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eyes on each other before to-day.”
“That’s true. But that’s why they’re able now to go ahead.”
“Go ahead!” Mr. Wilkins could only echo the outrageous words.
“I’m sorry, Mellersh,” said Mrs. Wilkins again, “if you don’t like it,
but—”
Her grey eyes shone, and her face rippled with the light and conviction
that had so much surprised Rose the first time they met.
“It’s useless minding,” she said. “I shouldn’t struggle if I were you.
Because—”
She stopped, and looked first at one alarmed solemn face and then at
the other, and laughter as well as light flickered and danced over her.
“I see them being the Briggses,” finished Mrs. Wilkins.
That last week the syringa came out at San Salvatore, and all the
acacias flowered. No one had noticed how many acacias there were till
one day the garden was full of a new scent, and there were the delicate
trees, the lovely successors to the wistaria, hung all over among their
trembling leaves with blossom. To lie under an acacia tree that last
week and look up through the branches at its frail leaves and white
flowers quivering against the blue of the sky, while the least movement
of the air shook down their scent, was a great happiness. Indeed, the
whole garden dressed itself gradually towards the end in white, and
grew more and more scented. There were the lilies, as vigorous as ever,
and the white stocks and white pinks and white banksia roses, and the
syringa and the jessamine, and at last the crowning fragrance of the
acacias. When, on the first of May, everybody went away, even after
they had got to the bottom of the hill and passed through the iron
gates out into the village they still could smell the acacias.