Her face became radiant with affection, as she lifted it to his in the moonlight.
“Why should she come between us even in my thought? You are here, you, my child, my home. What has cast this heavy burden on my soul? It is the gipsy blood beginning to burn again: surely nothing has happened.”
She questioned him closely with her eyes, thus pleading with him to silence the vague doubts that haunted her; he answered faintly, “Nothing, child, nothing has happened.”
She drew a deep breath, and gave forth a faint laugh.
“Ah, how strangely I have felt. It must have been the cold night air. This England is so chilly, and you, how damp your clothes seem. Your hair is saturated! Come in, beloved, come in, my poor child, my bird of Paradise, she will perish!”
Lord Clare bore me into the chamber. Lights were obtained, and my wet garments were exchanged for a night robe of delicate linen.
“See if I do not take care of her,” said my mother, folding the cashmere shawl around me, while great tears crowded to her eyes, and she looked timidly into his face.
“I do not doubt it,” he answered, kindly, “she is warm now and getting drowsy upon your bosom. Go to rest; both need it. Do you know it is after midnight?”
He touched her forehead with his lips, and kissing me, prepared to go. She looked after him, and her great eyes said a thousand times more than she would have dared to speak.
He hesitated, said something about the necessity of being early at Greenhurst, and then, as if restraint had become irksome beyond endurance, laid his hand on the stone balustrade, and leaped over.