The next morning he announced the necessity of returning to the North to complete some business, and said he must, in the mean time, spend some hours at the plantation. "And Rosa dear," added he, "I shall really be angry with you if you go there again unless I am with you."
She shook her finger at him, and said, with one of her most expressive smiles: "Ah, I see through you! You are planning some more pleasant surprises for me. How happy we shall be there! As for that rich uncle of yours, if you will only let me see him, I will do my best to make him love me, and perhaps I shall succeed."
"It would be wonderful if you did not, you charming enchantress," responded he. He folded her closely, and looked into the depths of her beautiful eyes with intensity, not unmingled with sadness.
A moment after he was waving his hat from the shrubbery; and so he passed away out of her sight. His sudden reappearance, his lavish fondness, his quick departure, and the strange earnestness of his farewell look, were remembered like the flitting visions of a dream.
CHAPTER XI.
In less than three weeks after that tender parting, an elegant barouche stopped in front of Magnolia Lawn, and Mr. Fitzgerald assisted a very pretty blonde young lady to alight from it. As she entered the parlor, wavering gleams of sunset lighted up the pearl-colored paper, softened by lace-shadows from the windows. The lady glanced round the apartment with a happy smile, and, turning to the window, said: "What a beautiful lawn! What superb trees!"
"Does it equal your expectations, dear?" he asked. "You had formed such romantic ideas of the place, I feared you might be disappointed."
"I suppose that was the reason you tried to persuade me to spend our honeymoon in Savannah," rejoined she. "But we should be so bored with visitors. Here, it seems like the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve had it all to themselves, before the serpent went there to make mischief. I had heard father and mother tell so much about Magnolia Lawn that I was eager to see it."
"They visited it in spring, when it really does look like Paradise," replied he. "It has its beauties now; but this is not the favorable season for seeing it; and after we have been here a few days, I think we had better return to Savannah, and come again when the lawn is carpeted with flowers."
"I see your mind is bent upon not staying here," answered she; "and I suppose it would be rather tiresome to have no other company than your stupid little Lily Bell."