“You were born under a star that brought me good luck.”
They were in the flower-garden, a delightful old garden of velvet turf and herbaceous borders, a garden brimful of roses, standard roses and climbing roses and dwarf roses, arches of roses that made the blue sky beyond look bluer, alleys shaded with roses, like the vine-clad berceaux of Italy. It was a garden shut in by walls of ilex and yew, and so secluded as to make an al fresco saloon for summer habitation; a saloon in which one could breakfast or dine, without fear of being espied by any one approaching the hall door.
Eve was enchanted with her new home. She poured out her confidence to him who was so soon to be her husband, with the right to know her inmost thoughts, her every impulse or fancy. It was not often that she talked of herself; but to-day she was full of personal reminiscences, and Vansittart encouraged her innocent egotism.
“I don’t think you realize that you are playing the part of King Cophetua, and marrying a beggar-maiden,” she said. “I don’t think you can have any idea what a struggle my life has been since I was twelve years old—how that dear Nancy and I have had to scheme and manage, in order to feed four hungry girls. You remember how Hetty and Peggy giggled when you talked about dinner. We scarcely ever had a meal which you and Lady Hartley would call dinner. We were vegetarians half our time—we abstained when it wasn’t Lent. We had our Ember days all the year round. Oh, pray don’t look so horrified. We had the kind of food we liked. Vegetable soups, and savoury messes, salads and cheese, cakes and buns, bread and jam. We had meals that we all enjoyed tremendously—only we could not have asked a dropper-in to stay and lunch or dine—could we? So it was lucky people took so little notice of us.”
“My darling, you were the pearls, and your neighbours were the swine.”
“And then our dress. How could we be neat tailor-made girls when a ten-pound note once in a way was all we could extort from father for the whole flock? Ten pounds! Lady Hartley would pay as much for a bonnet as would buy gowns for all five of us. And then you bring me to this delicious old house—so spacious, so dignified, with such a settled air of wealth and comfort—and you ask if I can suggest improvement in things which to my mind are perfect.”
“My dearest, I want you to be happy, and very happy; and to feel that this house is your house, to deal with as you please.”
“I only want to live in it, with you,” she answered shyly, “and not to disappoint you. What should I do if King Cophetua were to repent his romantic marriage, and were to think of all the brilliant matches he might have made?”
“When we are settled here I will show you the girls my mother would have liked me to marry, and you will see that they are not particularly brilliant. And I do not even know if any of them would have accepted me, had I been minded to offer myself.”
“They could not have refused you. No one could. To know you is to adore you. Come, Jack, you have been talking rodomontade to me. It is my turn now. You are not extraordinarily handsome. I suppose, as a sober matter of fact, Mr. Sefton is handsomer. Don’t wince at the sound of his name. You know I have always detested him. I doubt if you are even exceptionally clever—but you have a kind of charm—you creep into a girl’s heart unawares. I pity the woman who loved you, and whom you did not love.”