His conversation, after he had smilingly satisfied her anxiety as to her father’s being comfortably settled with Mrs. Paine by his side, turned on the house and scenery. It was grand and beautiful; he had not been prepared for a mansion so fine, or a park so picturesque; she had never described it as so very charming; did she not think it so?
“Had she not? she thought she had mentioned how much she admired it; perhaps he had forgotten; descriptions of unknown places seldom made much impression.”
That depended, he affirmed, on who gave the description; he did not think he had forgotten any thing she had ever said, any conversation they had ever held.
Hilary looked down at the bunch of exotics she held in her hand. They caught his eye also, and he remarked on their beauty, taking them from her hand to examine them.
“They are all foreigners,” said he, “or raised in a hot-house!”
“Yes, I believe they came from Mr. Huyton’s hot-houses, which are always beautiful.”
“And what is that, and that, and that?” questioned he, still holding the flowers. He made her tell him the names of each blossom, and commented on them and their peculiarities.
He seemed very happy, and perhaps was rendered still more so, by an observation of Hilary’s in reply to his remarks. As he returned her flowers, he said, with a sort of subdued smile,
“You should give me my violets back again, for they are quite put to shame by these grand specimens of floriculture. They did very well at the Vicarage, but here they seem out of place, and it would be a charity to hide them in their native obscurity again.”
“Then they are exactly like their wearer,” replied she, blushing a little, and smiling at the same time, “and sympathy forbids my throwing them away.”