"Not unless I want to be stared at; and I do not want to be stared at, in that way. I am glad I did not go with mamma and those people; if Sandie had come, I do not think he would have altogether liked it. Though I don't know but it is good to make men jealous. Mamma says it is."
"Oh no!" said Dolly. "Not anybody you care for."
"What do you know?" said Christina archly. Before she could receive an answer, then, she had started and sprung up; for the door gently opened and on the threshold presented himself a gentleman in naval uniform.
"Sandie!" cried Christina.
"Didn't you expect me?" he said with a frank and bright smile.
Dolly had heard enough about this personage to make her very curious; and her eyes took keen note of him. She saw a tall, upright figure, with that free poise of bearing which is a compound of strength and ease; effortless, quiet, graceful, and dignified. Though in part the result of a certain symmetry of joints and practised activity in the use of them, this sort of bearing refers itself also, and yet more surely, to the character, and makes upon the beholder the impression again of strength and ease in the mental action. It is not common; it struck Dolly in the first five steps he made into the room and in the manner of his greeting his betrothed. Out of delicate consideration, I suppose, for the company in which they found themselves, he offered only a look and a hand-clasp; but Christina jumped up and kissed him. She was not short, yet she had to make a little spring to reach his lips. And then, quietly putting an arm round her, he gave her her kiss back. Christina was rosy when she turned to present him, and both were smiling. Letting her go, he bowed low before Christina's friend; low and gravely; with such absolute gravity that Dolly almost felt herself in the way; as if he wished her not there. Then they sat down around the fire; and the same feeling came over her again with a rush. They were three; they ought to have been but two; she was one too many; they must wish her away. And yet, Christina had asked her precisely and specially that she might be one of the company that night. Dolly would have wished herself away, nevertheless; only that she was so very much interested, and could not. The newcomer excited her curiosity greatly, and provoked her observation; and, if the truth must be told, exercised also a powerful attraction upon her. He sat before the fire, full in her view, and struck Dolly as different from all the people she had ever seen in her life. She took glances from time to time, as she could, at the fine, frank, manly face, which had an unusual combination of the two qualities, frankness and manliness; was much more than usually serious, for a man of his age; and yet, she saw now and then, could break to tenderness or pleasure or amusement, with a sweetness that was winning. Dolly was fascinated, and could not wish herself away; why should she, if Christina did not?
In all her life she never forgot the images of two of the people around the fire that evening. "Sandie" in the middle, in front of the blaze; Christina on the other hand of him. She was in a glistening robe of dark blue silk, her fair hair knotted and wound gracefully about her head; a beautiful creature; looking at her lover with complacent looks of possession and smiles of welcome. Dolly never knew what sort of a figure the third was; she could not see herself, and she never thought about it. Yet she was a foil to the other two, and they were a foil to her, as she sat there at the corner of the hearth on a low cushion, in her black dress, and with no ornament about her other than the cameo ring. A creature very different from the beauty at the other corner of the fireplace; more delicate, more sensitive, more spiritual; oddly and inexplicably, more of a child and more of a woman. That's a rare mixture. There was something exceedingly sweet and simple in her soft brown eyes and her lips; but the eyes had looked at life, the brow was grave, and the lips could close into lines of steady will. The delicate vessel was the shrine of a soul, as large as it could hold, and so had taken on the transparent nobility which belongs to the body when the soul is allowed to be dominant. One point of the contrast between the two girls was in the character and arrangement of their hair. Christina's was smooth, massed, and in a sort massive; Dolly's clustered or was knotted about her head, without the least disorder, but with a wilfulness of elegant play most harmonious with all the rest of her appearance. To characterise the two in a word, Christina was a beautiful pearl, and Dolly was a translucent opal.
They sat down round the fire.
"Well, Sandie, you naughty boy," Christina began, "what has kept you away all this time?"
"Duty."