The only persons present at the supper were Mr. ——, his wife, Rosette, and Grierson, and it must be confessed that the young lady did all the talking. Most of it was about her school days, and there were bright little sketches of French life and much, but not very much, of the army that was sweeping over Europe, overthrowing old landmarks and breaking up dynasties. It was hardly to be wondered at that the others were listeners. The lovely face of the speaker seemed to beam as she spoke. Her beautiful eyes were at times as still as a waveless sea, and as deep, under the blue sky of a cloudless summer day. At times they flashed and sparkled as she became more interested in the subject of her conversation; her speech seemed to flow, as flows the song of the lark singing and winging his way up until he is lost in the height, and there was that soupçon of a foreign accent to which we have already referred, and to which we are half tempted to give the name of “brogue,” knowing how sweet what we call the “brogue” can be in a winsome Irish girl’s lips. Then there were the wonderful gestures that seemed, as it were, to add colour and motion to her descriptions. It was simply a delight to watch the play of her features, and as for Robert Grierson, he seemed to himself as if he were under a spell, and in truth he was. If Love had wounded him the previous evening, this night it succeeded in binding him hand and foot; and, as he returned home, walking in the moonlight by the stream, he seemed to hear, as it murmured by, the music of her voice.
It is hardly necessary to say that he made frequent opportunities of meeting her. Mr. and Mrs. —— gave him every facility. Mrs. ——, because she was, like most women, a bit of a matchmaker, and could sympathise still with a little love romance. That this was one she did not doubt. Anyone with her opportunity would have found no difficulty in making this discovery, and she regarded the match in every way a suitable one. Rosette was, indeed, almost penniless, while Robert Grierson had enough and to spare for both, with no relatives depending on him, and she thought he ought to be proud to win for his wife so beautiful and charming a girl as Rosette.
As for Mr. ——, he was glad of the intimacy which he saw springing up between the young couple, for other, though hardly as romantic, reasons. As for Rosette herself, she had been so much accustomed to admiration that at first she accepted Robert Grierson’s attentions as a matter of course, but it was not very long until she felt that her interest in him was becoming deeper, and her longing to meet him stronger.
During their earlier meetings their talk was just such as might be expected to take place between a handsome, brilliant, light-hearted, young lady, who assumed the airs of a queen, and a somewhat bashful young gentleman, who had felt his heart was under her feet, and who, dazed by her beauty and her will, could do barely more than listen and admire. But when they had become more intimate her talk was of another character. She began to speak much of France—of the Revolution—of the cause of Liberty.
She seemed to know by heart the wonderful story of the young Republic that had started up half armed and caught hoary dynasties by the throat, and humbled them to the dust.
As she spoke the battlefields seemed to rise before her vision, and she described the conflicts as if she had taken part in them, and on one occasion, after telling how a crowd of beardless boys, without shoes, and almost in tatters, had rushed the heights and sabred the Austrian gunners, she suddenly turned towards Grierson, and, with passionate gesture, exclaimed:
“Ah, if I were a man, I should be a soldier. But if I ever marry, I’ll marry only a soldier of liberty.”
She and Grierson were standing on a knoll that rose over the river that flashed back the hues of the sunset.
They fell also on the face and figure of Rosette, and as Grierson listened to her impassioned tones and watched her lovely face glowing with transcendent beauty he felt she had only to lift her finger to beckon him to destruction, and that he would have leaped in response like a hound loosened from the leash.