understood, at the blue gleam of her gown and the gold gleam of her
little head through the trees of the park, or through the oaken
shadows of the hall at Cavendish Court during my scant visits there.
No maid of my own age drew, for one moment, my heart away from her.
She had no rivals except my books, for I was ever an eager scholar,
though it might have been otherwise had the state of the country
been different. I can imagine that I might in some severe stress
have had my mind, being a hot-headed youth, diverted by the feel of
the sword-hilt. But just then the king sat on his throne, and there
was naught to disturb the public peace except his multiplicity of
loves, which aroused discussion, which salted society with keenest
relish, but went no farther.

I took high honours at Cambridge, though no higher than I should
have done, and so no pride and no modesty in the owning and telling;
and then I came home, and my mother greeted me something more warmly
than she was wont, and my stepfather, Col. John Chelmsford, took me
by the hand, and my brother John played me at cards that night, and
won, as he mostly did. John was at that time also in Cambridge, but
only in his second year, being, although of quicker grasp upon
circumstances to his own gain than I, yet not so alert at book-lore;
but he had grown a handsome man, as fair as a woman, yet bold as any
cavalier that ever drew sword--the kind to win a woman by his
own strength and her own arts.

The night after I returned, there was a ball at Cavendish Court, the
first since the death of Madam Rosamond, and my brother and I went,
and my stepfather and my mother, though she loved not Madam
Cavendish.

And Mary Cavendish, at that time ten years old, was standing, when I
first entered, with a piece of blue-green tapestry work at her back,
clad in a little straight white gown and little satin shoes, and a
wreath of roses on her head, from whence the golden locks flowed
over her gentle cheeks, delicately rounded between the baby and
maiden curves, with her little hands clasped before her; and her
blue eyes, now downcast, now uplifted with utmost confidence in the
love of all who saw her. And close by her stood her sister
Catherine, coldly sweet in a splendid spread of glittering brocade,
holding her head, crowned with flowers and plumes, as still and
stately as if there were for her in all the world no wind of
passion; and my brother John looked at her, and I knew he lov