Her curly crown of black hair was parted in the middle and drawn low on the side of the face in two great waves and tied behind with a pink ribbon. The long ends were curled into four strands and thrown carelessly around her neck in front and hung to the waist. Her head was circled with a tiny wreath of the living pink roses from which the silk ones had been modelled. To John’s fancy this wreath against her black hair seemed the jewelled crown of a queen set in priceless rubies.
She poured the tea with her bare arm uplifted in a fascinating pose, the right arm curved just enough to tilt the teapot and yet preserve the dimple at her elbow. In all his life he could not remember an arm like these—so graceful, so seductive each little movement, they seemed to possess a conscious soul of their own. Her whole being spoke the charm of the boundless vitality of youth just budding into perfect womanhood. Her delicate skin flashed its tints in harmony with every mood of thought in her voice. She had as a divine gift a sensitiveness of expression, so acute that it could be controlled by the fierce will which hid beneath the velvet surface. She could blush at will because her imagination was so vivid that she could direct its powers by a subtle process of auto-suggestion.
John had not realised until he saw her eat how wonderful were the lines of her luscious lips. He felt that he could sit there forever and watch her dainty wrist and tapering fingers lift the cup. Her eyes were friendly to-night! They looked at him with dreamy tenderness, a childlike trust, and perfect faith.
How could he live through the evening without telling her of his love! Yet he must keep silent. He felt with deep foreboding an approaching catastrophe which must soon overwhelm the men who had created an Empire whose power they could not control. That Empire had left a stain of blood on the floor of this house—a stain that must forever darken his own life and hers—and yet—how could he give her up?
He rose from the table at her suggestion and followed her in a spell as she lifted a silver candlestick above her head and started to explore the house.
He found his tongue at last and told her with boyish enthusiasm the legends of the old mansion, the associations of each room, and sketched with good-humoured criticism the peculiarities of his people. In the gallery of the observatory he showed her the spots from which the slightest sounds were echoed to the hall below, and explained the origin of many of the ghost stories which the Negroes believed with such implicit faith.
Stella leaned over the railing and looked down into the hall at the chair in which her father had fallen the night of the dance, and a curious smile played about her lips.
“And what are you smiling at?” he asked softly.
Without the quiver of an eyelid, either in surprise or recognition of the fact that he had caught her in a moment off her guard, she replied:
“I was just wondering if you ever believed in ghosts?”