There was something so frank and persuasive about the elegant stranger, that Joris could not refuse the courtesy she asked for herself and her nephew.  And, having yielded, he yielded with entire truth and confidence.  He gave his hand to his visitors, and made them heartily welcome to join in his household rejoicing.  True, Mrs. Gordon’s persuasive words were ably seconded by causes which she had probably calculated.  The elder and Madam Semple were present, and it would have been impossible for Joris to treat their friends rudely.  Bram was also another conciliating element, for Captain Hyde was on pleasant speaking terms with him; and, as yet, even Neil’s relations were at least those of presumed friendship.  Also, the Van Gaasbeeks and others present were well inclined to make the acquaintance of a woman so agreeable, and an officer so exceptionally handsome and genteel.  Besides which, Joris was himself in a happy and genial mood; he had opened his house and his heart to his friends; and he did not feel at that hour as if he could doubt any human being, or close his door against even the stranger and the alien who wished to rejoice with him.

Elder Semple was greatly pleased at his friend’s complaisance.  He gave Joris full credit for his victory over his national prejudices, and he did his very best to make the concession a pleasant event.  In this effort, he was greatly assisted by Mrs. Gordon; she set herself to charm Van Heemskirk, as she had set herself to charm Madam Van Heemskirk on her previous visit; and she succeeded so well, that, when “Sir Roger de Coverley” was called, Joris rose, offered her his hand, and, to the delight of every one present, led the dance with her.

It was a little triumph for the elder; and he sat smiling, and twirling his fingers, and thoroughly enjoying the event.  Indeed, he was so interested in listening to the clever way in which “the bonnie woman flattered Van Heemskirk,” that he was quite oblivious of the gathering wrath in his son’s face, and the watchful gloom in Bram’s eyes, as the two men stood together, jealously observant of Captain Hyde’s attentions to Katherine.  Without any words spoken on the subject, there was an understood compact between them to guard the girl from any private conversation with him; and yet two men with hearts full of suspicion and jealousy were not a match for one man with a heart full of love.  In a moment, in the interchange of their hands in a dance, Katherine clasped tightly a little note, and unobserved hid it behind the rose at her breast.

But nothing is a wonder in love, or else it would have been amazing that Joanna did not notice the rose absent from her sister’s dress after Captain Hyde’s departure; nor yet that Katherine, ere she went to rest that night, kissed fervently a tiny bit of paper which she hid within the silver clasps of her Kirk Bible.  The loving girl thought it no wrong to put it there; she even hoped that some kind of blessing or sanction might come through such sacred keeping; and she went to sleep whispering to herself,—­“Happy I am.  Me he loves; me he loves; me only he loves; me forever he loves!”