"Yes, I've got a penny given to me, Trottie," said Leslie, taking the child up in her lap and kissing it. "Such a beautiful shining penny."
"Thow it me," said the little one.
But Leslie put her hand on her bosom with a jealous smile.
"No, no; I can't show it even to you, Trottie," she said; "not to any one. And I am not going to buy anything with it, but going to keep it as long as ever I live."
She did not see Mr. Temple again that day, and did not even think of him or the hard, unjust things he had said of Yorke; and if she had, it would only have been to laugh at them. Yorke fickle and false! With that gift of his rising and falling on her heart, she would not have believed an angel if he had come to tell her anything against her beloved.
The duke missed her all that afternoon, missed her very much. He had got used to having her standing or sitting by his chair, and her sweet, low-pitched voice had been as a soothing balm in his moments of pain. And yet he could not wholly trust her, or believe that she was better and less mercenary and self-seeking than the rest of her sex.
His keen eyes had seen the change in her face when he had spoken of Yorke, and he had told himself that what he had prophesied was coming true; this artless-looking girl with the clear, guileless eyes was already aiming at a ducal coronet. It did not occur to him that she might love Yorke for himself alone; or, if it did, he put the thought away from him and hugged his old cynical mistrust of her sex.
The next day passed and no Yorke appeared, but on the morning of the following one he got into the train at Paddington on his way to Portmaris.
As he did so, with a sigh of relief and expectant happiness, he noticed a tall lady dressed in black with a veil over her face pass his carriage and enter the next, and he was struck in an absent kind of way by the grace of her figure; but she disappeared from his mind the moment she passed the window, and he gave himself up to picturing his meeting with Leslie.
A few hours, and then——. He lit a cigar, and stretched his long legs on to the opposite seat and thought.