Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/365

 There were servants, plenty of them, at Hamilton Hill, who would literally have shed their blood in defence of their mistress, but they showed neither the blind obedience of the negro nor the shrewd readiness of the Parisian domestic. On the contrary, they seemed persuaded that length of service entitled them to be obstinate, perverse, and utterly negligent of orders. There were two or three seniors of whom Lady Hamilton positively stood in awe, and an old grey-headed butler, perfectly useless from gout and obesity, would expostulate angrily with his mistress for walking bareheaded on the terrace in an east wind. That same east wind, too, was another trial to Cerise. It gave her cold, it made her shiver, and she was almost afraid it sometimes made her cross. There were drawbacks, you see, even to a love-match, a fortune, and Hamilton Hill!

Yet she was very happy. She continually repeated to herself how happy she was. To be sure, she missed her mother's society, missed it far more than she expected when at first she acquired the freedom of the Matron's Guild. Perhaps, too, she may have missed the incense of flattery so delicately offered at the receptions of the Marquise; nay, even the ponderous and well-turned compliments of the Prince-Marshal, who, to do him justice, treated her with a chivalrous affection, compounded of romantic devotion to her mother, and paternal regard for herself. But I am sure she would never have allowed that a drop could be wanting in the full cup of her happiness, for was not George the whole world to her, and had she not got him here all to herself?

She walked thoughtfully on the terrace, surrounded by the glorious beauty of earth and sky, looking, and seeing not. Perhaps she was back in Touraine amongst the vineyards, perhaps she was in the shady convent-garden, cooling her temples in the pure fresh breeze that whispered to the beeches how it had gathered perfumes from the orchards and the hedgerows and the scented meadows of pleasant Normandy. Perhaps she was rustling through a minuet in the same set with a daughter of France, or fanning mamma in the hot West Indian evening, or straining her eyes to windward from the deck of 'The Bashful Maid,' with George's arm round her waist, and his telescope pointing