What is the meaning of 'in the note'?

Question

It's from Edith Wharton's "Afterward", a short story published in 1910.

I can't figure out the real meaning of 'in the note' in the paragraph below.

But when she dipped into the damp heat of the greenhouses, among the spiced scents and waxy pinks and reds of old-fashioned exotics, — even the flora of Lyng was in the note!—she learned that the great man had not arrived, and the day being too rare to waste in an artificial atmosphere, she came out again and paced slowly along the springy turf of the bowling-green to the gardens behind the house. At their farther end rose a grass terrace, commanding, over the fish-pond and the yew hedges, a view of the long house-front, with its twisted chimney-stacks and the blue shadows of its roof angles, all drenched in the pale gold moisture of the air.

Answer 1

It's not an easy sentence to decode, but I suspect the answer lies in this definition of "note" from the Cambridge dictionary:

an emotion or a way of expressing something:
-There was a note of caution in her letter.
-His speech struck just the right note.
-The meeting ended on an optimistic note.

The emotion(s) in question here are highlighted earlier in the paragraph that contains the sentence in question:

The task involved on such charmed winter days almost as much delighted loitering about the different quarters of her demesne as if spring were already at work on shrubs and borders. There were such inexhaustible possibilities still before her, such opportunities to bring out the latent graces of the old place, without a single irreverent touch of alteration, that the winter months were all too short to plan what spring and autumn executed. And her recovered sense of safety gave, on this particular morning, a peculiar zest to her progress through the sweet, still place.

In other words, Mary is going about her morning's work with a sense of engagement and hope: she is enjoying herself, pottering about the old house and looking for objects of delight, the "latent graces" of the house that can be enjoyed with little or no alterations.

In this sense, the "spiced scents" and "waxy pinks and reds" of the house's "flora" - Lyng is the name of the property - that she encounters in the greenhouse chime with her emotional sense of engagement and anticipation. They are things to be savoured and enjoyed on an otherwise dull winter's day, and are thus in the "note" of her emotional state.

Answer 2

This term comes from perfuming. A note is part of a scent. These can be analyzed in terms of when they are smelled, but in this context, it means only that she can smell "flora of Lyng" in the room.

Also in this context, it carries the suggestion that she smelled but did not see it

Answer 3

Mary is expecting an engineer who will look at the pipework in the greenhouse, and refers to that person as "an authority from Dorchester":

There was something wrong about the piping of the hot-house, and she was expecting an authority from Dorchester, (…).

The only way to contact the engineer was by writing, i.e. by sending a letter or "note". This is why the man is referred to again in the next part of the sentence (emphasis mine):

But when she dipped into the damp heat of the greenhouses, among the spiced scents and waxy pinks and reds of old-fashioned exotics—even the flora of Lyng was in the note!—she learned that the great man had not arrived, (…).

The "flora of Lyng" are the plants in the greenhouse, which depend on the greenhouse's pipework and are therefore mentioned in the note.