A pretty maid brought him breakfast in bed. She gave him a cheerful morning greeting but embarrassed him by hoping in her thought that he would not make love to her. Her mind held some memory of how the last man in this room had done so, but she shied from the thought of the outcome so much that instead of decently avoiding her look Rodvard was tempted to pry deeper, but there was hardly time. She said it would be near to noon when Count Cleudi rose and that his apartment was in one of the pavilions set among tree and shrub and garden, west from the main villa. Rodvard dressed and went to stroll in that direction through curved avenues among intricate beds of spring flowers—tulip and narcissus, with pink azaleas just in the bud beside them and magnolia showing its heavy white wax. The pathways had been laid out so that each sweep brought somewhere into view through trees the pale blue bay, with the white houses of Sedad Vix climbing the slope beyond, their walls touched to gold by genial sunshine; bright yellow birds were singing overhead, or busily gathering morsels for their nests. Rodvard felt his heart expanding with a joyous certainty that all would yet be well, though in the same tick demanding of himself how men who dwelt in such surroundings could be given to evil and oppression. Ah, if all people could only walk in gardens daily! A question in philosophy to put to the doctor—but before he could frame it into words, a turn of the path brought him past a tall clump of rhododendrons to the front of a red-doored pavilion, where a gardener was letting into the ground plants of blooming hyacinth. The air was rich with their fragrance. “Good morning to you,” said Rodvard cheerfully, for joy of the world. The man looked up with lips that turned down at the corners. “If you say it is a good morning, I suppose it must be one for you,” he said, and turned back to his trowel. “Why, I would call it the best of mornings. Does not the fine air of it please you?” “Enough.” “Then what’s amiss? Have you troubles?” “Who has not?” The gardener slapped his trowel against the ground beside his latest plant. “Look at these flowers, now. Just smell that white one there, it’s more fragrant than the blue. Aren’t they beautiful things? Brought here at expense, and in this soil, see how black it is, they would grow more perfect than ever, year by year. But here’s the end of them; as soon as the blossoms fade ever so little, poor things, they must be dug up and thrown away, because she—” he swung his head and rolled an eye in the direction of the red-doored pavilion “—can’t bear to have any but blooming flowers at her door and will want new lilies.” “Who is she?” asked Rodvard, lowering his tone for fear that voices will sometimes carry through wood.