She was very beautiful, certainly; he had not discovered until this instant what a power of witchery lurked in those dark eyes. He had gazed into their brown depths as a man who looks deep into a crystal pool, thinking that he sees all that is there.
She had not looked at him when she rejected his aid and sprang out with the help of Francis. She did not look at him when she turned and took Jamie by the hand.
"Are you not tired of the boy yet?" asked Mrs. Verdon's silvery voice. "You are very kind, dear Miss Kilner; but pray send him to nurse if he wearies you."
"He does not weary me in the least," Elsie answered, looking smilingly into Katherine's face. She could smile unflinchingly, although she saw that Arnold was staying by the "fair ladye's" side.
"Let them go their way together," she thought. "After all, what right have I to care?"
As to Francis Ryan, he forgot that Lily Danforth was looking after him with glances full of the deepest reproach. He had never been thoroughly in love with Lily; he had only felt for her that spurious kind of love which grows out of proximity. But she, poor girl, had set all her hopes upon him, and was very miserable when she saw what Elsie had done. She began to think that she had made an enemy of Miss Kilner.
"It was Mary's fault," she thought bitterly. "Mary decided that we should give her the cold shoulder. 'We don't know who she is,' she said. Absurd! It would have been better to have been civil."
Elsie, too, had forgotten Lily. The hint which Arnold had given her about the old attachment between his cousin and Ryan had slipped out of her mind. She was intent on wearing a brave face before the world, and hiding all the outward and visible signs of heartache.
Yet there was no need to hide a pain which no one suspected her of enduring. No one, save Mrs. Lennard, had discovered that Elsie had a secret, and the old lady could keep her own counsel.
"I have scarcely had a word from you all day," said Francis, not caring to conceal his delight as he walked up the meadow by her side.