CHAPTER VIII.
HEART STRUGGLES.
Philip Desha had a will as firm as iron when he made up his mind, and he carried out to the letter his plan for avoiding beautiful Viola, and breaking his heart loose from her chains.
Besides, his pride had been stimulated by a caution Mrs. Wellford had given him the very day of the skating-party, and shortly before the accident:
“Don’t carry out the simile of the moth, Cousin Phil, and singe your wings in the candle’s flame.”
Her glance at Viola pointed the remark, and he flushed warmly as he answered:
“Have no fear for me.”
Mrs. Wellford, who was a very charming young woman, continued gravely:
“She is wonderfully fascinating, and I do not mind confessing that I love her dearly. To me she appears a thoughtless child, almost innocent of intentional wrong-doing, but the fact remains that she has given pain to many true, loving hearts by encouraging their suits only to reject them at the last, after leading them on with all the tactics of the most finished coquette. I have even heard it said that she intends to have a hundred rejections to boast of before she marries.”
“She will never add my name to the list,” he replied, bitterly.
“Do not be too sure. She can be irresistible when she chooses, the little siren!” she exclaimed; and just then some one joined them, and no more was said on the subject.
But Philip Desha understood that his cousin’s pride was enlisted lest Miss Van Lew should have the triumph of adding him to the list of her victims.
“It shall never be,” he said to himself, passionately, and held his course resolutely, keeping away from every place where he was likely to meet the little beauty.
“By and by I shall have conquered myself, then I can meet her again with indifference,” he promised himself.
But that by and by was slow in coming, he could not deny that to himself.
He thought one reason was that he heard so much about her, for the young men found her beauty a favorite topic.
She scarcely ever missed a social function, and he heard more than ever of her beauty and her coquetry.
“She is at her old trade of winning hearts. Apparently she has forgotten her pretty penitence that day for her petty vanities,” he thought, bitterly.
He never forgot the day when he made his first speech of any length in Congress, and lifting his eyes to the galleries, suddenly saw her sitting in the crowd with her great luminous eyes fixed on his face, apparently drinking in every word he uttered with as keen an interest as if the political questions of the day were her favorite topics.
It gave him a great start to see her there so unexpectedly, and to meet the intent gaze that was so flattering to his oratorical powers.
For a moment his voice broke with sheer surprise, and he swept his hand across his face to hide the deep flush that mantled it, only to be succeeded by deathly pallor as he went on with his speech, but not so eloquently as before, palpably unnerved by her presence and her scrutiny—the bashfulness of a true man in love.
For fight his passion as he might, Philip Desha had not yet succeeded in ousting it out from his heart.
It was six weeks since he had seen her, but he thrilled and trembled with emotion now as he bowed to the speaker of the house, and resumed his seat amid the applause of the galleries, but not daring to look up again lest he meet the gaze of her speaking eyes and be outdone by her fatally luring beauty.
It seemed to him that he could feel her eyes burning on his face, wonderingly, reproachfully, that he had ignored her so long. Strong man as he was, he trembled, feeling that he had to begin all over again the struggle with his heart.
“There must be something uncanny about the girl. She has bewitched me. I can not get free from her Lorelei spell,” he told himself, with something like fear of his enslaver, and suddenly rising, he hurried from the hall as though to escape some evil influence.
Unfortunately he was detained by some one in the lobby several minutes, and presently getting out into the corridor, started back in dismay, meeting Viola and her aunt face to face.