He bent his head and kissed her. It was clumsy and shaking and entirely sincere, and for a long time neither of them said anything at all.
The orchid did not die.
That was the quiet miracle of the thing, and Samuel Hale, when he came to look at the torn flower on its bench that evening, said so with some astonishment. He had expected the plant to sulk, as plants do, for a season or two. Instead it put up a second spike in September, and a third in the following spring, and in time it threw so many offshoots that there were enough to send a plant to the Duke of Marlowe, and one to the Horticultural Society in London, and one, wrapped in damp moss and tied with a white ribbon, to a cottage by the lower gate where a young schoolmistress was learning to love a great many cuttings.
They were married in the autumn, Samuel and Hannah, with the Earl and Countess in the front pew. The Earl gave the bride away, since her own father was dead, and was observed by the congregation to wipe his eyes more than once, and to hold his wife's hand throughout the sermon, which was thought to be a most unusual thing.
Gerard Hartley left the county that summer and was never seen there again.
And in the year following, on a warm morning in the second week of June, a man in a plain coat came down the path to the glasshouse at half past five, with a woman on his arm and a small shawled bundle in the crook of her other, and opened the door.
It was warm inside. It smelled of wet bark and moss. In the far corner, on a shelf of slatted teak, a plant with grey-green leaves was throwing out its first white flower of the season, and beside it, upon an upturned crate, sat a book, a pencil, and a flask of tea going cold.
Samuel Hale looked up from the shelf, and smiled.
"Good morning, my lord. My lady." He nodded gravely to the bundle. "Master Honoria."
"Her ladyship," said the Earl, with great dignity, "is a girl."
"So I observe, my lord. But she has your mother's nose, and I believe she means to take after her in botany."
The Earl of Wyncombe looked down at his infant daughter, who was regarding the white flower with the serious, unfocused attention of the very young, and then at his wife, who was looking at him with shining eyes. And he thought, in some wonder, of the cold years, and the stone behind his ribs, and the wet dark night he had stood among the laurels.
It was the only place I was ever happy, he had once said, to a picture.
He had been wrong. It had not been the place at all.
"Sit down, my dear," he said, and drew out the crate. "Hale, I believe Lady Cecilia has an argument with Mr. Sweet that she is eager to resume. I should like to hear it."
And in the green and golden light of the glasshouse at Wyncombe Park, with the cooling pipes ticking softly and a white flower turning toward the sun, the Countess opened her book, and began to laugh.
THE END