Naylor awoke from his reverie, and found himself alone. He felt how few and bald had been his expressions of obligation; and he had come forward prepared to deliver himself so fully, and in such carefully chosen words, when the near view of her face had raised long-buried recollections, and confused him with a sense of doubleness in the presence before him, and left his memory blank. The tender girl he had been parted from long ago, seemed associated and blended with the personality of this beautiful deliverer before him; and in an effort to disentangle the old impressions from the new, the precious moment for uttering his little speech had slipped away. Now he was alone, feeling how tongue-tied and thankless he must have appeared, and how impossible it would be to make another opportunity for delivering his speech.
And yet the speech might not be necessary now. She had received him very graciously, and had even said that she was pleased to know him--said it twice--and that they would meet again. "What more could he want?" he thought; "and was he not an ass to fancy that any set phrases of his could give pleasure to so glorious a creature?--and shabby at heart, to think that any string of words could lessen the obligation under which he stood? He must never forget the debt, or dream that by word or act it could be lessened; rather, he must treasure the recollection, and watch and be ready, if haply he might, some day, be privileged to serve or succour in return."
So thinking, he turned on his heel and went his way, leaving the spectators in the gallery to find some other object to divert their leisure.
CHAPTER VIII.
[MRS WILKIE'S POWDER].
Rose left Naylor standing on the gravel, and went into the house, making her way leisurely up to her room.
The parlour door stood ajar, disclosing only darkness within, to eyes coming straight from the outer glare of sunshine. It seemed cool in there, with the rustling sea-breeze sifting fitfully through the closed Venetians; and there were gurglings of smothered laughter, which told that the place was not deserted. She stepped within the gloom, and, as her eyes grew used to it, she became able to make out the tenants.
A cheerful crew of girls, standing and seated in a ring, occupied the centre of the floor. In their midst sat old Mrs Wilkie on a low ottoman, which she occupied by herself, like a kind of throne, fanning herself industriously till the short grey curls upon her temples danced and fluttered in the artificial gale. The new blue ribbons in her cap and the old blue eyes in her head danced in unison and elation, and a proud self-satisfied smile played about her lips, and deepened the creases in her cheeks, which looked round and rosy like an overkept winter apple. She was in her glory, and she gave yet a more energetic flap to the palm-leaf fan, as she pursed her lips together, and prepared to speak again.
"Yes, my dears," were her words as Rose joined the circle, "blue was always my colour. You see I am fair--'like a lily,' the young men used to tell me I was," and she made a flourish with her fan. "But that was years ago," and she blew a sigh which made her chest heave like a portly bellows. "And then I had a colour--like a Cheeny-rose, the haverels would have it; but the Scotch gentlemen are great hands to blaw in the lugs of silly girls. Not that I was ever the wan to let my head be turned with their nonsense--but still they had grounds for what they said."
"You were a beauty," said Lettice Deane--"I can see that;" and the girls exchanged glances brimming with amusement and incredulity, such as those feel whose bloom is still in the present tense, when one of the have-beens puts in her claim to personal charms.