Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. I, 1866.djvu/27

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CHAPTER I.

He left me when the down upon his lip
Lay like the shadow of a hovering kiss.
“Beautiful mother, do not grieve,” he said;
“I will be great, and build our fortunes high.
And you shall wear the longest train at court,
And look so queenly, all the lords shall say,
‘She is a royal changeling: there’s some crown
Lacks the right head, since hers wears naught but braids.’”
O, he is coming now—but I am grey:
And he——

On the 1st of September, in the memorable year 1832, some one was expected at Transome Court. As early as two o'clock in the afternoon the aged lodge-keeper had opened the heavy gate, green as the tree trunks were green with nature's powdery paint, deposited year after year. Already in the village of Little Treby, which lay on the side of a steep hill not far off the lodge-gates, the elder matrons sat in their best gowns at the few cottage doors bordering the road, that they might be ready to get up and make their courtesy when a travelling carriage should come in sight; and beyond the vil-