“Well, I don’t believe you see half that you ought to,” adding naively, “How did you and Mrs. Lafirme happen to come home together this evening?”
The bright lamp-light made the flush quite evident that arose to his face under her near gaze.
“We met in the woods; she was coming from Morico’s.”
“David, do you know that woman is an angel. She’s simply the most perfect creature I ever knew.”
Melicent’s emphasis of speech was a thing so recurrent, so singularly her own, as to startle an unaccustomed hearer.
“That opinion might carry some weight, Mel, if I hadn’t heard it scores of times from you, and of as many different women.”
“Indeed you have not. Mrs. Lafirme is exceptional. Really, when she stands at the end of the veranda, giving orders to those darkies, her face a little flushed, she’s positively a queen.”
“As far as queenliness may be compatible with the angelic state,” replied Hosmer, but not ill pleased with Melicent’s exaggerated praise of Thérèse.
Neither had heard a noiseless step approaching, and they only became aware of an added human presence, when Mandy’s small voice was heard to issue from Mandy’s small body which stood in the mingled light and shadow of the door-way.
“Aunt B’lindy ’low supper on de table gittin’ cole.”
“Come here, Mandy,” cried Melicent, springing after the child. But Mandy was flying back through the darkness. She was afraid of Melicent.
Laughing heartily, the girl disappeared into her bedroom, to make some needed additions to her toilet; and Hosmer, waiting for her, returned to his interrupted reflections. The words which he had spoken during a moment of emotion to Thérèse, out in the piny woods, had served a double purpose with him. They had shown him more plainly than he had quite been certain of, the depth of his feeling for her; and also had they settled his determination. He was not versed in the reading of a woman’s nature, and he found himself at a loss to interpret Thérèse’s actions. He recalled how she had looked away from him when he had spoken the few tender words that were yet whirling in his memory; how she had impetuously ridden ahead,--leaving him to follow alone; and her incessant speech that had forced him into silence. All of which might or might not be symptoms in his favor. He remembered her kind solicitude for his comfort and happiness during the past year; but he as readily recalled that he had not been the only recipient of such favors. His reflections led to no certainty, except that he loved her and meant to tell her so.