his basket flower-roots of several varieties. There were bundles of snowdrop, hyacinth and crocus bulbs, violets and double daisies, which were to bloom in early spring, and of carnations, pinks, picotees, lilies of the valley, forget-me-not, summer's-farewell, meadow-saffron, and others, for the later seasons of the year.
Troy laid these out upon the grass, and with an impassive face set to work to plant them. The snowdrops were arranged in a line on the outside of the coping, the remainder within the enclosure of the grave. The crocuses and hyacinths were to grow in rows; some of the summer flowers he placed over her head and feet, the lilies and forget-me-nots over her heart. The remainder were dispersed in the spaces between these.
Troy, in his prostration at this time, had no perception that in the futility of these romantic doings, dictated by a remorseful reaction from previous indifference, there was any element of absurdity. Deriving his idiosyncracies from both sides of the Channel, he showed at such junctures as the present the inelasticity of the Englishman, mingled with that blindness to the line where sentiment verges on mawkishness, so characteristic of the French.
It was a cloudy, muggy, and very dark night, and the rays from Troy's lantern spread into the
