"
"So it does," agreed Richard, and now he had much ado to keep his
soaring spirits from betraying the happy secret which he saw his
betrothed did not remotely suspect. He knew she expected to dwell
hereafter in the "stone pile" which had been the home of the Kendricks
for many years, and she had never by a word or look made him feel that
such a prospect tried her spirit. That it was not to her a wholly happy
prospect he had divined, as he might have divined that a wild bird would
not be happy in a cage, nor a deer in a close corral.
"Oh, the garden!" breathed Roberta, and clasped her hands with an
unconscious gesture of pleasure, as the car swept round the house and
past the tall box borders of what was, indeed, such an old-time
memorial, tended by faithful and loving hands, as must stir the interest
of any admirer of the stately conceptions of an earlier day. A bowed
figure, at work in a great bed of rosy phlox, straightened painfully as
the car stopped, and the visitors looked into the seamed, tanned face of
the presiding spirit of the place, the old gardener who had served
General Armitage all his life.
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