CHAPTER XXV.
THE FIRST WARNING.
On the following morning Dr. Duncan took the train to Farnham, and full of delightful anticipation walked over to his sister's cottage.
It was the most lovely spring day imaginable. The young vegetation glowed beneath the bright sky, and a warm fresh breeze stirred it to happy music. It was, indeed, the very morning to go a-wooing. All nature was in harmony with the man's feelings, and he felt all its joyous sympathy as he walked with buoyant step along the fair English lanes, and the open moorland tracks, with fancies exultant and blithe as a lark's morning song.
At last he reached a little iron gate that opened on to the grounds of the cottage. He passed through it, and followed the path that clove the shrubbery, whose waving blossoms of lilac and laburnum seemed to whisper a glad welcome to him. Then, his heart beating fast, he walked on, till turning round a corner of the bushes, the lawn opened out before him, with the creeper-covered cottage beyond it.
And then he saw a sight that made him stand quite still suddenly, and hold his breath with keen emotion.
One who loved him had been watching for him, and had seen him from her window coming down the road, then she had gone out to meet him.
He saw the young girl walking towards him across the fresh daisy-sprinkled grass which still sparkled with dew at her feet. Her hands were slightly extended as if eager to greet him. She wore a morning dress of white muslin. There was no hat on her head, and the sunshine gleamed in her tresses. A faint blush lit her cheek, and on her lips played that smile of pleasure which, when a lover finds his presence brings it to his mistress, makes him know the most exceeding happiness this world can give.
He did not move, but stood still, wishing to prolong each stage of his delight, gazing with adoration at the lovely figure as it approached. So ethereal a being did she appear in that white robe, with her face pale save for the faint glow of joy that flushed either cheek; so fair, so fragile a creature, that she seemed to her lover as of some sweet noble order of spirits, too high, too pure, for the coarse affections of this earth; and tears came to his eyes with the tenderness he felt in his worship of this delicate girl.