She made a strong effort to greet Wynne frankly, and to conceal from him the feeling which his coming excited. She would have died rather than show him how glad she was that he had come. She saw the eagerness of his glance when he entered, and she felt the warmth of his greeting. She noted the change in his manner, and fancied it arose from his fear lest he betray himself. She set herself to overcome his reserve; and when she had succeeded she sprang up with a gay laugh, light-hearted and full of a delicious, incomprehensible pleasure. She wanted to break out into singing, so sweet is the delight of new love unrecognized save as simple joy in living.
The entrance of Mehitabel with the card of Mr. Stanford brought her back to earth.
"Already?" she said, feeling as if she were defrauded that thus her moment of enjoyment was cut short.
She could not trust herself for more than a word of excuse to Wynne, but hurried to her chamber to collect her thoughts and to examine her toilet before she descended to her visitor. Some inward personality seemed to be trying properly to frame the speech by which she should make Stanford understand that it was idle for him to hope longer; while all the time she was thinking of the man whom she had just left.
Stanford was holding out his hands to the blaze in the fireplace when she entered the parlor, for the morning was a sharp one. Berenice saw with appreciation how satisfactory he was in all his appointments and in his bearing; how well kept and how well bred. She felt, however, for the first time that he was perhaps a little too faultlessly attired for a man, and she glanced at his cleanly shaven cheek with an acute memory of the stout black stubble on the face she had left behind her, yet carried still in the eye of her mind.
"Good-morning," she said, giving the visitor her hand, and making her manner at once as cordial and as unemotional as possible. "It was too good of you to come all the way up here in this cold weather, just to see me."
He pressed her hand with eagerness, and so meaningly that the color flushed into her cheeks. His air seemed to her to have in it a suggestion of intimacy which was irritating beyond endurance.
"There was nothing good about it," he answered. "I had to assure myself by actual sight that you were safe; and, besides, it gave me an excuse for coming, and I was only too glad of that."
"Sit down," Berenice said, ignoring the compliment. "It really was frightful; but I came through safe. Grandmother wouldn't let me see the paper this morning; but I know the details must have been horrible."
She grew grave as she spoke. She seemed again to see the whole terrible sight. The wreck, thrusting out tongues of fire, the dead and the dying strewn about on the snow; Wynne, at her feet, insensible and ghastly in the uncertain light. She shuddered and drew in her breath.