“As if I could forget!”
She kept reading the words over and over till she knew them all with her eyes shut, then a sudden remorseful memory pierced her heart.
Was she untrue to her first love?
Just so had she read and dreamed over the anonymous verses that had given her such deep pleasure, vowing in a girl’s romantic rashness that she loved him and would marry no one else.
The memory of him was still dear, the verses were written on her heart; but here she was dwelling on another with her mind full of his blue eyes, and soft words, and ringing laughter. She was indeed fickle, untrue!
For a moment little Eva began to despise herself, then came a lightning thought, a hope:
“If they should prove to be the same?”
Trembling with excitement, she unlocked a drawer and took out the treasured poems and read them again.
“Oh, how sweet they are—sweeter every time I read them over!” she exclaimed, then started, with a wild tremor, adding:
“The note! Why, the writing is the same—surely the very same! Oh, my silly heart! Are you going to jump out of my breast with rapture?”