Reaching the house, she mounts the stairs with swift but silent footsteps, and, after a nervous hesitation before the door of her aunt Priscilla's room, finds herself once again face to face with Monica.
That pretty cause of all this plotting is not in bed, as Kit had predicted might be the case. She is not even undressed. She has only exchanged her azure gown for a loose white morning robe, long and trailing, and lavishly trimmed at the throat and wrists with some rare old Mechlin lace that Aunt Penelope had given her a week ago, glad in the thought that it may perchance add another charm to the beauty of her darling.
Her hair is rolled up in a small, soft knot behind; her face is a little pale; her eyes, large and luminous, have great heavy shadows lying beneath them, suggestive of fatigue and tiring thought. Altogether, she is looking as lovely as any heart can desire.
"Ah, you have returned!" she says, as Kit enters. "How long you have been! I gave you up. I thought some pixy had become enamoured of you and had carried you off to his kingdom."
"I was in danger of nothing so insignificant as a pixy. It was the great Apollo's self I feared," says Kit, with a sly humorous smile. "And here is your lily: he sent it to you with his love and a kiss."
"Apollo?" smiling.
"Why, yes. Who else could it be at this hour?"
"Yet there is something strange in your manner."
"That is as it should be. On such a night as this, how could one escape a little touch of that 'moonstruck madness' I spoke of a while since? Go out yourself, walk through that moonlit garden just where I walked, to where in that corner over the rays melt into shadow, and try if there be nothing in it to make your heart beat faster."
"I could do it, and return calm as I am now."