Then Harry came, and they began to pass the evening in the usual way, practising their songs, with music, and the little dance, without which the girls could not have gone away happy. And Angela, for the first time, observed a thing which struck a chill to her heart, and robbed her of half her joy.
Why had she never before discovered this thing? Ah! ignorant maiden, despite the wisdom of the schools. Hypatia herself was not more ignorant than Angela, who knew not that the chief quality of the rose of love in her heart was to make her read the hearts of others. Armed with this magic power, she saw what she might have seen long before.
In the hasty glance, the quick flush, the nervous trembling of her hands, poor Nelly betrayed her secret. And by those signs the other girl, who loved the same man, read that secret.
"O selfish woman!" said Angela's heart. "Is your happiness to be bought at such a cost?"
A girl of lower nature might have been jealous. Angela was not. It seemed to her no sin in Nelly that she thought too much of such a man. But she pitied her. Nor did she, as some women might have done, suspect that Harry had trifled with her feelings. She knew that he had not. She had seen them together, day after day; she knew what his bearing had always been toward her, frank, courteous, and brotherly. He called her by her Christian name; he liked her, her presence was pleasant; she was pretty, sweet, and winning. No: she did not suspect him. And yet, what should she say to the poor girl? How comfort her? How reconcile her to the inevitable sorrow?
"Nelly," she whispered at parting, "if you are unhappy, my child, you must tell me what it is."
"I cannot," Nelly replied. "But oh! do not think about me, Miss Kennedy; I am not worth it."
Perhaps she, too, had read those same signs and knew what they meant.