"Hideous!" Charley repeated, "you! I wonder if you could possibly look ugly in anything? I wonder if you know how pretty you are to-night in that charming hat and that scarlet drapery?"
"Certainly I know, and charming I undoubtedly must look to wring a word of praise from you. It's the first time in all your life, sir, you ever paid me a compliment. Hitherto you have done nothing but find fault with my looks and everything else."
"There is a time for everything," he answers, a little sadly—sadly! and Charley Stuart! "The time for all that is past. Here is our boat. You will steer, Edith? Yes—then I'll row."
The baronet and Trix were already several yards off, out upon the shining water. Another party—a large boat containing half-a-dozen, Captain Hammond among them, was farther off still. In this boat sat a girl with a guitar; her sweet voice as she sang came romantically over the lake, and the mountain echoes, taking it up, sang the refrain enchantingly over and over again. Edith lifted up her face to the starry sky, the moonlight bathing it in a glory.
"Oh, what a night!" she sighed. "What a bright, beautiful world it is, and how perfectly happy one could be, if—"
"One had thirty thousand a year!" Charley suggested.
"Yes, exactly. Why can't life be all like this—moonlight, capital dinners, lots of friends and new dresses, a nice boat, and—yes—I will say it—somebody one likes very much for one's companion."
"Somebody one likes very much, Edith? I wonder sometimes if you like me at all—if it is in you to like any one but yourself."
"Thanks! I like myself, certainly, and first best I will admit. After that—"
"After that?" he repeats.