When the arch of flowers was empty and the happy pair had left for the train, Lily and Gerald went strolling about the garden hand in hand.
Lily had been a bridesmaid, Gerald an usher. Both were in the fine apparel of their parts; thoughts of weddings hummed in both of their heads.
“Well, Lily,” said the young man idly, in their walk between odorous lines of wall-flowers and heliotrope, “I suppose you too will soon be getting married.”
“Oh, no!” Lily shook her head. “There is nobody I could marry.”
“Why, I thought, Lily,” he said, “that you were going to marry me!”
“No, Gerald,” she replied promptly, but with gentleness and regret, so as not to hurt his feelings.
“I might come and live with you,” she added, after a second, “and keep house for you. A cottage in the country, with beehives and ducks and a little donkey.... Gerald, do you know about Sir William Wallace?”
351Though a chasm appeared to divide this subject from the last, Gerald shrewdly supposed a connection between them.
“Very little. You tell me.”