Chapter 19 - Page 2

wedding-day, alone, his Lordship had spoken to him of the joy
which made him pale.

"Gerald," he said, "I could speak to none other of it. Your great heart
will understand. 'Tis almost too sacred for words. Shall I waken from a
dream? Surely, 'tis too heavenly sweet to last."

Would it last? his kinsman asked himself in secret, could it? Could
one, like her, and who had lived her life, feel an affection for a
consort so separated from her youth and bloom by years? She was so
young, and all the dazzling of the world was new. What beauteous,
high-spirited, country-bred creature of eighteen would not find its
dazzle blind her eyes so that she could scarce see aright? He asked
himself the questions with a pang. To expect that she should not even
swerve with the intoxication of it, was to expect that she should be
nigh superhuman, and yet if she should fail, and step down from the
high shrine in which his passion had placed her, this would be the
fiercest anguish of all.

"Were she mine," he cried, inwardly, "I could hold and guide her with
love's hand. We should be lost in love, and follies and Courts would
have no power. Love would be her shield and mine. Poor gentleman,"
remembering the tender worship in my Lord's kind face; "how can she
love him as _he_ loves _her_? But oh, she should--she _should_!"

If in the arrogance of her youth and power she could deal with him
lightly or unkindly, he knew that even his own passion could find no
pardon for her--yet if he had but once beheld her eyes answer her
lord's as a woman's eyes must answer those of him she loves, it would
have driven him mad. And so it came about that to see that she was
tender and noble he watched her, and to be sure that she was no more
than this he knew he watched her too, calling himself ignoble that
Nature so prompted him.

There was a thing she had said to him but a week after the marriage
which had sunk deep into his soul and given him comfort.

"From my lord I shall learn new virtues," she said, with a singular
smile, which somehow to his mind hid somewhat of pathos. "'New
virtues,' say I; all are new to me. At Wildairs we concerned ourselves
little with such matters." She lifted her eyes and let them rest upon
him with proud gravity. "He is the first good man," she said, "whom I
have ever known."

'Twas not as this man observed her life that the world looked on at it,
but in a different manner and with a different motive, and yet both the
world and his Grace of Osmonde beheld the same thing, which was that my
Lord Dunstanwolde's happiness was a thing which grew greater and deeper
as time passed, instead of failing him.