"I will be here to-morrow night," he said; "and if you can't come out to me, have a light in your room at twelve o'clock, darling, to let me know you are all right."
And then they separated; and Rachel felt rather than saw her way home, so dazzled with tears was she, while Roden Dalrymple at her desire remained behind and watched her.
She went straight into the house and upstairs to her room, to gather together, in a feverish hurry of renunciation, all her diamonds and jewels, which like Dead Sea apples, had suddenly become dust.
And he, long after she was gone,—long after Mrs. Hardy's carriage returned, and all the chimes in the city had rung the midnight hour—lingered where she had left him, leaning his arms on a convenient wall, watching a lighted window, and thinking. He was very happy. He had come unawares upon his happiness, when he was most in need of it, and it seemed to him that it was the best he could have had.
Anything sweeter than this fresh and simple heart, which was satisfied to invest all its wealth in him—anything brighter than the future she had spread before him—he did not want or wish for. It was the amplest compensation that he could imagine for the mistakes and disappointments of his wasted past.
And yet, though he was hardly conscious of it—though he would not have owned to it if he had been—he had a vague misgiving about her. He did not wish that she had been less easy to win; he had no fear that she was mistaking a sentimental girlish fancy for love; he did not for a moment apprehend that she would forsake or wrong him.
But there was a suggestion of untried and untested youth about all the circumstances of this sudden betrothal, as far as she had influenced them, and there was an intangible suspicion that somewhere she was weak.
He did not recognise, and therefore did not formulate, the sentiment that infused that touch of grave and sad anxiety into his happy meditations; but, nevertheless, it was there, and the time came when it was justified.
