TESSA WADSWORTH’S DISCIPLINE.
I.—HEARTS THAT SEEMED TO DIFFER.
She was standing one afternoon on the broad piazza, leaning against the railing, with color enough in her usually colorless cheeks as she watched the tall figure passing through the low gateway; he turned towards the watching eyes, smiled, and touched his hat.
“You will be in again this week,” she said coaxingly, “you can give me ten minutes out of your busy-ness.”
“Twice ten, perhaps.”
The light that flashed into her eyes was her only reply; she stood leaning forward, playing with the oleander blossoms under her hand until he had seated himself in his carriage and driven away; not until the brown head and straw hat had disappeared behind the clump of willows at the corner did she stir or move her eyes, then the happy feet in the bronze slippers tripped up-stairs to her own chamber. Dinah had left her slate on a chair, and dropped her algebra on the carpet, at the sound of Norah’s voice below the window.
Tessa was glad to be alone; she was always glad to be alone after Ralph Towne had left her, to think over all that he had said, and to feel again the warm shining of his brown eyes; to thank God with a few, low, joyful exclamations that He had brought this friend into her life; and then, as foolish women will, she must look into her own face and try to see it as he saw it,—cheeks aglow, tremulous lips, and such a light in the blue eyes!
She did not know that her eyes could look like that. She had thought them pale, cold, meaningless, and now they were like no eyes that she had ever looked into; a dancing, tender, blue delight.
Had he read her secret in them?
Her enthusiasm with its newness, sweetness, and freshness,—for it was as fresh as her heart was pure,—was moulding all her thoughts, strengthening her desire to become in all things true and womanly, and making her as blithe all day long as the birds that twittered in the apple-tree near her chamber window.