Only this, that now for the first time the words seemed to possess their real meaning. She had learned how to speak them!
“Good-night! Good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say good-night till it be morrow!”
She ought to have been glad; why then did she utter a little cry almost of dismay, and cover her face with her hands?
CHAPTER III.
“IF I SHOULD FAIL.”
Doris sped homeward, but, fast as she walked, her thoughts seemed to outrun her. Had she fallen asleep by the brook and dreamed it all? She could almost have persuaded herself that she had, but for the handkerchief hidden in the bosom of her dress.
“Cecil Neville!” She repeated the name twenty times, and each time it sounded more pleasant and musical. There was no need to call up the remembrance of his face, for that floated before her mental vision as she hurried on with downcast, dreamy eyes.
“Am I out of my senses?” she exclaimed, at last, trying to rid herself of the spell by a light laugh. “Any one would think I was playing the part of a sentimental young lady in a three-act comedy. It was rather like a play; but it’s generally the hero who saves the life of the principal lady. I didn’t save his life, though he says I did. How he said it! Why can’t one speak like that on the stage, now? Cecil Neville!”
She took out the handkerchief and looked at it.
“And this is a coronet. What is he, I wonder? A duke, or an earl, or what? And what does it matter to me what he is?” she asked herself in the next breath. “I may never see him again, and if I did we should meet as strangers. Dukes or earls have nothing in common with actresses. I wish I could forget all about him. But I can’t—I can’t,” she murmured, almost piteously. “Oh, I wish I had stayed at home, and yet I don’t, either,” she added, slowly. “If I had not been there, perhaps he would not have come to, and might be lying there now!” she shuddered. “How brave and strong he looked riding at the hedge; it was a mad thing to do! And yet he made light of it! Ah, it is nice to be a man—and such a man! Cecil Neville! I wish he had not told me his name! I cannot get it out of my head. And he lives with his uncle at the Towers. Perhaps Jeffrey knows who the uncle is. I must tell him,” she sighed. Somehow she felt a strong reluctance to speak of the afternoon’s adventure; but she had never had any secrets from Jeffrey, and she added with another sigh: “Yes, I must tell him. He will be angry—no, he is never angry, but he will be—what? sorry. And yet I could not help it. It was not I who rode at the hedge, and—I wonder what he thought of me when he came to?” A burning blush rose to her face, and she stopped still to contemplate the new phase of the question. “I—I had his head upon my lap! Oh, what could he have thought? That I was forward and impertinent, and yet, no, he did not look as if he did, and—and he thanked me and asked me to forgive him—how many times! Cecil Neville. There”—and she laughed impatiently—“that is the last time I will think of his name—or him!”