It was on a perfect September day, with that deeper blue in the clear sky and wonderful freshness in the air which summer’s end brings with it, that Sydney was married.
As on that first morning at the Castle long ago, she rose before the rest of the household, and went out into the Park, where diamond dew lay thick and the hedges sparkled with jewelled cobwebs.
She would not call Dolly to come with her: she wanted for a little while upon this happy morning to be the lonely Sydney again.
But there was little to recall that first walk, as she stood on the marble steps of the Castle and looked into the glory of September sunshine glittering around her.
She went through the Park, making for the gap in the hedge she knew so well, and drinking in the beauty which was so atune with her heart to-day—the dark-foliaged trees, the upland fields, some bare, some covered still with corn-sheaves, stacked in hiles, as the Blankshire people called them—the glitter of dew at her feet, where every tiny blade of grass seemed jewelled in the sunshine.
She could not resist one peep through the mullioned windows of the quaint, dark, comfortable, Queen Anne house, furnished throughout by loving hands to suit the girl’s taste. The fittings from her luxurious rooms in the Castle had gone with her to this new home by St. Quentin’s wish, and the beautiful plate on the sideboard spoke eloquently enough of the feeling among the tenantry of the estate for “our young lady.”
Mackintosh had filled the conservatory with his choicest flowers, and Bessie and the pair of ponies already inhabited the roomy stables. This was to be her home and Hugh’s. Her home and Hugh’s!—how good it sounded!
Her eyes shone as she turned into the road leading into the village.
How different all was from that first walk, when the new life had appeared so strange and lonely, and home so terribly far away! Had it ever seemed possible then that she would come to love Lislehurst so well, could come to be as happy there as she was to-day?
At the gap where they had first met Pauly was waiting, with a basket and a broad smile of satisfaction on his round chubby face.