"HE SHALL FEED HIS FLOCK LIKE A SHEPHERD"
The garden of the old palace at Eshwara had been rightly described by
Roshan Khan as a pleasant place. Longer than it was broad, its shady
walks and orange groves clung to the river, raised above it by a
balconied wall against which the current ran dimpling. On two of the
remaining sides, a twenty-feet high barrier of sheer masonry,
buttressed and bastioned, blocked out all curious eyes. On the third,
separating it from the courtyard where the big gun stood, rose the
palace. Seen thus intimately from within, the latter had changed its
character. No longer severe, stern, giving a blank stare at the world
from the narrow slits of infrequent windows, it had grown fanciful,
almost fantastic, full of canopied turrets and inconsequent little
latticed retreats.
At least in the two upper storeys; for the lower one was more solid,
its chief feature being a wide, aisled passage leading right through it
to a door which gave on the courtyard. Being exactly opposite the one
in the corner of the Fort bastion on the other side, this door opened,
as the latter did, on one of the slantwise limbs of the quaint
union-jack of raised paths which centred in the cannon.
It was not necessary, however, to go round by this in crossing from one
door to the other, as by keeping to the river steps, you could do so on
the same level.
In old times the guardians of the frail beauties for whose delectation
the garden had been made, had lived in the crypt-like vaulted rooms
which opened out from this aisled passage; so keeping the gate against
illegal wanderings. Since the only other exit from the garden, save by
boat, was through the second storey of the women's apartments, and as
this was by a door leading directly into the royal rooms (which were on
the other side of the tunnel that gave access to the courtyard, and
also divided the palace into two portions--male, and female), the
butterfly prisoners had had no chance of fluttering to strange honey.
In those days, therefore, the door had always been bolted and barred.
It stood wide open, however, showing a vista of green at the farther
end of the passage, when Captain Dering and Lance Carlyon came over to
it in reply to the intimation that Miss Laila Bonaventura was "_At Home
for music on Wednesday afternoons_," which had been brought to the Fort
overnight by an old pantaloon. A very old pantaloon with a wizened
face, a few sparse hairs--dyed flaming red--standing at right angles to
his cheeks, and a marvellous livery, consisting for the most part of
yards upon yards of tarnished tinsel cloth, twisted and twined about
head and waist like Saturn's rings. The oldest of old pantaloons, with
a back curved by a life-time of obeisances, a toothless mouth, still
full of sonorous titles, and a wicked old eye, watchful for the least
want of the master, be it good or evil. A pantaloon, with Heaven knows
what history of unutterable things hidden in his old brain, such as is
to be seen, even in these days, lingering round the ruins of a native
court; a figure despicable enough, yet real; so in a way pathetic, by
reason of its absolute lack of real interest in things as they are.
And now as the two Englishmen paused,--partly because the swift change
from the glare without to the gloom within was startling,--this same
pantaloon, with a white muslin robe superadded to the livery as a badge
of his dignity as door-keeper, precipitated himself upon them from the
shadows, with ancient skips of alacrity and loop-like salaams; then
with crab-like sidlings led the way, the young men following.
"I must have that old chap on paper before I leave," said Vincent
Dering; "he's too good to be lost."
So, their steps echoing cheerfully with their laughter, they went on
until, towards the middle of the passage, the aisle to their left
widened, and through a maze of pillars and arches, a glimpse or two of
air and sunlight showed sharply.
Lance took a curious step towards them. "Opens on to the river, I
expect; jolly cool it must be in the hot weather! By Jove! those old
sinners knew how to be comfortable. Hullo!"--he paused in a sort of
horror--"I say, Dering! I believe it's a chapel. Yes! it is!" He took
off his cap instinctively, and moved another step forward to see
better.
But Captain Dering called impatiently, "Oh, come along, do, Carlyon! I
didn't promise to go to church! Hymns are bad enough in all
conscience."
Lance, however, stood rooted to the spot, cap in hand. "Hush!" he said
in a low voice, "I believe they are having service." As he spoke a
robed figure showed between the arches against the sunlight beyond
them; showed with something in its lifted hands, then passed to some
unseen altar.
