She did not return his greeting—scarcely looked at him, but glided quietly into the darkness.
[CHAPTER XXVII.]
Sleep kept afar off from Stella's eyelids that night. The momentous morrow loomed before her, at one moment filling her with a nameless dread, at another suffusing her whole being with an equally nameless ecstasy.
Could it be possible that to-morrow—in a few hours—she would be Leycester's wife? There was enough in the reflection to banish sleep for a week.
Let us do her justice. Love and not ambition was the sentiment that moved and agitated her. It was not the thought of the title and the wealth which awaited her, not the future Wyndward coronet which set her trembling and her heart throbbing, but the reflection that Leycester, her lover, her ideal of all that was great and noble, and manfully beautiful, would be her own, all her own.
At an early hour she heard Frank wandering up and down outside her door, and at last he knocked.
"Are you getting up, Stel?" he asked, in a whisper.
Stella opened the door and stood before him in her plain stuff dress, which Frank was wont to declare became her better than the satins and silks of a duchess, and he looked up at her with an admiring nod.
"That's right!" he said. "I've been up ages. I've taken my bag and hidden it in the lane. Is yours ready?"