“That’s true. But that’s why they’re able now to go ahead.”
“Go ahead!” Mr. Wilkins could only echo the outrageous words.
“I’m sorry, Mellersh,” said Mrs. Wilkins again, “if you don’t like it, but—”
Her grey eyes shone, and her face rippled with the light and conviction that had so much surprised Rose the first time they met.
“It’s useless minding,” she said. “I shouldn’t struggle if I were you. Because—”
She stopped, and looked first at one alarmed solemn face and then at the other, and laughter as well as light flickered and danced over her.
“I see them being the Briggses,” finished Mrs. Wilkins.
That last week the syringa came out at San Salvatore, and all the acacias flowered. No one had noticed how many acacias there were till one day the garden was full of a new scent, and there were the delicate trees, the lovely successors to the wistaria, hung all over among their trembling leaves with blossom. To lie under an acacia tree that last week and look up through the branches at its frail leaves and white flowers quivering against the blue of the sky, while the least movement of the air shook down their scent, was a great happiness. Indeed, the whole garden dressed itself gradually towards the end in white, and grew more and more scented. There were the lilies, as vigorous as ever, and the white stocks and white pinks and white banksia roses, and the syringa and the jessamine, and at last the crowning fragrance of the acacias. When, on the first of May, everybody went away, even after they had got to the bottom of the hill and passed through the iron gates out into the village they still could smell the acacias.