"Good-night, dearest."
So, since she was not to give Corrie his morning coffee, she would not give Gerard's to him or see him until his return from the race course. As a matter of course, it was not to be contemplated that she should rise at dawn for a tête-à-tête breakfast with the guest, at this period when all the fine elements that composed their relation hesitated at the point of crystallization. But she scarcely regretted the postponed interview. It would be better to meet each other differently, at more leisure. He would come again to the fountain arcade, where she watched for Corrie's return.
When Flavia reached her own room, there stood on her dressing-table a long silver-paper and filigree box. Wondering, she raised the lid, to be met with a gust of exquisite perfume and confronted with a mass of frail yellow roses, lovely with the quaint, virginal beauty of suggestion that separates them from all their other-colored kin. Across the glistening petals lay a cover cut from a pocket dictionary, bearing written upon it one sentence: "Definition of the meaning of Flavia Rose."
She laid her head beside the flowers, gold upon gold. She, also, the fancy came to her, had placed this day in the vase of Al-Mansor. But the day to come outshone it, as a rosy pearl one merely white.
"To-morrow," she whispered to herself. "To-morrow."
VI
WRECK
Gray, sluggish, slow in coming and sullen of aspect, a reluctant dawn succeeded the night. A wet mist clung everywhere in the windless atmosphere, muffling sound as well as light. There was not even a servant stirring in the Rose house, when Gerard descended the dark stairs and went out into the chill, damp park.
In the garage one bright point shone out; under a swinging electric lamp Rupert was preparing his machine to go out, a solitary figure in the expanse of wavering shadows and dim bulks.