His practised eye made him aware of the fact that Beatrice understood what he considered to be the essentials of a recherché lunch: a lunch appeals to the eye; but wine appeals to other senses than the sense of seeing; and the result of his judgment was to convince him that, if Mr. Avon was as careless in the affairs of the cellar as he was in the affairs of the drawing-room, he was to be congratulated upon having about him someone who understood still hock at any rate.
In the drawing-room, she busied herself in arranging, in Wedgwood bowls, some flowers that he had brought her—trifles of sprawling orchids, Eucharis lilies, and a fairy tropical fern or two, all of which are quite easy to be procured in London in October for the expenditure of a few sovereigns. The picture that she made bending over her bowls was inexpressibly lovely. He sat silent, watching her, while she prattled away with the artless high spirits of a child. She was surely the loveliest thing yet made by God. He thought of what the pious old writer had said about a particular fruit, and he paraphrased it in his own mind, saying, that doubtless God could make a lovelier thing, but certainly He had never made it.
“I am delighted to have such sweet flowers now,” she cried, as she observed, with critical eyes, the effect of a bit of flaming crimson—an orchid suggesting a flamingo in flight—over the turquoise edge of the bowl. “I am delighted, because I have a prospect of other visitors beside yourself, my lord.”
“Other visitors?” said he. He wondered if he might venture to suggest to her the inadvisability of entertaining other visitors during her father’s absence.
“Other visitors indeed,” she replied. “I did not tell you yesterday all that I had to tell. I forget now what we talked about yesterday. How did we put in our time?”
She looked up with laughing eyes across the bowl of flowers, that she held up to her face.
“I don’t forget—I shall never forget,” said he, in a low voice.
“You must never forget,” said she. “But to my visitors—who are they, do you fancy? Don’t try to guess, for if you should succeed I should be too mortified to be able to tell you that you were right. I will tell you now. Three days ago—while we were still on the Continent—Miss Craven called. She promised faithfully to do so at Castle Innisfail—indeed, she suggested doing so herself; and I found her card waiting for me on my return with a few words scrawled on it, to tell me that she would return in some days. I don’t think that anything should be in the same bowl with a Eucharis lily—even the Venus-hair fern looks out of place beside it.”
She had strayed from her firebrand orchids to the white lilies.
“You are quite right, indeed,” said he. “A lily and you stand alone—you make everything else in the world seem tawdry.”