"Miss Grey, allow me to present to you my friend, Captain Clendenon," he said, in his graceful, off-hand way.
"Perfectly beautiful, faultily faultless!" murmured the captain to himself, as he bowed over the delicate hand she shyly offered.
With quiet grace she accepted the chair he placed for her, and, taking up a great lapful of flowers, answered a question Mr. Conway asked:
"Yes, your aunt's headache is better, and she will be down this evening. These flowers are for the drawing-room. You know how she loves to see a profusion of flowers about the house through the whole season."
"'Ah! one rose-- One rose, but one, by those fair fingers culled, Were worth a hundred kisses pressed on lips Less exquisite than thine.'"
It was like Bruce Conway's graceful impudence to quote those lines, smiling up into the Hebe-like face of the girl. He was the spoiled darling of fortune, the handsome idol of the fair sex, as perfect in his dark, manly beauty as she in her opposite angelic type. Yet she hesitated, trifling saucily with her flowers, and half denying the rose he craved.
"I am chary of giving away roses obtained at the price of so many thorns," said she, holding up a taper finger with a dark-red scratch marking a zigzag course over its whiteness. "Gather your roses yourself, sir."
"If I might gather those that blossom on your cheeks, I might take the risk of the thorns," he answered, daringly.
The roses referred to deepened to vivid crimson, the golden lights in the pansy-colored eyes sent a fiery gleam along the black-fringed lashes, as she answered, indignantly:
"I did, indeed, but you know my idle habit of jesting. Pardon me."
"Willingly, so that the offense is not repeated," she answered, more gently, as she continued at her task, grouping the flowers into tasteful bouquets, and ending by a fragrant gift to each gentleman of a tiny posy for his button-hole, that restored sociability and brought back the ease that had marked the first of the interview.
"And to-morrow, Bruce," said the captain, presently, "I shall see the last of you for years, if not forever. What possesses you to go wandering off to Europe in this mad fashion?"
A smothered cry of astonishment caused him to look at Grace Grey. She was looking straight at Bruce Conway, the rose-bloom dying away from her cheeks, and the beautiful eyes, eager, questioning, startled, with a woman's love looking out of them, and a woman's love revealed, alas! too plainly, in that mute gaze.