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Page 16
Henry could not rest until he had seen her again, and found out whether
her coldness was a mere freak of coquetry, or something more. One evening
when, thanks to the long twilight, it was not yet dark, he called again.
She came to the door with hat and gloves on. Was she going out? he asked.
She admitted that she had been on the point of going across the street to
make a call which had been too long delayed, but wouldn't be come in. No,
he would not detain her; be would call again. But he lingered a moment on
the steps while, standing on the threshold, she played with a button of a
glove. Suddenly he raised his eyes and regarded her in a quite particular
manner. She was suddenly absorbed with her glove, but he fancied that her
cheek slightly flushed. Just at the moment when he was calculating that
she could no longer well avoid looking up, she exclaimed--
"Dear me, how vexatious! there goes another of those buttons. I shall
have to sew it on again before I go," and she looked at him with a
charmingly frank air of asking for sympathy, at the same time that it
conveyed the obvious idea that she ought to lose no time in making the
necessary repairs.
"I will not keep you, then," he said, somewhat sadly, and turned away.
Was the accident intentional? Did she want to avoid him? he could not
help the thought, and yet what could be more frank and sunshiny than the
smile with which she responded to his parting salutation?
The next Sunday Laura and he were at church in the evening.
"I wonder why Madeline was not out. Do you know?" he said as they were
walking home.
"No."
"You're not nearly so friendly with her as you used to be. What's the
matter?"
She did not reply, for just then at a turning of the street, they met the
young lady of whom they were speaking. She looked smiling and happy, and
very handsome, with a flush in either cheek, and walking with her was the
new drug-clerk. She seemed a little confused at meeting Henry, and for a
moment appeared to avoid his glance. Then, with a certain bravado, oddly
mingled with a deprecating air, she raised her eyes to his and bowed.
It was the first intimation be had had of the true reason of her
alienation. Mechanically he walked on and on, too stunned to think as
yet, feeling only that there was a terrible time of thinking ahead.
"Hadn't we better turn back, hear?" said Laura, very gently.
He looked up. They were a mile or two out of the village on a lonely
country road. They turned, and she said, softly, in the tone like the
touch of tender fingers on an aching spot--
"I knew it long ago, but I hadn't the heart to tell you. She set her cap
at him from the first. Don't take it too much to heart. She is not good
enough for you."
Sweet compassion! Idle words! Is there any such sense of ownership,
reaching even to the feeling of identity, as that which the lover has in
the one he loves? His thoughts and affections, however short the time,
had so grown about her and encased her, as the hardened clay imbeds the
fossil flower buried ages ago. It rather seems as if he had found her by
quarrying in the depths of his own heart than as if he had picked her
from the outside world, from among foreign things. She was never foreign,
else he could not have had that intuitive sense of intimateness with her
which makes each new trait which she reveals, while a sweet surprise, yet
seem in a deeper sense familiar, as if answering to some pre-existing
ideal pattern in his own heart, as if it were something that could not
have been different. In after years he may grow rich in land and gold,
but he never again will have such sense of absolute right and eternally
foreordained ownership in any thing as he had long years ago in that
sweet girl whom some other fellow married. For, alas! this seemingly
inviolable divine title is really no security at all. Love is liable to
ten million suits for breach of warranty. The title-deeds he gives to
lovers, taking for price their hearts' first-fruits, turn out no titles
at all. Half the time, title to the same property is given to several
claimants, and the one to finally take possession is often enough one who
has no title from love at all.
Henry had been hit hard, but there was a dogged persistence in his
disposition that would not allow him to give up till he had tested his
fortune to the uttermost. His love was quite unmixed with vanity, for
Madeline had never given him any real reason to think that she loved him,
and, therefore, the risk of an additional snub or two counted for nothing
to deter him. The very next day he left the shop in the afternoon and
called on her. Her rather constrained and guarded manner was as if she
thought he had come to call her to account, and was prepared for him. He,
on the contrary, tried to look as affable and well satisfied as if he
were the most prosperous of lovers. When he asked her if she would go out
driving with him that afternoon, she was evidently taken quite off her
guard. For recrimination she was prepared, but not for this smiling
proposal. But she recovered herself in an instant, and said--
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