Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/210



garden is the fairest spot in all the wide Rondelet plantation. Here the lilies are all ablow, lining the paths in stately rows and nodding gravely at one another as Margaret walks between them, brushing the dew from their petals with the sweep of her white robe. She passes under an amethyst canopy of wistarias; and leaning against the old tree about which the vine has flung its freshness, she pauses and breathes in the beauty of the scene. A thick hedge of Cherokee-roses screens the garden from the house and offices. Here is no hint of work or business; it is a place to dream in, a place to love in, a place to lie in at peace, when life and love and work are over. Dark and straight, a pair of aged cypresses rise from the midst of all the bloom and perfume of countless flowers. Between the two quiet sentinels is a tomb, lichen-stained, grass-grown. The letters are now untraceable. The Great Mother has blurred out the words which tell by what name,