After the dictation of so long a letter and the work of signing it with his own hand, and all his wonderings and perplexities, Gonsalvo sat in his chair so much bewildered that he could not wholly extricate his thoughts, nor could even Father Joseph make their meaning perfectly clear to him. And in this perplexed state there came to him all of a sudden one vivid, lucid thought of his three fair fields. He rose, and though Father Joseph would have assisted him with his counsel, he went forth in silence out of the house alone. And soon he was walking on those remembered grasses, dewy now with the evening.
With folded hands in a chair Father Joseph ordered his thoughts. But to Gonsalvo, pacing his fields again, there came a calm along the slanting rays, and out of the turf he trod, and from the cool of evening and glitter of leaves; it came from that quiet moment in which day ceases to burn, and it welled up out of memories of other evenings that had illumined those fields. Far off he saw the form of Gulvarez riding away, bent on his horse, his two men-at-arms behind him: he turned to call to him some word as he went: he filled his lungs to hail him; but turned instead to some flowers among the grasses that the sun had touched in his fields.
XXX
The End of the Golden Age
When Ramon Alonzo read his father’s letter a fear came into his daydreams, and he stood a long while wondering. Peter stood before him gazing into his face, and Anemone by his side was quietly reading his thoughts; and both saw trouble there, rushing up black and suddenly to darken the coming years. And there he stayed while two phrases went up and down amidst his dismayed thoughts—“the daughter of some illustrious house” and “well established in honour before the coming of the Moors.” What should he do? Were those two phrases to wither away his happiness? And yet what way of escape? Hope herself seemed blind to it.
“What is the matter?” Anemone said, as he stood there still and silent.
“It is from my father,” he said.
And she knew then that his father would not receive her, but she said nothing.
“Peter,” he said after a little while, “I must go on alone. Guard my lady.”
To her he turned to give excuses and reasons for leaving her awhile in the forest; but she left all to him and needed no reasons.
A little way further they went on together, Peter walking behind; and then Anemone and Ramon Alonzo parted as though it had been for years, though they were only a few hundred paces from the Tower, and Ramon Alonzo had sworn to return to her long before evening. Then he left her and went down to the edge of the forest where it touched the rocky land at the end of the garden; and Peter assured Anemone that his young master would soon return, for that he ever kept his word to the last letter of it: but she was full of heaviness from that dark news that had troubled Ramon Alonzo, although she knew not the words of it, yet she felt it as on sultry days in summer we feel the thunder before we have seen a cloud.
When Ramon Alonzo came to the edge of the forest he hid himself carefully by an old oak that he knew; then he looked towards the garden.
And soon he saw walking on those remembered paths his sister with the Duke of Shadow Valley. They were coming towards him and he saw her clearly, a new gaiety in her dress, and a look in her face that was almost strange to him. Then they turned back again. The next time that they approached he watched her face to find a moment when he could show her that he was there without the Duke perceiving him. And for long he only saw that new look increasing the spell of her beauty; and though the Duke looked seldom toward the forest, and had she glanced for a moment he might have signed to her, yet he caught not one of those glances roving from under her lashes, and the pair went back again to a further part of the garden.
The Duke was talking to Mirandola, that handsome head bending towards her; and suddenly she lifted her head, looking far beyond the garden, and her gaze was out over the forest where Ramon Alonzo hid. And suddenly he waved his kerchief to her by the hollow old bole of that oak by which they had played of old. She saw the sign and at once walked nearer to him, the Duke walking beside her. And when he saw that tall and slender figure in black
