How pretty my darling was that afternoon, with the flush on her face and the sparkle in her eyes, as, with the bouquet in her hands, she walked with me back to the cottage, where I was going to help her a little in her French; and how gayly she chattered, sometimes about herself and what she meant to be, and then of the young ladies from the Hill who had called at the cottage the day before.
“I don’t think Miss Creighton very pretty,” she said, “though she looks just like the pictures in the fashion books. Miss Emma is handsomer than she, but neither are half as handsome as Mrs. Schuyler.”
“I believe you think Mrs. Schuyler very pretty,” I said, and she replied:
“Pretty, I guess she is! She is beautiful,—just like a grand duchess.”
“How old is she?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. How old are you, Miss Armstrong?”
I told her almost twenty-seven, and she exclaimed:
“That is very old! I don’t think Mrs. Schuyler can be half as old as that. She looks just like a girl. Oh! oh! oh! there she is! There she is! Look, look, Miss Armstrong, they come! they come!”
We were very near Gertie’s home, and the excited child pointed toward an open barouche which had turned the corner and was just opposite the cottage. I recognized Colonel Schuyler at once, but not for an instant did my gaze rest on him; it wandered to the lady at his side, the peerless creature whose fine-cut face, framed in masses of golden-brown hair, was white and pure as a water-lily, and whose dark eyes scanned eagerly the cottage and its surroundings, and then rested upon Gertie and myself with a curious, wondering look.
“I mean to throw her this as a welcome,” Gertie cried, and the bouquet gathered from Abelard’s grave went whirling through the air, and fell directly in Edith’s lap, while Gertie snatched her bonnet from her head and shook it toward the carriage, her hair falling in rippling waves around her shoulders, and her face radiant with joy.