Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/51

 determined that he should not be allowed to forget his promise about the portrait.

Madame de Lamouderie rose from her chair and took her stick. But she did not really need a stick, Jill observed. Though so old she was surprisingly upright and she moved forward on her high heels with a beautiful ease and majesty.

Graham looked about them as they went; he was more interested in the Manoir than in his old friend. 'That window up there is oddly placed,' he said, at the foot of the stair. 'It reminds me of a window in a Méryon.'

'It is a very difficult window to clean,' said the old lady. 'Almost impossible, as you will recognize. Joseph has to mount a ladder from the landing.' She opened the glass door and the sunny stretch of the garden was before them, a straight path, running between gnarled fruit-trees, from where they stood, to a bench placed against the wall at its farthest end. It was melancholy, meditative; yet not unhappy; it was too well tended for that, as Jill's practised eye recognized at once. The ancient trees were pruned; the borders dug; the autumn flowers that grew on either hand looked like the flowers of fifty years ago, but their soil was carefully weeded. Over the high walls was the chestnut forest. 'I should spend all my time in this garden if I lived here!' Jill exclaimed.

Graham stood looking about him, suddenly silent; and something brooding, remote, desolate, even, in his expression struck upon Jill with the sense of