“Half an hour on the place, Aunt Etarre,” she said, shaking her head, “and you know our one romance!”
“So does Pelleas,” I claimed defensively, “or, at all events, he has actually talked with the lover.”
“Pooh!” said Pelleas in that splendid disdain which, in matters of romance, he always pretends, “we were talking botany.”
“That’s he,” said Avis, nodding. “Bonnie’s sweetheart is the young under-gardener—if you can call a man a sweetheart who is as shy as Karl. He is really Faint Heart. But I think those two little people are in love.”
Then I learned how, ever since the coming of Bonnie to Little Rosemont, this big young Karl had paid her the most delicate and the most distant attention. He had brought roots of violets and laid them outside her window-ledge; and he had tossed in her blind clusters of the first lady-slippers and the first roses. But though all the household at Little Rosemont had good-naturedly done what it could to help on the affair, some way it had not prospered. And as I listened I resolved past all doubting that something must be done. For Pelleas and I are fain to go through the world seeking out people who love each other without knowing, and saying to them: “Fair Heart and Faint Heart, take each other’s hands and follow us.”
Still, I was obliged to be certain that Bonnie was in love as well as the young god whom we had surprised, and I meant to look in her eyes the while I named the name of this young Karl. I think that there are no eyes which I cannot read in a like circumstance and the pastime is one of the delights of my hours.
“Bonnie,” said I to the little maid as she brushed my hair that night, “I’ve an idea that you were wishing something delightful when you stood in that great doorway to-night. Were you not?”
“O, ma’am,” said little Bonnie, and I saw her face, shadowy above my own in the mirror, burn sudden crimson.
“Of course you were,” said I briskly. “Bonnie,” I pursued, “when I came upon you I had just seen under a birch-tree not far away a fine young fellow with a flower in his hand. Can that have been the under-gardener?”
“O, ma’am,” said Bonnie, “I s’pose, if he had a flower—” and her voice trembled, and she did not meet my eyes in the mirror.