GIRDING ON THE HARNESS.
Later that same morning a gentleman calling upon Mistress Katie Archdale was told that he would find her with friends in the garden. Walking through the paths with a leisurely step which the impatience of his mood chafed against, he came upon a picture that he never forgot.
Great stretches of sunshine lay on the garden and in it brilliant beds of flowers glowed with their richest lights, poppies folded their gorgeous robes closely about them, Arab fashion, to keep out the heat; hollyhocks stood in their stateliness flecked with changing shadows from the aspen tree near by. Beds of tiger lilies, pinks, larkspur, sweetwilliams, canterbury bells, primroses, gillyflowers, lobelia, bloomed in a luxuriance that the methodical box which bordered them could not restrain. But the garden was by no means a blaze of sunshine, for ash trees, maples, elms, and varieties of the pine were there. Trumpet-vines climbed on the wall, and overtopping that, caught at trellises prepared to receive them, and formed screens of shadows that flickered in every breeze and changed their places with the changing sun. But it was only with a passing glance that the visitor saw these things, his eyes were fixed upon an arbor at the end of the garden; it was covered with clematis, while two great elms met overhead at its entrance and shaded the path to it for a little distance. Under these elms stood a group of young people. He was unannounced, and had opportunity without being himself perceived, to scan this little group as he went forward. His expression varied with each member of it, but showed an interest of some sort in each. Now it was full of passionate delight; then it changed as his look fell upon a tall young man with dark eyes and a bearing that in its most gracious moments seemed unable to lose a touch of haughtiness, but whose face now was alive with a restful joy. The gazer, as he perceived this happiness, so wanting in himself, scowled with a bitter hate and looked instantly toward another of the party, this time with an expression of triumph. At the fourth and last member of the group his glance though scowling, was contemptuous; but the receiver was as unconscious of contempt as he felt undeserving of it. From him the gazer's eyes returned to the person at whom he had first looked. She was standing on the step of the arbor, an end of the clematis vine swaying lightly back and forth over her head, and almost touching her bright hair which was now towered high in the fashion of the day. She was holding a spray of the vine in her hand. She had fastened one end in the hair of a young lady who stood beside her, and was now bringing the other about her neck, arranging the leaves and flowers with skilful touches. Three men, including the new-comer, watched her pretty air of absorption, and the deftness of her taper fingers, the sweep of her dark lashes on her cheek as from the height of her step she looked down at her companion, the curves of her beautiful mouth that at the moment was daintly holding a pin with which the end of the spray was to be fastened upon the front of the other's white dress. It was certainly effective there. Yet none of the three men noticed this, or saw that between the two girls the question as to beauty was a question of time, that while the one face was blooming now in the perfection of its charm, the charm of the other was still in its calyx. The adorner intuitively felt something of this. Perhaps she was not the less fond of her friend that the charms she saw in her were not patent to everybody. Bring her forward as much as she might, Katie felt that Elizabeth Royal would never be a rival. She even shrank from this kind of prominence into which Katie's play was bringing her now. She had been taken in hand at unawares and showed an impatience that if the other were not quick, would oblige her to leave the work unfinished.
"There," cried Katie, at last giving the leaves a final pat of arrangement, "that looks well, don't you think so, Master Waldo?"
"Good morning, Mistress Archdale," broke in a voice before Waldo could answer. "And you, Mistress Royal," bowing low to her. "After our late hours last night, permit me to felicitate you upon your good health this morning, and—" he was about to add, "your charming appearance," but something in the girl's eyes as she looked full at him held back the words, and for a moment ruffled his smooth assurance. But as he recovered himself and turned to salute the gentlemen, the smile on his lips had triumph through its vexation.
"My proud lady, keep your pride a little longer," he said to himself. And as he bowed to Stephen Archdale with a dignity as great as Stephen's own, he was thinking: "My morning in that hot office has not been in vain. I know your weak point now, my lofty fellow, and it is there that I will undermine you. You detest business, indeed! John Archdale feels that with his only son in England studying for the ministry he needs a son-in-law in partnership with him. The thousands which I have been putting into his business this morning are well spent, they make me welcome here. Yes, your uncle needs me, Stephen Archdale, for your clever papa is not always brotherly in his treatment, he has more than once brought heavy losses upon the younger firm. It's a part of my pleasure in prospect that now I shall be able to checkmate him in such schemes, perhaps to bring back a little of the loss upon the shoulders of his heir. Ah, I am safer from you than you dream." He turned to Waldo, and as the two men bowed, they looked at one another steadily. Each was remembering their conversation the night before over some Bordeaux in Waldo's room, for they were staying at the same inn and often spent an hour together. They had drunk sparingly, but, just returned from their sail, each was filled with Katie Archdale's beauty, and each had spoken out his purpose plainly, Waldo with an assurance that, if it savored a little of conceit, was full of manliness, the other with a half-smothered fierceness of passion that argued danger to every obstacle in its way.
"You've come at the very right moment, Master Harwin," broke in Katie's unconscious voice, and she smiled graciously, as she had a habit of doing at everybody; "We were talking about you not two minutes ago."
"Then I am just in time to save my character."
"Don't be too sure about that," returned Miss Royal.
Waldo laughed, and Katie exchanged glances with him, and smiled mischievously.