"I will deceive him to the very last," she thought. "I will delude him until the very hour which sees me Earle's wife."
She bent all her energies to this. It was easy enough to win from Earle a promise of total silence; it was not quite so easy to win that same promise from the earl and countess. She did win it, though.
On that same evening that Earle left, a superb night in June, when the stars were gleaming in the skies, and the night air was heavy with sweet odors, Lord and Lady Linleigh had gone out into the grounds. The evening was far too beautiful to be spent indoors, and she followed them. They were sitting under the great drooping beeches, watching the loveliness of that fair summer night.
The same thought struck both of them as Doris came to them, that neither starlight nor moonlight had ever fallen on so fair a figure as this. Her long dress of white sweeping silk trailed over the long grass, she wore fragrant white lilies on her breast and in her golden hair; she might have been the very spirit of starlight, from her fair, picturesque loveliness. She went up to them, and bending down to kiss Lady Linleigh's hand, she knelt on the grass at their feet.
"You are alone," she said, "the two arbiters of my destiny. I am so glad, for I have a favor—a grace to ask."
"It is granted before it is asked," said the countess.
But Lord Linleigh laughed.
"No," he said, "that would hardly be wise; we cannot allow that."
She raised her face to his, and he saw how earnest it was in its expression of pleading and prayer.
"Dear papa," she said, gently, "you must not refuse me this."