Florella, without any excuses or shyness, took a little portfolio from the table, and showed some sketches of flowers in water-colour. The execution was slight and not perfectly skilful; but each little drawing had a characteristic suggestiveness which freed it entirely from the inexpressible dulness of most fruit and flower pieces.
A bunch of growing sweet peas labelled, “A tiptoe for a flight,” had the summer breeze blowing through them; “Pure lilies of eternal peace,” had a certain dreamy, unearthly fairness that suggested “airs of heaven,” and “A bit of green” was a cheerful, struggling plant of flowering musk, in sooty soil, on a smutty window-sill, with a yellow fog behind it.
“Why, that’s just how flowers look against smoke,” said Guy. “They glare with brightness.”
“Ah, that’s what I meant!” said Florella, pleased. “Do you draw, Mr Waynflete? You are fond of pictures?”
“I can’t draw,” said Guy; “but I can write down faces in pen-and-ink outline. I can’t make pictures. I don’t think I enjoy them.”
“Waynflete likes music,” said Cuthbert; “that is more in his line.”
“Tunes often put drawings into my head,” said Florella, simply. “The time when I began to do flower pictures was at Waynflete,” she added. “Some of the flowers there looked so wonderfully old; and age is a very difficult sentiment to convey in a flower! I never could manage it.”
As she spoke, there was a movement among the guests, and Mrs Palmer caught the name.
“Ah, Waynflete!” she said. “It was such a delightful old place, and so bracing. I should have liked to stay there very much, but the noises were such a worry. I declare when I sat in that old drawing-room by myself in a summer evening, I used to feel quite creepy. Mr Waynflete, do tell me if any noises have been heard since?”
Some of the company pricked up their ears. There are several aspects under which “ghosts” may be viewed, and there is no question that they are both fashionable and interesting. A haunted house and its owner are not often under notice at once.