Chapter 5

"I loved you alway, I will not deny it; not for three months, and
not for a year; but I loved you from the first, when I was a child,
and my love shall not wither, till death shall end me."--GAeLIC SONG.

"Our own acts are our attending angels, in whose light or shadow
we walk continually."



The Fontaine place was a long, low, white building facing a tumbling
sea, and a stretch of burnt sea-sands. It had no architectural beauty,
and yet it was a wonderfully picturesque place. Broad piazzas draped
in vines ran all around the lower story, and the upper revealed itself
only in white glimpses among dense masses of foliage. And what did
it matter that outside the place there were brown sand-hills and
pale-sailed ships? A high hedge of myrtles hid it in a large garden
full of the scents of the sun-burnt South--a garden of fragrant beauty,
where one might dream idly all day long.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon of an August day, and every thing
was still; only the _cicadas_ ran from hedge to hedge telling
each other, in clear resonant voices, how hot it was. The house door
stood open, but all the green jalousies were closed, and not a breath
of air stirred the lace curtains hanging motionless before the windows.
The rooms, large and lofty, were in a dusky light, their atmosphere
still and warm and heavy with the scent of flowers. On the back piazza
half a dozen negro children were sleeping in all sorts of picturesque
attitudes, a bright mulatto women was dozing in a rocking-chair, and
the cook, having "fixed" his dinner ready for the stove, had rolled
himself in his blanket on the kitchen floor. Silence and dusk were
every-where, the dwelling might have been an enchanted one, and life
in it held in a trance.

In one of the upper rooms there was an occupant well calculated to
carry out this idea. It was Phyllis, fast asleep upon a white couch,
with both hands dropped toward the floor. But the sewing which had
fallen from them, and the thimble still upon her finger, was guarantee
for her mortality. And in a few minutes she opened her soft, dark eyes,
and smiled at her vacant hands. Then she glanced at the windows; the
curtains were beginning to stir, the gulf breeze had sprung up, the
birds were twittering, and the house awakening.

But it was pleasant to be quiet and think in such an indolent mood;
and Phyllis had some reasons for finding the "thinking" engrossing.
First, she had had a letter from Elizabeth, and it was in a very
hopeful tone. Antony and George Eltham were doing very well, and, as
Lord Eltham had become quietly interested in the firm, the squire felt
more easy as to its final success. Second, Mr. North was leaving