"Is that Plas Afon? I'm so sorry!" exclaimed Aura, as a swift turn in the road brought them to a sheltered bay almost land-locked by a rocky promontory covered with trees. It needed but one glance at these to show you that here was art, not nature. But it was art mimicking Nature in her kindest moods and bringing together from the four corners of the earth the glories of eastern and western forests, of the south and of the north. A few gold leaves still lingered on the Spanish chestnuts, the blue of the noble pine formed a background for the golden-barked willow, the silver cedar threw out its long arms across a scarlet oak, and almost to the water's edge grew rare conifers and blossoming shrubs.
"I believe you are afraid! I am," said Ned, steering for the portico.
"Who's afraid?" laughed Ted from the back seat, his eyes on the girl.
"Not you or I, I'll bet. We sit free of this sort of thing. Keep your responsibilities to yourself, Ned!"
Once more Aura looked back at him and smiled brilliantly. She was not afraid, but she felt oppressed. Yet how lovely it was! A velvet lawn sloping away to the sea. Those unknown beautiful trees, each standing sentinel over a portion of God's earth, and in the sheltered nooks groups of tall grasses and hardy palms. Not a dead leaf, every tuft of herbage in its right place. And the gravel! Aura had never dreamt of such gravel before! Each pebble round--polished, glowing, half-translucent in the sunshine, like an uncut gem. She felt she could scarcely dare to walk upon the pretty things.
And it was a beautiful house too; a real fairy palace. Yes! it was like a dream--a dream of great, of exceeding beauty. There was not a discordant note in it. The man of whom Ned had told her, who had built it, who had lavished a fortune on it, and had then died in faraway Italy, leaving it to fall into the hands of Philistines, must have had----. What must he have had! Ah! well, he must have been rather like Ned Blackborough himself. For Plas Afon fitted Ned somehow in its fineness, its elusiveness.
She turned her eyes to him, and flushed; for his were on hers, thinking how Plas Afon fitted her. And in truth it did; fitted her all the more for the flush, since she held her head higher, and followed him with a still lighter, freer step.
"I am so glad," said Helen Tressilian coming forward. "This is Miss Vyvyan; Aunt Em--this is Miss Aura Graham."
"Delighted, I'm sure," murmured a tall, stately, absolutely colourless lady, who was engaged in making laborious needle-point on a tiny piece of black lining about two inches square. A tiny reel of almost invisible thread, a miniature pair of scissors, were also held in her left hand. They formed her only individuality; for the rest she got up at the right time, ate her breakfast and made appropriate breakfast remarks, and so lived through her day doing as the rest of the world did. But these came down with her in the morning and went to bed with her at night, held always in her white be-ringed left hand. Perhaps she slept with them. Anyhow they were an integral part of her waking life. If any one, thinking to be agreeable, asked her how she was getting on, she would smile gently, indulgently, and say that of course such work took time.
Ned used to feel that it annihilated Time altogether, and could he have happened on it unprotected, would for a certainty have annihilated it. But it went with her everywhere--even in the motor.
"Something quite terrible has happened, Ned," went on Helen Tressilian--she had given one look at Aura and been satisfied--"but it can't be helped. The Smith-Biggs have motored over from Aberaron--and--and--they have brought Mr. Hirsch. I sent Dr. Ramsay out with them to show them the garden, but--but they'll have to stop to lunch."
"They're welcome," retorted Ned with irritation; "I shall lunch in the garden when they've left it. We"--he looked at Aura--"only eat the fruits of the earth, you know."
"It was your cousin who asked me to lunch," began Aura gravely, whereat Ned laughed.
"You have an appalling sense of duty," he replied. "But I give in to it. Now, as I see Hirsch and Co. coming across the lawn, if we slip out by the back we shall escape them till lunch-time anyhow."
Aura looked at him doubtfully. His responsibilities, which were beginning to weigh her down, seemed to affect him not at all.
"Are you going too, Mr. Cruttenden?" asked Helen, noticing a certain hesitation on Ted's part. In truth he was undecided. He wanted to see Mr. Hirsch, and, at the same time, he wished to be with Aura. Of course he could see his chief after lunch; but supposing they did not stop to lunch?
So Ned Blackborough had the girl to himself. For a moment or two, as he led her round by the back way through thickets of rhododendrons, he felt triumphant, as a man does when he sees an opportunity before him.
And then, then he forgot everything in pure delight at her eager face, in the joy of her enjoyment.
"It is the most beautiful place in the world," she cried at last, "and this is the most beautiful thing in it."
She was on her knees beside a tuft of red bronze Tyrolean saxifrage, out of whose close carpet of velvet the tiny silver-green scimitars of the _iris alata_ curved round guarding its broad, purple-blue blossoms. For they were in the winter-garden now. Not one of those crystal palaces of palms and hot-water pipes which answer to that name in the minds of so many. No! This was a real garden, in full air, but tucked away from every breeze that blows in a cove giving on the sea.
Among the rocks above the small cleft of sandy beach on which the tide lapped lazily, grew all the kindly green things innumerable which have learnt to do without the rest of winter sleep. The winding walks edged their narrow way through great tinted carpets of saxifrage and sedums, and many another sturdy-leaved coverer of bare earth. Bronze and sage and golden, brown and purple and grey, with a few blue blossoms on a creeping veronica, a few late primroses, a few early winter aconites.
