Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/322

312 Frank and Maud toiled radiantly on, at times tempted to renounce the vows that contempt for the selfishness of others had imposed, and to seek their own happiness in wedded life. On such occasions they redoubled their energies, threw themselves more resolutely into labours for others. They survived the ordeal, to laugh at the prevalent opinion that man and maid may not love all their life, as brother and sister, and nothing more!

Only once they kissed and embraced—when, long years after, the aged Bishop-of-all-the-Settlements bent his snowy head of flowing hair over the angelic but aged face of a smiling woman, who was passing away. In momentary despair he cried—

"Maud, I cannot live without you."

"Then you have loved me?" she murmured, taking his hand.

"All the while, from the first till now," he answered, as the great, unwrinkled brow fell on the breast of the angel whose spirit had fled!

Hilda became Mrs. Tom Lord, and schooled her husband, volatile to the last, into some sense of the dignity that became a landed proprietor and member for his district. Eventually Sir Thomas became one of the most popular members of a powerful Ministry.

For a year or more, Travers, the president of the "New Order," sought in the "sweet vale" of Mimosa, at Heatherside, to "heal him of his grievous wound."

No love was overtly made. Men and women do that but once. But on the anniversary of the coming of the Lily-maid, Travers took Eva, ripened now into graceful womanhood, to the wattle grove beside the lake. Sitting on the grassy bank, beside which the mysterious barque