The frost scouts of the marshalling winter had fallen upon the woods which skirted the Drennen estate, and the great beeches were crimsoning in their death flush; the maples enchanting with their fickle foliage, some still clinging to their green, and others brilliant with blushes that they must soon stand naked before the cold stare of the sky. Here and there on some aspiring knoll a slim poplar rose like a splendid bouquet of starting yellow.
At a turn of the road, which wound leisurely between seamed tree-boles, Margaret had seated herself upon a lichened slab of stone. Her loosely braided hair lay against the hood of her scarlet cloak, slipping from her shoulders, and she seemed, in her vivid beauty, the incarnate spirit of the blazonry of fall. Her head was bare and her clasped hands, dropped between her knees, held a slender book, a random selection from the litter of the library table. It was the story of Marpessa, and unconsciously she had folded down the leaf at the lines she had just read:
“I love thee then
Not only for thy body packed with sweet
Of all this world, that cup of brimming June,
That jar of violet wine set in the air,
That palest rose, sweet in the night of life;
Nor for that stirring bosom all besieged
By drowsing lovers, or thy perilous hair;
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