yet 'tis but a few short weeks."

Slowly they went on together, past lily-pool asleep in marble basin,
through green boskages amid whose leafy shade marble dryads shyly
peeped and fauns and satyrs sported; beneath the vast spread of mighty
trees across smooth, grassy levels, by shady walks and so at last to
the blazing glory of the rose-garden. Here my lady paused with an
exclamation of delight.

"Indeed, indeed, 'tis lovely--lovelier than I had dreamed! Are you not
proud of it?"

"Yes," he answered, "more especially since I never owned a foot of land
till of late--or a roof to shelter me, for that matter."

"You were a soldier!"

"And a very poor one!" he added.

"And they called you 'Fighting d'Arcy!'" said she, looking into the
grey eyes she had been wont to think almost too gentle.

"That sounds strange--on your lips," said he with his grave smile, "I
perceive the Sergeant has been talking."

"He has been boasting to me of all your wounds, sir!" The Major
laughed. "He is greatly proud of you, sir."

"He saved my life more than once."

"You must have been a very desperate soldier to have been wounded so
very often, Major John!"

"Why you see, at that time," he answered, handing her down the steps
into the garden, "I wished to die."

"To die?" she repeated. "O, prithee why?"

"This was twenty years ago, I was a boy then," he sighed. "To-day I
am----"

"A man, and therefore wiser," said she as they went on together among
the roses. "And pray why did you seek death?" she questioned softly.

"Because I had lost the woman I loved."

"So then you--have--loved?"

"As a boy of twenty may," he answered. "She--I was an ensign without
influence and prospects and--they forced her to wed a wealthier than I."

"O! And she did?" Lady Betty stopped to stamp an angry foot.

"Indeed they--compelled her----"

"Major John sir, no woman that is a woman can be compelled in her
affections!"

"She was very young."

"Pooh, sir! I am not yet a withered and wrinkled crone, yet no one
shall or should compel me!" And here, with a prodigious flutter of her
print gown, my lady seated herself on rustic bench beside the sundial.

"No indeed," said he, "you are--are different." At this she flashed
him a swift up-glance and, meeting his gaze, dimpled, drew aside her
garments' ample folds and graciously, motioned him beside her. The
Major sat down.

"And was she happy?"

"No!"

"Which doth but serve he