She put her small hand in his, and he felt the fingers curl around his
own, gently detaining him.
"Well, dear?" he asked, thinking that she was about to change her mind
and say she would have the new dress.
Her face dropped a little to hide the warm flush that rose over it as
she stammered in desperate confusion:
"Before you--go--I must make a confession. Last night I--I--told an
untruth when I said I had a headache and could not sing. You--you will
not call me your little Una, your lady of truth any more now, will you,
Eliot?"
She was so close to him, the supple, girlish figure leaned so near that
he daringly slipped his arm around the small waist. A thrill of rapture
ran through him as he felt her nestle shyly in his clasp.
"So it was not a headache, my little Truth?" he whispered, lovingly.
"What was the reason then that made you desert us all so unkindly?"
"It was--was--a fit of ill-temper," Una exclaimed, remorsefully; then
she turned round, so quickly, so lightly, he did not realize it until
it was over, and slipping her arm around his neck drew his face down to
hers, pressed a light, bashful kiss upon his lips, then tore herself
from his clasp and fled the room.
Strong man as he was, Eliot Van Zandt reeled backward into a chair,
dizzy with delicious rapture at that light, shy but ardent pressure of
Una's lips upon his own.
It had come so unexpectedly, that moment of bliss after the bitterness
and hopelessness of last night, it was like the dawning of a new day
after a night of storm and darkness.
Hope plumed her wings again in his heart.
"She is going to learn to love me," he thought, happily, too blind
still to understand the full meaning of that caress that had sent such
a shock of rapturous delight through his whole being.
He sat still a few blissful moments, going gladly over her looks and
words.
"Not a headache--a fit of ill-temper. Ill-temper over what?" he
wondered, then suddenly: "Oh, my little love, my darling, you were
vexed because Ida Hayes sat down by my side, because I took her in to
dinner. Well, I shall bless the coming of Ida if through her coquetry
my Una learns she has a heart."
Meanwhile, frightened at her own boldness, her heart beating furiously,
Una rushed upstairs, seeking solitude in which to hide herself from all.
"What must he think of me?" she murmured, with crimson blushes. "I did
not mean to do it. I do not know how I dared so much. Was he angry, I
wonder? I could not look at him. I was so amazed at what I had done!"
Her lips burned with the touch of his, her heart throbbed with pain
and pleasure commingled. Walking restlessly up and down the floor, she
murmured:
"I love him so dearly that I must--I must win his heart! Then, and not
till then, will he forgive me for the loss of Ida and her fortune. How
shamed I felt over the proffer of the new dress! He will give me new
dresses, but he will not give me his heart. He puts me away from him
like a stranger. Shall I resent it? Ah, no, no; since he has sacrificed
so much for me, I must sacrifice my pride for him. For his own sake,
for his future happiness; I, the Little Nobody, obscure, unloved,
penniless, uncultured, must make myself beloved by him until he shall
bless the wayward fate that made him mine."
The dark eyes glowed, the cheeks crimsoned with emotion, as Una
thought, passionately:
"I would that I could do some brave, noble, heroic deed that would
challenge the world's admiration, so that he would forget my obscure
origin and my misfortune that drove him to the sacrifice that saved me
from the world's scorn, in sudden pride and love for me!"
There was a light tap at the door. Mrs. Wilson had sent Edith to bring
her tardy pupil to the school-room.
"If you are sick, or otherwise engaged, she will readily excuse you,"
Edith said.
"I do not want to be excused," said Una, as she hurried to the presence
of the gentle governess.
But that day she found books and lessons irksome in the extreme. Her
heart and mind were full of the strange facts she had heard last night
from the lips of Sylvie.
She who had been wedded, yet no wife, for almost a year had only now
found out that she was unloved, and the humiliation weighed her almost
to the earth, in spite of her brave, sensible resolve to win Eliot yet,
and make him forget that once he had sighed for Ida Hayes.
She longed to throw down the irksome books and cry out to the gentle,
placid Mrs. Wilson: "Away with books! Teach me the only lesson that
interests me now--how to win my husband's heart!"
She beat back the yearning impulse to claim this gentle woman's
sympathy with bitter pride.
"Shall I complain of him to her, to any one?" she thought. "Ah, no;
it lies between us two and God! The bitter secret shall never pass
my lips! Secret, did I say? Alas! it is known to them all, has been
known all along. How they must pity me, the unloved wife, the perhaps
unwelcome intruder in the home to which they had hoped he would bring
Ida Hayes a loved and loving bride!"
It did not look as if she was unwelcome when at the close of study
hours Maud and Edith burst into the room.
"Una, we are just dying to get hold of you!" Edith cried. "We want to
talk about the theater-party. What are we going to wear, for I'm sure
we can not afford new dresses."
"And we want to look as nice as possible, for Ida and Sylvie will do
all they can to outshine us," added Maud. "Of course they have lots of
new things, so Edith and I have just made up our minds to have some of
the pretty things in mamma's trunks upstairs. She gave them to us long
before she died. So if you won't be offended, Una, dear, come with us,
and we'll find something that we can fix over for the theater-party."
"What is it all about?" queried gentle Mrs. Wilson, and Edith returned:
"A popular actress who left the stage almost sixteen years ago has
returned to it again, and they say she is as young, lovely, and
spirited as when she retired to marry a rich aristocrat. All paint,
of course, but Sylvie is just wild to have us go and see her play on
Thursday night."