No, he would stay here and win her if he could; and when she was his wife, how proud he would be to introduce her to Isabel Coolidge and her mother as the future Lady of Dunforth!
And Brownie!
Who shall describe the tumult that was in her heart, as she sought Lady Ruxley’s apartments?
She could not misinterpret Adrian’s manner toward her. Had not he almost called her darling? Had not his every tone and look been fraught with that magnetic influence which could not be mistaken?
Did not his horror, when he had found it was she who had been in such peril, bespeak a deeper interest than that of a mere friend?
Ah, yes! and her hands burned with his passionate kisses even now.
How precious—how doubly precious the boon of life would seem to her hereafter, since it had been bestowed upon her by him!
“I will know my fate this day,” said Adrian, the next morning, as he arose from his almost sleepless couch and descended to the breakfast parlor.
For the past six months Brownie had been so continually in his thoughts that she had grown to seem almost a part of himself, and now it seemed to him as if, in the great horror of the night previous, when they had stood so near to death, and together had caught a glimpse, so to speak, of the darkness and gloom of mysterious eternity, it seemed, I say, as if they had tacitly acknowledged and felt that they belonged to each other.