"'Well, as it turned out, her trustees have bought my place out and
fixed it over, and here we live together, I may say, both fairly
content!

"'Come in and see her, won't you? It'll do no harm. Cortright, did you
say your name was?' and before we could retreat, throwing Brown Tom's
loose check-rein across the pickets of the gate, she led us to where the
tall woman, dressed in pure white, stood under the trees, a look of
perfectly calm expectancy in the wonderful dark eyes that made such a
contrast to her coils of snow-white hair.

"'Cortright! Martin Cortright, is it not?' she said immediately, as her
companion spoke the surname. 'And your wife? I had not heard that you
were married, but I remember you well, Lavinia Dorman, and your city
garden, and the musk-rose bush that ailed because of having too little
sun. Chester will be so sorry to miss you; he is seldom at home in the
mornings, for he takes long walks with our son. He is having the first
entire half year's vacation he has allowed himself since our marriage.
But you will always find him in the garden in the afternoon; he is so
fond of fragrant flowers, and he is making new studies of herbs and
such things, for he believes that in spite of some great discoveries it
will be proven that the old simples are the most enduring medicines.'

"As she spoke she was leading the way, with that peculiar undulating
progress, like a cloud blown over the earth's surface, that I had
noticed at first. Then we came out from under the shade of the trees
into the garden enclosure and I saw borders and beds, but chiefly
borders, stretching and curving everywhere, screening all the fences,
approaching the house, and when almost there retreating in graceful
lines into the shelter of the trees. The growth had the luxuriance of a
jungle, and yet there was nothing weedy or awry about it, and as the
breeze blew toward us the combination of many odours, both pungent and
sweet, was almost overpowering.

"'You very seldom wore a buttonhole flower, but when you did it was a
safrano bud or else a white jasmine,' Mrs. Marchant said, wheeling
suddenly and looking at Martin with a gaze that did not stop where he
stood, but went through and beyond him; 'it was Dr. Russell who always
wore a pink! See! I have both here!' and going up to a tea-rose bush,
grown to the size of a shrub and lightly fastened to the side of the
house, she gathered a few shell-like buds and a moment later pulled
down a