"We have very cold weather in Virginia sometimes," returned Mabel,
still scanning the sentinel gate-posts, and the pyramidal
arbor-vitae trees flanking them.
Her gaze was a mournful farewell, but she neglected none of the
amenities of hospitality. She was used to talking commonplaces.
"We feel it all the more, too, on account of the mildness of the
greater part of the winter," she subjoined.
"Allow me!" said the other, looping back the curtain she had until
now held in her hand. "Whereas our systems are braced by a more
uniform temperature to endure the severity of our frosts, and high,
keen blasts."
"I suppose so," assented Mabel, mechanically, and unconscious as
himself that meaning glances were stolen at them from the fireside
circle, while the hum and conversation was continuous and louder,
for the good-natured intent on the speakers' part to afford the
supposed lovers the chance of carrying on their dialogue unheard.
"But our houses are very comfortable--often very beautiful," Mr.
Dorrance persevered, keeping to the scent of his game, as a trained
pointer scours a stubble-field, narrowing his beat at every
circuit; "and the hearts of those who live in them are warm and
constant. It is not always true that "'The cold in clime are cold in blood;
Their love can scarce deserve the name.
"I have thought sometimes that that feeling is strongest and most
enduring, the demonstration of which is guarded and infrequent, as
the deepest portion of the channel is the most quiet."
If his philosophical and scientific talk were heavy and solid, his
poetry and metaphors were ponderous and labored. Yet Mabel listened
to him now, neither facing nor avoiding him, looking down at her
hands, laid, one above the other, upon the window-sill, the image of
maidenly and courteous attention.
Why should she affect diffidence, or seek to escape what she had
foreseen for weeks, and made no effort to ward off? She had come to
the conclusion in October that Herbert Dorrance would, when the
forms he considered indispensable to regular courtship had been gone
through with, ask her to marry him, and coolly taken her resolution
to accept him. This morning, on the reception of a handsome
Christmas gift from him, and discovering in his actions something
more pointed than his customary punctilious devoirs, and in his
didacticism the outermost of the closing circle of pursuit she had
furthermore concluded that his happy thought was to celebrate the
festal season by his betrothment. She was quite ready for the
declaration, which, she anticipated, would be pompous and formal.
She would have excused him from "doing" the poetical part of it;
but, since it was on the programme, it was not her province to
interfere.