He glanced at it, and then passed it, with a smile, to his daughter.
The visitors took the hint, and rose precipitately.
“We must all try to meet again to-morrow,” Mrs. Bennett said, as they all filed out, escorted by Mr. Mead, leaving a clear field for Leola’s lover.
The happy girl sank back in her chair, feeling as if her heart would burst with its wild throbbing.
People had died from shock of joy as well as of grief. Could she survive it?
Her face went pale for a moment—pale as a snowdrift, and she closed her lovely eyes with a gasp.
There was a quick step in the room, a hurried breath, and some one knelt at her feet, and caught her two hands in a rapturous clasp that sent the warm blood bounding through her heart again, crimsoning her cheeks and lighting her eyes like stars as she opened them to meet those dark-blue orbs that in the long ago had lured the girlish heart from her breast, and taught her the most exquisite lesson of life, with its blended joy and pain.
“And all the wondrous things of love
That sing so sweet in song
Were in the look that met in their eyes,