A Sovereign Remedy

by Flora Annie Webster Steel

"They're welcome," retorted Ned with irritation; "I shall lunch in the garden when they've left it. We"--he looked at Aura--"only eat the fruits of the earth, you know."

"It was your cousin who asked me to lunch," began Aura gravely, whereat Ned laughed.

"You have an appalling sense of duty," he replied. "But I give in to it. Now, as I see Hirsch and Co. coming across the lawn, if we slip out by the back we shall escape them till lunch-time anyhow."

Aura looked at him doubtfully. His responsibilities, which were beginning to weigh her down, seemed to affect him not at all.

"Are you going too, Mr. Cruttenden?" asked Helen, noticing a certain hesitation on Ted's part. In truth he was undecided. He wanted to see Mr. Hirsch, and, at the same time, he wished to be with Aura. Of course he could see his chief after lunch; but supposing they did not stop to lunch?

So Ned Blackborough had the girl to himself. For a moment or two, as he led her round by the back way through thickets of rhododendrons, he felt triumphant, as a man does when he sees an opportunity before him. And then, then he forgot everything in pure delight at her eager face, in the joy of her enjoyment.

"It is the most beautiful place in the world," she cried at last, "and this is the most beautiful thing in it."

She was on her knees beside a tuft of red bronze Tyrolean saxifrage, out of whose close carpet of velvet the tiny silver-green scimitars of the iris alata curved round guarding its broad, purple-blue blossoms. For they were in the winter-garden now. Not one of those crystal palaces of palms and hot-water pipes which answer to that name in the minds of so many. No! This was a real garden, in full air, but tucked away from every breeze that blows in a cove giving on the sea. Among the rocks above the small cleft of sandy beach on which the tide lapped lazily, grew all the kindly green things innumerable which have learnt to do without the rest of winter sleep. The winding walks edged their narrow way through great tinted carpets of saxifrage and sedums, and many another sturdy-leaved coverer of bare earth. Bronze and sage and golden, brown and purple and grey, with a few blue blossoms on a creeping veronica, a few late primroses, a few early winter aconites. And through it, over all, was the fine scent of the winter heliotrope that clung to the crannies of the rocks or grew lush by the little stream, which, falling in tinkling cascades, slid along the sand into the sea. It was such a garden as every one with patience and care might have; which none but the very few take the trouble to plant. There was nothing in it to tell of wealth save an old stone sphinx jutting out by the steps which led to the tiny wedge of beach, its plinth forming a sort of jetty, beside which a boat lay moored. That had the measureless calm of Egypt in its eyes as it stood, backed by the changeful sky, the changeful sea.

"I believe it sees me," added Aura, looking up from the broad open face of the flower, her own as open, as beautiful, "and it has never seen me before. That makes me feel less strange, here where everything is new--and strange. It seems to me I have seen more to-day than in all my life before. It is so curious----"

"What? To see new things?" he answered, smiling down at her. "Isn't that the only thing worth having in life--to be able to think when you wake, 'To-day something may come to me which never came before'--to feel a sort of perpetual annunciation----"