"The adjective is not necessary," corrected she.
"Don't you believe that one may love unspeakably?" asked he with a smile.
"It sounds like a figure of speech."
He laughed aloud, and drew her out on the veranda.
"Our home," he said; "come, let us go through the garden and a little way into the wood."
The next day Gertrude opened the windows of the guest-chamber, and made everything there bright and fresh. The table in the dining-room was gayly decked, and Frank drove to the city in the new carriage to bring the judge from the station.
Gertrude was glad of the opportunity of seeing him, Frank had told her so much about his old friend. She had laughed heartily over his droll descriptions of his friend's peculiarities, how in company when he tried to pay a compliment he invariably managed to make it a back-handed one, to his own infinite astonishment.
She would take especial pains with her dress for this "jewel" of a man, as Frank called him. She put a rosette of lace in her hair, Frank liked that so much, it looked so matronly, almost like a little cap. When she went up to the toilet-table with this graceful emblem of her youthful dignity, to look at herself in the glass, she saw there a bouquet of lilies of the valley with a paper wound round their stems.
"From him, from Frank," she whispered, growing crimson with delight.
He had said good-bye to her with such a merry smile. She hastily unwound the paper from the flowers and read it.