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The warm southern spring had burst its green bonds and flown suddenly into the arms of summer; it lay disporting itself in the splendor of new-clad flowers along the shores of the Mediterranean, laughing up at the dazzling sky like a babe smiling into its mother’s face. Everything was fresh, lustrous, and dewy. The sun was not too hot to be enjoyable, the birds were not too tired to sing, a light breeze came fluttering from the sea to cool the vines, and died away in sighs and whispers amidst the ilex-grove that made a background to the white-washed villa where a group of three persons were sitting out on the terrace under the shade of a broad veranda. I dare say you have recognized the young lady in the fleecy muslin dress. The pink tint in her ivory complexion is a decided improvement; but it has not so changed her that you could forget her. She looks stronger now; there is an energetic grace in her movements that tells of improved health; so, too, does the warmer glow of the dark gold hair
and the more animated glance of the eyes. You see she has brought her doves with her, and seems to have many interesting things to say to them as they perch on her head and her finger, and utter that, to her, melodious chant of theirs, but which Sir Simon Harness has the bad taste to find wearisome and lugubrious.
“Could you persuade those doves of yours to cease that dismal noise just for ten minutes, Franceline? It’s working under difficulties, trying to correct proof-sheets while they keep up that dirge.”
Franceline, deeply offended, carries off her darlings to the other side of the house, without deigning any further comment than a toss of her pretty head at the speaker and a look of mild reproach at her father, who yields a tacit consent to the insult by his silence. Moreover, when Franceline and “those doves of hers” are out of sight, he breathes an audible sigh of relief and proceeds to read the contested sentence aloud again. There was a good deal of arguing and bickering over it; Sir Simon insisting that the epithet was too strong and should be modified, while M. de la Bourbonais maintained that whether he applied the term “patriot cast in the rough antique mould” to Mirabeau or not signified very little, since the facts as he stated and construed them applied it far more forcibly. They were squabbling over it still when, half an hour later, Franceline came back, apparently in a forgiving mood, and expressed her wonder how people could go on quarrelling when everything around was so full of peace, in a world where all created things were steeped in beauty and in bliss; where life was not a struggle, but a joy; where nothing was needed but
the will to vibrate to the pulse of love with which the great mother’s breast was heaving, to respond to the sun’s wooing and the wind’s wafting, to the music of flowers and birds, to be a voice in the choir and a grain of incense on the altar, to live, to love, and to be happy. What were proof-sheets worth if they could not swell the glad concert and sound their chime in the joy-bells of life? They were sounding their little chime, though, in spite of the frequent clash of arms they gave rise to between the author and his pig-headed Tory critic. The crisp little rolls of paper were an immense superadded interest to Raymond—and consequently to Franceline—in their new life of golden sunshine. They would come to an end soon now; a few more bundles of proofs, then a pause of solemn expectation, and the great work would appear immortalized between the boards.
CHAPTER XVI..
FOUND AT LAST!
While the three inmates of the white-washed villa were watching the days go by, and wondering if to-morrow could possibly be as happy as yesterday and to-day, Clide de Winton was living a very different life in his lodgings near the asylum. He had not yet been permitted to see the lady whom he believed to be his wife. She had fallen ill with an attack on the lungs which had very nearly proved fatal, and during the six weeks that it lasted it was impossible to let any one approach her except the familiar faces of the doctor and her attendant. She had rallied from this illness only to return to her old delusion with a fonder intensity than ever. Day after day she decked herself in her faded flowers and ribbons, and stood or knelt at her window, stretching out her arms to the mid-day sun, calling to him with the tenderest words of endearment, and telling him her passionate love-tale over and over again; then turning from this to paroxysms of despair more violent than formerly, and which threatened at each crisis to shatter the fragile vase and send the feeble spark flying upwards.
“And now she courted love; now, raving, called on hate.”