CHAPTER XI

AFTER "THE BALL."

She was conscious of what she had said an instant afterwards and blushed to the brow. If any one at that moment had asked her what's in a name, and she had been compelled to reveal her inmost convictions, the fair Rose, who by any other name would be as sweet, would have answered "impropriety, embarra.s.sment, a host of unpleasant emotions."

It was impossible to explain to him that she had been helping him to make hay that evening in Lady Sarah Maitland's parlours, and that that was why the name that she had heard so frequently in the meadow had left her lips so easily and naturally that night. Better try and seem unconscious. But unconsciousness, like happiness, comes unsought or not at all. As for Allan, his own name had never made such music in his ears and surely to no lone watcher waiting for the dawn could the first blush of morn be more welcome than was to him this lovely mantling bloom on the face of the girl he loved.

"Charming!" "Exquisite!" "Do sing something else!" were the exclamations rained upon her as she ceased to sing, but she looked only to him.

"How is it I have never heard you sing before?" he inquired, with the applause that the others had uttered shining unspoken in his eyes.

"You have too many professional singers about your home. I am afraid to sing before them. Did you ever hear birds called 'the angels of earth?'"

"Never."

"Well, if n.o.body else originated the phrase I am willing to do so--rather than that it shouldn't be originated at all."

"It may be a pretty idea," said Allan, "and yet it fails to suit my critical taste." They withdrew a little from the crowd, and found a quiet place in which to sit and chat, for now a pianist of note had been led a willing sacrifice to the place Rose vacated.

"You must be hard to please," said Rose. "What can be more like an angel than a bird? It has wings, and it sings, and it is rejoicingly happy. It seems to be particularly blest every moment of its blessed little life."

"Very likely. Nevertheless I think a flower much more closely resembles an angel."

"A flower? Why, there is scarcely a point of resemblance."

The young man laughed, but the slight whimsical frown between his brows deepened.

"Now that isn't at all what I expected you to say. I thought you might be kind enough to inquire, 'What flower?' and then I could reply, 'The queen of flowers.'"

Rose looked down a moment at the warm pink hands restlessly twining and intertwining in her lap. "I am glad I did not make the inquiry,"

she said.

"You don't like clumsy compliments?"

"I believe I don't like any kind from you."

"Why, please?"

"I don't know exactly, unless because it seems natural to expect something better."

Allan Dunlop was dimly aware that a compliment of a very high order had been paid to himself. "Our best friends are those who compel us to do our best," he said. "I hope you will always expect something better of me than anything I have done."

It was the speech of an ambitious young man. They both recognized the note of earnestness that seemed to place them for a moment above the frivolous crowd about them. Only for a moment; then they lapsed easily into the light talk so natural to the occasion.

"Have you had a pleasant evening?" he asked.

"Very pleasant." Her mind reverted once more to her delightful reverie, and the scent of new-mown hay was again about her. Then, as though he could read her thoughts, she brought them back to the present with a quick little blush, and mentioned the name of the gentleman who had absorbed so large a part of her time, if not of her attention, through the evening.

"Now, why should she blush when she mentions his name?" thought poor Allan, with a sharp jealous pang at his heart, for the man she alluded to was an eligible bachelor, who had successfully resisted the charms of one generation of maidens. "If you find Mr. Gallon's conversation so interesting," he said, rather forlornly, "mine will seem dull by contrast. What was he expatiating upon?"

"Politics, mostly."

"Are you interested in that subject? I think of going into politics more deeply myself some time."

"Do you, indeed? More than you have?" If he had spoken of going into a decline Rose could not have looked more foreboding. Allan glanced across half-enviously at the personage who had the power to invest that topic with interest. "He seems to be more than usually roused to-night."

Rose suppressed a yawn. "Does he talk better when he is roused than he does when he's asleep?" she asked.

"Surely he displayed no signs of sleepiness when talking with you."

"No; but I cannot answer for myself."

