Allan kept his love alive on glimpses of sunny hair, and sad little
smiles, and fragments of talk, that, light and conventional as they
might seem to chance listeners, were to him clothed with lovely hidden
meanings. Sometimes when the eyes met by chance the small warm hands
plucked nervously at the flowers she carried, or there was a restless
consciousness in step and glance, or a scarcely perceptible quiver of
the curved lip, or a piteous droop of the regal little head. Very
slight things were these, yet out of them Memory and Imagination made
a sumptuous feast, at which Love, like a starveling prince in exile,
sat down with never sated appetite.
CHAPTER XIV.
MUDDY LITTLE YORK.
If the course of true love could be persuaded to forsake its ancient
uncomfortable method in favour of a single harrassed lover, surely the
trials of Allan Dunlop might soften its harsh turbulence, and move it
to a gentler flow. Rose was devoted to her father, and the tie between
them, made stronger by her mother's death, was not of a nature to be
affected by the sighing breath of a mere lover. Then she was as
lovable as she was lovely, and there was nothing in the cordial liking
of a host of friends to encourage the growth of any morbid desire for
the affection of a poor and insignificant outsider.
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