"Oh, come along, do! there's a good chap, and let's get out of the
way," repeated Captain Dering, sharply. "It's Father Narayan, I
suppose,--he's as mad as a hatter, and boshes the whole business--at
least, so Delamere said. I told you we were a bit early, but you would
start; still it's too bad of the old man to have his chapel in the
front hall! Come along! and let us wait in the garden--it looks an
awfully jolly one--awfully--"
He paused, perhaps at the change, this time, from gloom to glare,
perhaps at the sudden sense of anticipation, the sudden quickening of
the pulse of life, which made him draw a long breath involuntarily.
It was not unfamiliar to him, that sudden stir of vitality, of
expectation; and with a curious smile on his face he crossed to the
edge of the marble plinth on which the passage opened, and leaning over
the balustrade, looked down to a terrace below, and so on to the garden
itself.
A perfect wilderness of common flowers, sown broadcast, lay at his
feet, hemming in a shallow marble tank, which was nearly covered with
the dewy leaf-cups of the lotus, and set round with mosaic arabesques.
From this tank two aqueducts led to the edge of the terrace, and ended
in steep slopes of fretted marble, where cascades had once wimpled and
dimpled down to the water-maze which lay below--a shiny lake, cobwebbed
over by narrow marble paths just wide enough for the bare, flying
feet of a laughing girl. Beyond was scented shade, with glints of
water-courses gleaming here and there; while here and there came a peep
of a latticed balcony overhanging the river; a balcony just large
enough for a laughing girl and her lover.
Yet there was not even a butterfly to be seen hovering over the
flowers. All was still, all was silent, until Vincent Dering's careless
laugh echoed through the stillness, the silence.
"Can't you imagine it--all lit up--they used to put coloured lamps
behind the cascades, I'm told, and play 'Catch who can' up and down
and all around the place! On the whole I expect they enjoyed
themselves--better than the type-writing girls of to-day do, for
instance."
"Got beastly sick of enjoying themselves before they had done with it,
I expect," replied Lance, succinctly, "especially if there was always
such a confounded strong smell of orange blossoms. Bah! I'd prefer a
polecat; but," he gave a distasteful glance at his companion, "I
believe you like strong scents."
"Why not?" laughed Vincent Dering, drawing out a handkerchief deluged
with white-rose, and sniffing at it, "it's a harmless taste," here his
jest passed to earnest, and his eyes took a half soft, half cynical
expression,--"so's the other, in a way. It isn't altogether despicable
to let yourself loose in Paradise without an _arriere pensee_ of
flaming swords. Especially if you can give pleasure to someone else
thereby. One could act Romeo and Juliet nicely in this garden. And have
your choice of balconies, too," he continued, returning to jest, "even
if the young woman--"
He glanced back as if to verify his remark from the _facade_ of the
palace, but what he saw behind him brought a sudden straightening of
his lounge, and rather an elaborate doffing of his sailor hat; for he
was always a trifle ornate in his courtesy towards women, and the girl
who stood within a pace or two of him was distinctly attractive,
if--even at the first glance--a little too bread-and-buttery for his
taste; too young, too clumsy as to waist, too massive in the contours
of face and figure. For Captain Vincent Dering's taste had remained
constant for the last three years to a different type of beauty; a type
which, for the first time in his life, had made him sentimental,
romantic, more or less unselfish. Still the girl was handsome, even in
that babyish frock of starched white muslin, girt about with a yellow
silk sash. The dress, he told himself,--for he was a connoisseur in
_chiffons_, and had a pretty turn for painting in addition--would have
been better soft, and creamy; but thank heaven! the sash was not blue,
like the marker of the missal she carried in her hand. It might have
been; for it was impossible to fathom the lack of all sense of fitness
in some women. Yet the result would have been to take all the ivory
tints from this girl's complexion, and leave it jaundiced. And the
ivory was charming.
"I am Miss Bonaventura," she began in a set way, which convinced
Captain Dering that she had been sent to say those very words, and none
other; "my guardian, Father Ninian Bruce, will be here directly. Won't
you come upstairs to the drawing-room? I am sorry we did not know it
was so late."
"It is our fault; we are disgracefully early," put in Captain Dering.
"I told Carlyon--" then he paused, feeling curiously at a loss before
the girl's look of stolid gravity.
"Perhaps your watch is too fast," she suggested, "and then my guardian
likes to go by the sun. He says it never needs winding up. But I think
it is inconvenient, when everybody else has a watch. It is always
better to do as other people do."
Her voice was very sweet and full; but a country-bred accent spoilt its
beauty, and brought a grimace to Captain Dering's face, as he and his
companion dutifully followed the speaker up one of the curved flights
of steps, which led from the plinth to a wide loggia on the second
storey. Like the room seen through its arches, this was lavishly
decorated with fragments of looking-glass fashioned into flowing
designs with gilt stucco. The afternoon sun, at this height shining
full into the loggia, made it a veritable star chamber.
"What a charming place," went on Captain Dering in his best manner.
"Doesn't it remind you of the Arabian Nights, Carlyon?"
A sudden vague surprise and interest came to the girl's face,
lightening it infinitely.
"Have you read the _Alif Laila?_" she asked. "My _moonshi_ brought
it--I have to learn Urdu, you know, because my guardian thinks I ought
to be able to speak to the people, as he does--and I wanted to read it,
because it is my name, you see--Laila--it means 'night,' I believe--but
my guardian did not wish it. He gave me the 'Mirror of Virtue' instead.
It is a very, very long--"
Her almost childish garrulity ceased in a faint flush over the ivory of
her face, and she reverted to her lesson, and her indifference--"The
other people will be here directly; but they will come from the city,
across the tunnel, and go straight into the drawing-room. Would you
like to come in there, or stay here?"
"Oh! stay here, please!" said Vincent, desperately. The young woman was
getting on his nerves.
"Then perhaps you would like to try the piano?" persisted Miss
Bonaventura. "My guardian has it brought out here on Wednesday
afternoons, because it sounds well among the arches. Will you try it?"
Her hand--it was ivory also, Vincent observed, and had long
filbert-shaped nails--held the cover of the keyboard open stolidly; and
Lance Carlyon, feeling a bit desperate also, said appealingly:--
"Do, Dering. He is a nailer at the piano, I assure you, Miss
Bonaventura, and he sings too."
"So my guardian--" she began, when Vincent's patience gave way and,
with a perfect devil of exasperation roused in him, he sat down on the
music-stool and with a crash burst into a naughty little love song he
had picked up at Brindisi on the way out. He did it simply to soothe
himself; so, to do him justice, he nearly fell off the music-stool in
horror when, at the refrain of the second verse, a very full round
_mezzo-soprano_ joined in it with a _verve_ and _abandon_ far exceeding
his own.
He scarcely knew whether to apologize, or go on; but Miss Bonaventura
apparently had no doubts. She finished with a gay little _staccato_
note which would have made her fortune at a music hall, and then turned
to the accompanist with a smile which showed an absolutely flawless set
of teeth. "What funny words; but I like them, and the tune too. What is
it called? I should like to get it and sing it to my guardian."
Vincent, who had begun a stammering regret that he had not remembered
her nationality, altered his phrase, with a sense of relief, to "You
know Italian very well, I suppose, Miss Bonaventura?"
She returned to her indifference immediately. "My guardian and I speak
it. He loves Italy and the Italians. He knew my grandmother there. She
was a princess; but he never speaks of her, so I don't know very much
about it. Only Mother at the convent said that my guardian--"
She was off, gaily, on the childishly confidential tack again, when the
sight of someone coming up the stairs made her veer towards dignity
once more. "There is my guardian," she said; "he is very sorry to have
kept you waiting."
Evidently this was the last bit of her lesson, for she closed the piano
with great decision.
The figure which came slowly towards them was that of a very old man,
yet one older, by many years, than his looks. For he was still
straight, save for a slight stoop in the neck; but this, by the
backward poise of the head thus made necessary to enable his brown eyes
to meet all things, after their habit, squarely, if softly, gave him an
air of alertness. He was dressed in an ordinary black _soutane_, but
wore a fine white embroidered muslin skull-cap, such as natives wear,
instead of a black one. His grey hair showed, still luxuriant, beneath
it; and the wide sash of faded lilac silk, with tasselled ends, which
was tied in a bow about his waist, set off his still slim and still
graceful figure.
"I hope my little girl has been doing the honours properly," he began,
pausing a pace or two from the young men, and not offering to shake
hands; but his voice was a welcome in itself, and had that nameless
_cachet_ of absolute good breeding which makes offence impossible.
There was a slight hesitancy in it too, now and again, which was
overcome by a look that took the listener into its confidence, and
appealed for friendly forbearance--"but she is only just back from
school at Calcutta, and the good nuns did not see much company, did
they, Laila?" Then in an undertone of solicitude he added, in Italian,
"Didst tell them, _cara mia?_--didst remember it all?"
