It was late April, and the snow was gone from the mountains save in a
few sheltered places under some rock or overhanging tangle of roots.
In the valley the apple trees were abloom; in the woods the dogwood was
falling; the roadsides were turning from mellow brown to green, here
and there carpeted with violets; a line of emerald showed where some
willows caressed the stream. Great puffs of cloud floated slowly
across the deep blue of the sky, their cool shadows passing reluctantly
over the plowed fields, the few bright patches of wheat, and the brown
ribbon of road--gray in summer and lately white with snow--that wound
up from the lowland. Even the weather-worn buildings bore signs of
spring. Barn doors were thrown back, and little calves tied in the
barn yards protested their infant loneliness; while from upper windows
of the houses, windows that had been kept closed during all the long
winter, flapping curtains waved outward to the breeze.
Two months and more had passed since the night when John Ogilvie
returned to consciousness to find the face he loved bending above him,
and on this particular morning Father Cary had driven Rosamund to the
post office at the Summit, on his way to sell a calf, and she was
taking a leisurely homeward way, reading, as she went, the handful of
letters the mail had brought her. Every now and then the betraying
fragrance of arbutus lured her from the road to little excursions among
the trees. Sometimes she looked up at the flash of a brilliant wing,
or stopped to listen to an outburst of bird-music. It was plain to be
seen that she was living in the hour; the present satisfied; she was
taking it as unquestioningly as a child, caring neither to hasten its
passing nor to hold it back. To past and future she was giving no
thought; the moment was enough.
She smiled often over her letters.
Yetta's was a pæon of joy. She had been for two months under the care
of the governess chosen by Mrs. Maxwell, working hard at all her
lessons, devouring them, Rosamund thought--and going twice a week to an
advanced pupil of a great master for singing lessons. She wrote that
she had just received a letter from Mrs. Flood, saying that when the
master declared her ready to study in Paris or Berlin, she would make
it possible for her to go. "How funny it seems," she wrote, "to call
dear Mrs. Reeves by that name!"
There was a long envelope from an architect, enclosing various
blue-prints which she tried to unfold, but which so resisted the breeze
that they were soon put back for later inspection. There was a thin
letter from Cecilia, bearing a foreign stamp, which Rosamund read more
than once, with varying emotions. It ran: