t expect you to translate properly what I
saw last night under the oak-tree, the night of the ball on the opposite
side, when Patricia made her debut.

Chapter XIV. Love and lavender.

How well I remember our last evening in Dovermarle Street!

At one of our open windows behind the potted ferns and blossoming
hydrangeas sat Salemina, Bertie Godolphin, Mrs. Beresford, the
Honourable Arthur, and Francesca; at another, as far off as
possible, sat Willie Beresford and I. Mrs. Beresford had sanctioned a
post-prandial cigar, for we were not going out till ten, to see, for the
second time, an act of John Hare's Pair of Spectacles.

They were talking and laughing at the other end of the room; Mr.
Beresford and I were rather quiet. (Why is it that the people with whom
one loves to be silent are also the very ones with whom one loves to
talk?)

The room was dim with the light of a single lamp; the rain had ceased;
the roar of Piccadilly came to us softened by distance. A belated vendor
of lavender came along the sidewalk, and as he stopped under the windows
the pungent fragrance of the flowers was wafted up to us with his song.

'Who'll buy my pretty lavender?
Sweet lavender,
Who'll buy my pretty lavender?
Sweet bloomin' lavender.'

The tune comes to me laden with odours. Is it not strange that the
fragrances of other days steal in upon the senses together with the
sights and sounds that gave them birth?

Presently a horse and cart drew up before an hotel, a little further
along, on the opposite side of the way. By the light of the street lamp
under which it stopped we could see that it held a piano and two persons
beside the driver. The man was masked, and wore a soft felt hat and a
velvet coat. He seated himself at the piano and played a Chopin waltz
with decided sentiment and brilliancy; then, touching the keys idly for
a moment or two, he struck a few chords of prelude and turned towards
the woman who sat beside him. She rose, and, laying one hand on the
corner of the instrument, began to sing one of the season's favourites,
'The Song that reached my Heart.' She also was masked, and even her
figure was hidden by a long dark cloak the hood of which was drawn over
her head to meet the mask. She sang so beautifully, with such style and
such feeling, it seemed incredible to hear her under circumstances like
these. She followed the ballad with Handel's 'Lascia ch'io pianga,'
which rang