She tells herself this lie without a blush, perhaps because she is so pale at the bare thought that her eyes may never again be gladdened by his presence, that the blood refuses to rise.
A bell tinkles softly in the distance. The early dusk is creeping up from behind the distant hills, that are purple with the soft and glowing heather. The roar of the rushing waves comes from the bay that lies behind those encircling hills, and falls like sound of saddest music on her ear. Now comes
Still evening on, and twilight gray
Has in her sober livery all things clad.
And Mona, rousing herself from her unsatisfactory reverie, draws her breath quickly and then moves homeward.
But first she turns and casts a last lingering glance upon the sloping hill down which her sweetheart, filled with angry thoughts, had gone. And as she so stands, with her hand to her forehead, after a little while a slow smile of conscious power comes to her lips and tarries round them, as though fond of its resting-place.
Her lips part. An expression that is half gladness, half amusement, brightens her eyes.
"I wonder," she says to herself, softly, "whether he will be with me at the usual hour to-morrow, or,—a little earlier!"
Then she gathers up her gown and runs swiftly back to the farm.