Now, my lady Dian felt that she had been actuated by a very uncommon feeling down in the grove, and she had actually stooped to ask a man to do a favor for her own sweet sake if he loved her, forsooth. Certainly that man ought to respond by devoting himself to her at once and forever. And that man was doing the very opposite thing. Dian had forgotten that she was wearing Charlie Rose's ring; had quite forgotten all that might be involved or inferred from such a circumstance. She watched and waited for their return from the walk, feeling for the first time in her life, that somebody had slighted her.
It was not altogether an accident that she sat under the cottonwood tree on the return of the two, nor was it wholly by design that my lady looked like the very spirit of the night, with her simple white dress, her pale yellow gleaming hair breaking about her face in rings and waves, while her white arms, bared to the elbow, rested on her lap and deadened the white of her dress by their warm, creamy tints.
Charlie Rose stood at a little distance, evidently enjoying every detail of the beautiful picture as he leaned on the rude bars of the fence near Dian. Ellen came up to Dian, and as John sat down on one side of her, she slid close to her friend on the other side, and put her arms lovingly around her neck.
"Oh, Dian, isn't the night lovely?"
"Yes, dear, it is. But it is getting late and we must go in."
John sat so close to the fair-haired girl that he could see the starry shine in her soft blue eyes, and as he looked at her beautiful face the remembrance of the scene he had witnessed in the grove, and that this dear girl had been gazed at and admired by a wicked man, brought the hot tide of feeling welling up in his heart, and he was obliged to turn away his face from her dazzling beauty, while he slowly stroked his long beard, and listened to Charlie Rose exchanging poetic nonsense with the two girls.
"Two stars agleam in the silent night
Two girls a-dream in the soft moonlight,"
improvised Charlie.
"The girls have a dread of a cool evening breeze,
For they catch a stray cough, two colds and a sneeze,"
jeered Dian in response. And she took Charlie's arm as she allowed him to escort her into the house.