So he rowed them across; and then, while Rosamond discussed plaits and gores with the new dress-maker, he discoursed his best eloquence and learning to the professor, with such good effect that the latter said to Rosamond, as they walked home through the twilight, having been persuaded to extend the row a little, "I am glad, dear, that this opportunity of presenting young Symington to you without apparent favoritism has arisen. He is a most promising young man, but a little inclined, I fear, from what I hear of him in his social capacity, to be frivolous. We may together exercise a restraining influence over him."
"I thought he talked most dreadfully sensibly," said Rosamond, laughing; "but I like him, and I hope we shall see him often."
They did. He called at first with the professor, afterward, at odd times,—never in the evening,—without him. He persuaded Rosamond to continue her patronage of his boat. Sometimes the professor went, sometimes he did not. Mr. Symington was frequently induced to sing when they were upon the water, and once or twice Rosamond joined her voice to his.
The 30th of June had at last been appointed for the wedding-day. They were to go to Europe at once, and spend the vacation travelling wherever Rosamond's fancy should dictate. All through the winter she had discussed their journey with the liveliest interest, sometimes making and rejecting a dozen plans in one evening. But of late she had ceased to speak of it unless the professor spoke first; and this, with the gentle tact which he had always possessed, but which had wonderfully developed of late, he soon ceased to do.
She was sometimes unwarrantably irritable with him now, but each little fit of petulance was always followed by a disproportionate penitence and remorse. At such times she hovered about him, eagerly anxious to render him some of the small services which he found so sweet. But she was paler and thinner than she had ever been, and Miss Christina noticed, with a kindly anxiety which did her credit, that Rosamond ate less and less.
May was gone. It was the first day of June,—and such a day! Trees and shrubs were in that loveliest of all states,—that of a half-fulfilled promise of loveliness. Rosamond felt the spell, and, in spite of all that was in her heart, an unreasoning gladness took possession of her. She danced down the path of the long garden behind the seminary and danced back again, stopping to pick a handful of the first June roses. It was early morning, and the professor stopped—as he often did—for a moment's sight of her on his way from the dreary boarding-house to the equally dreary college. She caught both his hands and held up her face for a kiss. Then she fastened a rosebud in his button-hole.
"You are not to take that out until it withers, Paul," she said, laughing and shaking a threatening finger at him. "Do you know what it means,—a rosebud? I don't believe you do, for all your Greek. It means 'confession of love;' and I do love you,—I do, I do."
"I know you do, my darling," he said gently; "and it shall stay there—till it withers. But that will not be long. I stopped to tell you that I cannot go with you this afternoon; but you must not disappoint Mr. Symington. I met him just now, and told him I should be detained, but that you would go."
"You had no right to say so without asking me first," she said sharply. "I don't wish to go. I won't go without you. There!"
He was silent, but his deep, kind eyes were fixed pityingly upon her flushed, excited face.