Whereupon he bowed low, with mock formality, approached her offering his arm. “I crave the honor.”
The girl placed her hand in his arm with a promptness that flushed his face, but immediately blanched it with the teasing remark: “It’s to be only as far as the conservatory, you know.”
“And from there around the grounds,” he replied tenderly.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “You insist on going the rounds with me? Oh, very well!” and they laughed together.
Shortly after they had gone, the portieres of an entrance to the left were cautiously parted and a young girl peeped in, then entered the room. She was the embodiment of youth, happiness and expectancy.
She was dressed in the whitest of white muslin. A narrow band of magenta-colored silk encircled her slender waist, the long, loose ends of the bow flowing almost to her feet, while her mass of raven black hair drawn back from her fair white forehead, and coiled at the back of her shapely head lent a queenly grace to a divinely moulded form.
The suppleness of her carriage, intensified by the simplicity of her soft, faultless dress, was a poem of delight which needed no skill of adornment to beautify; no touch of art to dignify.
Across the room she stole, as lightly as though her feet were winged, and listened at the door.
“I am sure I heard his voice!” Then with a smile of joy, she tripped to the open window overlooking the piazza, and looked out, murmuring—“how I long to see him. My Joe! Handsome, manly Joe, I adore you. And these, his flowers—his favorite flower, our beautiful rose,” drawing from her hair two red roses, which she kissed again and again.
“I hurried home because I could not remain away from you, and now—oh, the joy of a glad surprise—I hear footsteps!” and she listened expectantly, then turned to behold Mrs. Harris, an elderly lady of portly bearing and elegantly dressed, who was at that moment entering from the piazza.