She glanced up to see Eliot gazing
straight ahead, apparently supremely oblivious of that slender, gracious
figure in front, moving lightly betwixt Robin and the stooping, rather
clever-looking doctor.
Presently they all trooped into the hot-houses--warm and fragrant with the
smell of freshly-watered earth, and a rather fierce-looking gardener paused
in his work to exhibit this or that particular plant in which he took a
special interest. But the pride of the rectory was the orchid-house, and
insensibly everybody gravitated towards it.
Ann and Eliot were strolling along a little behind the rest, and she paused
a moment to rifle a pot of heliotrope of a spray of clustered blossom.
"Heavenly stuff!" she exclaimed, sniffing it rapturously. "Smell it!" And
she held it out just under Eliot's nose, obviously expecting him to share
her enthusiasm.
Nothing in the world brings back the past so poignantly as remembered
scents--neither sight nor sound. A pictured face, the refrain of
a song, may chance to stir the pulse of memory, but a remembered
fragrance--intangible, unseen--seems to penetrate to the inmost soul
itself, ripping asunder the veil which the years between have woven and
refashioning the dead past for us as vividly as though it had never died.
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