She passed on, with a smile of assent. Almost the first thing that caught her attention out of doors was a large and handsome fuchsia. She gathered a spray of the rich purple and crimson flowers, and placed it negligently in her hair. Many women would have stood before their mirror for an hour without producing the same superb effect. Then she placed another spray of the same gorgeous flowers in the bodice of her dress. It was all done without effort, and she would have been the last in the world to suspect how beautiful she looked. Then she went on to the fountain, for the beautiful, calm evening had awakened all the poet's soul within her. The grand, sensitive nature thrilled—the beautiful, poetic mind reveled in this hour of nature's most supreme loveliness. A thousand bright fancies surged through her heart and brain; a thousand poetical ideas shaped themselves into words, and rose to her lips.
So time passed, and she was unconscious of it, until a shadow falling over the great white lilies warned her that some one was near.
Looking up quickly, she saw a tall, fair, handsome young man gazing at her with mingled admiration and surprise. Beside him stood Sir Oswald, courtly, gracious, and evidently on the alert.
"Captain Langton," he said, "let me introduce you to my niece, Miss Darrell."
Not one feature of the girl's proud, beautiful face moved, but there was some little curiosity in her dark eyes. They rested for a minute on the captain's face, and then, with a dreamy look, she glanced over the heads of the white lilies behind him. He was not her ideal, not her hero, evidently. In that one keen, quick glance, she read not only the face, but the heart and soul of the man before her.
The captain felt as though he had been subjected to some wonderful microscopic examination.
"She is one of those dreadfully shrewd girls that pretend to read faces," he said to himself, while he bowed low before her, and replied with enthusiasm to the introduction.
"My niece is quite a Darrell," said Sir Oswald, proudly. "You see she has the Darrell face."
Again the gallant captain offered some flattering remark—a neatly turned compliment, which he considered ought to have brought her down, as a skillful shot does a bird—but the dark eyes saw only the lilies, not him.
"She is proud, like all the Darrells," he thought; "my father always said they were the proudest race in England."