All is well with us,—pleasant and peaceful, and homelike,—and yet—
I look at a miniature that lies on the table before me, and my mind drifts back to the unforgettable past. I am far away from Pencarrow, when—some one comes behind my chair; a pair of soft hands are laid over my eyes.
“Dreaming or working,—which?” laughs Anne.
I take the hands in mine, and draw her down till she has her chin on my shoulder, her soft cheek against my face.
The dusk is falling, but through it she sees the glint of the diamonds on the table,—and pulls her hands away.
“You have been thinking of those dreadful days in Russia again!” she says reproachfully, with a queer little catch in her voice. “Why don’t you forget them altogether, Maurice? Let me put this in the drawer. I hate to look at it,—to see you looking at it!”
She picks up the miniature, gently enough, slips it into a drawer, and turns the key.
“I—I know it’s horrid of me, darling, but I can’t help it,” she whispers, kneeling beside me, her fair face upturned,—a face crowned once more with a wealth of bright hair, which she dresses in a different way now, and I’m glad of that. It makes her look less like her dead sister.
