But already the vision of Hope had vanished from Stephen's mind. He saw only the mature grace and loveliness of the woman who had long ago been the one fixed star of his errant youth and to whom he now brought the homage of ripened manhood.
"I don't want anybody in the smallest particular different from yourself, sweet Lady Love. Don't worry though," as he saw her troubled eyes. "I am not going to pester you. I shall take myself off to-morrow but I shall come back and some day I shall surprise you in a lonely hour and you will say, 'Stephen, do hurry and get the license.'"
Seeing his whimsical, reassuring smile, Felicia smiled back, half relieved, and indeed not quite knowing how much of it all had been in earnest; glad, at all events, to have him slip back so easily into the familiar channels of friendliness.
And just then the girls, having finished their call, came gayly chattering up the walk, demanding of Stephen whether he had suffered any ill effects from the experimental sandwich he had so manfully encountered. And amidst the general confusion of talk and laughter Stephen rose to take his departure, giving no hint of finality about his leave taking, except a slightly lengthened clasp of Felicia's hand and a steady gaze into her blue eyes. Consequently the girls, at least, were considerably surprised the next day to receive three boxes of sweet peas each with Stephen Kinnard's card, rose pink for Suzanne, shell pink for Barb, delicate lavendar for Sylvia. Sylvia's box also contained a charming little note thanking the girl for her summer's hospitality and regretting that the writer was called out of town without opportunity for formal farewells. For Felicia had come violets, but no word at all, not even a card.
"H-m-m," murmured the astute Suzanne, when the girls were alone, "Called out of town, indeed! Needn't tell me. Your Felicia didn't have such a becoming extra bloom yesterday for nothing. You are safe for the present, Sylvia. She evidently dismissed him."
Down the Hill, at the Oriole Inn, Hope and Martha Williams reigned in the absence of the young proprietor who since her grandmother's death had been traveling in Europe with the Armstrongs, her sister Constance and her husband, Sylvia's erstwhile gardener. And to the Oriole Inn also came flowers, dainty, half-open, pink rosebuds nestled in maidenhair fern. Came also a brotherly affectionate note of thanks and adieu from the artist.
"The sketches are bound to be a success," he wrote, "for you are the very spirit of Southern gardens, the veriest rose of them all." So he had put it, poet fashion, and Hope, with fluttering pink and white in her cheeks, ran off to enjoy her treasures in happy solitude, leaving her sister Martha stolidly measuring lengths for the new dining-room curtains. No one had ever sent roses to Martha in all her life. Nor had any one ever written poet lines about her or to her. She was not that kind, as she would herself have explained. But it was not that that brought a wry twist to her lips and a worried look to her eyes as she bent over her work.
"Why couldn't he a been a little meaner to her?" she demanded of the curtains. "'Twould have been a whole lot kinder than being kind."
In which theory she unconsciously paraphrased the words of a person she had never heard of, another perturbed guardian of another flower-like maid, the Lily Maid of Astolat. Of Launcelots and Elaines there are a plenty in this somewhat uneconomical world.
CHAPTER III