Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/138

 stars five years ago--not so densely covered with the honeysuckle; still the honeysuckle, recently trained there, was fast creeping up the sides; and through the trellis of the woodwork and the leaves of the flowering shrub, he just caught a glimpse of some form within--the white robe of a female form in a slow gentle movement-tending perhaps the flowers that wreathed the arbour. Now it was still, now it stirred again; now it was suddenly lost to view. Had the inmate left the arbour? Was the inmate Lady Montfort? George Morley's step had not passed in that direction.

CHAPTER XXII.

A QUIET SCENE-AN UNQUIET HEART.

Meanwhile, not far from the willow-bank which sheltered Lionel, but far enough to be out of her sight and beyond her hearing, George Morley found Lady Montfort seated alone. It was a spot on which Milton might have placed the lady in "Comus"--a circle of the smoothest sward, ringed everywhere (except at one opening which left the glassy river in full view) with thick bosks of dark evergreens and shrubs of livelier verdure; oak and chest nut backing and overhanging all. Flowers, too, raised on rustic tiers and stages; a tiny fountain, shooting up from a basin starred with the water-lily; a rustic table, on which lay hooks and the implements of woman's graceful work; so that the place had the home-look of a chamber, and spoke that intense love of the out-door life which abounds in our old poets from Chaucer down to the day when minstrels, polished into wits, took to Will's Coffee-house, and the lark came no more to bid bards

"Good morrow       From his watch-tower in the skies."

But long since, thank Heaven we have again got back the English poetry which chimes to the babble of the waters, and the riot of the birds; and just as that poetry is the freshest which the out-door life has the most nourished, so I believe that there is no surer sign of the rich vitality which finds its raciest joys in sources the most innocent, than the childlike taste for that same out-