The sun sparkled upon the River, the waves murmured softly at their feet, beneath a gentle breeze laden with the mysterious breath of awakening spring; and these two sat there bantering one another, like children, gleefully. Mary no longer recognized the man who sat before her. Every line had passed from his face; and but for his Olympic beard, he might have seemed a great jolly boy just come home for his holidays. She could not take her eyes off his face. She was scrutinizing it, wondering where could be lurking those ambuscades of passion that she thought she had detected more than once. And the fire-darting flashes, where were they hidden, beneath those ingenuous glances, so tender, so soft, so caressing? CHAPTER LIV. To four people at Elmington that was a happy week. I suspect it was rather a dull one to every one else. The friendship of Alice and Mary had renewed its youth. Each had told the other everything. That is, they did what they could; for there was always no end left to tell. Not a word was wasted, not a moment spent on any subject but one. Never had two young men been more talked about. “We are both so well suited,” said Alice. “To a matter-of-fact body like me, Mr. Frobisher—” “Oh, Alice, he is just too charming, with his quaint, humorous ways; and then _so_ devoted!” “Do you _think_ so?” “Why, the poor man is _just dying_ with love, and—” “But just think of your affair, Mary! _When_ are you going to let him tell you who he is? Oh, I’ll tell you. Suppose we let them both come up to Richmond at the same time to interview our respective and respected papas. Oh, won’t it be _dreadful_!” And with that they fell on each other’s necks and giggled. “Mr. Frobisher says he will be hanged if he speaks to my father. He says he thinks it a liberty to ask any man for his daughter; so he intends to speak to mother. Bashful? O-o-o-oh!” Charley and the Don, too, had their confabulations, but how was any one to find out what they said? But a merrier, jollier soul than the latter it would have been hard to find. (I believe my grandfather would have been somewhat scandalized at the way he profaned the Guarnerius with his jigs, had not Charley made casual mention of the _gigas_ of Corelli and the old Italian school; which seemed to lend a certain air of classicity to their homely Virginia descendants.) These four, then, were happy. But upon the horizon of Mary’s dreams there hung a speck of cloud. It was no bigger than a man’s hand, but its jagged edges, splotching the rosy east, marred the perfection of the dawn. To say what that cloud was, brings up a subject upon which I touch with extreme reluctance.