Page:Herbert Jenkins - The Rain Girl.djvu/200

 bushes the possession of the garden. It seemed as if Nature had been permitted to go her own way, without either help or hindrance from man.

In the centre of the garden was a sundial, moss-green from exposure to the weather, the base overgrown with grass and some sort of weed-like creeper, whilst from above the lattice-windowed inn, a chimney reared its long neck and smoked lazily into the blueness of the sky. Birds were twittering and dropping on to the grass, seizing the crumbs of cake that Beresford idly tossed to them, then, as if suddenly realising their daring, they would speed away to devour their plunder in safety.

As the days passed, Lola and Beresford had drifted into the habit of spending all their time together. There had been no plan or arrangement; it had just happened. They still sat at different tables in the dining-room. She had not invited him to take meals with her. She was thinking of the proprieties, he decided. He was conscious that they formed the topic of conversation at the Imperial. The Thirty-Nine Articles had frankly thrown him overboard, and either ignored or glared at him.

During their walks and excursions together, Lola had told him much about herself. How she had lost her mother when a few months old, and her father, who died of a broken heart, three years later. An uncle in New Zealand, whom she had never seen, had assumed responsibility for his brother's child.

A little more than a year previously he had died, and she had inherited his vast fortune.