He bows and opens the door as he finishes his speech. Lord Sartoris, though sorely troubled, makes no sign; and, without so much as a pressure of the hand, they part.
CHAPTER XIX.
"Lock you, how she cometh, trilling
Out her gay heart's bird-like bliss!
Merry as a May-morn thrilling
With the dew and sunshine's kiss.
Ruddy gossips of her beauty
Are her twin cheeks; and her mouth,
In its ripe warmth, smileth fruity
As a garden of the south."—Gerald Massey.
To Georgie the life at the vicarage is quite supportable,—is, indeed, balm to her wounded spirit. Mrs. Redmond may, of course, chop and change as readily as the east wind, and, in fact, may sit in any quarter, being somewhat erratic in her humors; but they are short-lived; and, if faintly trying, she is at least kindly and tender at heart.
As for the vicar, he is—as Miss Georgie tells him, even without a blush—"simply adorable;" and the children are sweet good-natured little souls, true-hearted and earnest, to whom the loss of an empire would be as dross in comparison with the gain of a friend.
They are young!
To Dorian Branscombe, Miss Broughton is "a thing of beauty, and a joy forever; her loveliness increases" each moment, rendering her more dear. Perhaps he himself hardly knows how dear she is to his heart, though day after day he haunts the vicarage, persecuting the vicar with parochial business of an outside sort. It ought, indeed, to be "had in remembrance," the amount of charity this young man expended upon the poor during all this early part of the year.