The Duchess of Rosemary Lane. A Novel

"I must ask you one question, sir. Do you remain at Springfield?"

"No; I leave to-night, and I shall probably be absent for weeks. Ah, I perceive that answer is satisfactory to you. I see a lady approaching. Shall you or I retire?"

The gardener's son, casting one glance at the advancing form, walks slowly away, and his shadow is soon swallowed up by other shadows, among which he walks in pain and grief.

Nelly Marston is in no holiday humour; she is trembling with shame at the thought of what passed in the sick-chamber of her peevish mistress, and she approaches Mr. Temple with downcast head. Love and humiliation are fighting a desperate battle within her breast, and she does not respond sympathetically to her lover's glad greeting. He uses his best arts to soothe and comfort her; he addresses her by every endearing title, saying she is dearer to him than all the world, and beseeching her to throw all the rest aside. She listens in silence at the first, as he pours this sweet balm of Gilead upon her troubled soul. He is in his brightest mood, and his speech which tells the oft-told tale flows sweetly and tenderly. They stand beneath the stars, and he calls upon them to witness his love, his truth, his honour. Every word that falls from his lips sinks into her soul, and her heart is like a garden filled with unfading flowers. Humiliation and unrest melt into oblivion, never more to rise and agonise her. He loves her; he tells her so a hundred times and in a hundred ways. He will be true to her; he swears it by all the beautiful signs around them. Fairer and more lovely grows the night as he kisses away her tears. The moon rises higher in the heavens and bathes them in light. Softly, more tenderly he speaks, and she, like a child listens, listens-listens and believes, and hides her blushing face from him. Ah, if truth lives, it lives in him-in him, the symbol of all that is good and manly, and noble! She is so weak, he so strong! She knows so little, he so much! The sweet and enthralling words he whispers into her ears as her head lies upon his breast, form the first page of the brightest book that life can open to her; and the sighing of the breeze, the sleeping flowers, the hushed melody of the waving grass, the laughing, flashing lights of heaven playing about the dreamy shadows in the waters of the brook, are one and all delicious evidences of his truth, his honour, and his love.

"I love you-I love you-I love you!" he vows and vows again. "Put your arms about my neck-so! and whispers to me what I am dying to hear."

"You are my life!" she sighs, and their lips meet; and then they sit and talk, and, as she gazes into the immeasurable distances of the stars, she sees, with the eyes of her soul, a happy future, filled with fond and sweet imaginings,

PART THE THIRD

AUTUMN

The season of England's loveliest sunsets is here. The golden corn, ripe and ready for the sickle, bows gracefully beneath the lavender-perfumed breeze, and whispers to bountiful earth, "My time has come. Farewell!"

In a garden attached to a cottage situated twenty miles from Springfield stands Nelly Marston, by the side of an old apple-tree loaded with fair fruit, and looking, with the white moss gathered about its limbs, like an ancient knight clothed in silver armour. The cottage has many rooms of delightfully odd shapes, is tastefully furnished, and is built in the centre of an acre of land so prettily laid out and so bright with colour that few strangers see it without pausing a while to admire.

Nelly Marston is more beautiful than when we saw her last at Springfield, and to the poetical mind presents a fine contrast to the gnarled and ancient tree, which, could it speak, might honestly say, "Old I am, but am yet fair to the eye and can produce good things. Come, my girl, gather sweetness from me, and wisdom too, if you need it."

She gathers sweetness and that is enough for her. From where she stands, she has a broken view of the winding lane which, from distant wider spaces, leads to the front of the cottage. Often and again her eyes are directed towards this lane, with a look which denotes that her heart is in them. She is like fair Rosamond waiting for her prince. He comes! A horseman turns into the winding path and waves his hand to her. She replies with the gladdest of smiles and with a waving of her own pretty hand, and her heart beats joyfully to the music of the horse's hoof. Her prince draws rein at the cottage-door, and she is there to meet him. A lad with face deeply pock-marked takes the horse to the stable, casting as many admiring glances towards Nelly as time will permit of.

"Now, Nelly," says the prince gaily, as he throws his arms about her and kisses her again and again, "was ever lover more punctual than I?"

"How can I tell?" she answers, "I never had but one."

"Ah, Nelly, Nelly!" he exclaims, with uplifted finger and an arch smile; "do you forget the gardener's son?"

