She moved a pace from him and, sitting down on the bench, drew a hanging branch of wild rose to the wild rose of her cheek.
“The last of my country flowers,” she murmured.
“Stay,” he exclaimed. “Let me pluck you a posy!”
High over their unconscious heads, Lionel Ratcliffe, peering cautiously over the balustrade, had a sneer for the childish eagerness. But Diana took the flowers with a simple grace.
“Thank you, and thank you.… Nay, how sweet they are! And to think that to-morrow evening we shall be so far away. ’Tis hard to leave the garden for the town.”
(“Mark you, now,” whispered Ratcliffe overhead, nipping Hare by the arm, “and take a lesson in Dan Cupid’s ways. ’Twill be: ‘Think of me, and do not forget me!’ And a prate of hopes, and a whisper of pledges. And then the word will hop out like a hot coal, Love! and their little world will be all ablaze—And ’twill be Love … Love … Love, and everything lost if some one be not at hand to spray cold water at the right moment.”
“The garden can?” suggests the practical Ned, in a mouthing undertone.
“Hush! lad,” murmured the other, “hast yet to learn metaphor. Nay—hark! Not a breath, on thy life.”)
“I shall dream, I think, of the gardens of Rockhurst,” Diana was saying.
“The gardens?” echoed Harry. He was leaning against the wall, by the bench, looking down at her, bending close. “Gardens? Is that all you regret, Mistress Harcourt?”