"Gwyneth dear, you do look so charming! My dear," she continued, taking the elder girl's hand, "I must tell you. I have such news. I am so happy. I dare not inform any but you. Travers Courtenay," she added—Gwyneth's clear brow darkened; all the world seemed conspiring to sound her ungracious lover's name in her ear—"has proposed virtually," continued Eva. "I think his way so much nicer than fine sentences lovers string together in novels. He's given me a beautiful silver case with—what do you think?—my own likeness and his side by side. He sent a message by my maid that he had taken the liberty of putting a keepsake on my shelf, and there I found it."
As a matter of fact, Malduke had given the message to the servant-girl, Ann, with whom he had ingratiated himself. Travers had, indeed, in an absent mood, plucked some flowers, as he strolled in the Heatherside garden, and, not knowing why, told Ann to give them to her mistress, with his compliments. Meeting the young man the next morning, Eva, in her simple way, had said, with the silver case in her mind, that she felt she ought not to keep his beautiful gift. He, thinking of the bouquet, begged her to accept his present as a souvenir of their pleasant drive. "I hope we may have a longer one together some day." The girl pondered the passing words. Her youthful imagination associated varied sentiments with the beautiful present so strangely conferred. She recalled the words with which Oliver Wendell Holmes' "Autocrat" proposed to the "little schoolmistress." "Shall we take the long walk together?" This other "longer drive," what could it mean but life's pleasant wandering through Elysian Fields in company?
As to Travers, the girl's artless joy touched him.
