Some fallen statue among
rank Roman growth, some marble semblance of a young god, overlaced with
a vine and plunged in tall ferns and beaded grasses? And she, bending
there,--was it Diana and Endymion over again, Psyche and Eros? Ah,
no!--simply Mrs. Laudersdale and Roger Raleigh. Only while one might
have counted sixty did she linger to take the real beauty of the scene:
the youth, adopted, as it were, to Nature's heart by the clustering
growth that sprang up rebounding under the careless weight that crushed
it; an attitude of complete and unconscious grace,--one arm thrown out
beneath the head, the other listlessly fallen down his side, while the
hand still detained the straw hat; the profile, by no means classic, but
in strong relief, the dark hair blowing in the gentle wind, the flush
of sleep that went and came almost perceptibly with the breath, and the
sunbeam that slanting round suddenly suffused the whole. "Pretty boy!"
thought Mrs. Laudersdale; "beautiful picture!" and she flitted on. But
Roger Raleigh was not a boy, although sleep, that gives back to all
stray glimpses of their primal nature, endowed him peculiarly with a
look of childlike innocence unknown to his waking hours.
Startled, perhaps, by the intruding step, for it was no light one, a
squirrel leaped from the bough to the grass, and, leaping, woke the
sleeper. He himself, now unperceived, saw a vision in return,--this
woman, young and rare, this queenly, perfect thing, floating on and
vanishing among the trees.
Pages:
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101