There was a lovely winter sunset that evening, and Hertford felt it a delight that his eyes took in the same scene as hers, and felt that the same emotions were aroused by it in both their hearts. When, at last, she spoke to the maid and rose to go below, he boldly resolved to make a move at the same time, and so he walked the length of the deck behind her, and followed her through the door. It was a delight to him even to catch the tones of her voice as she spoke to the maid. As they turned away in opposite directions, their looks just met. How was it possible, he asked himself, that he could feel what he did from the touch of her eyes, and she feel nothing? He did not believe it!
The next day they landed at New York, and he saw her met by friends whose ardent feeling showed how lovingly welcome she was. They whisked her away in a handsome carriage whose liveried servants, as Hertford observed, showed far more pleasure in their faces at welcoming the young lady, than her august and stately aunt.
Hertford was accorded a cordial welcome by his old friends, and the first thing he found himself called upon to do was to attend a large ball. He felt disinclined for it, but the possibility of seeing the lovely face that haunted every sleeping and waking minute made him consent. One of his former circle of friends insisted on taking him, and as they drove through the streets, he confided to Hertford the fact that he was in love, and that he expected to see at this ball the object of his affection, who, it appeared, was a rich and charming widow. The former of these attributes was intimated very delicately, but the whole thing seemed to Hertford, in his present romantic state of mind, revoltingly vulgar. How impossible it would be to confide to his companion the feeling that possessed his heart! Any allusion to the money struck him as being unpardonable—and he simply could not understand a man’s finding it possible to be in love with a widow. He thought of the lovely maiden on whom his heart was fixed, and the mere memory of her fresh young beauty made his pulses quicken. But he forced himself to appear interested, and wished his companion all success and happiness.
“The success would certainly secure the happiness,” was the answer, “but the trouble is there are a dozen fellows, besides me, trying to marry her, and she declares she will marry no one.”
As they got out of the carriage Hertford dismissed the subject from his mind. He had not yet got himself up to the point of making definite inquiries about the lady of his love, and it seemed to him now impossible even to make a confidant of a man whose nature could permit him to talk about being in love with a rich widow!
As the two men walked about the rooms together, each was conscious of being on the watch, but Hertford, for his part, gave no sign. He met a few old acquaintances who remembered him still, but the place was very barren and irksome to him, in spite of its magnificent display, when suddenly his companion gave his arm a jerk and said: “There she is!”
But Hertford, too, had caught sight of something that made his heart thump suffocatingly. A few paces from him was a tall, imposing, angular figure with a familiar Roman profile, and at her side was the adorable being he had so worshippingly enshrined in his heart, looking so beautiful in her white ball-dress that his eyes were dazzled with the delight of this vision. Again, as her eyes met his, he felt that their spirits had touched. Out of the delicious confusion caused by that glance, he was roused by the consciousness that he was being formally introduced.
“My friend Mr. Hertford, Miss Shelton—and Mrs. Etheridge.”
At the mention of the former name, the tall and sharp-faced lady made him a gracious, if angular, acknowledgment; at the mention of the latter, the beautiful young creature in white looked up into his face and gave him a frank and lovely smile. She seemed even to half-extend her hand, and was beginning to speak, when Hertford, bewildered, stunned, and only dimly conscious of what he was doing, made a hurried bow, and with some excuse, moved rapidly away.
With a numbed consciousness, and a bewilderment that scarcely allowed him to realize the objects before his eyes, he somehow got through the rooms and out into the street, and, finally, into his own room at the hotel. There he locked himself in, and, without turning up the light, threw himself upon his face on the bed. After ten minutes of such fierce unhappiness as he had never known before, he got up, turned on the light, and looked at his dishevelled figure in the glass. “Have I been crying?” he said to himself, seeing that his cheeks were flushed, his eyes red, and his face dampened either by tears, or by the sweat of pain. With his nature, romantic, sensitive, the blow was a terrible one.