“The fury of the tempest you admire proves its paternity,” he said, with a manifest effort at lightness. “It emanates from the vast magazines of frost, snow, and wintry wind that lie far to the north-east even of my home, and THAT is in a region you would think drear and inhospitable after the more clement airs of of your native State.”
“We have very cold weather in Virginia sometimes,” returned Mabel, still scanning the sentinel gate-posts, and the pyramidal arbor-vitae trees flanking them.
Her gaze was a mournful farewell, but she neglected none of the amenities of hospitality. She was used to talking commonplaces.
“We feel it all the more, too, on account of the mildness of the greater part of the winter,” she subjoined.
“Allow me!” said the other, looping back the curtain she had until now held in her hand. “Whereas our systems are braced by a more uniform temperature to endure the severity of our frosts, and high, keen blasts.”
“I suppose so,” assented Mabel, mechanically, and unconscious as himself that meaning glances were stolen at them from the fireside circle, while the hum and conversation was continuous and louder, for the good-natured intent on the speakers' part to afford the supposed lovers the chance of carrying on their dialogue unheard.
“But our houses are very comfortable—often very beautiful,” Mr. Dorrance persevered, keeping to the scent of his game, as a trained pointer scours a stubble-field, narrowing his beat at every circuit; “and the hearts of those who live in them are warm and constant. It is not always true that
“'The cold in clime are cold in blood;
Their love can scarce deserve the name.
“I have thought sometimes that that feeling is strongest and most enduring, the demonstration of which is guarded and infrequent, as the deepest portion of the channel is the most quiet.”
If his philosophical and scientific talk were heavy and solid, his poetry and metaphors were ponderous and labored. Yet Mabel listened to him now, neither facing nor avoiding him, looking down at her hands, laid, one above the other, upon the window-sill, the image of maidenly and courteous attention.