E-text prepared by Andrew Templeton, Juliet Sutherland, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
by
Author of Robert Elsmere, The History Of David Grieve, etc.
In Two Volumes
1894
[Illustration: Portrait of Mary A. Ward]
"If nature put not forth her power
About the opening of the flower,
Who is it that could live an hour?"
"The mists—and the sun—and the first streaks of yellow in thebeeches—beautiful!—beautiful!"
And with a long breath of delight Marcella Boyce threw herself on herknees by the window she had just opened, and, propping her face upon herhands, devoured the scene, before her with that passionate intensity ofpleasure which had been her gift and heritage through life.
She looked out upon a broad and level lawn, smoothed by the care ofcenturies, flanked on either side by groups of old trees—some Scotchfirs, some beeches, a cedar or two—groups where the slow selective handof time had been at work for generations, developing here the delightfulroundness of quiet mass and shade, and there the bold caprice of barefir trunks and ragged branches, standing black against the sky. Beyondthe lawn stretched a green descent indefinitely long, carrying the eyeindeed almost to the limit of the view, and becoming from the lawnonwards a wide irregular avenue, bordered by beeches of a splendidmaturity, ending at last in a far distant gap where a gate—and a gateof some importance—clearly should have been, yet was not. The size ofthe trees, the wide uplands of the falling valley to the left of theavenue, now rich in the tints of harvest, the autumn sun pouringsteadily through the vanishing mists, the green breadth of the vastlawn, the unbroken peace of wood and cultivated ground, all carried withthem a confused general impression of well-being and of dignity.Marcella drew it in—this impression—with avidity. Yet at the samemoment she noticed involuntarily the gateless gap at the end of theavenue, the choked condition of the garden paths on either side of thelawn, and the unsightly tufts of grass spotting the broad gravel terracebeneath her window.
"It is a heavenly place, all said and done," she protested to herselfwith a little frown. "But no doubt it would have been better still ifUncle Robert had looked after it and we could afford to keep the gardendecent. Still—"
She dropped on a stool beside the open window, and as her eyes steepedthemselves afresh in what they saw, the frown disappeared again in theformer look of glowing content—that content of youth which is nevermerely passive, nay, rather, contains an invariable element of covetouseagerness.
It was but three months or so since Marcella's father, Mr. RichardBoyce, had succeeded to the ownership of Mellor Park the old home of theBoyces, and it was little more than six weeks since Marcella hadreceived her summons home from the students' boarding-house inKensington, where she had been lately living. She had ardently wishedto assist in the June "settling-in," having not been able to apply hermind to the music or painting she was supposed to be studying, norindeed to any other subject whatever, since the news of their