"If she had lived five hundred years ago, her face would have been painted as that of some mediæval saint," muttered Philip to himself. "She is far away too good to be the wife of such a shuffling, weak-minded fellow as I am."
When he reached the florist's shop on his way back to the office, the remaining bouquet was still in the window. He hesitated a moment, and then went in.
"I will take that other bouquet, if you please, Miss Welland," he said: but Mary noticed that there was no smile on his face this time, as she tied up the flowers. Philip set off in the direction of The Lilacs. He was dissatisfied with himself for what he had done, there was a sore feeling at work within him, and yet his steps seemed drawn irresistibly towards the roof that sheltered Margaret Ducie.
He had got half-way to the cottage when he was overtaken by Captain Lennox in his dog-cart.
"'Morning, Cleeve," called out the Captain; "where are you off to in such a hurry?"
"I didn't know that I was in a hurry," said Philip as he faced round, while that wretched tell-tale flush, which he could not succeed in keeping down, mounted to his face. "The fact is, I was on my way to the cottage," he added. "I thought that I might venture to call on Mrs. Ducie and ask her acceptance of a few flowers."
"And she will be very pleased to see you, I do not doubt," answered Lennox. "I am on the way home myself; so jump up and I will give you a lift."
When they reached the cottage they found Mrs. Ducie practising some songs which she had just received from London. She wore a dress of some soft, creamy material embroidered with flowers, with ornamental silver pins in her hair and a silver snake round one of her wrists. She accepted Philip's flowers very graciously.
"How charmingly they are arranged," she said; "and with what an eye for artistic effect. I must try to paint them before they begin to fade."
Philip begged that he might not interrupt her singing; so she resumed her seat at the piano, and he stationed himself behind her and turned over the leaves of her music. Now that he was here and in her presence, and so near to her that he could have stooped and touched her hair with his lips, the infatuation of last night crept over him again with irresistible force. He was like a man bewitched, from whom all power of volition seems stolen away. She looked even more beautiful this morning in the soft cool twilight of the drawing-room than when seen by lamplight yesterday evening. Nowhere had he seen a woman like her, or one who exercised over him such a nameless but all-powerful charm. By-and-by she persuaded him to sing too.