“Quite sure,” replied Mrs. Derwent. “She tries to hide it, but I can see that his attentions are most unwelcome to her. If he happens, in handing her something, to touch her accidentally, she visibly shrinks from him. Oh, Mr. Norman has noticed this as well as I have, and it hurts him.”
“And yet she cannot bear him out of her sight, you say?”
“Exactly. As long as he is within call she is quiet and contented, and in his absence she fidgets. And yet she does not care to talk to him, and does so with an effort that is perfectly apparent to me. The poor fellow is pathetically in love, and I can see that he suffers keenly from her indifference.”
“I suppose he expects his patient devotion to win the day in the end.”
“I don’t think he does. I felt it my duty in the face of May’s behaviour—which is unusual, to say the least—to tell him that I didn’t believe she cared for him or meant to marry him. ’I quite understand that,’ was all he answered. But why he does not expect her to do so, is what I should like to know. As she evidently can’t live without him, I don’t see why she won’t live with him.
“But now, Dr. Fortescue,” added Mrs. Derwent, rising to leave the room, “let us go to my daughter. She is prepared to see you. But your visit is purely social, remember.”
A curtain of honeysuckle and roses protected one end of the piazza from the rays of an August sun, and it was in this scented nook, amid surroundings whose peace and beauty contrasted strangely with those of our first meeting, that I at last saw May Derwent again. She lay in a hammock, her golden head supported by a pile of be-ruffled cushions, and with one small slipper peeping from under her voluminous skirts. At our approach, however, she sprang to her feet, and came forward to meet us. I had thought and dreamt of her for six long weary days and nights, and yet, now that she stood before me, dressed in a trailing, white gown of some soft material, slightly opened at the neck and revealing her strong, white, young throat, her firm, rounded arms bare to the elbow, and with one superb rose (I devoutly hoped it was one of those I had sent her) as her only ornament, she made a picture of such surpassing loveliness as fairly to take my breath away. I had been doubtful as to how she would receive me, so that when she smilingly held out her hand, I felt a great weight roll off my heart. Her manner was perfectly composed, much more so than mine in fact. A beautiful blush alone betrayed her embarrassment at meeting me.
“Why, Dr. Fortescue,” exclaimed Alice Cowper, “you never told me that you knew May.”
“Our previous acquaintance was so slight that I did not expect Miss Derwent to remember me.” I answered evasively, wondering, as I did so, whether May had confided to her friend where and when it was that we had met.