So they passed from the orchard and parted, fearful of being missed.
How should such a pair do, but after its kind? Life was dull without
love-making, so they made it. And the more they made, the more they
wanted to make, until casual encounters would no longer serve their
turn.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE ENCHANTED CHAIR.
In the castle things went on much the same, nor did the gathering
tumult without wake more than an echo within. Yet a cloud slowly
deepened upon the brow of the marquis, and a look of disquiet, to be
explained neither by the more frequent returns of his gout, nor by
the more lengthened absences of his favourite son. In his judgment
the king was losing ground, not only in England but in the deeper
England of its men. Lady Margaret also, for all her natural good
spirits and light-heartedness, showed a more continuous anxiety
than was to be accounted for by her lord's absences and the dangers
he had to encounter: little Molly, the treasure of her heart next to
her lord, had never been other than a delicate child, but now had
begun to show signs of worse than weakness of constitution, and the
heart of the mother was perpetually brooding over the ever-present
idea of her sickly darling.
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