Mona evades a reply.
"How cold it is!" she says, rising, with a little shiver. "Let us go home."
If she had been nurtured all her life in the fashionable world, she could scarcely have made a more correct speech. Geoffrey is puzzled, nay more, discomfited. Just in this wise would a woman in his own set answer him, did she mean to repel his advances for the moment. He forgets that no tinge of worldliness lurks in Mona's nature, and feels a certain amount of chagrin that she should so reply to him.
"If you wish," he says, in a courteous tone, but one full of coldness; and so they commence their homeward journey.
"I am glad you have been pleased to-night," says Mona, shyly, abashed by his studied silence. "But," nervously, "Killarney is even more beautiful. You must go there."
"Yes; I mean to,—before I return to England."
She starts perceptibly, which is balm to his heart.
"To England!" she repeats, with a most mournful attempt at unconcern, "Will—will that be soon?"
"Not very soon. But some time, of course, I must go."
"I suppose so," she says, in a voice from which all joy has flown. "And it is only natural; you will be happier there." She is looking straight before her. There is no quiver in her tone; her lips do not tremble; yet he can see how pale she has grown beneath the vivid moonlight.