“I stopped to talk with Sweetheart about a little plan of ours, Miss Nellie,” he said, taking her hand a moment and pressing it warmly.
“He is going to give us a ball at Verelands when I go home,” said Thea, joyously.
“Oh, glory!” cried Nell, impetuously. “Let us hurry in and tell them all!” and they entered the house, where Miss Bentley was waiting impatiently. She took possession of Norman de Vere for the remainder of his visit.
CHAPTER XLI.
Norman called at Orange Grove every day after that; but it was always the same. The handsome Miss Bentley persisted in appropriating his visit entirely to herself, and gave him no chance for any tender passages with Thea.
They even persuaded him to come sometimes in the evening when they had impromptu dancing, the girls taking turns at playing the piano. He was even beguiled into taking the floor himself now and then, and it was wonderful how much younger and blither it made him feel. Thea said, too:
“It pleases me to see you dance. I feel then that you do not look on amusements of that kind as being altogether frivolous and silly.”
After that she might have beguiled him into almost any boyish folly, so far was he carried away by her girlish spirits. It seemed to him that he retained just enough reason to prevent him from making open love to the little beauty.
“She has grown so frank and confiding that I must not drive her from me by showing her what is in my heart,” he thought, blindly, for Thea’s assertion that she did not desire to be called his sister had made him shy of asserting any unusual interest in one so capricious.
“I must keep my place as elderly guardian, and she will reward me with unlimited confidences and frankness,” he thought, bitterly.