“I have been so looking forward to showing you the garden,” he said hurriedly in his kind eagerness to put her at her ease. “There are still a few late chrysanthemums, and you will find blue and white violets in the grass by the sundial.”
They passed down the steps together and through the green twilight of the orange groves, and came to a little fountain in the midst of a space of lawn set about with laurels. Hilaire threw a biscuit into the pool, and the dark water gleamed with silver and gold as the fish rushed at it.
“I flatter myself that all the living things in this garden know me,” he said. “I bar the plainer kinds of insects and scorpions, of course; but the small green lizards are charming, aren’t they?”
“Mamie Whittaker had one on a gold chain. She used to wear it sometimes.”
“She would,” he said drily. “The young savage! Better go naked than torture harmless things.”
“This place is perfect,” sighed Olive; and then, “You have no home in France?”
“We should have; but our great-grandfather was guillotined in Paris during the Terror, and his wife and child came to England. Years later, when they might have gone back they would not. Why should they? Napoleon had given the Avenel estates to one of his ruffians, who had since seceded to the Bourbon and so made all secure. Besides, they were happy enough. Marie Louis Hilaire gave music lessons, and the Marquise scrubbed and cooked and patched their clothes—she, who had been the Queen’s friend, and so they managed to keep the little home together. Presently the young man married, and then Jean Marie appeared on the scene. We have a picture of him at the age of five, in a nankeen frock and a frill. Our mother was a Hungarian—hence Jean’s music, I suppose—and there is Romany blood on that side. These are our antecedents. You will not be surprised at our vagaries now?”
Olive smiled. “No, I shall remember the red heels of Versailles, English bread and butter, and the gipsy caravan.”
“Jean has fetched your books from the Monte di Pietà. Marietta found the tickets in your coat pocket. You don’t mind?”
Looking at her he saw her eyes fill with tears, and he hurried on: “No rubbish, I notice. Are you fond of reading?”