Clodagh laughed; then all at once her face looked grave.
"Dearest," she said suddenly, "you don't know how much!" And without explaining her words, or waiting for Nance to speak again, she passed quickly across the hall and up the stairs.
Four different times Clodagh began her letter to Barnard. Sitting by the writing-table close to the open window of her bedroom, she watched the various members of the house party depart on their different ways; but the quieter and more deserted the house became, the more impossible it seemed to her to accomplish the task she had in hand. At last, with a gesture of despair, she tore up the half-written letters that lay strewn about her; and, rising from the table with a sigh of vexation, left the room, closing the door softly.
With a frown of unhappiness and perplexity still upon her forehead, she descended the stairs, crossed the hall, and passing round the back of the house, made her way to the rose garden.
The rose garden at Tuffnell was always a place of beauty; but in the month of July it was a paradise of scent and colour. Down its centre ran a long strip of close-cut lawn, flanked on either side by stone seats and stone nymphs and satyrs, brought from an old Italian garden; on the high wall, that preserved to the place an absolute seclusion, a dozen peacocks sunned themselves gorgeously; while over the entire enclosure grew—and climbed—and drooped—roses; roses of every shade and of every size; roses that filled the air with a warm scent that seemed at once to mingle with and to hold the summer sun.
She paused for an instant upon entering this enchanted garden, and drew a deep breath of involuntary delight; then, walking slowly, as though haste might desecrate such beauty, she passed down the long smooth lawn that formed an alley of greenness amid the pink and crimson of the flowers.
Pausing at the farther end, she stood, soothed by the sights and scents about her, until suddenly a harsh, disturbed cry from one of the peacocks broke the spell. She turned sharply, and saw Deerehurst standing close behind her.
"I saw you from my dressing-room window," he said, in answer to her look of surprise. "Was it very presumptuous of me to follow you?"
The cold, familiar voice banished the thought of the roses. Her vexations and perplexities came back upon her abruptly, causing her face to cloud over.
"No!" she said hastily—"no! I—I think I am glad to see you. I am in a hopeless mood to-day. Things won't go right!"