"Do as I bid you. Bessmer, you can come in now. I suppose it is ordered for the best that young girls should be such hopeless simpletons!"
CHAPTER XV.
"No summer ever came back, and no two summers ever were alike. Times change, and people change; and if our hearts do not change as readily, so much the worse for us."—Nathaniel Hawthorne.
| "But, ah! who ever shunn'd by precedent |
| The destined ills she must herself assay?" |
| —Shakspeare. |
When Miss Vanhorn and her niece entered the ball-room, late in the evening, heads were turned to look at them; for the old woman wore all her diamonds, fine stones in old-fashioned settings, and shone like a little squat-figured East Indian god. Anne was beside her, clad in pale lavender—an evening costume simply made, but more like full dress than anything she had yet worn. Dexter came forward instantly, and asked her to dance. He thought he had never seen her look so well—so much like the other ladies; for heretofore there had been a marked difference—a difference which he had neither comprehended nor admired. Anne danced. New invitations came, and she accepted them. She was enjoying it all frankly, when through a window she caught sight of Heathcote on the piazza looking in. She happened to be dancing with Mr. Dexter, and at once she felt nervous in the thought that he might at any moment ask her some question about the day which she would find difficulty in answering. But she had not thought of this until her eyes fell on Heathcote.
Dexter had seen Heathcote too, and he had also seen her sudden nervousness. He was intensely vexed. Could Ward Heathcote, simply by looking through a window, make a girl grow nervous in that way, and a girl with whom he, Dexter, was dancing? With inward angry determination, he immediately asked her to dance again. But he need not have feared interference; Heathcote did not enter the room during the evening.
From the moment Miss Vanhorn heard the story of that day her method regarding her niece changed entirely; for Mr. Heathcote would never have remained with her, storm or no storm, through four or five hours, unless he either admired her, had been entertained by her, or liked her for herself alone, as men will like occasionally a frank, natural young girl.
According to old Katharine, Anne was not beautiful enough to excite his admiration, not amusing enough to entertain him; it must be, therefore, that he liked her to a certain degree for herself alone. Mr. Heathcote was not a favorite of old Katharine's, yet none the less was his approval worth having, and none the less, also, was he an excellent subject to rouse the jealousy of Gregory Dexter. For Dexter was not coming forward as rapidly as old Katharine had decreed he should come. Old Katharine had decided that Anne was to marry Dexter; but if in the mean time her girlish fancy was attracted toward Heathcote, so much the better. It would all the more surely eliminate the memory of that fatal name, Pronando. Of course Heathcote was only amusing himself, but he must now be encouraged to continue to amuse himself. She ceased taking Anne to the woods every day; she made her sit among the groups of ladies on the piazza in the morning, with worsted, canvas, and a pattern, which puzzled poor Anne deeply, since she had not the gift of fancy-work, nor a talent for tidies. She asked Heathcote to teach her niece to play billiards, and she sent her to stroll on the river-bank at sunset with him under a white silk parasol. At the same time, however, she continued to summon Mr. Dexter to her side with the same dictatorial manner she had assumed toward him from the first, and to talk to him, and encourage him to talk to her through long half-hours of afternoon and evening. The old woman, with her airs of patronage, her half-closed eyes, and frank impertinence, amused him more than any one at Caryl's. With his own wide, far-reaching plans and cares and enterprises all the time pushing each other forward in his mind, it was like coming from a world of giants to one of Lilliputians to sit down and talk with limited, prejudiced, narrow old Katharine. She knew that he was amused; she was even capable of understanding it, viewed from his own stand-point. That made no difference with her own.
After three or four days of the chaperon's open arrangement, it grew into a custom for Heathcote to meet Anne at sunset in the garden, and stroll up and down with her for half an hour. She was always there, because she was sent there. Heathcote never said he would come again; it was supposed to be by chance. But one evening Anne remarked frankly that she was very glad he came; her grandaunt sent her out whether she wished to come or not, and the resources of the small garden were soon exhausted. They were sitting in an arbor at the end of the serpentine walk. Heathcote, his straw hat on the ground, was braiding three spears of grass with elaborate care.