Suddenly, regretfully for the pain she must cause him, she recollected Julian. She could never marry him now. She would never, never marry anyone. She would be an old maid, like Aunt India. The prospect seemed rather pleasing than otherwise. With such a precious love in her heart she could never be quite lonely, no matter if she lived to be very, very old! She wondered if Aunt India had ever loved. And just then Phœbe’s voice called her from below and she went to the door and answered. She bathed her hot cheeks and wet eyes in the chill water, and with a long look about the big square room, which seemed now to have taken on the sacredness of a temple of confession, she went down-stairs.
Winthrop had not guessed. She knew that at once when she saw him. He was eagerly anxious about her, and blamed himself for her fright.
“I ought never to have let you try such foolishness,” he said, savagely. “You might have hurt yourself badly.”
“Oh,” laughed Holly, “but you were there to catch me!”
There was a caressing note in her voice that thrilled him with longing to live over again that brief moment in the parlor. But he only answered, and awkwardly enough, since his nerves were taut: “Then please see that I’m there before you try it again.”
They sat down at table with Miss India, to whom by tacit consent no mention was made of the incident, and chattered gayly of all things save the one which was crying at their lips to be spoken. And Holly kept her secret well.
XII.
January and Winter had passed together. February was nearly a week old. Already the garden was astir. The violet-beds were massed with blue, and the green spikes of the jonquils showed tiny buds. There was a new balminess in the air, a new languor in the ardent sunlight. The oaks were tasseling, the fig-trees were gowning themselves in new green robes of Edenic simplicity, the clumps of Bridal Wreath were sprinkled with flecks of white that promised early flowering and the pomegranates were unfolding fresh leaves. On the magnolia burnished leaves of tender green squirmed free from brown sheaths like moths from their cocoons. The south wind blew soft and fresh from the Gulf, spiced with the aroma of tropic seas. Spring was dawning over Northern Florida.