Page:The Talisman.pdf/51

Rh nerves, and genius—wrote a prescription—advised quiet and country air. "Take some pretty place, quite retired, but near enough to town for a morning’s drive to bring you to London; for I must see you again—not often, I hope;—not often, I am sure!" muttered the physician, as his patient withdrew. Charles Smythe now resolved on taking a place in the country; but he equally resolved on wishing nothing about it. He would drive a few miles out of town, and take the first place to let that he liked. The horses baited at a small country inn; he had lunched; and then, for fear he might get weary, and wish for a stroll, he wandered out. It was an unusually hot day, in an unusually forward spring; but the sunshine was cheerful, and the heat was softened by the wide and leafy branches of the elm-trees whose boughs met overhead. The hedges were covered with May, in the fragile and fragrant luxuriance of its short-lived blossom. On each side were meadows of deep grass, now of a dark and shadowy, now of a bright and glittering green, as the sunbeam or the cloud passed alternately over them. A low but pleasant murmur, the whisper of leaves, the chirrup of the birds, the stir of insect wings, was on the air; and as the invalid wound down the green lane, he forgot for a while how rich and how wretched he was. His thoughts wandered in as desultory a manner as he did himself, fixing rather on objects without than within. He was roused from his reverie by that sudden rustling