“I have not gone so much in society for years,” she said, in her sweet, gentle fashion. “But it is a pleasure to chaperon you, my dear, you enjoy it so much, and I receive so many compliments on introducing you.” Then she sighed. “Ah, Thea, I might have been chaperoning a daughter of my own now if she had lived.”
“You had a daughter?” Thea cried, in surprise.
“Yes, a little angel. But she died when she was four years old. Oh, Thea, I can not talk to you of her; it is too painful,” the beautiful woman cried, bursting into tears.
Thea’s heart thrilled with passionate pity and tenderness. She put her arms about the drooping figure, and kissed the tear-wet face, whispering of her love and sympathy, until at last Lady Edith ceased her sobbing and murmured:
“If she had lived, she would have been like you, darling Thea. She had the same blue eyes and curling golden hair. I hope you will come to us some time in Devonshire, and I will show you her portrait.”
That night Thea told her husband of Lady Edith’s sorrow.
“I love her more and more,” she said. “This sorrow draws me nearer to her, because it makes me think of my own dear mother who lost me in my childhood by a fate more sad than death.”
It was not often that Thea referred to the mystery of her past, but of late her thoughts had dwelt more frequently upon it. She wondered if her parents were yet alive—if they missed and mourned the child so strangely lost.
“If I could find my mother, I would like for her to resemble sweet Lady Edith,” she thought sometimes when she found a minute’s quiet in the whirl of gayety in which she was plunged—ball, opera, reception succeeding one another in bewildering rapidity.
But suddenly it all came to an end. In her tulle gowns and bare throat and arms the beautiful girl caught cold in damp, foggy London, and that evening when she laid her fair head on Norman’s shoulder, with the plaintive words, “I am tired—my head aches,” was the beginning of weeks of illness and pain when Thea lay, hot and feverish and sometimes delirious, on her bed, while Lady Edith, giving up society entirely, nursed her with all a mother’s devotion.