That senseless pang of jealousy died a very easy death after all, and the only sufferer from it would have been entirely happy were it not for the advancing form of Commodore Macleod, who came in search of his daughter, and bore her off with a speed that left her lover a little chilled and daunted.

The Canadian winter with its bright, fierce days and sparkling nights was upon them, but it held no terrors for the young hearts who met it in a mood as defiantly merry as its own. Only a suffering or morbid nature sees in winter the synonym of death and decay; fancies that mourning and desolation is the burden of the gaily whistling winds; and regards the bare trees, rid of their dusty garments, and quietly resting, as shivering skeletons, and the dancing snow-flakes as the colourless pall that hides from sight all there is of life and loveliness. Nature, when the labours of the year are over, sinks to rest beneath her fleecy coverings, lulled to sleep in the kindly, yet frosty, arms of the Northern tempest. What wild weird lullabies are sung to her unheeding ears, dulled by the lethargy of sleep. How early falls the darkness, and how late the long night lingers, the better to ensure repose to the sweet mistress of the earth! How bright the starry eyes of heaven keeping watch above her rest!

The Macleods had settled in a furnished house, through which Rose had already diffused the charm of her dainty personality. She was kneeling before the hearth, like a young fire-worshipper, one snowy afternoon, and thinking a little drearily that the close environment of a snow-storm in town rendered it almost as lonely as the country, when a visitor was announced, the sound of whose name seemed to make the solitude populous. It was Allan Dunlop, whom she instantly forgave for so soon availing himself of her permission to call, when she realized how welcome a break his coming made in the cheerless monotony of the day. He caught a glimpse of bright hair against a background of blazing logs, and then she came forward to meet him, not eagerly, not shyly, but with a charming manner in which both eagerness and shyness were suggested. At that moment all the warmth and brightness of the bleak colourless world shone for him in the eyes and hair of this sweet girl, and in the glowing fire-place before which she drew his chair.

"It is exactly the sort of day on which one expects to be free from the annoyance of callers," he said. "Ought I to apologize?"

"By all means--instantly--and in the most profuse and elaborate terms." She a.s.sumed her grand air, mounted a footstool, and stood looking over his head with her saucy chin elevated, waiting for the abject pet.i.tion that did not come. The young man's heart rendered the tribute of an unmistakable throb to its "little queen;" but emotional declarations are out of place after a short acquaintance, especially when there exists a decided belief that they will be listened to in an unfriendly spirit, or, what is infinitely worse, in a friendly spirit.

It was the fear of making Rose his friend that steeled Allan's determination to bide his time, and that rendered his present reply rather more stiff than sensational.

"I beg a thousand pardons," he began, when she interrupted him with--

"Oh, that is too many. Do try and be a little more moderate in your demands. Would it please you to have me spend the whole afternoon in forgiving you?"

Allan laughed--a blithe contented little laugh. "Any way that you like to spend the afternoon will please me," he said, "so long as I am not deprived of your presence. Oh, not _that_ way," he added, as a little frown crept between her golden-brown eyebrows, "that way excepted."

"Very well. I'll not frown at you, but you must promise not to come so near again to the verge of a compliment."

"I promise. Anything to keep a frown from marring the--I mean from your face. But the difficulty is to think of anything that is as easy to say."

"You might better remind me of my faults."

"Oh, you could scarcely expect me to be eloquent on that subject. I didn't know that they exist--that is to say, I am incapable of speaking upon a subject so wide reaching and profound. Are they like unto the snow-flakes for mult.i.tude?"

"No, not quite so numerous, but far worse in quality. For instance, the other day I never smiled at papa the least bit when I said, good morning!"

"Horrible! what an unnatural daughter!"

"It was because he wouldn't let me dance as often as I wanted to the night before. He said he must draw the line somewhere. It is strange that the word _somewhere_ in that sentence invariably means the precise point where it is most painful to have it drawn."

Allan Dunlop, who had already had some experience of the Commodore's ability to draw the line at the sensitive point designated by his daughter, murmured only, "very strange."

"Not that he was in the least unkind about it," continued Rose. "Papa is always lovely to me, no matter how I behave."