CHAPTER III. When she had set foot in the garden and he came back to her, he was honestly surprised. He had thought her a precocious child of thirteen. Here was a tall girl up to his shoulder, with a figure that was rounding into the gracious curves of womanhood--eighteen at the very least, he decided, in spite of her childish manner and the simple blue gingham dress whose ruffled skirt was still short enough to betray half an inch of _écru_ stocking above the top of her trim little buttoned boots. She looked back a little apprehensively at the step-ladder at the window. “You may move the ladder until I get my flowers,” she said. “I am afraid that if cook came up to see after me she would find me out.” He was rather amused at her pretty air of command as contrasted with her frightened, appealing tones of a little while ago. He obeyed her command, then sat down carelessly on a rustic seat, and watched her as she flitted about among his flowers. First she adorned herself, after the manner of a vain woman, with a bunch of rosebuds in the soft little fichu of white lace at her neck, and another at the belt of her white apron. Then she roved about from flower to flower, daintily and capriciously as a butterfly, but culling sweets as industriously as a bee, her white apron soon being filled with the scented beauties. Absorbed in her delightful occupation, time flew unheeded. She seemed to forget her neighbor, and the grim, gray house, whose shadow reached out long and dark and forbidding across the garden and compassed her in its gloom like a fateful prophecy. He watched the child, as he called her to himself, idly, and yet with that something of interest that even the cold and world-hardened cannot deny to youth and happiness. Something of pity mingled with his careless thoughts. She seemed so young, and gay, and light-hearted, and he knew that it could not last, that the years would overtake her, and teach her that “Youth’s life is but a brief one, Foam from an ebbing sea.” She passed out of sight under the shady arches of the trees, and for a little while Oran Delaney forgot her. He smoked a cigar with his hat drawn over his eyes, and his moody brows drawn together. The sudden silvery tinkle of a bell from the house aroused him to a remembrance of luncheon and his guest. He glanced around him, and caught the glimmer of a blue dress among the trees. Following it, he found her hovering over a bed of exquisite pansies, murmuring softly to herself little exclamations of girlish pleasure and delight. “I hope you will forgive me for rousing you to the prosaic realities of life,” he said, “but my luncheon is ready, and I came to ask you to share it.” “Luncheon!” She glanced up with a startled face. “Is it so late as that?” “‘How softly falls the foot of Time, that only treads on flowers!’” he quoted. “Yes, it is two o’clock”--glancing at his watch--“has not your physical entity already reminded you of that fact?”