I said next day to Martelli, "You will see Mrs. Fraser this afternoon, I hope. She has half promised to come and look at my flowers."

"What have I to do with Mrs. Fraser?" he exclaimed with a shrug. "My business is with books, not women. I can understand the one, but not the other."

"But I want to justify my love. Her beauty will do this for me."

"Have I not seen her?" he asked, stretching out his arms.

"Yes, by moonlight—with blank eyes and expressionless face. Her beauty by noon is somewhat different from her beauty by night."

"Sir, yellow hair and black eyes make no charm for me."

"You are a Goth."

"When I was a young man I fell in love once a week. That proves a catholic taste, at all events, for my Hebes must have varied."

"But you will let me introduce you to Mrs. Fraser? You can know and like without admiring her. You will be struck with her conversation."

"Does she talk well?"

"She talks strangely—what Shakespeare calls 'matter and impertinency mixed.' Her shrewd discursiveness pleases me."

"Ah, Sir, you are willing to be pleased."

"I cannot help being pleased. Her musical prattle is very different from the sort of entertainment I am used to in other women. Dull decorous reason I can get anywhere. Her talk is rare as her beauty."

"A kind of mad talk, Sir."

"Mad, indeed! You shall hear her yourself and judge."

"Pray excuse me. I will take my pipe, and while you enjoy your tÊte-À-tÊte will search for curious objects on the beach."

"Be it so, then," said I, somewhat chagrined: for I wanted to witness this chilly sceptic melting into admiration before my beautiful neighbour's eyes.

There goes a disappointed man (thought I, as I watched him enter the house). His austerity cloaks some odd experience, I dare swear. Could I but see into his memory I might witness a strange drama being played in that little theatre. Some unconscionable jilt has soured the ripe juices of his nature; and now he spits venom at the whole sex. Yet he makes wry faces over his cynicism. I don't think he relishes it much. He argues, I suppose, that the coming of a wife will prove the going of his occupation. He has a rich young fellow under his charge and has no wish to surrender him to the keeping of a woman. So he directs his forked tongue at her in the hope that I shall be influenced. My little signor, you will be disappointed, if you hope this!

He left the house after lunch.

At the proper hour I stood at the gate in the fields and peeped over. The garden was empty. I looked at my watch. It was past the time at which I had met her the day before. Twenty minutes passed. I walked to and fro, staring at the windows in the hope of catching a glimpse of her face. Believing she would disappoint me, I grew irritable. "Her conduct," I thought, "is unladylike, to say the least. She promised to meet me, and should come. If she is making a fool of me how will that Martelli exult! But it is my own fault. Am I not an independent man? If I want to marry, have I not but to open my arms to have them filled without the trouble of wooing? For how many women are there who would not cheerfully do all the courting for two thousand pounds a year? Then what do I here, in a hot field, tormented by that accursed gnat" (and here I aimed a prodigious but idle blow at the insect) "worrying my mind with conjectures, a spectacle for the pert eye of the widow's maid, who probably sits watching me from the ambush of a window-curtain?" And I was positively in the act of walking away, when suddenly, from amid a row of lilac trees close to the gate, stepped forth—Mrs. Fraser.

"Shall I tell you your thoughts?" she exclaimed, approaching me, without returning my salutation by smile or bow.

"If you please," I answered, my mood clearing in her presence as the cloudy heavens clear when the sun shines out.

"Stoop your ear then."

I inclined my head. She leaned across the gate and whispered, "Mrs. Fraser—— Oh!" she cried, springing back, and clapping her hands, "there are some words that are coarse and burning in the mouth as radishes. This is one. But it's true—and truth must be pungent."

"But before I can tell whether it is true or not, let me know what you think."

"Don't you think me—a humbug?"

"No, no!" I exclaimed with a laugh.

"Why do you say no?" with sudden earnestness.

"But I may tell you I was annoyed," I continued, "because I feared you would not come."

