"Of course," she said slowly, "there is no other thing for me to do, unless I were to stay here and look after what is left. There is much to do, you know. And now take me to the garden. I want to see what those two are looking at."
It was a wilderness of a garden for all Smalley's care, and one might easily have been lost in it. Side by side they walked down a pathway, and in the far distance they caught a glimpse of Phipson and his host poring over a row of flower pots. Jackson was about to keep straight on, when Mrs. Smalley deliberately turned into a bypath, and he followed her, admiring the perfect outline of her figure and the easy grace of her walk. "Isn't this an odd place?" she said, as on taking a turn they came upon what was evidently the ruin of an old temple. All that remained, however, was the plinth and a single griffin of monstrous size, that stood up above the shrubbery around it and glared down upon the intruders. "Fancy if such things really lived," and she dug the silver-mounted cane she carried into the plaster.
"They did, I think, in the old days," replied Jackson. "It must have been just such a monster who guarded Castle Dolorous and carried away the White Lady to keep her a close prisoner."
"And of course a youthful knight came and blew on a silver bugle, and then there was a fight."
"Yes, and the knight won, and the fair lady gave him a gage to wear, and perhaps----"
"Oh, never mind the perhaps--she gave him her gage, did she? What did she give?" and as Ruys said this she loosened with her hand a bunch of mignonette that was pinned to her dress.
"Oh, a ribbon or a kerchief, or maybe a flower, and the knight wore it as a charm against all evil, and a light to guide him on his quest."
"Yes," she said dreamily, "the good old days--I would we were now in them. I can not picture a knight in a tweed suit--can you? How would a gage look on that?" and with a sudden movement of her hand she placed the flowers against Peregrine's breast and held them there.
"Will you let it rest there?" His voice sounded strange and hollow to himself. Ruys bent forward and fastened the flowers in his coat slowly and deliberately, standing close to him as she did this, and a mad longing came over the man to clasp her to him, to ask her to put her white arms round his neck and say she loved him, to tell her she was loved with a love that could only end with his death. But he held out somehow, God alone knows how, and when Ruys had pinned the flowers over his heart she said softly:
"There, that is my gage; remember, it is to be an amulet to guide you to the right."