"So I thought," she answers, visibly abashed. "Maud is so grand, and white, and queenly, and I am so little, and dark, and ugly."
"That is not true," he answers, hastily. "You are beautiful, Reine. I am sure you know that. You are like a beautiful 'queen-rose,' all sweetness, color and dew, 'set round with little willful thorns.' Maud is like a grand white calla lily, beautiful, but devoid of sweetness and perfume."
"The lily is the most beautiful of all flowers," the girl answers, sighing.
"But the rose is the emblem of love," he replies, smiling as the swift color floods her cheeks.
She has no answer ready, and he goes on with some embarrassment:
"Do not try to be like Maud, Reine. Though so beautiful and stately, she was mercenary and treacherous. Perhaps a less perfect manner is preferable with a heart free from guile. Do you not think so?"
Before she can reply, Sir George Wilde comes up to them. His eyes rest admiringly on the beautiful, graceful, dark-eyed girl by the side of Vane Charteris.
"Sentimentalizing and reading poetry?" says the intruder, looking at Reine's book. "Upon my word it is simply shocking, the number of flirtations going on this evening. Miss Langton, let me see your verses," coolly taking the open volume from her hand.
Vane, looking off to sea, unreasonably vexed, and out of humor, hears him reading in a clear, full voice, the lines on which Reine's hands have been closely folded since he sat down by her.
"'We stand at the window watching,
Oh, God! through the glass of time,
For the sails of our hopes to blossom
Out on life's horizon line.