"I know; I understand," said Lady Mary; "but I am afraid Peter won't want to stir from home. He is so glad to be back, poor boy, one can hardly blame him; and he shares his father's prejudices against London."
"Does he, indeed?" said John, rather dryly. "Well, make the most of your summer with him. You will get only too much London—in the near future."
"Perhaps," Lady Mary said, smiling.
But, in spite of herself, John's confidence communicated itself to her.
When Peter and John had departed, Lady Mary went and sat alone in the quiet of the fountain garden, at the eastern end of the terrace. The thick hedges and laurels which sheltered it had been duly thinned and trimmed, to allow the entrance of the morning sunshine. Roses and lilies bloomed brightly round the fountain now, but it was still rather a lonely and deserted spot, and silent, save for the sighing of the wind, and the tinkle of the dropping water in the stone basin.
A young copper beech, freed from its rankly increasing enemies of branching laurel and encroaching bramble, now spread its glory of transparent ruddy leaf in the sunshine above trim hedges, here and there diversified by the pale gold of a laburnum, or the violet clusters of a rhododendron in full flower. Rare ferns fringed the edges of the little fountain, where diminutive reptiles whisked in and out of watery homes, or sat motionless on the brink, with fixed, glassy eyes.
Lady Mary had come often to this quiet corner for rest and peace and solitude in days gone by. She came often still, because she had a fancy that the change in her favourite garden was typical of the change in her life,—the letting-in of the sunshine, where before there had been only deepest shade; the pinks and forget-me-nots which were gaily blowing, where only moss and fungi had flourished; the blooming of the roses, where the undergrowth had crossed and recrossed withered branches above bare, black soil.
She brought her happiness here, where she had brought her sorrow and her repinings long ago.
A happiness subdued by many memories, chastened by long anxiety, obscured by many doubts, but still happiness.
There was to be no more of that heart-breaking anxiety. Her boy had been spared to come home to her; and John—John, who always understood, had declared that, for the present, at least, Peter must come first.