"No," said Lottie, grimly; "I'm not likely to proclaim this business from the housetops. This is a play that it will be best not to advertise. Good-night!"
[CHAPTER XII.]
Margaret had read those lines of Swinburne's:
"Nothing is better, I well think,
Than love; the hidden well-water
Is not so delicate to drink.
"Nothing so bitter, I well know,
Than love; no amber in cold sea,
Or gathered berries under snow,"
and she remembered them; they came floating up through her memory during the still hours of the night following Lord Blair's passionate avowal.
It had taken her so completely by surprise that even yet she had scarcely realized what this was that had happened to her.
She had read of love, had painted it, but hitherto she and it had been perfect strangers; and now—and now all wonderful mysterious sweetness of it suffused her whole being. "He loves me! he loves me!" she found herself repeating over and over again in a species of half-unconscious rapture; and as she murmured the significant words she hid her face in her hands, and the words he had spoken came surging back on her ears and in her heart, and she could still feel his hot, passionate kisses on her hands and hair.