And like a dash of cold water came the memory of Otho’s words. Beresford was angry with her for the joke she had played, and would like to shake her for a naughty, saucy little vixen. “Let him try it—that’s all!” she exclaimed, shaking her bright head defiantly, then leaning it half despondently on her arm. Wearied by the pleasures of the long, bright day, she sunk into slumber. Sweet dreams came to her there in the fragrant gloom of the warm spring night. To her fancy she was walking with St. George Beresford in a beautiful rose garden. Overhead there leaned a sky all darkly, beautifully blue, while little fleecy clouds tempered the golden brightness of noon. From afar there came to her the soft murmur of the sea blended with low, soft music divinely sweet and tender—the music of love. All around her were the rarest roses filling the summer air with fragrance—roses intwining shady bowers of lattice-work, roses wreathing triumphal arches, roses bordering long winding walks, delicious thickets of roses so dense that the sun’s rays had not yet dried the dew from their velvet petals. On her head was a wreath of pink roses, at the waist of her beautiful fleecy white gown, were white and pink ones blended in exquisite contrast. [31] [31] By her side, with his arm about her slender, supple waist, walked handsome St. George Beresford. They were lovers. And in this beautiful rose garden they seemed to be as much alone as Adam and Eve were in Eden. No faintest sound of the great surging, wicked world intruded on the delicious solitude—nothing came to their hearing save the low murmur of the distant sea, that soft music breathing the soul of love, and the song of birds mating and nesting in the rose-trees that shook down their bloomy petals in rosy clouds over every path. They did not miss nor want the world in this Eden. They were all in all to each other, this beautiful pair of
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