But while he was thinking it, Manuel had spoken it. "Miss Garda, I would give a year out of my life for a picture of you as you are at this moment!" he said, ardently. Winthrop turned away.
He went to look at some camellias, whose glossy leaves formed a thicket at a little distance; on the other side of this thicket he discovered a crape-myrtle avenue, the delicate trees so choked and hustled by the ruder foliage which had grown up about them that they stood like captives in the midst of a rabble, broken-hearted and dumb; with some pushing he made his way within, and followed the lost path. It brought him to a mound of tangled shrubbery which rose like a small hill at this end of the garden, decked here and there, in what seemed inaccessible places, with brilliant flowers. But the places had not been inaccessible to Torres. Winthrop met him returning from the thorny conflict with a magnificent stalk of blossoms which he had captured there, and was now bringing back in triumph; it was a long wand of gorgeous spurred bells, each two inches in length, crimson without, cream-color within, the lip of the flaring lower petal lined with purple, and spotted with gold. Torres carried his prize to Garda, and offered it in silence. She thanked him prettily in Spanish, and he stood beside her, his dark face in a dull glow from pleasure.
"Perhaps it is poisonous," murmured Manuel, taking good care, however, to murmur in English.
"Oh, my dearest child! pray put it down," said Mrs. Thorne, anxiously.
"It is quite harmless," said the clergyman, "I know the family to which it belongs. It is not indigenous here; probably the original shrub was planted in the garden many years ago, and has run wild."
Garda took the stalk in her right hand, extended her left rigidly, and, stiffening her light figure in a wooden attitude, looked meekly upward.
"Bravo! bravo!" said the Doctor from his well-curb, laughing, and beginning on a second orange.
She stood thus for a few instants only. But it was very well done—an exact copy of a dark, grim old picture in the little Spanish cathedral of Gracias, a St. Catherine with a stalk of lilies in her hand.
Winthrop, who had returned, was standing on the other side of the open space. Apparently he had not noticed this little pantomime. Garda looked at him for a moment. Then she left her place, went across, and gravely decorated him with her stalk of blossoms, the large stem going through three of the button-holes of his coat before it could hold itself firmly; the brilliant flowers extended diagonally across his breast, past his chin, and above one ear.
"Your hat will break the top buds," said Garda, surveying her handiwork. "Please take it off."