“Our good hostess has been dreaming of soldiers, Mr. Van Hupfeldt,” put in Mrs. Mordaunt, lightly, “and it seems that such a dream always brings good news to her guests; so my daughter is feeling the effects of it.”
Van Hupfeldt looked puzzled, and asked: “Has Miss Violet heard that her orchids are flourishing in her absence, or that those two swans I promised have arrived?”
Violet and Mrs. Mordaunt exchanged glances of approval of this speech, the latter saying: “There are brighter things in the world than orchids, thank Heaven! and a kind deed may be more white and graceful than all the swans of Dale Manor.”
Van Hupfeldt looked still more puzzled—a look which was noted by the women, but was attributed by them to a wish not to seem to know anything of the joyful note, and was put down to his credit. After some minutes’ talk of a general nature, Mrs. Mordaunt went out. Violet sat in an easy-chair at one of the balcony windows. Van Hupfeldt leaned against the embrasure of the window. He seemed to brace himself for an effort before he said to her:
“This is Monday evening, and since Saturday, when I brought you from the cemetery, I have not once closed my eyes. If you continue to manifest this inconsolable grief for your sister’s fate, I must break down in some way. Something will happen. I shall go crazy, I think.”
“You mean very kindly, I suppose,” answered Violet, with lowered lids; “though I do not see—”
“No, you cannot see, you do not know,” said he, with a certain redness and strain in the eyes which made it a credible thing that he had not slept in some time. “But it is so. It has been the craving of my life to save you from this grief. Let me do it; you have to let me do it!”
“How save me?” she asked, with an upward glance under her long lashes, while she wondered at the blaze in the man’s eyes. “I am not to be saved from it by any means, though it will be lessened by the proofs of my sister’s honor and of her child’s fair name, and by the discovery of the whereabouts of the child. There are no other means.”
“Yes, there are! There is the leaving of your present life, the companionship of one who will have no care but to make you happy, to redress a little in you the wrong done to your sister. That is my motive—God knows!—that is my main motive—”
“Surely I do not understand you aright!” cried Violet, somewhat dismayed by his outburst. “Your motive is to redress a wrong done by some one to my sister by devoting yourself to make me happy? Certainly, that seems a most nobly disinterested motive; but is philanthropy of this sort the best basis for the kind of proposition which you are making me? Philanthropy most certainly would wear thin in time, if it did not rest on affection—”