"No." Presently they came through a door to the hothouses, and she had
to be introduced to the head gardener, a Scotchman, and express her
admiration of everything, and eat some wonderful grapes; and here
Tristram again "played the game," and chaffed, and was gay. And so they
went out, and through a clipped, covered walk to another door in a wall,
which opened on the west side--the very old part of the house--and
suddenly she saw the Italian parterre. Each view as she came upon it she
tried to identify with what she had seen in the pictures in _Country
Life_, but things look so different in reality, with the atmospheric
effects, to the cold gray of a print. Only there was no mistake about
this--the Italian parterre; and a sudden tightness grew round her heart,
and she thought of Mirko and the day she had last seen him. And Tristram
was startled into looking at her by a sudden catching of her breath, and
to his amazement he perceived that her face was full of pain, as though
she had revisited some scene connected with sorrowful memories. There
was even a slight drawing back in her attitude, as if she feared to go
on, and meet some ghost. What could it be? Then the malevolent sprite
who was near him just now whispered: "It is an Italian garden, she has
seen such before in other lands; perhaps the man is an Italian--he
looks dark enough." So instead of feeling solicitous and gentle with
whatever caused her pain--for his manners were usually extremely
courteous, however cold--he said almost roughly:

"This seems to make you think of something! Well, let us get on and get
it over, and then you can go in!"

He would be no sympathetic companion for her sentimental musings--over
another man!

Her lips quivered for a moment, and he saw that he had struck home, and