Miss Pickering followed her mother. Tall, very tall, and poised with a lovely grace, she was, but for the arresting darkness of brows and lashes, fair; with the infantile fairness, the wild-rose tints, that to the ingenuous male will always seem to vouch for a spiritual exquisiteness to match. And she, too, had small, aquiline features, and her hair was as golden as the heart of a wild rose. She did not smile, like her mother; she was a serene young lady, and silent, as loveliness should be.
“This sweet place!” said Mrs. Pickering. “How charmingly you are improving it, Mr. Westmacott; it looks prettier every time I see it.”
“It will take years before it looks as I mean it to look,” said Aubrey, leading them up the terraces. “That’s the joy of gardening, isn’t it? It gives one something to plan for one’s whole future.” He smiled with a slight appealingness at Miss Pickering. “I am afraid I make myself rather foolish sometimes; I talk so much about my garden.”
“I don’t wonder that you do,” said Mrs. Pickering; “it’s quite a little Paradise.”
In the drawing-room it was Mrs. Pickering who continued to talk. She renewed her laments over the water-colours. "To think that these beautiful old places should get into the hands of common middle-class people!"—Aubrey had again to assure her that the people who had bought his mother’s old home were very nice indeed.—And Mrs. Pickering said that she doted upon his room, “So old-world, so peaceful!” and expatiated on the view of the terraced lawns and further meadows from the window. She made no comment on his foxgloves, and it seemed like a presage of happiness when Miss Pickering, from her chair, remarked, looking up at them, “How lovely your pink foxgloves are!”
“You think so? You like them? Yes, yes, are they not lovely?” He was delighted with her commendation.
“It’s such a pretty idea, putting them with the grasses,” said Miss Pickering. “I do like lots of flowers in a room.”
He did not have an opportunity of speaking with her alone till after tea. Then, when they had all gone into the garden—how it happened he did not know, for he would not have dared arrange it—he found himself walking down the path towards the copse with Miss Pickering, while behind them, quite far already behind them, Mrs. Pickering paused and exclaimed over the herbaceous border, Mr. Carew beside her. Mrs. Carew and Mrs. Pomfrey had sat down under the trees near the house.
“Would you like to see the pink foxgloves growing?” he asked her. “They are very beautiful growing—more beautiful, I think you’ll feel, than in the house.”
“I’d love to see them,” said Miss Pickering.