“Baby darling, you are one year old to-day, and only see what Santa
Claus has brought you--gifts splendid enough for a little prince!”
cried Thea, kneeling down on the nursery floor in her white cashmere
morning-dress, to clasp the little toddling boy in her eager arms.
He sprung eagerly to her breast, and when Norman de Vere entered a
minute later, he found them thus--Thea on a rug upon the floor, her
little son in her arms, their faces so close together that the rich
gold of her curls blended with the fairer gold of the baby’s lying
in silken curls all over his shapely head. The child’s beauty was
cherubic, and while he had hair and eyes like his mother, he had the
proud De Vere features, making him strangely like his father in spite
of the fact that his eyes were blue, his hair golden, and his skin the
loveliest white and red. Alan Arthur they had named him--the Alan for
Norman’s father, the brave soldier who had died in battle, and the
Arthur was for Lady Edith’s dead husband. She had written and asked
that his second name should be Arthur, and promised to come to the
christening of the child, but the sudden illness of her brother had
prevented the journey, and she had not come yet, although her husband’s
namesake was a year old. But she had not forgotten, and many rich gifts
had come across the sea to her husband’s namesake from both her and
Lord Stuart.
Thea was right in thinking that her boy had gifts splendid enough for
a prince, for the Christmas-tree standing over against the window was
laden with costly things enough to gladden the heart of a little king.
Many had come from friends in the city and many from across the sea. It
made the girlish mother very proud and happy to know that her boy was
held in so much esteem, and as she clasped and kissed him she whispered
to him in the most approved baby-talk, that it was no wonder people
fell in love with him--he was so sweet and lovely they simply could not
help it.
Norman laughed gayly at her maternal vanity, as he knelt down and took
mother and child into his strong, loving embrace, and so his mother
found them when she, too, came in to see how Master Alan liked his
Christmas-tree.
Baby did not know how to appreciate anything yet. When they put
anything into his dimpled little hands, he poked it into his mouth like
a little pig. Thea vowed in despair that he would have to be quite five
years old before she could allow him to have half of his beautiful
playthings, lest he should choke himself to death.
“How strange, dear, it seems to see your child sitting there with
its toys at play,” cried grandmamma, smilingly. “Why, it seems but
yesterday that you were a child at play yourself, and Norman bringing
you new toys every day. On a shelf in my closet now there is a great
box of your broken dolls and playthings.”
“Oh, I must look at them some time,” Thea cried, with almost childish
delight at the thought; and the very next day she had her maid lug in
the big box to her room and leave it on the floor. Alan was out in the
grounds with his nurse, Norman was at his desk in the library, Mrs.
de Vere was directing the maids about some housework. Thea thought it
would be a good time to look over the store of toys Norman had given
her. Norman--yes, that was the charm--had loved her in her innocent
childhood--had selected these toys for her with his own hands. There
was a thought of him in every headless doll, every piece of battered
doll furniture, every dog’s-eared book with gayly painted pictures, and
the fond heart thrilled with tender thoughts of him.
“My own, own love, my darling who loves me so!” murmured the beautiful
red lips; and pausing for a moment in a happy dream, she absently
turned the leaves of a torn picture-book.
Ah, what was that that fell out from between the leaves?--a crumpled
letter, a little pair of stub-pointed scissors.
Thea started, and a strange light came into her eyes.
As though she had held the book of her life in her hands and the warm
leaves had fluttered apart at the opening pages, the past had rushed
over her mind, so slight are the tokens needed to revive a sleeping
memory.
Thea felt herself again a child, so vivid was her recollection of the
moment when she had picked up from the floor the crumpled letter Norman
had cast aside, and hidden it with the scissors in the book for future
clipping. Then, child-like, she had forgotten all about it.
“What is it, anyway?” she thought, idly straightening the sheet out on
her knee and regarding the delicate feminine letters with curious eyes.
No thought came to the happy young wife that it could be wrong to read
the letter tossed aside so carelessly and forgotten so long. She saw
that the heading was simply “My husband,” but for the moment no thought
came to her of Norman’s first wife. She had read more than half,
before, with a startled cry, she glanced at the end of the letter and
read there the name Camille.
But she could not pause now. She read on with dilated eyes until she
had mastered the whole of Camille’s cruel defiance. Her jealous, angry
spirit had not spared her husband the bitterest taunts. Let him but
dare, she wrote, institute proceedings for a divorce, and she would
tell the whole world what a monster he was, bringing under her roof his
illegitimate child and trying to deceive her and the world with the
story that it was a stranger whom he had saved in a railway wreck.