Chapter 10 - Page 2

being perhaps remembers his whole life through--and strangely enough
they are often small incidents. I do not think there will ever pass
from me my memory of the way the rain swept over the park lands and
bare trees the day I stood with my Lord Dunstanwolde at the Long
Gallery window, and he told me of the new-born child dragged shrieking
from beneath its dead mother's body."

Some days later he went to Camylott to pass a few weeks in the country
with his parents, who were about to set forth upon a journey to Italy,
where they were to visit in state a palace of a Roman noble who had
been a friend of his Grace's youth, they having met and become
companions when the Duke first visited Rome in making the grand tour.
'Twas a visit long promised to the Roman gentleman who had more than
once been a guest of their household in England; and but for affairs of
his Grace of Marlborough, which Roxholm had bound himself to keep eye
on, he also would have been of the party. As matters stood, honour
held him on English soil, for which reason he went to Camylott to spend
the last weeks with those he loved, amid the country loveliness.

When my lord Marquess journeyed to the country he took no great
cavalcade with him, but only a couple of servants to attend him, while
Mr. Fox rode at his side. The English June weather was heavenly fair,
and the country a bower of green, the sun shining with soft warmth and
the birds singing in the hedgerows and upon the leafy boughs. To ride a
fine horse over country roads, by wood and moor and sea, is a pleasant
thing when a man is young and hale and full of joy in Nature's
loveliness, and above all is riding to a home which seems more
beautiful to him than any place on earth. One who has lived
twenty-eight years, having no desire unfulfilled, and taking his part
of every pleasure that wealth, high birth, and a splendid body can give
him, may well ride gaily over a good white road and have leisure to
throw back his head to hearken to a skylark soaring in the high blue
heavens above him, to smile at a sitting bird's bright eyes peeping
timidly at him from under the thick leafage of a hazel hedge, or at the
sight of a family of rabbits scurrying over the cropped woodland grass
at the sound of his horse's feet, their short white tails marking their
leaps as they dart from one fern shelter to the other; and to slacken
his horse's pace as he rides past village greens, marking how the
little children tumble and are merry there.

So my lord Marquess rode and Mr. Fox with him, for two days at least.
In the dewy morning they set forth and travelled between green
hedgerows and through pretty tiny villages, talking pleasantly, as old
friends will talk, for to the day of his old