The afternoon's summer sun shone in on the chestnut head of a girl, bent sedulously over a book. She was Marjorie Bethune, only daughter of one of the minor canons of Norham. She was hard at work constructing a sonnet, to the accompaniment of the great organ in the cathedral, where her father was taking the service. The words of the psalms and anthem were almost audible, as well as their music, through the open windows, stimulating the girl's reluctant fancy. There were other helps, too, to her imagination—the twitter of birds in the flowering trees near the further window, the hum of the bees in the lime-trees, the scents of syringa and lilies.
The room in which she sat had a much-lived-in air and a pleasant old-fashioned shabbiness of aspect. There was a large round table covered with papers and books, calf-bound and large for the greater part—the books and litter of a scholar. Books also were heaped on the quaint spindle-legged side-table with deep drawers, ornamented with carving and brass Tudor roses; and wherever in the room was any wall-space low bookshelves of a peculiar pattern filled it. The wall-colouring above was a rich tan and red, the whole making a harmonious background to the girl's burnished head and brilliantly fair complexion.
A sudden thought seemed to strike her. She lifted her eyes to the further end of the room, where on a sofa near the pretty window lay a fragile-looking woman. The extreme youthfulness of her appearance was not contradicted by the brilliancy of the beautiful dark eyes she turned now on Marjorie.
"Mother, I wish you would tell me exactly what father said when he proposed to you. I suppose he did propose?" questioningly, gazing in doubtful sympathy at the colour flooding her mother's face at her question.
"You will know for yourself some day, Marjorie," Mrs. Bethune said softly.
"I? But I want to know now. Just the facts. You can't make up things on nothing," disconsolately. "Our literary guild next month wants a poem—a sonnet by preference—on Love. Such a subject! I could imagine a lot. But I don't know."
Mrs. Bethune's eyes were full of laughter, but her face was grave as she looked at her discontented young daughter.
"People's experiences vary," she said reminiscently.
"Do they? But yours would do, mother—just to get a fact for a foundation. Love seems such a shimmery, slippery thing."
"It was behind the door—at a party first. He had asked me to look at a picture——"