1. DECEMBER TO APRILWeek after week, month after month, the time had flown by.
Christmas had passed; dreary winter with dark evenings had given
place to more dreary winter with light evenings. Thaws had ended in
rain, rain in wind, wind in dust. Showery days had come—the period
of pink dawns and white sunsets; with the third week in April the
cuckoo had appeared, with the fourth, the nightingale.
Edward Springrove was in London, attending to the duties of his
new office, and it had become known throughout the neighbourhood of
Carriford that the engagement between himself and Miss Adelaide
Hinton would terminate in marriage at the end of the year.
The only occasion on which her lover of the idle delicious days
at Budmouth watering-place had been seen by Cytherea after the time
o
