“Oh, why have you wasted your life?” she cried. “Why have you turned your back on all the good things God gives man? Why is your home desolate, your hearth vacant, your heart solitary? David, David, this house should never have been empty thus; there should be children round your knee! What have you done with your life?” The tears brimmed over and ran down her cheeks. Then her strange passion fell away from her, and she stood ashamed. He had started first and put up his hand as if to thrust back her words. There was a long silence. When he broke it, it was as one who speaks upon the second thought, with the cold control that follows an unadmitted emotion. “For me such things will never be.” “Why, why?” The cry seemed forced from her. He waved his hand with the gesture of the most complete renunciation. “Never,” he repeated. The word, she felt, was final. She gazed at him almost angrily; then tears, caused now by mortification and confusion, rose irresistibly again. To conceal them she turned to the window, pulled open the queer little casement and, leaning on her elbows, looked out in silence. Below her lay the Herb-Garden, with its variegated autumn burden of berries, red or purple or sinister orange; its groups of fantastically shaped leaves, turning to tints not usually known in this sober clime; here a patch, violet, nearly black; and there a streak of tropical scarlet; elsewhere again mauve, verdigris-green—colours, indeed, that village folk said, “no Christian plants ought to produce.” The scents of them, as pungent yet different in decay as ever in their blossom time, rose to her nostrils mixed sweet and bitter, over-dulcet, poisonous or aromatic-wholesome. The sight and the smell were full of subtle reminiscence. She felt her throbbing heart calm down, her hot cheeks grow cool. In some mysterious way, now as in her childhood, the Herb-Garden seemed to draw her and to speak to her; to promise and withhold some fairy secret, she knew not whether for joy or sorrow, but yet incomparably sweet. As she gazed forth she noticed the quaint figure of her father come into view from behind a clump of bushes. He was attended by Barnaby, who, under the direction of his master’s gesture, culled leaves and flowers. Circling round the pair, Belphegor, the black cat, could be seen gravely watching the proceedings. There was something peaceful and world-detached in the silent scene, and it brought back some of that sense of rest and home-return which she had found so blessed the previous night. All at once she felt close to her the shadowing presence of her cousin, and the next moment his touch upon her shoulder sent her blood leaping.