De Courval threw himself at her feet on the ground covered with autumn's lavished colors.
"We have nothing like this in France. How wonderful it is!"
"Yes," she said; "it is finer than ever I saw it." Then, not looking up, she added, after a pause, the hands he watched still busy: "Why didst thou not bring me any goldenrod last evening? I asked thee."
"I saw none."
"Ah, but there is still plenty, or at least there are asters. I think thou must have been gathering pensées, as thy mother calls them; pansies, we say."
"Yes, thoughts, thoughts," he returned with sudden gravity—"pensées."
"They must have been of my cousin Shippen or of Fanny Cadwalader, only she is always laughing." This young woman, who still lives in all her beauty on Stuart's canvas, was to end her life in England.
"Oh, neither, neither," he said gaily, "not I. Guess better."
"Then a quiet Quaker girl like—ah—like, perhaps, Deborah Wharton."