"You might have known! you might have guessed!" she cried, with passion.
"But, you walk an even way; you choose nor high nor low; you look deep
into your mind, but your heart you keep cool and vacant. Oh, a very
temperate land! I think that others less wise than you may also be less
blind. Never speak to me of this day! Let it die as these blooms are dying
in this hot sunshine! Now let us walk to the coach and waken my father. I
have gathered flowers enough."

Side by side, but without speaking, they moved from shadow to sunlight,
and from sunlight to shadow, down the road to the great pine-tree. The
white and purple flowers lay in her hand and along her bended arm; from
the folds of her dress, of some rich and silken stuff, chameleon-like in
its changing colors, breathed the subtle fragrance of the perfume then
most in fashion; over the thin lawn that half revealed, half concealed
neck and bosom was drawn a long and glossy curl, carefully let to escape
from the waved and banded hair beneath the gypsy hat. Exquisite from head
to foot, the figure had no place in the unpruned, untrained, savage, and
primeval beauty of those woods. Smooth sward, with jets of water and
carven nymphs embowered in clipped box or yew, should have been its
setting, and not this wild and tangled growth, this license of bird and
beast and growing things. And yet the incongruous riot, the contrast of
profuse, untended beauty, enhanced the value of the picture, gave it
piquancy and a completer charm.

When they were within a few feet of the coach and horses and negroes, all
drowsing in the sunny road, Haward made as if to speak, but she stopped
him with her lifted hand. "Spare me," she begged. "It is bad enough as it
is, but words would make it worse. If ever a day might come--I do not
think that I am unlovely; I even rate myself so highly as to think that I