[V.]
THE GODDESS IS HUMAN.
The friends found their way home together in the cool of the evening; both very quiet, but Roscoria evidently meditating some deep design. At night, growing confidential as they patrolled the garden, smoking, Louis proceeded to rave of his goddess "for an hour by his dial." Tregurtha heard and nodded in silence. He was a more reserved man than his friend, so he did not even mention the maid who ate his share of the strawberries. Indeed, he forgot her whilst listening to the outpourings of his ingenuous comrade.
"I shall never be any good at my work, I'm afraid," complained Roscoria; "that beautiful face is the only thing my mind will comprehend."
"Well, if I were you, as you seem so far gone, I should take some steps," advised Dick. "I'm no friend of shilly-shallying. If you love the girl, go and tell her so, I advise."
"I wish I'd more money," sighed the schoolmaster.
"Many a good paterfamilias has wished that before you, my lad," observed Tregurtha, with a laugh. "How does the country curate get on with his six children, do you suppose?"
"Eh, I don't know. O Lord! I hope I never shall be the father of a boy!" exclaimed the pedagogue, with a sudden agitated glance up at the bedroom windows, as the dread crossed his mind that he might have been overheard all this while.
However, all objection melted before the warmth of Roscoria's attachment, and one night he gave up his keys and authority to Tregurtha, bade him bolt the shutters and troll out prayers to the household in his jovial bass, for Louis Roscoria was going to a ball to "declare himself."
He had found out all about Lyndis (or thought he had). She was the niece of Admiral Sir John Villiers; her father dead; her mother married again to a hunting, racing type of man who wanted no stepdaughter about. So fair Lyndis was staying with her uncle for the time, looking after the housekeeping in return for his kind protection. But Roscoria gathered much hope that his suit might possibly be the means of relieving her from any unsettled feeling that she might have about her future. And thus it came to pass that at the termination of their fifth dance together they were sitting in a ferny grotto—the goddess was all robed in blue this time, as if she had brought down a piece of summer sky trailing after her—and Louis began all at once to show the tenderness he felt.