CHAPTER LI.
“I am tired, Norman, and my head aches. I will not go to the opera to-night,” Thea said, languidly, laying her flushed face down on her husband’s shoulder.
Three weeks had passed since their coming to London, and Thea had tasted all the sweetness and triumph of a triumphal entrance upon society, which had crowned her in her first week with the laurels of belleship. Her husband’s name was already known in London through his popular books, and the brilliant social world immediately made a pet of his lovely girl-bride. Her sparkling beauty, her naïveté, her frank enjoyment of everything created a decided sensation, and Lady Edith’s daily mail was crowded with invitations for herself and guests.
“I have not gone so much in society for years,” she said, in her sweet, gentle fashion. “But it is a pleasure to chaperon you, my dear, you enjoy it so much, and I receive so many compliments on introducing you.” Then she sighed. “Ah, Thea, I might have been chaperoning a daughter of my own now if she had lived.”
“You had a daughter?” Thea cried, in surprise.
“Yes, a little angel. But she died when she was four years old. Oh, Thea, I can not talk to you of her; it is too painful,” the beautiful woman cried, bursting into tears.
Thea’s heart thrilled with passionate pity and tenderness. She put her arms about the drooping figure, and kissed the tear-wet face, whispering of her love and sympathy, until at last Lady Edith ceased her sobbing and murmured:
“If she had lived, she would have been like you, darling Thea. She had the same blue eyes and curling golden hair. I hope you will come to us some time in Devonshire, and I will show you her portrait.”
That night Thea told her husband of Lady Edith’s sorrow.
“I love her more and more,” she said. “This sorrow draws me nearer to her, because it makes me think of my own dear mother who lost me in my childhood by a fate more sad than death.”
It was not often that Thea referred to the mystery of herpast, but of late her thoughts had dwelt more frequently upon it. She wondered if her parents were yet alive—if they missed and mourned the child so strangely lost.
“If I could find my mother, I would like for her to resemble sweet Lady Edith,” she thought sometimes when she found a minute’s quiet in the whirl of gayety in which she was plunged—ball, opera, reception succeeding one another in bewildering rapidity.
But suddenly it all came to an end. In her tulle gowns and bare throat and arms the beautiful girl caught cold in damp, foggy London, and that evening when she laid her fair head on Norman’s shoulder, with the plaintive words, “I am tired—my head aches,” was the beginning of weeks of illness and pain when Thea lay, hot and feverish and sometimes delirious, on her bed, while Lady Edith, giving up society entirely, nursed her with all a mother’s devotion.
When the young wife began to get better the clever physician ordered her husband to take her back to Italy to recuperate.
“She has had quite enough of dancing and flirting and damp, muggy air for the present; now she must have some months of rest and quiet,” he said, in his autocratic way that nobody dreamed of disputing—least of all Norman de Vere, to whom he had revealed a fact that made the strong man’s pulses beat high with joy, while it increased, if possible, his love and devotion for his beautiful bride. The hope that Camille had disappointed long ago was to be realized at last. There would be a child to perpetuate the name of De Vere.
Lady Edith wept quietly at the news.
“It recalls old days to me,” she said, pathetically.