“What a fierce crimson!” Frederic remarked upon the widely-opened rose Miss Tazewell received in place of the delicate bud.  “That must be the ‘hue angry, yet brave,’ which, Mr. George Herbert asserts, ‘bids the rash gazer wipe his eye.’”

“More poetical nonsense!” said Rosa, deliberately tearing the bold “geant” to pieces down to the bare stem, “unless he meant to be comic, and intimate that the gazer was so rash as to come too near the bush, and ran a thorn into the pupil.”

No one answered, except by the indulgent smile that usually greeted her sallies, howeve? absurd, among those accustomed to the spoiled child’s vagaries.

Mabel was making some leisurely additions to her bouquet in the shape of ribbon grass and pendent ivy sprays, coaxing these with persuasive touches to trail over the edge and entwine the pedestal of the salver on which her bowl was elevated; her head set slightly on one side, her lips apart in a smile of enjoyment in her work and in herself.  It was a picture the lover studied fondly—­one that hung forever thereafter in his gallery of mental portraits.  Beyond a pair of fine gray eyes, the pliant grace of her figure and the buoyant carriage of youth, health, and a glad heart, Mabel’s pretensions to beauty were comparatively few, said the world.  Frederic Chilton had, nevertheless, fallen in love with her at sight, and considered her, now, the handsomest woman of his acquaintance.  Her dress was a simple lawn—­a sheer white fabric, with bunches of purple grass bound up with yellow wheat, scattered over it; her hair was lustrous and abundant, and her face, besides being happy, was frank and intelligent, with wonderful mobility of expression.  In temperament and sentiment; in capacity for, and in demonstration of affection, she suited Frederic to the finest fibre of his mind and heart.  He, for one, did not carp at Aunt Rachel’s declaration that they were intended to spend time and eternity together.

Still, Mabel Aylett was not a belle, and Rosa Tazewell was.  Callow collegians and enterprising young merchants from the city; sunbrowned owners of spreading acres and hosts of laborers; students and practitioners of law and medicine, and an occasional theologue, had broken their hearts for perhaps a month at a time, for love of her, since she was a school-girl in short dresses.  Yet there had been a date very far back in the acquaintanceship of each of these with the charmer, when he had marvelled at the infatuation which had blinded her previous adorers.  She was “a neat little thing,” with her round waist, her tiny hands and feet and roguish eye—­but there was nothing else remarkable about her features, and in coloring, the picture was too dark for his taste.  Why, she might be mistaken for a creole!  And each critic held fast to his expressed opinion until the roguish eyes met his directly and with meaning, and he found himself diving into the bright, shimmering wells, and drowning—­still ecstatically—­before he reached the bottom whence streamed the light of passionate feeling, striking upward through the surface.  What her glances did not effect was done by her dazzling smile and musical voice.