He went away and left her to her solitude under the orange tree with its glistening green leaves, its waxen-white flowers and golden globes of fruit. She looked a little sadly at the flowers which had fallen from her hands and which her kneeling lover had crushed into the turf.
"The great booby," she said indignantly to herself. "He has remorselessly crushed all my beautiful flowers."
Was it an omen?
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
Julius Revington went away from the presence of the girl he adored, cast down but not destroyed.
He had set his mind doggedly on winning her and he was by no means despondent of winning her yet.
His grosser, weaker nature could not comprehend the higher, loftier nature of Irene. Her gentle intimation of how he fell short of her ideal had not greatly impressed him except to fill him with a certain amount of sullen jealousy toward some unknown person or other whom it was evident existed in her mind, and possibly in flesh and blood upon the earth.
"Perhaps she has already given her heart away," he thought to himself. "But, no, she is too young. That cannot be."
As he walked slowly along the path toward the villa something bright and shining on the ground attracted his attention. He stooped and picked it up.