This morning Rajputana held the field. Lilámani, with a thrill in her low voice, was half reading, half telling the adventures of Prithvi Raj (King of the Earth) and his Amazon Princess, Tara--the Star of Bednore: verily a star among women for beauty, wisdom, and courage. Many princes were rivals for her hand; but none would she call "lord" save the man who restored to her father the Kingdom snatched from him by an Afghan marauder. "On the faith of a Rajput, _I_ will restore it," said Prithvi Raj. So, in the faith of a Rajputni, she married him:--and together, by a daring device, they fulfilled her vow.
Here, indeed, was Roy's 'beautiful marry,' fit prelude for the tale of that heroic pair. For in life--Lilámani told them--marriage is the beginning, not the end. That is only for fairy tales.
And close against her shoulder, listening entranced, sat the child Tara, with her wild-flower face and the flickering star in her heart--a creature born out of time into an unromantic world; hands clasped round her upraised knees, her wide eyes gazing past the bluebells and the beech-leaves at some fanciful inner vision of it all; lost in it, as Roy was lost in contemplation of his Mother's face....
And this unorthodox fashion of imbibing knowledge in the very lap of the Earth Mother, was Lilámani Sinclair's impracticable idea of 'giving lessons'! Shades of Aunt Jane! Of governess and copy-books and rulers!
Happily for all three, Lady Roscoe never desecrated their paradise in the flesh. She was aware that her very regrettable sister-in-law had 'queer notions' and had flatly refused to engage a governess of high qualifications chosen by herself; but the half was not told her. It never is told to those who condemn on principle what they cannot understand. At their coming all the little private gateways into the delectable Garden of Intimacy shut with a gentle, decisive click. So it was with Jane Roscoe, as worthy and unlikeable a woman as ever organised a household to perfection and alienated every member of her family.
The trouble was that she could not rest satisfied with this achievement. She was afflicted with a vehement desire--she called it a sense of duty--to organise the homes of her less capable relations. If they resented, they were written down ungrateful. And Nevil's ingratitude had become a byword. For Nevil Sinclair was that unaccountable, uncomfortable thing--an artist; which is to say he was no true Sinclair, but the son of his mother whose name he bore. No one, not even Jane, had succeeded in organising him--nor ever would.