“I sail myself in a few weeks. I only waited for your departure to have my sister select our little household gods.
“For I have sworn to be a slave of the lamp no more, and so my spinning is done. I shall not return to America.”
“Do not leave me, Hugh!” murmured Elaine Willoughby. “I need your friendship; I need you more than ever, now that—”
He was already striding away, for with a last convulsive grasp of her hands, he had swiftly passed on over the velvety turf toward the still opened gates.
His heart was in a mad revolt, there had been some meddling folly, and his pulses were throbbing now in a wild unrest. The agony was beyond his surface stoicism.
But, he stood as one transfixed when a voice sweet and low set his blood leaping madly through his veins.
“Hugh, come back!” The words were simple, but he turned to where the woman whom he madly loved stood awaiting him with half-outstretched arms.
“Do you not see?” she murmured. “How can I tell you what you should have known long ago?”
“You are not to marry Alynton?” cried her lover, a light of hope stealing into his eyes. His heart was flooded with a warmth of daring hopes.
“The man whom I am to marry has not yet asked me to be his wife,” faintly said Elaine.