"No, I do not forget him; he was very good to me. But I do not mean in that way."

"In what way, then, puss?"

"You'll tease me till I tell you. I don't know how to say it."

"Say it you must, though, my queen."

"Of course I must. You have got what you call a strong will. Isn't that it?"

"That is it," he assents, with a nod which is both careless and determined.

"And are never to be turned from your purpose?"

"Never. That is the only way to get on in life, and I mean to get on."

"Nothing can prevent that. You are so clever that I am half inclined to be frightened of you. And I should be, if I were not sure you loved me."

He kisses her as he observes, "Put the strongest will into the crucible of love, and it melts like lead in a furnace. In such a test steel would become as pliant as running water. Love is the most intoxicating poison, my darling."

"I don't like the word," she says.

"The word 'darling'?" he inquires.

"No, the word 'poison.' Love is not a poison; it is an elixir." She winds her arms round his neck, and murmurs, "It has given me a new life. The world is more beautiful than it used to be I am sure."

He smiles at her sentiment. "I remember telling you once that you had a strong will of your own, Nelly."

"I haven't that much," she says, placing the nail of her thumb to the tip of her little finger. "Not that much!"

"But you are a cunning puss, for all that," he says, as he draws her face to his. They are in the cottage now, and she is sitting on his knee. "You want to fly away from the subject we were speaking of, so my strong will must bring you back to it. Well, I'll be content with a compromise. Who is this lover that so limits your knowledge?"

"I shall not tell you that, sir. You must guess it-if you can! As if you could! No, I'll not say! I can keep a secret. Oh, you may laugh, but I can!"

"Well, then, where is he?"

"Where? Why, thousands of miles away of course!"

"Let me not catch him!" he cries gaily. "Well, now, pet, to spite that person, who I hope will not suffer very much in consequence, I intend to stop with you a whole fortnight."

Her face lights up with joy.

"I have important business in London," he continues, with a sly laugh; "oh, most important! My presence is imperatively required in the great city. The interests of an influential client depend personally upon me, so Lady Temple has given me leave of absence. Confiding old soul!"

"Lady Temple is the same as ever?"

"The same as ever. No change. Fretful and peevish, throwing out all sorts of dark innuendoes one minute, and smiling upon me the next. Now a lamb, now a tigress. I have the temper of an angel, Nell, or I could never stand it. But I humour her-for your sake, pet, as well as my own. Our future depends upon her.

"Does she speak of me?"

"She mentioned your name once last week, and not amiably. But enough of her. Goodbye, my worthy aunt, for a happy fortnight. If she guessed how matters stood, Nell, between me and you, I should be-well, best not think of that. The prospect is not a pleasant one. Now tell me how you have passed the time, how many new laid-eggs you get a day, and how the chickens are, whether the new little pig has any idea of its ultimate fate, how the fruit is getting on, and how you like the new boy I sent to look after the stable. You did not want him you wrote to me; but thereby hangs a tale, which you shall hear presently. Upon my word, Nell, I suspect he is in love with you, like everybody else who sees you. I have a kind of belief that you are a love-witch. He never took his eyes off you, all the time he was waiting for my nag. Now for the reason of his being here. Nelly, to-morrow morning, before you are up, there will arrive at this little cottage the prettiest basket-carriage and the prettiest pair of ponies in England. A present for you, pet, from your lover thousands of miles away. Ah, you kiss me for that, do you! Then I take it, you are pleased with this mysterious lover of yours!"

"I believe no woman in the world was ever half so happy as I. When you are with me, there is not a cloud on my life."

"That's a good hearing," he says, heartily. "Why, Nelly, you are a living wonder! A satisfied woman! I shall scarcely be surprised to hear you say you have not a wish ungratified."

"Not quite that. I have one wish."

"To wit," he prompts.

She whispers it to him.

"That the next fortnight would last for ever, so that you would never have to leave me!"

"A woman's wish all over," he says. "But the old man with the scythe will not be denied, my pet. While lovers dream, time flies the faster, I can't imagine you with white hair, Nell; yet you would look lovely anyway."

" Your hair will be white, too, remember," she says, in a tone of tender jesting. "It will be strange to look back so many years, and think and talk of the past. But we shall be to each other then what we are now. Say that we shall."

"Say it! I swear it, my pet! Let Time do his worst, then. You shall not pluck another white hair out of my head. Nelly, I love you more and more every day of my life."