CHAPTER XXVIII.

HOW TITA RECEIVES A BASKET OF FLOWERS AND AN ENTREATY; AND HOW SHE CEASES TO FIGHT AGAINST HER DESTINY.

It is quite early, barely eleven o’clock, and a most lovely morning.  Tita and Margaret, who have just settled down in the latter’s boudoir, presumably to write their letters, but actually to have a little gossip, are checked by the entrance of a servant, who brings something to Tita and lays it on the table beside her.

“With Sir Maurice Rylton’s compliments,” says the servant.

“What is it?” says Tita, when he has gone, with the air of one who instinctively knows, but would prefer to go on guessing about it.

“Not dynamite, assuredly,” says Margaret.  “What a delightful basket!”

“What can be inside it?”

“The best way to find that out is to open it,” says Margaret, with abominable briskness.  “Shall I cut these pretty ribbons, or will you?”

“No, don’t cut them,” says Tita quickly.

She draws the basket towards her, and slowly and with care unties the true lover’s knot of pale blue ribbon that fastens it.

“Flowers, I expect,” says Margaret.

“But tied up like this?”

“That is because there is a letter inside it.”

“You seem to know all about it,” says Tita, at which Margaret grows a little red, and wishes, like the parrot, that she had not spoken.

“Yes; it is flowers,” says Tita.

“Such flowers!” cries Margaret.  And, indeed, it is a rare basketful of Nature’s sweetest gifts that lies before them.  Delicate reds, and waxen whites, and the tender greens of the waving fern.  “How beautiful!” exclaims Margaret.

Tita has said nothing.  But now she puts out her hand.

“What is that?” says she.

“Why, the letter,” says Margaret, forgetting her late discomfiture in the excitement of this new discovery.

Tita draws it forth reluctantly.  It is tied to a little plant—­a tiny plant of pale forget-me-not.

“What can he have to write about?” says she.  “Perhaps it is to say he is not coming to-day; let us hope so.  But what does this plant mean?”

She opens the envelope with disdainful fingers.  It does not, however, contain a letter, after all.  It is only a verse scribbled on a card: 

    “If you will touch, and take, and pardon,
    What I can give;
    Take this, a flower, into your garden,
    And bid it live.”

Neither of them speaks for a moment.

“It is a pretty message,” says Margaret at last.

“Yes.”

Tita’s face is turned aside.  Her hand is still resting on the table, the verse and the little plant within it.

“He will be coming soon,” says Margaret again.

“Yes, I know.”

“You will be kind to him, dearest?”

“That—­I don’t know.”