They watched her as the grey-headed founder led her across the bridge, and opened the garden gate; but she did not look. He spoke to her and pointed out her favourite trees, and then groaned in the anguish of his heart, for she made no reply. Her soft, sweet eyes might have been blind; her tongue have never spoken; and her soft, pinky, shell-like ears have never heard a sound, for all the sign she gave; and the founder’s heart sank low as he felt that his task of love had been labour in vain.
And yet he would not despair; but, leading her in, he gently placed her in the recess by the open window with her work spread around as of old, and her roses nodding and flinging their odours into the pleasant room.
No word, no look, no sign; and at last, in despair, the founder left her with her maid, and, bent of head and weary, trudged up to Master Peasegood’s cot to tell of his disappointment over a friendly pipe.
“Yes,” he said, at last; “it is all over, and I am going to try to be resigned.”
“Nay,” said the parson, “why say that? Be resigned, man, come to you what may; but, after all this preparation, why give it up?”
“Because it is useless, Master Peasegood. Her mind is dead.”
Master Peasegood refilled a pipe, and lit it to smoke for awhile in silence, while the founder gazed before him through the open window at the setting sun.
“I could preach thee a long, long sermon on the subject of hope, Master Cobbe,” said the parson at last; “but I will refrain. Look here, man, and recollect what thou hast done. Only to-day thou did’st take our sweet smitten flower back to the bed where it blossomed and grew so fair. It had been away in desert soil that had blighted it, and where it had grown wild and strange; and, lo! thou saidst ‘I will plant it back in the old sweet soil, and there shall be a miracle; it shall blossom in an instant as of old—in the twinkling of an eye.’”
“Yes, yes, I did—I did,” cried the founder, sadly.
“And it did not blossom a bit,” said Master Peasegood bluntly. “Jeremiah Cobbe, that is all.”