"I expected you would be, and so I determined to watch you. You watched me yesterday. It was not fair. When one is alone one indulges in all kinds of moods; and you might have seen me make myself ugly and foolish by pouting, grimacing, frowning, or smiling, just as the mood obliged me. I don't like to be caught unawares. I choose to smooth my face down so," looking gravely, "when I am watched. There is an expression I wear as a vizor; it's this."

As a three-year old child looks, who, being told not to smile, frowns, that it may appear grave, so looked she. Then, breaking into a sudden smile:

"I watched you frown. You stared at my poor little house as though you could have burnt it up with your eyes. How you flung your impatience at the tiny fly that annoyed you! 'Oh this treacherous woman!' you thought; 'how glibly she made the word of promise to the ear to break it to the hope!' Did you not think all this and as much more as would take me twenty minutes to tell? I watched you just as steadily as you watched me yesterday. I saw your weakness. Did you see mine? No—my hat hid my face. You couldn't see my eyes. And unless you see the eyes you can't tell what is going on in the mind."

"No, nor when you see the eyes can you always tell what is going on. It would be a delightful privilege," said I, looking steadily at her, "to be able to interpret those fiery hieroglyphics in which the soul writes her thoughts upon the eyes."

"I don't think so," she replied. "There would be little pleasure in life if we could read one another's thoughts."

"There would be no hypocrisy, at all events; we should have to speak the truth."

"And would you like that?" she asked. "Would the plain heiress like to hear her lover declare that his only motive in offering her marriage was to get her money? Would the father like to hear that the reason of his son's affection is that he may not be forgotten in his will? Life is a great mirage. Let it alone—pray, let it alone. Don't pour the light of truth on it, or it will vanish like a rainbow when the storm is over."

"I thought, Mrs. Fraser, you were so enamoured of truth?"

"Yes, among my friends. It pleases me to speak the truth, and I choose to hear the truth spoken. I hate compliments, and fine language, and the gingerbread splendour of politeness, as it is called. But it is not because I love truth that I would rob the world, which I hate, of the pleasure of telling lies."

"You spoke of my weakness just now. What weakness did my face or behaviour illustrate?"

"Impatience."

"Nothing worse?"

"If I had remarked anything worse, I should have let you go away."

"Allow me to open this gate. You will come and see my flowers?"

"It would not be fair in me to refuse you after keeping you waiting so long."

I held the gate open. She passed from her garden into mine.

"These grounds present no such pretty coup d'oeil as yours," I said. "I am new at this sort of work, and for all I know my taste may be a little cockneyfied."

"Oh, but the garden is in beautiful order! Pray do not speak to me of my poor little slip of ground. That lawn is larger." We paced through the walks. I could hardly remove my eyes from her face. She had replaced her hat of yesterday by one resembling that worn by Peg Woffington in Reynolds's picture. Her dress was black silk, with a muslin body. A carved ivory cross hung on her bosom by a chain of white coral.

"Your presence here gives me great happiness," I exclaimed; "and it makes me proud to think that I should have been the first to cause you to break through your rule of solitude."

"I have lived here a long time now, and you are the only person I know," she answered.

"But you must have felt dull sometimes?"

"Often. How should I help feeling dull? I have no one to speak to."

"But this must be your own fault," I said gently. "You might easily have made acquaintances."

"Yes, but I would not risk it. I might not like them, and in a small place like this it is embarrassing to withdraw from society after one has mingled in it. Besides, people are apt to be impertinent when they have nothing to do. A widow is always an object of curiosity, especially to elderly spinsters—and there are many here. Now I will let any one discuss me to her heart's content—on one condition: that we remain strangers. Oh, what a glorious rose, Mr. Thorburn!"

I separated it from the tree and gave it to her.

"You should have offered it more timidly," she exclaimed, looking at me over the flower; "how did you know I would not reject it like I did your bouquet?"

"I didn't think. But you recall my wish to send you some flowers. Will you let me order the gardener to make you a bouquet?"

"If you please."

I called to one of the men and gave him the instructions. We got upon the lawn.

