But Sylvia was not looking with the outward eye. Sylvia had been reading romances, and had a vague idea of a lover who would some day appear, being distinguished from the ordinary admirers of salons and ball-rooms by something knightly in his aspect. And this man seemed to have that something. His face was a face of power, yet not harsh, rather with a touch of melancholy.
As a rule Sylvia was immediately observant of her own emotional states, especially where men were concerned; but this once she was too much interested to think what she was thinking. She was noting the man’s deeply-shadowed eyes and shiny black hair, his statue-like figure and his mastery of the horse. She wondered if he would look in her direction, and she waited, fascinated, for the moment when his glance would rest upon her.
The moment came. He started slightly, and then quickly his hand went up to his hat. “I beg your pardon,” he said, politely.
Sylvia noted his deep, full-toned voice; and with a sudden thrill she recollected Harriet’s adventure. “Can this be Frank Shirley?” she thought. She caught herself together and smiled. “It is for me to beg pardon,” she said. “I came near shooting at you.”
“I deserved it,” he answered, smiling in turn. “I was trespassing on my neighbor’s land.”
Sylvia had by now been “out” a full year, and it must be admitted that she was a sophisticated young lady. When she met a man, her thought was: “Could I love him? And how would it be if I married him?” Her imagination would leap ahead through a long series of scenes: the man’s home, his relatives and her own, his occupations, his amusements, his ideas. She would see herself traveling with him, driving with him, presiding at dinner-parties for him—perhaps helping to get him sober the next morning. As a drowning man is said to live over his whole past in a few seconds, so Sylvia might live her whole future during a figure at a “german.”
But with this man it was different. She could not imagine him in any position in her world. He was an elemental creature, belonging in some wild place, where there was danger to be faced and deeds to be done. Sylvia had read “Paul and Virginia,” and “Robinson Crusoe,” and “Typee,” and in her mind was a vague idea of a primitive, close-to-nature life, which one yearned for when one was tightly laced, or was sent into the parlor to entertain an old friend of the family. She imagined this strange knight springing forward and lifting her upon his saddle-bow, to bear her away to such a world. She could feel his powerful arms about her, his whispered words in her ear; she could hear the clatter of his horse’s hoofs—away, away!
She had to make another effort, and remember who she was. “You are not lost, I suppose?” he was asking.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I am on a ‘stand.’”
“Of course,” he replied; again there was a pause, and again Sylvia’s brain went whirling. It was absurd how the beating of her heart kept translating itself into the clatter of horse’s hoofs.