Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/245

Rh looking for some one, yet the expression was not wholly one of expectancy; it was of a vague anxiety. Her eyes moved slowly from face to face in the seats behind her. As they came nearer and nearer to me my heart beat violently. Was she about to know me at last? Had the tourmaline bond revealed me to her? Her eyes met mine. I had resolved that no change in my face should assist the recognition, but I felt the blood mount to my temples, and I could no more have withdrawn my eyes from hers than I could have lifted the old church in my arms. For a second her eyes fell under mine, then she lifted them again with the old appealing look which I remembered so well, her cheeks flushed, and a reproachful expression gathered around her mouth. If she had said: "I know it is you; how can you be so cruel, pretending not to know me?" it could not have been plainer. I smiled, and in one second there broke all over her face a light of rosy color and laughing gladness, and turning to Mrs. Allen and the Dominie, she spoke one eager word, pointing to me. In a moment more the dear old Dominie had my hands in his, and, too regardless of the place, we were talking breathlessly. It was well for us that an intermission in the exercises arrived at that moment. Once the barriers of my incognito were broken down, words could not come fast enough.

"I am very glad to see thee once more," were all the words of welcome Mrs. Allen spoke, but the