She rested her chin on her hands and was quite unaware that, in her thin blue dress, with frills of yellow lace falling away from the arms above the elbows, and with her neck rising from the transparent stuff like an iris on its slender stem, she made anything of a picture, until she became aware that some one was standing quite still on a lower terrace and looking at her with so fixed an expression that she turned until her eyes met his. Most girls would have started with surprise, but to Carolina it was no surprise at all to find the stranger of the Metropolitan Opera and the stranger who had borrowed her brother’s dog-cart, a part of the enchanted garden, and to feel in her own heart that he was no stranger to her, nor ever had been, nor ever could be.
They looked at each other for a few moments, the man and the woman, and the sound of the brook came faintly to their ears. But the scent of the garden was all about them and there was no need of speech.
Slowly Carolina smiled, and he reached up his hand to hers and took it and said:
"And I know you," he said, "for I have felt ever since that first night that you would come."
Then he drew back strangely and looked around at the garden and frowned, as if it had been to blame for the words he had spoken when he had not meant to speak. But, although Carolina saw the look and the frown, she only smiled and breathed a great sigh of content and looked at the garden happily.
"Did you know that you and I are related?" And he saw with a great lift of the heart that she turned pale before answering, so to spare her he went on, hurriedly:
"I have been talking to Mrs. Winchester, and we find that the La Granges and Lees are kin. You and I are about twelfth cousins, according to Miss Sallie Yancey."
"So we are of the same blood," said Carolina, gently. Then she added: "I am glad."
"And so am I,--more glad than I can say, for it will give me the opportunity to be of service to you--in a way I could not--perhaps--if we were not kin."
Carolina looked at him inquiringly, but he had turned his head away, and again a frown wrinkled his smooth, brown forehead. Carolina looked at him eagerly. He was a man to fill any woman’s eye,--tall, lean, lithe, and commanding, with long brown fingers which were closed nervously upon the brim of his soft black hat. His nose was straight, his lips sensitive yet strong, and his eyes had a way of making most women sigh without ever knowing why. Moultrie La Grange was said to have "a way with him" which men never understood, but which women knew, and knew to their sorrow, for everywhere it was whispered that "Moultrie would never marry, since--" and here the whispers became nods and half-uttered words and mysterious signs which South Carolinians understood, but which mystified Mrs. Winchester, and Carolina did not happen to hear the subject discussed.