And tender buds are fretting to be free."
The fickle sun is flinging its broad beams far and near, now glittering upon the ivied towers, and now dancing round the chimney-tops, now necking with gold the mullioned window. Its brightness is as a smile from the departing summer, the sweeter that it grows rarer every hour; its merry rays spread and lengthen, the wind grows softer, balmier, beneath its influence; it is as the very heart of lazy July.
"And on the woods and on the deep
The smile of heaven lay.
It seemed as if the day were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which shed to earth above the sun
A light of Paradise."
There is an "inviolable quietness" in all the air.
Some late roses have grown, and cluster round Lilian's window; stooping out, she kisses and caresses them, speaking to them as though they were (as indeed they are) her dear friends, when nurse's voice recalls her to the present, and the inner room.