Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/164

154 rattling, and harvest-hands, youths and maidens, mothers with their children, sang as they set up into stooks the golden sheaves. All became as night for Gwyneth. Then a cruel glare; and in the centre was fixed the vision of her mother's gift, with the portraits of Eva and the man she loved side by side!

"It is too cruel! too cruel!" she sobbed. "He might at least have returned my gift." There must be some mistake, she tried to. think, but all was so circumstantial! What her father and Malduke had wildly uttered of yore concerning the heartlessness, the viciousness, the cruelty of the "upper classes," flooded her mind. For a moment the stricken thing lay on the bed, her face buried in her hands, as she moaned, and called her mother's name. Had she been at hand to guide, her child would not have yielded herself so freely, to be cast off with scorn by the first monied youth, with attractive face and speech, who pretended to woo her.

"Can you not find it, dear?" the old lady was calling from within.

Quietly, now, the girl replaced the silver case—took up the blithesome Foresters, and hurried forth. She smiled as she entered the room.

"I was looking at Lancelot and Elaine, she remarked, cheerfully. "I have brought it too. May I read that, instead of the babble of Robin Hood and Maid Marion? It is somewhat weak and wearisome."

"Anything you like, my child. But how your hand is shaking! Are you sure you are not ill?"

"Oh, dear, no"—with a light scornful gesture—"only indignant at the thought of the gay knight's treatment of 'the Lily-maid of Astolat.' I was peeping at a few pages. I suppose it's the way of the world, especially of knights and gentlefolk."