Mrs. de Vere in the meanwhile was superintending arrangements for the grand ball that was to come off at Verelands. She thought she saw in this an augury that Norman was waking up to a better frame of mind from the torpor and world-weariness that had possessed him so long.
“Can there be a woman in the case?” thought the shrewd old lady.
Her thoughts flew to the woman who had been sleeping the last long sleep in Greenwood for two years.
“Poor Camille!” she murmured, pityingly. “If he ever marries again I trust his judgment of his second wife will be kinder than it was of his first.”
She was pleased at the thought that Norman contemplated a second marriage. She fell to wondering whether it was Thea West or Miss Bentley.
“Miss Bentley would be the most suitable certainly in point of age,” she mused. “But no one can tell. These old widowers are usually most anxious to secure a sixteen-year-old girl.”
A slight frown wrinkled her brow. She feared that happiness in marriage could not exist with so great disparity in age. When she thought of Norman marrying Thea West there came to her some suggestive lines:
“Thy life is spring, but autumn mine,
Thy hope all flowers, mine bitter fruit.”
But she did not speak to Norman of her hopes and fears, as she would have done in earlier days. He had always maintained something like reserve toward her since the long-past-time when she had blamed him for harshness toward his wife.