The stonemasons and the rest would have pulled down and replaced the little stone nymph, but Dalabey ordered them off sternly.
"You leave yon maid alone, her be in keeping wi' the old place, her be! Too true some o' they weeds might be cleared off the pond, Markabee, but there be a line beyond which no one must go, so let the stone maid bide!"
So the little nymph was left in her old place, and the sunlight kissed her white stone shoulders, and dappled the slender little stone body with splashes of vivid brightness, and, little by little, the old garden came back to its own again. The weeds were all gone and the flowers bloomed, and the June sunshine and the June showers made the grass green and pleasant to the sight.
Meanwhile Allan stayed away; he was in London and his time was not unpleasantly employed.
He was too healthy and too young to brood over what after all had been merely a dream. It had been wonderfully real and wonderfully tender and beautiful while it had lasted. He had come back to reality with a sense of loss and a heartache for the little maid who had looked at him with such love in her blue eyes, who had put her arms about, his neck and called him her dear and kissed his eyes. Very, very real it had been and for many a day and many a night he could not put it out of his memory.
But this was to-day and there was all the world about him and he was to be married to a girl who was beautiful and good, and for whom he felt a liking and admiration that bordered on real affection.
Most of all he felt sorry for her, why he hardly knew, sometimes when she did not know that he was looking at her, there was a sadness about her eyes, a sad pensive little droop to her lips, which was gone all in a moment if he spoke to her.
There was a very comfortable understanding between them. They were going to be man and wife very soon, in the natural course of events they would have to live their lives together. They were beginning that life with mutual regard, liking and friendship. Love and passion were entirely absent.
"I am old, Allan," Kathleen said, "much, much older than you dear, in every way, not only in years, but——" she paused.
"In suffering and knowledge!" she might have said, but did not.