But if she had flushed when he entered, she flushed far more when he
came to speak to her. He held in his hand a bouquet of flowers,--white
camellia buds and bloom, and dark, shadowy green; a whim of his own, he
said.

"I heard about the maroon dress," he added, when he had given it to her,
"and my choice of your flowers was guided accordingly. White camellias,
worn with maroon sik, are artistic, Mollie, your brother will tell you."

"They are very pretty," said Mollie, looking down at them in grateful
confusion; "and I am much obliged. Thank you, Mr. Gowan."

"A great many good wishes go with them," he said, good-naturedly. "If
I were an enchanter, you should never grow any older from this day
forward." And his speech was something more than an idle compliment.
There was something touching to him, too, in the fact of the child's
leaving her childhood behind her, and confronting so ignorantly
the unconscious dawn of a womanhood which might hold so much of the
bitterness of knowledge.

But, of course, Mollie did not understand this.

"Why?" she asked him, forgetting her camellias, in her wonder at his
fancy.

"Why?" said he. "Because seventeen is such a charming age, Mollie; and
it would be well for so many of us if we did not outlive its faith and
freshness."

He crossed over to Dolly then, and made his well-turned speech of
friendly greeting to her also, but his most ordinary speech to her had
its own subtle warmth. He was growing very fond of Dolly Crewe. But
Dolly was a trifle preoccupied; she was looking almost anxiously at
Mollie and the camellias.

"He has been paying her a compliment or she would not look so fluttered
and happy," she was saying to herself. "I wish he wouldn't. It may
please him, but it is dangerous work for Mollie."

And when she raised her eyes to meet Ralph Gowan's, he saw that there
was the ghost of a regretful shadow in them.

She had too much to do, however, to be troubled long. Phil's friends
began to drop in, one by one, and the business of the evening occupied
her attention. There was coffee to be handed round, and she stood at
a side-table and poured it out herself into quaint cups of old china,
which were a relic of former grandeur; and as she moved to and fro,
bringing one of these cups to one, or a plate of fantastic little cakes
to another, and flavoring the whole repast with her running fire of
spicy speeches, Gowan found himself following her with his eyes and
rath