"I HAVE FORGOT WHAT LOVE AND LOVING MEANT."
Between 1710 and 1726 Fairmile Park had been growing year by year less like a gentleman's park and more like a forest. The wild tangle of underwood, the hollies and hawthorns, the wildernesses of beech and oak, the deep ferny glades, and patches of furze and heather took a richer beauty with every season, and throve and flourished under a régime of absolute neglect. And in this wilderness Irene roamed at large, unfettered and uncontrolled as the spirit of the woods, and seeming to tramp or villager who met her suddenly, amidst the glancing lights and tremulous shadows of interwoven boughs, almost as ethereal as some nameless being from another world. Never had peasant or tramp accosted her rudely in all those years in which she had roamed alone, growing from childhood to womanhood, ever in the same woodland seclusion, and never knowing the shadow of weariness. Her childhood and girlhood had been passing solitary since the waif's death, but those slow monotonous years had been in no wise unhappy. Roland Bosworth had been an indulgent father, desiring nothing so much as his daughter's happiness. Had he seen her pine in her lonely life he would, at any sacrifice to himself, have changed his habits; but as he saw her joyous and happy, in perfect health and radiant beauty, he saw no reason to take her out of the almost monastic seclusion in which she had been reared into the perils and temptations of the outer world. For Mr. Bosworth's daughter, the heiress of wealth which had become somewhat notorious by the mere progress of years, there would be snares and traps, and it was well that she should be guarded closely. When the time came for her to marry it would be his business to find a fitting alliance; to mate wealth with wealth, and thus guard against the possibility of mercenary feeling on the part of the husband. Society in those days was thickly beset with heiress-hunters; and the heiress-hunter of a hundred and fifty years ago was an adventurer only less audacious than the highwayman who stopped coaches on Hounslow Heath, or on the wild hills beyond the Devil's Punchbowl.
For a year or more after the nameless orphan's death Rena had pined for her little companion; but gradually the vividness of memory faded, the sweet sister face, smiling back her own smiles like an image reflected in a river, became a dream, and revisited her only in dreams; and then came the awakening of the young mind to external beauty, the deep, inborn love of Nature reviving in the expanding soul; the delight in flowers, and sun, and clouds, and trees, and streamlets, and the still, dark lakelet, upon whose placid surface the tracery of summer boughs made such delicate shadows. The love of mute companions intensified with the ripening years; the great Newfoundland dog with its massive head and grave affectionate eyes; the ponies, and rabbits, and poultry-yard with its ever-varying delights; the tame hare, the talking magpie: these were her companions and friends, and provided occupation from January to December.
Until her tenth year the Squire's daughter was allowed to riot in the delight of ignorance. She ran wild from morn till eve, learnt no more than Mrs. Bridget could teach her, whose scope in the actualities of education did not go far beyond the alphabet and words of one syllable, but whose imaginative powers were wide and memory particularly vivid. From this teacher Rena learnt all the most famous fairy tales of the world, and a good many old English and Scottish ballads. These furnished her fancy with themes for thought and dreaming, and stimulated a poetical feeling which seemed inborn, so early did it show itself.
When she was approaching her twelfth birthday the Squire, who had allowed himself until now to be deterred by Mrs. Layburne's black looks at the mention of a governess, suddenly lost patience.
"My only child is growing up as ignorant as a kitchen-wench through your folly," he said. "I must hire a governess for her before the month is out."
"So be it," answered Barbara, with a fretful shrug of her lean shoulders; "but if you wish to keep your daughter clear of adventurers and fortune-hunters, you had best beware of governesses, music-masters, and all such cattle. They are mostly in league with some penniless schemer on the look-out for a fortune."
"My daughter is too young to be in danger yet awhile."
"Too young to be married, perhaps, but not too young to be perverted by sentimental tales about lovers; and a few years later the governess whispers that the romance may be made earnest, and some fine afternoon governess and pupil meet a young man in the park, who protests he has seen Miss at her window one day and has been pining for her ever since. Then come a post-chaise, pistols, and a helter-skelter drive to the purleius of the Fleet Prison, and the pretty young pair are fast bound in matrimonial fetters before the father can catch them."
"I'll warrant there shall be no folly of that kind," said Bosworth.