BY MRS. E. LYNN LINTON, AUTHOR OF “PATRICIA KEMBALL.”

CHAPTER XXXVII.

UNWORTHY.

The storm had passed with the night, and the day was bright and joyful—­almost hard in its brightness and cruel in its joy; for while the sun was shining overhead and the air was musical with the hum of insects and the song of birds, the flowers were broken, the tender plants destroyed, the uncut corn was laid as if a troop of horse had trampled down the crops, and the woods, like the gardens and the fields, were wrecked and spoiled.  But of all the mourners sighing between earth and sky, Nature is the one that never repents, and the sun shines out over the saddest ruin as it shines out over the richest growth, as careless of the one as of the other.

Edgar came down from the Hill in the sunshine, handsome, strong, jocund as the day.  As he rode through the famous double avenue of chestnuts he thought, What a glorious day! how clear and full of life after the storm! but he noted the wreckage too, and was concerned to see how the trees and fields had suffered.  Still, the one would put forth new branches and fresh leaves next year; and if the other had been roughly handled, there was yet a salvage to be garnered.  The ruin was not irreparable, and he was in the mood to make the best of things.  Do not the first days of a happy love ever give the happiest kind of philosophy for man and woman to go on?

And he was happy in his love.  Who more so?  He was on his way now to Ford House as a man going to his own, serene and confident of his possession.  He had left his treasure overnight, and he went to take it up again, sure to find it where he had laid it down.  He had no thought of the thief who might have stolen it in the dark hours, of the rust that might have cankered it in the chill of the gray morning.  He only pictured to himself its beauty, its sweetness and undimmed radiance—­only remembered that this treasure was his, his own and his only, unshared by any, and known in its excellence by none before him.

He rode up to the door glad, dominant, assured.  Life was very pleasant to the strong man and ardent lover—­the English gentleman with his happiness in his own keeping, and his future marked out in a clear broad pathway before him.  There was no cloud in his sky, no shadow on his sea:  it was all sunshine and serenity—­man the master of his own fate and the ruler of circumstance—­man the supreme over all things, a woman’s past included.

Not seeing Leam in the garden, Edgar rang the bells and was shown into the drawing-room, where she was sitting alone.  The down-drawn blinds had darkened the room to a pleasant gloom for eyes somewhat overpowered by the blazing sunshine and the dazzling white clouds flung like heaps of snow against the hard bright blue of the sky; yet something struck more chill than restful on the lover as he came through the doorway, little fanciful or sentimental as he was.