‘He shall wear the order of St. Fiacre if you like, if there be such an order to reward good gardeners,’ said Othmar gaily, seeing her genuine anxiety on the man’s behalf. ‘I may come and see your decorations to-morrow. Shall I send you a load of flowers? That would be better I think.’
She looked alarmed.
‘Oh no; oh pray, do not!’ she said with earnestness. ‘You are very kind to think of it, Monsieur, but it would frighten the curé, and we should not know what to do with so many, the church is so very small——’
She hesitated a moment, the colour in her cheeks grew warm as she added:
‘My cousin does not know that I come here. I do not mean that it is any secret, but she might think it wrong, intrusive, impertinent——’
‘She could think nothing of the sort,’ said Othmar. ‘They are three words which no one could associate with Mdlle. de Valogne; I am delighted my deserted house could be so honoured. Must you go? I shall not easily forgive myself if I frighten you away. Let me come with you to the gate at least.’
He walked beside her under the palms and on the shaven grass down an aisle of clipped arbutus, carrying for her the camellias, white and rose, which he had broken off their plants with no care for the appearance of the group to which they belonged.
She was silent; she was subdued by an unwonted sense of wrong-doing; she fancied that she had committed some terrible indiscretion; but how was she to have known that he was there, when for three winters the camellias had blossomed unseen in those silent evergreen ways, which no step but a gardener’s had ever disturbed, and where she had come to watch the blackbirds trip over the fallen leaves, and the fountains dance in the sunshine, and the tea-roses shower petals of cream and of gold on the terraces, with no more thought or hesitation than she had gone to the olive-yards of Nicole Sandros? Her confusion had nothing of awkwardness. It was very graceful, almost stately, in its silence; it was the grave innocence, the startled hesitation, of the young nymph surprised in the sanctuary of the grove.
She accepted the orchids with a serious gratitude, which seemed to him quite out of proportion to the slenderness of the gift; but when he said as much she interrupted him:
‘They are so beautiful,’ she said earnestly. ‘It seems cruel to have plucked them. One fancies they will take wing like the butterflies.’