They were going to her. If she were out, they would go and find her; at her aunt's, at the Vicarage, on the links yonder; anywhere but at Discombe. He hoped she had not gone to Discombe.
"Yes, he is fond of me, I believe, in his own way. There never was a better husband," Lady Emily answered thoughtfully. "But I know, Allan! I know!"
"What, mother?"
"I know that I was not his first love—that I was only a pis aller—that there is something wanting in his life, and always must be till the end. I should brood over it all, perhaps, Allan, and end by making myself unhappy, if it were not for my farm; but all those living creatures occupy my mind. One living fox-terrier is worth a whole picture-gallery."
Suzette was at home. The after-math had been cut in the meadow in front of Marsh House, a somewhat swampy piece of ground at some seasons, but tolerably dry just now, after a hot summer. Suzette and Bessie Edgefield were tossing the scented grass in the afternoon sunshine, and fancying themselves useful haymakers. They threw down their hay-forks at the approach of visitors, and there was no more work done that day, though Allan offered to take a fork. They all sat in the garden talking, or wandered about among the flowers in a casual way, and while Bessie and Lady Emily were looking at the contents of the only greenhouse, Allan found himself alone with Suzette in a long gravel walk on the other side of the lawn-like meadow, along all the length of which there was a broad border filled with old-fashioned perennials that had been growing and spreading and multiplying themselves for half a century. A row of old medlar and hazel trees sheltered this border from the north wind, and hid the boundary fence.
"Dear old garden!" cried Allan. "How much nicer an old garden is than a new one!"
"I hope you don't mean to disparage your garden at Beechhurst. Our gardener is always complaining of the old age of all things here. Everything is worn out. The trees, the shrubs, the frames, the greenhouse. One ought to begin again from the very beginning, he says. He would be charmed with Beechhurst, where all things are so neat and trim."
"Cockney trimness, I'm afraid; but if you are satisfied with it, if you think it not altogether a bad garden——"
"I think it a delightful garden," said Suzette, blushing at that word "satisfied," which implied so much.
"I am glad of that," said Allan, with a deep sigh of content, as if some solemn question had been settled. "And you like my mother?"