"It's a gorgeous time I see before you, dear; riches and a carriage and servants in livery, and a beautiful wife decked over with jewels and gold as bright as her hairsuccess and a fair name, honour and a ripe old ageand remember the poor gipsy woman, won't you, darling?"
He found his daughter in a chair by the window. Her face was puffed and blotched with tears, and her legs would hardly support her when she stood up. She had brought her youngest son with her, a fine sturdy little fellow of fourteen. When Reuben came into the room she gave the boy a glance, and, as at a preconcerted signal, they both fell on their knees.So Naomi would maunder to her acquaintance; with Reuben she confined herself to hints and innuendoes. Sometimes she complained to Mrs. Backfield, but her husband's mother was unsympathetic.
THREE:He came nearly every night. If she was not at the gate he would whistle a few bars of "Rio Bay," and she would steal out as soon as she could do so without rousing suspicion. Boarzell became theirs, their accomplice in some subtle, beautiful way. There was a little hollow on the western slope where they would crouch together and sniff the apricot scent of the gorse, which was ever afterwards to be the remembrancer of their love, and watch the farmhouse lights at Castweasel gleam and gutter beside Ramstile woods."I'm not going to fight a man old enough to be my father," he said, flushing.
Sam obeyed; but whether owing to his trepidation or the slippery surface of the earth, he lost his footing and disappeared, uttering a cry of terror. Byles stood for an instant, irresolute whether to advance to the succour of his servitor, or leave him behind, for he apprehended that the cry would arouse the guardians of the Chase. Recollecting, however, that it would be as dangerous to abandon him as to attempt his extrication, he rushed forward to the spot where Sam had disappeared. The man had, in his fall, grasped the root of a tree from which the late heavy rains had washed the earth, and he lay suspended midway down. Byles hastily threw him a rope, with which he had intended to bind the animal on the barrow, and, with some difficulty, succeeded in dragging him up.The sky had faded behind him and a crimson moon looked over his shoulder."I trust I'm not in the way," she said rather coldly, "but the storm is so violent, and the drifts are forming so fast, that I hope you will not mind my sheltering here."
