



Produced by Hillie Plantinga and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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Transcriber's notes:

Four typographical errors have been corrected:
  Page  88, "seemes" changed to "seems" (it seems such a wasteful way
                                         to live somehow,)
  Page 162, "Ellen" changed to "Ellen," ("I'm very glad you feel that way
                                         about it, Ellen,")
  Page 199, "accomodating" changed to "accommodating" (He felt his mind
                                                       accommodating to)
  Page 252, "Weatherall" changed to "Weatheral" (Mr. Weatheral had some
                                                 papers)





THE LOVELY LADY




_By the same author_

A WOMAN OF GENIUS

THE ARROW MAKER

THE GREEN BOUGH

CHRIST IN ITALY




[Illustration: _"It was one thin web of rose and gold over lakes of
burnished light...."_]




THE LOVELY LADY

BY MARY AUSTIN

[Illustration: ]

_Frontispiece by Gordon Grant_

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1913




_Copyright, 1913, by_

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

_All rights reserved, including that of
translation into Foreign Languages,
including the Scandinavian._




To

J. AND E.

THE COMPANIONS OF THE GONDOLA




CONTENTS


                                                      PAGE

PART ONE

In which Peter meets a Dragon, and the Lovely
Lady makes her appearance.                               3

PART TWO

In which Peter becomes invisible on the way to
growing rich.                                           37

PART THREE

In which Peter becomes a bachelor.                      59

PART FOUR

In which the Lovely Lady makes a final appearance.     107




ILLUSTRATIONS


"It was one thin web of rose and gold over lakes of
burnished light...."




PART ONE

IN WHICH PETER
MEETS A DRAGON, AND
THE LOVELY LADY
MAKES HER APPEARANCE




PART ONE

IN WHICH PETER MEETS A DRAGON, AND THE
LOVELY LADY MAKES HER APPEARANCE




I


The walls of the Wonderful House rose up straight and shining, pale
greenish gold as the slant sunlight on the orchard grass under the apple
trees; the windows that sprang arching to the summer blueness let in the
scent of the cluster rose at the turn of the fence, beginning to rise
above the dusty smell of the country roads, and the evening clamour of
the birds in Bloombury wood. As it dimmed and withdrew, the shining of
the walls came out more clearly. Peter saw then that they were all of
 pictures wrought flat upon the gold, and as the glow of it
increased they began to swell and stir like a wood waking. They leaned
out from the walls, looking all one way toward the increasing light and
tap-tap of the Princess' feet along the halls.

"Peter, oh, Peter!"

The tap-tapping grew sharp and nearer like the sound of a crutch on a
wooden veranda, and the voice was Ellen's.

"Oh, Peter, you are always a-reading and a-reading!"

Peter rolled off the long settle where he had been stretched and put the
book in his pocket apologetically.

"I was just going to quit," he said; "did you want anything, Ellen?"

"The picnic is coming back; I thought we could go down to the turn to
meet them. Mrs. Sibley said she would save me some things from the
luncheon."

If there was a little sting to Peter in Ellen's eagerness, it was
evidence at least, how completely he and his mother had kept her from
realizing that it was chiefly because of their not being able to afford
the well-filled basket demanded by a Bloombury picnic that they had not
accepted the invitation. Ellen had thought it was because Bet, the mare,
could not be spared all day from the ploughing nor Peter from hoeing
the garden, and her mother was too busy with the plaid gingham dress she
was making for the minister's wife, to do any baking. It meant to Ellen,
the broken fragments of the luncheon, just so much of what a picnic
should mean: the ride in the dusty morning, swings under the trees, easy
games that she could play, lemonade, pails and pails of it, pink ham
sandwiches and frosted cake; and if Ellen could have any of these, she
was having a little piece of the picnic. What it would have meant
particularly to Peter over and above a day let loose, the arching elms,
the deep fern of Bloombury wood, might have been some passages, perhaps,
which could be taken home and made over into the groundwork of new and
interesting adventures in the House from which Ellen had recalled him.
There was a girl with June apple cheeks and bright brown eyes at that
picnic, who could have given points to princesses.

He followed the tapping of his sister's crutch along the thick, bitter
smelling dust of the road, rising more and more heavily as the dew
gathered, until they came to the turn by the cluster rose and heard
below them on the bridge, the din of the wheels and the gay laughter of
the picnickers.

"Hi, Peter!"

"Hello, Ellen!"

"Awful sorry you couldn't come... had a bully time.... Killed a
copperhead and two water snakes."

"Here, Ellen, catch ahold of this!"

And while she was about it the June apple girl leaned over the end-board
of the wagon, and spoke softly to Peter.

"We're going over to Harvey's pasture next Wednesday afternoon,
berrying, in the Democrat wagon with our team; Jim Harvey's going to
drive. We made it up to-day. Surely you can get away for an afternoon?"
That was what the voice said. "To be with me," the eyes added.

"I don't know.... I'd like it...."

It was not altogether the calculation as to how much earlier he would
have to get up that morning to be able to take an hour off in the
afternoon, that made Peter hesitate, but the sudden swimming of his
senses about the point of meeting eyes. "I'll tell you what," he said,
"you come by for Ellen, and I'll walk over about four and ride home with
you."

"Oh," said the girl; she did not know quite whether to triumph at having
gained so much or to be disappointed at so little. "I'll be expecting
you."

The horses creaked forward in the harness, the dust puffed up from under
the wheels and drowned the smell of the wilding rose, it fell thick on
the petals and a little on Peter's spirit, too, as he followed Ellen
back to the house, though it never occurred to him to think any more of
it than that he had been working too long in the hot sun and was very
tired. It did not, however, prevent his eating his share of the picnic
dainties as he sat with his mother and Ellen on the veranda. Then as the
soft flitter of the bats' wings began in the dusk, he kissed them both
and went early up to bed.

Peter's room was close under the roof and that was close under the elm
boughs; all hours he could hear them finger it with soft rustling
touches. The bed was pulled to the window that gave upon the downslope
of the hill; at the foot of it one saw the white bloom-faces of the
alders lift and bow above the folded leaves, and the rising of the river
damp across the pastures. All the light reflected from the sky above
Bloombury wood was no more than enough to make a glimmer on the glass of
a picture that hung at the foot of Peter's bed. It served to show the
gilt of the narrow frame and the soft black of the print upon which
Peter had looked so many times that he thought now he was still seeing
it as he lay staring in the dusk--a picture of a young man in bright
armour with loosened hair, riding down a particularly lumpy and swollen
dragon. Flames came out of the creature's mouth in the immemorial
fashion of dragons, but the young man was not hurt by them. He sat there
lightly, his horse curvetting, his lance thrust down the dragon's throat
and coming out of the back of his head, doing a great deed easily, the
way people like to think of great things being done. It was a very
narrow picture, so narrow that you might think that it had something to
do with the dragon's doubling on himself and the charger's forefeet
being up in the air to keep within the limits of the frame, and the
exclusion from it of the Princess whom, as his father had told him the
story, the young knight George had rescued from those devouring jaws. It
came out now, quite clearly, that she must have had cheeks as red as
June apples and eyes like the pools of spring rain in Bloombury wood,
and her not being there in the picture was only a greater security for
her awaiting him at this moment in the House with the Shining Walls.

There was, for the boy still staring at it through the dusk, something
particularly personal in the picture, for ever since his father had
died, three years ago, Peter had had a dragon of