Before I crossed the little bridge I scented the big orange-tinted tea-roses and the pinks. Leaves on apricots were falling; the fig-tree was bare of verdure, and the wind chased the big, bronzed leaves across the beds of herbs, piling them into heaps at the base of the granite wall.
A boy took my horse; a servant in full Breton costume 260 admitted me; the velvet humming of Sylvia Elven’s spinning-wheel filled the silence, like the whirring of a great, soft moth imprisoned in a room:
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“Woe to the Maids of Paradise, Yvonne! Twice have the Saxons landed—twice! Yvonne! Yet shall Paradise see them thrice! Yvonne! Yvonne! Marivonik! “Fair is their hair and blue their eyes, Yvonne! Body o’ me! their words are lies, Yvonne! Maids of Paradise, oh, be wise! Yvonne! Yvonne! Marivonik!” |
The door swung open noiselessly; the whir of the wheel and the sound of the song filled the room for an instant, then was shut out as the Countess de Vassart closed the door and came forward to greet me.
In her pretty, soft gown, with a tint of blue ribbon at the neck and shoulders, she seemed scarcely older than a school-girl, so radiant, so sweet and fresh she stood there, giving me her little hand to touch in friendship.
“It was so good of you to come,” she said; “I know you made it a duty and gave up a glorious gallop to be amiable to me. Did you?”
I tried to say something, but her loveliness confused me.
Somebody brought tea—I don’t know who; all I could see clearly was her gray eyes meeting mine—the light from the leaded window touching her glorious, ruddy hair.
As for the tea, I took whatever she offered; doubtless I drank it, but I don’t remember. Nor do I remember what she said at first, for somehow I began thinking about my lions, and the thought obsessed me even while 261 striving to listen to her, even in the tingling maze of other thoughts which kept me dumb under the exquisite spell of this intimacy with her.
The delicate odor of ripened herbs stole into the room from the garden; far away, through the whispering whir of the spinning-wheel, I heard the sea.