"Mr. Wornock was a great Shakespearian."
They were in the garden by this time—sauntering with slow footsteps along the level stretch of turf on one side of the broad gravel walk. At the end of the cypress avenue there was a semicircular recess, shut in by a raised bank, and a wall of clipped yew, in which, at regular intervals, there were statues in dark green niches.
"Mr. Wornock brought the statues from Rome when he was a young man. The gardens were laid out by his grandfather nearly a century ago," explained Mrs. Wornock.
Allan noticed that she spoke of her husband generally as "Mr. Wornock."
"That amphitheatre reminds me a little of the Boboli gardens," said Allan; "but there is a peacefulness about this solitude which no public garden can have."
Three peacocks were trailing their plumage on the long lawns between the house and the amphitheatre, and one less gorgeous but more ethereal, a bird of dazzling whiteness, was perched, with outspread tail, on an angle of the cypress wall.
The lady and her companion strolled to the end of the lawn, and crossed the amphitheatre to a stone temple, open on the side fronting the south-western sun, and spacious enough to accommodate a dozen people.
"If you had a garden-play, how delightfully this temple would serve for a central point in your stage," said Allan, admiringly.
"People have asked me to lend them the gardens for a play—'Twelfth Night,' or 'Much Ado about Nothing;' but I have always said no. I should hate to see a crowd in this dear old garden."
"Yet there are people who would think such a place as this created on purpose for garden-parties, and who would desire nothing better than a crowd of smart people."