"I am afraid there is only one fairy on earth just now, and that is you," says Nicholas, with a faint smile, smoothing back her pretty hair with loving fingers, and gazing fondly into the blue eyes that have grown so big and earnest during their discussion.
"I mean a real fairy," says Dorothy, shaking her head "If she were to come now this moment and say, 'Dorothy'——"
"Dorothy," says a voice outside at this very instant, so exactly as Doatie pauses that both she and Nicholas start simultaneously.
"That is Mona's voice," says Doatie. "I must go. Finish your letters, and come for me then, and we can go into the garden and talk it all over again. Come in, Mona; I am here."
She opens the door, and runs almost into Mona's arms, who is evidently searching for her everywhere.
"Ah! now, I have disturbed you," says Mrs. Geoffrey, pathetically, to whom lovers are a rare delight and a sacred study. "How stupid of me! Sure you needn't have come out, when you knew it was only me. And of course he wants you, poor dear fellow. I thought you were in the small drawing-room, or I shouldn't have called you at all."
"It doesn't matter. Come upstairs with me, Mona. I want to tell you all about it," says Doatie. The reaction has set in, and she is again tearful, and reduced almost to despair.
"Alas! Geoffrey has told me everything," says Mona, "That is why I am now seeking for you. I thought, I knew, you were unhappy, and I wanted to tell you how I suffer with you."
By this time they have reached Dorothy's room, and now, sitting down, gaze mournfully at each other. Mona is so truly grieved that any one might well imagine this misfortune, that is rendering the very air heavy, in her own, rather than another's. And this wholesale sympathy, this surrendering of her body and mind to a grief that does not touch herself, is inexpressibly sweet to her poor little friend.
Kneeling down by her, Dorothy lays her head upon Mona's knee, and bursts out crying afresh.