CHAPTER IV.
RIVALRY.
For a few days after Morley's arrival, he felt almost happy—happy in the society of Ethel, though the time when she would have to quit Laurel Lodge and sail from England—a time of painful, and it bade fair to be most hopeless separation—hung like a black cloud on the horizon of their future, and, alas! that time was not far distant now.
In three days the air of his native England had begun to redden Morley's cheek, but his eyes were sad in expression, and his heart was at times oppressed by thoughts which even Ethel's smile failed to dispel.
We have said the season was spring, and the last days of April, the time of which Clare sang so sweetly in his "Shepherd's Calendar."
"With thee the swallow dares to come
And cool his sultry wing;
And urged to seek his yearly home,
Thy suns the martin bring.
"Oh, lovely month, be leisure mine,
Thy yearly mate to be.
Though May-day scenes may lighter shine,
Their birth belongs to thee."
All the old familiar places where Ethel and Morley had wandered hand in hand before, they revisited now together.
The old green lanes of the picturesque village of Acton-Rennel, which, with its quaint old tumble-down houses of white-washed brick, and the black oak beams that run through their walls at every angle, its ivied porches and latticed windows, half hidden by wild roses and honeysuckles, is one of the prettiest in England, were wandered in again and again.