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Page 11
"I don't know what you mean," she answered, with assumed carelessness.
"I mean that you went to punish me."
"You're sufficiently conceited," she replied. "Laura, come here; your
brother is teasing me."
"And do you think I want to be teased to?" replied that young lady,
pertly, as she walked off.
Madeline would have risen and left Henry, but she was too proud to let
him think that she was afraid of him.. Neither was she afraid, but she
was confused, and momentarily without her usual self-confidence. One
reason for her running off with Tom had been to get a chance to think. No
girl, however coolly her blood may flow, can be pressed to a man's
breast, wildly throbbing with love for her, and not experience some
agitation in consequence. Whatever may be the state of her sentiments,
there is a magnetism in such a contact which she cannot at once throw
off. That kiss had brought her relations with Henry to a crisis. It had
precipitated the necessity of some decision. She could no longer hold him
off, and play with him. By that bold dash he had gained a vantage-ground,
a certain masterful attitude which he had never held before. Yet, after
all, I am not sure that she was not just a little afraid of him, and,
moreover, that she did not like him all the better for it. It was such a
novel feeling that it began to make some things, thought of in connection
with him, seem more possible to her mind than they had ever seemed
before. As she peeped furtively at this young man, so suddenly grown
formidable, as he reclined carelessly on the ground at her feet, she
admitted to herself that there was something very manly in the sturdy
figure and square forehead, with the curly black locks hanging over it.
She looked at him with a new interest, half shrinking, half attracted, as
one who might come into a very close relation with herself. She scarcely
knew whether the thought was agreeable or not.
"Give me your hat," she said, "and I'll put some lilies in it."
"You are very good," said he, handing it to her.
"Does it strike you so?" she replied, hesitatingly. "Then I won't do it.
I don't want to appear particularly good to you. I didn't know just how
it would seem."
"Oh, it won't seem very good; only about middling," he urged, upon which
representation she took the hat.
He watched her admiringly as she deftly wreathed the lilies around it,
holding it up, now this way and now that, while she critically inspected
the effect.
Then her caprice changed. "I've half a mind to drop it into the river.
Would you jump after it?" she said, twirling it by the brim, and looking
over the steep bank, near which she sat, into the deep, dark water almost
perpendicularly below.
"If it were anything of yours instead of mine, I would jump quickly
enough," he replied.
She looked at him with a reckless gleam in her eyes.
"You mustn't talk chaff to me, sir; we'll see," and, snatching a glove
from her pocket, she held it out over the water. They were both of them
in that state of suppressed excitement which made such an experiment on
each other's nerve dangerous. Their eyes met, and neither flinched. If
she had dropped it, he would have gone after it.
"After all," she said, suddenly, "that would be taking a good deal of
trouble to get a mitten. If you are so anxious for it, I will give it to
you now;" and she held out the glove to him with an inscrutable face.
He sprang up from the ground. "Madeline, do you mean it?" he asked,
scarcely audibly, his face grown white and pinched. She crumpled the
obnoxious glove into her pocket.
"Why, you poor fellow!" she exclaimed, the wildfire in her eyes quenched
in a moment with the dew of pity. "Do you care so much?"
"I care everything," he said, huskily.
But, as luck would have it, just at that instant Will Taylor came running
up, pursued by Laura, and threw himself upon Madeline's protection. It
appeared that he had confessed to the possession of a secret, and on
being requested by Laura to impart it had flatly refused to do so.
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