Petticoat Rule Part 50

How peaceful it must be there among the hills!

The breeze murmured more persistently, and anon with its dreamlike sound there mingled the frou-frou of a woman's skirts.

The sick man ventured to open his eyes.

Lydie, his wife, was kneeling beside his bed, her delicate hands clasped under her chin, her eyes large, glowing and ever grave fixed upon his face.

"Am I on earth?" he murmured quaintly.

"Of a truth, milor," she replied, and her voice was like the most exquisite music he had ever heard; it was earnest and serious like her own self, but there was a tremor in it which rendered it unspeakably soft.

"The leech saith there's no longer any danger for your life," she added.

He was silent for awhile, as if he were meditating on a grave matter, then he said quietly:

"Would you have me live, Lydie?"

And as she did not reply, he repeated his question again:

"Do you wish me to live, Lydie?"

She fought with the tears, which against her will gathered in her eyes.

"Milor, milor, are you not cruel now?" she whispered through those tears.

"Cruel of a truth," he replied earnestly, "since you would have saved me at peril of your own dear life. . . . Yet would I gladly die to see you happy."

"Will you not rather live, milor?" she said with a smile of infinite tenderness, "for then only could I taste happiness."

"Yet if I lived, you would have to give up so much that you love."

"That is impossible, milor, for I only love one thing."

"Your work in France?" he asked.

"No. My life with you."

Her hands dropped on to the coverlet, and he grasped them in his own.

How oft had she drawn away at his touch. Now she yielded, drawing nearer to him, still on her knees.

"Would you come to England with me, Lydie? to my home in England, amongst the hills of Suss.e.x, far from Court life and from politics?

Would you follow me thither?"

"To the uttermost ends of the world, good milor," she replied.

THE END