The Lovely Lady

The Lovely Lady, by Mary Austin

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lovely Lady, by Mary Austin This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Lovely Lady
Author: Mary Austin
Illustrator: Gordon Grant
Release Date: January 14, 2007 [EBook #20359]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOVELY LADY ***

Produced by Hillie Plantinga and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

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 coloured 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,