“Only promise me one thing. I did not think of this—it is so sudden. I am going away to-morrow, to Mrs Grey’s, for a fortnight. Promise not to tell any one—your father, your brothers, till I come back. Give me time to—to get used to it first.”
“Of course,” said Cheriton reluctantly, “that must be as you please. But I long to tell them of my great happiness. And my father will care so much about it. But of course I promise. But I may write to you?”
“No—no—then every one will find it out!” said Ruth, with recurring agitation. “You—you don’t know how I feel about it.”
“Well, I have gained too much to complain,” said Cheriton, too loyal-hearted, and too inexperienced, for a single doubt. “But Ruth, my Ruth, one thing—give me one kiss to remember!”
“Go then—go! some one will find us!” cried Ruth, and startled by approaching footsteps, she rushed away from him; but the treacherous kiss was given, though she felt in a moment that she would almost have died to recall it. She had revenged herself; she hated herself; she already began to try to excuse herself.
A little later, while troops of gaily-dressed children were dancing in the lighted hall, and the outdoor guests were rapidly departing, Alvar was standing on the terrace, wondering what could have become of his brother. More than one person had remarked that he looked delicate and overworked; and Alvar felt anxious as he saw him come slowly up from the grounds towards him.
“Where have you been, Cherry?” he said. “Are you not well?”
Cheriton smiled rather dreamily.
“Oh, yes, quite well,” he said. There was a far-away look of blissful, peaceful content in his eyes, as if it were indeed well with him; an expression of perfect, thankful happiness, as far removed from the ordinary state of this tolerably comfortable work-a-day world as one of great wretchedness and misery; and as remarkable. As Alvar looked at him, they heard the cry of a little child. Cheriton turned and saw trotting along the terrace in the dusk a very little boy, left behind by some of the schools now trooping out of the park. Cherry lifted him up in his arms and smiled kindly at him, trying to make out whom he belonged to, and the child clung to him, quite at ease with him. “Milford School; ah! I see their flag. Come, my lad, we’ll go and find them. There, don’t cry, nobody must cry to-night, of all nights in the year.”
“When Lady Milford has been so kind,” said Alvar, for the child’s benefit.