“I am sick of it all,” she cried, breaking the silence. “I am sick of the whole world, and of myself more than the rest. How I wish I was like Aunt Clarissa.”
She began to wander about restlessly, pulling at the roses with no particular object, but because she could not keep still. Buds and blossoms, red, and cream, and white, were torn from their stems ruthlessly, until her hands were full, and then she stopped again, half wondering at herself.
“What am I thinking of?” she said. “What do I want them for? Poor things!” remembering her parable bitterly. “They might have been very sweet to-morrow.”
She held the cool, fresh things close up to her face, breathing in their fragrance eagerly; and when she took them away, their blossoms were bright here and there--perhaps with dew; certainly with dew, if it was dew that wet her fevered cheeks, and softened her eyes so strangely.
Scarcely three minutes later she turned with a start, and then stood listening. Some one had left the house, and was coming across the lawn toward her. She waited a few seconds, to make sure that she was not mistaken, and then she bent down over a bush, and began leisurely to gather more roses, though she was overloaded already.
“Where is Georgie?” she asked, calmly, of the intruder, when he reached her side.
“Georgie,” returned a rather constrained voice, “is talking to Miss Hetty. Miss Clarissa sent me here to remind you that the dew is falling, and that you are not strong enough to bear the night air.”
“Miss Clarissa is very good,” Lisbeth answered. “And so are you. But dear Miss Clarissa has been threatening me with an untimely grave, as the result of night air, ever since I was six months old; so, perhaps, I am not so grateful as I ought to be. I love darkness rather than light, upon the whole, and don’t find that it disagrees with me; perhaps because my deeds are evil.”
For fully two minutes, she gathered her flowers in silence, while Anstruthers waited, and looked at her; but at last she stood upright, and their eyes met.
“It is a beautiful night,” she remarked, sententiously.
“We have had a great number of lovely nights, lately.”
She busied herself with her roses for a little while, to the exclusion of everything else, and then she gave it up.