LVI. WHEN THE NIGHT IS DARKEST
XLVII. DAWN IS NEAR
XLVIII. CONCLUSION

CHAPTER I

Remains of our good yeomanry blood will be found in Kent, developing
stiff, solid, unobtrusive men, and very personable women. The
distinction survives there between Kentish women and women of Kent, as
a true South-eastern dame will let you know, if it is her fortune to
belong to that favoured portion of the county where the great battle
was fought, in which the gentler sex performed manful work, but on what
luckless heads we hear not; and when garrulous tradition is discreet,
the severe historic Muse declines to hazard a guess. Saxon, one would
presume, since it is thought something to have broken them.

My plain story is of two Kentish damsels, and runs from a home of
flowers into regions where flowers are few and sickly, on to where the
flowers which breathe sweet breath have been proved in mortal fire.

Mrs. Fleming, of Queen Anne's Farm, was the wife of a yeoman-farmer of
the county. Both were of sound Kentish extraction, albeit varieties of
the breed. The farm had its name from a tradition, common to many other
farmhouses within a circuit of the metropolis, that the ante-Hanoverian
lady had used the place in her day as a nursery-hospital for the royal
little ones. It was a square three-storied building of red brick, much
beaten and stained by the weather, with an ivied side, up which the
ivy grew stoutly, topping the roof in triumphant lumps. The house could
hardly be termed picturesque. Its aspect had struck many eyes as being
very much that of a red-coat sentinel grenadier, battered with service,
and standing firmly enough, though not at ease. Surrounding it was a
high wall, built partly of flint and partly of brick, and ringed all
over with grey lichen and brown spots of bearded moss, that bore
witness to the touch of many winds and rains. Tufts of pale grass,
and gilliflowers, and travelling stone-crop, hung from the wall, and
driblets of ivy ran broadening to the outer ground. The royal Arms were
said to have surmounted the great iron gateway; but they had vanished,
either with the family, or at the indications of an approaching rust.
Rust defiled its bars; but, when you looked through them, the splendour
of an unrivalled garden gave vivid signs of youth, and of the taste of
an orderly, laborious, and cunning hand.

The garden was under Mrs. Fleming's charge. The joy of her love for it
was written on its