Now she stood before him, in the full charm of her innocent girlhood, clad all in white, with her little hands clasping that bunch of flowers, the pale rays of an April sun touching her fair hair with gold. Her blue eyes were raised shyly to him just for an instant as she rose to meet him. He thought her elegant and pretty, stately, too, in her prim white gown.
"She was born to be a great lady," he thought to himself with an inward chuckle, "and by Gad I'll make her one."
In his mind—which seemed all in a whirl now—he compared her to Mistress Julia Peyton, and thought his cousin a mighty fool for preferring the latter.
He bowed very low as Rose Marie advanced and at an encouraging word from maman, she placed her hand on his, and he kissed the tips of her ice-cold fingers.
"A snow-maiden, by my faith!" he thought to himself. "Michael, thou rogue! Thou'lt of a surety have to infuse warmth into those pale cheeks."
She felt almost paralyzed with shyness, and very angry with herself for seeming so gauche and stupid. The while she curtsied to my lord in the most approved and primmest of fashions, the little bouquet of snowdrops escaped her trembling fingers. My lord stooped and picked it up, and she held out her hand for it, but he met her swift and timid glance with a bold challenge, and raised the bouquet to his lips before he hid it in the folds of his surcoat.
Rose Marie thought her future lord picturesque in his elegant accoutrements; the fine cloth of his coat, of a dull shade of red, the cut of his garments, the delicate bit of lace at throat and wrist set off the massive strength of his figure: she was not quite sure if he were really handsome, for there was a curious look in his eyes, especially when they met hers which she had never seen in any man before, and a strange setting of mouth and jaw which did I not suggest the love-sick husband.
But she liked his easy bearing as he talked to maman with an easy familiarity that proclaimed high birth and, gentle breeding. He had declined for himself Mme. Legros' offers of refreshment in the shape of mead or aromatic wines, but accepted gratefully when she offered to take mugs of steaming ale out to his men.
Rose Marie felt as if this were all a dream, and as if she would wake anon in her narrow bed behind the cotton curtains in her room under the eaves. She took several furtive glances at her future lord, and felt not a little piqued that he took so little heed of her. After that first hand kiss, and that quick flash of his deep-set eyes, when he hid her bouquet in his coat, she had not caught him once looking at her—was it because he did not think her fair?
Papa talked incessantly, and presently maman came back, and in that same vague dream-like way Rose Marie seemed to hear them talking about the wedding ceremony. My lord seemed impatient and anxious to get through the necessary formalities prescribed by the Church, and then to take his bride away with him to England as quickly as possible. Obviously she was not to be left alone with her future husband just now; and though in her young heart, she had looked forward to the moment when she would be alone with my lord, she now felt relieved at the thought that it was not to be.