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There was a light step at his side, and glancing up, he saw Margie Harrison. She was in evening dress, her white arms and shoulders bare, and glistening with snowy pearls. Her soft unbound hair fell over her neck in a flood of light, and a subtle perfume, like the breath of blooming water-lilies, floated around her. "I want to make you my captive for a little while, Mr. Trevlyn," she said, gayly.
I went down into the garden somewhere about the hour of sunrise, through the wet grass that was all scintillant with dew. On the marble bench by the pond, where the water-lilies were now rotting, I flung myself down, and there was I found a half-hour later by Giuliana herself.
Boggy ground alternates with patches of dry stony earth, and in early summer every little pool of water affords sustenance to coarse-scented white water-lilies, and clumps of the yellow iris that are over-shadowed by masses of tall graceful reeds.
We sat in the fine garden behind the house, on the lawn, in the shade of mulberry trees laden with yellow translucent fruit, by a pond that was all afloat with water-lilies. There was a crescent-shaped seat of hewn marble, over which Messer Gambara, who was with us, had thrown his scarlet cardinal's cloak, the day being oppressively hot.
It seemed a very little time after all before they were stepping out of the boat at Aunt Emma's boathouse, and the picnic and the row were both over. "Good-bye, dear lake," said Milly, turning with her hands full of water-lilies to look back before they went up to the house. "Good-night, mountains; good-night, Birdsnest Point. I shall soon come and see you again."
When they came to the edge of the pond, and stopped to look at the water-lilies, and at the white flood of the moonlight, and all the clustering masses of the trees that hung round as if to keep it hidden and sheltered, it was she who spoke: "Your father was very fond of this view. Almost the last time he was out we brought him here. He sat down for a long time, and was quite pleased.
Had a talk with him asked him to come up and have a look at you. It was when Nevile went off on this trip. No, no, I liked old Senhouse. He was a nice-minded chap. Not the kind to eat you up and take everything you've got as if he had a right to it. No. That's Nevile's line, that is. You wouldn't see Nevile lending you his bed, or risking his life after water-lilies."
It came quite easily to the edge of the bank when Lindsay pulled the chain, and seemed deliberately to invite them to step into it. Such a temptation was not to be resisted. In a moment they were both inside. "If I can manage to untie it, I'm sure I could punt us out on to the river," said Lindsay. "Oh, do! And then perhaps we could find some water-lilies," agreed her ever-willing friend.
Rare shrubs exotics grew out of large vessels of japanned earthenware, whose brilliant tints added to the voluptuous colouring of the scene. A jet d'eau, crystalline, rose to the height of twenty feet, and, returning in a shower of prismatic globules, stole away through a bed of water-lilies and other aquatic plants, losing itself in a grove of lofty plantain-trees.
As they had plenty of time they went up the Seine slowly. They coasted along the reaches covered with water-lilies, and the heavy, mud-covered boat slipped over the lily pads and bent the flowers, which stood up again as soon as they had passed.
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