“Who will not come?” said Una. “Are you expecting any one?”
“Did I speak?” she said. “Yes, I am expecting someone, but he will not come. People one expects and wants never do—never do. You will find that out in time, wild bird; you will find—ah!” and she started and turned pale, and her hand, which had been laid on Una’s arm, closed over it with a sudden grip and flutter.
Una looked up, and her face went deadly white.
The room seemed to spin round with her, and the lights to flood her brain and paralyze her, for there, towering above the throng, stood Jack Newcombe.
Jack Newcombe—not in his rough tweed suit, but in evening dress; Jack, not with the frank, tender, pleasant smile which always rested upon his face as it appeared in her dreams, but with a cold, half-irritable, and wholly bored expression.
Slowly she rose and glided into the shadow of the recess and hid herself, her heart beating wildly, her whole form trembling with a strange ecstasy of mingled fear and delight.
At last she saw him again.
CHAPTER XXI.
Poor Jack! How came he to be in Lady Bell’s ball-room?