"What a pretty house!" she said, looking up. "It stands so cool and white from the road. What made you take it?"

"I got tired of London. I wanted to study."

"Oh, I remember—you told me. Do you study now?"

"Not much, I fear."

"Where do you study?"

"In my library there," said I, pointing to the window.

"You ought to be there now. I am keeping you from your books," she exclaimed, with a certain grave archness.

"You would be keeping me from my books, whether you were absent or present."

"Should I? How?"

"By making me think of you."

"And do you really think of me, Mr. Thorburn?"

"You have never been out of my mind since the evening I dreamt of you."

"It was curious you should have dreamed of me," she said, putting her hands behind her and leaning against the back of a garden-seat.

"It was mysterious," I answered gravely.

"And was my face in your dream exactly like it is here?" she asked, looking up that I might see her fully.

"It was more sad. You had a brokenhearted look in your eyes. What I saw in my dream was more like your face in your sleep, when I met you afterwards."

"What made you dream of me?"

"I cannot tell."

"Had you ever seen me?"

"Never."

"Nor heard me described?"

"No."

"How quickly the swallows fly!" she exclaimed, pointing in the air. "What would you give to be able to live all day long in that pure blue? This is a beautiful rose you have given me. How can the thick, ugly, common earth yield such lovely things?"

"You were questioning me, Mrs. Fraser. Do continue your examination."

"Questioning you? What about?" she asked, looking at me with a little bewildered air.

"About my dream. I have often wanted to discuss it with you, that I may understand it. You who inspired it should know what it means."

"I cannot tell you, indeed. I did not inspire it. I had never seen you nor heard of you."

"In the olden times it was the custom to examine dreams, in the belief that they were prophecies. I would like to revive the custom, to see what my dream forebodes."

"What should it forebode? Sadness, perhaps, since my eyes were so sad."

"Dreams go by contraries, they say."

"Then they are useless as prophecies."

"But I am by no means disposed to let my dream slip by so easily. I choose to think it significant in some sense which I wish explained."

"It was a prophecy, perhaps, that you should meet me: and you did."

"It was a prophecy perhaps, that our lives were to mingle, and they may."

"Nothing is impossible," she answered quietly.

She did not say this consciously. It was an answer obviously made without the slightest reference to its implication.

"How beautiful these grounds of yours look under the blue sky," she continued gaily. "I wish you had not made me see them. They will spoil me for my narrow garden."

"Why will you not use them as your own? Those gates were made for communication. You can always be alone by naming the hours it may suit you to come. I can dismiss the gardeners for that time, and hide myself in my study."

"Your offer is very polite, but I will not accept it. I shouldn't care to wander about a place that doesn't belong to me; for there is little real satisfaction in admiring the possessions of others. Besides, my fingers would itch to be at the flowers. I should be picking the choicest. That is my way."

"You would be welcome to pick them all."

"Yet were I to come I would not wish you to hide yourself. Your company does me good. I have felt more cheerful since I knew you."

"You give me great pleasure in saying this, Mrs. Fraser."

"I mean it. I find you frank and easy and kind. You are not in the least tiresome. When you first spoke to me I saw your face set out with compliments and mots, like any other man's might have been. But I swept this sugary French repast away and made you substitute hearty nourishing solids. This makes you agreeable."

Her grave innocent look forbade me to smile; yet it was not easy to preserve my gravity. I felt like a big boy lectured by some pretty little girl.

She stood looking pensively at her foot, which she waved to and fro on the heel; then exclaimed,

"I am going now."

I had no wish to part with her.

"Pray don't go yet. We have not been long together."

"No, not very long. But taste is refined by abstinence."

"Yes, but this sort of refinement is fretting. Your company is like that sweet wine, mentioned by a Persian poet, of which the more you drank the thirstier you became."

"Oh! here comes the gardener with my bouquet!" she cried.

The man presented it to her, cap in hand.

