THE BREATH OF AUTUMN 
97 
perfume sweeter even than the white jasmine’s upon 
the silence and the dusk. If only the nightingale were 
singing . . . but he will sing no more this year. 
The little formal garden beyond the south terrace, 
with its leaden images and urns, that long ago were 
brave with gilding, owes its chiefest adornment just now 
to the goodly company of phloxes and asters, where¬ 
with the plots and borders smile discreetly fair. Against 
the sombre background of trim dark box and yew the 
frail loveliness of the phlox is very daintily arrayed. 
Milk-white and tender amethyst, faint hues of lavender 
and rosy-lilac, peach, and violet prevail amid this throng 
of softly clustered blossoms; there is I know not what 
of reticence, of gentle virginal pride, in the senti¬ 
ment they would seem to express. To my mind they 
own somewhat of the air of delicate, well-born spinsters, 
no longer fair with the magic of first youth, but 
delightful still in remote, fastidious fashion; living on, 
as it were, in a cloud of serene memories through days 
of unruffled calm. At their feet, and within the many 
box-bordered beds that rejoice this quiet pleasaunce, the 
earth is all enamelled with asters of every kind and 
colour. One could almost think that the late chry¬ 
santhemums had forestalled their season, so liberal of 
growth and various of hue are some of these, more 
especially the paeony-flowered and the comet species. 
The quilled varieties have their own especial virtues, 
and I incline, with every season that passes, more and 
more to the belief that there is no aster which is not 
delightful, save only the extremely “ dwarf”; but then, 
I cannot imagine any flower finding favour in my sight 
H 
