He should see that lovely face again, was his first waking thought; but when the evening was over Maurice Trafford went back to his lodgings a sadder and a wiser man.
He was dazzled and bewildered when he saw her again—the young girl in the white gown was changed into a radiant princess. Nea was dressed for a ball; she came across the great lighted room to greet Maurice in a cloud of gauzy draperies. Diamonds gleamed on her neck and arms; her eyes were shining; she looked so bewilderingly beautiful that Maurice grew embarrassed, all the more that Mr. Huntingdon’s cold eyes were upon them.
Maurice never recalled that evening without pain. A great gulf seemed to open between him and his master’s daughter; what was there in common between them? Nea talked gayly to him as well as to her other guests, but he could hardly bring himself to answer her.
His reserve disappointed Nea. She had been longing to see him again, but the handsome young clerk seemed to have so little to say to her. He was perfectly gentlemanly and well bred, but he appeared somewhat depressed.
Nea’s vanity was piqued at last, and when Lord Bertie joined them in the evening she gave him all her attention. Things had not progressed according to Mr. Huntingdon’s wishes. Nea could not be induced to look favorably on Lord Bertie’s suit; she pouted and behaved like a spoiled child when her father spoke seriously to her on the subject. The death of one of Lord Bertie’s sisters had put a stop to the wooing for the present; but it was understood that he would speak to Nea very shortly, and after a long and angry argument with her father she was induced to promise that she would listen to him.
Nea was beginning to feel the weight of her father’s inflexible will. In spite of her gayety and merry speeches, she was hardly happy that evening. Lord Bertie’s heavy speeches and meaningless jokes oppressed her—how terribly weary she would get of him if he were her husband, she thought. She was tired of him already—of his commonplace, handsome face—of his confidential whispers and delicately implied compliments—and then she looked up and met Maurice’s thoughtful gray eyes fixed on her. Nea never knew why she blushed, or a strange, restless feeling came over her that moment; but she answered Lord Bertie pettishly. It was almost a relief when the carriage was announced, and she was to leave her guests. Maurice, who was going, stood at the door while Lord Bertie put her in the carriage—a little gloved hand waved to him out of the darkness—and then the evening was over.
Mr. Huntingdon had not seemed like himself that night; he had complained of headache and feverishness, and had confided to Dobson that perhaps after all Dr. Ainslie was right, and he ought to have taken more rest.
Somehow he was not the man he had been before his accident; nevertheless he ridiculed the idea that much was amiss, and talked vaguely of running down to the sea for a few days.
But not even that determined will of his could shake off the illness that was creeping over him, and one night when Nea returned from a brilliant réunion she found Belgrave House a second time in confusion. Mr. Huntingdon had been taken suddenly ill, and Dr. Ainslie was in attendance.
By and by a nurse arrived—a certain bright-eyed little Sister Teresa—and took charge of the sick man. After the first few days of absolute danger, during which he had been tolerably submissive, Mr. Huntingdon had desired that he should be kept informed of all matters connected with an important lawsuit of his at present pending; and during the tedious weeks of convalescence Maurice Trafford carried the daily report to Belgrave House. It seemed as though fate were conspiring against him; every day he saw Nea, and every day her presence grew more perilously sweet to him.
She had a thousand innocent pretexts for detaining him, little girlish coquetries which she did not employ in vain. She would ask him about her father, or beg him to tell her about the tiresome lawsuit, or show him her birds and flowers, anything, in fact, that her caprice could devise to keep him beside her for a moment; very often they met in her father’s room, or Mr. Huntingdon would give orders that Mr. Trafford should stay to luncheon.
Nea, in her blindness, thought she was only amusing herself with an idle fancy, a girl’s foolish partiality for a face that seemed almost perfect in her eyes; she little thought that she was playing a dangerous game, that the time was fast approaching when she would find her fancy a sorrowful reality.
Day by day those stolen moments became more perilous in their sweetness; and one morning Nea woke up to the conviction that Maurice Trafford loved her, that he was everything to her, and that she would rather die than live without him.
It was one afternoon, and they were together in the drawing-room. Maurice had come late that day, and a violent storm had set in, and Mr. Huntingdon had sent down word that Mr. Trafford had better wait until it was over. To do Mr. Huntingdon justice, he had no idea his daughter was in the house; she had gone out to luncheon, and he had not heard of her return.
The heavy velvet curtains had been drawn to shut out the dreary scene, and only the fire-light lit up the room; Nea, sitting in her favorite low chair, with her feet on the white rug, was looking up at Maurice, who stood leaning against the mantel-piece talking to her.
He was telling her about his father’s early death, and of the sweet-faced mother who had not long survived him; of his own struggles and poverty, of his lonely life, his efforts to follow his parents’ example. Nea listened to him in silence; but once he paused, and the words seemed to die on his lips. He had never seen her look like that before; she was trembling, her face was pale, and her eyes were wet with tears; and then, how it happened neither of them could tell, but Maurice knew that he loved her—knew that Nea loved him—and was holding her to his heart as though he could never let her go.
CHAPTER IX.
THE AWAKENING.
That thrilling, solemn, proud, pathetic voice,
He stretched his arms out toward that thrilling voice,
As if to draw it on to his embrace.
I take her as God made her, and as men
Must fail to unmake her, for my honor’d wife.
E. B. Browning.
Paradise itself could hardly hold an hour of purer and more perfect bliss than when those two young creatures stood holding each other’s hands and confessing their mutual love.
To Nea it was happiness, the happiness for which she had secretly longed. To Maurice it was a dazzling dream, a madness, an unreality, from which he must wake up to doubt his own sanity—to tremble and disbelieve.
And that awakening came all too soon.
Through the long hours of the night he lay and pondered, till with the silence and darkness a thousand uneasy thoughts arose that cooled the fever in his veins and made him chill with the foreboding of evil.
What had he done? Was he mad? Had it been all his fault that he had betrayed his love? Had he not been sorely tempted? and yet, would not a more honorable man have left her without saying a word?
How could he go to Mr. Huntingdon and acknowledge what he had done? that he, a mere clerk, a poor curate’s son, had dared to aspire to his daughter, to become the rival of Lord Bertie Gower—for Nea had confided to him her father’s ambition. Would he not think him mad? groaned Maurice, or would he turn with that hard, dark look on his face that he knew so well, and give him a curt dismissal?
Maurice remembered George Anderson and trembled, as well he might; and then as the whole hopelessness of the case rushed upon him, he thought that he would tell his darling that he had been mad—dishonorable, but that he would give her up; that he loved her better than himself,