Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/481

 the rein. But neither Emerald nor Grey Plover, mettled hunters both, could afford more than a temporary palliative to the goad that pricked their rider's heart.

Sir George had better have been more or less suspicious. Had he chosen to lower himself in his own eyes by ascertaining how Lady Hamilton spent her mornings, he would have discovered that she employed herself in filling voluminous sheets with her neat, illegible French hand, writing in her boudoir, where she sat alone. Very unhappy poor Cerise was, though she scorned to complain. Very pale she grew and languid, going through her housekeeping duties with an effort, and ceasing altogether from the carolling of those French ballads in which the Yorkshire servants took an incomprehensible delight.

She seemed, worst sign of all, to have no heart even for her flowers now, and did not visit the terrace for five days on a stretch. The very first time she went there, George happened to spend the morning at home.

From the window of his room he could see one end of the terrace with some difficulty, and a good deal of inconvenience to his neck; nevertheless, catching a glimpse of his wife's figure as she moved about amongst her rose-trees, he could not resist watching it for a while, neither suspiciously nor in anger, but with something of the dull aching tenderness that looks its last on the dead face a man has loved best on earth. It is, and it is not. The remnant left serves only to prove how much is lost, and that which makes his deepest sorrow affords his sole consolation—to feel that love remains while the loved one is for ever gone.

Half a dozen times he rose from his occupation. It was but refitting some tackle on the model brigantine, yet it connected itself, like everything else, with her. Half a dozen times he sat down again with a crack in his neck, and an inward curse on his own folly, but he went back once more just the same. Then he resumed his work, smiling grimly while his brown face paled, for Monsieur de St. Croix had just made his appearance on the terrace.

"As usual, I suppose," muttered Sir George, waxing an inch or two of twine with the nicest care, and fitting it into a block the size of a silver penny. But somehow he could