"I do; you will never be a stranger to me," she said, simply.
"Thank you; do you know that evening coming from the Grand, after 'Erminie;' I was in the seventh heaven after having been so near you."
"'So near, and yet so far,'" she said, smiling; "for the frowning battlements of the conventionalities were still between us."
"Yes; but I dreamed that your pretty lace fan would waft them away, being a woman (though, by your eyes, I feel sure a warm-hearted one); still, you cannot know how my heart leaped when I saw that you had forgotten your fan; my first impulse led me to follow you with it, but Scotch second-sight suggested the means I adopted, to tell you my name. How did you like it?"
"Very much, indeed," she said, smiling, as looking into his face half shyly, remembering how she had pressed his card to her lips; "I love both your names, for reasons I may tell you another time. Are you Highland Scotch?"
"Yes; and from fair Dunkeld."
"Indeed! you must be proud of your birthplace; the scenery must be beautiful, were it only in among your groves of trees. I love the giants of the forest so, that I wonder in the Pagan world they have not been as gods; now we sing,
"'Ye groves that wave in Spring,
And glorious forests sing,
Alleluia.'"
"You have a passion for trees, I see, and would surely like Dunkeld; 30,000,000 alone are said to have been planted by a Duke of Athol; we father on to the scenery a spice of romance running through us."
"Don't try to excuse it by fathering it on to other than your own nature; our age is too practical; but Emerson expresses my thoughts exactly when he says 'everything but cyphering is hustled out of sight; man asks for a novel, that is, asks leave for a few hours to be a poet.' But, perhaps, you don't agree with me?"