A slight breeze stirred the flower-scented air and set the pines whispering for a moment; then all was silent. With eyes half closed, Darrell raised the violin and, drawing the bow softly across the strings, began one of his own improvisos, the exquisite, piercing sweetness of the first notes swelling with an indescribable pathos until Kate could scarcely restrain a cry of pain. Higher and higher they soared, until above the clouds they poised lightly for an instant, then descended in a flood of liquid harmonies which alternately rose and fell, sometimes tremulous with hope, sometimes moaning in low undertones of grief, never despairing, but always with the same heart-rending pathos, always voicing the same unutterable longing.

Unmindful of his surroundings, his whole soul absorbed in the music, Darrell played on, till, as the strains sank to a minor undertone, he heard a stifled sob, followed by a low whine from Duke. He glanced towards Kate, and the music ceased instantly. Un.o.bserved by him she had left the hammock and was seated opposite himself, listening as though entranced, her lips quivering, her eyes shining with unshed tears, while Duke, alarmed by what he considered signs of evident distress, looked anxiously from her to Darrell as though entreating his help.

"Why, my dear child, what is the matter?" Darrell exclaimed, moving quickly to her side.

"Oh," she cried, piteously, "how could you stop so suddenly! It was like snapping a beautiful golden thread!" And burying her face in her hands, her whole frame shook with sobs.

Darrell, somewhat alarmed himself, laid his hand on her shoulder in an attempt to soothe her. In a moment she raised her head, the tear-drops still glistening on her cheeks and her long golden lashes.

"It was childish in me to give way like that," she said, with a smile that reminded Darrell of the sun shining through a summer shower; "but oh, that music! It was the saddest and the sweetest I ever heard! It was breaking my heart, and yet I could have listened to it forever!"

"It was my fault," said Darrell, regretfully; "I should not have played so long, but I always forget myself when playing that way."

Kate's face grew suddenly grave and serious. "Mr. Darrell," she said, hesitatingly, "I have thought very often about the sad side of your life--since your illness, you know; but I never realized till now the terrible loneliness of it all."

She paused as though uncertain how to proceed. Darrell's face had in turn become grave.

"Did the violin tell you that?" he asked, gently.

She nodded silently.

"Yes, it has been lonely, inexpressibly so," he said, unconsciously using the past tense; "but I had no right to cause you this suffering by inflicting my loneliness upon you."

"Do not say that," she replied, quickly; "I am glad that you told me,--in the way you did; glad not only that I understand you better and can better sympathize with you, but also because I believe you can understand me as no one else has; for one reason why the music affected me so much was that it seemed the expression of my own feelings, of my hunger for sympathy all these years."

"Have there been shadows in your life, then, too? It looked to be all sunshine," Darrell said, his face growing tender as he saw the tear-drops falling.

"Yes, it would seem so, with this beautiful home and all that papa does for me, and sometimes I'm afraid I'm ungrateful. But oh, Mr. Darrell, if you could have known my mother, you would understand! She was so different from papa and auntie, and she loved me so! And it seems as though since she died I've had n.o.body to love me. I suppose papa does in a fashion, but he is too busy to show it, or else he doesn't know how; and Aunt Marcia! well, you know she's good as she can be, but if she loved you, you would never know it. I've wondered sometimes if poor mamma didn't die just for want of love; it has seemed lots of times as though I would!"

"Poor little girl!" said Darrell, pityingly. He understood now the wistful, appealing look of the brown eyes. He intended to say something expressive of sympathy, but the right words would not come. He could think of nothing that did not sound stilted and formal. Almost unconsciously he laid his hand with a tender caress on the slender little white hand lying near him, much as he would have laid it on a wounded bird; and just as unconsciously, the little hand nestled contentedly, like a bird, within his clasp.

A few days later Darrell heard from Walcott the story of Harry Whitcomb's love for his cousin. It had been reported, Walcott said, in low tones, as though imparting a secret, that young Whitcomb was hopelessly in love with Miss Underwood, but that she seemed rather indifferent to his attentions. It was thought, however, that the old gentleman had favored the match, as he had given his nephew an interest in his mining business, and had the latter lived and proved himself a good financier, it was believed that Mr. Underwood would in time have bestowed his daughter upon him.

Darrell listened silently. Of young Whitcomb, of his death, and of his own part in that sad affair he had often heard, but no mention of anything of this nature. He sat lost in thought.

"Of course, you know how sadly the romance ended," Walcott continued, wondering somewhat at Darrell's silence. "I have understood that you were a witness of young Whitcomb's tragic death."

"I know from hearsay, that is all," Darrell replied, quietly; "I have heard the story a number of times."

Walcott expressed great surprise. "Pardon me, Mr. Darrell, for referring to the matter. I had heard something regarding the peculiar nature of your malady, but I had no idea it was so marked as that. Is it possible that you have no recollection of that affair?"

"None whatever," Darrell answered, briefly, as though he did not care to discuss the matter.

"How strange! One would naturally have supposed that anything so terrible, so shocking to the sensibilities, would have left an impression on your mind never to have been effaced! But I fear the subject is unpleasant to you, Mr. Darrell; pardon me for having alluded to it."

