After all, however, his brightest bays were gained in his character as carpet knight. Trained coquettes and professional flirts, flushed by a long course of victories, had put confident lances in rest and run vain-glorious tilts with him. He was always ready to accept the challenge; ready to become, for a few days, or, in exceptionally tough cases, a few weeks, the apparent captive of the ambitious belle. The approach of proud humility than which nothing could have been more opposed to servility of spirit or demeanor; the gradual, and finally rapt absorption of his every faculty and sentiment into his unspoken adoration of her whose chains he wore; the delicate appreciation of each shade of feeling and thought, and prescience of each desire;—above and beneath all, his singular faculty of adaptation to the various phases of character set for his reading,—could hardly fail, first, to disarm, then to flatter, finally to captivate.
Up to this period of his career, when he had entered his nine-and-twentieth year, nobody said openly of him that his business in life was to win hearts for the pleasure of breaking them. If he had broken any, his victims made no moan. In the cases of the veteran coquettes alluded to just now, sympathy would have been thrown away. There were stealthy whispers to the effect, however, that others, less wary, had been drawn into his snare; had dreamed of love, and, awakening to anguished perception of their folly, had shrouded bleeding hearts in robes of pride or Christian resignation, and lived on outwardly as little changed by the experience as was he. It is superfluous to remark that these cautious rumors lent lustre to his fame instead of tarnishing it; that dozens of intrepid damsels were wrought by the hearing into a Curtius-like spirit of self-immolation; panted to leap, bedecked in their bravest array, into the gulf which yawned to destroy the safety and peace of mind of the whole sisterhood of marriageable women in the classic town of Hamilton. The envious, nor the prudish, stigmatized him as a lady-killer. The coarse term would be an insult to his refinement, his notable honor, and equally notable kindness of heart. He was, beyond question, the most charming of men, a social diamond of the first water, although the obtuse daughters of the Dundee manse had not at once discovered it.
What wonder that he, sitting among the roses in the arbor, found infinite diversion in the recollection that he was pronounced by Jessie "positively homely"—utterly unattractive beside her handsome lover, and that her more discreet sister had mildly echoed her disappointment?
He enjoyed the novelty of the incident and the laugh it gave him—was sincere in the half-spoken regret—"What a pity I cannot publish this verdict and the manner of its delivery, in Hamilton."
With that, he pulled down a branch of musk roses nodding above his head; broke it, tore off the petals,until he had a double handful, and buried his face in the odorous mass. Roy came up with him as the sound of low, sweet singing moved the stillness of the garden and the sunset into music. The songstress was Jessie, lying within her oriel-window alone, and gazing at the amber ocean billowing above the purple hills at the outlet of the valley. Her rich contralto voice was like the colored light and the musk roses, Orrin thought, in no wise tempted to dislike or underrate her because she did not value him aright. That mistake would rectify itself, by and by. He could stay a fortnight in Dundee as well as not. Roy had pressed him to do so, and he began to think he would.
This was what Jessie sang, never dreaming of the audience, fit, but few, hidden in the blossoming thicket:
"Sleeping, I dreamed, Love—dreamed, Love, of thee;
O'er the bright wave, Love, floating were we.
Light in thy fair hair played the soft wind,
Gently thy white arms round me were twined;
And as thy song, Love, swelled o'er the sea,
Fondly thy blue eyes beamed, Love, on me."
Neither of the cousins stirred until the song was finished, when a robin in the nearest elm began his vespers.
"This is Arcadia!" said Orrin, ravishing another spray—great white roses this time, with creamy hearts.
"It is home!" replied the other, softly.