MEETING HER FIRST LOVE.
She had never ceased to regret that, when the heartless Mrs. Levy had
turned her out of doors, she had forgotten to take with her the little
journal, the confidant of her girlish secrets, her love, her hopes, her
sorrows.
Blushes would always overspread her lovely face and neck when she
wondered whether Sadie Allen, or any one else, had read the little book
and discovered her foolish secret--her love for Bayard Lorraine.
“I hope that no one will ever know that,” she would sigh, most
bitterly; yet the old tenderness and the half pique were still there;
the blue eyes and the proud, handsome face were still distinct in her
memory, and at times a bitter pang would pierce her heart at thought of
her wasted love and hopes.
And then she would wonder if he was married, and if he was happy with
his chosen bride, and such thoughts as these would leave a shadow on
her face in even the gayest scenes, causing one of her admirers to
exclaim one day that a shadow had crossed the sun.
She was very fond of books, and one day a literary man asked her if she
had read the new American novel that had created such a sensation.
“No,” she replied, and he promised to bring her the book, saying
laughingly that she ought to be better acquainted with the authors of
her native land.
She read the book, and was charmed with its clever delineations of
character and its romantic and original plot. It was the work of a
man of genius, and made a deep impression on the mind of Fair; yet,
strangely enough, she did not think of glancing at the title page to
find out the name of the author.
She told her literary friend how much she admired the book, and then he
said:
“By the way, the author is in London at present. He crossed the ‘big
pond’ a few days ago to look after the interests of his book, which was
published here simultaneously with its appearance in New York. I have
had the pleasure of an introduction. Would you like for me to bring
him to call?”
“I--I don’t know,” she said, pursing her lips dubiously. “Would he be
interesting, do you think?”
“All the ladies who have seen him declare that he is more charming than
his book.”
“Young?”
“On the sunny side of thirty.”
“Oh, how pleasant! I wish I were smart enough to write a book.”
Her English friend laughed at her Yankee phrase, “smart,” then asked:
“May I bring him?”
“Please do; I want to see if he looks like his hero,” she replied, with
awakened interest, and that day she told her adopted mother that Mr.
Converse was going to bring the American author to call.
“What is his name?”
“I have forgotten--that is, I don’t believe I ever looked in the book
to see.”
“Look now,” said Mrs. Howard.
But at that moment the Fraynes, their traveling companions, were
announced, and the American author was forgotten in an animated
discussion of the Italian winter they were going to have. The
Fraynes--who consisted of a father and mother, a son who was in love
with Fair, and two pretty daughters--had consented to be the guests of
Mrs. Howard at the prince’s villa.
It was on the evening of a day two days later that a small party of
sociable people were gathered in Mrs. Howard’s drawing-room, when their
number was suddenly swelled by the appearance of Mr. Converse and a
gentleman whom he introduced to Mrs. Howard and the company as Mr.
Lorraine.
Fair had not yet come down. She had gone to her room after dinner, to
change her dinner dress, that had been soiled with gravy by an awkward
waiter.
Her maid, a trim English girl, gave her a dress of white clairette
cloth, whose soft, lustrous folds fell about the slender, graceful form
with statuesque grace. She wore a wide sash of soft, white silk, tied
at the side in long, graceful loops. She was only medium height, but
the costume made her look tall, and when Betty had fastened the pearls
on the bare white arms and the bare throat, exposed by a square-necked
bodice, she--the poor working girl so suddenly transplanted into an
atmosphere of wealth and luxury--looked like a young princess, so
graceful was her form, so beautiful her face, with its glorious,
dark-brown eyes, whose dazzling light was all that was needed to
relieve the severity of her pure white drapery.
“Mother likes me in white,” she said, with a gratified glance into the
broad mirror, and, taking up her big bunch of white ostrich feathers,
called by Dame Fashion a fan, she swept out, followed by the admiring
remark from Betty:
“I like you in any color, miss. You look sweet in all.”
She went on, with a smile at the maid’s flattery, humming, as she
walked, the low refrain of a love song--then the drawing-room door
opened. She was on the threshold, a lovely, slender shape, all in
white, with a vivid face lighted by starry eyes and crowned by shining
red-gold hair; and a man had started up in amazement from Mrs. Howard’s
side, and was staring at her with wondering eyes. She did not see him
at first, for she was greeting several friends; but all at once she
heard Converse say at her side:
“I’ve brought the American author, Miss Howard. Here he is--Bayard
Lorraine!”
When they stood face to face, she was the calmer of the two. She had
been nerving herself for this so long, looking for it, longing for
it, that now, with a glad consciousness of her perfect beauty, and an
inward thrill of deep emotion, she could greet Bayard Lorraine with
a lovely girlish dignity all her own. It was he who looked startled,
disturbed. He stared at her in perplexity, as if she had been a ghost.
Fair looked at him with a smile. She could guess what made him stare in
such surprise.
She made him think of the girl whose life he had saved two years ago.
“He remembers my face, although he was too proud to ask my name,” she
thought, and it soothed her wounded pride to think that he had at least
retained some memory of her through the time that had elapsed.
But not for worlds would she have owned to her identity.
“We meet now on equal terms,” was her swift thought, and she determined
to hold her vantage ground.
What could come of it? Nothing! She was not free, and it was more than
likely that he was married. Yet a headlong fate seemed to urge her on
to know him better, to make the most of her opportunity, to gain from
this fleeting chance some more bittersweet memories to wear thread-bare
with constant usage in coming years.
While these swift emotions rather than thoughts ran through her
whirling brain, he recovered himself, and greeted her with simple
conventional ease, apologizing with easy grace for his wondering stare.
“I fear you took me for a moon-struck lunatic--but I was beauty-struck.”
So he did not intend to tell her that she had startled him by her
likeness to a poor working girl whose life he had saved two years ago?
It was all the better. She would be saved from the sin of evading her
identity.
A minute more, and they were sitting side by side on the same sofa,
talking to each other with the formality of strangers, it is true, yet
gazing into each other’s eyes with a more than ordinary interest.
He was handsomer than ever, she was thinking, and a thrill of rapture
went through her as she thought she detected in the blue eyes a look of
more than conventional admiration.
“What if he should love me? Oh, Heaven, the sweetness of that thought!”
the girl whispered to her throbbing heart, and the warm color rose to
her face, and the brown eyes filled with a happy light.
“I have read your book. Is it your first one?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Converse tells me that it has had a flattering success. Your wife
must feel very proud of you.”
She was fanning herself with useless energy--the room was not too
warm--as she put this leader.
“My wife!” he said, in a puzzled tone, then laughed. “I hope she will
be when I get her, but just now she is in the future.”
“Oh, so you are not a married man?” she exclaimed naïvely, and he shook
his head, thinking to himself:
“Pretty flirt! She put that leader very cleverly. She did not intend to
waste herself on me if I was a benedict.”
He had seen the look of pleasure on her face, and it thrilled his heart.
“She is glad--so am I,” was the inward comment, for he was conscious
of a dangerous intoxication in her presence, which he did not try to
resist.
She was so beautiful, so charming; besides, that haunting likeness
about her added to the fascination she exercised over him.
When they parted that night, it was with a promise of meeting on the
morrow, and neither Bayard Lorraine nor Fairfax Fielding slept at all
that night for thinking of each other and longing for the meeting next
day.
Fair had her heart’s desire. The man she had loved at first sight,
whose memory she had worshiped in silence for two long years, had
fallen in love with her at their first meeting.
She had read it already in the frank, clear glance of the splendid blue
eyes.
“And only last night I wept on my pillow because I was convinced that I
should never see him again,” she told herself, in rapturous wonder.