r good company. What!
what! I know honest lads when I see them! Smile on them, my Thelma!--and
then we will warm their hearts with another cup of wine."

As he spoke, the maiden advanced with a graceful, even noble air, and
extending both her hands to each of the visitors in turn, she said--

"I am your servant, friends; in entering this house you do possess it.
Peace and heart's greeting!"

The words were a literal translation of a salutation perfectly common in
many parts of Norway--a mere ordinary expression of politeness; but,
uttered in the tender, penetrating tones, of the most musical voice they
had ever heard, and accompanied by the warm, frank, double handclasp of
those soft, small, daintily shaped hands, the effect on the minds of the
generally self-possessed, fashionably bred young men of the world, was
to confuse and bewilder them to the last degree. What could they answer
to this poetical, quaint formula of welcome? The usual latitudes, such
as "Delighted, I'm sure;" or, "Most happy--am charmed to meet you?" No;
these remarks, deemed intelligent by the lady rulers of London
drawing-rooms, would, they felt, never do here. As well put a gentleman
in modern evening dress _en face_ with a half-nude scornfully beautiful
statue of Apollo, as trot out threadbare, insincere commonplaces in the
hearing of this clear-eyed child of nature, whose pure, perfect face
seemed to silently repel the very passing shadow of a falsehood.

Philip's brain whirled round and about in search of some suitable reply,
but could find none; and Lorimer felt himself blushing like a schoolboy,
as he stammered out something incoherent and eminently foolish, though
he had sense enough left to appreciate the pressure of those lovely
hands as long as it lasted.

Thelma, however, appeared not to notice their deep embarrassment--she
had not yet done with them. Taking the largest goblet on the table, she
filled it to the brim with wine, and touched it with her lips,--then
with a smile in which a thousand radiating sunbeams seemed to quiver and
sparkle, she lifted it towards Errington. The grace of her attitude and
action wakened him out of his state of dreamy bewilderment--in his soul
he devoutly blessed these ancient family customs, and arose to the
occasion like a man. Clasping with a tender reverence the hands that
upheld the goblet, he bent his handsome head and drank a deep draught,
while his dark curls almost touched her fair ones,--and