

Julia Kavanagh (1824-1877), _Daisy Burns_ (1853), volume 1, Tauchnitz 
edition


Produced by Daniel FROMONT


COLLECTION

OF

BRITISH AUTHORS.
 

VOL. CCLXIII.
 


DAISY BURNS BY JULIA KAVANAGH.
 

IN TWO VOLUMES.
 

VOL. I.
 

TAUCHNITZ EDITION
 


By the same Author,
 

NATHALIE 2 vols.

GRACE LEE 2 vols.

RACHEL GRAY 1 vol.

ADELE 2 vols.

A SUMMER AND WINTER IN THE TWO SICILES 2 vols.

SEVEN YEARS AND OTHER TALES 2 vols.

FRENCH WOMEN OF LETTERS 1 vol.

ENGLISH WOMEN OF LETTERS 1 vol.

QUEEN MAB 2 vols.

BEATRICE 2 vols.

SYBIL'S SECOND LOVE 

DORA 2 vols.

SILVIA 2 vols.

BESSIE 2 vols.

JOHN DORRIEN 2 vols.
 

DAISY BURNS;
 

A TALE
 

BY
 

JULIA KAVANAGH,
 

AUTHOR OF "NATHALIE."

 

_COPYRIGHT EDITION_.

 

IN TWO VOLUMES.
 

VOL. I.
 

LEIPZIG

BERNHARDT TAUCHNITZ

1853.

 

JULIA KAVANAGH


DAISY BURNS.



CHAPTER I.



As I sat alone this evening beneath the porch, the autumn wind rose and 
passed amongst the garden trees, then died away in the distance with a 
low murmuring. A strange thrill ran through me; the present with its 
aspects vanished; I saw no more the narrow though dearly loved limits 
which bound my home; the little garden, so calm and grey in the dewy 
twilight, was a wide and heaving sea; the low rustling of the leaves 
seemed the sound of the receding tide; the dim horizon became a circular 
line of light dividing wastes of waters from the solemn depths of vast 
skies, and I, no longer a woman sitting in my home within reach of a 
great city, but an idle, dreaming child, lay in the grassy nook at the 
end of our garden, whence I watched the ships on their distant path, or 
sent a wandering glance along the winding beach of sand and rock below.

A moment effaced years, and my childhood, with its home, its joys, and 
its sorrows, passed before me like a thing of yesterday.

Rock Cottage, as my father had called it, rose on a lonely cliff that 
looked forth to the sea. It was but a plain abode, with whitewashed 
walls, green shutters, and low roof, standing in the centre of a wild and 
neglected garden, overlooked by no other dwelling, and apparently far 
removed from every habitation. In front, a road, coming down from the low 
hills of Ryde, wound away to Leigh; behind, at the foot of a cliff, 
stretched the sea. The people of Leigh wondered "how Doctor Burns could 
live in a place so bleak and so lonely," and they knew not that to him 
its charms lay in that very solitude with its boundless horizon; in the 
murmurs of the wind that ever swept around his dwelling; in the aspect of 
that sublime sea which daily spread beneath his view, serene or terrible, 
but ever beautiful.

This was not however the sole recommendation of Rock Cottage; it stood 
conveniently between the two villages of Ryde and Leigh, of which my 
father was the only physician. There was indeed a surgeon at Ryde, but he 
never passed the threshold of the aristocratic mansions to which Doctor 
Burns was frequently summoned, and whence he derived the larger portion 
of his income. That income, never very considerable, proved however 
sufficient to the few wants of the lonely home where my father, a 
widower, lived with me, his only child.

Of my mother I had no remembrance; my father seldom mentioned her name; 
but there was a small miniature of her over our parlour mantle-piece, and 
often in the evening, sitting by our quiet fireside, he would look long 
and earnestly on the mild and somewhat mournful face before him, then 
give me a silent caress, as I sat on my stool at his knee, watching him 
with the ever-attentive look of childhood.

I was sickly and delicate, and he indulged me to excess. "Study," he 
said, "would only injure me, for I was a great deal too clever and 
precocious for a child;" so he taught me himself the little I knew, and 
put off from month to month his long contemplated and still cherished 
project of sending me to some first-rate school. I believe that in his 
heart he felt loath to part from me, and was secretly glad to find some 
excuse that should keep me at home. He never left me in the morning 
without a caress, and often, when he returned late from visiting some 
distant patient, his first impulse, as well as his first act, was to 
enter my room and kiss me softly as I slept. I loved him passionately and 
exclusively, and years have not effaced either his memory or his aspect 
from my heart. I remember him still, a man of thirty-five or so, tall, 
pale, and gentlemanly, with wavy hair of a deep golden brown, and dark 
grey eyes of singular light and beauty. How he seemed to others I know 
not: to me he was all that was good and great.

I felt happy to live thus alone with him; I never wished for the 
companionship of other children; I asked not to move beyond the limits