Chapter 27
We concluded our wedding-tour rather sooner than we had at first intended, and returned to England and Willowsmere Court about the middle of August. I had a vague notion stirring in me that gave me a sort of dim indefinable consolation, and it was this,—I meant to bring my wife and Mavis Clare together, believing that the gentle influence of the gracious and happy creature, who, like a contented bird in its nest, dwelt serene in the little domain so near my own, might have a softening and wholesome effect upon Sibyl's pitiless love of analysis and scorn of all noble ideals. The heat in Warwickshire was at this time intense,—the roses were out in their full beauty, and the thick foliage of the branching oaks and elms in my grounds afforded grateful shade and repose to the tired
