The Frances Hodgson Burnett MEGAPACK ®. Frances Hodgson Burnett

import than the one she had graced previously, it being to celebrate the majority of the heir to an old name and estate, who had been orphaned early, and was highly connected, counting, indeed, among the members of his family the Duke of Osmonde, who was one of the richest and most envied nobles in Great Britain, his dukedom being of the oldest, his numerous estates the most splendid and beautiful, and the long history of his family full of heroic deeds. This nobleman was also a distant kinsman to the Earl of Dunstanwolde, and at this ball, for the first time for months, Sir John Oxon appeared again.

      He did not arrive on the gay scene until an hour somewhat late. But there was one who had seen him early, though no human soul had known of the event.

      In the rambling, ill-cared for grounds of Wildairs Hall there was an old rose-garden, which had once been the pride and pleasure of some lady of the house, though this had been long ago; and now it was but a lonely wilderness where roses only grew because the dead Lady Wildairs had loved them, and Barbara and Anne had tended them, and with their own hands planted and pruned during their childhood and young maiden days. But of late years even they had seemed to have forgotten it, having become discouraged, perchance, having no gardeners to do the rougher work, and the weeds and brambles so running riot. There were high hedges and winding paths overgrown and run wild; the stronger rose-bushes grew in tangled masses, flinging forth their rich blooms among the weeds; such as were more delicate, struggling to live among them, became more frail and scant-blossoming season by season; a careless foot would have trodden them beneath it as their branches grew long and trailed in the grass; but for many months no foot had trodden there at all, and it was a beauteous place deserted.

      In the centre was an ancient broken sun-dial, which was in these days in the midst of a sort of thicket, where a bold tangle of the finest red roses clambered, and, defying neglect, flaunted their rich colour in the sun.

      And though the place had been so long forgotten, and it was not the custom for it to be visited, about this garlanded broken sun-dial the grass was a little trodden, and on the morning of the young heir’s coming of age some one stood there in the glowing sunlight as if waiting.

      This was no less than Mistress Clorinda herself. She was clad in a morning gown of white, which seemed to make of her more than ever a tall, transcendent creature, less a woman than a conquering goddess; and she had piled the dial with scarlet red roses, which she was choosing to weave into a massive wreath or crown, for some purpose best known to herself. Her head seemed haughtier and more splendidly held on high even than was its common wont, but upon these roses her lustrous eyes were downcast and were curiously smiling, as also was her ripe, arching lip, whose scarlet the blossoms vied with but poorly. It was a smile like this, perhaps, which Mistress Wimpole feared and trembled before, for ’twas not a tender smile nor a melting one. If she was waiting, she did not wait long, nor, to be sure, would she have long waited if she had been kept by any daring laggard. This was not her way.

      ’Twas not a laggard who came soon, stepping hurriedly with light feet upon the grass, as though he feared the sound which might be made if he had trodden upon the gravel. It was Sir John Oxon who came towards her in his riding costume.

      He came and stood before her on the other side of the dial, and made her a bow so low that a quick eye might have thought ’twas almost mocking. His feather, sweeping the ground, caught a fallen rose, which clung to it. His beauty, when he stood upright, seemed to defy the very morning’s self and all the morning world; but Mistress Clorinda did not lift her eyes, but kept them upon her roses, and went on weaving.

      “Why did you choose to come?” she asked.

      “Why did you choose to keep the tryst in answer to my message?” he replied to her.

      At this she lifted her great shining eyes and fixed them full upon him.

      “I wished,” she said, “to hear what you would say—but more to see you than to hear.”

      “And I,” he began—“I came—”

      She held up her white hand with a long-stemmed rose in it—as though a queen should lift a sceptre.

      “You came,” she answered, “more to see me than to hear. You made that blunder.”

      “You choose to bear yourself like a goddess, and disdain me from Olympian heights,” he said. “I had the wit to guess it would be so.”

      She shook her royal head, faintly and most strangely smiling.

      “That you had not,” was her clear-worded answer. “That is a later thought sprung up since you have seen my face. ’Twas quick—for you—but not quick enough.” And the smile in her eyes was maddening. “You thought to see a woman crushed and weeping, her beauty bent before you, her locks dishevelled, her streaming eyes lifted to Heaven—and you—with prayers, swearing that not Heaven could help her so much as your deigning magnanimity. You have seen women do this before, you would have seen me do it—at your feet—crying out that I was lost—lost for ever. That you expected! ’Tis not here.”

      Debauched as his youth was, and free from all touch of heart or conscience—for from his earliest boyhood he had been the pupil of rakes and fashionable villains—well as he thought he knew all women and their ways, betraying or betrayed—this creature taught him a new thing, a new mood in woman, a new power which came upon him like a thunderbolt.

      “Gods!” he exclaimed, catching his breath, and even falling back apace, “Damnation! you are not a woman!”

      She laughed again, weaving her roses, but not allowing that his eyes should loose themselves from hers.

      “But now, you called me a goddess and spoke of Olympian heights,” she said; “I am not one—I am a woman who would show other women how to bear themselves in hours like these. Because I am a woman why should I kneel, and weep, and rave? What have I lost—in losing you? I should have lost the same had I been twice your wife. What is it women weep and beat their breasts for—because they love a man—because they lose his love. They never have them.”

      She had finished the wreath, and held it up in the sun to look at it. What a strange beauty was hers, as she held it so—a heavy, sumptuous thing—in her white hands, her head thrown backward.

      “You marry soon,” she asked—“if the match is not broken?”

      “Yes,” he answered, watching her—a flame growing in his eyes and in his soul in his own despite.

      “It cannot be too soon,” she said. And she turned and faced him, holding the wreath high in her two hands poised like a crown above her head—the brilliant sun embracing her, her lips curling, her face uplifted as if she turned to defy the light, the crimson of her cheek. ’Twas as if from foot to brow the woman’s whole person was a flame, rising and burning triumphant high above him. Thus for one second’s space she stood, dazzling his very eyesight with her strange, dauntless splendour; and then she set the great rose-wreath upon her head, so crowning it.

      “You came to see me,” she said, the spark in her eyes growing to the size of a star; “I bid you look at me—and see how grief has faded me these past months, and how I am bowed down by it. Look well—that you may remember.”

      “I look,” he said, almost panting.

      “Then,” she said, her fine-cut nostril pinching itself with her breath, as she pointed down the path before her—“go!—back to your kennel!”

      * * * *

      That night she appeared at the birth-night ball with the wreath of roses on her head. No other ladies wore such things, ’twas a fashion of her own; but she wore it in such beauty and with such state that it became a crown again even as it had been the first moment that she had put it on. All gazed at her as she entered, and a murmur followed her as she moved with her father up the broad oak staircase which was known through all the country for its width and massive beauty. In the hall below guests were crowded, and there were indeed few of them who did not watch her as she mounted by Sir Jeoffry’s side. In the upper hall there were guests also, some walking to and fro, some standing talking, many looking down at the arrivals