She hurried through a mere pretense of a breakfast, and putting on her hat and jacket, set out.
The sky had cleared somewhat, and the sun, shining through the spaces of blue, touched the green leaves with a dazzling sheen.
As she went toward the meadows, her heart beating with an anticipatory joy, her mind was hard at work.
Perhaps, after all, Jeffrey would not so much mind her giving up the stage and the career for which he had so carefully prepared her. It was her happiness he had been seeking—only her happiness, and when he learned that it was bound up in her love for Cecil Neville, he would not refuse his consent or throw any obstacle in the way.
Looking at it in this hopeful fashion, she reached a spot where the footpath branched in two directions—one led to the brook, the other to the railway station.
She stopped and glanced at the path to the brook wistfully; perhaps Cecil was already waiting for her. Consulting her tiny watch—a present from Jeffrey—she saw that there was just time to go round by way of the brook, and, with a heightened color and eager eyes, she took the path that led thither.
“After all,” she murmured, when she reached the bank, and looked round upon the unbroken solitude; “I might have waited! He is not here! I dare say he has not finished his breakfast yet; and yet, if he knew that I was here——”
She sat down on the bank, and gazed dreamily about her. The brook babbling at her feet; the branches of the trees waving solemnly above her head; the very air seemed eloquent of the lover who had stolen her heart and absorbed her life, and she fell into a delicious reverie. Then, suddenly, her eyes fell upon the big round stone at the foot of the tree, and a smile broke over her face.
“What a foolish, romantic girl he must have thought me,” she murmured; “as if he would let anything prevent him coming.”
As she spoke she rose, and, almost mechanically, knelt down and turned the stone over.