"I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me, concerning young ladies who sit perched on rocks in the rain. Is it your favorite amusement, may I ask, Miss Darrell, to sit here and be rained on? And are there no lunatic asylums in Sandypoint, that they allow such people as you to go at large?"
She sprang to her feet and confronted him, her breath caught, her eyes dilating.
"Oh!" she cried, in a breathless sort of way, "it is Charley!"
She held out both her hands, the whole expression of her face changing—her eyes like stars.
"Charley, Miss Darrell, and if it had been the Man in the Moon you could hardly look more thunderstruck. And now, if I may venture to propound so delicate a conundrum, how long is it since you lost your senses? Or had you ever any to lose, that you sit here in the present beastly state of the weather, to get comfortably drenched to the skin?"
He was holding both her hands, and looking at her as he spoke—a young man of some five-and-twenty, with grey eyes and chestnut hair, well-looking and well-dressed, and with that indescribable air of ease and fashion which belongs to the "golden youth" of New York.
"You don't say you're glad to see me, Dithy, and you do look uncommonly blank. Will you end my agonizing suspense on this point, Miss Darrell, by saving it now, and giving me a sociable kiss?"
He made as though he would take it, but Edith drew back, laughing and blushing a little.
"You know what Gretchen says to Faust: 'Love me as much as you like, but no kissing, that is vulgar.' I agree with Gretchen—it is vulgar. Oh, Mr. Stuart, what a surprise this is! I have just been reading a letter from your sister, and she doesn't say a word of your coming."
"For the excellent reason that she knew nothing about it when that letter was written. Let me look at you, Edie. What have you been doing to yourself since I left, that you should fall away to a shadow in this manner? But perhaps your failing is the natural and inevitable result of my leaving?"