"Miss Minturn—Katherine! Did you prize them enough to keep them— here?" and he touched the door of her "treasure closet"
"They are a—a souvenir of a delightful evening—my last at
Hilton," she faltered.
His countenance fell; yet something in the tense attitude of the figure beside him, in her quickened breathing and fluctuating color emboldened him to ask:
"Did they convey no message to you? had they any special significance? Tell me—tell me, please!"
"They had not—then," she confessed, almost inaudibly.
"Then?" he repeated, eagerly.
"I did not know—I had not looked—-"
"You did not know their language then; but you do now, dear?" he said, a glad ring in his tones. "And may I tell you that my heart and all its dearest hopes went with those little voiceless messengers? That was Why—"
"Oh! Uncle Phillip, the carriage has come for us and we are waiting for you," cried Dorothy's voice from the low, open window on the opposite side of the room, and for the first time in his life a feeling of impatience with his niece stirred in Phillip Stanley's heart. "Why! is anything the matter?" she added, as she observed Katherine's averted eyes and unusual color and her uncle's unaccustomed intensity.
"I'll be with you in a minute, Dorrie," he said. "Just one word," he pleaded, bending nearer to Katherine, "have you treasured my messengers because of their message?"