“Do you believe me?” Thea repeated, alarmed at his silence; and the frank innocence of her face compelled him to answer:
“Yes, I believe you. I think they wronged you.”
“Oh, thank you!” she cried, radiantly. “If you had not believed me I don’t think I could have borne to stay at Verelands. How good you are! But I remember that you were just as kind to me when I was a little child. You saved my life. I feel so grateful to you for that!”
He did not understand why he should feel that odd pique because she was talking to him so freely, so gratefully, so unrestrainedly, as if he were a hundred years old. Something made him say, daringly:
“Do you remember how you crept into my arms and kissed me the first day we met? You said you loved me, and fed me peppermint drops. Mr. Hinton said then that you were a little flirt.”
Her cheeks were pink as roses, and she removed the little hand from his arm in a furtive way.
“I remember that I was very fond of you,” she said, with a smile; but she did not meet his questioning glance. “How forward I must have seemed to you!” she added, constrainedly.
“No, indeed,” he began; but Thea was glad not to hear any more of his reminiscences, for Mrs. de Vere entered very opportunely at that moment, and the girl went to a seat where she sat in silence, furtively studying that darkly handsome face, and wishing he had not remembered she had made love to him when she was a mere baby.
CHAPTER XXXV.
After that first night, Norman de Vere found no occasion for unconscious pique at Thea’s sisterly frankness toward him. By the next morning her manner had changed indefinably. It had developed into a pretty dignity that just escaped shyness, and was almost reserve. She tacitly avoided her handsome guardian and clung to his mother with all the tenderness of a daughter.