He wondered, as he said those words, whether it had been his own despair at the thought of having irrevocably lost her which invested her familiar beauty with a new and mystic power. “Yes, she looked exquisitely lovely, and completely happy—an ideal bride.”
“If her nose were a thought longer her face would be almost perfect,” said Janet. “How was she dressed?”
“I can no more tell you than I could say how many petals there are in that Dijon rose yonder. She gave me an impression of cool soft colour. I think there was yellow in her hat—pale yellow, like a primrose.”
“Men are such dolts about women’s dress,” retorted Janet, impatiently; “and yet they pretend to have taste and judgment, and to criticize everything we wear.”
“I think you may rely upon us for knowing what we don’t like,” said Theodore.
He seated himself in his father’s easy-chair, a roomy old chair with projecting sides, that almost hid him from the other occupants of the room. He was weary and sad, and their chatter irritated his overstrung nerves. He would have gone straight to his own room on arriving, but that would have set them wondering, and he did not want to be wondered about. He wanted to keep his secret, or as much of it as he could. No doubt those three knew that he had been fond of her, very fond; that he would have sacrificed half his lifetime to win her for the other half; but they did not know how fond. They did not know that he would fain have melted down all the sands of time into one grain of gold—one golden day in which to hold her to his heart and know she loved him.
CHAPTER II.
“And warm and light I felt her clasping hand
When twined in mine; she followed where I went.”
There is a touch of childishness in all honeymoon couples, a something which suggests the Babes in the Wood, left to play together by the Arch-Deceiver, Fate; wandering hand in hand in the morning sunshine, gathering flowers, pleased with the mossy banks and leafy glades, like those children of the old familiar story, before ever hunger or cold or fear came upon them, before the shadow of night and death stole darkly on their path. Even Godfrey Carmichael, a sensible, highly educated young man, whose pride it was to march in the van of progress and enlightenment, even he had that touch of childishness which is adorable in a lover, and which lasts, oh, so short a time; transient as the bloom on the peach, the down on the butterfly’s wing, the morning dew on a rose.