"My darling," he began. "I must call you that even though I have no right to. My darling—I want to tell you these my thoughts to-night, before I see you to-morrow as an ordinary guest at your dinner-party. I want you to know how utterly I love you, and how I am going to do my best with the rest of my life to show you how I honor you and revered you as an angel, and something to live for and shape my aims to be worthy of the recollection of that hour of bliss you granted me. Dearest love, does it not give you joy—just a little—to remember those moments of heaven? I do not regret anything, though I am all to blame, for I knew from the beginning I loved you, and just where love would lead us. But it was not until I saw the peep into your soul, when you never reproached me, that I began to understand what a brute I had been—how unworthy of you or your love. Darling, I don't ask you to try and forget me—indeed, I implore you not to do so. I think and believe you are of the nature which only loves once in a lifetime, and I am world-worn and experienced enough to know I have never really loved before. How passionately I do now I cannot put into words. So let us keep our love sacred in our hearts, my darling, and the knowledge of it will comfort and soothe the anguish of separation. Beloved one, I am always thinking of you, and I want to tell you my vision of heaven would be to possess you for my wife. My happiest dream will always be that you are there—at Bracondale—queen of my home and my heart, darling. My darling! But however it may be, whether you decide to chase away every thought of me or not, I want you to know I will go on worshipping you, and doing my utmost to serve you with my life.—For ever and ever your devoted lover."
And then he signed it "Hector," and not "Bracondale."
The widow had promised to give it into Theodora's own hand on the morrow.
He added a postscript:
"I want you to meet my mother and my sister in London. Will you let me arrange it? I think you will like Anne. And oh, more than all I want you to come to Bracondale. Write me your answer that I may have your words to keep always."
Mrs. McBride came round in the morning to the private hotel in the Avenue du Bois, to ask the exact time of the dinner-party, she said. She wanted to see for herself how things were going. And the look in Theodora's eyes grieved her.
"I am afraid it has gone rather deeply with her," she mused. "Now what can I do?"
Theodora was unusually sweet and gentle, and talked brightly of how glad she was for her father's happiness, and of their plans about England; but all the time Jane McBride was conscious that the something which had made her eyes those stars of gracious happiness was changed—instead there was a deep pathos in them, and it made her uncomfortable.