'Little birds sing strange songs sometimes.'
'Sour grapes, Jerry, that is all,' replied Dalton, laughing, but only from the teeth outwards, as he rode off to what Wilmot said was 'his doom.'
The rumour—real or alleged—so casually mentioned by Jerry, rankled deeply in Dalton's mind for a time, but it passed away when he found himself in the presence of Mrs. Trelawney, and he saw again her soft hazel eyes, so delicately lidded, their long lashes and eyebrows darker than her rich chestnut hair; her dress that hung in clinging folds around her and showed her beautiful form, grandly outlined as that of a classical statue; and when Antoinette—or Netty, as he called her now—stole her hand, white as a snowflake and tiny as a fairy's, into his, and, looking at him with eyes blue as forget-me-nots, said, 'I love you!' he stroked the shower of golden tresses that were held back from the child's brow by a blue silk riband, and replied, while he kissed her.
'And I love you, Netty, so much!'
Her tiny mouth was all a-tremble with fun and pleasure as she asked—
'And don't you love mamma too?'
He made no answer, but Mrs. Trelawney, whose eyes had been suffused with tender pleasure at his kind manner with Netty, now laughed and said—
'What do you mean, you enfant terrible?'
'I heard you and Alison Cheyne talking of Captain Dalton the other day and I thought I should so like him for a papa.'
'Why?' asked Mrs. Trelawney.