Annette, half ashamed of herself for doing it, had kept her promise, and lured the sister out of the parlor on some pretext.
Anita rose immediately, made the gentleman a slight obeisance, and glided from the room without uttering a word.
When she had gone, he sat there confounded. “She a child!” he muttered. “She is the most self-possessed and determined woman I ever met.”
The love-song he had asked for addressed to God, and her abrupt departure, were to his mind proofs of the most mortifying rebuff he had ever received.
But he mistook, not knowing the difference between a child of earth and a child of heaven. That he could mean any other kind of love-song than the one she had sung never entered Anita’s mind. Love was to her an everyday word, oftener on her lips than any other. She spoke of love in the last waking moment at night and the first one in the morning. There was no reason why she should fear the word. As to the rest, it was nothing but obedience.
“Why did you come out, my dear?” asked Sister Cecilia, meeting her in the entry.
“Sister Bernadette told me never to remain alone with a gentleman,” Anita replied simply.
Lawrence was just saying to himself that, after all, her fear of staying with him was rather flattering, when she re-entered the room with Annette and the sister, and came to the piano again. It was impossible for vanity to blind him. He had not stirred the faintest ripple on the surface of her heart. It was a salutary mortification.
Sister Cecilia carried in her hands a man’s large gray shawl. Opening it out, she threw it over their improvised sofa, and tucked it in around the arms and the cushions. “It will do nicely,” she said. “And we do not need it for a wrap or a spread.”
Annette viewed it a little. “So it will,” she acquiesced. “A few large pins will keep it in place. But here is a little tear in the corner. Let me turn it the other way. There! that does nicely, doesn’t it, Lawrence?”