So he had hidden behind his groom!
And with the realisation of how much he cared--_must_ care, to have striven
so hard to hide and fight it down--she was shaken with a shy, quivering
ecstasy, a hesitant sweetness of need and longing that pulsed through every
nerve of her. The thought of the morrow almost frightened her. He would
come to-morrow--come to tell her all that he had left unsaid, to claim that
promise of surrender which a woman both loves and fears to give.
... It was late when at last she slept, and she woke to find the sunlight
streaming in through her window, and Maria standing at her bedside, an
appetising breakfast-tray in her hands and a world of shrewd suspicion in
her twinkling eyes. Last night she had chanced to look out of her kitchen
window--which admitted of a slanting glimpse of the Cottage gateway--and
had drawn her own deductions accordingly.
"You've had a brave sleep, Miss Ann," she observed, as she deposited the
tray she was carrying on a small table beside the bed. "Mr. Coventry stayed
late, I reckon?"
Ann flushed a little, smiling. She did not resent the kindly
inquisitiveness which gleamed at her out of Maria's sharp old eyes, but
she had no mind to gratify it at the moment.
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