They strolled among these flowers in this pleasant seclusion for a time, until Lady Alice pronounced herself fatigued, and sat down upon a rustic seat, with due ceremony of adjustment and assistance.
"Sit down by me, Mr. Strangways. Which am I to call you, by-the-bye?"
"Which you please, madam," answered Varbarriere, with the kind of smile he used with her—deferential, with, nevertheless, a suspicion of the scornful and amused in it, and as he spoke he was seated.
"As for you, grandson," she continued, "you had better take a walk in the garden—you'll find the door open;" she pointed with her parasol to the old-fashioned fluted door-case of Caen stone in the garden wall; "and I want to talk a little to my friend, M. de Varbarriere—Mr. Strangways, as I remember him." And turning to that sage, she said—
"You got my letter, and have well considered it, I trust?"
"I never fail to consider well anything that falls from Lady Alice Redcliffe."
"Well, sir, I must tell you——"
These were the last words that Guy heard as he departed, according to orders, to visit her ladyship's old-fashioned garden. Could a young fellow fancy a duller entertainment? Yet to Guy Deverell it was not dull. Everything he looked on here was beautified and saddened by the influence that had been there so recently and was gone.
Those same roses, whose leaves were dropping to the earth, she had seen but a day or two ago in their melancholy clusters; under these tall trees she had walked, here on this rustic seat she had rested; and Guy, like a reverent worshipper of relics, sat him down in the same seat, and, with a strange thrill, fancied he saw a pencilled word or two on the arm of it. But no, it was nothing, only the veining of the wood. Why do ladies use their pencils so much less than we men, and so seldom (those I mean whose relics are precious) trace a line by chance, and throw this bread upon the waters, where we poor devils pull cheerless against wind and tide?
Here were flowers, too, tied up on tall sticks. He wondered whether Beatrix ever tended these with her delicate fingers, and he rose and looked at the bass-mat with inexpressible feeling.