A Life For A Love

CHAPTER I.


The time was July, and the roses were out in great profusion in the
rectory garden. The garden was large, somewhat untidily kept, but it
abounded in all sweet old-fashioned flowers; there was the invariable
tennis-court, empty just now, and a sweet sound of children laughing
and playing together, in a hay-field near by. The roses were showering
their petals all over the grass, and two girls, sisters evidently, were
pacing up the broad walk in the centre of the garden arm-in-arm. They
were dark-eyed girls, with chestnut, curling hair, rosy lips full of
curves and smiles, and round, good-humored faces. They were talking
eagerly and excitedly one to the other, not taking the smallest notice
of the scene around them--not even replying when some children in the
hay-field shouted their names, but coming at last to a full stand-still
before the open window of the old-fashioned rectory study. Two men were
standing under the deep-mullioned window; one tall, slightly bent, with
silvery-white hair, aquiline features, and dark brown eyes like the
girls. He was the Rector of Jewsbury-on-the-Wold, and the man he was
addressing was his only son, and the brother of the eager
bright-looking girls.