"Tell me everything," he said after a pause. "About your life—and what you do—and how you spend your days. This is such a changed Bessie that I scarcely seem to know her."
"For the better, Mr. Byfield?" She looked at him with no seriousness at all, and he gave her a gay answer naturally enough.
"Oh—this isn't the Bessie of Arcadia Street at all; this is a being in a white frock who belongs naturally and properly to the country. I shall believe presently that you've been here all your life."
"I believe it already," she retorted. "Arcadia Street seems miles and miles away, as though it had never existed at all; I find myself wondering sometimes exactly how one turned into it—and what the houses were like—and if they really were as small and mean as they seem to be now. You'll like Fiddler's Green," she added quickly.
"I'm sure I shall. And so I suppose you are really and truly very happy?"
She did not answer for a moment; she walked on beside him, and he noticed as he glanced at her that her face was grave. "So happy sometimes, Mr. Byfield, that I'm afraid," she said steadily. "I wake at night in the great room that is mine, and I lie listening to the silence, and wondering if it's all true. I dread sometimes to open my eyes in the morning, for fear that I may open them in the old narrow room in the old narrow house in Arcadia Street; I'm frightened when they knock at my door in the morning, lest it should be Amelia come to say that the baker has stopped credit, or the milkman wants a little something on account. You don't know, Mr. Byfield," she added, turning wide, serious eyes upon him for a moment—"you really don't know what it means never by any chance to hear that phrase again—'someone wants something on account.'"
"I think I can understand," he replied. "And so you still like Fiddler's Green—eh?"
"I never believed that there was such a place," she said. "It's wonderful! Even poor father seems to be getting more used to it; he missed his club terribly at first. But now he is finding quite a lot to interest him; he drives round and studies the architecture of the various old inns round about—sometimes gives up a day to it."
"And your brother?" asked Gilbert with a frown.
"Aubrey is turning out really splendidly," said the girl. "He looks quite handsome when he's riding; even father admits that—and father never did like Aubrey. In fact, everything is better than it has ever been—and all the dreams I ever had seem to have come true."