“Please think of me, then, as the child you used to know; never as the débutante who must be fed, à la Bouncey, on the sweets of sentiment.”
“Take sentiment—I mean the higher sentiment, that lifts us 180 sometimes above our baser worldly nature—out of life, and it is not worth the living,” Morris said earnestly. “That man could not understand it any more than he could understand you!”
“Perhaps you are right,” she answered, quietly. “We are too old friends to talk society at each other; and you are so different from him.”
Perhaps Morris was luckier for not replying.
It may be that the Destiny, which, we are told, shapes our ends, did not leave his so rough-hewn as it might have.
He himself could scarcely have told what thoughts were framing themselves in his mind; what words had almost formed themselves on his tongue. There are moments in life, when we live at the rate of hours; and Van Morris was certainly going the pace, mentally, for those ten seconds of silence, before the echo of the girl’s voice ceased vibrating on his ear. He was vaguely conscious, some ten seconds later still, that rarely had a calm, well-posed man of the world found himself quite so dizzy, from combined effects of a quick waltz, a flower-laden atmosphere, and a rounded arm pressing only restfully upon his own.
Suddenly that pressure grew sharp and decided. They stopped abruptly at a sharp turn of the walk.
On a somewhat too small rustic seat, under the fruit-laden boughs of an orange tree, and comfortably screened thereby from the gleam of the tinted lantern, sat Miss Rose Wood and Mr. Andrew Browne.
Their two heads were rather close together; their two hands were suspiciously distant, as though by sudden movement; and the lady’s fan had fallen at her feet, most à propos to the crunch of the gravel, under approaching feet.
But only Blanche—less preoccupied with her thoughts than her companion—had caught the words, “Dismiss carriage—escort home,” before Miss Wood’s fan had happened to drop at her feet.