"What a very unpleasant fancy!" She shivered lightly, and extended the tips of her very chilly fingers to him in a last good-night.
Mademoiselle Helene was intensely proud. She had been an unobserved witness of the scene between Edward and Wanda in the wood, and, of course, had made her own misinterpretation. A man who could permit a low, untutored savage to fawn upon him in that way, kissing his hand repeatedly, and flushing with gratified vanity, presumably at his words of endearment, could scarcely expect to be treated otherwise than with disdain by the high-bred girl whom he had previously delighted to honour. As for Edward he was sorely hurt and bewildered. Helene's treatment of him he considered decidedly curt, and natural resentment burned within him at the thought. But before he reached home his anger had passed away, and with it all remembrance of the cold maiden and the unpleasant evening she had given him. In their place lived an intense recollection of a tawny woman, beautiful and warm-blooded; and his heart thrilled with a tumult of emotions at the memory of her lustrous velvet lips closely pressed within his wounded hand.
CHAPTER IX.
ON THE WAY TO THE CAPITAL.
From early summer to late autumn, from assurance of bloom to certainty of frost, is but a step—the step between life and death. The murmuring leaves and waters on the shores of Kempenfeldt Bay had learned a louder and harsher melody—the wild wind-prophecy of winter. For a brief season Indian summer came to re-illumine the despairing days, and the larches, set aflame by her hand, flashed like lights. Then through the softly tinted wood broke the Autumn brightness upon delicate shimmering birch trees, red sumachs, purple tinged sassafras, golden rod and asters; but now the oaks and beeches had changed their velvet green raiment to dull brown, and all the wild woods, after the pitiless and well-nigh perpetual rains of Fall, were stricken and discoloured. Madame and Mademoiselle DeBerczy had flown with the birds, and were now domiciled in their winter home at the Oak Ridges, whither Rose Macleod, in response to an urgent invitation from Helene, had accompanied them, and whence she wrote letters of entreaty to her father, urging him to take a house in York for the winter.
"Not that it is so particularly lively," she wrote, "but it is not quite so deathly as at Pine Towers. Edward will be willing to come, I know, desperate lover of nature that he is, for there is nothing in the woods now but eternal requiem over lost and buried beauty, of which, in the natural vanity of youth, he may be tempted to consider himself a part. As for the children they will build snow-houses, and sit down in them, thus ensuring permanent bad colds, and the other member of your family, if she returns home, will 'look before and after, and sigh for what is not.' Is not that a sufficiently depressing picture? Dear papa, you know that, like the bad little boys in a certain class of Sunday School literature, I can't be ruled except by kindness. Now see what an immense opportunity I have given you to govern me according to approved Sunday School ethics!"
She paused a moment, considering not what could be said, but what could be omitted from a missive which was to be convincing as well as caressing in its nature, when Helene entered the room.
"Love letter, Rose?" she inquired carelessly.
"Certainly," responded her friend, "all my letters are love letters.
Would you have me write to a person I didn't love?"
"Why, I couldn't help it, that is supposing the letter you are writing is addressed to Allan Dunlop. Of course he is a person you don't love."