I felt the blood rush to my face, and I think I had never in all my life experienced such embarrassment.
"I'm not such a coxcomb, mother, as to believe any girl could fall in love with me—Helen above all others."
She smiled, with a little inward amusement in her smile. "You must remember," she said again softly, "that Helen is not a child, and you surely would not make her suffer."
"Why, mother," I gasped, "we are just like brother and sister: our intimacy is the habit of years."
"Good-night, my son," my mother said, and went away still smiling: "I have perfect faith in your magnanimity."
I remembered with a flash of guilty self-consciousness one or two little circumstances about our talk by the window two hours before which I have not set down here. It had seemed an easy task to soothe the child. If there had been any absurdity like that my mother hinted at, would she—could I— No, never! She was a careless child, with fits of coldness, imperious tenderness and generosity. Not a woman at all. The idea was quite distasteful to me that Helen was a grown-up woman with whom I must be on my guard.
However, Helen's manner to me next day and at all times was calculated to assure any man that she was a wilful, self-sustained young creature of extraordinary beauty and grace, who was devoted to her father, and to him alone. I saw Thorpe one evening pick up, by stealth, the petals of a crimson rose which had dropped from the stalk that still nestled in the black ribbon at her throat, and I laughed at him for his pains as he laid them carefully away in his pocket-book.
"Miss Floyd," said I, "here is another rose. Don't honor that poor skeleton of a vanished flower."
She saw the accident which had befallen her rose, and took mine from me and replaced her ornament with a fresh blossom. "Give me the poor stem," said I as she was about to throw it away.
"What is that for?" she asked, staring at me as I placed it in my buttonhole. "What do you want of the poor old thing?"