"She did not; I offered it,--nay, forced it upon her; and for her brother she would do anything. It's my belief he is the only human being she does truly love." "All the better. Love for a brother never yet blocked the way to any other. But, hark! I hear her stirring. Belike she will be able to come down for supper. Go thou, and don thy scarlet sash and the falling band with lace edge. Oh, and don't forget the lace cuffs and the gold lacings." "Mother, dost take thy son for a baby or a popinjay?" "Neither, but for the dullard he is, not to know that dress makes as much difference in men as in women. Why, who knows but I would have had thy father a year earlier, had he paid more heed to his attire! Go! Go!--Suppose thou hadst never come!" Here words failed her, and she caught her son to her heart, cried over him a moment, and then pushed him toward the stairs. CHAPTER XVIII THE EMERALD TAG With the dignity of absolute self-renunciation Elinor took up the cramped, new existence in the little cottage at St. Mary's. To Cecil it was but a play, this strange life in the tiny rooms, where the great four-post bed seemed an elephant in a toy house, and the head on the carved chest appeared to be perpetually grinning at the incongruity of its surroundings. What cared the child for narrow quarters, while in the evenings he could lie as of old before the fire, and in sunny spring days could wander through the village streets, now loitering on the wharf to watch the lumber loading for the new house at Cecil Point and anon pausing at the smithy for a talk with the blacksmith as he hammered at his anvil? For the first time in his life the boy was learning the meaning of democracy. The best gift money can offer its owners is the aloofness afforded by wide acres, and the servants who act as buffers to the multitude; but the eternal laws of compensation hold here as everywhere, and this aristocratic seclusion is bought at the expense of the feeling of kinship and sympathy with the average man. Elinor realized this, and it reconciled her to much that was trying in her new lot. She felt that her own life was at an end, the last page turned, and _finis_ written on that day when Giles Brent met her on the river path at St. Gabriel's and told her that the waters had closed over the head of Christopher Neville. On that day hope fell dead; but duty lives on after hope has died, and then there was always Cecil. On him she lavished all her pent-up love, all the unsatisfied ambition of her heart. For him she planned and worked. He was to be Lord of the Manor, then Councillor, then perhaps in the far-off days Governor of the Province, and always an honor to the Calvert name. Already men were at work building the house at Cecil Point, and the wood-chopper's axe rang merrily among the giant trees that must fall to clear the fields and make them ready for their burden of wheat and maize and tobacco.