"Is the lord of the manor ready for his breakfast?" she asked as
she came forward, smiling.
"I am ready, mother," he replied without smiling, touching his lips
to her cheek.
She linked her arm in his as they ascended the steps. At the top
she drew him gently around until they faced the landscape rolling
wide before them.
"It is so beautiful!" she exclaimed with a deep narrow love of her
land. "I never see it without thinking of it as it will be years
hence. I can see you riding over it then and your children playing
around the house and some one sitting here where we stand, watching
them at their play and watching you in the distance at your work.
But I have been waiting a long time for her to take my place--and
to take her own," and she leaned heavily on his arm as a sign of
her dependence but out of weakness also (for she did not tell him
all). "I am impatient to hear the voice of your children, Rowan.
Do you never wish to hear them yourself?"
As they stood silent, footsteps approached through the hall and
turning they saw Dent with a book in his hand.
"Are you grand people never coming to breakfast?" he asked,
frowning with pretended impatience, "so that a laboring man may go
to his work?"
He was of short but well-knit figure. Spectacles and a thoughtful
face of great refinement gave him the student's stamp. His
undergraduate course at college would end in a few weeks.
Postgraduate work was to begin during the summer.
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