return that night, but would have supper in Ramsgard with his mother. The afternoon proved to be as misty and warm as the earlier hours of the day; and as he retraced the track of Thursday’s drive with Darnley, he did not permit the various agitations into which he had been plunged to destroy his delight in that relaxed and caressing weather. He found that travelling on foot in full daylight revealed to him many tokens of the Spring that he had missed on his evening drive.

Once or twice he descended into the ditches on either side of the road, where the limp whitish-pink stalks of half-hidden primroses drooped above their crinkled leaves, and, with hands and knees embedded in the warm-scented earth, pressed his face against those fragile apparitions.

The sweet, faint odour of these pale flowers made him think of Gerda Torp, and he began worrying his mind a good deal as to the effect of his mother’s arrival upon the progress of his adventure.