"'My wife, yes, almost a bride yet, but we are making her blush. My love, this is Mr. Lawrence, of New York, one of the best friends I have. You must take him into especial favor for your husband's sake.'
"I am sure there was color enough in my face then. Why will Mr. Dennison constantly drag that odious word, husband, into everything he says? Does he think I can ever forget it?
"We sat down in company, enjoying the cool shadows of the veranda. All my pleasure was at an end; the conversation turned upon stocks, railroads, and mining. I gathered from it that Mr. Lawrence was a stock-broker or something of that kind, and that Mr. Dennison was connected with him in an enterprise for which money was to be supplied. Once or twice I caught the stranger looking at me while my husband conversed, but I was occupied with my embroidery, and did not seem to notice him; perhaps he was admiring the contrast between the pure white of my dress and the gorgeous richness of the worsteds in my lap.
"While they were talking, Mr. Dennison insisted that I should sit closer to him, and more than once he placed his hand on my work and prevented me going on with it, as if I had been a child. This annoyed me. After all, one does not care to be so obviously exhibited as 'the old man's darling.' It is embarrassing when the fine eyes of a man like that are upon you.
"After dinner that day, Mr. Dennison stole off to a low pan in the library for his half-hour of sleep. I usually occupied my own room at this hour, but as I went that way, our guest came in from the veranda, where he had been smoking a cigar, and laughingly entreated that I should not leave him alone.
"I ran up-stairs, threw a black lace shawl over my head, Spanish mantilla fashion, and joined him. It was sunset, and all the beautiful landscape lay wrapped in a veil of purplish mist, through which trembled a soft golden glow that brightened all the west, and shimmered through the tree-tops like flashes of fire.
"We walked on through the delicious atmosphere, to which the perfume of innumerable flowers gave forth their sweetness, as they brightened under the soft dews that had just began to fall.
"Unconsciously, we turned out of the oak-avenue and walked toward a pretty pond, or miniature lake, which lay to our right, sheltered by one live-oak and a cluster of magnolia-trees, from which the blossoms brought to me that morning had been cut. A shrub-like species of the magnolia grew around the pond, hedging it in with great white blossoms, and the sedgy borders were aglow with wild flowers. It was not yet time for the water-lilies to be in blossom, but in some places their large green pads covered the lake with patches of glossy greenness, while a light wind rippled through them, stirring the waters like ridges of diamonds between the trembling leaves.
"How beautiful it was! The birds were no longer musical, but we watched them fluttering through the leaves and settling down in safe places among the rushes, while the sweet stillness of the closing day fell upon them.
"My hand rested on the arm of our guest; he was talking earnestly, and his eloquence thrilled me with sensations unlike anything I had felt before. There was unmeasured poetry in every word he uttered. We had, I do not know how, got on to the subject of that book again, and he was defending it in language warm, fervid, and startling, as the story itself. My hand shook on his arm; a new idea had seized upon me, and against my own will I spoke.