Page:Romance & Reality 1.pdf/29

Rh

just rose an hour too soon the next morning—morning, that breaker of spells and sleep. There was the garden dingy and dusty, the green trees with a yellow fever, and the flowering shrubs drooping as if they had been crossed in love of the fresh air. The milkman was, jailor-like, going his clanking rounds; and, instead of gay equipages waiting for the graceful figures that passed over the steps lightly as their blonde,—now stood a pail, a mop, and a slipshod domestic, whose arms, at least, said much for the carnations of London. Around, like the rival houses of York and Lancaster, some white, some red, stood mansions whose nobility was certainly not of outward show, and setting forth every variety of architecture save