He sighed, and hid his face in his long, thin hands.
"They paint love as a chubby, laughing child," he mused bitterly. "They
should draw him as a cruel, heartless monster, with a scourge instead of
a toy dart in his hands. If I wrote a love song, it should be the wail
of a breaking heart. Only two months! It seems as if I had known her for
years. Was that look always in her eyes? Will it always remain there?
Oh, God! if I could change it, if I could be the means----Yes; I'd ask
for nothing more, nothing better, but just to see her happy. They might
carry my coffin down the stairs as soon as they pleased afterward."
He stretched out his hand for his violin, but drew his hand back.
"Not to-night. They are talking over the brother's slice of luck, and I
won't break in upon their joy. Good night, my love--who never will be
mine."
* * * * * Every evening Dick came home with fresh items of information about the
work to be done at Anglemere, and Nell began to catch something of the
excitement of his anticipation.
Sometimes Falconer came down to listen, and he tried to hide the pain
the prospect of their departure cost him, as now and again he joined in
the discussion of their plans; but more often he sat gazing out of the
window, and stealing glances at the beautiful face as it bent over some
needlework for Dick or herself--more often for Dick.
But one night--it was the night before they were to start--he almost
betrayed himself.
"To-morrow you will have escaped the piano and violin, Tommy's squeals
and the yowling of the cats, the manifold charms of Beaumont Buildings,
and the picturesque cabbages of the costers' barrows, Miss Lorton. I
wonder whether you will ever come back?"
"Why, of course," said Nell, smiling. "Dick is not going to spend the
remainder of his life at Anglemere. Oh, yes; we shall be back almost
before you have missed us, Mr. Falconer."
"Think so?" he said, smiling, too, but with a strange look in his eyes,
and a tremulous quiver of the thin and too-red lips. "Then you will have
to be back in a very few minutes after the cab has left the door. No;
somehow I fancy that Beaumont Buildings is seeing the last of you. Tommy
must share my dread, for he howled with more than his accustomed
vehemence when he said 'Good-by' just now."
"That was because you said I ought not to kiss him, because he was so
dirty," said Nell. "Poor little Tommy! Yes, I think he'll miss me!"