“What was your uncle’s name?” he inquired; and I answered “Lee,” noticing the while, how the shadow which had settled upon his face at the mention of Boston, passed gradually away.
For a moment he was silent, and then rather abruptly, he asked, “Did you like her?”
I remembered the time when Dr. Clayton had asked me a similar question concerning Dell Thompson, and now, as then, I answered evasively, that “I hardly knew her—she was very beautiful and accomplished.”
Here he interrupted me by saying, “I did not ask if you thought her beautiful. I asked if you liked her.”
I felt a little annoyed, for I thought he had no right thus to question me, and forgetting that she was to be his wife, I replied, “No sir, I did not like her. Neither do I think she liked me, or my sister who was with me; and this is one reason why I wish to leave before her return.”
I supposed he would be offended at hearing me speak thus of her, but he was not; he merely smiled as he answered, “Ada has many faults, I know, but I do not believe your situation will be less pleasant on account of her presence. If it is, just state the case to me. I am competent to manage it, I believe; besides that, it is uncertain how long she will remain at Cedar Grove.”
He commenced plucking at the green vine-leaves which grew above my head, while I turned my face away to hide my emotions; for of course, when Ada left Cedar Grove, it would be as his bride, I thought, and was surprised when he continued, “The cousin with whom she is travelling in Europe, has won from her a half promise that she will spend next winter with her in New Orleans, and if so she will leave in October; so you see, she can’t annoy you long; and now you must promise me not to leave us unless she prove perfectly disagreeable.”
There is not, I believe, the least coquetry in my nature, and I replied frankly that I would stay.
“You have made me very happy, Miss Lee,” said he, rising up and laying his hand upon my head, just as a father might caress his child, for he was thirty-one and I was eighteen!
That night I pondered long upon what he had said, recalling every word and look, and at last, when a ray of light faintly glimmered upon my befogged intellect, I hid my face in the pillow, lest the moonlight, which shone around me, should read thereon the secret thought which I scarcely dared to harbor for a moment. Could it be possible that he loved me, and but that for my unaccountably stupid blunder in thrusting first Jessie and then Halbert in his face, he would have told me so! But no—it was impossible. He was probably engaged to Ada. She was beautiful and rich—I was homely and poor. It could not be. And then, my reader, did I first awake to the consciousness of how much I loved him; and how, when he was wedded to another, the world would be to me naught but a dreary blank. Anon, I remembered my former affection for Dr. Clayton, and then I grew calm. I had outgrown that, I said, and in all probability I should outlive this, my second heart-trouble. So, falling back upon the “Lee Seminary” as something which was to comfort me in my lone pilgrimage, I fell asleep and dreamed that Mr. Delafield’s children, amounting in all to a dozen, were every one placed under my special charge!