Rose sauntered after, by-and-by, as if unwillingly drawn by a loadstone, and found the heavens wrapped in a rosy flame of Northern Lights. He looked as though he belonged to them, so pale and elf-like was his face then, like one bewitched. "Papa's fireworks fade before mine," I said. "Now we can live in the woods, as Lu has been wishing; for a dry southerly wind follows this, with a blue smoke filming all the distant fields. Won't it be delicious?" "Or rain," he replied; "I think it will rain to-morrow,--warm, full rains"; and he seemed as if such a chance would dissolve him entirely. As for me, those shifting, silent sheets of splendor abstracted all that was alien, and left me in my normal state. "There they come!" I said, as Lu and Mr. Dudley, and some others who had entered in my absence,--gnats dancing in the beam,--stepped down toward us. "How charming for us all to sit out here!" "How annoying, you mean," he replied, simply for contradiction. "It hasn't been warm enough before," I added. "And Louise may take cold now," he said, as if wishing to exhibit his care for her. "Whom is she speaking with? Blarsaye? And who comes after?" "Parti. A delightful person,--been abroad, too. You and he can have a crack about Louvres and Vaticans now, and leave Lu and Mr. Dudley to me." Rose suddenly inspected me and then Parti, as if he preferred the crack to be with cudgels; but in a second the little blaze vanished, and he only stripped a weigelia branch of every blossom. I wonder what made Lu behave so that night; she scarcely spoke to Rose, appeared entirely unconcerned while he hovered round her like an officious sprite, was all grace to the others and sweetness to Mr. Dudley. And Rose, oblivious of snubs, paraded his devotion, seemed determined to show his love for Lu,--as if any one cared a straw,--and took the pains to be positively rude to me. He was possessed of an odd restlessness; a little defiance bristled his movements, an air of contrariness; and whenever he became quiet, he seemed again like one enchanted and folded up in a dream, to break whose spell he was about to abandon efforts. He told me life had destroyed my enchantment; I wonder what will destroy his. Lu refused to sit in the garden-chair he offered,--just suffered the wreath of pink bells he gave her to hang in her hand, and by-and-by fall,--and when the north grew ruddier and swept the zenith with lances of light, and when it faded, and a dim cloud hazed all the stars, preserved the same equanimity, kept on the _evil_ tenor of her way, and bade every one an impartial farewell at separating. She is preciously well-bred.