"And God bless you."
He took off his cap and left her. Mavis watched his tall form turn the corner with a sad little feeling at her heart. But love is a selfish passion, and when Mavis awoke three mornings later, when it wanted four days to her marriage, she would have forgotten Windebank's existence, but for the fact of his having sent her a costly, gold-mounted dressing-case. This had arrived the previous evening, at the same time as the frock that she proposed wearing at her wedding had come from Bathminster. She looked once more at the dressing-case with its sumptuous fittings, to turn to the wrappings enclosing her simple wedding gown. She took it out reverently, tenderly, to kiss it before locking the door and trying it on again. With quick, loving hands she fastened it about her; she then looked at the reflection of her adorable figure in the glass.
"Will he like me in it? Do you think he will love me in it?" she asked Jill, who, blinking her brown eyes, was scarcely awake. She then took Jill in her arms to murmur:
"Whatever happens, darling, I shall always love you."
Mavis was sick with happiness; she wondered what she had done to get so much allotted to her. All her struggles to earn a living in London, the insults to which she had been subjected, the disquiet that had troubled her mind throughout the spring, were all as forgotten as if they had never been. There was not a cloud upon the horizon of her joy.
As if to grasp her present ecstasy with both hands, she, with no inconsiderable effort, recalled all the more unhappy incidents in her life, to make believe that she was still enduring these, and that there was no prospect of escape from their defiling recurrence. She then fell to imagining how envious she would be were she acquainted with a happy Mavis Keeves who, in three days' time, was to belong, for all time, to the man of her choice.
It was with inexpressible joy that she presently permitted herself to realise that it was none other than she upon whom this great gift of happiness unspeakable had been bestowed. The rapture born of this blissful realisation impelled her to seek expression in words.
"Life is great and noble," she cried; "but love is greater."
Every nerve in her body vibrated with ecstasy. And in four days—
Two letters, thrust beneath her door by Mrs Farthing, recalled her to the trivialities of everyday life. She picked them up, to see that one was in the well-known writing of the man she loved; the other, a strange, unfamiliar scrawl, which bore the Melkbridge postmark. Eager to open her lover's letter, yet resolved to delay its perusal, so that she could look forward to the delight of reading it (Mavis was already something of an epicure in emotion), she tore open the other, to decipher its contents with difficulty. She read as follows:—