The very thought brought a vivid scarlet to Neva’s face in place of her strange pallor, and as if frightened at her own thought, she arose and went to the open window, and leaned upon the casement.
Lady Wynde stole back to her couch, and she was sitting upon it the picture of languor when Neva returned, very pale now and subdued, and with a shadow of trouble in her eyes.
“Have you finished your letter so soon, dear?” asked the step-mother, sweetly. “I believe I can guess what were the last injunctions to you of your dear father. He often told me of his plans for you. Shall you do as he desired?”
Again the glowing scarlet flush covered Neva’s cheeks, lips, even her slender throat.
“My father’s last wishes are a command to me,” she said, slowly, yet as if her mind were quite made up to obey the supposed wishes of her father.
“It was Sir Harold’s request that you should marry a young man in whom he took considerable interest—one Rufus Black, was it not?” asked Lady Wynde.
Neva uttered a low assent.
“And you will marry this young fellow?”
“My father liked him well enough to make him my—my husband,” said Neva. “I can trust my father’s judgment in all things. I never disobeyed papa in his life, and I cannot disobey him now that he seems to speak to me from Heaven. If—if Rufus Black ever proposes marriage to me, and if he is still worthy of the good opinion papa formed of him, I—I—”
Her voice broke down, as she remembered the fair, boyish face, the warm blue eyes, the tawny hair and noble air of Lord Towyn, and again with inward shame the question framed itself in her mind—why could not her father have recommended to her affection young Arthur Towyn, whom her father had loved next to his own son? Why must he desire her to marry a man she had never seen?