buried, and the raftsmen will pass within a few hundred yards of him
where he lies, and will sing the same strain that so fascinated him,
but he will not hear it, and learn it and bring it back for Lady
Violet, the loveliest woman in England! For he has gone down into
the eternal shadow that no man ever penetrates."
The Prisoner Dubois.
Miss Cecilia Maxwell was the only child of Sir Robert Maxwell, K. C.
M. G., member of the Cabinet, chief orator of the Liberal party, and
understudy for the part of Premier, who, although a Scotchman by
birth, was a typical Canadian--free, unaffected, honest and sincere.
His bushy iron-gray hair, his keen gray eyes, his healthy florid
color, and the well-trimmed black moustache, which gave his face an
unusually youthful appearance for a man of his age, went with a fine
stalwart physique and a general bodily conformation apparently in
keeping with the ideas of early rising, cold ablutions and
breakfasts of oatmeal porridge that the ingenuous mind is apt to
associate with Scotch descent and bringing-up. His daughter was a
very beautiful girl. Born in the shadow of the pines, she had been
educated successively in Edinburgh, Brussels and Munich, had been
presented at Court, been through two London seasons, spent half of
one winter in South America, another in Bermuda, had been ogled by
lords, worshipped by artists, and loved by everybody.
Once more in Canada, she took her place in the limited yet exacting
political circles of the Capital, of Toronto, and of distant Winnipeg.
Life was full of duties, and she shirked none, though on days when
they were put away earlier than usual she would fall to musing of
the country place down the river she had not seen for years, with
the beautiful woods, and the simple, contented French, and the
evenings on the water.
"That great, lonely river," she thought on one occasion, looking
idly out of her window. "What other river in the world is like it?--
and the tiny French villages with the red roofs and doors, and the
sparkling spires and the queer people. Delle Lisbeth, and _veuve_
|