"Thank you, thank you," she exclaimed, inclining her sweet face over the flowers. And when the man had withdrawn, she drew close to me, and pointing with a white finger to the bouquet, said:

"Have you ever imagined what shapes and expressions the spirits of flowers take? The spirit of the lily would be a languid floating shape, with meek eyes and hands crossed on her bosom: but of course very, very small—smaller than the fairies. The violet would be a little baby boy with round blue eyes and a wee red mouth. The rose would be a young girl with a rich complexion. Her beautiful limbs would be tinted with a delicate pink like the shadow of the red rose in water. She would be haughty, with a glowing eye; and her hair would be bound by a circle of gold."

"And what flower," I asked, "should, at its death, take the form of a woman exquisitely modelled, with black eyes melting from one sweet expression into another, sometimes startled, sometimes pleading, always luminous with bright but tender alternations of thought"——

"I see," she interrupted gravely; "you agree with me; you believe in the resurrection of the flowers."

"I think you could make me believe in anything."

She uttered a laugh; its abruptness made it discordant.

"Good-bye," she exclaimed, "I will come and see your flowers again some day."

"May I not show you over my house?"

"What is there to be seen?"

"Come and judge."

I held the door open; she paused, entered, and returned.

"I'll not look over your house to-day. You have had enough of my company. You may walk with me to the gate."

She moved away, I followed her.

"How long do you think my bouquet will last, Mr. Thorburn?"

"Some days."

"I wonder that people who like one another should make presents of flowers. When a young man presents a bouquet to the girl he is in love with, do either of them think that the gift exactly typifies their passion—all human passion—which is bright to-day and withered to-morrow?"

"They would hardly think this. I can understand love seeking for expression in the most lovely and fragrant symbols the world has to offer. But the real truth is, the majority of lovers don't think at all. They imitate. They give what others give."

"Now that is the way I like to hear people talk," she exclaimed with a merry laugh; "I am quite sure that the only way to be truthful is to be cynical."

"I am afraid so."

"If I were a young and inexperienced girl, the person on whose judgment I should most depend would be the one who most sincerely disbelieved in the existence of virtue."

"No, no. Such an infidel would make a bad guide."

"An infallible guide, you mean. How could he err?"

"He would err by not being able to grasp the full character of the world's wickedness. He would underrate its depravity by allowing it no virtue whatever."

"I don't understand. This is a paradox," said she stopping, for we had reached the gate. "Would you increase the world's wickedness by making it virtuous?"

"Yes, up to a certain point. I speak in the sense of Dean Swift, who said we had all of us Christianity enough to make us hate one another. Virtue has a very fructifying power, and vice springs richly from its soil. A totally wicked world is an impossibility. That dreadful place to which we are told sinners will be consigned cannot be utterly wicked, or it could not exist."

"I almost catch your meaning, but you don't express yourself well, Mr. Thorburn."

"You are quite right. I am given, I am sorry to say, to walking round my thoughts too much." I could have added that such eyes as hers were not calculated to make a man logical or even disputatious, save in a love argument.

"I am then to believe that there is enough good in the world to make it more wicked than it would be were there no good?"

"Why, having advanced my position, I am bound to stick to it. You have said indeed what I think, but what I would not preach."

She stood lost in thought for some moments.

"Mr. Thorburn," she presently said, "I think the world very, very bad; it is cold-hearted, selfish, and dishonourable and mean and pitiless. I see now that it could not be all this if it had not what it calls virtue and religion to prompt it; for the virtue of the world teaches us to hate those whom it pronounces corrupt; and its religion"——she stopped with a bewildered look; "what does its religion teach?"

"History will answer that better than I. But what have we to do with the world, Mrs. Fraser? Here, under that tender sky, amid these flowers, fanned by this soft air, we should not let thoughts of its wrongs and treacheries trouble us."

"If one could throw memory upon the air and bid the breeze bear its burden a thousand miles away, then would it be well. But the afternoon is passing. Good-bye, Mr. Thorburn."

"When may I see you again?"

"Oh, you will find a time," she answered with a little demure laugh; and so saying she passed through the gate.