OUR SENTIMENTAL GARDEN 



of decision, an untamed, spirited look to the whole coun- 

 tenance. The word savage could not apply to anything 

 so exquisitely dainty in manner and appearance ,- and yet 

 one felt the long line of savage ancestry at the back of her, 

 a wildness no other European nation would show in such 

 a flower of its race. And, to finish the description, no one 

 had ever so pretty a mouth with the smile of a child and a 

 thousand fascinating expressions. 



Life had dealt very hardly with her, as is sometimes the 

 case with such buoyant souls. She lost all she loved, and 

 was left in the end with half a province in land, and 

 no creature nearer than the son of a second cousin to 

 whom to bequeath the vast inheritance. 

 Wedded to an English officer in the Austrian service, while 

 still in her teens, one might have thought she would have 

 had a better chance of domestic bliss than if her choice had 

 fallen upon one of her own countrymen / since, above all 

 in those middle Victorian days, the English home and the 

 English virtues are so proverbial. But he was all that a 

 husband ought not to be. And her only child died in 

 babyhood. For thirty years she devoted herself in an 

 alien land to what she conceived to be her duty. A 

 fervent believer in the higher destinies of man and the 

 necessity of repentance, she would say, " I will not give 

 up Johnnie's soul/' 



The dashing Chevau-leger became an old curmudgeon of 

 the crankiest description. To a less courageous spirit life 

 would really have been intolerable beside him. Neverthe- 

 less the small London house near the Park, every window 

 of which was bright with flower-boxes, was as gay within 

 as it was without, and friends flocked to those Sunday 

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