My Friends in their Gardens 
grey percherons , with postillions clad in blue-and-silver 
jackets, yellow breeches tucked into high boots, and blue 
caps with great silver tassels. I met her once, wandering 
in a vineyard. She said she was in search of Roman coins 
(the district had formerly been a favourite watering-place of 
the Romans, and below the tranquil waters of the land- 
locked bay could be traced ruins of their houses). I 
remember how strange she looked in her gay Paris hat 
with feathers, trailing her velvet gown over the hard red 
clods of earth among the vines, followed by a little frisking 
white Maltese dog. Another time I trespassed involuntarily 
in the gardens of the rising palace. 
Having wandered along the beach, I suddenly found 
myself, on turning the corner of a low wall, within the 
precincts of the garden, if you can so term a rather over- 
grown slope where the native wild shrubs contended for the 
mastery with newly-planted Orange-trees. I followed a little 
path upward, and came to an old grotto, one grown with 
Maidenhair Fern, which I afterwards heard was said to be 
an ancient Roman fountain, in the midst of arches that were 
all that remained of baths built by the Romans. The lonely 
lady was there, sitting among the Geraniums and Aloes, 
with a book in her hand, but her eyes fixed on the far-off 
sea. She greeted me, and I apologised for my unpremedi- 
tated intrusion. We got into conversation, and somehow 
or other I learnt that she liked sitting there because it 
reminded her of her old home— a prim little house in the 
suburbs of Paris, where her father had loved Geraniums and 
treasured a fancy Rockery, and she had helped him to garden 
and collect coins. Now he was dead and the house was 
sold. She had been poor then ; now her husband was said 
to be fabulously rich. She asked me to come and see her 
again. “ Do come, madame,” she said, “I ... I am 
very lonely.” But I was obliged to leave the neighbourhood 
very shortly, and when the next year I came back the villa 
had passed into other hands. There had been a smash, 
and one day the millionaire disappeared as suddenly as he 
had come, leaving a load of debt in the confiding little 
307 
