"'Perhaps some languid summer day,
When drowsy birds sing less and less,
And golden fruit is ripening to excess;
If there's not too much wind or too much cloud,
And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,
Perhaps my secret I may say,
Or—you may guess.'"
"What beautiful words," he cried. "It seems to me, Lady Marion, that you have a whole storehouse full of the most apt and beautiful quotations. You ought to have been a poet yourself."
"No," she replied, "I can appreciate, but I cannot invent. I can make the words and the thoughts of a poet my own, but I cannot invent or create; I have no originality."
"You have what is rarer, still," he cried; "a graceful humility that raises you higher than any other gift could do."
He spoke so warmly that she looked up in wonder, but Lord Chandos turned abruptly away; there might be danger if he said more.
So the lovely, leafy month of May ended, and June began. Then Lord Chandos began to think of home—his birthday was on the thirtieth of June, and he knew what he had promised for that day. He could see the pretty, flower-covered window—the roses which must be thrust aside—the gate he had promised to open; he remembered every detail. Well, it was all very pretty and very pleasant; but, he could not tell why, the bloom of the romance was gone, that was quite certain. He had learned to associate poetry with the pale moonlight and golden hair, with a very fair face and a soft ripple of sweet speech. Still he intended most honorably to keep his promise; he took great delight, too, in thinking of Leone's passionate happiness, of her beautiful face, of the ecstasy of welcome she would give him. Then, of course, he must marry her; the very day after that would be the first of July, and, for the first time, he thought of his coming marriage with a sigh—it would separate him so entirely from his mother, and from Lady Marion; in all probability he would never see much of her again. He thought more of her loss than of his own.
"How she will miss me," he said to himself; "she will have no one to consult, no one to advise her. I wish we could always be the same good friends as now."
Then it occurred to him that perhaps, after all, his wife would not care to know that he was on such confidential terms with any one but herself.
He would have felt far less sure of either his return or his marriage if he had overheard a slight conversation that took place between his mother and Lady Marion. The Countess of Lanswell called one day and took the young heiress out for a drive with her; when they were seated, driving through scenery so beautiful one could hardly believe it to be a fallen world, the countess in her sweetest manner, which she knew how to make quite irresistible, said:
"Lady Marion, I want you to help me to do something, if you will."