Molly rode very fast on returning, and she was so quiet that Cecil
Laurens regarded her knit brows and pursed-up lips in surprise.
“You are leading me a sort of John Gilpin race, Miss Barry. What is the
matter with you?” he said.
“I am impatient to read my letter,” she replied in a curt voice.
They were outside the limits of the town now, and riding up the
mountain road beneath tall overarching trees that lined the road on
either side. He said, kindly:
“We can stop long enough to read your letter, since you are so
impatient.”
Molly let the speed of her gray filly slacken a little, and looked
round at him with candid eyes.
“I would rather not,” she said.
“But there would be nothing improper in doing so, and I am not in a
hurry,” he urged.
“Yes, I know; but I’m afraid. If I read the letter, and sis--I mean,
Aunt Lucy--did not say _yes_, I should fly into a tantrum and alarm
you,” with a sparkle of malice in the black eyes.
“I think I _have_ seen you in a tantrum,” he replied, with equal
malice. “But of course Aunt Lucy will say yes to any request of yours.”
She shook her curly head despondingly, but the filly had fallen
unchecked into a slower pace.
“Ah, you don’t _know_, Mr. Laurens,” she said, dolorously. “You see, I
wrote to Aunt Lucy that I was tired of Ferndale, and wanted to come
home, but--but--I’m afraid she won’t let me go yet.”
“Tired of Ferndale?” he repeated.
“Yes, sick and tired,” she replied, emphatically. “I thought it would
be jolly fun to come, at first, but I’ve been here three weeks now, and
it’s the pokiest old hole I ever saw! I’d give anything to be back in
Staunton.”
“She has left a lover behind her, of course,” the young man thought to
himself, and he said, in rather a cross tone:
“Your aunt would be angry if she heard you abusing Ferndale like that.
Do you know that it is considered a fine place?”
“Yes, and I wouldn’t have Aunt Thalia know my private opinion of it.
You won’t betray me, will you?” smiling.
“No, but I’m sorry you want to get away from Ferndale,” with
unaccountable inward irritation. “Why don’t you tell your Aunt Thalia
so?”
“Oh,” with a horrified gesture, “not for worlds. You know--I’m to be
her heiress. I must not offend her, or she may disinherit me.”
“So you are mercenary?” lifting his graceful brows into distinctive
arches.
“It runs in the Barry blood, does it not?” she retorted.
And he answered gravely:
“I never knew it before!”
Molly laughed merrily.
“Now, you make me think you a hateful prig again. But there, we needn’t
quarrel, only I must say again, I don’t want to stay at Ferndale, and I
pray Heaven this letter may send me permission to go home.”
He would have joined her in that fervent prayer if he had known what
that letter was to bring forth, but in his ignorance and blindness he
began to say to himself that it was a pity old Mrs. Barry was going to
lose her bright young companion so soon.
“But, it _is_ lonely for such a little butterfly,” he thought. “I must
try to brighten up her life at Ferndale for my old friend’s sake.”
Full of this generous impulse, he said:
“It shall not be dull any more at Ferndale. I know many of the pretty,
lively young girls at Lewisburg, and I shall bring some of them to call
on you. Then we will devise some parties and picnics to amuse you. I
only wish my mother and sisters were at home so that you could come and
make a visit at Maple Shade.”
“They would not care about _me_!” she replied with an odd touch of
bitterness.
“Miss Barry, you ought to know better than that. Did I not tell you
that our families are intimate friends? My mother and my sisters would
take the greatest interest in you. I wish that Mrs. Barry had sent you
abroad with my sisters to be educated.”
“Thank you,” with sarcasm.
He paid no attention to her outburst, but continued, as if struck by a
sudden thought:
“I have an idea.”
“Really?” exclaimed Molly, with deeper sarcasm than before.
“Yes, impossible as it may appear to you,” he replied, flushing
slightly under the fire of her large, magnetic dark eyes. “Miss Barry,
you know that I have but lately left London and that I shall return in
a few weeks?”
“Yes,” carelessly.
“Here is my plan, I shall ask Mrs. Barry to let me take charge of you
and place you at school with my sisters to finish your education.”
Molly caught her breath quickly, and something like a sharp regret
pierced her heart.
To herself she said:
“Ah, if I were not a little fraud what a future would lie before me!”
But looking up into his face with eyes that gave no sign of the pang
she was enduring, she said:
“Mr. Laurens, you must have taken leave of your senses to talk about a
girl of five-and-twenty finishing her education.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss Barry, you look much younger than that, and
you certainly do need a little more polish. The Barrys were always
noted for their polished manners,” he replied, frankly, but the
frankness on the whole was rather engaging.
