"The fellow had fine taste anyway," laughed the captain, "both in the selection of the flowers and their recipient."
"Thank you," answered Queenie, demurely, looking up with a smile, and dropping her lashes very quickly a minute after, for something in the glance of his dark eyes sent a blush to her cheek and made her silly little heart thrill strangely.
Captain Ernscliffe only smiled like one used to such effects. He was a bachelor, and thirty years old, and women called him a flirt. Be that as it may, he was as handsome as a prince, and knew how to make women's lashes flutter down upon cheeks that blushed crimson under his glance.
"What an innocent little darling she is," he thought, to himself. "How different from her sisters, and from the girls one meets usually in society! One might well resign all the liberties of bachelorhood to win and wear so sweet a flower." "Doubtless you have woven a pretty web of romance about the unknown giver of your flowers, Miss Lyle," he said, jestingly.
She had pressed the flowers to her lips unconsciously, and at his words she started and smiled, and looked up to reply with the brightest face he had ever looked upon. But suddenly, before a single word left her lips, her aspect changed strangely and marvelously. Her cheeks and lips grew white as death, her eyes grew wild with horror, and she swept her hand across her brow as if to dispel some horrid vision. Her form trembled like a leaf in a storm, and with a wild, inarticulate cry she wavered and fell in a lifeless heap at Captain Ernscliffe's feet.
It was all so sudden that Captain Ernscliffe lifted her up and carried her through the low window out on the balcony before anyone had noticed her fall. He laid her down on a rustic lounge, turned her white face up to the air, and went and called her mother very quietly.
"Oh! Captain Ernscliffe, is she dead?" exclaimed Mrs. Lyle, wringing her hands in terror.
"Oh! no, she has only fainted, I think. The rooms were too warm, perhaps. See, she is already reviving in the cooler air out here."
The girl's breath came fluttering back in a long, quivering sigh. She caught Captain Ernscliffe's arm and half-lifted herself without seeming to notice her mother.