CHAPTER XXXIV.
Norman waited something over half an hour, and found himself growing oddly impatient for his mother’s return. Aservant came in and lighted the gas, and then to pass the time away he sat down at the grand piano and began to play some dreamy chords that sounded strange in his own ears, it was so long since he had played before. But he was a little excited over his mother’s home-coming, it seemed.
“Oh, Mr. de Vere, you play the piano? I’m so glad!” cried a clear voice, with that indescribable ring of hope and youth in it that is so sweet to world-weary ears.
He turned his head. A white figure was coming toward him over the soundless Turkish carpet—Thea, in all the glow of her young beauty, smiling, eager.
She came close to his side. She laid her beautiful white hand, dimpled and ringless, on his arm, and said, frankly:
“Before I came I was angry with you. I did not care what you thought of me, but I—I have changed my mind. I’m going to tell you the truth in the beginning, for—somehow—I don’t want you to think as badly of me as you seemed to in that letter.”
He sat silent, looking into the flushed, eager face, not helping her by a word or even a smile.
But Thea went bravely on:
“Tom and Frank, you know? The Hintons said I used them outrageously. I didn’t mean to, and I think they misunderstood. We were brought up together, and they seemed just as much my brothers as Emmie did my sister. I loved them both, but not—that way,” vaguely.
“What way?” Norman de Vere asked in a puzzled tone. He looked keenly into the eager face, and Thea’s blush deepened to scarlet.
“Oh, you know,” she said, rather helplessly. “I didn’t like it when Tom tried to make love to me. It actually disgusted me. So I snubbed him every time, and—thinking Frank wasn’t so foolish—I treated him like a brother. The great goose thought I was in love with him, and wanted to marry him—the idea! So they both—Frank and Tom—proposed the same day. Of course, I said no. Emmie eavesdropped—the mean thing—and made a row about it.”
“But wasn’t there some one else—Emmie’s lover?” he suggested, quietly.
“So they wrote you that, too?” angrily. “But it wasn’t my fault! He was fickle, I think. He tired of Emmie, and wanted to pay me attention. I said no every time, but she wouldn’t believe me, so just once—to tease her because she had scolded me so—I danced with him as often as he asked me, and I—I was real spiteful toward Emmie that time, Iown it, but she provoked me! I never thought of flirting with anybody. The boys all seemed to like me. I suppose it was because I was fond of dancing, and could sing—”
She paused for breath, and the dark eyes watching her face seemed to say, mutely:
“Isn’t there more yet?”
Blushing deeper than ever, she added:
“Well, some of them made a great fuss over my curls! I can’t see why! I don’t like the color. I would have changed with Emmie any day for her beautiful brown braids!”
Norman de Vere smiled as his eyes wandered to the beautiful ripples of gold falling to the small, round waist. He thought there was some excuse for “the boys,” as she called them.
Thea drew a long, half-sobbing breath, and the small hand on his coat-sleeve unconsciously tightened its pressure.
“Do you believe me?” she asked, eagerly, anxiously. “I—I—can’t bear that you should believe their stories. It was just as I have told you. I never thought of flirting with anybody.”
She looked at him eagerly, fondly, almost as if she were going to fall into his arms, as in that long past time of babyhood that recurred to him vividly now. But he said to himself, amusedly:
“No doubt she looks on me as a brother, too. No wonder poor Frank Hinton lost his heart if she played sister in this sweet, confiding fashion. Little witch, she is very charming, and perhaps she does not really know her power.”
“Do you believe me?” Thea repeated, alarmed at his silence; and the frank innocence of her face compelled him to answer:
“Yes, I believe you. I think they wronged you.”
“Oh, thank you!” she cried, radiantly. “If you had not believed me I don’t think I could have borne to stay at Verelands. How good you are! But I remember that you were just as kind to me when I was a little child. You saved my life. I feel so grateful to you for that!”
He did not understand why he should feel that odd pique because she was talking to him so freely, so gratefully, so unrestrainedly, as if he were a hundred years old. Something made him say, daringly:
“Do you remember how you crept into my arms and kissed me the first day we met? You said you loved me, and fed me peppermint drops. Mr. Hinton said then that you were a little flirt.”
Her cheeks were pink as roses, and she removed the little hand from his arm in a furtive way.
“I remember that I was very fond of you,” she said, with a smile; but she did not meet his questioning glance. “How forward I must have seemed to you!” she added, constrainedly.
“No, indeed,” he began; but Thea was glad not to hear any more of his reminiscences, for Mrs. de Vere entered very opportunely at that moment, and the girl went to a seat where she sat in silence, furtively studying that darkly handsome face, and wishing he had not remembered she had made love to him when she was a mere baby.