“It is very beautiful weather,” she remarked—­there was no tremor about her fingers, at all events, as she made secure the brooch that fastened the simple morning-dress at the neck, “only it seems a pity to throw away such beautiful sunshine on withered gardens and bare trees.  We have some fine chrysanthemums, though; but I confess I don’t like chrysanthemums myself.  They come at a wrong time.  They look unnatural.  They only remind one of what is gone.  If we are to have winter, we ought to have it out and out.  The chrysanthemums always seem to me as if they were making a pretence—­trying to make you believe that there was still some life left in the dead garden.”

It was very pretty talk, all this about chrysanthemums, uttered in the low-toned, and gentle, and musical voice; but somehow there was a burning impatience in his heart, and a bitter sense of hopelessness, and he felt as though he would cry out in his despair.  How could he sit there and listen to talk about chrysanthemums?  His hands were tightly clasped together; his heart was throbbing quickly; there was a humming in his ears, as though something there refused to hear about chrysanthemums.

“I—­I saw you at the theatre last night,” said he.

Perhaps it was the abruptness of the remark that caused the quick blush.  She lowered her eyes.  But all the same she said, with perfect self-possession,—­

“Did you like the piece?”

And he, too:  was he not determined to play the part of an ordinary visitor?

“I am not much of a judge,” said he, lightly.  “The drawing-room scene is very pretty.  It is very like a drawing-room.  I suppose those are real curtains, and real pictures?”

“Oh yes, it is all real furniture,” said she.

Thereafter, for a second, blank silence.  Neither dared to touch that deeper stage question that lay next their hearts.  But when Keith Macleod, in many a word of timid suggestion, and in the jesting letter he sent her from Castle Dare, had ventured upon that dangerous ground, it was not to talk about the real furniture of a stage drawing-room.  However, was not this an ordinary morning call?  His manner—­his speech—­everything said so but the tightly-clasped hands, and perhaps too a certain intensity of look in the eyes, which seemed anxious and constrained.

“Papa, at least, is proud of our chrysanthemums,” said Miss White, quickly getting away from the stage question.  “He is in the garden now.  Will you go out and see him?  I am sorry Carry has gone to school.”

She rose.  He rose also, and he was about to lift his hat from the table, when he suddenly turned to her.

“A drowning man will cry out; how can you prevent his crying out?”

She was startled by the change in the sound of his voice, and still more by the almost haggard look of pain and entreaty in his eyes.  He seized her hand; she would have withdrawn it, but she could not.