“Richard’s wife,” she mused. “May I have strength to make him love me dearly, and to be to him the best of wives.”
It was a fervent wish, but as it passed her trembling lips, the tears began to flow, and though she fought against it, the thoughts would come rushing through her brain of what might have been had some one else known her sooner, and not looked down upon her as a poor weak, simple girl.
“Oh, but this is dreadful,” she moaned; “disloyal to poor Dick—cruel to myself. What shall I do!”
She was hastily drying her eyes, when a step on the gravel startled her, and Jacky Budd appeared, red-nosed as of old, and bearing a small round basket, and a packet.
“From Master Selwood, Miss Eve. Parson said I was to gi’e ’em to yow, so I brote ’em down the garden mysen, and my dooty to you, Miss, and may you be very happy, and I’d take it kindly if yow’d let me drink your health, and long life to you.”
Eve smiled her thanks as she placed a shilling in his hand, sending Jacky away a happy man, as he calculated that that shilling contained eight gills of ale, and to him what he called comfort for his sorrows.
As the gardener went away Eve’s agitation became excessive, and she hardly dared to lift the lid of the basket.
But a short time since, and she had mentally reproached him for forgetting her, as no token whatever had arrived, only a formal note to her aunt, saying that he would be at the church at ten the next morning, while all the time his thoughts had been of her, for here was the token.
A glad flush overspread her cheeks, as at last she took the basket and raised the lid, to find within a large bouquet of costly white exotics, the stephanotis amongst which sent forth its sweet perfume, mingled with that of orange blossoms—a gift to a bride.
“A gift to a bride,” she whispered, and the flush faded, even as the sunbeams were paling fast in the trees above her head.