“I have.  The first time I came to your house to dinner you wore blue, the softest, richest blue imaginable, and you sat where the shaded light made a picture of you I shall never forget.  I’ve never seen that peculiar blue since without thinking of you.  It’s one of the shades of that larkspur, isn’t it?”

“I made fun of you, afterward, for telling Rosy you noticed the colours we wore,” confessed Roberta, with a mischievous glance.

“You did—­you rascal!  Look up at me a minute—­please.  The blue of your eyes, with those black lashes, is another larkspur shade, in this light.  I’ve called it sea-blue.  Rob—­dearest—­the nights I’ve dreamed about those eyes of yours!”

He got no further chance to observe them just then, as he might have expected, for Roberta immediately turned their light on the garden and away from his worshipful regard.  She engaged the old gardener in conversation, and made his dull gaze brighten with her praise.  Meanwhile Richard went off to the house, and presently returning, drew his party into a group and put a question, striving to maintain an appearance of indifference.

“It occurred to me you might care to look into the house itself.  It’s rather interesting inside, I believe.  There seems to be a caretaker there, and she says we may come in.  She’ll meet us at the front.  Shall we take a minute to do it?”

“I should like it very much,” agreed Roberta promptly.  “I’ve heard mother speak of the fine old hall with its staircase—­a different type from ours, and very interesting.”

“There certainly is a remarkable attraction to me in this place,” said Matthew Kendrick, walking beside Roberta with hands clasped behind his back and head well up.  “It has a homelike look, in spite of its deserted state, which appeals to me.  I wonder that the remnant of the family does not care to retain it.”

“I hear the remnant is all but gone,” his grandson informed him, with sober lips but dancing eyes.  He was delighted with his grandfather for his assistance in playing the part of the casual observer.  He led the way up the steps of the white-pillared portico, and wheeled to see the others ascending.  He watched Roberta as she preceded him over the threshold of the opened door.

“Shall I see you coming in that door, you beautiful thing, years and years from now?” he asked her in his heart, and smiled happily to himself.

And now, indeed, old Matthew Kendrick played his part nobly and with skill.  When the party had admired the distinction of the hall, and the stately sweep of its staircase, he led Ruth into a room on the left at the same moment that Richard summoned Roberta to look at something he had described in the room on the right.  A question drew the caretaker after Mr. Kendrick, senior, and the younger man had the moment he was playing for.

“This fireplace, Robin—­isn’t it the very counter-part of the one in your own living-room?” He asked it with his hand on the chimney-piece, and his glowing eyes studying hers.