Through the wood behind the house the snow-drops were rising, in a white invading host, over the ground covered with the red-brown deposit of innumerable autumns.

Above their glittering white, rose an undergrowth of laurels and box, through which again shot up the magnificent trunks--gray and smooth and round--of the great beeches, which held and peopled the country-side, heirs of its ancestral forest.

Any one standing in the wood could see, through the leafless trees, the dusky blues and rich violets of the encircling hill--hung there, like the tapestry of some vast hall; or hear from time to time the loud wings of the wood-pigeons as they clattered through the topmost boughs.
Diana was still in the village.

She had been spending her hour of escape mostly with the Roughsedges.

The old doctor among his books was now sufficiently at his ease with her to pet her, teach her, and, when necessary, laugh at her.