Surely never was a story so odd, so strange as hers! A bride unknown, a wife whose face has never yet been seen!
"Well," thinks Cecil, as she seats herself while her maid binds up her long fair hair, "no use troubling about it beforehand. What must be must be. And at all events the dreaded interview cannot be too soon, as until my return to town I believe I am pretty safe from him here."
But in saying this she reckons without her host in every sense of the word.
CHAPTER XIV.
"Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster who doth mock
The meat it feeds on."
—Othello.
Next day at luncheon Mr. Amherst, having carefully mapped out one of his agreeable little surprises, and having selected a moment when every one is present, says to her, with a wicked gleam of anticipative amusement in his cunning old eyes: