"
"You're as proud of the romance as I am, or you wouldn't be at such
pains to repeat it to everybody, pretending to think I've already told
it," said Nevill. "But I'm going to show Knight his quarters. Pretty or
plain, there are no ghosts here that will hurt him. And then we'll have
lunch, for which he's starving."
Stephen's quarters consisted of a bedroom (furnished in Tunisian style,
with an imposing four-poster of green and gold ornamented with a gilded,
sacred cow under a crown) and a sitting room gay with colourful
decorations imported from Morocco. These rooms opened upon a wide
covered balcony screened by a carved wooden lattice and from the
balcony Stephen could look over hills, near and far, dotted with white
villas that lay like resting gulls on the green wave of verdure which
cascaded down to join the blue waves of the sea. Up from that far
blueness drifted on the wind a murmurous sound like AEolian harps,
mingled with the tinkle of fairy mandolins in the fountain of the court
below.
At luncheon, in a dining-room that opened on to a white-walled garden
where only lilies of all kinds grew, to Stephen's amazement two
Highlanders in kilts stood behind his hostess's chair. They were young,
exactly alike, and of precisely the same height, six foot two at least.
"No, you are not dreaming them, Mr. Knight," announced Lady MacGregor,
evidently delighted with the admiring surprise in the look he bestowed
upon these images.
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