CHAPTER XXVI.
REGINALD’S PROPOSAL.
Eva sank into a low chair and hid her face in her hands. The sound of her low, distressful sobbing filled the long drawing-room. It was a complete breakdown—one that her aunt had never witnessed in her before.
She was so young and childish when her father brought her home, she had never suspected a lover in her past, much less the tragedy of woe that had sent her into a madhouse and left its fatal impress on her life.
She stood beside the window, pained and doubtful how to offer further comfort, and wondering if it might not be a good time to speak a word in her stepson’s favor.
Fortune favored her, for just then she saw him in front of the house in his splendid new sleigh, with his pair of Kentucky thoroughbreds in their glittering, gold-mounted harness. She cried out eagerly:
“Oh, Eva, dear, the sun has come out, and here is Reggie with his new Kentucky grays to take you for a sleigh ride! Dry your eyes quickly, before he comes in!”
Eva dabbed her eyes with her tiny lace handkerchief, but they were still dim with the tears she hadshed when the young man entered through the heavy portières, tall, elegant, handsome, in his long fur-lined overcoat.
He greeted them with effusion, for he was radiant with good spirits, having decided to put his fate to the test to-day, scarcely dreaming of a refusal.
“You will come with me for a spin through the park, will you not, Eva? It is the finest day I ever saw—crisp underfoot and bright overhead! It will put new life in you. Come, we must not lose a minute of this glorious opportunity!”
“Go, dear, and get ready. It will brighten your spirits,” added her aunt, so eagerly that she did not know how to refuse.
She went slowly to her room, but while she was changing her silken gown for a cloth one, and wrapping herself warmly in a sealskin cloak, she was thinking ruefully:
“If I go I cannot keep him from proposing to me! He will be sure to seize upon the opportunity. I have evaded him so long! And I grieve to wound his heart by a refusal, but I had as well have it over and done with, since it is inevitable, sooner or later.”
With a sigh of resignation she went down to her handsome suitor, wondering at her own indifference to him, and wishing she could like him well enough to marry him and please everybody.
It did not occur to her, as it might have done to many a society girl, to accept him without love for the sake of all the advantages he had to offer.
In the primitive society in which she had been raised, no young girl ever thought of marrying for any other reason but love. And Eva was true to the pure instincts of her nature. Her heart must go with her hand.
But she dreaded Reggie’s pain and auntie’s and papa’s disappointment when she had refused her suitor. She hoped they would not scold her, or sulk, as auntie sometimes did when things did not go to her liking.
With these rueful thoughts in her mind Eva was helped into the sleigh that went flying over the smooth crust of snow to Central Park, that was already filled with a joyful throng.
“See how enviously the fellows all nod at me! What wouldn’t they give to be in my place by your side, Eva?” chuckled Reggie, in high good humor with himself and the world.
“Oh, no, it is just your fancy,” she answered, blushing at his open praise.
“Not a bit of it! They are all in love with you, Eva. Do you know what the fellows say at my club? That you are the prettiest girl that ever came to New York.”
“They are very kind, I’m sure, but it cannot be true!” she answered shyly.
The handsome grays were just spinning along, the young pair in the sleigh were bowing and smiling every other minute to some of their acquaintances, the sky was blue and clear, the air was full of exhilaratingozone and the music of sleigh bells. Somehow it all got into Eva’s blood like wine, and she did not feel so miserable as she did an hour before. It was pleasant, sleigh riding with such fine horses and such a handsome young man, and, like most any other young girl, she enjoyed being told that she was fair to look upon.
A little pensive smile curved her sweet, red lips and encouraged her admirer to proceed:
“It’s true, every word of it! You are really the prettiest girl in New York, Eva. I said so the first time I saw you, and I say so still. The prettiest and the sweetest.”
“It’s coming! I’m so sorry!” she thought with secret dismay, having grown in a year of belleship quite familiar with the signs.
“Oh, no,” she answered deprecatingly.
“But I say yes,” he insisted, trying to look down ardently into the dark eyes that were persistently turned away from him, while he continued:
“You know well enough all I think of you, Eva! The first time we met you wiled my heart away with one look of your big, innocent dark eyes, like a wondering child’s, and I have been in your toils ever since! But I tried to be patient. I waited till you had seen the world and had had your pick and choice of lovers, and refused one after another till I thought: ‘I will speak now, for there may be a chance for me.’ Is there, little Eva? Do you love me? Will you be my wife?”
She knew it all before, as he said; all his love and his hopes. How could she help it when his devotion was so plain?
And the pain of refusing him, the sorrow of dashing his hopes to earth, shook her heart with such pity that she did not know how to answer him; her tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of her mouth.
“You do not speak, my darling!” he added anxiously. “Why do you turn your eyes away? Are you coquetting with me? Does silence give consent?”
“Oh, no, no!” she managed to blurt out, in her alarm lest he consider himself accepted.
Reginald Hamilton’s face paled to the hue of ashes at those words from Eva’s lips, and, gripping the lines more tightly to restrain the spirited prancing of the grays that hindered hearing, he muttered eagerly:
“I don’t think I understood you rightly, Eva! Did you say yes?”
She gathered all her reluctant strength for the answer and said gently:
“No, no; I cannot marry you, because I do not love you!”
He had no more looked to be refused than he had expected the blue heavens to fall and blot him out of existence.
His brain went dizzy with the shock, his senses seemed to reel, a fury of indignation shook him so that he was obliged to wreak vengeance instantly on something or other.
Eva, shrinking by his side, heard a stifled imprecationfrom his blanched lips as he caught the horse-whip in a shaking hand and struck the grays sharply over the back.
The spirited animals had never brooked the lash. They bolted instantly, tearing the sleigh along like mad, to the horror of every beholder.