But what it reminded him of did not transpire, for at that moment they were joined by Clara, basket in hand. She was going to gather some roses, she said. Roland, however much he might or might not have preferred his cigar and his host’s more or less sporting stories, could do nothing less than offer to help her. Which offer was graciously accepted.
“Ha-ha! Roland, she’ll make you do all the finger-licking part of the business,” jocosely cried the Colonel after them.
“By the bye, what was the sequel to that unlucky smash in the conservatory?” said Clara, as they turned into the garden path. “The orchid, I mean. Did you get frightfully scolded?”
This in reference to a casualty which had befallen during the speaker’s stay at Cranston, when again the sweep of Roy’s blundering tail had wrought mischief, breaking a fairly valuable orchid.
“No—I was let down rather easily. The veteran said it wasn’t a very rare one, and only remarked in his glum way that he supposed dogs would be happier outside conservatories than in them.”
“Ah! I’m glad of that; I was afraid the General would have been dreadfully vexed. Can you reach that, Mr Dorrien? There, if I hold down the bough—so—thanks. Now that other one.”
Her tall, elegant figure showed to advantage in the light morning dress, as in easy attitude she reached up to hold the refractory bough—Clara Neville was not one to indulge in unbecoming exertions. Her voice was low and well modulated, and fell pleasantly upon the ear—around them blossoming rose-bushes and the fragrant scents of the garden—and in the background bits of the red-brick Elizabethan house peeped at them through the trees. In no wise was he insensible to the influences of the picture and its central figure, the graceful, handsome girl talking to him in easy, familiar manner and with her most attractive smile; and then for the first time his father’s words, spoken on the evening of the day he first saw Clara Neville, darted across his mind, “She will have Ardleigh Court”—and now it also dawned upon him that the words had been spoken with design.
Yet how many men would willingly have changed places with him! And, even as things stood, his father’s cherished scheme, for now he felt instinctively that such it was, would not have come adversely to him—if—ah! that little “if!”
“Oh, Mr Dorrien—there, look, you’ve splashed me all over by letting go of that branch too soon,” cried Clara, with a little shiver. “And it has all gone up my sleeve, and it’s rather cold. But never mind,” she added with a laugh, “you’ve come off second best. How you’ve scratched yourself!”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” he replied hastily, apologising for his remissness and feeling guilty. The branch which he had let go of was thorny, and had torn his hand at the same time as it had sprinkled his fair companion with the rain-drops which hung upon its leaves.