She sat up presently, dashing the tears from her violet eyes, her sweet lips curling in fierce self-scorn.
“Thea West, you are a little simpleton. How could you have such a fancy for one moment? You know perfectly well how far he ranks above you in everything—even age. He was a man—a married man—when you were a baby. He thinks you are a baby still.”
Some more fierce sobs came at that. Oh, how young, how silly, she must appear in his eyes! If she could only add ten years to her age!
“He would not dare hug me then and call me his little sister. I should seem too grown up and dignified.”
But Thea West was a very sensible girl in spite of her gay spirits. When her first passion of disappointment had worn off, she began to argue the case with herself. She saw that her little tempest of resentment against Norman de Vere was all wrong. He had been very, very kind to her. She owed him a world of gratitude.
“It is no wonder I fell in love with him, he is so handsome, so noble, so gifted! One could love him just from reading his books,” she said, sadly, yet with a thrilling consciousness of Norman’s dark, magnetic eyes. “But with him it is different. He could never think of loving me. Besides, he can have no faith in women. The Hintons have told me that he was separated from his wife because she was false to him. Is that why he looks so grave and sad, I wonder? Perhaps he loved her so well that he can never love another, now that she is dead.”
A sudden pity filled her heart for the man whose life had been so cruelly wrecked by a woman’s falsity.
“I wish I could comfort him. I wish I were really his little sister.”
She resolved suddenly that she would not disappoint Norman de Vere, who had been so kind to her, who had asked her not to be afraid of him, but to give him the confidence of a sister.
“I will fight down this too warm love of mine. It will soon die with no hope to feed on,” she decided. “I will be a sister to him in truth. It is possible I might be a comfort to him in that way.”