Even to die in, Daffadillies was marvelous. No roads, save the one road through the woodlands by which the recumbent Julia and her nurse motored, gave access to that great house set high above terraced gardens. On three sides of it--east, west, and north--great oaks baffled the winds; southward were no trees, only slope on slope of field and farm-land, ramparted in middle distance by the bosoming downs.
Day-long, the wise brown southward-gazing face of Daffadillies trapped the sunshine in its high gabled windows; day-long, whiffs of the sparkling sea blew tempered across twenty miles of kindly earth into that vast oak-floored room, with the four-poster bed and the Jacobean furniture, which Aliette at her very first visit had mentally chosen for the invalid.
In that Sussex home quiet reigned like a sleeping princess. The balustered staircases gave back scarcely a sound to the sedulous feet of Julia'a serving-women. Neither from the brown-paneled dining-room nor from the book-lined library could any whisper of voice arise to where, had she so willed it, the invalid might have dreamed away her summer in country peace, hearing only the swish and click of the mower on the tennis-lawn, the snap and cut of gardeners' shears among the shrubberies.
But it was not for dreams, rather for their accomplishment, that Julia had taken Daffadillies. Aliette, bringing Ponto on the evening train, found her in the highest fettle, curiously awake.
"My dear," she smiled, "this place is ideal. Ideal! You've done wonders."
"Then the journey didn't tire you?"
"Not a bit. I feel quite well. So well, in fact, that I've told nurse she needn't sleep in my room to-night."
"But suppose you were taken ill?"
"I sha'n't be taken ill." Something of the old mastery was back in Julia's voice. "If I am, I can always ring for Smithers." And she touched the two electric pushes, one for the light and the other for the bell, which nurse had arranged under her pillow; smiling at her own astuteness when--her morphia refused--the watchers withdrew for the night. Then she waited, ears tense, eyes wide open, heart throbbing in anticipation of its deed.
Smithers, acting on instructions, had set out her writing-things on the desk under the vast curtained window. A night-light burned on the bed-table. Across the glow of the night-light she saw her traveling ink-pot, the gold pen which Ronnie had given her for Christmas, the leather manuscript-box with its store of foolscap and sharpened pencils.