The bell was rung, a few words said to the servant, and then a beautiful little pony was led on to the lawn. The children clapped their hands in glee. Sir Ronald bent down and kissed his wife.
“My good angel,” he whispered, “my bright, winsome wife, I have saddened you with my queer ideas; forget everything except that you are the sunshine of my home. Come out, love, among the flowers and see the children at play.”
So she shook off, so far as she could, all memory of that conversation, and she stood in the sunshine on the emerald lawn, little Clare clinging to her dress, watching the princely boy taking his first lesson in riding and wondering to herself why it was God’s will she should be there, blessed and loving, while the murdered wife slept in her quiet grave. Then, with grave rebuke to herself, she raised her face to the smiling heavens, and remembered that He who reigned there knew best.
CHAPTER XXXI.
A LAUREL WREATH.
The spirit of unrest did not leave Kenelm Eyrle. When he met Sir Ronald and Lady Hermione at lunch he looked very pale, ill, and determined. He held Lady Hermione’s soft, white hand in his. “I must ask you to pardon me,” he said. “I have no right to let my troubles cloud your happy home.”
“I have nothing to pardon, but, oh! Kenelm!” she said, “you have been true to your love for her, true to her memory for so long, could you not take a new interest in life? Even she, herself, could ask no greater sacrifice than you have already made.”
Sir Ronald had not yet entered the dining-room, and they were standing before the long, open windows. She went to him with tears in her beautiful eyes.
“You do not know,” she said, “how I mourn for your wasted life, Kenelm. They tell me there is no estate in the country neglected like yours. That your tenantry are poor and neglected, your dependents the least prosperous of any; that over everything belonging to you there seems to have fallen a blight. Is it so?”
“Yes. I cannot speak falsely to you, Hermione; it is so, and I do not care to set it right.”
“Ah, if you knew,” she continued, earnestly, “how wrong it is, how hateful to God and man are those neglected duties, you would renounce this mania—it is but a mania after all—and begin to live in earnest. Oh, Kenelm, be persuaded, be influenced.”