CHAPTER XXIII.

THE DAWN OF LOVE.

PRIOR to all this the intimacy between Horace Ramornie and Gwendoleyne Wedderburn had been ripening with a rapidity that her aunt, had she known of it, would have deemed " frightful" as well as fatal to all her hopes; but still love had never been spoken of between them.

Busy about his estate and the farms thereon; busy too about country matters, and the affairs of the little Burgh of Barony which owned him as patron and superior, Sir John Wedderburn spent much of his time out of doors, and a deal of it in his saddle. Cyril had been entirely occupied by his own secret passion, while Robert was sulky, and affected to be deep in his legal studies, reading up for a forthcoming examination, and frequently went alone fishing. As the household was in mourning there were few invitations given, and few visitors at Willowdean; hence, in spite of all Lady Wedderburn's plans,

Horace-not Cyril-and Gwenny were generally thrown together; and what could be more natural than that the young people should learn to love each other?

Yet he dared not speak of the passion that was growing in his heart.

Lady Wedderburn had not been without a dread that the Master of Ernescleugh, young Everard Home, who was every way an agreeable and remarkably good-looking man, might "cut out" both her sons. Gwenny knew that he was the heir to a peerage, and rank would have much weight in the mind of an Indian-bred girl; so she was thankful when his leave of absence expired, and he was recalled to London. She did not speak again to Cyril of Mary Lennox, either tauntingly or otherwise; but once she said to her husband

Cyril has been looking pale and unhappy of late, and I know it must be caused by that artful girl at Lonewoodlee. What does the foolish fellow go on about? Absurd! It is only a girl's pretty face, after all.”

"Have you forgotten the days of your own youth, and what your face was then to me as Kate Douglas? Ay, and is so still," said the good-natured Baronet, pinching her chin.

"True; but I didn't gad about the country alone on snowy nights with men like Rooke Chesters. Cyril is conscious of her unworthi

ness; so it is only the memory of a face that disturbs him."

"Don't worry poor Cyril; once with his regiment, he may forget all about her. Yet what does a poet say?—

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Only the face of a woman;

Only a face-nothing more!

But the memory of that sweet vision
Comes back to my heart o'er and o'er.
Only a woman's soft eyes;

Only a look, that was all;

A glance that I chanced to encounter
Still binds my soul in thrall.'

It was at a ball of the Caledonian Hunt we first
And never forget you were once

met, Kate. young."

Gwendoleyne Wedderburn thought there was some analogy in the destiny of herself and Horace from the fact of his being so young, and having come, like herself, to Willowdean in his boyhood, without father or mother. Horace was a smart subaltern in the Line now, and had quite considered himself a man in all respects for a few years past; but Gwenny loved to think of him as the lonely boy he had been; for his manner was grave and gentle, and his voice and smile were ever sweet and pleasant to her.

Cyril, we have said, was pre-occupied, and Robert had enough of the student in him to be somewhat brusque, so Horace she preferred un

disguisedly, to the infinite chagrin of Lady Wedderburn; and, if truth must be told, somewhat to the amusement of Sir John, who, though he would have been pleased enough to see his son with a bride so suitable and wealthy, was an enemy to all match-making.

The large and stately house of Willowdean, with its shady library, its galleried conservatory, its long corridors hung with valuable pictures, and its spacious garden, was a pleasant place for such sweet companionship; and whatever young Ramornie did, when not with Gwenny, was always done as if in a kind of dream to occupy the blank of time when he could not be with her.

How would time be occupied when they should be parted, perhaps to meet no more!

The garden was older than the house, having belonged to its predecessor, the ancient mansion, "the peel and fortalice of Willowdean;" thus its yew hedges and boxwood borders were thick and dense beyond any to be seen in gardens of more modern date; and in the centre stood the ancient sun-dial, by the gnomon of which Sir John's forefathers had set or regulated their round silver watches that were like turnips in shape, and had perhaps wooden wheels that were worked "by thorl and string."

As yet the garden was only in bud, and there for the first time Gwenny heard with wonder the

voice of the cuckoo when she and Horace were planting some rare Indian seeds which she had brought from the Choultry; and she sighed when reflecting that he must be so far away when these seeds became flowers in all their tropical glory; and when (then so bleak and bare), with its famous ribbon-borders of every imaginable colour, the hedges of azaleas and drooping fuchsias under the shelter of the older rows of privet and yew, the clusters of beautiful shrubs and beds of geraniums, verbenas, and calceolarias were in all the bloom and splendour of

summer.

And many a delightful drive they had in the park, when Gwenny usually took the reins of the pony-phaeton, for there the grass was smooth as a billiard-table, having been carefully rolled and mowed in season, ever since clover-seeds had first been sown in it, in 1708, by Sir Cyril Wedderburn-the same Baronet who drank the health of James VIII., sword in hand, at Greenlaw Cross, when the Comte de Fourbin's fleet, with the Scots and Irish Brigades on board, was off the Isle of May; who nearly rabbled out the Union Parliament, and played many other political pranks in his time.

The month was still March; but already the park-or "policy," as the Scots called it was sheeted with pale yellow primroses, where, in the next month the Lent lilies would be in all their golden bloom.