I don’t know what he meant, and I don’t know anything except that I am miserable, and Grant is equally so, and I do not dare stay alone with him a moment, or look in his eyes for fear of what I may see there, or he may see in mine.
Alas for us both, and alas for the Hepburn line!
CHAPTER XI.—The Author’s Story.
THE CRISIS.
It came sooner than the two who were watching the progress of affairs expected it, and the two were Kizzy and Dizzy. The first was looking at what she could not help, with a feeling like death in her heart, while the latter felt her youth come back to her as she saw one by one the signs she had once known so well. She knew what Grant’s failure to marry Thea meant to them. But she did not worry about it. With all her fear of Keziah, she had a great respect for and confidence in her, and was sure she would manage somehow, no matter whom Grant married. And so in her white gown and blue ribbons she sat upon the wide piazza day after day, and smiled upon the young people, who, recognizing an ally in her, made her a sort of queen around whose throne they gathered, all longing to tell her their secret, except Doris, who, hearing so often from her Aunt Keziah that she was the cause of all the trouble, was very unhappy, and kept away from Grant as much as possible. But he found her one afternoon in the summer-house looking so inexpressibly sweet, and pathetic, too, with the traces of tears on her face, that, without a thought of the consequences, he sat down beside her, and, putting his arms around her, said:
“My poor little darling, what is the matter, and why do you try to avoid me as you do?”
There was nothing of the coquette about Doris, and at the sound of Grant’s voice speaking to her as he did, and the touch of his hand which had taken hers and was carrying it to his lips, she laid her head on his shoulder and sobbed:
“Oh, Grant, I can’t bear it. Aunt Kizzy scolds me so, and I—I can’t help it, and I’m going to Meadowbrook to teach or do something, where I shall not trouble any one again.”
“No, Doris,” Grant said, in a voice more earnest and decided than any she had ever heard from him. “You are not going away from me. You are mine and I intend to keep you. I will play a hypocrite’s part no longer. I love you, and I do not love Thea as a man ought to love the girl he makes his wife, nor as she deserves to be loved; and even if you refuse me I shall not marry her. It would be a great sin to take her when my whole soul was longing for another.”
“Grant, are you crazy? Don’t you know you must marry Thea? Have you forgotten the Hepburn line?” Doris said, lifting her head from his shoulder and turning towards him a face which, although bathed in tears, was radiant with the light of a great joy.
Had Grant been in the habit of swearing, he would probably have consigned the Hepburn line to perdition. As it was, he said: