“I got it at the Abbey. I strolled up there to-day,” said he, in a half-confusion. “Will you have it?”
“No,” said she, curtly.
“Neither will I, then,” cried he, tearing it out of his button-hole and throwing it away.
What a long journey in life can be taken in the few steps from the drawing-room to the dinner-table!
CHAPTER LXIV. THE END
As Dr. Stewart had many friends to consult and many visits to make,—some of them, as he imagined, farewell ones,—Dolly was persuaded, but not without difficulty, to take up her residence at the cottage till she should be able to return home. And a very pleasant week it was. To the old lady it was almost perfect happiness. She had her dear Tony back with her after all his dangers and escapes, safe and sound, and in such spirits as she had never seen him before. Not a cloud, not a shadow, now ever darkened his bright face; all was good-humor, and thoughtful kindness for herself and for Dolly.
And poor Dolly, too, with some anxious cares at her heart,—a load that would have crushed many,—bore up so well that she looked as cheery as the others, and entered into all the plans that Tony formed about his future house, and his gardens and stables, as though many a hundred leagues of ocean were not soon to roll between her and the spots she traced so eagerly on the paper. One evening they sat even later than usual. Tony had induced Dolly, who was very clever with her pencil, to make him a sketch for a little ornamental cottage,—one of those uninhabitable little homesteads, which are immensely suggestive of all the comforts they would utterly fail to realize; and he leaned over her as she drew, and his arm was on the back of her chair, and his face so close at times that it almost touched the braids of the silky hair beside him.
“You must make a porch there, Dolly; it would be so nice to sit there with that noble view down the glen at one's feet, and three distinct reaches of the Nore visible.”
“Yes, I'll make a porch; I'll even make you yourself lounging in it See, it shall be perfect bliss!”