quickness in scenting the lemon-verbena bush proved but
the first of many instances. But he began and ended with enjoyment; of
the artist's impulse to reproduce and imitate beauty he felt nothing.
Mr. Frank recognised with a pang that he had failed not only in keeping
his torch bright but in passing it on; that the true self which he had
missed expressing must die with him barren and untransmitted.
The closer he drew in affection, the farther this son of his receded,--
receded in the very act of acknowledging his sonship--with a gesture,
smilingly imprehensible; with eyes which allured the yearning he
baffled, and tied it to the hopeless chase.

Mr. Frank, who worshipped flowers, was perhaps the most ineffective
gardener in England. With a trowel and the best intentions he would do
more damage in twenty minutes than Miss Bracy could repair in a week.
She had made a paradise in spite of him, and he contented himself with
assuring her that the next tenant would dig it up and find it paved with
good intentions. The seeds he sowed--and he must have sown many pounds'
worth before she stopped the wild expense--never sprouted by any chance.
"Dormant, my dear Laura--dormant!" he would exclaim in springtime,
rubbing his head perplexedly as he studied the empty borders.
"When I die, and am buried here, they will all sprout together, and you
will have to take a hook and cut your way daily through the vegetation
which hides my grave." But Victor, who approached them in the frankest
ignorance, seemed to divine the ways of flowers at once. In the autumn
he struck cuttings of Miss Bracy's rarest roses; he removed a sickly
passion-flower from one corner of the cottage to another and restored it
to health within a fortnight. Within a week after his coming he and
Miss Bracy were deep in cross-fertilizing a borderful of carnations she
had raised from seed. He carried the same natural deftness into a score
of small household repairs. He devised new cradles for Miss Bracy's
cats, and those conservative animals at once accepted the improvement;
he invented a cupboard for his father's canvases; he laid an electric
bell from the kitchen beneath the floor of the dining-room, so that Miss
Bracy could ring for Deborah by a mere pressure of the foot; and the
well-rope which Deborah had been used to wind up painfully was soon
fitted with a wheel and balance-weight which saved four-fifths of the
labour.

"It beats me where you learned how