But she had called him Allan, the name had seemed to come spontaneously from her lips, as he had called her Betty! He felt shaken, life had suddenly become fantastic to him, nothing seemed very real. It was after all a world of dreams; this too, was a dream. He could almost have welcomed the voice of Dalabey, but it did not come. So she stood there, with bent head and he saw something fluttering in her little hand.
"You—you have brought me a message?" he said, and his voice sounded strangely hoarse and discordant.
"Yes, sir, from—from my Lady!" She dropped him a little curtsey, he could see the flush still in her cheeks, could see that it even stained her white neck and her little ears. He rose and went to her and stretched out his hand. He hoped that she would look up but she did not, never once were the blue eyes lifted to his own. Why had she come, why had she come? He had not wanted her to come, yet she had come into his life after all. She was here, standing before him, not in the picturesque trappings of a byegone century, but in her modern dress, still he knew her well enough.
"Betty, Betty!" Betty who had kissed him, who had told him that she loved him.
He had hoped once that he might meet her in real life. He had pictured her, tried to dream that dream again, yet had never succeeded. And now that at last he saw her, could stretch out his hand and touch her, he knew that it were better that she had not come.
He put out his hand and took the telegram from her, yet did not look at her.
The little head seemed to droop lower, he could see the childish breast heaving under the pretty white apron. She dropped him a curtsey humbly.
"You are Betty!" he said. "And you called me——"
"Oh sir, oh sir forgive me. Indeed—indeed I du not know what made me, sir!" Now the blue eyes were lifted to him in pitiful appeal.
"Indeed—oh indeed, sir, I didn’t know what I were saying! ’Twasn’t as if I myself spoke, ’twas as if—if summut in me made me say it—oh sir—indeed, I couldn’t help it! I—I don’t know what made me du it!"
How blue her eyes were, how they shone and glittered now with the tears that clung to the sweeping, upturned lashes, how pitiful in its appeal for pardon was the little face! He looked at her with a feeling of pity, and yet not of pity only. It was she! the girl of his dreams, the girl who had come to him and called him "Allan, her Allan," this girl a servant in the house, who had come to him this day in real life and had called him by his name.