His colour came and went now as he thought of the girl he was about to meet, the girl who was all the world to him. He tugged nervously at his small golden moustache, and his blue eyes blinked at the dazzling colours of the flowers. But there was something about the boy--for he was no more than twenty-three--which brought conviction that his spirit was more manly than his looks would have one believe. His air was resolute; his figure, though slim, was athletic; yet withal he was nervous and emotional in the extreme. And, after all, this was how it should be, for Neil Webster's fame as a violinist of rare promise was well known. Already he had made a name for himself both in England and America.
With such a temperament it was not wonderful that he should love Ruth Cass, who also was of a highly sensitive nature. Neil thought of her now with an intensity inspired by the memory of the joy she had been to his appreciative eye when, last Christmas, he had seen her for the first time.
As the young man sat there wrinkling his brows in the effort to recall completely the memory of Ruth's first appearance, a side door opened and she herself appeared. With light steps she stole forward, and laying her gloved hands upon his eyes she laughed out of sheer joy.
"Who is it?" she asked, gaily. "I give you three guesses."
Neil turned, took her hands and kissed them. "As if I needed more than one," he said, with light reproach. "I should not be a true lover did I not guess your presence even without seeing you."
"Yet you didn't, you didn't," sang the girl. "I came upon you unawares."
"But I knew yow were coming, for I felt it in my heart. Come, let me look at my rose of Sharon. It is six long weary weeks since I saw you."
She made a little curtsey, and then stood demurely before him. To a stranger she would have been almost a great a surprise as the house itself. And she was in keeping with it--the beautiful Andalusian Marquise of de Musset's ballad come to life in foggy England. The Quaker name of Ruth suited ill with that rich southern beauty. Had she been called Cleopatra, that Royal name would well have matched her appearance. Although but twenty years of age she was already in the full bloom of womanly loveliness. Of no great height, she possessed one of those perfect figures seen only in Spain. She walked with the swaying, graceful gait of the Andalusian woman. An olive skin, large, liquid eyes of midnight blackness, lips scarlet as a pomegranate blossom, full and a trifle voluptuous.
As became a daughter of the South, Ruth was arrayed in a ravishing dinner-dress of black and gold which suited her swarthy beauty. In the coils of her blue-black hair she wore sparkling diamonds; the same stones blazed on neck and wrists, and in this splendour she seemed to the excited eyes of her lover like some gorgeous tropical flower blossoming beneath ardent skies.
"Come now," she said, sinking into a chair. "We have just a few minutes before the others come in, and they are not to be passed in silence."