and divert her melancholy, ſhe being very well beloved, both by the nobility and gentry, for her comely carriage, modeſt behaviour, ſweetneſs of temper, and affability.
In the cool of the day the uſually made it her buſineſs, to retire into her garden penſive and alone. it being, by the care and diligence of the gardener, kept and ordered like another paradiſe, ſtored with great variety of choice plants and flowers, adorned with pleaſant fountains, and ſeveral delightful arbours, ſhaded over with intertwining jeſſamine, in which ſhe and her abſent Lord had paſſed ſome joyful as well as ſad hours, and at the remembrance of them would ſadly weep, then pray (according to the cuſtom of the Papiſts, who allow praying to ſaints) to the tutelary ſaints for his protection: and ſo drying up her tears, would walk thence again, taking but little reſt in any place: but one time paſſing by a bed of tulips, ſhe eſpied Bernard her gardener (for ſo he was called) buſy in watering them, and erecting ſuch as declined their drooping heads, occaſioned by the heat of the ſun's too ſcorching beams; ſhe had often in this man obſerved a harmleſs native innocency, accompanied with acute ingenuity; (and indeed a gardener who underſtands his buſineſs as he ought to do, muſt be an ingenious man) and therefore imagined, it might adminiſter to her ſome advantage, to hold diſcourſe with him in what related to the myſteries of gardening, thinking it no undervaluing, though he was her menial ſervant, ſince ſhe had often read, That 'kings, princes, and other great and wife men had voluntarily become of this occupation; that Adam, when governor of all the world, was employed in it by God himſelf;' ſo that coming cloſe to him, whilſt his
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