"Oh, you are English; how delightful!" I remarked, ingenuously.
"But surely the garden belongs to the house?"
"Yes, but the house doesn't belong to me." She was a long,
lean, pale person, habited apparently in a dull-colored
dressing gown, and she spoke with a kind of mild literalness.
She did not ask me to sit down, any more than years before
(if she were the niece) she had asked Mrs. Prest, and we stood
face to face in the empty pompous hall.
"Well then, would you kindly tell me to whom I must address myself?
I'm afraid you'll think me odiously intrusive, but you know I MUST
have a garden--upon my honor I must!"
Her face was not young, but it was simple; it was not fresh, but it was mild.
She had large eyes which were not bright, and a great deal of hair which
was not "dressed," and long fine hands which were--possibly--not clean.
She clasped these members almost convulsively as, with a confused,
alarmed look, she broke out, "Oh, don't take it away from us;
we like it ourselves!"
"You have the use of it then?"
"Oh, yes. If it wasn't for that!" And she gave a shy, melancholy smile.
"Isn't it a luxury, precisely? That's why, intending to be
in Venice some weeks, possibly all summer, and having some
literary work, some reading and writing to do, so that I must
be quiet, and yet if possible a great deal in the open air--
that's why I have felt that a garden is really indispensable.
I appeal to your own experience," I went on, smiling.
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