“I can go and be back again before the kind housekeeper returns,” she thought, slipping out of the room and stealing like a shadow along the dim corridors till she reached a door that led out upon the beautiful grounds into the calm, sweet night.
CHAPTER XIV.
COTTAGE AND CASTLE.
The beautiful California night, sweet and balmy, although it was March—how like a dream of beauty lay the grounds about Bonair, with their thick shrubberies and fragrant flowers!
Yet Berry, unused to nocturnal wanderings alone, would have been frightened only for the wild excitement that dominated every other emotion.
The full moon rode queenly in the cloudless sky, and shone like silver on the lovely scene—on tall groups of statuary, gleaming whitely against clumps of tropical shrubbery, on arbors twined with roses, on tinkling fountains, on tall, white clumps of lilies and beds of hyacinths, scenting the air with sweetness. All that wealth and taste could devise in this land so favored by nature, was here in lavish measure adorning the many acres of ground that surrounded the picturesque pile of magnificent buildings called Bonair.
And simple Berenice Vining, to whom all this was so new and amazing, caught her breath with a gasp, remembering that Charley Bonair was heir to it all—the only son of the proud multimillionaire.
She felt for the first time the vast difference between her and the man who had made careless love to her for twenty-four hours—love that was not great enough to bridge the gulf between the lowly cottage and the lofty castle, so that she might walk across it to his arms.
Her thoughts flew to the old home, to the humble cottage, with the morning glories climbing all over it in blue and white and roseate glory, and a yearning came to her for her little room again, with its cheap white ruffled curtains at the window, and the simple adornings so dear to a young girl’s heart.
Her heart rose in her throat, and she had to pause and lean her head against a tree, while she sobbed in hysterical distress:
“Oh, mamma, mamma!”