This was the last of April, and six weeks later Mildred was Mrs. Giles Thornton, traveling through Scotland and Wales and trying to believe herself happy in her husband’s love and the costly gifts he lavished upon her. She had been courted and admired as Fanny Gardner, but the deference paid her now and her independence were very sweet to her, and if she could have forgotten Hugh and been permitted to make herself known to her family, she would have been content at least on the morning when she left New York and started for Thornton Park.
CHAPTER VI.
MRS. GILES THORNTON.
She was very lovely in all the fullness of her matured beauty as she stepped from the train at Rocky Point, and with her large bright eyes swept the crowd of curious people gathered to see her, not one of whom she recognized. A handsome open carriage from Brewster’s, sent up a few days before for this occasion, was waiting for them, and with a half bow to those who ventured to salute her husband, Mildred seated herself in it and was driven through the well-remembered street, her heart beating so loudly that she could hear it distinctly as she drew near the top of the hill from which she knew she would see her old home and possibly her mother. And when the hill top was reached and she saw the house with its doors opened wide, and from the upper window of what had been hers and Bessie’s room a muslin curtain blowing in and out, she grew so white that her husband laid his hand on hers, and said, “Don’t take it so hard, darling. You are doing it to please me.”
“Yes, but it seems as if I must stop here,” she answered faintly as she leaned forward to look at the house around which there was no sign of life, or stir, except the moving of the curtain and the gambols of two kittens playing in the doorway where Mildred half expected to meet the glance of Bessie’s blue eyes and see the gleam of Charlie’s golden hair.
But Charlie was lying on the mountain side, and Bessie, although out of sight, was watching the carriage and the beautiful stranger in whom she saw no trace of her sister.
“I’ve seen her,” Bessie said, as she went into her mother’s room, “and she is very lovely, with such a bright color on her cheeks. And so young to be Mr. Thornton’s wife! I wonder if she loves him. I couldn’t.”
“No. I suppose you prefer Gerard,” Mrs. Leach replied, while Bessie answered blushingly, “Of course I do. Poor Gerard! How angry his father will be when he knows about Tom and me, too. Gerard was going to tell him at once, but I persuaded him to wait until the honeymoon was over. Just two months I’ll give him, and during that time I mean to cultivate Mrs. Thornton and get her on my side. I hope she is not proud like him. She did not look so.”
Bessie had been at the Park that morning helping Alice give the last touches to the rooms intended for the bride. These had been finished in the tints which Mr. Thornton had prescribed. Everything was new, from the carpets on the floors to the lace-canopied bedstead of brass. There were flowers everywhere in great profusion, roses mostly of every variety, and in a glass on a bracket in a corner, Bessie had put a bunch of June pinks from her own garden, explaining to Alice that her mother had sent them to the bride, as they were her favorite flowers and would make the rooms so sweet. Everything was finished at last, and after Bessie was gone Alice had nothing to do but to wait for the coming of the carriage which she soon saw entering the Park. Mildred’s face was very white and her voice trembled as she saw Alice in the distance and said, “I can’t bear it. I came near shrieking to the old home that I was Mildred. I must tell Alice. I cannot be so hypocritical. There is no reason for it.”
“No, no,” and Mr. Thornton spoke a little sternly. “It is too late now, and you have promised. I wish it and have my reason. Ah, here we are, and there are Alice and Gerard.”
They had stopped under the great archway at the side entrance where Gerard and Alice were waiting for them and scanning the bride curiously as she alighted and their father presented her to them,—not as their mother, but as “Mrs. Thornton, my wife.”