She held her left hand in front of her, covered with a
red velvet glove, and on the wrist a little brown falcon, very
fluffy and bedraggled, which she smoothed and fondled as she
walked. As she came out into the sunshine, Alleyne noticed that
her light gown, slashed with pink, was all stained with earth and
with moss upon one side from shoulder to hem. He stood in the
shadow of an oak staring at her with parted lips, for this woman
seemed to him to be the most beautiful and graceful creature that
mind could conceive of. Such had he imagined the angels, and
such he had tried to paint them in the Beaulieu missals; but here
there was something human, were it only in the battered hawk and
discolored dress, which sent a tingle and thrill through his
nerves such as no dream of radiant and stainless spirit had ever
yet been able to conjure up. Good, quiet, uncomplaining mother
Nature, long slighted and miscalled, still bides her time and
draws to her bosom the most errant of her children.
The two walked swiftly across the meadow to the narrow bridge, he
in front and she a pace or two behind.
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