Clem came soft-footedly with a branching candelabra, which he placed on the round-topped old table by which she had been sitting. She moved a step to where the soft lights glowed up into her face, and with mock seriousness stood to be surveyed fairly.
"There, Mr. Blake! You see I confess all my years."
And I saw the truth, that she loitered gracefully among the vague and pleasant fifties. But then she did a thing which would have been injudicious in most women of her years. Her hand, still holding my roses, went up to her face, and her cheek glowed dusky and pink against the yellow petals. I saw that she rightly appraised her own daring and felt free to say:—
"You see! My confusion was inevitable. Not one of those candles can be spared if I am to believe you are Miss Caroline."
Again she laughed, revealing now a girlish freshness in the small mouth, that had somehow lingered to belie the deeper, graver lines about her dark eyes. As she still regarded me with that smiling, waiting lift of the short upper lip, I called out:—
"More lights, Clem! I need all you have."
Whereat Miss Caroline fell into her chair with a marvellous blush, an undeniable darkening of the pink on cheeks that were in texture like the finest, sheerest lawn.
Never thereafter could I refuse credence to tales, of which many came to me, exposing Miss Caroline
