Jeffrey ate his breakfast almost in silence, and there was no trace of last night’s emotions on his broad brow. As was usual with him, he went down to the theatre directly after breakfast, and Doris was left alone.
The time had now arrived in which she must decide what she must do respecting Lord Neville’s note.
She opened her writing-case, and, after sitting before it for half-an-hour, wrote an answer in which she declined a meeting with him; and it gave her satisfaction for a few minutes, at the end of which she—tore it up!
No answer she could pen—and she tried hard—seemed satisfactory. Some were too familiar, others too stiff and haughty.
“I shall have to see him!” she murmured, at last, as if in despair—“for the last time!” A thrill of regret ran through her at the words; they sounded so sad and significant.
Trying to frame some form of words in which she could speak to him, she made her way to the meadows, and as she went the beauty of the spring morning seemed to take to itself a new and strange loveliness, and, notwithstanding her difficult task, the thought that she was going to meet him again filled her with a vague, indescribable sensation that half-pleased, half-troubled her.
All the place was silent save for the singing of the birds and the babbling of the brook, and as she seated herself on the mossy bank she looked round, as one views a place rendered familiar and pleasant by associations.
Wherever she went, whatever happened to her in the future, she thought, she should always remember Barton meadows, the clump of elms, the silver brook, and—ah, yes!—the handsome face lying so still and white in her lap.
As she was recalling the scene, dwelling on it with a singular commingling of pleasure and pain, she heard the beat of a horse’s hoofs, just as she had heard it the first morning; and Lord Neville came flying over the hedge, a little further from her this time, and still upon his horse, and not upon his head.
He pulled the animal up almost on its haunches, and, slipping from the saddle, hurried toward her.