What could she mean? he thought. Did she—did she care also, as he had dared to hope?
Trembling with hope, the color rushing to his brow, he bent over the agitated girl, and read hope in the trembling smile of the coral lips.
“Oh, Daisie, will you love me?” he cried impetuously, and she answered, with a broken sob:
“Oh, how could I help it, dear?”
And then he dared to kiss her, and for the space of five minutes heaven seemed to come down to earth in that rare bliss of mutual love.
Absorbed in sweet assurances of tenderness, they did not hear the crunching of carriage wheels that stopped at the gate, nor the rustle of a silken robe as a fine little lady came up the steps. But Aunt Alice saw the sight from an upper window, and hurried down to admit the pretty, airy little visitor.
“Mrs. Bell, I presume?” she twittered. “Well, I am Mrs. Fleming, cousin of Royall Sherwood, you know. I came to call on Miss Daisie, having heard she had been injured in an accident.”
And scarcely had Dallas pushed back his chair from its close proximity to the sofa when she was in the room, aflutter with laces and ribbons and flaxen crinkles.
“Why, Mr. Bain, this is a surprise! I—I did not know you were acquainted with Miss Bell,” she broke out, in dismay and alarm.
Dallas was a trifle disconcerted, but he rallied himself and answered lightly: