Virginia sprang to her feet, the tint of the wild rose in her cheeks, her violet eyes grown black with repressed excitement.
"Mr. Heath?" she cried, her scarlet lips parting in a bewildering smile.
"Yes; forgive me for having startled you so," he said, gently, then adding with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. "You were surely in a very brown study."
"I am afraid I was," she returned, laughing. "But what lovely flowers!" she continued, taking them up and bending to inhale their fragrance. "How kind of you to gather them for me."
The young man's eyes lingered about her in a delighted gaze, for she made the fairest picture imaginable standing there in her soft gray dress with its collar and cuffs of black velvet, a knot of scarlet ribbon at her throat, the brilliant flowers in her hands, and a fleecy white shawl wrapped about her shoulders. Her shining hair was gathered into a satiny brown coil at the back of her head and pinned with a silver arrow, while a few naturally curling locks lay lightly on her forehead. The dark, moss-grown rock was behind her; the softly waving plumy boughs of the pine tree above her, a carpet of tender green beneath her feet.
"You are still trembling from the shock that I have given you," he said in a tone of self-reproach, and noticing how the flowers quivered in her grasp, "pray, pardon me and give me a handshake of welcome, or I shall almost regret that I came."
She looked up frankly into his dark eyes, and laid her small hand unhesitatingly in his.
"You are very welcome, Mr. Heath," she said, "and I am sure that papa will be very glad to see you."
William Heath smiled at her words.
He felt sure that she, too, was glad to see him—that his coming was a pleasant break in the monotony of her life; her varying color, the bright, happy gleam of her eyes told him this.