"Yes," said Dartmouth, "I will go to-morrow."
XIII.
When Dartmouth entered the drawing-room at Rhyd-Alwyn the next evening, a half hour after his arrival, he found Sir Iltyd alone, and received a warm greeting.
"My dear boy," the old gentleman exclaimed, "I am delighted to see you. It seems an age since you left, and your brief reports of your ill-health have worried me. As for poor Weir, she has been ill herself. She looks so wretched that I would have sent for a physician had she not, in her usual tyrannical fashion, forbidden me. I did not tell her you were expected to-night; I wanted to give her a pleasant surprise. Here she is now."
The door was pushed open and Weir entered the room. Dartmouth checked an involuntary exclamation and went forward to meet her. She had on a long white gown like that she had worn the morning he had asked her to marry him, but the similarity of dress only served to accentuate the change the intervening time had wrought. It was not merely that she had lost her color and that her face was haggard; it was an indefinable revolution in her personality, which made her look ten years older, and left her without a suggestion of girlishness. She still carried her head with her customary hauteur, but there was something in its poise which suggested defiance as well, and which was quite new. And the lanterns in her eyes had gone out; the storms had been too heavy for them. All she needed was the costume of the First Empire to look as if she had stepped out of the locket he had brought from Crumford Hall.
As she saw Dartmouth, the blood rushed over her face, dyeing it to the roots of her hair, then receded, leaving it whiter than her gown. When he reached her side she drew back a little, but he made no attempt to kiss her; he merely raised her hand to his lips. As he did so he could have sworn he saw the sun flashing on the domes beneath the window; and over his senses stole the perfume of jasmine. The roar without was not that of the ocean, but of a vast city, and—hark!—the cry of the muezzin. How weird the tapestry looked in the firelight, and how the figures danced! And he had always liked her to wear white, better even than yellow. He roused himself suddenly and offered her his arm. The butler was announcing dinner.
They went into the dining-room, and Dartmouth and Sir Iltyd talked about the change of ministry and the Gladstone attitude on the Irish question for an hour and a quarter. Weir neither talked nor ate, but sat with her hands clasped tightly in her lap. Dartmouth understood and sympathized. He felt as if his own nerves were on the rack, as if his brain had been rolled into a cord whose tension was so strained that it might snap at any moment. But Sir Iltyd was considerate. He excused himself as soon as dessert was removed, on the plea of finishing an important historical work just issued, and the young people went directly to the drawing-room. As Dartmouth closed the door Weir turned to him, the color springing into her face.
"Tell me," she said, peremptorily; "have you discovered what it meant?"
He took her hand and led her over to the sofa. She sat down, but stood up again at once. "I cannot sit quietly," she said, "until I know. The enforced repression of the past week, the having no one to speak to, and the mystery of that dream have driven me nearly mad. It was cruel of you to stay away so long—but let that pass. There is only one thing I can think of now—do you know anything more than when you left?"
He folded his arms and looked down. "Why should you think I could have learned anything at Crumford Hall?" he demanded, with apparent evasion.