"And now you are sorry?" he said. "Tell me it was only your fun! Why, my dear boy, you wear your heart on your sleeve! Well, if you would really like to beg my pardon, you may do it."
The boy turned his white face toward him.
"I—beg—your—pardon," he said, as if every word cost him an agony, and then, with a sudden twitch of the face, he turned and went slowly with bent head toward the house.
Jasper looked after him with a steely, cruel glitter in his eyes, and he laughed softly.
"Dear boy!" he murmured; "I have taken so fond a liking for him, and this only deepens it! He did it for your sake. You did not think I meant to keep the rose! No; I should have given it to you! But I may keep this! I will! to remind me of your promise that we may still be friends!"
And he let her hand go, and walked away.
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
Lord Leycester was on fire as he strode up the hill to the Hall, and that notwithstanding he was wet to the skin. He was on fire with love. He swore to himself, as he climbed up the slope, that there was no one like his Stella, no one so beautiful, so lovable and sweet as the dark-eyed girl who had stolen his heart from him that moonlight night in the lane.
And he also vowed that he would wait no longer for the inestimable treasure, the exquisite happiness that lay within his grasp.