ve Mrs. Fisher either, because she had seemed lofty.
How funny of her. So funny to worry about such little things, making
them important.

The bedrooms and two of the sitting-rooms at San Salvatore were
on the top floor, and opened into a roomy hall with a wide glass window
at the north end. San Salvatore was rich in small gardens in different
parts and on different levels. The garden this window looked down on
was made on the highest part of the walls, and could only be reached
through the corresponding spacious hall on the floor below. When Mrs.
Wilkins came out of her room this window stood wide open, and beyond it
in the sun was a Judas tree in full flower. There was no sign of
anybody, no sound of voices or feet. Tubs of arum lilies stood about
on the stone floor, and on a table flamed a huge bunch of fierce
nasturtiums. Spacious, flowery, silent, with the wide window at the
end opening into the garden, and the Judas tree absurdly beautiful in
the sunshine, it seemed to Mrs. Wilkins, arrested on her way across to
Mrs. Arbuthnot, too good to be true. Was she really going to live in
this for a whole month? Up to now she had had to take what beauty she
could as she went along, snatching at little bits of it when she came
across it--a patch of daisies on a fine day in a Hampstead field, a
flash of sunset between two chimney pots. She had never been in
definitely, completely beautiful places. She had never been even in a
venerable house; and such a thing as a profusion of flowers in her
rooms was unattainable to her. Sometimes in the spring she had bought
six tulips at Shoolbred's, unable to resist them, conscious that
Mellersh if he knew what they had cost would think it inexcusable; but
they had soon died, and then there were no more. As for the Judas
tree, she hadn't an idea what it was, and gazed at it out there against
the sky with the rapt expression of one who sees a heavenly vision.

Mrs. Arbuthnot, coming out of her room, found her there like
that, standing in the middle of the hall staring.

"Now what does she think she sees now?" thought Mrs. Arbuthnot.

"We are in God's hands," said Mrs. Wilkins, turning to her,
speaking with extreme conviction.

"Oh!" said Mrs. Arbuthnot quickly, her face, which had been
covered with smiles when she came out of her room, falling. "Why, what
has happened?"

For Mrs. Arbuthnot had woken up with such a delightful feeling of
security, of relief, and she did