A moment and they were floating down the whirling tide of the dance, with the wild, sweet waltz music swelling and sounding, and Miss Jocyln's perfumed hair breathing fragrance around him, the starry face and dark, dewy eyes, downcast a little, in a happy tremor. The cold, still look of fixed pride seemed to melt out of her face, and an exquisite rosy light came and went in its place, making her more lovely than ever; and Sir Rupert saw and understood it all, with a little complacent thrill of satisfaction.
They waltzed out of the ball-room into a conservatory of exquisite blossom, where tropic plants of gorgeous hues, and plashing fountains, under the white light of alabaster lamps, made a sort of garden of Eden. There were orange and myrtle trees oppressing the warm air with their sweetness, and through the open, French windows came the soft, misty moonlight, and the saline wind. There they stopped, looking out at the pale glory of the night, and there Sir Rupert, about to ask the supreme question of his life, and with his heart beginning to plunge against his side, opened conversation with the usual brilliancy in such cases.
"You look fatigued, Miss Jocyln. These great balls are great bores after all."
Miss Jocyln laughed frankly. She was of a nature far more impassioned than his, and she loved him; and she felt thrilling through every nerve in her body the prescience of what he was going to say; but for all that, being a woman, she had the best of it now.
"I am not at all fatigued," she said; "and I like it. I don't think balls are bores—like this, I mean; but then, certainly, my experience is very limited. How lovely the night is! Look at the moonlight, yonder, on the water, a sheet of silvery glory. Does it not recall Sorrento, and the exquisite Sorrentine landscape—that moonlight on the sea? Are you not inspired, sir artist?"
She lifted a flitting, radiant glance, a luminous smile, and then the star-like face drooped again—and the white hands took to reckless breaking off sweet sprays of myrtle.
"My inspiration is nearer," looking down at the drooping face. "Aileen—" and there he stopped, and the sentence was never destined to be finished, for a shadow darkened the moonlight, a figure flitted in like a spirit, and stood before them—a fairy figure, in a cloud of rosy drapery, with shimmering, golden curls, and dancing eyes of turquoise blue.
Aileen Jocyln started back, and away from her companion, with a faint, surprise cry. Sir Rupert, wondering and annoyed, stood staring; and still the fairy figure in the rosy gauze stood like a nymph in a stage tableau, smiling up in their faces, and never speaking. There was a blank pause of a moment, then Miss Jocyln made one step forward, doubt, recognition, delight, all in her face at once.
"It is—it is!" she cried, "May Everard!"
"May Everard!" Sir Rupert echoed—"little May!"