She keeps her room that evening, pleading weariness as an excuse for not appearing at dinner. She wants time to think over the joyful change in her prospects before she meets Captain Lockhart again. She is scarcely herself now. Such a strange, tremulous, passionate happiness is thrilling through her heart as makes her nervous with its intensity. Little shafts of fire seem thrilling through her veins. Love, which she had thought never to experience, has taken up its dwelling in her heart, and every nerve thrills with its unspeakable rapture.
"And I was so blind, I thought it only friendship!" the fair young countess murmurs to herself, with a happy smile playing around her lips. "How happy he will be when I tell him that I love him, and that I will be his wife! It cannot be wrong for me to marry him. I am sure he will help me to my vengeance when I tell him of the oath I swore by my father's death-bed. Dear Philip, how grand and handsome he is! He is the noblest of men!"
Lady Clive, having privately questioned her brother as to Vera's fainting fit, and received no satisfaction, is at her wits' end! Why this terrible swoon, when she had deemed Lady Vera well and strong again?
She wonders even more when the young girl appears at breakfast the next morning. Never had the young countess appeared so enchantingly lovely. Clothed in a delicate, white morning dress, with purple pansies at her throat and waist, and all her glorious golden hair floating loosely about her perfect form, with a blush of happiness on her cheeks, and the shy light of tenderness in her splendid eyes, it seemed to all as if her peerless beauty had received a new dower of glory. All wondered, but none knew that the threatening cloud that had overshadowed her life so long had rolled away, and that it was the new light of hope that made her face so radiant.
"You look unusually well, my dear. There is no trace of your illness left this morning," Lady Clive exclaims, with her usual charming good nature, as Lady Vera glides into her seat.
A blush and smile of acknowledgement from the young girl. She glances shyly under her long lashes at Captain Lockhart, who is her vis-a-vis at table. But the handsome soldier, after one slight glance and a courtly bow, does not seem to see her. Miss Montgomery, who sits next him, absorbs his attention this morning. She is a belle and beauty, and has long angled for Captain Lockhart. Seeing Lady Vera so gay and smiling, he resolves not to damp her pleasure by a sight of his own grave, troubled face, so he lends himself assiduously to the coquette's efforts to amuse him, succeeding so well in his plan that she is completely blinded, and murmurs to herself with sudden bitterness:
"He is flirting with Miss Montgomery to show me how little he cares for my rejection. Ah, well, if he is satisfied, I am!"
So the first seeds of pride are sown in her heart by a coquette's petty arts.
"Alas! how slight a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love!"