Now Nettie was again at Broadlands, and day by day she and Arthur met. Lookers-on began to whisper, and some that had hoped Sir Henry's heir would seek a wife in a different direction lost hope.
At last a day came when the young man opened his heart to the relatives who had been as father and mother to him, and asked their consent and blessing on his union with Nettie Clifford, provided he could win hers.
They answered him together: "May God bless you as we do, and speed your wooing! 'A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband.' We could desire no better fortune for our boy than to win such a wife as Annette Clifford."
With a light heart Arthur set out for Broadlands. There was to be a garden party in the lovely grounds that afternoon, and he had no doubt that he should find an opportunity of telling Nettie all that was in his mind. He did not, however, see her immediately on his arrival. The grounds were extensive, and before Arthur Boyd made one amid the crowd of guests who kept pouring through the wide gateway, Nettie had been pounced upon and carried off to take part in a game at tennis.
The decisive set was just at an end when he caught sight of her, flushed and smiling, after a hard-won victory. But bright as was the colour on the girl's cheek, it deepened at his approach, and it was with a look of frank pleasure that she laid her hand in his and bade him welcome.
But while Nettie's roses deepened, those on Arthur's face died away, and he became deadly pale as he glanced at the girl's extended hand, for there, glittering on her "engaged finger," was a superb diamond, a beautiful single stone of bluish white, a stone of great value, as the merest ignoramus could tell. Surely the presence of such a jewel in such a place could have only one meaning.
Arthur hardly knew what he said. He knew that Nettie looked half frightened, and asked if he were ill, and that he had answered in the negative, and got away out of sight. True, she seemed to look wistfully after him, and her lips moved, as if she were begging him to stay. Probably she was shocked at what she had done, and wished to deprecate the grief and resentment his face must have expressed.
All their happy hours, all her sweet girlish ways, all the tell-tale blushes at his coming, all that he had thought he read in the shy eyes that were wont to droop when he looked too steadily in their direction, all these things were as nothing to him any more than others. Someone—Arthur thought he knew who—had offered, and been promptly accepted by the portionless girl, who was bound to marry well, whether true love were included in the bargain or not.
Arthur could not leave Broadlands at once, as he longed to do, for his aunt and uncle, with other friends, were to come later, and he had promised to wait for and return with them. So he strolled away to a lonely part of the grounds, and having passed a miserable hour there, once more bent towards the entrance-gates, where he met Nettie.