"A good idea," said Kate's lover, when the door closed; "come, my dear girl, give us something a little less depressing than that we have just been favoured with."
"How odd," said Kate languidly, "that Rose will not like you. I cannot understand it."
"Neither can I," replied Mr. Stanford; "but since the gods have willed it so, why, there is nothing for it but resignation. Here is 'Through the woods, through the woods, follow and find me.' Sing that."
Kate essayed, but failed. Her headache was worse, and singing an impossibility.
"I am afraid I must lie down," she said. "I am half blind with the pain. You must seek refuge in the billiard-room, Reginald, while I go upstairs."
Mr. Stanford expressed his regrets, kissed her hand—he was very calm and decorous with his stately lady-love—and let her go.
"I wish Rose had stayed," he thought; "poor little girl! how miserable she does look sometimes. I am afraid I have not acted quite right; and I don't know that I am not going to make a scoundrel of myself; but how is a fellow to help it? Kate's too beautiful and too perfect for mortal man; and I am very mortal, indeed, and should feel uncomfortable married to perfection."
He walked to the curtained recess of the drawing-room, where Rose had one morning battled with her despair, and threw himself down among the pillows of the lounge. Those very pillows whereon his handsome head rested had been soaked in Rose's tears, shed for his sweet sake—but how was he to know that? It was such a cozy little nook, so still and dusky, and shut in, that Mr. Stanford, whose troubles did not prey on him very profoundly, closed his dark eyes, and went asleep in five minutes.
And sleeping, Rose found him. Going to her room to read, she remembered she had left her book on the sofa in the recess, and ran down stairs again to get it. Entering the little room from the hall, she beheld Mr. Stanford asleep, his head on his arm, his handsome face as perfect as something carved in marble, in its deep repose.
Rose stood still—any one might have stood and looked, and admired that picture, but not as she admired. Rose was in love with him—hopelessly, you know, therefore the more deeply. All the love that pride had tried, and tried in vain, to crush, rose in desperation stronger than ever within her. If he had not been her sister's betrothed, who could say what might not have been? If that sister was one degree less beautiful and accomplished, who could say what still might be? She had been such a spoiled child all her life, getting whatever she wanted for the asking, that it was very hard she should be refused now the highest boon she had ever craved—Mr. Reginald Stanford.