Why travel to Athens,--why wander among the Ionian
Isles for love of the classic ground? Surely, though the clear-brained
old Greeks were the founders of all noble literature, they have reached
their fulminating point in the English Shakespeare,--and the
Warwickshire lanes, decked simply with hawthorn and sweet-briar roses,
through which Mary Arden walked leading her boy-angel by the hand, are
sacred as any portion of that earth once trodden by the feet of Homer
and Plato.
So, at least, Thelma thought, when, released from the bondage of London
social life, she found herself once more at Errington Manor, then
looking its loveliest, surrounded with a green girdle of oak and beech,
and set off by the beauty of velvety lawns and terraces, and
rose-gardens in full bloom. The depression from which she had suffered
fell away from her completely--she grew light-hearted as a child, and
flitted from room to room, singing to herself for pure gladness. Philip
was with her all day now, save for a couple of hours in the forenoon
which he devoted to letter-writing in connection with his Parliamentary
aspirations,--and Philip was tender, adoring and passionate as lovers
may be, but as husbands seldom are.
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