“It is the loveliest face I ever saw, and the complexion is quite English. That pleases me, of course, for, although I admire your American beauties exceedingly, I am quite partial to English red and white,” he added, smiling.
“I am glad that Thea compares favorably with your English beauties,” Norman said, carelessly. “But she is pure American. Her whole life has been spent in Virginia and Florida.”
Then a sudden flush stained his cheek. He remembered suddenly that Thea was at least four years old when he found her, and that those four years of her life were a complete blank to him. From whence she came he had no idea.
But he could not explain this to Lord Stuart. Their slight acquaintance did not warrant such confidence and familiarity. He remained silent a moment, then said, as though in dismissal of the subject:
“My wife has been my ward from her childhood. When I was abroad with my mother she was at school in Virginia.”
CHAPTER XLIX.
Lord Stuart could hardly understand the strange interest he took in Norman de Vere’s lovely young wife. She was beautiful, but he had seen many beautiful women without feeling much interest in them. He was past sixty now, and the interest he took in women was cynical rather than romantic. Since the time when Camille de Vere’s charms had made him a captive for a brief space of time, he had felt no touch of the tender passion.
But the lovely face and dark-blue eyes of Norman de Vere’s girl-bride haunted him with strange persistency, and he caught himself longing to know her, wondering if Norman would present him when Thea came on deck again. He did not dare to ask the favor, remembering that he had not been quite guiltless in the affair with Camille, but had actually wished to part her from her boy-husband, and marry her himself.
It was no such impulse that stirred him now in thinking of the fair young girl who had taken the place of fair but faulty Camille in Norman’s heart. If he had had a daughter, Lord Stuart would have felt much the same toward her as he did toward Thea.
When she came on deck again, her beautiful face a little pale from her experience of seasickness, he was standing near her steamer-chair, and Norman, after a moment’s hesitation, presented him to his wife.