But if Winsome wanted a new sensation she was disappointed, for Ralph was by no means angry.
"So that's where it went?" said Ralph, smiling gladly.
"Yes," said Winsome, blushing not so much with guilt as with the consciousness of the locality of the note-book at that moment, which she was not yet prepared to tell him. But she consoled herself with the thought that she would tell him one day.
Strangely however, Ralph did not seem to care much about the book, so Winsome changed the subject to one of greater interest.
"And what else did you think about me that first day?--tell me," said Winsome, shamelessly.
It was Ralph's opportunity.
"Why, you know very well, Winsome dear, that ever since the day I first saw you I have thought that there never was any one like you--"
"Yes?" said Winsome, with a rising inflection in her voice.
"I ever thought you the best and the kindest--"
"Yes?" said Winsome, a little breathlessly.
"The most helpful and the wisest--"
"Yes?" said Winsome.
"And the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life!"
"Then I do not care for anything else!" cried Winsome, clapping her hands. She had been resolving to learn Hebrew five minutes before.
"Nor do I, really," said Ralph, speaking out the inmost soul that is in every young man.
As Ralph Peden sat looking at Winsome the thought came sometimes to him--but not often--"This is Allan Welsh's daughter, the daughter of the woman whom my father once loved, who lies so still under the green sod of Crossthwaite beneath the lea of Skiddaw."
He looked at her eyes, deep blue like the depths of the Mediterranean Sea, and, like it, shot through with interior light.
"What are you thinking of?" asked Winsome, who had also meanwhile been looking at him.
"Of your eyes, dear!" said Ralph, telling half the truth--a good deal for a lover.
Winsome paused for further information, looking into the depths of his soul. Ralph felt as though his heart and judgment were being assaulted by storming parties. He looked into these wells of blue and saw the love quivering in them as the broken light quivers, deflected on its way through clear water to a sea bottom of golden sand.
"You want to hear me tell you something wiser," said Ralph, who did not know everything; "you are bored with my foolish talk."
And he would have spoken of the hopes of his future.
"No, no; tell me--tell me what you see in my eyes," said Winsome, a little impatiently.
"Well then, first," said truthful Ralph, who certainly did not flinch from the task, "I see the fairest thing God made for man to see. All the beauty of the world, losing its way, stumbled, and was drowned in the eyes of my love. They have robbed the sunshine, and stolen the morning dew. The sparkle of the light on the water, the gladness of a child when it laughs because it lives, the sunshine which makes the butterflies dance and the world so beautiful--all these I see in your eyes."