After reading the same passage some seven times, Chloris let her book lie a moment in her lap. How marvellous, how simple, how natural, how exquisite! Truly like the coming up of a flower. First, they were children together, fair-dealing, unquarrelsome playmates; then, schoolboy and schoolgirl, always good unsentimental friends; and finally, time, passing over them, slowly turned them to lovers; for this, no question, was whither they were tending: quiet, undemonstrative, unjealous, faithful, devoted lovers, presently married people, and by and by, God pleasing, tenants of one same grave. And this sweetness in the heart, this best of all earthly goods, God granted it to the humblest of his creatures! Why, then, were so many dissatisfied with this dear earth? Why were some on it interested in the discipline of the will? Ah, this summer, so endearingly begun, to be ended so—and Chloris, in a confusion of bliss, almost as if to give herself a countenance towards herself, took up her book again, finding moonlight and wild azaleas and whippoorwills between the lines, a dappled, singing shingle, a golden beach, velvet winds from over sea.
The sunshine crept off the window-square; a sadness instantly invaded the room; Chloris jumped up to open the blinds. Time to dress! Then she did her hair as painstakingly as ably, put on a just-ironed white gown with a violet figure, and stood at the glass weighing the question of a velvet band around the neck. A fateful sound already was dawning on the distance outside, but she did not as yet hear it. Too hot! She tossed the velvet ribbon in the top bureau-drawer so unconcernedly as if not, at that moment, the Parcæ had been tangling the skein of her life, and wondered idly if any one describing her would call her pretty. She thought, in conscience, not; but of a charming appearance, she hoped any one would.
At this point penetrated to her brain a sound of voices out on the road beyond the lawn and the hedge. She looked between the curtains.
Two ladies, unknown to her, were slowly sauntering past in the direction of the beach; one, near middle age, in a darkish gown; the other, young, in light colors of a distinctly fashionable tone; this latter carried over her shoulder a very large, fluffy, and, as it showed even at this distance, inexpressibly costly parasol. She turned her face a moment on the ancient vine-overclambered country-house, from one window of which peeped Chloris, looked it up and down and across, and turned away, making, Chloris supposed, some comment upon it to her companion.
When they had disappeared from sight, Chloris, still at the window, musing on that face seen a moment, heard a leisurely jingling, and saw pass at a walking pace an empty shining carriage, drawn by two superb bays, driven by a man in livery.
"It must be their turn-out," she concluded her wondering. "Who can they be but the people that were to move into the Beauregard cottage?"
Then, as there was time to spare before tea, she sat down in the window. Shortly, was a lively jingling, a trampling, and the shining carriage bowled swiftly by on its way back from the beach; on its cushions, two ladies under a broad lacy parasol; a mighty cloud of dust running after it, never to over-take.
Almost at the same moment Chloris saw Him, half the subject of her idyl, coming across the lawn.
She went to meet him.