The flicker of the tall wax tapers now caught her dainty figure, casting golden lights and deep, ruddy shadows on her fair young face and on the whiteness of her gown. In her arms she held an enormous sheaf of pale pink monthly roses, the spoils of the garden, lavish in its autumnal glory.
Never had Wessex—fastidious, fickle, insouciant Wessex—seen anything more radiant, more exquisite, more poetic than this apparition which came towards him like the realization of all his maddest dreams.
For one moment more he lingered, his ardent, passionate soul was loath to give up these heaven-born seconds spent in looking at her. Her eyes shone darkly in the gleam of the candle light and had wondrous reflections in them, which looked ruddy and hot; her delicately chiselled features were suffused with a strange glow, which seemed to come from within; and her lips were slightly parted, moist and red like some ripe summer fruit. From her whole person there came an exhalation of youth and womanhood, of purity and soul-stirring passion.
"Come down, sweet singer," said Wessex to her at last.
She gave a startled little cry, leant over the balustrade, and the sheaf of flowers dropped from her arms, falling in a long cascade of leaves and blossoms, rose-coloured and sweet-scented, at his feet.
"Ah, Your Grace frightened me!" she whispered, with just a touch of feminine coquetry. "I . . . I . . . didn't know you were here."
"I swear you did not, sweet saint . . . but now . . . as I am here . . . come down quickly ere I perish with longing for a nearer sight of your dear eyes."
"But my flowers," she said, with a sudden access of timidity, brought forth by the thrilling ardour of his voice. "I had picked them for Her Majesty's oratory."
"Nay! let them all wither save one . . . which I will take from your hand. Come down. . . ."
One of the roses had remained fixed in the stiff fold of her panier. She took it between her fingers and sighed.