Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/319

 

O it was Mr. and Mrs. Winnery (née Fosdick) who were destined in the end to use the four bathtubs installed by the Princess d'Orobelli for her retirement from the world. The very face of the villa had been changed and the bleak, barren and mournful air which once had invested it was gone forever. Like the countenances of ladies who have had their faces lifted it appeared new and pleasant without losing altogether its engaging air of antiquity and experience. The garden was all in order now and where only sour and brilliant green moss had once grown there were now banks of flowers which actually grew with all the extravagance described in the tourist circulars on the subject of Brinoë. And Mr. Winnery, now that he was no longer forced to live in Brinoë, found it a lovely place. In the long summer twilights he and the pregnant Mrs. Winnery walked slowly up and down the long colonnades of mottled plane trees talking together in sudden bird-like bursts of intimacy of the days before they were brought together by the death and the miracle of Miss Annie Spragg. Neither of them had ever known any intimacy before and its discovery enchanted them.

She also told him a great deal more about Aunt Henrietta, each day thinking up fresh horrors to relate. She expressed surprise at the fact that Aunt Henrietta had never found him guilty of improper