“Perfect. I was tempted to dream all my time away instead of painting. I hope you will like the pictures. There was something in the atmosphere of the place that bothered me.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, just as though ghosts were trying to play tricks with my hands. The gardens are classic, renaissance, or what you please. It should have been all sunny, delightful formalism, but then——”
“Something Gothic crept in.”
“How do you know that?”
“I have been to Latimer.”
Her eyes met his with a flash of understanding.
“Of course. But I——Well, you must judge.”
The music had stopped, and an eddy of the crowd came lapping round behind the sequoia. Canterton was captured by an impetuous amateur gardener in petticoats who had written a book about something or other, and who always cast her net broadly at an interesting man.
“Oh, Mr. Canterton, can you tell me about those Chinese primulas?”