“Oh, no, my lord; it will be no trouble,” the butler made haste to reply; “the marquis would be much annoyed if your lordship were to be inconvenienced.”
Lord Cecil nodded; he could scarcely suppress a smile at the butler’s crediting the marquis with such hospitable sentiments.
“All right,” he said, again; “I’ll have it at half-past six.”
“Yes, my lord,” assented the butler, with a faint sigh; it seemed to him a dreadful sacrifice; and Lord Cecil soon afterward took up his hat and went out.
He made his way to the meadows, and stood looking down on the brook and at the spot where Polly had landed him so nearly upon his head; and at the bank where the fair unknown, whose face and voice haunted him perpetually, had sat, and a vague hope dwelt in his breast that she might, perhaps, revisit the scene as he was doing.
But an hour passed and she did not come, and he strode off, moodily, full of disappointment and half angry with himself.
“I am a fool!” he thought. “She has forgotten me by this time. Why should she come back here? If I were to meet her, what could I say to her? She’d very likely think me an impertinent snob if I did more than lift my hat. I couldn’t very well tell her that I have scarcely thought of anything but her since we parted yesterday and to say anything less to her would seem to me to be saying nothing at all!”
Thus musing, he went into the town, his stalwart figure, with its military carriage, his handsome, patrician face, and his Poole-made clothes, which he wore as if they had grown on him, causing no little sensation amongst the inhabitants.
But though he stared into the shop windows and looked at every girl who came in sight, he did not see the girl of whom he was thinking; and it was nearly seven before he came back to the “small dinner of three or four courses” which the considerate butler had served for him in the breakfast room.
He was half inclined to give up the idea of the theatre, and if it had not been for his dread of the marquis’ society he would have done so. As it was, he ate his dinner slowly, and enjoyed it, although he was in love; and then, and not till then, he fully made up his mind to go.