“I am going away to-morrow,” repeated Darley. Miss Charteris said nothing, but gazed out of the window.
“Why don't you say something?” he burst out. “Have you nothing to say?”
“What should I say? Do you want me to say good-by? Is it such a sweet word, then, that you are anxious that I should say it now?”
Darley knelt beside the little dusky figure in the rocker. How sweet it is to have the woman you love speak to you like this, and to hear her voice tremble, and to feel that she cares for you!
“No, I don't want you to say good-by,” he said, very gently. “I want you to tell me not to go. Can't you see that the thought of leaving you has been like the thought of eternal darkness to me? I love you, and I want you for my own, always, that I may never know the bitterness of good-by!” Miss Charteris turned her head, and Darley saw that the gray eyes he loved so well were wet. She put out one little white hand till it rested on his.
“Stay!” she whispered.
After a while, when the lamps—those horribly real and unromantic things—were brought in, they talked of other matters. But both seemed very happy, and ready to talk of anything. Even the mysterious hood, which was now completed, came in for a share of attention, and the inquisitive Darley learned that it was for a “poor old soul,” as Miss Charteris expressed it, who lived in a wretched little shanty with a worthless grandson, at the other end of the town. By-and-by Miss Charteris said:
“I have some news for you. Bella was married yesterday. Can you guess to whom?”
“No, I cannot,” answered Darley, almost breathlessly. Bella was the Miss Charteris of the city. He did not know whether to feel glad or indifferent, but he was free of the gentlest touch of spleen. A woman will be conscious of a twinge of pique when she hears that a man with whom she has had some little love affair has married some one else. But Darley was not conscious of any such sensation.
“It was very quiet,” continued Miss Charteris. “At least, I gather so from the paper which tells me of it. Bella never writes me, and not even on this occasion has she done so. However, she is now Mrs. Lawrence Severance.”