He had loved her all his life, as it seemed to him. They had been companions, friends, lovers, for longer than either could remember, so gradual had been the growth of love. Yet the privilege of belonging to each other was not the less sweet because of this old familiarity.
“Are we really married—really husband and wife—Godfrey?” asked Juanita, nestling to his side as they stood together in the wide verandah where they breakfasted on these July mornings among climbing roses and clematis. “Husband and wife—such prosaic words. I heard you speak of me to the Vicar yesterday as ‘my wife.’ It gave me quite a shock.”
“Were you sorry to think it was true?”
“Sorry—no! But ‘wife.’ The word has such a matter-of-fact sound. It means a person who writes cheques for the house accounts, revises the bill of fare, and takes all the blame when the servants do wrong.”
“Shall I call you my idol, then, my goddess—the enchantress whose magic wand wafts gladness and sunshine over my existence?”
“No, call me wife. It is a good word, after all, Godfrey—a good serviceable word, a word that will stand wear and tear. It means for ever.”
They breakfasted tête-à-tête in their bower of roses; they wandered about the Chase or sat in the garden all day long. They led an idle desultory life like little children, and wondered that evening came so soon, and stayed up late into the summer night, steeping themselves in the starshine and silence which seemed new to them in their mutual delight.
There was a lovely view from that broad terrace, with its Italian balustrade and statues, its triple flight of marble steps descending to an Italian garden, which had been laid out in the Augustan age of Pope and Addison, when the distinctive feature of a great man’s garden was stateliness. Here was the lovers’ favourite loitering place when the night grew late, Juanita looking like Juliet in her loose white silk tea-gown, with its Venetian amplitude of sleeve and its mediæval gold embroidery. The fashionable dressmaker who made that gown had known how to adapt her art to Miss Dalbrook’s beauty. The long straight folds accentuated every line of the finely moulded figure, fuller than the average girlish figure, suggestive of Juno rather than Psyche. She was two inches taller than the average girl, and looked almost as tall as her lover as she stood beside him in the moonlight, gazing dreamily at the landscape.
This hushed and solemn hour on the verge of midnight was their favourite time. Then only were they really alone, secure in the knowledge that all the household was sleeping, and that they had their world verily to themselves, and might be as foolish as they liked. Once, at sight of a shooting star, Juanita flung herself upon her lover’s breast and sobbed aloud. It was some minutes before he could soothe her.
“My love, my love, what does it mean?” he asked, perplexed by her agitation.