Perhaps he might take offence at her coy conduct, and pluck the token from its place? How could she convey to him the knowledge, of her happiness at beholding it there? How tell him that he was but too welcome to wear it?
“If I could find the other,” she soliloquised in low murmuring, “I should carry it in some conspicuous place, where he might see it—on my hand—my breast—in the frontlet of my coif, as he wears its fellow in his beaver. If only for a moment, it would tell him what I wish, without words. Alas! I’ve lost the other. Too surely have I lost it. Everywhere have I searched in vain. What can I have done with it? Bad omen, I fear, to miss it at such a time!”
“If he go forth as he has come,” continued she, resuming her mental soliloquy, “I shall not have the opportunity to speak to him at all—perhaps not even to exchange salutation. He will scarce ask to see me. He may not look back. I cannot call after him. What is to be done?”
There was a pause, as if her thoughts were silently occupied in forming some plan.
“Ha!” she exclaimed at length, pretending to look inquiringly out of the window. “Lora and Walter are wandering somewhere through the park? I shall go in search of them.”
The motive thus disclosed was but a mere pretence—put forth to satisfy the natural instincts of a maiden’s modesty. It ended the struggle between this, and the powerful passion that was warring against it.
Marion flung the coifed hood over her head; drew the coverchief forward to shade the sun from her face—perchance also to hide the virgin blush which her thoughts had called forth; and, gliding down stairs, passed out on her pretended errand.
If she had either desire, or design, to find those she went forth to seek, she was destined to disappointment. Indeed her search was not likely to have been successful: for, on issuing from the house, she went only in one particular direction—the most unlikely one for Walter and Lora Lovelace to have taken at that hour: since it was a path that led directly to the western entrance of the park.
Had she sought the old Saxon camp, it is probable she would have found the missing pair, though more than probable, that neither would have thanked her for her pains.
As it was, she took the opposite way; and, after traversing a long stretch of avenue with slow lingering steps, she found herself near that old ivy-grown gateway that opened upon the Oxford high-road.