“Lawrence.”
Amy Waring heard them. The two words seemed sharp: they pierced her heart, and she felt faint. The room swam, but she bit her lip till the blood came, and her stout heart preserved her from falling.
“It is what I knew: they are engaged.”
But how was it that the manner of Lawrence Newt toward herself was never before more loyal and devoted? How was it that the quiet hilarity of the morning was not gone, but stole into his conversation with her so pointedly that she could not help feeling that it magnetized her, and that, against her will, she was more than ever cheerful? How was it that she knew it was herself who helped make that hilarity—that it was not only her friend Hope who inspired it?
They are secrets not to be told. But as they all sat around the table, and Arthur Merlin for the first time insisted upon reading from Byron, and in his rich melancholy voice recited
“Though the day of my destiny’s over,”
It was clear that the cloud had lifted—that the spell of constraint was removed; and yet none of them precisely understood why.
“To-morrow, then,” said Lawrence Newt as they parted.
“To-morrow,” echoed Amy Waring and Hope Wayne.
Arthur Merlin pulled his cap over his eyes and sauntered slowly homeward, whistling musingly, and murmuring,