CHAPTER XLI.
Norman called at Orange Grove every day after that; but it was always the same. The handsome Miss Bentley persisted in appropriating his visit entirely to herself, and gave him no chance for any tender passages with Thea.
They even persuaded him to come sometimes in the evening when they had impromptu dancing, the girls taking turns at playing the piano. He was even beguiled into taking the floor himself now and then, and it was wonderful how much younger and blither it made him feel. Thea said, too:
“It pleases me to see you dance. I feel then that you do not look on amusements of that kind as being altogether frivolous and silly.”
After that she might have beguiled him into almost any boyish folly, so far was he carried away by her girlish spirits. It seemed to him that he retained just enough reason to prevent him from making open love to the little beauty.
“She has grown so frank and confiding that I must not drive her from me by showing her what is in my heart,” he thought, blindly, for Thea’s assertion that she did not desire to be called his sister had made him shy of asserting any unusual interest in one so capricious.
“I must keep my place as elderly guardian, and she will reward me with unlimited confidences and frankness,” he thought, bitterly.
Mrs. de Vere in the meanwhile was superintending arrangements for the grand ball that was to come off at Verelands. She thought she saw in this an augury that Norman was waking up to a better frame of mind from the torpor and world-weariness that had possessed him so long.
“Can there be a woman in the case?” thought the shrewd old lady.
Her thoughts flew to the woman who had been sleeping the last long sleep in Greenwood for two years.
“Poor Camille!” she murmured, pityingly. “If he ever marries again I trust his judgment of his second wife will be kinder than it was of his first.”
She was pleased at the thought that Norman contemplated a second marriage. She fell to wondering whether it was Thea West or Miss Bentley.
“Miss Bentley would be the most suitable certainly in point of age,” she mused. “But no one can tell. These old widowers are usually most anxious to secure a sixteen-year-old girl.”
A slight frown wrinkled her brow. She feared that happiness in marriage could not exist with so great disparity in age. When she thought of Norman marrying Thea West there came to her some suggestive lines:
“Thy life is spring, but autumn mine,Thy hope all flowers, mine bitter fruit.”
“Thy life is spring, but autumn mine,Thy hope all flowers, mine bitter fruit.”
“Thy life is spring, but autumn mine,Thy hope all flowers, mine bitter fruit.”
“Thy life is spring, but autumn mine,
Thy hope all flowers, mine bitter fruit.”
But she did not speak to Norman of her hopes and fears, as she would have done in earlier days. He had always maintained something like reserve toward her since the long-past-time when she had blamed him for harshness toward his wife.
So she went on with alacrity superintending the arrangements at Verelands for the ball. In old times many splendid entertainments had been held within its walls, and she made up her mind that this should be second to none.
Thea must have a new dress, too, for the occasion, as it would be a sort of coming-out affair for her. Mrs. de Vere ordered for her a simple but effective costume—a white tulle bordered with narrow white satin ribbons, worn over a white silk slip, and plenty of lilies of the valley as garnitures.
“She will be the sweetest thing in the house,” she thought, proudly. “I never saw any one so perfectly lovely as thisnameless girl. I suppose it is sure to be a match between her and Cameron Bentley.”