Still he said nothing. There was some misgiving on his mind which no words of mine removed. I felt it instinctively. Even when I said—and as I write it down now I marvel how I could have said it—even when I said, softly, "Well, I regret nothing. I have enjoyed myself," he did not reply.
I wondered at it just for a moment, but no mood of his could damp my complete content. Even though, as I neared home, I began to be more and more uneasy about my parents' anxiety, no cloud could rest on the horizon of this fair, sweet dawn of day. I could not see beyond the barrier of that ever-widening, ever-brightening curtain of glorious light; but there it was, making glad for the coming of the blessed sun that would soon fill the whole space of heaven's free and perfect purity.
The coldness of the sky and of all the world was slowly throbbing with the wakening warmth. What was there beyond that burning edge of the world, beyond that sea of strange, exultant brightness?
We began to climb the hill, and on the garden terrace stood my father. He was waiting for me just as he had waited for me on that night in May when he had told me to be friends with Trayton Harrod.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Mother never scolded me at all for my adventure, and of course I was much more sorry than I should have been if she had done so.
As I stood there in the cool, gray dawn, with my wet habit, the dew-drops still standing on the curls of my red hair, my face—I make no doubt—pale with distress, and my gray eyes at their darkest from the same cause, I suppose I looked rather a sorry spectacle, and one that melted her heart; anyhow, I know that she put her arm round me and gave me a hasty kiss before she pushed me forward to meet father. For a moment I felt something rise in my throat, and I suppose I ought by rights to have cried. But I did not cry; I was too happy in spite of it all, and luckily neither father nor mother was of those people who expect one to cry because one is sorry.
As I have said, they neither of them said a word of rebuke. I gave my explanation, and it was accepted; father only declared that it was a very good thing Trayton Harrod had met me when he did; and mother only remarked that "least said soonest mended." I suppose they were both glad to have me safe home. And that drive with father's bailiff, which had meant so much to me, was thus buried in sacred silence.
It was the day that Joyce was to come home. As I dressed myself again after the couple of hours' sleep, which I could not manage to do without, I remembered that it was the day for Joyce to come home. How was it that I had not thought of it? How was it that I had not thought of it all yesterday, nor for many yesterdays before it?