“Yes,” said he, with a little intake of the breath; “yes, I cared once.”

“And—­she cared?” asked Miss Stapylton.

She happened, even now, not to be looking at him.

“She!” Rudolph Musgrave cried, in real surprise.  “Why, God bless my soul, of course she didn’t!  She didn’t know anything about it.”

“You never told her, Olaf?”—­and this was reproachful.  Then Patricia said:  “Well! and did she go down in the cellar and get the wood-ax or was she satisfied just to throw the bric-a-brac at you?”

And Colonel Musgrave laughed aloud.

“Ah!” said he; “it would have been a brave jest if I had told her, wouldn’t it?  She was young, you see, and wealthy, and—­ah, well, I won’t deceive you by exaggerating her personal attractions!  I will serve up to you no praises of her sauced with lies.  And I scorn to fall back on the stock-in-trade of the poets,—­all their silly metaphors and similes and suchlike nonsense.  I won’t tell you that her complexion reminded me of roses swimming in milk, for it did nothing of the sort.  Nor am I going to insist that her eyes had a fire like that of stars, or proclaim that Cupid was in the habit of lighting his torch from them.  I don’t think he was.  I would like to have caught the brat taking any such liberties with those innocent, humorous, unfathomable eyes of hers!  And they didn’t remind me of violets, either,” he pursued, belligerently, “nor did her mouth look to me in the least like a rosebud, nor did I have the slightest difficulty in distinguishing between her hands and lilies.  I consider these hyperbolical figures of speech to be idiotic.  Ah, no!” cried Colonel Musgrave, warming to his subject—­and regarding it, too, very intently; “ah, no, a face that could be patched together at the nearest florist’s would not haunt a man’s dreams o’nights, as hers does!  I haven’t any need for praises sauced with lies!  I spurn hyperbole.  I scorn exaggeration.  I merely state calmly and judicially that she was God’s masterpiece,—­the most beautiful and adorable and indescribable creature that He ever made.”

She smiled at this.  “You should have told her, Olaf,” said Miss Stapylton.  “You should have told her that you cared.”

He gave a gesture of dissent.  “She had everything,” he pointed out, “everything the world could afford her.  And, doubtless, she would have been very glad to give it all up for me, wouldn’t she?—­for me, who haven’t youth or wealth or fame or anything?  Ah, I dare say she would have been delighted to give up the world she knew and loved,—­the world that loved her,—­for the privilege of helping me digest old county records!”

And Rudolph Musgrave laughed again, though not mirthfully.

But the girl was staring at him, with a vague trouble in her eyes.  “You should have told her, Olaf,” she repeated.

And at this point he noted that the arbutus-flush in her cheeks began to widen slowly, until, at last, it had burned back to the little pink ears, and had merged into the coppery glory of her hair, and had made her, if such a thing were possible—­which a minute ago it manifestly was not,—­more beautiful and adorable and indescribable than ever before.