You--Bab, I beleive you are up to some mischeif!"
"Mischeif?"
"You don't need to pretend to me," she went on, looking into my very
soul. "I have eyes. You're not decked out this way for ME."
I had meant to tell her nothing, but spying just then a man ahead who
walked like Adrian, I was startled. I cluched her arm and closed my
eyes.
"Bab!" she said.
The man turned, and I saw it was not he. I breathed again. But Jane was
watching me, and I spoke out of an overflowing Heart.
"For a moment I thought--Jane, I have met THE ONE at last."
"Barbara!" she said, and stopped dead. "Is it any one I know?"
"He is an Actor."
"Ye gods!" said Jane, in a tence voice. "What a tradgedy!"
"Tradgedy indeed," I was compeled to admit. "Jane, my Heart is breaking.
I am not alowed to see him. It is all off, forever."
"Darling!" said Jane. "You are trembling all over. Hold on to me. Do
they disaprove?"
"I am never to see him again. Never."
The bitterness of it all overcame me. My eyes sufused with tears.
But I told her, in broken accents, of my determination to stick to him,
no matter what. "I might never be Mrs. Adrian Egleston, but----"
"Adrian Egleston!" she cried, in amazement. "Why BARBARA, you lucky
Thing!"
So, finding her fuller of simpathy than usual, I violated my Vow of
Silence and told her all.
And, to prove the truth of what I said, I showed her the sachet over my
heart containing his rose.
"It's perfectly wonderfull," Jane said, in an awed tone.
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