“Here is a froward favorite, and excitement with a vengeance! He will not speak yet; for with all his fire he is wary, and while he fumes I must work. But how? but how?”
VII.
A storm raged all that night; but dawn came up so dewy and serene, that the world looked like a child waking after anger, with happy smiles upon its lips, penitential tears in its blue eyes.
Canaris was early astir, after a night as stormy within as without, during which he had gone through so many alternations of feeling, that, weary and still undecided, he was now in the mood to drift whithersoever the first eddy impelled him. Straight to Gladys, it seemed; and, being superstitious, he accepted the accident as a good omen, following his own desire, and calling it fate.
Wandering in the loneliest, wildest spot of all the domain, he came upon her as suddenly as if a wish had brought her to the nook haunted for both by pleasant memories. Dew-drenched her feet, hatless her head; but the feet stood firmly on the cliff which shelved down to the shore below, and the upturned head shone bright against the deep blue of the sky. Morning peace dwelt in her eyes, morning freshness glowed on her cheek, and her whole attitude was one of unconscious aspiration, as she stood there with folded hands and parted lips, drinking in the storm-cooled breeze that blew vigorous and sweet across the lake.
“What are you doing here so early, little dryad?” and Canaris paused, with an almost irresistible desire to put out his arms and hold her, lest she fly away, so airy was her perch, so eager her look into the boundless distance before her.
“Only being happy!” and she looked down into his face with such tender and timid joy in her own, he hardly had need to ask,—
“Why, Gladys?”
“Because of this,” showing a string of pearls that hung from her hand, half-hidden among the trailing bits of greenery gathered in her walk.