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But the driven serpent hissed horribly as it wriggled away. "You shall both be turned out of Beaurepaire by me, and forever; I swear it, parole de Perrin." He had not been gone a minute when Josephine's courage oozed away, and she ran, or rather tottered, into the Pleasaunce, and clung like a drowning thing to Rose, and, when Edouard took her hand, she clung to him.
There was one summer-house, a mass of honeysuckle, and there they sat down as those that had come back to Eden from a wander year. "Well, Kit?" "Thank God for our Pleasaunce."
Like a prince in a fairy tale, who has broken the mystic boundary of some enchanted pleasaunce, Tancred traversed the alleys which were formed by the lemon and pomegranate tree, and sometimes by the myrtle and the rose. His ear caught the sound of falling water, bubbling with a gentle noise; more distinct and more forcible every step that he advanced.
Over the gravel, over the grass, through the quiet pleasaunce she goes unswervingly, past the dark green laurels into the flower garden, and close to the murmuring streamlet to where a little patch of moss-grown sward can be seen, surrounded by aged elms. Here she finds him! He is asleep! He is lying on his back, with his arms behind his tired head, and his beautiful face uplifted to the heavens.
So I, a fool, do greet thee, fool, and welcome thee to this my palace of ease and pleasaunce where, an ye be minded to list to the folly of a rarely foolish fool, I will, with foolish jape and quip, befool thy mind to mirth and jollity, for thou art a sad fool, methinks, and something melancholic!" Quoth Beltane, sighing: "'Tis a sad world and very sorrowful!"
However, the prospect of loving best did not seem disagreeable to her; for with this announcement she deposited her head on his shoulder, and in that attitude took a little walk with him up and down the Pleasaunce: sixty times; about eight miles. These two were a happy pair. This wayward, but generous heart never forgot her offence, and his forgiveness.
The house stood at right angles to the east end of the Cathedral, from which it was only divided by a strip of turf broken up by fragments of old gray ruins, and edged by an iron railing, and by a paved passage-way, which led through the Dark Entry from the "Green Court," where the Deanery and Minor Canons' houses were situated, to the pleasaunce immediately around the Cathedral.
Sometimes an hour was snatched by Henrietta from roaming in the pleasaunce, and interchanging vows of mutual love and admiration, to the picture-gallery, where she had already commenced a miniature copy of the portrait of the great Sir Ferdinand. As the sun set they departed in their little equipage.
If anything, Josephine felt it worst. "It is my doing," she gasped, and tottered fainting. Rose supported her: she shook it off by a violent effort. "This is no time for weakness," she cried, wildly; "come to the Pleasaunce; there is water there. I love my mother. What will I not do for her? I love my mother." Muttering thus wildly she made for the pond in the Pleasaunce.
So thankfully enough they came unmolested to walled and wooded Shefton, which Cicely had last seen when she fled thence to Cranwell on the day of her marriage, oh, years and years ago, or so it seemed to her tormented heart. It was a strange and a sad home-coming, she thought, as they rode over the drawbridge and through the sodden and weed-smothered pleasaunce to the familiar door.
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