The words were simple enough, and her manner was quiet and reserved, but her voice went to the young man’s heart, thrilling it with a strange sensation. He did not attempt a retreat, and Neva looked up at him with something of surprise in her glorious red-brown eyes.
As he encountered her full gaze, his face flushed, his eyes glowed, and a warm smile curved his mouth.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but are you not Miss Wynde of Hawkhurst?”
Neva bowed assent, with an increasing surprise.
“I was sure, when I met your full glance, that you were Neva Wynde,” cried the young gentleman. “You do not remember me, I see; and yet, when you went away to that odious Paris school you and I parted with tears, and you promised to be true to me, little Neva. And you have forgotten me—”
“No, no,” cried the young girl, an answering glow in her face, and her eyes shining like suns. “Is it really you, Arthur? How you have changed!”
She held out her hand to him, and he clasped it with a warm, lingering pressure. Her eyes scanned his face in an earnest scrutiny, and she blushed again when she saw how handsome he was, and how like he was to an ideal she had long cherished in the very depths of her young soul.
He was fair, with warm blue eyes, golden hair, and a mustache of tawny gold. He had a frank, noble face, and his sunny eyes betrayed a generous soul. One who ran might read in his countenance a brave, dauntless soul, a grand, unselfish nature, an enlightened spirit, quick sympathies, and an honest, truthful, resolute character. Neva thought, as she shyly regarded him, that he was very like a hero of romance.
“I can hardly believe that it is Arthur,” she said, smiling, her face softly flushing. “You are not at all like the Arthur Towyn I knew, and yet I can see the old boyish gayety and brightness of spirit. Your mustache has changed your looks greatly, Lord Towyn.”
“It makes me look older perhaps,” said Lord Towyn gravely, “and as I am but three and twenty, and have a ward who is eighteen years old, it becomes me to produce as venerable an appearance as possible. Of course you are aware Neva, that I am one of the three trustees or guardians of your entire property, appointed by your father in his will?”