"That Rosa sulphurea is a haughty high-bred beauty that disdains even to shew herself beautiful unless she is pleased;--I love better what comes nearer home to the charities and wants of everyday life."
He had not answered her, Fleda knew; she thought of what he had said to Mrs. Evelyn about liking beauty but not beauties.
"Then," said he smiling again in that hidden way, "the head of the glen gave me the soil I needed for the Bourbons and French roses."--
"Bourbons?"--said Fleda.
"Those are exceeding fine--a hybrid between the Chinese and the Rose-à-quatre-saisons--I have not confined them all to the head of the glen; many of them are in richer soil, grafted on standards."
"I like standard roses," said Fleda, "better than any."
"Not better than climbers?"
"Better than any climbers I ever saw--except the Banksia."
"There is hardly a more elegant variety than that, though it is not strictly a climber; and indeed when I spoke I was thinking as much of the training roses. Many of the Noisettes are very fine. But I have the climbers all over--in some parts nothing else, where the wood closes in upon the path--there the evergreen roses or the Ayrshire cover the ground under the trees, or are trained up the trunks and allowed to find their own way through the branches down again--the Multiflora in the same manner. I have made the Boursault cover some unsightly rocks that were in my way.--Then in wider parts of the glade nearer home are your favourite standards--the Damask, and Provence, and Moss, which you know are varieties of the Centifolia, and the Noisette standards, some of them are very fine, and the Chinese roses, and countless hybrids and varieties of all these, with many Bourbons;--and your beautiful American yellow rose, and the Austrian briar and Eglantine, and the Scotch and white and Dog roses in their innumerable varieties change admirably well with the others, and relieve the eye very happily."
"Relieve the eye!" said Fleda,--"my imagination wants relieving! Isn't there--I have a fancy that there is--a view of the sea from some parts of that walk, Mr. Carleton?"