VANE'S strategy was doubtless perfect; but in the morning he found a
note sealed and superscribed in a charmingly pretty feminine hand.
"Dear Mr. Vane," it began, "Miss Roster's skating party has been
given up. She begged me to tell you; but, as I have not seen you, I
feel obliged to send you this note. If you have nothing better to do,
why will not you come that evening? It is so long since we have read
together.--Winifred Thomas."
"Now," thought Vane, "why should Miss Roster send word to him by Miss
Thomas?" He felt that he could not be positively rude, so at eight in
the evening he presented himself. Miss Thomas was apparently alone in
the house. She was sitting in the parlor, with no light but that of
the fire, into which she was looking with her deep blue eyes; her face
was pale, except that one cheek was rosy with the heat, imperfectly
screened from the flame with her fan. She received Vane coldly; he drew
up a chair, noticing, as he did so, her foot, which was covered only
with a slipper and a thin web of open-work black stocking, and was very
pretty.
Miss Thomas seemed _distraite_ and depressed; he had never seen her in
that mood before, and sought in vain to draw her into conversation. She
answered only in monosyllables and still looked dreamily into the fire.
Vane felt as if he had unwittingly offended her. Finally, just as he
rose to go--
"Why are you so strange to-night?"
"I--I?" stammered Vane.
"Yes." She lifted her small head and looked full at him. It seemed
as if there was a tear lost somewhere in the depth of her eyes. Vane
became conscious that he was a brute, and thought for the first time,
odd as it may seem, of the walk which he had asked her to take the
Sunday before. He had forgotten the walk entirely.
"I had suddenly to go to Pittsburg." This was true; but he had returned
on the Saturday. And yet he felt that he must say something, if only to
suppress his growing inclination to take her hand in his.
"What do you mean?" said she wonderingly. They were both sitting; Vane
staring at her helplessly.
"Why, when I broke our engagement to go to walk----" Truly he was
floundering more than ever.
"Oh! were we engaged to go to walk?"
A pretty mess he had made of it indeed.
"I am only too glad you have forgotten," he said; and then rising, with
an awkward bow, he got himself and his shattered reputation for _savoir
faire_ out of the room. After putting on his overcoat, he turned back
to the threshold of the parlor. "Will you go to walk next Sunday?" he
asked bluntly.
"I must go to church that afternoon. I am so sorry."
Vane bowed again, and took his departure more piqued than he was
willing to acknowledge. As he went down the steps he heard a few chords
upon the piano. It was the beginning of the love-song from Francesca
da Rimini. After all, he thought, why should he be offended? She had
behaved just as he should have wished her to. He could hardly expect
her to acknowledge that she had waited for him in vain. How pretty she
had looked in the firelight!
The next Sunday, about sunset, as he and John were returning from a
long walk in the country, two figures came out of a small church on
Sixth Avenue, well known for the excellence of its music. Miss Thomas
was one, the other John recognized as Ten Eyck. She did not seem to
see them, but the two walked rapidly ahead of them the length of the
block, and then turned down a side street. Vane pretended to be wholly
unconscious of the scene. John alone gave a grunt of surprise. And for
two weeks or more Vane treated Miss Thomas with alternate neglect and
familiarity when he met her in society; the former when he found it
possible to avoid her, the latter when he was necessarily thrown with
her. One night at a german she gave him a favor. Vane, after dancing
with her, felt obliged, in common politeness, to talk with her for a
few moments. He sought refuge in that sort of clumsy pleasantry which
our English models have taught us to call chaff; she said nothing, but
looked at him wonderingly, with large troubled eyes. She seemed as if
grieved at his manner and too proud to reproach him with it. Could she
really love the man? thought Vane. How could she? He felt as if the
suspicion did her an injury. Vane's heart melted to her as he came
home that night. He had mentally judged her as he would have judged a
woman in one of his cynical French comedies. He had treated her like
a character in a seventeenth century memoir. And how much above such
judgment was this sweet American girl! She was fond of her friends, and
true to them, and frank to him, so that he saw that she cared for him.
What did she know of the world, or of older societies, or the women in
his wicked French memoirs? She lived in new, pure, honest America; not
in the chronicles of the _Œil-de-bœuf_. And Vane felt that the best
amends he could make was to ask her to become his wife. When he hinted
this intention to Haviland that philosopher, for the first and only
time in his life, improvised a couplet:
"Jamais la femme ne varie,
Bien fol est toujours qui s'y fie."
Having got off this gâtha, John retired to his pipe, and became, like a
Hindoo god, impassive, ugly, and impenetrable.