She endured her absence from home far better than she had expected, so much easier was it to stay away than to set off, and so completely was she bound up with her companions, loving Phœbe like a parent, and the other two like a nurse, and really liking the brother. All took delight in the winter paradise of Hyères, that fragment of the East set down upon the French coast, and periodically peopled with a motley multitude of visitors from all the lands of Europe, all invalids, or else attendants on invalids.
Bertha still shrank from all contact with society, and the ladies, for her sake, lived entirely apart; but Mervyn made acquaintance, and sometimes went out on short expeditions with other gentlemen, or to visit his mercantile correspondents at Marseilles, or other places on the coast.
It was while he was thus absent that the three sisters stood one afternoon on the paved terrace of the Hotel des Isles d’Or, which rose behind them, in light coloured stone, of a kind of
Italian-looking architecture, commanding a lovely prospect, the mountains on the Toulon side, though near, melting into vivid blue, and white cloud wreaths hanging on their slopes. In front lay the plain, covered with the peculiar gray-tinted olive foliage, overtopped by date palms, and sloping up into rounded hills covered with dark pines, the nearest to the sea bearing on its crest the Church de l’Ermitage. The sea itself was visible beyond the olives, bordered by a line of étangs or pools, and white heaps of salt, and broken by a peninsula and the three Isles d’Or. It was a view of which Bertha seemed never able to have enough, and she was always to be found gazing at it when the first ready for a walk.
‘What are you going to sketch, Phœbe?’ she said, as the sisters joined her. ‘How can you, on such a day as this, with the air, as it were, loaded with cheiranthus smell? It makes one lazy to think of it!’
‘It seems to be a duty to preserve some remembrance of this beautiful place.’
‘It may be a pity to miss it, but as for the duty!’
‘What, not to give pleasure at home, and profit by opportunities?’
‘It is too hard to carry about an embodiment of Miss Fennimore’s rules! Why, have you no individuality, Phœbe?’
‘Must I not sketch, then?’ said Phœbe, smiling.