Grace turns aside from her chatter with her hostess to acknowledge the compliment with a passing, fond smile on her favorite.
"If I remember rightly," Mr. Conway bows slightly toward her, "Mrs. Winans has always had a quiet fund of energy in her composition that is a reproach to many who are stronger physically, but, alas! weaker in mental gifts. I am, unfortunately, Miss Lulu, one of those unstable ones who shall not excel in anything."
Mrs. Winans never glances that way. She holds her small head high, her underlying pride never more noticeable than now as she goes on talking with Mrs. Conway, languidly fanning herself the while.
Is memory busy at her heart? We think not, or if it is she would not go back to those happy, idly dreaming hours this spot recalls could they bestow all the happiness they promised then, and denied her. So often in our maturer experience we see the wisdom of God in withholding gifts we craved, whose attainment could but disappoint expectation and anticipation.
Bruce Conway would make Lulu, with her loving capacity of twisting love's garlands over wanting capabilities, a very happy wife—he never could have quite filled up the illimitable depths of Grace's heart, nor crowned her life with the fullness of content.
"Will you go to see our flowers?" he asks, bending to Lulu with one of his rarely sweet smiles. "You favor my aunt so seldom in this way that I must needs do the honors in as great perfection as is possible to me—one never expects any great quota of perfection from my indolence, you know."
She smiles as she dons again the broad straw hat that, by Mrs. Conway's request, she has laid aside, and rises to go.
He rises, too—oh, how peerless in her eyes, in his suit of cool white linen, and his graceful indolence.
"I am going to rifle your flower-garden of its sweets, Mrs. Conway," she says, lightly, as she follows him out on the broad piazza, down the steps, and into that exquisite garden that lay budding and glowing in the burning August sunshine.
"Ah, life is sweet when life is young,
And life and love are both so long!"