CHAPTER XXXV.
After that first night, Norman de Vere found no occasion for unconscious pique at Thea’s sisterly frankness toward him. By the next morning her manner had changed indefinably. It had developed into a pretty dignity that just escaped shyness, and was almost reserve. She tacitly avoided her handsome guardian and clung to his mother with all the tenderness of a daughter.
But he knew that for the first week or two she was engaged about half her time in reading his own works, for his mother had come herself to the library for them.
“Sweetheart is so anxious to read them, but she would not come herself lest she should disturb you,” she said.
“Good little girl!” her son muttered, dryly, and went on with his scribbling; but more than once that day he wondered if Thea was reading his books, and how she liked them.
“But I shall not ask her, since she is so silly as to pretend to be afraid of me,” he thought, severely; and tried to dismiss her from his mind, chafing to himself at the persistency with which her image came between him and his work.
Why should the blue eyes haunt him so when they scarcely saw each other save at the table, for he spent half of his time in his library, the other half walking or riding unsociably by himself, with now and then an evening at the Author’s Club or theater. Thea and his mother rode a great deal, too, but it was always in the elder lady’s two-seated pony-phaeton, which she drove herself. There was only room for two, and in any case Mrs. de Vere would not have asked him to make one of the party. She vaguely felt that Norman was not to be annoyed for the sake of a simple school-girl who seemed to him a mere child.
Norman saw it all—his mother’s care that he should not be bothered by Thea, and the girl’s entire acquiescence. Before she came he would have been pleased to know that it would be this way. It piqued him now.
“I do not want her to fear me now—she confided in me so sweetly when she was a child,” was the excuse he made to himself for his pique.
But Thea firmly determined on being “good,” as she phrased it—gave him not the least trouble. She subdued her joyous spirits when he was by; she did her daily practicing on the piano when he was out for his walk; when the neighbors began to call, and the young people found her out, she was demurely social; she held firmly in check the gayety that in Virginia had earned her the title of coquette.
“He said he believed in me, and he shall have no cause to change his mind,” the girl said to herself, when the temptation to be recklessly gay assailed her.
She had grown morbidly anxious to appear at her best in those dark eyes, whose grave glances haunted her dreams by night and her thoughts by day.
The same strange attraction that had drawn the two together so long ago was at work now—had been magnetizing both ever since that night when they had met again; but both were struggling against it, both called it by a colder name. To her it was gratitude, to him it was anxiety lest she should be repelled by one she had once trusted in so tenderly.
Across the gulf of reserve and apparent indifference each heart clamored eagerly for the other. Thea knew that he was always in her thoughts—that he was the handsomest man she had ever seen, the most famous, the most cultured. She lay awake at nights to think of him, and sometimes the snowy pillow was wet with tears.
“Oh, what is the matter with me? Surely, I am not pining for any one of those who treated me so harshly!” she would sigh, in plaintive wonder. Then, pityingly: “I wonder if Emmie has caught Charley back. I hope so. It must be sad to love in vain. I am sorry now for Frank and Tom. Perhaps I did not refuse them kindly enough. It seemed so ridiculous, because I was so young then” (she was about four months older now).
And one day Norman saw in the mail that was about to be sent out two letters addressed respectively to Frank and Tom Hinton. He called Thea into the library.
“Are you renewing your flirtation with your jilted lovers?” he asked, severely.
She blushed as she saw the letters in his hand.
“Oh, no, indeed! How can you think it? Please let me explain,” she cried, eagerly, and he waited curiously. The big, lustrous blue eyes lifted to his face, and somehow the glance they met in return held them fixed, though Thea trembled with strange pleasure at her own boldness; so she said: “I will look you straight in the eyes, Mr. de Vere, then you will see I am telling you the truth. I have been thinking lately that I was cruel to those poor boys—”
“And that you love them, after all?” he interrupted, harshly.
“Oh, no, no—never! I am sorry I laughed at them, that is all. I think now I ought to have refused them more sweetly—more kindly—so I am writing just to ask them to forgive me for laughing at them.”
