"Never mind, Smith," she said. "I am expecting Mr. Byrne,"
and then seeing that the fellow had not seated her visitor she
added, "He is a very dear friend." Smith faded quickly from
the scene.
"Billy!" cried the girl, rushing toward him with out-stretched
hands. "O Billy, we thought you were dead. How long have
you been here? Why haven't you been to see me?"
Byrne hesitated.
A great, mad hope had been surging through his being
since he had read of the broken engagement and received the
girl's note. And now in her eyes, in her whole attitude, he
could read, as unmistakably as though her lips had formed the
words that he had not hoped in vain.
But some strange influence had seemed suddenly to come to
work upon him. Even in the brief moment of his entrance into
the magnificence of Anthony Harding's home he had felt a
strange little stricture of the throat--a choking, half-suffocating
sensation.
The attitude of the servant, the splendor of the furnishings,
the stateliness of the great hall, and the apartments opening
upon it--all had whispered to him that he did not "belong."
And now Barbara, clothed in some wondrous foreign creation,
belied by her very appearance the expression that suffused her eyes.
Pages:
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269