CHAPTER XXXVIII.
“Is not this Thursday?” suddenly asked my grandfather, at breakfast, a week or so after the events just described. “It is? Then this is the day for the Poythress’s return. Ah, now we shall have music.”
A man talking with another may look him in the face for an hour without knowing one of his thoughts; a woman will flash a careless glance across your face,—across it—no more,—and read you to the heart.
Alice and Mary beamed upon each other and ejaculated, “Lucy!” But Mary’s eyes had had time to sweep the features of the Don. “Won’t it be charming to have Lucy with us!” said she; but she hardly knew what she said. Her face, turned towards Alice, wore a mechanical smile; but she saw only the Don and the startled, almost dazed look that came over his face on hearing Mr. Whacker’s words. How brave a little woman can be! She turned to the Don and said,—a seraphic smile upon her face,—“You have never heard Lucy play. You have a great treat in store.”
“No,” replied he, dropping his napkin. “No,” repeated he, his eye fixed upon vacancy. He had heard with his ears and answered with his lips. That was all. Suddenly recollecting himself, he turned to her with a bow and a courteous smile: “Yes, it will be a great treat,—very great;” but his thoughts, mightier than his will, swept the smile from his features and left them pale and rigid as before.
How many thoughts crowded upon Mary’s heart in that instant! “What a silly school-girl I have been! A word here and a word there, during these last ten days, have made me forget the intense interest he obviously took in Lucy at first sight. After all, what has he said to me? Nothing, absolutely nothing! And yet I was so weak as to imagine—and now he has learned of a new bond of sympathy—music—between Lucy and himself. Why did I learn nothing but waltzes and variations and such trash? If only—too late! And he has seen so little of her! That dream, too,—that strange, terrible dream,—should have warned me. And now Lucy is coming. Lucy! is she, then, so superior to me? She is as good as an angel, I know; but I thought that I—wretched vanity again”—and she stamped her foot—“yet Alice has thought so too—else why—surely, he cannot have been trifling with me? Never! Of that, at least, he is incapable! Such a noble countenance as his could not—” And for a second she lifted her eyes to his—
“Yes, Zip, I’ll take one.”
“Girls,” said Alice, “just look at Mary; an untasted waffle on her plate and taking another!”
Mary gave one of those ringing laughs that so infest the pages of female novelists.
“Is there to be a famine?” asked one.