“Love.”
The stars were gleaming above the dusky pine trees. The soft December air, mild as spring on that sheltered coast, scarcely stirred the drooping boughs that overshadowed the terrace. Colonel Estcourt lit his cigar, and began to pace with slow and thoughtful steps beneath the many lighted windows of the great building. Mrs Jefferson’s words haunted him, despite his efforts to dispel them. One of those windows belonged to the room where this strange and beautiful woman might even now be seated. Why did he picture to himself the pale exquisite face—the full dark eyes—the lovely rippling hair—as if they were charms already recognised and remembered. Why?—save that when he had heard their description they had struck home to his memory with a shock of pain, and a feverish dread that longed yet feared to find itself realised. To and fro—to and fro—he paced the terraced walk, and again and again his eyes sought that long line of light above his head.
There was a strange stillness in the brooding air—that mysterious hush, which is the music of night’s gentle footsteps, and insensibly its soothing influence stole over the unquiet of his restless thoughts—the warring powers of soul and sense grew silent and at rest.
Then something—a sound sweet as song—yet without the vibratory passion of a human voice—seemed to float out of the darkness and hold his ear enchained like a spell. It was the divinest beauty of music, divinely interpreted, and it seemed to him as he listened that all the discord and woe and misery that oppressed his earthly senses, disappeared and died away into the very perfection of peace.
He stood there quite silent—quite motionless—waiting, so it seemed to himself, for some fuller revelation to which these exquisite sounds were but a prelude.
It was a matter of no surprise when he quietly lifted his dreamy glance to the stone balcony above, and saw there, in the soft glow of light from the rooms beyond, the fair form of the woman he had expected to see.
A faint tremor of fear and apprehension thrilled his heart, but it died away as a low remembered voice stole through the space that parted him from a visible form he had never thought to see again.
“I told you we should meet. But I scarcely thought it would be so soon. Will you come up here, or shall I join you?”
The voice and greeting roused him. He bared his head and bent low to the speaker in a deeper homage than that of conventional courtesy.
“Is it really you, Princess? And may I be permitted to join you?”