Morgan’s story was true. He had described when, how and under what conditions Jack had pledged Lucy in a glass of wine on her wedding day, praying God to send blessings and happiness to his lost love.
Sing sweet mocking birds! Shine genial sun! Bloom fairest flowers of Sunny Florida! Bliss be thine, loved Lucy! Dream not of the ocean’s angry roar! The tempest’s cruel blast!
VII.
“I really can hardly realize, grandfather, that I have been married one year and that today is the anniversary of my wedding,” exclaimed Mrs. Walter Burton to her grandfather, as lingering over a late breakfast, they chatted in a desultory manner on many subjects.
The breakfast-room of the Dunlap mansion was one of the prettiest apartments in the house; bright and airy, with great windows reaching from ceiling to floor, which flooded the place with sunshine and cheerfulness this brilliant snowy New England morning.
Surely it had been difficult to find anything prettier than the young matron who presided over the sparkling service with the grace of the school-girl still visible notwithstanding the recently assumed dignity of wife.
Lucy Burton’s face and form possessed that rare quality of seeming always displayed to best advantage in the last costume she wore. Nothing could be more becoming than the lace-trimmed breakfast gown of a clinging silky, pink fabric worn by her this morning.
The tete-a-tete between grandfather and granddaughter each morning over the breakfast-table was an established and, to both, a cherished custom that had grown up since Lucy’s marriage.