“She’s gone to her room,” replied the woman, looking at him in some surprise.
“But she can not have gone long, and I want to see her,” said Comethup.
“She gave me strict instructions she was not to be disturbed.”
“Ah! but she didn’t know that I was coming to her. I must see her; I haven’t seen her all day, although she promised to meet me.”
The woman rose slowly from her seat and laid her work on the table; she came toward him, looking at him with a curious intentness. “You haven’t seen her all day? Then who was with her in the garden just now, and why did she run in crying? I saw that, although she hid her face from me.”
“I—I don’t know,” said Comethup, with a miserable pain beginning to gnaw at his heart. “I suspect—I know you’re mistaken, as you were before, when you thought she met some one. But will you please go and tell her that I am here, and that I should like to see her?”
Without another word Mrs. Dawson went out of the room, and he heard her quick feet ascending the stairs. Within a few minutes she returned, and stood just within the doorway of the room, looking at him. “She says you must forgive her, but she can not see you to-night. She will see you to-morrow. And she sends you her love.”
With that he had to be content, and he went away through the garden and through the streets back to the captain’s cottage. All night long he lay wide awake, turning over the matter in his mind, seeing again Brian coming striding out of the garden, picturing in imagination an interview between him and the girl which ended in tears for her. But with the morning, just as he was thinking of getting up, came a little rattle of pebbles at his window; he scrambled out of bed and looked from behind the curtain. Below, in the garden, was ’Linda, smiling up at him, and with that smile all the troublous doubts and fears of the night were gone in a flash.
He nodded to her, and scampered through his dressing and ran down to join her. She was in her most playful and bewitching mood; she caught both his hands and danced round him like a happy child, and dragged him into the house and kissed him before he had recovered breath to greet her.