'I don't want them. It's a very oppressive basket,' Edith said.

'How like you, Edith! I thought you were fond of flowers.'

'So I am, but I like one at a time. This is too miscellaneous and
crowded.'

'Some women are never satisfied. It's very rude and ungrateful to the
poor old man, who meant to be nice, no doubt, and to show his respect
for Englishwomen. I think you ought to write and thank him,' said
Bruce. 'And let me see the letter before it goes.'



CHAPTER VII

Coup de Foudre

When Aylmer Ross got back to the little brown house in Jermyn Street he
went to his library, and took from a certain drawer an ivory miniature
framed in black. He looked at it for some time. It had a sweet,
old-fashioned face, with a very high forehead, blue eyes, and dark hair
arranged in two festoons of plaits, turned up at the sides. It
represented his mother in the early sixties and he thought it was like
Edith. He had a great devotion and cult for the memory of his mother.
When he was charmed with a woman he always imagined her to be like his
mother.

He had never thought this about his wife People had said how