“I must beg pardon,” she said, with rather a bitter little smile, “for my exhibition of emotion. I had forgotten how Englishmen hate such exhibitions. It is vulgar enough to feel strong emotions—a sort of thing that should be left to foreigners and the lower classes; but to show them is to take an out-and-out liberty with the person we show them to, the worst possible bad form. Well, well! Words breaks no bones; 'hearts, though, sometimes,' the poet added: but there again, poets are vulgar-minded, human creatures, born as a general rule at Camberwell, and what can they know of the serene invulnerability of heart that is the test of real good-breeding? Anyhow”—her face changed again, lighting up—“what you say about its being often a good deal easier to fall in love with one man than with another is lamentably true—that's why we don't invariably love with reason. Your thought has elsewhere found expression in song—how does it go?” Her eyes by this time were shining with quite their wonted mirthful fires, yet deep down in them I think one might still have discerned a shadow of despite, as she sang:—
Rien n'y fait, menace ou prière;
L'un parle bien, l'autre se tait;
Et c'est l'autre que je préfère,—
Il n'a rien dit, mais il me plaît.
“Thank goodness,” cried the cheerful voice of Lucilla. “Thank goodness for a snatch of song.” Plump and soft, her brown hair slightly loosened, her fair skin flushed a little by the warmth of the afternoon, she came, with that “languid grace” which has been noted, up the terrace steps, her arms full of fresh-cut roses, so that she moved in the centre of a nebula of perfume. “Only I wish now it had been a blackbird or a thrush. I've spent half an hour wandering in the garden, and not a bird sang once. The silence was quite dispiriting. A garden without birds is a more ridiculous failure than a garden without flowers. I think I shall give this villa up.” She shed her roses into a chair, and let herself, languidly, gracefully, sink into another.
“Birds never do sing in the autumn—do they?” questioned Ruth.
“That's no excuse,” complained Lucilla. “Why don't they? Isn't it what they're made for?”
“Robins do,” said Ponty, “they're singing their blessed little hearts out at this very moment.”
“Where?” demanded Lucilla eagerly, starting up. “I'll go and hear them.”