His heart beat fast, too, and it beat faster still when he noted her black dress and saw how pale and slight she looked in it. He advanced towards her and taking her hand in both his, led her to a chair.
"I have startled you too much," he said. "Don"t make me feel that I was wrong to come. Don"t be angry with me."
She let him seat her in the chair and then he stood before her and waited for her to speak.
"It was rather--sudden," she said, "but I am not--angry."
There was a silence of a few seconds, because he was so moved by the new look her face wore that he could not easily command his voice and words.
"Have you been ill?" he asked gently, at last.
He saw that she made an effort to control herself and answer him quietly, but before she spoke she gave up even the effort. She did not try to conceal or wipe away the great tears that fell down her cheeks as she looked up at him.
"No, I have not been ill," she said. "My father is dead."
And as she uttered the last words her voice sank almost into a whisper.
Just for a breath"s s.p.a.ce they looked at each other and then she turned in her chair, laid her arm on the top of it and her face on her arm, with a simple helpless movement.
"He has been dead three months," she whispered, weeping.
His own eyes were dim as he watched her. He had not heard of this before. He walked to the other end of the room and back again twice.
When he neared her the last time he stopped.
"Must I go away?" he asked unsteadily. "I feel as if I had no right here."
But she did not tell him whether he must go or stay.
"If I stay I must tell you why I came and why I could not remain away,"
he said.
She still drooped against her chair and did not speak, and he drew still nearer to her.
"It does not seem the right time," he said, "but I must tell you even if I go away at once afterwards. I have never been happy an hour since we parted that wretched day. I have never ceased to think of what I had begun to hope for. I felt that it was useless to ask for it then--I feel as if it was useless now, but I must ask for it. Oh!"
desperately, "how miserably I am saying it all! How weak it sounds!"
In an instant he was kneeling on one knee at her side and had caught her hand and held it between both his own.
"I"ll say the simplest thing," he said. "I love you. Everything is against me, but I love you and I am sure I shall never love another woman."
He clasped her hand close and she did not draw it away.
"Won"t you say a word to me?" he asked. "If you only tell me that this is the wrong time and that I must go away now, it will be better than some things you might say."
She raised her face and let him see it.
"No," she said, "it is not that it is the wrong time. It is a better time than any other, because I am so lonely and my trouble has made my heart softer than it was when I blamed you so. It is not that it is the wrong time, but--
"Wait a minute," he broke in. "Don"t--don"t do me an injustice!"
He could not have said anything else so likely to reach her heart. She remembered the last faltering words she had heard as she bent over the pillow when the sun was shining on the golden tree with the wind waving its branches.
"Don"t do no one a onjestice, honey--don"t ye--do no one--a onjestice."
"Oh," she cried out, "he told me that I must not--he told me, before he died!"
"What!" said Ferrol. "He told you not to be unjust to _me_?"
"It was you he meant," she answered. "He knew I had been hard to you--and he knew I----"
She cowered down a little and Ferrol folded her in his arms.
"Don"t be hard to me again," he whispered. "I have been so unhappy--I love you so tenderly. Did he know that you--speak to me, Louise."
She put her hand upon his shoulder.
"He knew that I loved you," she said, with a little sob.
She was a great favorite among her husband"s friends in New York the next year. One of her chief attractions for them was that she was a "new type." They said that of her invariably when they delighted in her and told each other how gentle she was and how simple and sweet.
The artists made "studies" of her, and adored her, and were enthusiastic over her beauty; while among the literary ones it was said, again and again, what a foundation she would be for a heroine of the order of those who love and suffer for love"s sake and grow more adorable through their pain.
But these, of course, were only the delightful imaginings of art, talked over among themselves, and Louisiana did not hear of them. She was very happy and very busy. There was a gay joke current among them that she was a most tremendous book-worm, and that her literary knowledge was something for weak, ordinary mortals to quail before.
The story went, that by some magic process she committed to memory the most appalling works half an hour after they were issued from the press, and that, secretly, Laurence stood very much in awe of her and was constantly afraid of exposing his ignorance in her presence. It was certainly true that she read a great deal, and showed a wonderful aptness and memory, and that Laurence"s pride and delight in her were the strongest and tenderest feelings of his heart.
Almost every summer they spent in North Carolina, filling their house with those of their friends who would most enjoy the simple quiet of the life they led. There were numberless pictures painted among them at such times and numberless new "types" discovered.
"But you"d scarcely think," it was said sometimes, "that it is here that Mrs. Laurence is on her native heath."
And though all the rest of the house was open, there was one room into which no one but Laurence and Louisiana ever went--a little room, with strange, ugly furniture in it, and bright-colored lithographs upon the walls.
END.