IT was broad daylight before the entire household at Harrowby was asleep, but Angela, in the great four-posted bed with curtains and valance, had fallen asleep—young, healthy being that she was—the instant her head touched the pillow. The day came dull and quiet, and no light penetrated the closed shutters and drawn curtains of the large room in which Angela slept. It was twelve o’clock before she opened her eyes and then closed them again. She felt a delicious sense of languor after her hours of dancing and gay excitement, and the large, soft bed invited continued repose. She could not, however, go to sleep again. Wandering thoughts of what had happened the night before stole upon her, and then all at once Neville’s image, his looks, the pressure of his hand, so different from anything she had ever known, flashed upon her. She tried to put the thought away and, closing her eyes resolutely, lay still as a statue with that determination to go to sleep which always defeats its object. Presently, she sighed and turned restlessly; there was no more sweet repose for her, she had come face to face with that insistent passion which questions and demands an answer.
For the first time in her life the thought of meeting Neville made her feel shy. She loved him, oh, yes! Better than Richard, better than Archie! Neville had always been her champion who stood between her and disappointment, who warded off justice, who always approved of her, but Neville as a lover, as a husband—for Angela’s vivid mind traveled quickly—ah! that was different. If she married Neville it would be like the continuation of a story of which she already knew the best part. She yearned for life, movement, knowledge, a view of the great outside world, which to her in imagination appeared far more fascinating than any world could be, and yet on the threshold she was to be handed back to settle in the same groove, to see the same faces, do the same things as she had done all her life. She loved Harrowby with all her soul, but longed to try her wings in flight. It seemed as if the great book of life lay open before her, but she could not be permitted to read any part which she had not already read. Prince Charming, that other half of her heart and soul, that unknown being about whom it was so delicious to wonder, would never come to her.
Suddenly it came to her that Prince Charming was an entity and had a name—he was Philip Isabey. That straight-featured, black-eyed man of whom she had heard so much, whose wit, courage, daring, grace, and accomplishments Richard proudly recounted. In the still, abstracted life Angela led, with its narrow round of small duties, its larger but tamer pleasures, Angela’s imagination had felt the need of some object around which to weave its spell. Philip Isabey had become that object. Angela’s imagination was already in love with him and Angela and her imagination were one. She had never seen him, but that only made her long the more to see him. He had dominated her girlish dreams as far back as she could remember. She recalled slipping into Richard’s room and looking with a delicious sense, half rapture, half guilt, at the daguerreotype of Isabey and the sketches of him which were pinned to the walls. This apotheosis of Philip Isabey was her only secret, and being watched and tended, it grew fast and was cherished. When the recollection of this dream idyl came to Angela, she sat up in bed and clasped her hands with dismay. It must now come to an end, for Neville loved her—Neville, the best and truest man on earth, but not Prince Charming.
Just then the door opened quietly and Mirandy entered with a breakfast tray. On it lay a note—a few lines from Neville wishing her good morning. Angela’s first impulse was to smile, then to scowl. She told Mirandy sharply that it was not yet time for rising and after making the fire to go out and leave her. Soon the blaze lighted up the great darkened room, and Angela tried to persuade herself that it was midnight and not day as she lay in the great white bed watching the firelight dancing on the ceiling. She thrust the note under her pillow, but she could not forget that it was there and it disturbed her. It was four o’clock in the afternoon before she came downstairs. The house was still, Colonel and Mrs. Tremaine having gone out for a drive, Lyddon, Richard, and Archie being off on different expeditions and the servants, more asleep than awake, in a general state of collapse. Angela went into the study and there sitting by the window was Neville with a book in his hand. He rose at once as she entered and closed the door after her.
“I have been waiting to see you, Angela,” he said, taking her hand and leading her to the old leather-covered sofa; and then briefly and simply as a man who is a man speaks his love, he asked Angela to marry him. She had never said “no” to Neville in her life and it was clearly impossible now. Her shyness, her coldness, neither surprised nor disconcerted Neville. She was in many respects younger than her nineteen years, and this was her first acquaintance with love. But Neville knew or thought he knew that Angela’s intimacy with him was so great, her dependence on him so absolute, her affection for him of such long standing that she could not only be happy with him, but that she could not be happy with another man—for Neville Tremaine thought first of the woman he loved and secondly of himself. And in this belief he had a little time of rapture. But his dream was broken when he mentioned marriage to Angela.
“I shouldn’t have spoken so soon, Angela, but for the time in which we live. You know I am leaving day after to-morrow, and God knows when, if ever, I shall return.”
“You will come back when the State secedes,” said Angela positively. They were sitting on the sofa with Angela’s bright head close to Neville’s dark one.
“Ah, my dearest,” he said, “I don’t know whether I shall ever come back. I haven’t yet said whether I would resign from the army or not, and if I feel as I do now I shan’t.” Angela drew away from him and looked at him with wide, startled eyes.
“I—I don’t understand,” she said. “Of course you will resign; everybody expects that you will.”
“I know it. It would be a great deal easier for me if I could. But a soldier, Angela, has not the same attitude of conscience that any other man has. You know honor should come first with every man, but military honor takes possession of a man and disposes of him; so it will dispose of me.”