‘How much I have to record! What a day this has been! What a century of events and emotions have been compressed into a brief and fleeting fourteen or fifteen hours. And how little I thought when——’
She broke off abruptly, cast her pen down, and started from her chair, pacing about the room; her hands before her face, and short, tearless sobs now and then breaking from her lips.
‘Oh! what shall I do?’ she whispered. ‘What will become of me? I believe I had better have died before I had seen him. But if he loved me—oh! if God would let him love me—what am I saying?... I am afraid. I wish some one were here. I dare not be alone.’
She opened the door softly. On the mat before it lay Speedwell; he raised his head, blinked at her, and moved his great tail up and down slowly.
‘Speedwell, come in!’ she whispered, beckoning to him. The mastiff obeyed. Nita locked him into the room with her, and as he sat looking up at her, inquiring why she was troubled, she cast her arms about his faithful neck, and sobbed as if her heart would break.
When the paroxysm was over, and she looked at him, tears were coursing down Speedwell’s nose too.
‘You will never tell anyone, will you, Speedwell?’ she muttered. ‘You are wiser and stronger than your mistress, old dog and old friend.’
Speedwell watched beside the bed on which his mistress passed a restless night; her brain full of the rapidly changing images of alternating hope and anguish, rapture and despair and love, with which her day had been filled.
When morning came, and she looked in her glass, it showed her a very wan, white face, with dark rings round the eyes, and a piteous curve about the lips—a face changed indeed from that which, if not beautiful, had given joy to many, and had hitherto been thought a sweet face by those who loved and knew it best.