“Perhaps I shall see him to-night,” she thought; “perhaps he will come to the cab and say one word, just one word!” And when she came on, her beautiful eyes wandered over the crowded house with an eagerness which she could scarcely conceal.
But he was not there: and he did not come during the whole evening. She felt that she should know if he were in the theatre, though she should not be able to see him, and she knew even before she left the stage door to go to the cab that she should not see him, and Jeffrey had not come back!
“You feel tired to-night, Miss Marlowe,” said Mrs. Parkhouse, as Doris leaned back in the cab, and drew her cloak round her. “Shall I come home and stay with you to-night? I dare say you feel lonely without Mr. Jeffrey.”
But Doris would not let her do that.
“I am tired,” she said, “and I feel rather lonely, but Mr. Jeffrey would laugh at me for being so nervous. No, you shall not stay.”
She sat up into the night looking at the stars from the window, which she threw open, for the air was balmy with the breath of the coming summer; and she tried to realize all that had happened to her, all that was going to happen to her.
It was not of the title and rank that were to be hers she thought, but of Cecil’s love, and she stretched her long white arms out toward Barton Towers with a yearning gesture, murmuring, “My love, my love!”
The morning broke, not brightly and sunnily, but in fitful gleams glancing through shower clouds; and when she came downstairs she found a yellow telegram envelope beside her plate.
It was from Jeffrey, saying that the merest chance he had spoken of had occurred, and that he had been detained the night, but that he would catch the eleven o’clock train, and asking her to meet him.
Her face brightened as she read it. Yes, she would meet him, and as they walked through the woods from the station, she would tell him of her strange meeting with Lord Neville and all that had sprung from it, and then they both could go and meet Cecil by the brook.