Its half-classical drapery exactly suited the severe
regularity of her pensive features and her graceful figure. Alan
thought as he looked at her he had never before seen anybody who
appeared at all points so nearly to approach his ideal of
womanhood. She was at once so high in type, so serene, so
tranquil, and yet so purely womanly.
"Yes, it IS a lovely place," he answered, looking around at the
clematis that drooped from the gable-ends. "I'm staying myself
with the Watertons at the Park, but I'd rather have this pretty
little rose-bowered garden than all their balustrades and Italian
terraces. The cottagers have chosen the better part. What
gillyflowers and what columbines! And here you look out so
directly on the common. I love the gorse and the bracken, I love
the stagnant pond, I love the very geese that tug hard at the
silverweed, they make it all seem so deliciously English."
"Shall we walk to the ridge?" Herminia asked with a sudden burst of
suggestion. "It's too rare a day to waste a minute of it indoors.
I was waiting till you came.
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