Rossmoyne Part 69

"I don't feel a bit sleepy myself," says Monica, who is looking as fresh and sweet as if only now just risen.

"Neither do I," says Olga. "Come to my room, then, and talk to me for a minute or two."

They must have been long minutes, because it is quite an hour later when a little slender figure, clad in a pretty white dressing-gown, emerges on tiptoe from Mrs. Bohun's room and steals hurriedly along the deserted corridor.

Somebody else is hurrying along this corridor, too. Seeing the childish figure in the white gown, he pauses; perhaps he thinks it is a ghost; but, if so, he is a doughty man, because he goes swiftly up to it with a glad smile upon his lips.

"My darling girl," he says, in a subdued voice, "I thought you were in the middle of your first happy dream by this."

Monica smiles, and leaves her hand in his.

"I am not such a lazy-bones as you evidently thought me," she says. "But I must hurry now, indeed. All the world is abed, I suppose; and if Kit wakes and finds me not yet come, she will be frightened."

"Before you go, tell me you will meet me somewhere to-morrow. You,"

uncertainly, "_are_ going home to-morrow, are you not?"

"Yes. But--but--_how_ can I meet you? I have almost given my word to Aunt Priscilla to do nothing--clandestine--or that; and how shall I break it? You are always tempting me, and"--a soft glance stealing to him from beneath her lashes--"I should _like_ to see you, of course, but so much duty I owe to her."

"Your first duty is to your husband," responds he, gravely.

She turns to him with startled eyes.

"Who is that?" she asks.

"I am," boldly; "or at least I soon shall be: it is all the same."

"How sure you are of me!" she says, with just the faintest touch of offence in her tone that quickens his pulses to fever-heat.

"_Sure!_" he says, with a melancholy raised by pa.s.sion into something that is almost vehemence. "Was I ever so _unsure_ of anything, I wonder?

There is so little certainty connected with you in my mind that half my days are consumed by doubts that render me miserable! Yet I put my trust in you. Upon your sweetness I build my hope. I feel you would not willingly condemn any one to death, and what could I do but die if you now throw me over? But you _won't I think_."

"No, no," says Monica, impulsively, tears in her eyes and voice.

Tremblingly she yields herself to him, and let him hold her to his heart in a close embrace. "How could you think that of me? Have you forgotten that I _kissed_ you?"

Plainly she lays great stress upon that rash act committed the other night beneath the stars.

"_Forget it!_" says Desmond, in a tone that leaves nothing to be desired. "You are mine, then, now,--now and forever," he says, presently.

"But there is always Aunt Priscilla," says Monica, nervously. Her tone is full of affliction. "Oh, if she could _only_ see me now!"

"Well, she _can't_, that's one comfort; not if she were the hundred-eyed Argus himself."

"I feel I am behaving very badly to her," says Monica, dolorously. "I am, in spite of myself, deceiving her, and to-morrow, when it is all over,----"

"It shan't be over," interrupts he, with considerable vigor. "What a thing to say!"

"I shall feel _so_ guilty when I get back to Moyne. Just as if I had been doing something dreadful. So I have, I think. How shall I ever be able to look her in the face again?"

"Don't you know? It is the simplest thing in the world. You have only to fix your eyes steadily on the tip of her nose, and there you are!"

This disgraceful frivolity on the part of her lover rouses quick reproach in Monica's eyes.

"I don't think it is a nice thing to laugh at one," she says, very justly incensed. "I wouldn't laugh at _you_ if you were unhappy. You are not the least help to me. What _am_ I to say to Aunt Priscilla?"

"'How d'ye do?' first; and then--in an _airy_ tone, you know--'I am going to be married, as soon as time permits, to Brian Desmond.' No, no," penitently, catching a firmer hold of her as she makes a valiant but ineffectual effort to escape the shelter of his arms, "I didn't mean it. I am sorry, and I'll never do it again. I'll sympathize with _anything_ you say, if you will promise not to desert me."

"It is you," reproachfully, "who desert me, and in my hour of need. I don't think," wistfully, "I am so _very_ much to blame, am I? I didn't _ask_ you to fall in love with me, and when you came here all this week to see Madam O'Connor I couldn't possibly have turned my back upon you, could I?"

"You could; but it would have brought you to the verge of suicide and murder. Because, as you turned, I should have turned too, on the chance of seeing your face, and so on, and on until vertigo set in, and death ensued, and we were both buried in one common grave. It sounds awful, doesn't it? Well, and where, then, will you come to meet me to-morrow?"

"To the river, I suppose," says Monica.

"Do you know," says Desmond, after a short pause, "I shall have to leave you soon? Not now; not until October, perhaps; but whenever I do go it will be for a month at least."

"A _month_?"

"Yes."

"A whole long month!"

"The longest month I shall have ever known," sadly.

"I certainly didn't think you would go and do a thing like _that_," says his beloved, with much severity.

"My darling, I can't help it; but we needn't talk about it just yet.

Only it came into my head a moment ago, that it would be very sweet to get a letter from you while I was away: a letter," softly, "a letter from my own wife to her husband."

Monica glances at him in a half-perplexed fashion, and then, as though some thought has come to her for the first time, and brought merriment in its train, her lips part, and all her lovely face breaks into silent mirth.

"What is it?" asks he, a little--just a very little--disconcerted.

"Oh, nothing; nothing, really. Only it _does_ seem so funny to think I have got a husband," she says, in a choked whisper, and then her mirth gets beyond her control, and, but that Brian presses her head down on his chest, and so stifles it, they might have had Miss Fitzgerald out upon them in ten seconds.

"Hush!" whispers the embryo husband, giving her a little shake. But he is laughing, too.

"I don't feel as if I honored you a bit," says Miss Beresford; "and as to the 'obey,' I certainly shan't do that."

"As if I should ask you!" says Desmond. "But what of the _love_, sweetheart?"

"Why, as it is yours, you ought to be the one to answer _that_ question," retorts she, prettily, a warm flush dyeing her face.

"But why must you leave me?" she says, presently.

"The steward has written to me once or twice. Tenants nowadays are so troublesome. Of course I could let the whole thing slide, and the property go to the dogs; but no man has a right to do that. I am talking of my own place now, you understand,--_yours_, as it will be soon, I hope."

"And where is--_our_ place?"

The hesitation is adorable, but still more adorable are the smile and blush that accompany it.