r, but to a room which he had not entered before, it being
one she had had the fancy to have remodelled and made into a beautiful
closet for herself, her great wealth rendering it possible for her to
accomplish changes without the loss of time the owners of limited purses
are subjected to in the carrying out of plans. This room she had made as
unlike the Panelled Parlour as two rooms would be unlike one another. Its
panellings were white, its furnishings were bright and delicate, its
draperies flowered with rosebuds tied in clusters with love-knots of pink
and blue; it had a large bow-window, through which the sunlight streamed,
and it was blooming with great rose-bowls overrunning with sweetness.

From a seat in the morning sunshine among the flowers and plants in the
bow-window, there rose a tall figure in a snow-white robe--a figure like
that of a beautiful stately girl who was half an angel. It was my lady,
who came to him with blushing cheeks and radiant shining eyes, and was
swept into his arms in such a passion of love and blessed tenderness as
Heaven might have smiled to see.

"My love! my love!" he breathed. "My life! my life and soul!"

"My Gerald!" she cried. "My Gerald--let me say it on your breast a
thousand times!"

"My wife!" he said--"so soon my wife and all my own until life's end."

"Nay, nay," she cried, her cheek pressed to his own, "through all
eternity, for Love's life knows no end."

As it had seemed to her poor lord who had died, so it seemed to this man
who lived and so worshipped her--that the wonder of her sweetness was a
thing to marvel at with passionate reverence. Being a man of greater
mind and poetic imagination than Dunstanwolde, and being himself adored
by her, as that poor gentleman had not had the good fortune to be, he had
ten thousand-fold the power and reason to see the tender radiance of her.
As she was taller than other women, so her love seemed higher and
greater, and as free from any touch of earthly poverty of feeling as her
beauty was from any flaw. In it there could be no doubt, no pride; it
could be bounded by no limit, measured by no rule, its depths sounded by
no plummet.

His very soul was touched by her great longing to give to him the
feeling, and to feel herself, that from the hour that she had become his,
her past life was a thing blotted out.

"I am a new created thing," she said; "until you called me 'Love' I had
no life! All before was darkness. '