"I believe it," he replied.
Yet, although he saw that she wished to make friends, and was flattered by the belief, he could not all at once forget the anguish and sorrow she had caused him.
Then she took out a little jeweled watch that she wore. Time was flying. In one short half-hour Lord Charles would be back with her flowers and news of the opera-box.
"How angry he will be," she said to herself, "to think that any one should thwart his sovereign will and pleasure. He will look in every pretty nook by the river-bank, then he will go into the house and ask, 'Have you seen Mrs. Conyers?' And no one will be able to answer him. I should like to be here to see the sensation. Then he will be sulky, and finally come to the conclusion that I have given him up, and have run away from him."
She was so accustomed to think of him as selfish, loving nothing but himself, that she never imagined that he had grown to love her with a madness of passion to which he would have sacrificed everything on earth. She had been so entirely wrapped up in her own pursuits, in the acquisition of numberless dresses and jewels, that she had not observed the signs of his increasing devotion. Blind to his mad passion for her, she decided upon leaving him; and of all the mistakes that she ever made in her life, none was so great as this.
Ten minutes later they were walking rapidly toward the little town of Seipia: there they could go by train to Genoa. As they walked along the high-road Doris laughed and talked gayly, as though nothing had happened since they were first betrothed.
"This reminds me of old times, Earle," she said. "How goes the poetry, dear? I expect to hear that you have performed miracles by this time."
"You destroyed my poetry, Doris, when you marred my genius and blighted my life!"
She laid her hand caressingly on his.
"Did I? Then I must make amends for it now," she said.