Stuart was absent on horseback, riding from field to field, overlooking the workmen.
All the other members of the family were gathered on the front porch.
Mrs. Pole, with a pair of shears in her hands, was walking about the place, carefully clipping a few dead leaves from the rose vines that climbed about the pillars. She had taken to gardening with as much enthusiasm as Stuart had taken to farming.
Palma sat on a little, low chair, busy with her needlework. At her feet stood the pretty basket cradle in which lay the twin babes, sleeping.
Near them sat John Cleve, reclining in a large resting-chair. His hands were folded before him, and he was gazing out upon the scene with a face illumined by reverence and serene rapture. Not a word had he spoken since the babies went to sleep. Now he murmured:
“Oh! the beauty and the glory of Thy sunlit earth and heavens, our Father.”
The words seemed to issue involuntarily from the lips of the speaker in the midst of the deep silence.
“Oh! the loveliness of Thy celestial angels!” he murmured in a lower and a slower tone.
Palma looked up from her sewing.
He did not speak again.