Chapter XI: What Followed

When Hugh awoke the next morning it was with a confused idea that something had gone out of his life and left it a blank, and he asked himself what it was and why he was feeling so badly. But memory soon brought back a recollection of the secret he held and would hold to the end, for he had no intention of betraying Mildred or charging her with deception, if, indeed, he ever spoke to her again. He had no desire to do so, he thought, and then it came to him suddenly that there was to be a grand party at Thornton Park that night, and that he had ordered a dress suit for the occasion.

“But I shall not go,” he said to himself, as he made his hurried toilet. “I could not bear to see Milly tricked out in the gewgaws and jewels for which she sold herself.”

And firm in this resolution, he went about his usual duties in his office, clinching his fist and setting his teeth when several times during the day he heard Tom Leach talking eagerly of the party, which he expected to enjoy so much. Tom did not ask if Hugh was going, expecting it as a matter of course, and Hugh kept his own counsel, and was silent and moody and even cross for him, and at about four o’clock sat down to write his regret. Then, greatly to his surprise, he found how much he really wanted to see Mildred once more and study her in the new character she had assumed.

“I shall not talk with her and I don’t know that I shall touch her hand, but I am half inclined to go,” he thought, and tearing up his regret, he decided to wait awhile and see; and as a result of waiting and seeing, nine o’clock found him walking up the broad avenue to the house, which was ablaze with light from attic to basement, and filled with guests, who crowded the parlors and halls and stairways, so that it was some little time before he could fight his way to the dressing-room, which was full of young men and old men in high collars, low vests and swallow-tails, many of them very red in the face and out of breath with their frantic efforts to fit gloves a size too small to hands unused to them, for fashionable parties like this were very rare in Rocky Point.

Mildred had not wished it, as she shrank from society rather than courted it, but Gerard and Alice were anxious for it, and Mr. Thornton willing, and under the supervision of his children cards were sent to so many that the proud man grew hot and cold by turns as he thought of having his sacred precincts invaded by Tom, Dick and Harry, and the rest of them, as he designated the class of people whom he neither knew, nor cared to know. But Alice and Gerard knew them, and they were all there, Tom and Bessie with the rest, Tom by far the handsomest young man of all the young men, and the one most at his ease, while Bessie, in her pretty muslin dress, with only flowers for ornament, would have been the belle of the evening, but for the hostess, whose brilliant beauty, heightened by the appliances of dress, which so well became her fine figure, dazzled every one as she stood by her husband’s side in her gown of creamy satin and lace, with diamonds flashing on her white neck and arms and gleaming in her hair. How queenly she was, with no trace of the storm which had swept over her the previous night, and Hugh, when he descended the stairs and first caught sight of her, stopped a few moments, and leaning against the railing, watched her receiving her guests with a smile on her lips and a look in her eyes which he remembered now so well, and wondered he had not recognized before. And as he looked there came up before him another Milly than this one with the jewels and satin and lace, a Milly with tangled hair and calico frock and gingham apron, shelling her peas in the doorway and predicting that she would some day be the mistress of Thornton Park. She was there now, and no grand duchess born to the purple could have filled the position better.

“Thornton chose well, if he only knew it,” Hugh thought, and, mustering all his courage he at last went forward to greet the lady. And when she offered her hand to him he took it in spite of his determination not to do so, and looked into her eyes, which kindled at first with a strange light, while in his there was an answering gleam, so that neither would have been surprised to have heard the names Milly and Hugh simultaneously spoken. But no such catastrophe occurred, and after a few commonplaces Hugh passed on and did not go near her again until, at a comparatively early hour, when he came to say good-night.

Mildred had removed her glove to change the position of a ring which cut her finger, and was about putting it on again when Hugh came up, thinking that at the risk of seeming rude he would not again take the hand which had sent such a thrill through him when earlier in the evening he held it for an instant. But the sight of it, bare and white and soft as a piece of satin, unnerved him and he grasped it tightly, while he made his adieus, noting as he did so the troubled expression of her face as she looked curiously at him.

“Does she suspect I know her?” he thought as he went from the house, but not to his home.

It was a beautiful August night, and finding a seat in the shrubbery where he could not be seen, he sat there in the moonlight while one after another carriages and people on foot went past him, and finally, as the lights were being put out, Tom Leach came airily down the walk, singing softly. “Oh, don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt? Sweet Alice, with hair so brown.”

“Tom’s done for,” Hugh thought, little dreaming how thoroughly he was done for in more respects than one.