“You love the country, Miss Fairchild?”
“Yes;” and her smile was the reflection of the summer-lands that arose before her at the word. “With the right side of my heart do I love the spot where nature speaks and man is dumb.”
“And with the left?”
“I love the place where great men congregate to face their destiny and control it.”
“The latter is the deeper love,” said he.
She nodded her head and then said, “I need both to make me happy. Sometimes as I walk these city streets, I feel as if my very longing to escape to the heart of the hills, would carry me there. I remember when I was a child, I was one day running through a meadow, when suddenly a whole flock of birds flew up from the grass and surrounded my head. I was not sure but what I should be caught up and carried away by the force of their flight; and when they rose to mid heaven, something in my breast seemed to follow them. So it is often with me here, only that it is the rush of my thoughts that threatens such a Hegira. Yet if I were to be transported to my native hills, I know I should long to be back again.”
“The mountain lassie has wandered into the courts of the king. The perfume of palaces is not easily forgotten.”
Her eye turned towards Mr. Sylvester standing near them upright and firm, talking to a group of attentive gentlemen every one of whom boasted a name of more than local celebrity. “Without a royal heart to govern, there would be no palace;” said she, and blushed under a sudden sense of the possible interpretation he might give to her words, till the rose in her hand looked pallid.
But he had followed her glance and understood her better than she thought. “And Mr. Sylvester has such a heart, so a hundred good fellows have told me. You are fortunate to see the city from the loop-hole of such a home as his.”
“It is more than a loop-hole,” said she.