Once I heard my
mother murmur, as she stroked Frank's rosy cheeks and golden curls,
'My poor Henry is a strange, proud boy!' Then, looking from my
crutches to Frank's beautiful limbs, she said, 'How providential that
it was not the elder! Providence is kind.' She meant kind to the
House of Aylwin. I often wonder whether she guessed that I heard her.
I often wonder whether she knew how I had loved her.
This is how matters stood with me on that summer afternoon, when I
sat on the edge of the cliff in a kind of dull, miserable dream.
Suddenly, at the moment when the huge mass of clouds had covered the
entire surface of the water between Flinty Point and Needle Point
with their rich purple shadow, it seemed to me that the waves began
to sparkle and laugh in a joyful radiance which they were making for
themselves. And at that same moment an unwonted sound struck my ear
from the churchyard behind me--a strange sound indeed in that
deserted place--that of a childish voice singing.
Was, then, the mighty ocean writing symbols for an unhappy child to
read? My father, from whose book, _The Veiled Queen_, the extract
with which this chapter opens is taken, would, unhesitatingly,
have answered 'Yes.
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