"I dare say; one is incapable of concentrated thought on a perfect night."
"You are also growing poetical, then indeed it is time for a prosaic individual like myself to retire."
"No don't go yet, you can't sleep here if you go to bed early."
"Oh, that is your experience," said Miss Sheldon, as a bell from a distant campanile, showing white and slender against the sky, sounded the hour of nine o'clock. "Well, I'll stay for a few minutes longer, though I'm afraid Mrs. Trubbles will be dreadfully shocked."
They leaned over the iron balustrade of the terrace, and watched in charmed silence the dark waters rising and falling in the chill moonlight. The valse still sounded silvery in the distance, with its sad tone of regret and hopeless despair, and after a time Victoria began to hum the melancholy refrain in a low voice:
"My heart is dead,
And pleasure hath fled,
But the rose you gave me blooms fresh and red."
"What nonsense," she said contemptuously, breaking off suddenly. "I daresay the rose was quite withered, only his imagination saw it was blooming."
"Like his love for the girl."
"A bad shot, Mr. Macjean. How could it be so? His heart was dead, his pleasure fled, so under these discouraging circumstances the rose must certainly have been dead also."
"You said Gartney was cynical," said Angus slowly, "what about yourself?"