132 A BOOK ABOUT THE GARDEN. 



replied, " My father, the duke, wishes me to marry 

 him." " Not," he said passionately, " if you do not 

 love him ! " and then there was another dreadful 

 silence, broken by these hopeless, whispered words, 

 " I cannot, I dare not, disobey the duke. Some one 

 is coming ; we must go." 



I do not think that the Guardsman knew quite 

 what he was doing, but what he did was this : he 

 plucked a leaf from the orange-tree, and gave it to 

 her, and said, " If ever there is hope for me, or I can 

 help you, send me this leaf." 



Then others joined them, and they went their way. 

 I stayed there, mute and motionless, thinking what 

 cruel tyranny it was to crush those young loving 

 hearts, until a footman came to say that the ball was 

 over ; and then I hurried home, weary and sorrowful ; 

 and I remember that before I went to bed that night, 

 I prayed that she might send him the leaf. But Mrs. 

 Oldacre, from whom I never had a secret, declined to 

 regard the circumstances as becoming subjects for 

 doubt or petition. She sniffed at my solicitude with 

 a grand disdain, "because I know," she said, "that 

 she will send it to him." 



Of course we kept the secret sacredly ; but Phyllis, 

 my wife's sister, and maid to the Lady Alice, seemed 

 to us to know as much as we did. She was ever 

 sounding the captain's praise, or speaking of his rival 

 in anything but respectful terms, alluding to him as 

 " that galvanized mummy," and expressing her belief 

 that he had been placed as a boy in a petrifying well, 

 and been imprudently taken out before the process 



