“Meanwhile,” he said, with an effort to smile, “I shall be glad if you will allow me to make your house my home until my arrangements are completed. I am not so proud that I will not accept that hospitality at your hands.”
I do not think that Rosamond quite comprehended his last words. She only knew that he would not hurry away from the Forrest House, and she looked up eagerly, and said:
“I am so glad, and I hope you will not hate me, or ever believe I meant the foolish thing I said,—in that way.”
“No, Rossie,” he answered her, “I am far from hating you, and how can I think you meant that way when you have repeatedly declared that you would not marry me now for a thousand times the money?”
“No, now nor ever!” Rosamond exclaimed, energetically; and he replied:
“Yes, I know; men generally understand when a girl tells them she has no love or liking for them.”
There was something peculiar in his voice, as if what she said hurt him a little, and Rossie detected it, and in her eagerness to set him right involuntarily laid her hand on his arm, and flashing upon him her brilliant, beautiful eyes, in which the tears were shining, said to him:
“Oh, Mr. Everard, you must not mistake what I mean. I do like you, and shall for ever and ever; but not in a marrying way, and I am so sorry I have come between you and your inheritance. You have made me see that I cannot now help myself, but when I am twenty-one, if I live so long, so help me Heaven, I’ll give you back every dollar. You will remember that, and knowing it may help you to bear the years of poverty which must intervene.”
Again the long, silken lashes were lifted, and the dark, bright eyes looked into his with a look which sent a strange, sweet thrill through every nerve of the young man’s body. Rosamond had come up before him in an entirely new character, and he was vaguely conscious of a different interest in her now from what he had felt before. It was not love; it was not a desire of possession. He did not know what it was; he only knew that his future life suddenly looked drearier than ever to him if it must be lived away from her and her influence. She had risen to her feet as she was speaking, and he rose also, and went with her to the door, and let her out, and watched her as she disappeared down the stairs, and then went back to his task of sorting papers, with the germ of a new feeling stirring ever so lightly in his heart,—a sense of something which might have made life very sweet, and a sense as well of bitter loss.
Full of shame and mortification at what she had done, Rossie resolved to go at once to Elm Park and confess the whole to Beatrice, whom she found at home. She was thinking of the Forrest House and the confusion caused by the foolish will of an angry old man, when Rossie was announced, and, sitting down at her feet, plunged into the very midst of her trouble by saying: