Doris walked home in a state of mind easy enough to imagine but very difficult to describe. Imagine the emotion of a tender-hearted woman who for many weary months has deemed the man she loved with all her pure, ardent nature false, and then suddenly discovering that she has misjudged and wrongfully condemned him!
The sudden shock of joy that ran through her almost seemed to deprive her of her senses, and it was with the greatest difficulty that she could refrain from crying aloud, “Oh, my love! my love! forgive me! forgive me!” And if she did not say it aloud, the prayer rose from her heart. The cruel letter, which she read and re-read daily in the hope that its perusal would crush out her love for him, was false! A fiend in the form of a man had betrayed them both, and Cecil was true! He had loved her—loved her, Doris, until he had received that letter which she had given to Spenser Churchill—had loved her and deemed her as false as she had thought him!
For a time her mind failed to realize the web and woof of the plot which the “philanthropist” had woven with such devilish cunning; but though she did not know all the threads and lines of the scheme, she gradually began to understand how completely she and Cecil had been deceived. But why? What was the motive? She put the question away from her, and returned to the delicious thought that, after all, he, Cecil, had not deserted her; that the wicked letter was a forgery; and that her faith in him was restored to her.
And Percy Levant watched by her side, tenderly supporting her trembling arm in silence. Love bestows a keen insight into the feelings of the one beloved, and he knew all that was passing through her mind, and read it as one reads a printed book, and—he kept silence.
They reached the villa, and he led her into the hall.
“Go up to your room and rest,” he said, in a low voice.
“Yes,” she said, with a little start, as if she had forgotten his presence. “Yes, I—I am tired—very, very tired!” and she pressed her hand over her heart.
“Rest,” he repeated. “I shall remain in the house in case you should want me,” and he dropped her hand, and, strolling into the drawing-room, walked to the window, and looked out with the face of a man who has received sentence of death, and to whom all mundane matters can be of no consequence whatever.
Doris went upstairs to her own room slowly, and sank into a chair.
“Cecil was true! Cecil was true! Cecil loved me!” she repeated to herself a hundred times; then suddenly she started, for on a chair opposite her she caught sight of her wedding dress.