‘There’s nothing half so sweet in life
As love’s young dream.’
The poet is right. But then it does not last. In the unknown seas into which my bark is drifting all will be brightness and sunshine. Digby will be always kind, and father will be happy and gay. The people will love him, dear lonesome father! Away from the bustle and din and fogs of London, his life will enter a new lease. And Jack will visit us often, and together he and I will laugh over our childhood’s amours. Digby is too good to be jealous. I wonder if Jack will marry; I had never thought of that. Oh dear, oh dear! my victory over self will not be such an easy one as I had imagined. I hope Jack won’t marry that hateful Gordon girl, nor any of those simpering Symonses. But, after all, what does it matter to me whom Jack marries? I begin to think I am very mean after all; I hate myself. Positively I—”
“Come in.”
“Sir Digby has called, Miss Keane, and desires to see you for a moment. He is in the tartan boudoir.”
“Tell him, Smith, that I am sorry I cannot leave my room—that I have a headache—that—stay, Smith, stay. Say that I shall be down in a few minutes.”
“Yes, Miss Gertrude.”
“It is best over,” she murmured to herself as Smith left.
She touched the bell, and next minute she was seated before a tall mirror, at each side of which burned a star of candles, and her maid was dressing her hair.
“Mary,” she said, as she rose and smoothed out the folds of her blue silk dress, “do I look my best?”
“Oh, Miss Keane, you look ’most like a fairy—the low-bodied blue, and the pink camellia in your hair. You are so beautiful that if I were a knight I should come for you with a chariot and six, and carry you away to my castle, and have a real live dragon o’ purpose to guard you—I would really, miss.”