And through it, over all, was the fine scent of the winter heliotrope that clung to the crannies of the rocks or grew lush by the little stream, which, falling in tinkling cascades, slid along the sand into the sea. It was such a garden as every one with patience and care might have; which none but the very few take the trouble to plant.
There was nothing in it to tell of wealth save an old stone sphinx jutting out by the steps which led to the tiny wedge of beach, its plinth forming a sort of jetty, beside which a boat lay moored. That had the measureless calm of Egypt in its eyes as it stood, backed by the changeful sky, the changeful sea.
"I believe it sees me," added Aura, looking up from the broad open face of the flower, her own as open, as beautiful, "and it has never seen me before. That makes me feel less strange, here where everything is new--and strange. It seems to me I have seen more to-day than in all my life before. It is so curious----"
"What? To see new things?" he answered, smiling down at her. "Isn't that the only thing worth having in life--to be able to think when you wake, 'To-day something may come to me which never came before'--to feel a sort of perpetual annunciation----"
She stood up suddenly, measuring him with narrowed eyes.
"I do not understand," she began.
He shook his head. "Oh yes, you do. I'm sure of it. Sit down on the plinth there and I'll try and tell you what I mean."
So with the sphinx above her she sat and listened. It was not much he had to say. Only the half-whimsical half-serious thoughts of a man, who, almost without knowing it, had the seeing eye for the invisible, the hearing ear for the inarticulate, who felt, vaguely, that the best part of life lay beyond the boundary set to conscious life by the majority of men.
In formulated shape it was all new to her, but something in her, she knew not what, found it familiar, approved, and her face showed her approval, her interest.
"I see," she said slowly, "and the message is 'fear not' I like that."
"Yes!" he replied absently, clasping his hands over one knee and leaning back against the plinth to watch a cormorant that was coming back from fishing beyond the bar, a solitary swift, black speck upon the blue. "It would be good if one could get at it. We risk life every day for what we call love or money, but we are in a blue funk about the truth, because the truth is that neither love nor money--you know, don't you, that I am awfully, hideously rich?"
"Ted told me you were the richest man in England."
"The devil he did!" laughed Ned. "I beg your pardon, but that wasn't in the bond. Anyhow I'm beginning to feel as if I could with pleasure sell all that I have, and follow--something else."
"But you have no right," began Aura, "you can't shirk your responsibilities."
"_Et tu, Brute_," he murmured pathetically, "My dear creature! You haven't any idea how I loathe being rich. Money doesn't buy what I like--freedom. No! confound it, it is always getting in the way.
There!" he added resignedly as he rose, "I told you so. There is that pampered, powdered beast of a footman whom I'm ruining body and soul by my ridiculous claims, coming to tell us lunch is ready. And--and we are enjoying ourselves."
He looked at her as he held out his hand to help her to rise. She gave him hers frankly enough, but drew it away hastily as if something in the touch of his gave her offence, and a quick frown came to her face.
"That has nothing to do with it," she replied austerely, "You have no right to keep your guests waiting."
"If I had your sense of duty, I--I should kill that fellow," he remarked coolly, as the footman, stopping short at a respectful distance among the saxifrages, said in the tone of voice in which a congregation echoes the responses in church.
"If you please, your lordship, luncheon is served."
Aura looked grave for an instant, then she laughed. She was never quite sure whether to take Ned Blackborough _aux grands serieux_ or not. She admired him, however, when, entering the dining-room, the glitter and clatter of silver, the chatter and laughter of the guests, and the consciousness that every one was looking at her to see who had made their host so late, gave her a desire to run away. He was so easy, so self-possessed, withal so clearly determined not to let any one interfere with his plan, which was apparently to sit beside her.
"I beg your pardon, Helen," he said cheerfully, "Miss Graham and I were in the winter garden. Will you sit here, Miss Graham. Ah! Lady Smith-Biggs, so glad you've come, and how is Sir Joseph? Don't let me disturb you, Ramsay. You fill the place better than I should. Is there room for me by you, Aunt Em? Hullo, where's Hirsch?"
This, as he circled the table brought him to a vacant seat beside Aunt Em; but also next to Aura to whom he said in an undertone, "They'll hand you things you can eat."
The butler's introduction of an elaborate silver dish with the mystic whisper, "Brown bread and butter cutlets," emphasised the remark, and she helped herself decorously with a spoon and fork.
"Mr. Hirsch and Mr. Cruttenden went off smoking somewhere," replied Helen, "Ah! here they come at last."
"My dear Mrs. Tressilian," exploded Mr. Hirsch in his strident voice, "I am overwhelmed, but when one gets to talking about money----"
"There is always the devil to pay, Hirsch," put in Ned.
"Ah! my dear Blackborough, _wie gehts_. What an entrancing place. Why don't you buy it?"
"It is not for sale," replied Ned, "and it's quite enough to hire it, I assure you, Hirsch."
Mr. Hirsch laughed in his loud unfettered fashion.
"Ah! my dear Blackborough, you always pay too much for everything. You are the sellers' natural prey."
Aura who had helped herself out of another silver dish to something which the butler called _fraises a la creme en caisses_, because it looked to her like strawberries and cream, gave a quick glance at Ned.