At the sound of a new voice the lady in the bower started, as he could
see by her outline through the crevices of the wood-work and creepers.
The minister looked surprised.
‘You will lend me your Bible, sir, to assist my memory?’ he continued.
The minister held out the Bible with some reluctance, but he allowed
Somerset to take it from his hand. The latter, stepping upon a large
moss-covered stone which stood near, and laying his hat on a flat beech
bough that rose and fell behind him, pointed to the minister to seat
himself on the grass. The minister looked at the grass, and looked up
again at Somerset, but did not move.
Somerset for the moment was not observing him. His new position had
turned out to be exactly opposite the open side of the bower, and now
for the first time he beheld the interior. On the seat was the woman
who had stood beneath his eyes in the chapel, the ‘Paula’ of Miss De
Stancy’s enthusiastic eulogies. She wore a summer hat, beneath which
her fair curly hair formed a thicket round her forehead. It would be
impossible to describe her as she then appeared. Not sensuous enough
for an Aphrodite, and too subdued for a Hebe, she would yet, with the
adjunct of doves or nectar, have stood sufficiently well for either
of those personages, if presented in a pink morning light, and with
mythological scarcity of attire.
Half in surprise she glanced up at him; and lowering her eyes again,
as if no surprise were ever let influence her actions for more than a
moment, she sat on as before, looking past Somerset’s position at the
view down the river, visible for a long distance before her till it was
lost under the bending trees.