Laila Bonaventura looked at him with a faint resentment. "I think so,
guardian," she replied, in English. "Didn't I?"
The last came with such swift, almost savage, challenge of voice and
eyes, that Vincent Dering, the recipient, felt glad of the diversion
caused by the arrival, through the drawing-room, of some more guests to
claim the attention of the host and hostess, and so leave him in peace.
"I say, that girl has got splendid hair, hasn't she?" he said in an
undertone to Lance, as they stood a little apart, watching the new
comers.
"That tall one, you mean--don't admire it. Puts me in mind of that
devil of a chestnut who nearly killed me at polo; a chestnut with white
stockings; awfully handy, but--"
He paused as Father Ninian came up to them. "You can scarcely know any
of your neighbours as yet, Captain Dering," began the old man with the
ceremony of a past age, "so perhaps you will give me the privilege of
presenting you to some of our good mission ladies."
"Thanks," replied Vincent, hastily. "But I see my old friend, Mrs.
Walsall Smith, coming in. I must just go and shake hands. But I'm sure
Carlyon--"
Lance shot a perfectly pathetic glance after his Captain, who moved off
to meet a delicate-looking fair woman who at that moment came in with
Dr. Dillon; the latter taken possession of and monopolized by an
exceedingly pretty child of five, who had evidently inherited her
mother's fragility.
"Delighted, I'm sure," murmured Lance, following his leader dejectedly.
"Miss Erda Shepherd, Mr. Lancelot--I am right, am I not--Carlyon?"
It was the tall girl with the red-brown hair, of course. She had bronze
eyebrows, too, and bronze eyes--nice ones. He saw so much as he made
his bow, while Father Ninian stood looking first at the girl, then at
the young man; and as he looked his fine old hands were clasped as if
they held something very precious. It was a habit of his.
"I hope you will like each other," he said in his kind old voice; and
then, ere he moved away, his hands fell apart for an instant as if
giving something. "Peace go with you, my children," he said with a
smile.
Lance felt a queer, unaccustomed thrill travel from the nape of his
neck to his boots, pausing by the way at his heart. It was an unusual
method of introduction, certainly; yet somehow it relieved the shyness
which generally beset him at such functions. He found himself looking
frankly into the bronze eyes, and something in them made him say,
almost involuntarily:--
"That was rather a jolly way of beginning to be friends. I mean--" The
shyness came back with a rush; he blundered horribly.
"Very," put in the girl, interrupting him quite simply. "I hope it will
be peace. I always hope that. You know I am a missionary."
"Oh," he replied, blankly. "Yes, there are a lot of you--I mean--of
them, in Eshwara, aren't there?"
Her face set suddenly, her mouth grew almost stern. "Not enough, Mr.
Carlyon; not half enough," she replied. And the militant ring of her
voice, belying the peaceful professions of the previous moment, made
him look at her curiously, recognizing that he had touched some
quivering nerve of mind. "If you knew Eshwara as I know it," she went
on, passionately, "you would say so too; I'm sure you would."
The bronze eyes, meeting his blue ones, though they gave nothing back
but kindly, almost boyish, surprise, seemed satisfied. She turned
suddenly and stretched her right hand over the river which slipped
oilily past the wall below, as they stood beside the balustrade of the
loggia. "Look!" she said, impulsively. "Do you see that straight white
thing floating down the curve of the current yonder? It isn't a log;
those others are; plenty of logs come down the rivers from the forests
in the hills, for they don't catch all, you know, at the government
wood-station. And so the people here catch the runaways in the
backwater, and get paid for them. But that--" She paused and her other
hand gripped the balustrade hard; then she turned back to him with a
faint apology. "Why should I bother you? Let us talk of something else.
There is no reason why I should talk of these things to you so soon,
or, indeed, at all."
"I'd rather you did," he put in quickly. It was the truth. A sudden
curiosity had come to him, a sudden desire to know more, to think more.
He was less of a boy than he had been five minutes before. "I--I hope
you will," he added; "really I do--I--I--" He felt his manhood as he
had never felt it before, and yet, in a way, he was more forgetful of
it. The girl opposite him was womanhood incarnate to him, and yet, in
some mysterious way, beyond it, above it.
