“I dare say you will enjoy it very much. Beautiful young women always do,” Norman said, smiling. “You will have a chance to air your new Paris dresses that have never been worn yet; and, chère petite, you will need a maid.”
“Oh, dear, no; that will be quite unnecessary,” she protested; but her husband gently but firmly overruled the objections she had always raised to a maid.
“We will set about securing one at once,” he said; and Thea gave way gracefully. Of course he knew best.
A clever, elderly woman was secured, English instead of French, for Norman had always detested French maids since the days of Finette Du Val. With something like a sigh for the past happy days, Thea turned her face to the future, and in a few more days found herself clinging bashfully to her husband’s arm and receiving the cordial greetings of Lord Stuart and his widowed sister in their beautiful home.
She had looked forward with eager interest to the meeting with Lord Stuart’s sister, who had been romantic enough to mourn her dead husband for eighteen years. To the young bride who loved her husband with passionate devotion such constancy appeared most charming. She was quite sure that she should do the same if she were to lose her dear Norman, if indeed she did not die outright of grief.
Poor Thea, poor, happy, loving child! it seemed to her so easy to die if bereft of that which made life worth living. She did not realize the bitter contrasts of life:
“We pray for death,
But death comes not at will.”
She had been so much interested in Lord Stuart’s description of his sister that it did not seem strange to her that she thrilled and trembled when she stood at last in Lady Edith’s presence, and felt the touch of her soft, white hand, and heard her low, sweet voice speaking to her in the kindest accents, as if she quite understood the pretty girlish shyness of her guest.
Thea gained courage from those gentle tones and looked up at Lady Edith.