reeze fluttered her full muslin skirts, rose and white, and the
white lace of her parasol. The rich tones of her voice and the ring of
her laughter came up to Julius, as he leant against the stone mullion,
along with the droning of innumerable bees, and the cooing of the
pink-footed pigeons--that bowed to one another, spreading their tails,
drooping their wings amorously, upon the broad, gray string-course
running along the house front just beneath. Mademoiselle de Mirancourt,
a small, neat, gray and black figure, was beside Katherine, and, now
and again, he heard the pretty staccato of her foreign speech. Then
Richard Calmady rode onward, turning half round in the saddle, looking
up for a moment at the woman he loved. His horse broke into a canter,
bearing him swiftly in and out of the shadow of the glistening, domed
oaks and ancient, stag-headed, Spanish chestnuts which crowned the
ascent, and on down the long, softly-shaded vista of the lime avenue.
While Camp, the bulldog, who had lain panting in the bracken, streaked
like a white flash up the hillside in pursuit of his well-beloved
master.

And Julius March moved away from the open window with a sigh. Yet what,
after all, of malign or sinister was perceptible, conceivable even, in
respect of this glorious morning and these happy people--unless, as he
reflected, something of pathos is of necessity ever resident in all
beauty, all happiness, the world being sinful, and existence so
prolific of pain and melancholy happenings? So he went back, climbed
the library steps again, and taking the little bundle of chap-books
from their dusty resting-place, set himself, in a somewhat penitential
spirit, to master their contents. If the occupation was distasteful to
him, the more wholesome to pursue it! So, supplying the deficiencies of
torn or defaced pages by reference to another of the copies, he arrived
by degrees at a clear understanding of the whole matter. The story was
set forth in rhyming doggerel. The poet was not blessed with a gift of
melody or of style. Absence of scansion tortured the ear. Coarseness of
diction offended the taste. And yet, as he read on, Julius reluctantly
admitted that the cruel tale gained credibility and moral force from
the very homeliness of the language in which it was chronicled.

Thus Julius learned how, during the closing years of the Commonwealth,
the young royalist gentleman, Sir Thomas Calmady, dwelling in enforced
seclusion at Brockh