“The lease!” Thea repeated, bitterly. “I hate the very name. It has worked so much mischief, and all for nothing, Aleck says, and he knows, and don’t believe it would stand a moment, and if it does we have arranged for it, and should the Morton estate ever come to me through Aunt Kizzy’s foolish insistence, I shall deed it straight back to her, or to you and Grant, which will be better. It is time old Amos Hepburn was euchred, and I am glad to do it. Such trouble as he has brought to your grandfather, your father, and to me, thrusting me upon one who did not care a dime for me!”
“Thea, Thea, you are mistaken. I did care for you until I saw Doris, and I care for you yet,” Grant said, and Thea replied:
“In a way, yes. But you were driven to it by Aunt Kizzy, and so was I. Why, I do not remember a time when I did not think I was to marry you, and once I liked the idea, too, and threw myself at your head, and appropriated you in a way which makes me ashamed when I remember it. Aleck has told me, and he knows, and will keep me straight, while you would have let me run wild, and from a bold, pert, slangy girl I should have degenerated into a coarse, second-class woman, with only money and the Morton name to keep me up. You and Doris exactly suit each other, and your lives will glide along without a ripple, while Aleck’s and mine will be stormy at times, for he has a will and I have a temper, but the making up will be grand, and that I should never have known with you. I am going to tell Aunt Kizzy now, and have it over. So, Grant, let’s say good-bye to all there has been between us, and if you want to kiss me once in memory of the past you can do so. Doris will not mind.”
There was something very pathetic in Thea’s manner as she lifted her face for the kiss which was to part her and Grant forever, and for an instant her arms clung tightly around his neck as if the olden love were dying hard in spite of what she had said of Aleck; then without a word she went swiftly up the walk, leaving Grant and Doris alone.
CHAPTER XII.—Doris’s Story.
THE MISSING LINK.
How can I write when my heart is so full that it seems as if it would burst with its load of surprise and happiness? Grant and I are engaged, and so are Thea and Aleck, and of the two I believe Thea is happier than I, who am still so stunned that I can scarcely realize what a few hours have brought to me,—Grant, and—and—a fortune! And this is how it happened.
Grant was saying things to me which I thought he ought not to say, when Thea came suddenly upon us and told us she loved Aleck better than she did Grant, whom she transferred to me in a rather bewildering fashion, while I accepted him on condition that Aunt Kizzy gave her consent. She did not appear at dinner that night, and the next morning she was suffering from a severe headache and kept her room, but sent word that she would see Thea and Grant after breakfast. This left me to Aleck, who came early and asked me to go with him to the summer-house, where we could “talk over the row,” as he expressed it. Love had certainly wrought a great change in him, softening and refining his rugged features until he seemed almost handsome as he talked to me of Thea, whom he had fancied from the time he first saw her.
“She is full of faults, I know,” he said, “but I believe I love her the better for them, as they will add variety to our lives. She and Grant would have stagnated, as he did not care enough for her to oppose her in any way. Theirs would have been a marriage of convenience; ours will be one of love.”
And then he drifted off to the Morton lease and Hepburn line and family tree.
“You have never seen it, I believe,” he said, taking from his pocket a sheet of foolscap and spreading it out upon his lap. He had offered to show it to me before, but I had declined examining it. Now, however, I affected to be interested, and glanced indifferently at the sheet, with its queer looking diagrams and rows of names, which he called branches of the Hepburn tree. “I have not made it out quite ship-shape, like one I saw in London lately,” he said, taking out his pencil and pointing to the name which headed the list, “but I think you will understand it. You have no idea what a fascination there has been to me in hunting up my ancestors and wondering what manner of people they were. First, here is Amos Hepburn, the old curmudgeon who leased that property to your grandfather ninety years ago. He married Dorothea Foster, and had three daughters, Octavia, Agrippina, and Poppæa.”