“Yes sir,” I replied, while my face again grew scarlet. “They were beautiful, and I thank you very much.”
“I am glad to hear it,” he continued, looking me steadily in my eyes. “I thought perhaps, you did not like them when I found them on the walk, withered and dried by the sun.”
I was trying to think what to say by way of apology for thus treating his gift, when little Jessie came to my relief, by saying, “She didn’t like to throw ’em away, but ma didn’t want her to keep ’em.”
“Ah, yes. I understand it now,” said he, adding in an undertone, as he shook my hand, in accordance with the southern custom of bidding good-bye: “I hope, Miss Lee, you will exercise your own judgment in such trivial matters as that.”
That night I cried myself to sleep, half wishing I had never come to Cedar Grove, for I knew Mrs. Lansing would prove an exacting, unreasonable mistress; and when Ada came home, my situation, I thought, would be anything but agreeable; while, worse than all the rest, was the fear that I had displeased Mr. Delafield, and appeared very ridiculous in his eyes. Supposing he had put his arm on my chair, was that any reason why I should get angry and speak to him as I did? It was his way, and as he had said, he was not himself aware of what he was doing. Of course, then, he would think me very foolish, and would ever after treat me with coolness and indifference. How then was I surprised, when the next morning, in the presence of his sister, he handed me a much larger and handsomer bouquet than the one of the preceding day, saying, as he did so, “I want you to keep this and not throw it away, as you did my other one.”
Mrs. Lansing’s face, which had been unusually placid and serene, now looked cloudy and disturbed; but she said nothing; neither did she ever again make any allusion to the flowers which so frequently came to me from Sunny Bank. One reason for this might have been that she was otherwise perfectly satisfied with the conduct of her brother, which, by the way, was not wholly satisfactory to me! It is true, he was very polite, very kind; but there was about him a reserve which I could not understand, for after that little affair in the schoolroom, he never treated me with the same familiarity which marked his deportment towards the other young ladies, who came to the house. He did not like me, I said, and the thought that I was disagreeable to him made me very unhappy. To be sure, he was almost constantly at Cedar Grove, where he spent most of the time in the schoolroom, “superintending us,” he told his sister, who, believing me rather inefficient, made no objection to his supposed supervision of Lina’s studies. He did not often talk much to me, but I frequently met the earnest gaze of his piercing dark eyes, particularly when little Jessie sat in my lap, listening to my instructions; and once when Herbert asked him for “a copy,”—something beginning with “R,” he wrote “Rosa Lee, Meadow Brook, Massachusetts.” Still he disliked me—I was sure of that; and though I did not then know why it was, the impression that I was to him an object of aversion made me unhappy, and almost every day I cried, while Mrs. Lansing more than once told me that “she did not believe the South agreed with me, for I was not half so plump and rosy as when I first came.”
About this time, too, a Miss Dean, from the village, who had evinced quite a liking for me, told me, confidentially, that Mr. Delafield and Ada were certainly engaged; adding, that “it was sometimes sickening to see them together”—a fact I could not doubt, knowing him as I did, and remembering Ada’s demeanor towards Herbert when they were engaged. From the same source, too, I learned that Mr. Montrose and the elder Mr. Delafield had been warm friends; and that the latter, who died when both Mrs. Lansing and Richard were quite young, had committed them to the care of Mr. Montrose, who was to them the kindest of fathers until the time of his death, which occurred a few years after Mrs. Lansing’s marriage, when Richard was just of age. To his guardianship, therefore, as to that of a brother, had Mr. Montrose left his daughter, then a beautiful girl of seventeen; and since that time she had lived with Mrs. Lansing, who, though she appeared to love the young orphan, still opposed her marriage with her brother; not from any aversion to Ada, but because she did not wish Richard to marry at all, as in case he did not, his property would, in all probability, fall to her children, she being the only heir. When I asked her why Mr. Delafield was worth so much more than Mrs. Lansing, she replied, that the elder Mr. Delafield, in his will, had left two-thirds of his property to his son, bequeathing the other third to his daughter, whose husband had wasted nearly the whole in his extravagant manner of living. Cedar Grove, too, she said, was mortgaged to Richard for more than it was worth, and it was wholly owing to his forbearance and extreme generosity that Mrs. Lansing was enabled to support her present style of living. This, she said, aside from Mrs. Lansing’s hope that her children would one day inherit her brother’s wealth, was a sufficient reason why she wished him to remain a bachelor, as the presence of a wife at Sunny Bank would, in all probability, lessen his liberality towards herself. Miss Dean, who seemed to be well posted, also told me that, in case Mrs. Lansing saw her brother was determined to marry, she would, of course, prefer that he should marry Ada, who was quite a favorite, inasmuch as she had money of her own, and was connected with one of the first families in South Carolina.
All this I believed, and when I saw how anxious Mrs. Lansing appeared for Ada’s return, and how much interest Mr. Delafield, too, seemed to take in her, I felt sure that matters were at last amicably arranged, and that, for once, rumor was right in saying that Sunny Bank would, in the autumn, be graced by the presence of a mistress. Latterly, Mr. Delafield had been making some repairs, and only a few days before, when I chanced to be there with Jessie, he had taken me through his library into a little, pleasant, airy room, which he was fitting up with great elegance.
“This,” said he, laughingly, “I design as the boudoir of Mrs. Delafield, when I shall be fortunate enough to boast such an appendage to my household; and as a woman’s taste is supposed to be superior to that of men, I want your opinion. How do you like it? Do you think it would suit my wife, if I had one?”
Of course he meant Ada, and in fancy I saw her reclining upon the luxurious lounges, or gazing out upon the vine-wreathed piazza, and wealth of flowers, which greeted my view when I looked from the large bay window. For an instant I dared not trust my voice to speak, and when at last I did so, I am sure it must have trembled, for he came to my side and looked me earnestly in the face, while he smiled at my answer.