“Oh, Mr. de Vere, you play the piano? I’m so glad!” cried a clear voice, with that indescribable ring of hope and youth in it that is so sweet to world-weary ears.
He turned his head. A white figure was coming toward him over the soundless Turkish carpet—Thea, in all the glow of her young beauty, smiling, eager.
She came close to his side. She laid her beautiful white hand, dimpled and ringless, on his arm, and said, frankly:
“Before I came I was angry with you. I did not care what you thought of me, but I—I have changed my mind. I’m going to tell you the truth in the beginning, for—somehow—I don’t want you to think as badly of me as you seemed to in that letter.”
He sat silent, looking into the flushed, eager face, not helping her by a word or even a smile.
But Thea went bravely on:
“Tom and Frank, you know? The Hintons said I used them outrageously. I didn’t mean to, and I think they misunderstood. We were brought up together, and they seemed just as much my brothers as Emmie did my sister. I loved them both, but not—that way,” vaguely.
“What way?” Norman de Vere asked in a puzzled tone. He looked keenly into the eager face, and Thea’s blush deepened to scarlet.
“Oh, you know,” she said, rather helplessly. “I didn’t like it when Tom tried to make love to me. It actually disgusted me. So I snubbed him every time, and—thinking Frank wasn’t so foolish—I treated him like a brother. The great goose thought I was in love with him, and wanted to marry him—the idea! So they both—Frank and Tom—proposed the same day. Of course, I said no. Emmie eavesdropped—the mean thing—and made a row about it.”
“But wasn’t there some one else—Emmie’s lover?” he suggested, quietly.