It was early autumn, and Aura was standing in the garden, looking more like a Botticelli angel than ever, for her face was mutinous, the very curls about her temples and ears all crisped and gold-edged as she defied even the sunlight.
She was engaged in an argument with Martha, who, in Mr. Sylvanus Smith's brief yearly absences on the work of the Socialistic Congress, still attempted an authority which she had once held undisputed.
"Well, I wouldn't, not if it was ever so," asserted the worthy woman, her face aflame with righteous indignation. "Mr. Meredith, the rector, he know his part, an' being unbaptized there won't be no funeral, so what's the use of flowers?"
Aura's eyebrows almost met in a sudden frown. "You don't mean that they will refuse----"
"I don't know nothin', Miss H'Aura," interrupted Martha; "only what I hear tell. I don't 'old with baptism, nor yet with burials, specially the penny things they has hereabout. I don't want no halfpence to help bury me. I ain't like the folk nowadays, as is that restless they don't know where they'll lie, much less where they'll go to when they're dead. But I do hear it said that there'll be a fuss, becos the Calvinists wouldn't baptize the babby, hoping to get hold o' the name o' the father, for it was a sin and a shame, her not bein', as it were, all there, an' now the rector'll object to a unbaptized, except in the odd corner where they puts the 'fellow deceased.' No, it ain't the sort of thing for you to be mixing yourself up with, Miss H'Aura. Them lovely lilies'd be ashamed o' your taking them to that gurl Gwen."
Aura bent her head caressingly to the great bunch of gold-rayed Japanese lilies she held.
"I am taking them to a dead baby," she said quietly, "the lilies won't be ashamed of it."
And with that she turned on her heel superbly, leaving Martha speechless, to watch the blue linen smock cross the lawn and disappear behind the rhododendrons. A glimmer of it showed like a bit of heaven among the birchwood beyond the bridge ere the older woman found her tongue, and going over to where Adam was weeding beetroot confided in him.
"You mark my word, Adam Bate," she said solemnly, "Miss H'Aura" (the h was always added on such occasions as a point of ceremony) "'ll marry the wrong man, sure as eggs is eggs."
Adam looked up aghast. "The wrong 'un? Why, sakes me, she ain't got never one at all; and sorry be, for 'twud be a right sight to see 'un billin' and cooin' 'mongst the yapple trees, as true lovers shud."