"You and I must be about the same age, I expect," he said, with a
half-perplexed frown, "but you have seen a lot more than I have. I wish
you'd tell me, please!"
The straight white glint in the water was just disappearing behind one
of those balconies overhanging the river, where there was only room for
a pair of lovers.
"It is a dead girl, Mr. Carlyon," she said in a low voice. "She was in
my school. Her people were very bigoted--Brahmins in a temple--but they
let her be taught to read, because she was betrothed to an educated
man. Last year she was married--she was but a child still--and I have
only seen her once or twice since. Then"--the voice paused a second.
"She was very frightened, poor little Premi, at what was coming. 'I
shall die, Miss-_sahib_, I shall surely die,' she said to me the very
last time I saw her; so I promised--I am a medical missionary, Mr.
Carlyon. But when the time came, they would not let me in. I--I
went to the husband--he is an educated man--you may have heard of
him--Rama-nund, a great speaker,--he writes, too, and all that--but he
said he was helpless with the women; and I am not sure either if he
wished it himself--they don't know their own minds. So poor little
Premi and her baby--Oh!" she broke off with an infinite pain in her
voice--"it is so hard--so hard for both."
Her face, set riverwards, was soft, yet stern; full of fight, yet full
of pity, and Lance thought of a virgin martyr in the illustrated 'Lives
of the Saints' with which his grandmother, Lady Carewe, had been wont
to still his boyish unrest on Sunday afternoons. Yet there was
something beyond that self-concentrated devotion in this face;
something that took him back further still to the days when he had
sobbed out his childish hurts in his mother's arms.
"She was ill all yesterday and the day before--they told me there was
no hope of either--they just let them die. And they always put them in
the river--they have iron rings round their wrists and ankles to
prevent them coming back to harm the men--" She paused and turned to
Lance swiftly. "Isn't it true that there are not enough of us--that we
want more women to teach them what--"
"But I does!" came a high childish treble, forcing itself irresistibly
even on the attention of these two; "I 'ikes 'oo twenty 'fowsand times
better than dad, an' I 'ikes Captain Dering ten 'fowsand times better
too; an' so does 'mum--don't 'oo mummie?"
It was little Gladys Smith, who, clasping both Dr. Dillon's hands in
hers, had swung herself back from him so as to toss her fair curls from
her laughing face, as she looked up at him mutinously.
There was an instant's awkward pause, during which the eyes of a man
and woman met for a second. Met and parted hastily; but not before the
girl with the yellow silk sash, who stood between them, had looked from
one to the other with a dim surprise unclosing her red lips, and
showing the gleam of her white teeth between them.
Then Dr. Dillon said, carelessly, "And you like Akbar Khan better than
any of us, you young sinner, because he gives you sweeties! Here! Akbar
Khan, bring the Missy-_baba_ some cream toffee!"
The old pantaloon, who, with his loose coatee removed and a white
duster tucked into Saturn's waist-ring was now helping to hand round
coffee and cake, capered up with a voluble, but toothless,--
"_Ger-reeb--pun-waz!_" (Protector of the Poor.)
Gladys helped herself discriminately, staring at the old servitor the
while. "But I don't 'ike Akbar Khan. Do I, son of an owl?" she
continued superbly, in the accurate Urdu which comes so daintily from
lisping English babies. "Did I not say I would hate thee because thou
wouldst not tell me why thou didst prostrate thyself before the soldier
in the courtyard? And the _ayah_ laughed, the base-born! She knew also,
and would not say, and so did the soldier; so I hate you all!"
She stamped her little foot, and shook her curls defiantly.
"Gladys!" cried her mother, reproachfully.
"Hullo! What's all this about?" laughed Captain Dering, catching the
child up in his arms. "One of my soldiers insulting you? Who was it?"
He turned, with the absolute command of his race, to the be-ringed one,
who stood, full of deprecatory mumblings and salaamings, his hands,
holding the tray of sweets, trembling visibly.
"Who was it, Khan-_jee?_" asked Father Ninian, in a curiously even
tone; one which, nevertheless, seemed a compelling one, for a murmured
name came rapidly, followed by eager explanations.
Father Ninian frowned, and deliberately put on the gold _pince-nez_
which always hung around his neck. He seldom used it, however, being,
he would say playfully, in his native Scotch, too "well acquaint" with
Eshwara and all in it to need such help after fifty years experience.
