Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/297

 Never had the face of nature seemed to me so lovely as during that morning ride. The very fields from which their golden mantle had been stripped but the preceding day already showed a tender green among the short stub. ble. The multitudinous voice of the song-bird was outvied by the singing within my breast. Yet the storm of the preceding evening had not passed without leaving traces. The active zerdars, under whose care were the roads, had already swept clear the tracks with their machines; but the broken branches piled at intervals by the wayside, and an occasional uprooted tree, already cut into lengths, gave token of the force of the hurricane.

"I knew it was you were coming," said Reva with a bright smile, when I made my appearance at the breakfast-table in company with her father. He had merely requested her to have breakfast for three. I was satisfied that she was pleased at my arrival, and hoped that her prevision of the fact arose from a half-unconscious wish that it might be so.

The meal passed in comparative silence. I was preoccupied with what I had come prepared to say. Reva, for a like reason probably, was unusually distraite.

"Reva," said her father, who had for some time been observing her countenance while she was in a deep revery, "Ziemna was correct in her remark. Your face had just now an expression remarkably similar to that of Ismar. I should hardly have deemed it possible for countenances so dissimilar in feature so greatly to resemble each other in expression. It must arise from some common ancestor in the Diotha line. For you, Ismar," said he, addressing me, "do not at all resemble your father, but greatly the other side of your family."