trellis was a small, lonely garden; beyond the
garden was a large, vague, woody space, where a few piles of old timber
were disposed, and which he afterwards learned to be a relic of the
shipbuilding era described to him by Doctor Prance; and still beyond
this again was the charming lake-like estuary he had already admired.
His eyes did not rest upon the distance; they were attracted by a figure
seated under the trellis, where the chequers of sun, in the interstices
of the vine leaves, fell upon a bright-coloured rug spread out on the
ground. The floor of the roughly-constructed verandah was so low that
there was virtually no difference in the level. It took Ransom only a
moment to recognise Miss Birdseye, though her back was turned to the
house. She was alone; she sat there motionless (she had a newspaper in
her lap, but her attitude was not that of a reader), looking at the
shimmering bay. She might be asleep; that was why Ransom moderated the
process of his long legs as he came round through the house to join her.
This precaution represented his only scruple. He stepped across the
verandah and stood close to her, but she did not appear to notice him.
Visibly, she was dozing, or presumably, rather, for her head was
enveloped in an old faded straw hat, which concealed the upper part of
her face. There were two or three other chairs near her, and a table on
which were half-a-dozen books and periodicals, together with a glass
containing a colourless liquid, on the top of which a spoon was laid.
Ransom desired only to respect her repose, so he sat down in one of the
chairs and waited till she should become aware of his presence. He
thought Miss Chancellor's back-garden a delightful spot, and his jaded
senses tasted the breeze--the idle, wandering summer wind--that stirred
the vine leaves over his head. The hazy shores on the other side of the
water, which had tints more delicate than the street vistas of New York
(they seemed powdered with silver, a sort of midsummer light), suggested
to him a land of dreams, a country in a picture. Basil Ransom had seen
very few pictures, there were none in Mississippi; but he had a vision
at times of something that would be more refined than the real world,
and the situation in which he now found himself pleased him almost as
much as if it had been a striking work of art. He was unable to see, as
I have said, whether Miss Birdseye were taking in the prospect through
open or only, imagina