insolent sweet wit of Rosalind could have devised a fitting simile for
Time's gait at Selwoode those five days that Billy lay abed. Margaret
could not but marvel at the flourishing proportion attained by the
hours in those sunlit spring days; and at dinner, say, her thoughts
harking back to luncheon, recalled it by a vigorous effort as an
affair of the dim yester-years--a mere blurred memory, faint and vague
as a Druidical tenet or a Merovingian squabble.
But the time passed for all that; and eventually--it was just before
dusk--she came, with Martin Jeal's permission, into the room where
Billy was. And beside the big open fireplace, where a wood fire