"Where is she?" asked Harry, almost in a whisper; "perhaps, perhaps——"
"She has just come in," said Lady Oxted, feeling a violent desire to take Harry by the scruff of the neck and hurl him into Evie's presence; "she is in the drawing-room."
"Alone?" asked Harry.
"I don't know. Go and see."
Harry hesitated no longer, but left the room. Lady Oxted heard his step first of all slow on the stairs, then gradually quickening, and it would seem that he took the last six steps in a jump.
Evie was alone when he entered, seated at the far end of the room—ten miles away, it seemed to him. He felt his head swim, his knees were unloosed, his mouth was dry, and his heart hammered creakily in his throat. Then he raised his eyes again, and met her glance. And at that his courage coursed back like wine in his veins; she flooded and overflowed his heart; he was lost in an amazement of love, a man again. In two steps he covered those ten miles.
"You told me to aim at being the King of England," he said. "I have aimed far higher, and I have come to you for the crown."
Then no word was said at all about the Italian marchese, no longer young.