Immediately below him a small, turf-carpeted garden formed a square of shadow and sunlight. A jasmine clambered and sprawled along the purple brick wall at the rear, and a narrow, chocolate-hued bed of moist loam caught the fallen blooms. The bed held white and purple and lavender iris, and spiræa, and blue pentstemon, and was bordered with honey-flower. At the end of the old wall, where it formed an angle with an iron fence, a queerly shaped Daphne-tree threw grotesque shadows on the little lawn. But it was beyond the rusty iron barrier that Burton’s eyes found their richest reward. [Illustration] There stretched a quadrangle that was bounded by walls on two sides and at the farther end by the back of an old-fashioned Southern house, staid and sleepy-looking, whose second-story porch, half hidden by vines over white-painted iron lattice-work, held a hammock which ever since Burton’s coming had remained idle, swinging lazily in the afternoon breezes. The quadrangle was intersected by narrow red gravel paths bordered by box hedges waist-high. And between the hedges, against the walls, along the fence, and clambering upon the house were roses. Never had Burton seen or dreamed of such roses. The garden was a riot of intense reds, of tender pinks, of flaring yellows and dazzling whites, and of every hue and tint between. [Illustration] For the most part, they were the favorites of a generation gone: Banksias, festooning the warm bricks with bouquets of amber yellow and of violet-tinged white; Baltimore Belles, creamy-hued and graceful; rosy-violet Pride of Washingtons; sweetbriers of scarlet and blush; Austrian briers, single blossoms of flame-yellow. In the beds were great cabbage-roses of delicate, clear pink and of deep rose; moss-roses of many sorts, crimson Damasks, bright-red Luxembourgs, tiny clusters of flesh-colored Pompons. An immense bush of Gloire des Jardins was aflame with its great double blooms of red, while clustered about it were Madame Cottins, Philippe Quatres, Marceaus, Madame Hardys, Princess Clementines, and Madame Plantiers. The rich crimson, cup-shaped blossoms of a George the Fourth were nodding regally over the yellow-pink blooms of an Emmeline; the brown velvet petals of a Lord Nelson were clustering above a lowly Wellington; while, supreme in one three-cornered jungle of color, a spreading bush of Queen Victoria, an offshoot of the parent stem, showered the ground with its glowing petals. [Illustration]