Perhaps unconsciously he had muttered them aloud, for he was startled to see the look in her face, the wonder, the and excitement.
"What—what made 'ee say those words?" she gasped. "Oh, what made 'ee say 'em?"
"I don't know, I don't know," he said. "Betty, Betty, child, go back, forget all this, it is nonsense—some foolish dream that you and I seem to have shared. Go back, little maid, to your mistress and your work and forget—-" he paused, "forget that you knew my name to be Allan and that I knew you for Betty! Believe me it is better, far, far better so!" He smiled at her kindly. "Don't think that I am angry, why should I be angry? It seems to me, child, that fate is playing some strange trick with us, that is far, far beyond understanding. We must not try to understand it. Betty, better put it out of your mind and forget it——"
"If—if I could!" she whispered. "Oh if I could!"
"We must, both of us," he said sternly. "We must forget what we should never know!"
How pretty she was—and now that the colour was in her cheeks, how lovely she looked in the sunlight with the old garden all about her! Kathleen was right—a rarely lovely little maid was Mrs. Hanson's granddaughter! And as she was, so had been that other maid, the maid of his dream, the same gleaming, golden hair, the same delicate arched brows—the deep blue eyes—with their wealth of uplifted lashes, the fair oval of her cheeks, and the red lipped dainty little mouth that once had smiled on him so kindly and not smiled only, but had come so willingly to meet his own lips.
"Betty, there are some things that it is not given to us to understand, perhaps now and again in the lives of some mortals the curtain is for a moment lifted. It may have been so with us, lifted and then, allowed to fall again—and when it has been lifted only for a moment, Betty, it is better that we who have been granted a sight beyond it, should forget what we have seen and never let it influence our thoughts or our lives. Can you understand me, Betty?"
She nodded silently, she looked at him with her glorious eyes and in them he saw to his dismay, his terror almost, the same light, the light of the love he had seen shining in the eyes of his dream maiden.
But now she broke the spell, she dropped him a curtsey, she was turning away.
"Be there any answer to my lady's message, sir?" she asked.