Evadne looked at the pony. "Take him round," she said to the groom; and then she remarked that it must be tea-time, and asked us both to go in, and have some.
The air had brought a delicate tinge of colour to her usually pale cheeks, and she looked bright and bonny as she sat beside the tea-table, taking off her gloves and chatting, with her hat pushed slightly up from her forehead. It was an expansive moment with her, one of the rare ones when she unconsciously revealed something of herself in her conversation.
There were some flowers on the tea-table which I admired.
"Ah!" she said, with a sigh of satisfaction in their beauty; "I derive all my pleasure in life from things inanimate. An arrangement of deep-toned marigolds with brown centres in a glass like these, all aglow beneath the maiden-hair, gives me more pleasure than anything else I can think of at this moment."
"Not more pleasure than your friends do," I ventured.
"I don't know," she replied. "In the matter of love surgit amari aliquid. Friends disappoint us. But in the contemplation of flowers all our finer feelings are stimulated and blended, and yet there is no excess of feeling to end in regrets, or a painful reaction. When the flowers fade, we cheerfully gather fresh ones. But I hope I do not undervalue my friends," she broke off. "I only mean to say—when you think of all the uncertainties of life, of sickness and death, and other things more dreadful, which overtake our dearest, do what we will to protect them; and then that worst thing whether it be in ourselves or others: I mean change—when you think of it all, surely it is well to turn to some delicate source of delight, like this, for relief—and to forget," and she curved her slender hand round the flowers caressingly, looking up at me at the same time as if she were pleading to be allowed to have her own way.
I did not remonstrate with her. I hardly knew the danger then myself of refusing to suffer.
It was some weeks before I saw her again after that. I had been busy. But one day, as I was driving into Morningquest, I overtook her on the road, walking in the same direction. I was in a close carriage, but I pulled the checkstring as soon as I recognized her, and got out. She turned when she heard the carriage stop, and seeing me alight came forward and shook hands. She looked wan and weary.
"Those are fine horses of yours," was her smileless greeting. "How are you?"
"Have you been having a 'burst'?" I said—she was quite five miles from home. She looked up and down the road for answer, and affected to laugh, but I could see that she was not at all in a laughing mood, and also that she was already over-fatigued. I thought of begging to be allowed to drive her back, but then it occurred to me that, even if she consented, which was not likely, as she had a perfect horror of giving trouble, and would never have been persuaded that I was not going out of my way at the greatest personal inconvenience merely to pay her a polite attention; but even if she had consented, she would probably have had to spend the rest of the day alone in that great west window, with nothing to take her out of herself, and nothing more enlivening to look at than dreary winter fields under a sombre sky, and that would not do at all. A better idea, however, occurred to me.