“Where would you like to go best, India or Africa?” asked Eve, as she and Peggy sat side by side in a fairy-like yawl, that went dipping and dancing over those summer waves, and seemed like a toy boat as it sailed under the lee of an Orient steamer bound for Alexandria.
“Oh, I think I would rather go up a pyramid than anything,” gasped Peggy, breathless at the mere thought. “Don’t you remember Belzoni’s Travels, that tattered little old book which once was mother’s, and how they used to grope about, Belzoni and his people, and lose themselves in dark passages, and make discoveries inside the Pyramids? And then the Nile, and the crocodiles, which one could always run away from, because they can’t turn, don’t you know? Oh, I think Egypt must be best of all.”
Peggy and her companions were out driving along the Corniche road or sailing over the blue waters every day, and all day long; and the invalid made a most wonderful recovery during that week.
Her nights were ever so much quieter, her appetite had improved. Peggy’s chance began to look like a certainty, and hope revived in Eve’s breast. Hope had never died there. She could not believe that this bright, happy young creature was to be taken away from her. There was such vitality in Peggy, such vigour in those thin arms when they clasped themselves round Eve’s neck, such light and life in the full blue eyes when they looked out upon the movement and variety of the Rue Cannebière, or the bustle of the quays.
They went on to Cannes, and alighted first at one of the most comfortable hotels in Europe, the Mont Fleuri, so as to take their time in the selection of a home; for they meant to stay in Provence till there was an end of cold weather in England, to go back only when an English spring should have done its worst, and the footsteps of summer should be at hand. If Cannes should grow too warm, there was Grasse; and there were cool retreats perched still higher on the mountain slopes, where they might spend the last month or so of their sojourn. There were reasons why Eve would be glad to escape from the little world in which she was known, reasons why she should prefer the absolute retirement of a villa in a strange land, where she need receive no more visitors than she chose, where she might let it be known among the little community of British residents that she did not desire to be called upon.
They found just the retreat that suited them, high on the eastern hill, which at this season was cloaked with the mimosa’s golden bloom as with a royal garment. The villa stood on higher ground than the Hotel Californie, and all the gulf of San Juan lay at its feet, and the ships at anchor looked like toy ships in the distance of that steep descent, where palm and pine, cypress and olive, lent their varying form and colour to the rough grey rocks, and where garden below garden spread a carpet of vivid flowers, hedges of roses, beds of pink and purple anemones, the scarlet and orange of the ranunculus, amidst the gloom of rocky gorge and pine forest.
Beyond the gulf rose the islands, shadowy at eventide, clear and sunlit in those early mornings when Peggy watched the red fires of dawn lighting up far away yonder towards Italy. She shared Eve’s imaginings about that neighbouring country, and thought with wonder of being so near the border of that mystical land. All her ideas of Italy were derived from “Childe Harold,” the more famous passages of which she had read and learnt diligently under Eve’s instruction, the eldest daughter carrying on the education of the youngest in a casual way, after the homely governess had vanished from the scene.
The villa was small and unpretentious, flung down carelessly, as it seemed, in a spacious garden, a garden which had been neglected of late years, since much smarter villas had risen up, white and ornamental, upon the heights of Californie. But the garden had once been cared for. It was full of roses and ivy-leaved geranium, anemones and narcissi, and, what pleased Peggy most of all, there was a grove of orange trees, where she could lie upon the grass and let the mandarin oranges drop into her lap. Eve and her young sister sat among the oranges for hours at a stretch, Eve working at one of those tiny garments which it was her delight to make—“dressing dolls,” Vansittart called it; Peggy pretending to read, but for the most part gazing at sky or sea, watching the white clouds or the white ships sailing by in the blue.
“Don’t you think heaven must be very like this?” Peggy asked, one quiet noontide, when the sky was of its deepest sapphire, and the air had the warmth and perfume of an English midsummer.
“What, Peg, do you suppose there are orange trees in the ‘Land of the Leal’—orange trees, and smart villas, and afternoon parties?”
“No, no—only the blue sky, and the sea, and the hills jutting out, one beyond another, till they melt into the sky. It looks
