CHAPTER XXV
The sky was all aflame with the glory of one of late June’s gorgeous sunsets when he came up over the long sweep of meadowland and saw her straying about and gathering wild flowers to fill the vases in the wee house’s wee little drawing-room, and singing to herself the while in a voice that was like honey—thin but very, very sweet—and at the sight something seemed to lay hold of his heart and quicken its beating until it interfered with his breathing, yet brought with it a curious sense of joy.
“Good afternoon, Mistress of the Linnets!” he called out to her as he advanced (for she had neither seen nor heard his coming) with the big sheaf of roses he had brought held behind him and the bracken and kingcups smothering him in green and gold up to the very thighs.
She turned at the sound, her face illumined, her soft eyes very bright—those wondrous eyes that had lit a man’s way back from perdition and would light it onward and upward to the end—and greeted him with a smile of happy welcome.
“Oh, it is you at last,” she said, looking at him as a woman looks at but one man ever. “Is this your idea of ‘spending the afternoon’ with one, turning up when tea is over and twilight about to begin? Do you know, I am a very busy young woman these days”—blushing rosily—“and might have spent a whole day in town shopping but that Dollops brought me word that I might look for you? But, of course——No! I shan’t say it. It might make you vain to hear that you had the power to spoil my day.”
“Not any vainer than you have made me by telling me other things,” he retorted with a laugh. “I am afraid I have spoiled a good many days for you in my time, Ailsa. But, please God, I shall make up for them all in the brightness of the ones that are to come. I couldn’t help being late to-day—I’ll tell you all about that presently—but may I offer something in atonement? Please, will you add these to your bouquet and forgive me?”
“Roses! Such beauties! How good of you! Just smell! How divine!”
“Meaning the flowers or their donor?”—quizzically. “Or, no! Don’t elucidate. Leave me in blissful ignorance. You have hurt my vanity quite enough as it is. I was deeply mortified—cut to the quick, I may say, if that will express my sense of grovelling shame any clearer—when I arrived here and saw what you were doing. Please, mum”—touching his forelock and scraping his foot backward after the manner of a groom—“did I make such a bad job of my work in that garden that when you want a bouquet you have to come out here and gather wild flowers? I put fifty-eight standard roses on that terrace just under your bedroom window, and surely there must be a bloom or two that you could gather?”
“As if I would cut one of them for anything in the world!” she gave back, indignantly. Then she laughed, and blushed and stepped back from his impetuous advance. “No—please! You fished for that so adroitly that you landed it before I thought. Be satisfied. Besides, Mrs. Condiment is at her window, and I want to preserve as much as possible of her rapidly depreciating estimate of me. She thinks me a very frivolous young person, ‘to allow that young Mr. Hamilton to call so frequent, miss, and if you’ll allow me to say it, at such unseemly hours. I don’t think as dear Captain Burbage would quite approve of it if he knew.’”