Warner had more than once written of the tragedy of these people, his poet's imagination tracing the descent of the finer specimens from ancient kings whose dust was mixed with the sands of the desert; and his had been one of the most impassioned voices lifted in the cause of emancipation. For these reasons he was much beloved by the coloured folk of Nevis of all ranks, and some one of them had never failed to come forward, when he lay ill and neglected, or the bailiffs threatened to sell his house over his head. All obligations were faithfully discharged, for he received handsome sums from his publishers, but his patrimony was long since squandered; nothing remained to him but his home and a bit of land high on the mountain, which he had clung to because he loved its wild beauty and solitude.

Lady Mary Denbigh, with her languishing airs, her "Book of Beauty" style, bored him more than anyone in Bath House, and he had begun to suspect that her attentions were due not more to vanity than to a desire to find favour with Lord Hunsdon. But she was seldom far from Anne Percy, whose propinquity he could enjoy even if debarred communion. And Lady Mary frequently made Anne the theme of her remarks, in entertaining the poet; whose covert admiration she too detected and encouraged, although not without resentment. Miss Percy was undeniably handsome and high-born, but alas, quite lacking in fashion, in style, in ton. Not that Lady Mary despaired of her. If she could be persuaded to pass three seasons in London, divorced from that stranded corner of England where she had spent twenty-two long years, all her new friends felt quite hopeful that she would yet do them credit and become a young lady of the highest fashion. Her figure was really good, if somewhat Amazonian, and her face, if not quite regular--with those black eyebrows as wide as one's finger, and that square chin, when all the beauties had oval contours and delicate arches above limpid eyes--was, as she had before maintained, singularly striking and handsome, and if perhaps too warmly coloured, this was not held to be a fault by some.

Warner recalled the bitter-sweet of her babble as he heard her sigh gently beside him, her long golden ringlets shading her bent face. His eyes wandered, after their habit, to Anne Percy, who sat across the church, distinguished in that gay throng by bonnet and gloves and gown of immaculate white. He worshipped every irregular line in that noble, impulsive, passionate face and wondered that he had ever thought another woman beautiful; condemned his imagination that it had lacked the wit to conceive a like combination. Her eyes, commonly full of laughter, he had seen darken with anger and melt with tenderness. There were moments when she looked so strong as momentarily to isolate herself from normal womanhood, and suggest unlimited if unsuspected powers of good or evil; but those were fleeting impressions; as a rule she looked the most completely human woman he had ever known.




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