“Oh, indeed,” and as if memory had suddenly come back to him, Mr. Thornton seemed immensely relieved. “I remember now,—Bessie Leach; that’s the girl I have sometimes seen with Alice. Gerard taught her French,—a very pretty girl. And Mr. McGregor is engaged to her? I am very glad. Any girl might be proud to marry him.”
Mildred made no reply to this, and Mr. Thornton never guessed the dreary emptiness of her soul as she sat with her hands clasped tightly together, thinking of the man whom any girl would be proud to marry. A few months before she would have said that he was nothing more to her than the friend of her childhood, but she had recently learned her mistake, and that the thought of seeing him again was one of the pleasantest anticipations of her home going. There had come to the hotel a Mr. and Mrs. Hayford from America, who sometimes spent their summers at Rocky Point, where Mrs. Hayford was once a teacher. As Mildred had been her pupil, she remembered her at once, after hearing the name, and would have introduced herself but for a conversation accidentally overheard between Mrs. Hayford and a friend who had also been at Rocky Point, and to whom she was retailing the news, first of New York and then of Rocky Point, where she had spent a few days in April prior to sailing.
“Do you remember that Hercules of a lawyer, Hugh McGregor, whom you admired so much?” was asked. “They say he is engaged to Bessie Leach, a girl much younger than himself, but very pretty,—beautiful, in fact, and——
Mildred heard no more, but hurried away, with an ache in her heart that she could not quite define. Tom had intimated that Gerard was interested in Bessie, and now Hugh was engaged to her. Well, it was all right, she said, and would not admit to herself how hard the blow had struck her and how she smarted under it. And it was just when the smart was at its keenest that Mr. Thornton came again across her path, more in love, if possible, than ever, and more intent upon making her his wife. He had fought a desperate battle with his pride and had conquered it, and within twenty-four hours after meeting her in Paris, she had promised to marry him, and when her pledge was given she was conscious of a feeling of quiet and content which she had scarcely hoped for. In his character as lover Mr. Thornton did not seem at all like the man she had feared in her childhood, nor if he felt it did he gave the slightest sign that he was stooping from his high position. She had been very frank with him and had made no pretension of love. “I will be true to you,” she said, “and try to please you in everything. I am tired of the aimless life I have led so many years, and I think Mrs. Harwood is a little tired of me too. She says I ought to have married long ago, but I could not marry a fool even if he had a title. I shall be so glad to go home to my friends, although I am so changed they will never know me.”
Then she added laughingly: “Wouldn’t it be great fun not to write them who I am and see if they will recognize me?”
She did not really mean what she said, or guess that it harmonized perfectly with a plan which Mr. Thornton had in mind, and was resolved to carry out, if possible. If he could have had his wish he would not have gone to Rocky Point at all, but his children were there and Mildred’s heart was set upon it, and he must meet the difficulty in some way. He could marry Mildred, but not her family, and he shrank from the intimacy which must necessarily exist between the Park and the farm house when it was known who his wife was. In his estimation the Leaches were nobodies, and he could not have them running in and out of his house and treating him with the familiarity of a son and brother, as he was sure they would do if he did not stop it. If Mildred would consent to remain incognito while at the Park the annoyance would be prevented, and this consent he tried to gain by many specious arguments. His real reason, he knew, must be kept from sight, and so he asked it as a personal favor, saying it would please him very much and be a kind of excitement for her.
“Possibly you will be recognized,” he said; “and if so, all right; if not, we will tell them just before we go to New York in the autumn and enjoy their surprise.”
He did not add that, once away from Rocky Point, it would probably be long before he took her there again. He only talked of the plan as a joke, which Mildred did not quite see. She was willing to keep the secret until she met them, but to keep it longer was absurd and foolish, she said, and involved a deception, which she abhorred.
“I accepted you partly that I might be near them and see them every day,” she said, “and am longing to throw my arms around mother’s neck and tell her I have come back.”
“And so you shall in time, but humor my whim for once. You will not be sorry,” Mr. Thornton pleaded, and Mildred consented at last, and felt in a measure repaid when she saw how happy it made Mr. Thornton, whose real motive she did not guess.