Molly did not resent the imputation of brusquerie. She had heard it so
often before that it was nothing new, and besides she was quivering all
over with a tempest of excitement and regret, evoked by his words of a
moment ago.
To go abroad, to cross that big, blue sparkling ocean had been the
passionate desire of her life; oh, what would she not give to realize
that dream!
She had never envied the Barrys before; indeed, she had openly
cherished an amused contempt for their family pride, and had never
sighed for their broad acres or the blue blood that flowed in their
veins. In this moment of sore temptation, however, all was reversed.
“I wish--I wish--I were really Louise Barry instead of a contemptible
little fraud!” she sighed. “But then how much better is _she_? It is
all a muddle, and I can’t go, that’s all. And I hope and pray that Lou
has fixed up some plan for me to come home, for everything is getting
tangled up dreadfully!”
Poor child, she thought so truly, for at every step she was floundering
deeper into “the tangled web of fate.”
They rode in presently across the lawn at Ferndale, and Mrs. Barry,
from her seat in the wide hall, gave a smirk of satisfaction at sight
of Cecil Laurens.
Molly sprang down from her horse without waiting for assistance, flew
up the steps, across the porch and hall, and upstairs like a little
tornado, wild to possess herself of the contents of that fateful letter.
Cecil Laurens, half-vexed at her unceremonious exit from the scene,
dismounted more leisurely, and, handing his reins to a negro lad, went
in to pay his respects to his old friend, Mrs. Barry.
“Now, this is kind of you, Cecil; but where did you pick up Louise?”
beaming.
He explained, taking special care not to expose old Abe’s little
artifice, by which he had gained a morning’s gossip with his darky
friends.
“You must spend the day with us,” said the old lady. “Louise will be
down in a minute. She has only run upstairs to change her dress.”
“And to read her letter,” he added.
“Her letter?”
“She had a letter from home,” he explained, and Mrs. Barry’s brow
gloomed over.
“A letter from that odious relative, the daughter of the actress! Oh,
how I wish I could break her off from those pernicious influences!” she
sighed.
“Let me suggest a way,” cried Cecil Laurens, with sparkling eyes.
“So soon?” she thought, triumphantly; but her ardor was a little
dampened when he continued:
“You know I return to Europe in a few weeks. Let me take your niece
with me and place her at school with my sisters.”
She uttered a little gasp of dismay, and presently cried out:
“At school--Louise at school! What nonsense, Cecil! Why, she finished
lessons long ago. She is plenty old enough to be married.”
And a minute’s silence ensued.
There was a lurking smile on Cecil’s faultless face, and he thought
within himself:
“She may be old enough, but she is certainly not wise enough. I would
as soon think of marrying a baby.”
But feeling himself snubbed, he did not voice these sentiments aloud.
He said, simply:
“I forgot her age. She seems so very young--as young as my school-girl
sisters.”
“She lacks training. Her aunt Lucy has spoiled her, that is why she
seems so childish,” she replied, apologetically.
“So I thought. That is why I suggested a little more polish, such as
can only be acquired in a first-class school,” he replied. “But, dear
Mrs. Barry, please do not think me meddlesome. It was a hasty thought
spoken out too freely.”
“My dear Cecil! I am sure I thank you for expressing such an interest
in Louise. It is very flattering to her, coming from _you_,” Mrs. Barry
said, pointedly, and then she took the young man into her confidence
and told him of her wish to keep her niece at Ferndale, and so separate
her from her objectionable step-sister, “that theater child.”
Cecil Laurens applauded her resolve warmly, although he felt somewhat
like a traitor to the girl who had so frankly confided to him her
honest dislike of Ferndale.
“Next week I shall take her to the White Sulphur Springs,” she said. “I
mean to give her such a round of gayety that she will not longer regret
her humdrum home in Staunton.”
And again Cecil Laurens applauded this resolve. He had as deeply
grained a prejudice against “that theater child” as had old Mrs. Barry
herself, and desired just as ardently to keep Louise at Ferndale.
“I shall go to the White for a week myself just as soon as I get my
business here over,” he said, and Mrs. Barry replied that she was very
glad. It would be pleasanter for her and Louise having an old friend
there.
But when this confidential conversation was over, Mrs. Barry began to
think that her niece stayed upstairs a long time. She sent Ginny Ann to
call her down.
Ten, then fifteen minutes elapsed before Ginny Ann reappeared with the
announcement:
“I done argyfied my breff mos’ away, mistis, but I carn’t budge dat
chile! She done laid herseff down on dat flure, a-cryin’ and a-cryin’
her bressid eyes out!”