d sweetness of many
flowers rose and fell in the air. Beyond the shade, the sunshine broke
into a mosaic of merry colours, on larkspur and iris, pansies and pink
geraniums, jessamine, sweet-peas, tulips shameless in their extravagance
of green and crimson, red and white carnations, red, white, and yellow
roses. The sunshine broke into colour, it laughed, it danced, it almost
rioted, among the flowers; but in the prim alleys, and on the formal
hedges of box, and the quaintly-clipped yews, and the old purple brick
walls, where fruit trees were trellised, it lay fast, fast asleep.
Without the walls, in the deep cool greenery of the park, there was a
perpetual drip-drip of bird-notes. This was the web, upon which a chosen
handful of more accomplished birds were embroidering and
cross-embroidering and inter-embroidering their bold, clear arabesques of
song. Anthony had a table and a writing-case before him, and was trying
to write letters. But now he put down his pen, and, for the twentieth
time this afternoon, went over the brief little encounter of the morning.

Two ladies had passed him in a dog-cart, as he was walking home from the
village: a young lady driving, an oldish lady beside her, and a groom
behind.

That was all: the affair of ten seconds; and at first he was not aware of
any deeper or more detailed impression. He had glanced at them vaguely;
he was naturally incurious; and he had been thinking of other things.

But by-and-bye, as if his retina had reacted like a photographic plate, a
picture developed itself, which, in the end, by a series of recurrences,
became quite singularly circumstantial. The dog-cart and its occupants,
with the stretch of brown road, and the hedge-rows and meadows at either
side, were visible anew to him; and he saw that the young lady who was
driving had dark hair and dark eyes, and looked rather foreign; and he
said, but without much concern as yet, "Ah, that was no doubt Madame
Torrebianca, with her friend Miss What 's-her-name;"--and proceeded again
to think of other things.

The picture faded; but presently it came back. He noticed now that the
slightly foreign-looking young woman was pretty, and even
interesting-looking; that besides its delicate modelling and its warm,
rather Southern colouring, there was character in her face, personality;
that there were intelligence, humour, vivacity; that she looked as if she
would have something to say. He noticed, too, that she