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Not a little disconcerted, I hesitatingly answered that I had imagined the bay-tree required more and greater warmth of sunshine than it could find there. "Pooh!" said he, much offended at the slight cast on his beloved locality, "what has sunshine got to do with it?"
The sea-breeze had died away, and the wind was blowing in cooler gusts from the mountain; breezes laden with the aromatic sweetness of the bay-tree and the heavy scent of the shade-loving bracken wandered from far up the cañon into the cabin and out again, only to find themselves profaned and sordid with the smell of frying bacon.
Tempest reproachfully; "you forget that Violet is not out. She will not be sixteen till next February." "Bless her!" cried the Squire, with a tender look at his only child, "she has grown up like a green bay-tree. But if this were to be quite a friendly affair at Briarwood, she might go, surely." "It will not be a friendly affair," said Mrs. Tempest; "Lady Jane never gives friendly parties.
It was as if the wicked man of Scripture had daily watered a green bay-tree, to make sure that it should flourish.
She had earned his hatred, and she had had it ever since the moment when she had spoken scornfully of the saint, a hatred which had grown and flourished like the Biblical bay-tree. To despise a Christian and more especially a Christian woman was in keeping with his Oriental mind and Moslem training; he despised Millicent not only as a woman and a Christian, but as a harlot.
"I have cause to suffer," she replied with a sigh, not venturing to meet his eyes "to suffer and to wait. But my aunt " She said no more; her head fell on her bosom, her arms dropped to her side, she sighed deeply. "May I be at hand to shield you!" was his answer. After this, he, too, was silent. Rising from his knees, he leaned against the trunk of the bay-tree and contemplated her steadfastly.
"My dear fellow, you can prove nothing against him, and we have no power to bring him to trial. I believe you and I are fated to be the instruments of exemplary vengeance upon him eventually, ain't we, according to the Rani? Till then we must be content to see him flourishing like the green bay-tree."
For she and her daughters had fled to the great altar of the household gods and sat crowded about it like unto doves that are driven by a storm. Now the altar stood in an open court that was in the midst of the palace, with a great bay-tree above it.
Now she opened the book and held it before Hallblithe and turned the leaves so that he might see them clearly; and therein were woods and castles painted, and burning mountains, and the wall of the world, and kings upon their thrones, and fair women and warriors, all most lovely to behold, even as he had seen it aforetime in the orchard when he lay lurking amidst the leaves of the bay-tree.
"My dear miss, as the forest oak, 'cabined, cribbed, confined' with multitudes of its fellows, grows stunted, scrubby, and dwarfed, but, brought into the open fields alone, stretches out its arms to the blue heavens and its roots to the kindly earth, so that the birds of the air lodge in the branches thereof, and men sit under its shadow with great delight, so, in a word, shall you, under my fostering care, flourish like a green bay-tree; that is, if I am to have the honor."
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