She made no answer. She seemed to be undergoing a struggle with herself. Then at last—
“Why did you break through our agreement? We were not to see each other for six months. It is not four yet.”
“Violet! Do you mean to tell me you are sorry I have not kept that boshy arrangement of ours. Look me straight in the face and tell me you are—if you can.”
He turned her face towards him. The dark soft eyes were brimming, the delicate features were working with a wild yearning, which its owner was in vain striving to suppress.
“Sorry to see you? Oh, Maurice, my darling, I have thought of late I should never see you again,” she cried, breaking into a storm of sobs as she threw herself on his breast.
And this was the girl who, but a few days before, and almost on that very spot, had made an utter mock of all that savoured of real feeling. “I almost wish it would come true. It would be such a novel sensation,” had been her words to Marian. Ah, but it had come true—and that long before she uttered them. Certain it is that none there at Sunningdale had ever seen this side of Violet Avory; had ever suspected this secret chapter in her history.
“Don’t cry, little one,” said Maurice, soothingly, drawing her further within the recesses of the garden, and away from the obnoxious quince hedge, which might shelter prying eyes. “We are going to have such a happy time together now.”
“Now, yes,” she answered. “But—after? Nothing but misery.”
“Not a bit of it. We can go on waiting. Patience—that’s the word. When I used to get my ‘cast’ hung up or otherwise tangled while fishing, instead of blowing off a volley of cuss words, and tearing and tugging at the stuff, I made it a rule to remark aloud, ‘Pazienza!’ That answered, kept one in a cool and even mind, and saved further tangle and a lot of cussing. Well, that must be our watchword—‘Pazienza!’”
“I have got you now, at all events,” she murmured, pressing his arm. “But now, don’t you see why I met you as a perfect stranger last night?”