“I am so glad,” she said, simply, and a brighter light came to the lustrous blue eyes, a warmer glow to the dimpled cheek. Unconsciously to himself, Norman de Vere’s words and glances were far warmer than those of a brother to a sister. Thea felt it, and thrilled at the consciousness. Perhaps he loved her better than he knew.
“Ah, if I were only clever!” she thought, eagerly. “I will study—I will learn more things than they taught at school. My teachers said I could become very clever if I chose.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
The next day Thea had another delightful canter with her guardian, and when they returned, he told her to bring her verses down to him as she had promised yesterday.
“I hoped you had forgotten,” Thea exclaimed, ruefully. Having spent hours over her portfolio last night, she had decided that the dozen or so poems she had picked out for his inspection were nothing but trash, and she regretted the promise she had made.
But Norman de Vere would not release her until she promised to bring him the portfolio at once.
“I am anticipating quite a treat,” he said, with a soupçon of sarcasm that brought the color rushing to her cheeks.
“Then you will be disappointed,” she answered, tartly, but she went obediently for the verses.
“But I can not stay to see you read them. There is company only just arrived, and your mother wants me in the drawing-room,” she said, glad of so good an excuse for getting away, for her fair cheeks tingled with bashfulness. Why, oh, why had she been so silly as to own to verse-making? She could fancy him laughing quietly to himself at her crudities. But the die was cast. She had blundered into this humiliation of her own accord in her eagerness to climb nearer to the height of his genius. She flung the portfolio down upon the table, and made a very undignified retreat in her haste to be gone.
The visitors waiting for her in the drawing-room were some acquaintances she had made on first coming to Verelands several months ago—two gay young girls, and their brother, an unexceptionable young man. They were wealthy, and of good family—old friends of Mrs. de Vere, who warmly seconded the invitation they extended to Thea to return with them for a week’s visit to their country home, something more than three miles away.