The punishment of instant dismissal, with which at first
she haughtily threatened him, my lady thought fit, on reflection,
not to enforce. While he served her thus she knew he would not harm
her by a word, while, if he were expelled, chagrin might induce him
to reveal in a moment of exasperation what kind treatment would
assist him to conceal.
So he was allowed to remain on the premises, and had for his
residence a little cottage by the garden-wall which had been the
domicile of some of his predecessors in the same occupation. Here
he lived absolutely alone, and spent much of his leisure in reading,
but the greater part in watching the windows and lawns of his lady's
house for glimpses of the form of the child. It was for that
child's sake that he abandoned the tenets of the Roman Catholic
Church in which he had been reared, and became the most regular
attendant at the services in the parish place of worship hard by,
where, sitting behind the pew of my lady, my lord, and his stepson,
the gardener could pensively study the traits and movements of the
youngster at only a few feet distance, without suspicion or
hindrance.
He filled his post for more than two years with a pleasure to
himself which, though mournful, was soothing, his lady never
forgiving him, or allowing him to be anything more than 'the
gardener' to her child, though once or twice the boy said, 'That
gardener's eyes are so sad! Why does he look so sadly at me?' He
sunned himself in her scornfulness as if it were love, and his ears
drank in her curt monosyllables as though they were rhapsodies of
endearment.
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