He felt the joy of it as she stood at the door in her beautifully fitting travelling dress.
The thought sent an exultant glow through his veins, as he looked at her from where he was standing at the hearth. (There was no “cosy corner” abomination.)
She was his.
He went forward to meet her, and put out both his hands to her.
She placed a hand in each of his.
“How delightfully warm you are,” she said. “You were standing at the fire.”
“Yes,” he said. “I was at the fire; in addition, I was also thinking that you are mine.”
“Altogether yours now,” she said looking at him with that trustful smile which should have sent him down on his knees before her, but which did not do more than cause his eyes to look at her throat instead of gazing straight into her eyes.
They seated themselves on one of the old window-seats, and talked face to face, listlessly watching the old waiter lay a white cloth on a portion of the black oak table.
When they had eaten their fish and pheasant—Harold wondered if the latter had come from the Abbeylands’ preserves, and if Archie Brown had shot it—they returned to the window-seat, and there they remained for an hour.