"The Roses?"
"The Fredericks, then, if you like. They"re completely merged and indistinguishable."
"Why not say the Arbuthnots, my dear?" said Mr. Wilkins.
"Very well, Mellersh--the Arbuthnots. And the Carolines--"
Both Mr. Wilkins and Mrs. Fisher started. Mr. Wilkins, usually in such complete control of himself, started even more than Mrs.
Fisher, and for the first time since his arrival felt angry with his wife.
"Really--" he began indignantly.
"Very well, Mellersh--the Briggses, then."
"The Briggses!" cried Mr. Wilkins, now very angry indeed; for the implication was to him a most outrageous insult to the entire race of Desters--dead Desters, living Desters, and Desters still harmless because they were yet unborn. "Really--"
"I"m sorry, Mellersh," said Mrs. Wilkins, pretending meekness, "if you don"t like it."
"Like it! You"ve taken leave of your senses. Why they"ve never set eyes on each other before to-day."
"That"s true. But that"s why they"re able now to go ahead."
"Go ahead!" Mr. Wilkins could only echo the outrageous words.
"I"m sorry, Mellersh," said Mrs. Wilkins again, "if you don"t like it, but--"
Her grey eyes shone, and her face rippled with the light and conviction that had so much surprised Rose the first time they met.
"It"s useless minding," she said. "I shouldn"t struggle if I were you. Because--"
She stopped, and looked first at one alarmed solemn face and then at the other, and laughter as well as light flickered and danced over her.
"I see them being the Briggses," finished Mrs. Wilkins.
That last week the syringa came out at San Salvatore, and all the acacias flowered. No one had noticed how many acacias there were till one day the garden was full of a new scent, and there were the delicate trees, the lovely successors to the wistaria, hung all over among their trembling leaves with blossom. To lie under an acacia tree that last week and look up through the branches at its frail leaves and white flowers quivering against the blue of the sky, while the least movement of the air shook down their scent, was a great happiness. Indeed, the whole garden dressed itself gradually towards the end in white pinks and white banksai roses, and the syringe and the Jessamine, and at last the crowning fragrance of the acacias. When, on the first of May, everybody went away, even after they had got to the bottom of the hill and pa.s.sed through the iron gates out into the village they still could smell the acacias.