Floy choked back a rising sob, and sat like a statue in her chair, fearing to breathe lest she betray her cruel secret.
She was as proud as she was beautiful, this willful little Floy.
In the long happy weeks since she had been here with Alva she had dreamed some happy dreams, but now they were all over.
At first she had been glad to be here with her lover’s sister, and she had pictured to herself over and over his joy when he should come home and find her here an inmate of his home, a pet with his loved ones. Surely, then, it would be easy to win their liking for his chosen bride.
But when Alva’s confidences showed Floy the overweening pride of the Beresfords, she began to be frightened even of charming Alva.
She said to herself in weary nightly vigils:
“She, too, is proud, although she pretends to take her brother’s part. I can see that she has little sympathy with unequal marriages. If she but guessed that I am the girl her brother loves, she would send me away from the shelter of this roof.”
And in her terror of the cold world outside, her fear of her foes, and her longing to stay here till her lover’s return, poor Floy held fast her wretched little secret of love, scarcely daring to breathe when Alva named her brother’s name in praise or blame.
But that last conjecture of Alva’s as to her brother’s resignation to his mother’s will nearly broke the poor child’s heart.
She could not doubt Alva’s word. It must be true that among them all, in their pride of name and place, they had turned his heart against her, his absent little love.