PART II.

A queen’s dream.

[Illustration:  “Lilacs and laburnum trees bloom abundantly around.”]

Yet the recollection of that book is helping to soften Hazel.  There is a tender bit of writing at the close of the lecture which can hardly fail to reach any woman’s heart, unless it be wholly hardened; and Hazel’s is not a hard heart.  So she muses on it, growing gradually calmer and happier.  After all, she might be of some use in the world if she were to try, and if One Divine would be with her.

She stoops down to throw some coal on the fire.  She is too much exhausted physically to make it up carefully; but with an effort piles on large blocks and small indiscriminately, then throws in a handful of matches from a box within reach.  What strange chaos there seems to be in the grate after a little while!  One after another the matches go off with a phiz and short-lived flare, and each seems to light up a more curious scene than the last.  From being mere piled-up blocks of coal in a grate, they grow to be a half blocked up entrance to some unknown place.  There is a large shining black portal, half ruined, surrounded with debris.  By degrees Hazel’s languid curiosity is excited, and she wonders whither it leads.  Why should she not explore?...  The next match which takes fire lights up the slight form leaning far back in the big chair, with the soft, golden brown hair half loosened, and the dark, shadowed eyes fast closed.  And Hazel has passed through the dark gateway, and is in a wonderful world.

What a strange black gateway to have led into so fair a garden!  Hazel pauses at the entrance, her eyes glistening, her breath taken away with delight at the beauty of the scene before her.  A paradise of fresh green shade and exquisite light and colouring.  Wide-spreading chestnuts, graceful, feathery birches, and a hundred other trees, clothed and robed in their tender young leaves, mingle with a glory of pink and white spring blossom, which seems to fill the air like a snowstorm in the clear, blue sky.  The South wind blows and fans Hazel’s cheek, and wafts delicious breath of flowers and sweet-brier around her.  Beneath the shower of snowy blossom stretches smooth, green grass, and masses of brilliant flowers glow, expanding their petals up towards the sun.

After a while Hazel wanders forward in a dreamy intoxication of delight, every moment discovering fresh beauties.  She finds a beautiful grotto, where are large rocks and cascades and running streams and fountains.  She enters by a low archway of stone, covered with drooping ferns, and there, right before her, is a large clear pool at the foot of a huge rock.  She flushes with the prettiest of shy pleasure and frank admiration at sight of her own reflection.