Mattie held out her hand to Earle, with a grave, anxious look. If she could have saved him; if she could have done anything to help him! She seemed to have a foreboding that all was not well, that Doris was deceiving them.
"Good-night, Mattie," said Earle, in a low voice; "you see the sun is shining for me again."
"Heaven grant that it may always so shine!" said sincere Mattie.
Then she turned away from him abruptly. There were times when she could not bear those outward evidences of his love. She said to herself that Doris was quite unworthy of him—quite unworthy; but that if he had only cared for her, she would have made his life so bright for him.
Then the lovers went out together. Mattie, looking after them with a sigh, Mark Brace with a smile. Earle wishing that each moment of the starlight night could be lengthened into years, Doris silently wishing that there was no love in the world—nothing but diamonds.
Doris walked in silence to the garden gate. The picture was a beautiful one. The picturesque old farm-house lying in the soft moonlight, the moonbeams falling full and bright on the flowers, the fields, and the trees. The laburnums shining yellow and pale; the lilacs filling the air with sweet perfume; the starlight touching the golden head and face of the young girl until she looked beautiful and ethereal as an angel—lighting up the spiritual face of the young lover. Doris leaned against the gate, and directly over her head hung the flowers of the syringa tree. There was a deep, dreamy silence over the whole earth, as though the rest of heaven were lying over it. Earle was the first to speak.
"You look so beautiful, my darling," he said. "How am I to tear myself away?"
"Do not look at me," she replied, "then you will go easily enough."
"Do you want me to go?" he asked, bending a spray of syringa until it rested on her head. "Do you want me to go?"
No need to pain him yet. No need to wound with the point of a pin when she was preparing a sharp sword to stab him to the heart.