“I can afford to be merciful now,” thought Glen. “Good heavens! what a blind fool I have been! Why, she is worth a thousand Clotildes, and I was a fool not to see her superiority before!”
He paused just then to ask himself whether he were not still blind and foolish with conceit, for why should Marie care for him? But just then his eyes caught hers, and an electric glance made his pulse throb and hopes run high, as he told himself that it was no conceit upon his part, but the truth, and that after all he had not really loved Clotilde.
“No, my dear madame,” he said to himself; “it was a fancy such as a weak man like your humble servant is prone to indulge in. Yes,” he continued, and there was a faint smile on his lip as he caught sight of Clotilde just then watching him; “I thank my stars that I escaped your wiles. You are as handsome a woman as I ever met, and I certainly thought I loved you, but, by Jove, what an escape I have had!”
Glen’s thoughts were in his eyes, upon which Clotilde’s were fixed, but she did not interpret them aright; not even when he gazed at her almost mockingly, as if asking her if she were satisfied with her choice, to which he bade her welcome.
“By Jove, what will Dick say?” thought Glen, as he saw the little fellow cross to Marie. “Poor boy! Well, he will have to get over it, just as he has got over a score of other tender passions. And I thought he said he was in too much trouble about his sisters to think of matrimony for himself.”
The rooms grew more crowded, and Glen longed to cross to Marie’s side, but somehow he was always prevented, save for one five minutes, when Clotilde was by the entrance receiving some new arrivals. Those five minutes, though, were five intervals of joy during which very little was said, but that little was enough to endorse most fully without a positive declaration the ideas that had so lately begun to unfold.
The evening wore rapidly on. Marie was standing by the piano talking to little Dick Millet, and her eyes met those of Glen gazing at her across the room.
He was about to answer the summons they seemed to convey, when Lord Henry Moorpark, looking exceedingly old and yellow by the light of the chandeliers, but gentlemanly and courtly as ever, rose from his seat and crossed to where Marie stood, entering into conversation, as in his sad and deferential way he seemed to have set himself to hover about in the presence of the woman he loved.
“A very, very bright and pleasant party, my child,” he said tenderly. “I hope you are enjoying it.”
“Oh, so much!” cried Marie, darting a grateful look in his eyes. For it was so noble and good of him, she told herself, and she felt that she quite loved the tender-hearted old nobleman for the generous way in which he had seemed to sink his lover’s love in that of a guardian for a child.