Mr. Meredith found his way into some sealed and sacred chambers of the lad 's soul wherein not even Di had ever looked . They were to be chums from that friendly hour and Walter knew that he would never be frightened of the minister again . `` I never believed before that it was possible to get really acquainted with a minister , '' he told his mother that night . John Meredith drank from his slender white hand , whose grip of steel always surprised people who were unacquainted with it , and then sat down on the maple seat . He was in no hurry to go home ; this was a beautiful spot and he was mentally weary after a round of rather uninspiring conversations with many good and stupid people . The moon was rising . Rainbow Valley was wind-haunted and star-sentinelled only where he was , but afar from the upper end came the gay notes of children 's laughter and voices . The ethereal beauty of the asters in the moonlight , the glimmer of the little spring , the soft croon of the brook , the wavering grace of the brackens all wove a white magic round John Meredith . He forgot congregational worries and spiritual problems ; the years slipped away from him ; he was a young divinity student again and the roses of June were blooming red and fragrant on the dark , queenly head of his Cecilia . He sat there and dreamed like any boy . And it was at this propitious moment that Rosemary West stepped aside from the by-path and stood beside him in that dangerous , spell-weaving place . John Meredith stood up as she came in and saw her -- REALLY saw her -- for the first time . He had met her in his church once or twice and shaken hands with her abstractedly as he did with anyone he happened to encounter on his way down the aisle . He had never met her elsewhere , for the Wests were Episcopalians , with church affinities in Lowbridge , and no occasion for calling upon them had ever arisen . Before to-night , if anyone had asked John Meredith what Rosemary West looked like he would not have had the slightest notion . But he was never to forget her , as she appeared to him in the glamour of kind moonlight by the spring . She was certainly not in the least like Cecilia , who had always been his ideal of womanly beauty . Cecilia had been small and dark and vivacious -- Rosemary West was tall and fair and placid , yet John Meredith thought he had never seen so beautiful a woman . She was bareheaded and her golden hair -- hair of a warm gold , `` molasses taffy '' colour as Di Blythe had said -- was pinned in sleek , close coils over her head ; she had large , tranquil , blue eyes that always seemed full of friendliness , a high white forehead and a finely shaped face . Rosemary West was always called a `` sweet woman . ''
She was so sweet that even her high-bred , stately air had never gained for her the reputation of being `` stuck-up , '' which it would inevitably have done in the case of anyone else XXXXX Glen St. Mary .
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