‘Pooh! “An angel not too bright and good–” What is it? I know I am quoting it wrong, but it comes to the same thing. Good-night, boy! God bless you!’
Jerome, as he walked home, bit his lips, and his heart seemed burnt up within him with shame.
‘Gad! what a blackguard I feel when this sort of thing happens!’ he muttered, as he went in.
Avice had gone to bed. John Leyburn had departed. Nita was in her dressing-room, where Jerome found her.
‘You are tired?’ he asked, a new emotion in his face and eyes, as he bent over her.
‘A little, dear. Nothing much. I suppose you are busy?’
‘Yes. It is only a quarter-past ten. I am going to read for an hour. I have been–I mean your father has been speaking to me about you. He has been thanking me for making you happy. My God, Nita! How can I look at you and confess it! But some day’–he clasped her hand–‘some day, you shall be happy–you shall, my wife.’
He dared not trust himself to say any more, but left her.
Nita sat still in the same position, not weeping–she did not very often weep now–but looking down at the wedding-ring on her hand, and wondering if that some day would ever come.
It was but a very few days after this that Mr. Bolton’s death took place. Nita was very quiet, and apparently not much disturbed about it. She spoke about it to no one, except that when she first saw John Leyburn after it, she thanked him for all he had been to her father; and she one day said to Jerome that now the Abbey belonged to him, she wished very much that he would settle Monk’s Gate upon Avice for her own, unless he objected.