May laughed and turned away her head, and John saw the white throat color and the lovely bloom on her smooth cheeks deepen.
“We are forgetting the ferns,” she said.
“So we are; tell me the best place to find them.”
She led him up a green arcade, through which a shallow stream went bubbling on. By the marge of the water strong, hardy ferns were plentiful, but these were principally of the larger kinds. But here and there in little mossy dells, the rarer fronds in their delicate greenery grew, and John Temple, pen-knife in hand, was speedily engaged in cutting them from the earth. The Mayflower stood by his side, while John knelt on the ground, and John felt conscious that the situation was a dangerous one. Alone in the woods with a beautiful girl, kneeling practically at her feet! Yet he felt wonderfully happy. His years seemed to roll back; he was a youth again, with all the hopes and aspirations of youth.
He looked up at the fresh, bright face bending over him, and he forgot many things that he ought to have remembered. As for May Churchill she also felt perfectly happy. She had never known anyone she liked half so much as Mr. Temple, she was thinking. “And he is so good-looking, too,” pretty May also reflected, glancing down on John’s brown head.
These two, in truth, were fast drifting into that dangerous stream where too often lives are wrecked and hearts are broken. Standing on the marge the golden tide flows by, and we only see the shining surface, not the rocks below. But sweet are these hours; sweet the dawn, the dream, of joys to come! The dawn may cloud, the dream be broken, but the coming shadows seem far away.
It was only the early dawn for John and May. Neither of them, indeed, had for a moment reflected that this meeting would make any difference in their lives. Feelings are strange and subtle, and creep in unawares to the human heart. They only both felt very happy, and the world seemed very bright. Bright to them, and dark and black to jealous eyes watching them from the higher ground above.
These jealous, fiery brown eyes were those of young Henderson of Stourton Grange. He had hoped to meet May Churchill during the afternoon in Fern Dene, as she often went there, and to his rage, when he arrived at the crest of the hill above the Dene, he saw May again with John Temple.
He could see John look up in her face, as he knelt on the ground, and May look down and smile on his. Henderson had gone to the Dene in a most unhappy and unsettled state of mind, and this sight seemed to half-madden him. His brow grew black as night, and a bitter curse broke from his lips.
“But if I swing for it, this shall not be,” he muttered.