CHAPTER XIX
Stella found Lady Verny weeding. She drew the weeds up very gracefully and thoroughly, with a little final shake.
It was a hard, shivering March morning. Next to the bed upon which Lady Verny was working was a sheet of snowdrops under a dark yew-hedge. They trembled and shook in the light air like a drift of wind-blown snow.
Stella hovered irresolutely above them; then she said:
"Lady Verny, I am afraid I must go back to the town hall next week. I haven't been any use."
Lady Verny elaborately coaxed out a low-growing weed, and then, with a vicious twist, threw it into the basket beside her.
"Why don't you go and talk to Julian?" she asked. "He can't be expected to jump a five-barred gate if he doesn't know it's there."
Stella hesitated before she spoke; then she said with a little rush:
"What I feel now is that I'm not the person to tell him—to tell him it's there, I mean. I don't know why I ever thought I was. The person to tell him that would be some one he could notice like a light, not a person who behaves like a candle caught in a draft whenever he speaks to her."