'Nothing nearer than where we are now, my lady.' 'Then drive home,' she said after a moment. And the carriage rolled on its way.

A few days later, the same lady, in the same carriage, passed that spot
again. Her eyes, as before, turned to the distant tower.

'Nobbs,' she said to the coachman, 'could you find your way home through
that field, so as to get near the outskirts of the plantation where the
column is?' The coachman regarded the field. 'Well, my lady,' he observed, 'in dry
weather we might drive in there by inching and pinching, and so get
across by Five-and-Twenty Acres, all being well. But the ground is so
heavy after these rains that perhaps it would hardly be safe to try it
now.' 'Perhaps not,' she assented indifferently. 'Remember it, will you, at a
drier time?' And again the carriage sped along the road, the lady's eyes resting on
the segmental hill, the blue trees that muffled it, and the column that
formed its apex, till they were out of sight.

A long time elapsed before that lady drove over the hill again. It was
February; the soil was now unquestionably dry, the weather and scene
being in other respects much as they had been before. The familiar shape
of the column seemed to remind her that at last an opportunity for a
close inspection had arrived. Giving her directions she saw the gate
opened, and after a little manoeuvring the carriage swayed slowly into
the uneven field.