“You don’t make me afraid of him; you only make me pity him as I would a fierce hound who had been unwisely treated. If Harry were to crush my face, as he said, in a fit of passion, it would be the one thing which would make him treat me tenderly ever afterward.”
Colonel Richardson looked surprised.
“You almost make me bold enough to wonder——”
“Why I left him? I suppose my strongest reason really was that he was unbearable to me. His tenderness was odious as his anger, and worse than his neglect. I should dislike him more than ever now; but I should know how to treat him more wisely.”
Colonel Richardson understood women too well to say more on that subject. He turned the conversation.
“Mrs. Falconer expects her brother William next week,” he said. “Shall I bring him to the theater and see if he knows you?”
Annie caught eagerly at the idea of seeing her favorite William again. She had nothing to fear from his knowing where she was, and she was anxious to find out whether he was growing into a less worthless man than his brothers. He was now eighteen. She was anxious, too, to learn whether he still retained the affectionate remembrance of her. So her last words to Colonel Richardson were a repetition of her injunction to bring him to the theater without any warning that he would see her. She did not doubt that he would know her, especially as he was the one member of the family who knew she was on the stage.
The season was nearly over now, and night after night she scanned the audience anxiously in the hope of seeing those two faces she knew; but it was not until the very last night of all that, as she came on to the stage, she saw a tall young man in the stalls half rise from his seat, with the exclamation, just loud enough for her to hear—“Annie!”
At the end of the street William met her, and could hardly be restrained from embracing her, regardless of appearances. He was broader, manlier in figure; but in his manner to her he was exactly the same as before. She was thankful to see that he did not look dissipated, and he hastened to assure her that he had observed all her commands, that he read a great deal and “quite liked it.” He had not lived much at Elms, having passed most of his time with his uncle, his mother’s brother, in Ireland.
“And, Annie, I’m not going to lead an idle life. I’m going to be a soldier.”