hidden them on purpose, to enjoy their refinding. Moorlands without old Alec would hive been a wheel without a hub.
As a distinct feature of all these preparations—and this was the best part of the programme—Harry was to meet Kate at the outer gate supported by half a dozen of his young friends and hers—Dr. Teackle, Mark Gilbert, Langdon Willits, and one or two others—while Mrs. Rutter, Mrs. Cheston, Mrs. Richard Horn, and a bevy of younger women and girls were to welcome her with open arms the moment her dainty feet cleared the coach's step. This was the way princesses of the blood had been welcomed from time immemorial to palaces and castles high, and this was the way their beloved Kate was to make entry into the home of her lord.
Soon the flash of the coach lamps was seen outside the far gate. Then there came the wind of a horn—a rollicking, rolling, gladsome sound, and in the wink of an eyelid every one was out on the portico straining their eyes, listening eagerly. A joyous shout now went up from the negroes lining the fences; from the groups about the steps and along the driveway.
“Here she comes!”
The leaders with a swing pranced into view as they cleared the gate posts. There came a moment's halt at the end of the driveway; a postilion vaulted down, threw wide the coach door and a young man sprang in. It was Harry! … Snap!! Crack!! Toot—toot!!—and they were off again, heading straight for the waiting group. Another prolonged, winding note—louder—nearer—one of triumph this time!—a galloping, circling dash toward the porch crowded with guests—the reining in of panting leaders—the sudden gathering up of the wheel horses, back on their haunches—the coach door flung wide and out stepped Kate—Harry's hand in hers, her old mammy behind, her father last of all.
“Oh, such a lovely drive! and it was so kind of you, dear colonel, to send for me! Oh, it was splendid! And Matthew galloped most all the way.” She had come as a royal princess, but she was still our Kate. “And you are all out here to meet me!” Here she kissed Harry's mother—“and you too, Uncle George—and Sue—Oh, how fine you all look!”—and with a curtsy and a joyous laugh and a hand-clasp here and there, she bent her head and stepped into the wide hall under the blaze of the clustered candles.
It was then that they caught their breaths, for no such vision of beauty had ever before stood in the wide hall of Moorlands, her eyes shining like two stars above the rosy hue of her cheek; her skin like a shell, her throat and neck a lily in color and curves. And her poise; her gladsomeness; her joy at being alive and at finding everybody else alive; the way she moved and laughed and bent her pretty head; the ripples of gay laughter and the low-pitched tone of the warm greetings that fell from her lips!
No wonder Harry was bursting with pride; no wonder Langdon Willits heaved a deep sigh when he caught the glance that Kate flashed at Harry and went out on the porch to get a breath of fresh air; no wonder St. George's heart throbbed as he watched them both and thought how near all this happiness had come to being wrecked; no wonder the servants tumbled over each other in their eagerness to get a view of her face and gown, and no wonder, too, that the proud, old colonel who ruled his house with a rod of iron, determined for the first time in his life to lay down the sceptre and give Kate and Harry full sway to do whatever popped into their two silly heads.
And our young Lochinvar was fully her match in bearing, dress, and manners—every inch a prince and every inch a Rutter—and with such grace of movement as he stepped beside her, that even punctilious, outspoken old Mrs. Cheston—who had forgiven him his escapade, and who was always laughing at what she called the pump-handle shakes of some of the underdone aristocrats about her, had to whisper to the nearest guest—“Watch Harry, my dear, if you would see how a thoroughbred manages his legs and arms when he wishes to do honor to a woman. Admirable!—charming! No young man of my time ever did better.” And Mrs. Cheston knew, for she had hobnobbed with kings and queens, her husband having represented his government at the Court of St. James—which fact, however, never prevented her from calling a spade a spade; nor was she ever very particular as to what the spade unearthed.
Yes—a very gallant and handsome young man was our prince as he handed Kate up the stairs on her way to the dressing-room, and looked it in his pearl-gray coat with buttons of silver, fluffy white silk scarf, high dog-eared collar, ivory-white waistcoat, and tight-fitting trousers of nankeen yellow, held close to the pumps with invisible straps. And a very gallant and handsome young fellow he felt himself to be on this night of his triumph, and so thought Kate—in fact she had fallen in love with him over again—and so too did every one of the young girls who crowded about them, as well as the dominating, erect aristocrat of a father, and the anxious gentle mother, who worshipped the ground on which he walked.
Kate had noted every expression that crossed his face, absorbing him in one comprehensive glance as he stood in the full blaze of the candles, her gaze lingering on his mouth and laughing eyes and the soft sheen of his brown hair, its curved-in ends brushing the high velvet collar of his coat—and so on down his shapely body to his shapely feet. Never had she seen him so adorable—and he was all her own, and for life!
As for our dear St. George Temple, who had never taken his eyes off them, he thought they were the goodliest pair the stars ever shone upon, and this his happiest night. There would be no more stumbling after this. Kate had the bridle well in hand now; all she needed was a clear road, and that was ahead of both horse and rider.
“Makes your blood jump in your veins, just to look at them, doesn't it, Talbot?” cried St. George to Harry's father when Kate disappeared—laying his hand as he spoke on the shoulder of the man with whom he had grown up from a boy. “Is there anything so good as the love of a good woman?—the wise old prophet places her beyond the price of rubies.”
“Only one thing, St. George—the love of a good man—one like yourself, you dear old fellow. And why the devil you haven't found that out years ago is more than I can understand. Here you are my age, and you might have had a Kate and Harry of your own by this time, and yet you live a stupid old—”
“No, I won't hear you talk so, colonel!” cried a bride of a year. “Uncle George is never stupid, and he couldn't be old. What would all these young girls do—what would I have done” (another love affair with St. George as healer and mender!)—“what would anybody have done without him? Come, Miss Lavinia—do you hear the colonel abusing Uncle George because he isn't married? Speak up for him—it's wicked of you, colonel, to talk so.”
Miss Lavinia Clendenning, who was one of St. George's very own, in spite of her forty-odd years, threw back her head until the feathers in her slightly gray hair shook defiantly:
“No—I won't say a word for him, Sue. I've given him up forever. He's a disgrace to everybody who knows him.”
“Oh, you renegade!” exclaimed St. George in mock alarm.
“Yes—a positive disgrace! He'll never marry anybody, Sue, until he marries me. I've begged him on my knees until I'm tired, to name the day, and he won't! Just like all you shiftless Marylanders, sir—never know when to make up your minds.”
“But you threw me over, Lavinia, and broke my heart,” laughed Temple with a low bow, his palms flattened against his waistcoat in assumed humility.
“When?”
“Oh, twenty years ago.”
“Oh, my goodness gracious! Of course I threw you over then;—you were just a baby in arms and I was old enough to be your mother—but now it's different. I'm dying to get married and nobody wants me. If you were a Virginian instead of a doubting Marylander, you would have asked me a hundred times and kept on asking until I gave in. Now it's too late. I always intended to give in, but you were so stupid you couldn't
