“I wonder though if she’ll put in an appearance to-morrow! Perhaps she thought me impertinent, a bit of a bounder! Perhaps she’ll keep out of my way! Perhaps--but she can’t do that altogether, else what would become of the roses? She must come into the garden, and if she comes into the garden I shall see her. And I’ll behave very, very well, oh, perfectly! And she’ll say to herself, ‘Poor fellow, his manners are really quite nice--for a Northerner. And he seems rather harmless. I think I’ll be kind to him.’ And everything will be lovely!” [Illustration] Cheered by his prophecies, he drew the table as near to the open window as the spattering raindrops permitted and resolutely took up his pen. For the first half-hour his gaze was more often on the door of the neighboring house than on his task. But after that the work--a paper on “Early Colonial Architecture in the South” to be read at a meeting of the Society of Architects--progressed finely, while the rain beat ceaselessly upon trees and shrubs and _pat_, _pattered_ on the window-sill at his elbow. By bedtime he had written the final word. After he had blown out his lamp he went to the window overlooking the Enchanted Garden. The back of the Castle was in darkness, but the rain had ceased, the dripping roses were scenting the night with their perfume and, high overhead, the moon peeped wanly through a rift in the clouds. [Illustration] [Illustration] VII “They are looking well after the rain,” he suggested interrogatively. She had shown no disposition to avoid him, in fact, her rather distant inclination of the head had preceded his own bow by a flattering fraction of a second. “Yes,” she agreed, without, however, pausing in her task of filling her basket with great long-stemmed blooms. Burton left the table and leaned over the fence. “On a day like yesterday one rather wishes oneself a rose-bush or tree or something equally inanimate, don’t you think?” [Illustration] “I don’t think I ever have,” she answered. “Why should one?” “Perhaps you are one of those unnaturally cheerful persons who like rainy days,” he said. “For my part, I can’t bear them. Yesterday, for instance, I was awfully bored. I think I must have stood at my window up there for all of an hour looking down here and wishing for the sight of”--he suddenly recollected his resolve to be on his good behavior--“of a human being. It was a beast of a day!” “You didn’t look happy, that is true,” she said, bending to rescue a fallen clump of flaring red Luxembourgs. “Then you saw me?” he asked eagerly. “Why not? You stood in full sight at your window.” “But--but I didn’t see you,” he answered aggrievedly. She shook her head. “You couldn’t; I was in the kitchen making cake.” “Really?” From his tone one would have thought the making of cake a wonderful and quite unprecedented performance. “Really,” she mocked smilingly.