Chapter 11 - Page 2

the pride and joy of the head gardener, who lived for and among
them, as indeed they were the pride of those who worked under his
command, not a man or boy of them knowing any such pleasure as to see
her Grace walk through their labyrinths of bloom with my lord Marquess,
each of them rejoicing in the loveliness on every side and gathering
the fairest blossoms as they went, until sometimes they carried away
with them rich sheaves of crimson and pink and white and yellow. They
loved the high-walled kitchen garden, too, and often visited it,
spreading delight there among its gardeners by praising its fine
growths, plucking the fruit and gathering nosegays of the old-fashioned
flowers which bordered the beds of sober vegetables--sweet peas and
Canterbury bells, wall-flowers, sweetwilliams, yellow musk, and
pansies, making, her Grace said, the prettiest nosegay in the world.
Then they would loiter through the village and make visits to old men
and women sitting in the sun, to young mothers with babies in their
arms and little mites playing about their feet.

"And you never enter a cottage door, mother," said Roxholm in his young
manhood's pride and joy in her, "but it seems that the sun begins to
shine through the little window, and if there is a caged bird hanging
there it begins to twitter and sing. I cannot find a lady like
you"--bending his knee and kissing her white fingers in gay caress.
"Indeed, if I could I should bring her home to you to Camylott--and old
Rowe might ring his bells until he lost his breath."

"Do you know," she answered, "what your father said to me the first
morning I lay in my bed with you in my arm--old Rowe was ringing the
bells as if he would go wild. I remember the joyful pealing of them as
it floated across the park to come through my open window. We were so
proud and full of happiness, and thought you so beautiful--and you are,
Gerald, yet; so you are yet," with the prettiest smile, "and your
father said of you, 'He will grow to be a noble gentleman and wed a
noble lady; and they will be as we have been--as we have been,
beloved,' and we kissed each other with blissful tears in our eyes, and
you moved in my arm, and there was a tiny, new-born smile on your
little face."

"Dear one!" he said, kissing her hand more gravely; "dear one, God
grant such sweetness may come to me--for indeed I want to love some
woman dearly," and the warm blood mounted to his cheek.

Often in their tender confidences they spoke of this fair one who was
to crown his happy life, and one day, having returned from a brief
visit in another county, as they sat together in the evening she broke
forth with a little sigh