When night came, and with it a crowd to Mrs. Russell's rooms, the opportunity offered for the survey, and it was made scrutinizingly. Surrey was an only son, a well-beloved one, and what concerned him was investigated with utmost care.
Scrutinizingly and satisfactorily. They were dancing, his sunny head bent till it almost touched the silky blackness of her hair. "Saxon and Norman," said somebody near who was watching them; "what a delicious contrast!"
"They make an exquisite picture," thought the mother, as she looked with delight and dread: delight at the beauty; dread that fills the soul of any mother when she feels that she no longer holds her boy,—that his life has another keeper,—and queries, "What of the keeper?"
"Well?" she said, looking up at her husband.
"Well," he answered, with a tone that meant, well. "She's thorough-bred. Democratic or not, I will always insist, blood tells. Look at her: no one needs to ask who she is. I'd take her on trust without a word."
"So, then, you are not her critic, but her admirer."
"Ah, my dear, criticism is lost in admiration, and I am glad to find it so."
"And I. Willie saw with our eyes, as a boy; it is fortunate that we can see with his eyes, as a man."
So, without any words spoken, after that night, both Mr. and Mrs. Surrey took this young girl into their hearts as they hoped soon to take her into their lives, and called her "daughter" in their thought, as a pleasant preparation for the uttered word by and by.
Thus the weeks fled. No word had passed between these two to which the world might not have listened. Whatever language their hearts and their eyes spoke had not been interpreted by their lips. He had not yet touched her hand save as it met his, gloved or formal, or as it rested on his arm; and yet, as one walking through the dusk and stillness of a summer night feels a flower or falling leaf brush his check, and starts, shivering as from the touch of a disembodied soul, so this slight outward touch thrilled his inmost being; this hand, meeting his for an instant, shook his soul.