So it had come to be an unfailing sign that he was face to face with
something unexpected, something new. Naturally, therefore, it changed
the character of his face, bringing back to it a strange look of youth;
of hope and energy--the look of choice which age has not.
"Roshan Khan," he echoed, "why comes he here?" Then in sudden
recollection he turned to Vincent Dering. "Of course, he comes with
you. I knew he was in your regiment, but I did not think."
Captain Dering put down the child gently. "Is there any reason, sir,"
he asked decisively, "why he should not be here? If so--"
Father Ninian took off his eye-glasses slowly. He was back on familiar
ground. "No!" he said, with a smile and a shrug of the shoulders;
"none. He is welcome to come if he likes. He is a fine soldier, Captain
Dering, and a good fencer."
"The best I have ever come across," put in Lance Carlyon.
Father Ninian laughed, a satisfied, vainglorious little laugh, and
bowed, with his hand on his heart, in foreign fashion. It seemed almost
as if something had brought back the manners of a different life.
"His master thanks you," he said gaily. "I taught him; but as Esmond
said of the _botte de Jesuit_--not all. We craftsmen keep something up
our sleeve for our own use!"
Lance Carlyon's face grew eager. He had heard of Father Ninian's art
with the foils, and took his opportunity. "That's what Roshan does to
me. I took lessons from him, but he licks my head off with tricks.
Perhaps some day, sir--"
Father Ninian's right hand and wrist, despite their age, flourished
themselves with marvellous suppleness. "Of a surety! Of a surety," he
interrupted, still in that gay, almost reckless voice, "and I will
teach you '_L'Addio del Marito_.' I never taught that to Roshan--it
does not do for savage natures."
"The husband's good-by! What a funny name," echoed Laila, curiously.
"Why is it called that, guardian?"
The gaiety left the old man's face.
"Because the thrust is used, _cara mia_," he replied in Italian, and
his answer came dreamily, half to himself, "when even those who have
that greatest tie to life prefer to say good-by to it." He paused, then
went on cheerfully: "But come! Music! Music! We lose time horribly.
Laila, 'tis your part to begin."
The girl walked stolidly to the piano.
"What shall I sing, guardian?" she asked.
"Sing?" he repeated, reverting once more to Italian, and his voice had
the dreamy tone in it again; "sing my favourite, child. Something hath
taken me back to the old days--and sing it well."
Something in the pose of the girl, something in the faint defiance of
her face as she stood turning over the leaves of the music, attracted
Vincent Dering's fancy. He moved over to her, and asked if he should
play her accompaniment.
"If you can," she said, ungraciously.
He smiled. "What is it? Oh!--Handel." He shrugged his shoulders. "Yes!
I fancy I can play him--he is not very complex."
The next instant he had embarked, with a certain sense of pique lending
perfection to his phrasing, on the prelude; but perfect as his tone
was, it seemed to fall dull and dead before the voice which rose and
echoed into the arches.
"He shall feed His flock like a Shepherd."
Pure, peaceful, free from every touch of passion; absolutely, utterly,
beyond this world and its works, it rose and filled the garden; the
orange-scented garden with its fretted marble cascades and water-maze,
where the feet of laughing girls had chased each other, the latticed
balconies where lovers had sat.
"And He shall gather the lambs in His arms."
It floated out over the river where the dead girl had drifted, making a
light come to a pair of bronze eyes.
"Come unto Him all ye that labor."
Out beyond the garden, into the city, a faint far echo of the call made
men and women pause in the struggle for life, and say, "They are
singing in the palace."
"And ye shall find rest unto your souls."
The promise of all religions, the cry which makes all creeds one, rose
and fell, as the afternoon sun, shining into the loggia, put a canopy
of stars above the head of the singer.
Some of the audience said "Thank you," politely when she ended. Vincent
Dering did not. He stood on one side, and, being musical to the heart's
core, gave himself the luxury of silence. Only when Father Ninian, ever
mindful of ceremonies and courtesies, crossed to acknowledge the
services of the accompanist, he said briefly,--
"Who taught her that?"
The old man looked at him almost wistfully: "I heard her grandmother
sing it, nearly sixty years ago. I have never forgotten it."
"I do not wonder," said Vincent Dering, and his eyes, forgetful of
others, followed the girl whose dress ought to have been creamy and
soft, instead of white and starched.