“I could fashion no better at the time,” he answered, and he picked up Fra Angelico’s sketch of the Garden of Heart’s Delight. The cypresses were there, and the smooth lawns, with the white marble pavilion shining from the green depths, whilst the artist-friar had cunningly depicted a gold mohur tree, in all the glory of its summer foliage, to cover one corner of a tower where the sheer lines were too harsh.
Roger rose ponderously, having lost that ease of movement which was wont to be so deceptive when an enemy deemed him slow because of his size. He looked over Walter’s shoulder.
“’Tis a gaudy picture,” he growled, “but ’tis not the place I dream of at times when a pasty is too rich or the beer a trifle heavy.”
“I oft wish I had seen the garden as you knew it, Walter,” said his wife.
“May the Lord be thanked your wish was not granted!” he said, drawing her nearer and kissing her with a heartiness that was unaffected. “’Twas no fit habitation for you, Nellie, or for any Christian woman. Ask my Lady Sainton. She knew it, only too well. The Empress is right. It was best fitted to hold a tomb.”
And, indeed, while the men went forth into an English rose-garden, to indulge in the new fashionable habit of smoking tobacco-leaf, Matilda assured her young friend, for the hundredth time, that, notwithstanding the undoubted charms and barbaric elegance of the Persian princess, Walter Mowbray treated her very cavalierly. So, for the hundredth time, Nellie drove the wrinkles of thought from her brow, smiled delightedly when Matilda vowed that the man’s face on the stone elephant was not a quarter as handsome as Roger himself, and thus effectually banished the dim but lovely and ever fascinating wraith of Nur Mahal.
Footnotes:
[A] “There is indeed a God!”
[B] Collar or circlet.