3. THE FIFTH OF MARCHEdward's disclosure had the effect of directing Owen Graye's
thoughts into an entirely new and uncommon channel.
On the Monday after Springrove's visit, Owen had walked to the
top of a hill in the neighbourhood of Tolchurch—a wild hill that
had no name, beside a barren down where it never looked like
summer. In the intensity of his meditations on the ever-present
subject, he sat down on a weather-beaten boundary-stone gazing
towards the distant valleys—seeing only Manston's imagined
form.
Had his defenceless sister been trifled with? that was the
question which affected him. Her refusal of Edward as a husband
was, he knew, dictated solely by a humiliated sense of inadequacy
to him in repute, and had not been formed till since the slanderous
tale accounting