Her eyes withdrew themselves reluctantly from his, and the long-fringed lashes swept her cheeks. She looked adorable.
“I never heard of such nonsense!” he exclaimed, but not sternly. “If you will take my advice, Sweetheart, you will put the letters into the fire. Your cruelty helps them to forget you. Send them, and you will only have Tom and Frank at your feet again.”
“Do you really think so?” she cried, snatching the letters and tearing them to fragments in a hurry.
Her cheeks were glowing and her heart beat fast. How strange, yet sweet, it seemed to be here alone in the library with him—sitting in that chair before him like a little culprit, yet a happy one withal, for only to be near him was an exquisite delight to the girl! Her heart throbbed faster and the blood ran quicker through her veins with painful pleasure, at his mere presence.
Norman in his arm-chair, with his pen waiting for him on the desk, was in no hurry to begin writing. He was wishing he could think of something that would detain her yet longer. How the fair face and golden head seemed to light up the somber library!
She, on her part, was thinking that she must go now—that he had nothing more to say to her. But she—she had something else to say to him, if only she could muster up courage.
She glanced bashfully at him under the long lashes. Yes, he was regarding her attentively. The color flew warmly to her cheek in the dread lest he was remembering again with amusement that she had adored him when she was a very, very little girl.
But she kept her seat despite a sudden impulse to fly. She must tell him now.
“Oh, I am very sorry, Mr. de Vere, that—that—about Frank—you know. I couldn’t—couldn’t—” she stopped helplessly, her face like a rose.
“I am sure I do not understand what you are trying to tell me. Why are you so afraid of me? I’m not an ogre, child. Go on. I shall not scold you, what ever you confess.”
The sudden, kind, reassuring smile was a wonderful help. She could look at him again—she could say without blundering:
“I’m sorry you were disappointed in me—about Frank, you know. I’ve heard all about it—how you educated him for a profession, thinking—thinking to provide a nice husband for me. It was so kind in you. Were you very angry with me? I hope you can forgive me,” anxiously.
He bit his lip with vexation. So his mother had betrayed him.
“You don’t say a word, Mr. de Vere. I suppose you are vexed still. Perhaps you did not want me here, breaking up the peace and quiet you had with your mother before I came. This is what I wanted to say. It isn’t likely I will ever marry anybody, so you can’t get rid of me that way. But, please, can’t I go away and support myself? I could teach music. I have a talent for that, and for millinery, too. I—would—rather go, please, because I’m afraid I’m in your way here.”
The big blue eyes shone pathetically through starting tears.
Norman held out his hand to her as if she had been a child, and said, huskily:
“Sweetheart!”
She arose and went to him with the docility of a child, and put her dimpled white hand in his. When he pressed it tightly he felt how she was trembling.
“Dear Little Sweetheart, I have wounded you,” he murmured, tenderly. “Forgive me, child. That was a foolish fancy of mine to provide for your future. But it was different then. I did not know it would ever be so that you could come back to live at Verelands. I am glad you did not marry Frank Hinton. I hope you will never marry any one. I want you to stay always at Verelands to make the sunshine brighter and the flowers sweeter, as they have been ever since you came.”
His arm slipped around the slender, throbbing waist and pressed it gently.
“Never think yourself unwelcome again,” he whispered.“You must never be afraid of me again. Stay at Verelands and be my mother’s daughter, Sweetheart, and my own dear little sister.”
He turned and pressed his lips to the tear-wet cheek, and it seemed to him that it suddenly grew cold, the fair head drooped against him, the form grew limp in his arms. For a moment he held her quite unconscious, then she revived and struggled from his clasp.
“Let me go,” she said, with sudden coldness; and the next moment, alone in her room, she fell sobbing on the bed.
“His sister!” she moaned. “His sister, dear Heaven! just in the moment when I realized I loved him and hoped—hoped—he was going to ask me to be his wife!”