Page:Hichens - The Green Carnation.djvu/216

208 But your mind is artificially coloured: it comes from the dyer's. It is a green carnation; and I want a natural blossom to wear in my heart."

She got up.

"You are not angry with me?" she asked.

Lord Reggie's face was scarlet.

"You talk very much like ordinary people," he said, a little rude in his hurt self-love.

"I am ordinary," she said. "I am so glad of it. I think that after this week I shall try to be even more ordinary than I already am."

Then she went slowly into the cottage.

That evening Lord Reggie told Mrs. Windsor that he found he must leave for town on the following morning.

She was horrified, and was still more appalled when Esmé Amarinth expressed an intention of accompanying him.

"It's worse than the Professor's fit last year," she said dolefully. "But perhaps it will be better if we all go back to town to-morrow. You will not care to be rustic without any men, will you, Madame Valtesi?" she added.

"No," replied that lady. "It would be too much like having a bath in Tidman's salt, instead of in the ocean. It would be tame. We three women in this cottage together should be like the Graiæ, only we should not have even one eye and one tooth between us.