The conversation turned, but Darrell could not banish the subject from his thoughts. Kate had often spoken to him of her cousin, but never as a lover. He recalled his portrait at The Pines; the frank, boyish face with its winning smile--a bonnie lover surely! Had she, or had she not, he wondered, learned to reciprocate his love before the tragic ending came? And if not, did she now regret it?

He watched her that evening, fearing to broach a subject so delicate, but pondering long and deeply, till at last she rallied him on his unusual seriousness, and he told her what he had heard.

"Yes," she said, in reply; "Harry loved me, or thought he did; though he was like the others--he did not understand me any better than they. But he had always been just like a brother to me, and I could never have loved him in any other way, and I told him so. Papa said I would learn in time, and I think perhaps he would have insisted upon it if Harry had lived. I was sorry I couldn't care for him as he wished; he thought I would after a while, but I never could, for I think that kind of love is far different from all others; don't you, Mr. Darrell?"

And Darrell, looking from the mountain-side where they were standing out into the deep blue s.p.a.ces where the stars, one by one, were gliding into sight, answered, reverently,--

"As far above all others 'as the heaven is high above the earth.'"

To him at that instant love--the love that should exist between two who, out of earth's millions, have chosen each the other--seemed something as yet remote; a sacred temple whose golden dome, like some mystic shrine, gleamed from afar, but into which he might some day enter; unaware that he already stood within its outer court.

_Chapter XV_

THE AWAKENING

As Darrell was returning home one evening, some ten days later, he heard Kate's rippling laughter and sounds of unusual merriment, and, on coming out into view of the house, beheld her engaged in executing a waltz on the veranda, with Duke as a partner. The latter, in his efforts to oblige his young mistress and at the same time preserve his own dignity, presented so ludicrous a spectacle that Darrell was unable to restrain his risibility. Hearing his peals of laughter and finding herself discovered, Kate rather hastily released her partner, and the collie, glad to be once more permitted the use of four feet, bounded down the steps to give Darrell his customary welcome, his mistress following slowly with somewhat heightened color.

Darrell at once apologized for his hilarity, pleading as an excuse Duke's comical appearance.

"We both must have made a ridiculous appearance," she replied, "but as Duke seems to have forgiven you, I suppose I must, and I think I had better explain such undignified conduct on my part. Auntie has just told me that she is going to give a grand reception for me two weeks from to-day, or, really, two of them, for there is to be an afternoon reception from three until six for her acquaintances, with a few young ladies to a.s.sist me in receiving; and then, in the evening, I am to have a reception of my own. We are going to send nearly two hundred invitations to Galena, besides our friends here. Papa is going to have the ball-room on the top floor fitted up for the occasion, and we are to have an orchestra from Galena, and altogether it will be quite 'the event of the season.' Now do you wonder," she added, archly, "that I seized hold of the first object that came in my way and started out for a waltz?"

"Not in the least," Darrell answered, his dark eyes full of merriment.

"I only wish I had been fortunate enough to have arrived a little earlier."

A mischievous response to his challenge sparkled in Kate's eyes for a moment, but she only replied, demurely,--

"You shall have your opportunity later."

"When?"

"Two weeks from to-night."

"Ah! am I to be honored with an invitation?"

"Most a.s.suredly you will be invited," Kate replied, quietly; then added, shyly, "and I myself invite you personally, here and now, and that is honoring you as no other guest of mine will be honored."

"Thank you," he replied, gently, with one of his tender smiles; "I accept the personal invitation for your sake."

She was standing on the topmost stair, slightly above him, one hand toying with a spray of blossoms depending from the vines above her head.

With a swift movement Darrell caught the little hand and was in the act of carrying it to his lips, when it suddenly slipped from his grasp and its owner as quickly turned and disappeared.

Darrell seated himself with a curious expression. It was not the first time Kate had eluded him thus within the last few days. He had missed of late certain pleasant little familiarities and light, tender caresses, to which he had become accustomed, and he began to wonder at this change in his child companion, as he regarded her.

"What has come over the child?" he soliloquized; "two weeks ago if I had given her a challenge for a waltz she would have taken me up, but lately she is as demure as a little nun! We will have to give it up, won't we, Duke, old boy?" he continued, addressing the collie, whose intelligent eyes were fastened on his face with a shrewd expression, as though, aware of the trend of Darrell's thoughts, he, too, considered his beloved young mistress rather incomprehensible.

The ensuing days were so crowded with preparations for the coming event and with such constant demands upon Kate's time that Darrell seldom saw her except at meals, and opportunities for anything like their accustomed pleasant interchange of confidence were few and far between.

On those rare occasions, however, when he succeeded in meeting her alone, Darrell could not but be impressed by the subtle and to him inexplicable change in her manner. She seemed in some way so remotely removed from the young girl who, but a few days before, in response to the violin's tale, had confided to him the loneliness of her own life. A shy, sweet, but impenetrable reserve seemed to have replaced the childlike familiarity. Her eyes still brightened with welcome at his approach, but their light was quickly veiled beneath drooping lids, and through the cadences of her low tones he caught at times the vibration of a new chord, to whose meaning his ear was as yet unattuned.

He did not know, nor did any other, that within that short time she had learned her own heart's secret. Child that she was, she had met Love face to face, and in that one swift, burning glance of recognition the womanhood within her had expanded as the bud expands, bursting its imprisoning calyx under the ardent glance of the sun. But Darrell, seeing only the effect and knowing nothing of the cause, was vaguely troubled.