Chapter VI: “can This Really Be Nina?”

Nina was half mad for the time over the terrible experience that had come to her. She had sorrowed long over her husband’s absence and silence, but the worst fear that had come to her was that he was dead. That he was cold, indifferent, false, had never once occurred to her. The magnitude of her discovery stunned her. She could not think clearly. She was only conscious of one feeling, and that was a bitter, burning jealousy and hatred of the woman that held Talbot Strangemore’s heart.

“He is sorry that I am his wife--he is angry with his dead mother because she made him marry me. Oh, how can I bear this terrible humiliation!” she moaned, pressing her white hands against her throbbing temples, while her heart felt as if it would break with its burden of despair.

Presently Kitty--her own, faithful Kitty, who had been her maid ever since she, Nina, had been a little girl--came and knocked at her door.

“You may go away, Kitty, I do not want you now,” Nina said, in as natural a tone as she could assume.

“Open the door, Miss Nina, please, I have such joyful news for you,” cried Kitty, on the other side.

“What is it?” Nina asked, faintly, although she knew only too well.

“Miss Strangemore wants you to come down at once. Your husband is come at last,” the maid bawled through the key-hole, sorely disappointed that she had missed seeing the joylight flash into the fair face of the young mistress she loved so well.

She waited a moment, and she was surprised when Nina replied, indifferently:

“I--I--my head aches, Kitty. Tell them I cannot come down until dinner.”

“Well, I never! I thought she’d be wild with joy, and she’s as cool as a cucumber!” muttered disconcerted Kitty, as she retired with the message.

Miss Strangemore was too much astonished for words. When she had heard from one of the servants that Nina had come in, she had sent at once to her room, expecting in all good faith that the girl would come flying down the stairs to fling herself into the arms of her husband. The cool, almost curt reply amazed her, but Talbot Strangemore only laughed. The respite was indeed a relief.

“My wife apparently is no more anxious to meet me than I was to see her,” he said, lightly. “She gives me a chance to meet her under the least embarrassing circumstances; I commend her tact. Can you send a servant to the wharf, Aunt Drusilla, for my trunk, as I shall have to dress for dinner?”

“Your trunk? Then you have come to stay?” his aunt exclaimed, quickly.

“Of course. What else?” he exclaimed, in surprise, and arching his dark brows a little frowningly; but she did not explain. She could not tell him what she had been thinking about him in the privacy of her own room.

She had his trunks brought, and he went to the rooms that were always in readiness for him by Nina’s express orders, and where the furnishings and arrangements were perfect, while a vase of fresh flowers always stood upon the mantel, breathing forth a fragrant welcome to the possible return of the master. He noted their sweetness and beauty, and when he had carefully made his toilet for the late dinner, he selected a rosebud and some delicious heliotrope for a _boutonniere_, but it did not once occur to him that Nina’s delicate fingers had culled these sweets from the wealth of the conservatory, and placed them there in anticipation of his coming, although his thoughts were busy with her as he fastened them upon his coat.

“She was very ceremonious, certainly, deferring our meeting until dinner,” he thought, with unconscious pique. “I hope she has not been brought up with exaggerated notions of her importance as an heiress. How ridiculous that would make me appear before my friends, who already consider me a martyr!”

He went down stairs, where he found his aunt waiting primly in the large, seldom used parlor, which had been lighted and warmed in honor of his coming. A sensation of pleasure came over him as he entered the handsomely furnished room, and realized that he was master of all this elegance and luxury. He glanced around for the girl, the gift of whose small white hand had conferred it all upon him, but she was not visible.

“Nina is not down yet, but it is not many minutes to dinner, so she cannot delay her coming much longer,” said Miss Drusilla, interpreting his glance.

He took his stand on the hearth-rug and waited with his back to the glowing fire that the inclement March evening rendered necessary.

“It is very strange that you missed meeting her this evening,” pursued the old maid, reflectively. “Every day for years she and Lion have gone down to the wharf to see if the boat brought you home, and she was as punctual as usual this time.”

“I missed her, at all events,” said stupid Talbot Strangemore. “There was no one at the landing, and I met no one on the way to Selwyn Heights except a beautiful young lady with a black dog.”

Miss Drusilla regarded him as scornfully as if he had been a fool or a madman.

“Why, you simpleton”--she was beginning, tartly, when she was interrupted by the opening of a door. A tall, white figure glided into the room.

“Mrs. Strangemore!” announced Miss Drusilla, maliciously, and she immediately retired from the room, leaving husband and wife alone and face to face.

“I must be dreaming,” Talbot Strangemore said to himself, for here in the center of the room gazing fixedly at him, was the lovely girl he had encountered on the sands that evening, only that the warm red merino had been exchanged for a soft, clinging white robe with misty laces and multitudinous knots and loops of silvery white satin ribbon, while Kitty who had been intent on making her mistress look as bride-like as possible, had actually rifled the orange trees in the conservatory of their costly blooms and adorned her so that the folds of her dress and the loose veil of her golden hair exhaled the delicious fragrance of real orange blossoms as she moved slowly across the room to greet the handsome man who gazed at her in perplexity a moment, and then advanced to meet her, catching both her white hands in his as he said, with a tender intonation:

“Can this really be Nina, my little child-bride grown so beautiful and womanly?”

“Yes, it is Nina,” she replied, but when he bent down to kiss her curved red lips, she crested her golden head in haughty refusal.

“What, not even one kiss from my bride after all these years apart?” Talbot said, banteringly, and she answered, with girlish dignity:

“You know although we are married, we are almost strangers to each other,” and Talbot laughed a little as he answered:

“Yes, strangers, for we did not even recognize each other when we met upon the sands this afternoon.”

He was surprised when she looked steadily at him with those great dark eyes full of blended fire and softness and answered:

“You are mistaken, Mr. Strangemore, I knew you as soon as I saw you.”

“You knew me, and yet you did not speak. Why was that, Nina?” She had gone over to the corner of the hearth and was standing there with her white arm resting on the low, black marble mantel. He followed her and looked anxiously into her beautiful, pale face for a reply.

She answered with outward nonchalance and hidden bitterness:

“I really do not know. Perhaps I was disappointed at your failure to recognize Lion and me, or perhaps, I thought that our greetings might well keep a little longer.”

“My failure to know you again was a compliment of the highest type,” said Talbot Strangemore. “I had never dreamed that the little girl I left behind me would blossom out into such a rare and radiant maiden. Do not look at me so incredulously, my darling. Indeed, you _are_ beautiful, and in those white robes and real orange flowers you look queen-like, bride-like. Does it not seem to you, Nina, like a new bridal hour?”

Carried away by the influence of her marvelous beauty and her strange reserve, he would have continued in the same strain, but the girl did not heed him. She was gazing with horrified eyes at the bride-like robe in which her maid had dressed her. She tore the orange blossoms from her breast and hair and threw them disdainfully upon the floor.

“Kitty has done this, and I did not notice! How dared she make me so ridiculous?” she cried, bursting into a torrent of humiliated tears while she hid her shamed face in her hands.

Talbot Strangemore suddenly remembered the little girl who had wept so dolorously upon his breast five years ago, and he would have taken her to his arms again but she repulsed him. He retreated to his original position upon the hearth-rug, and stood watching her with puzzled eyes, until, her brief tempest of passion over, she dashed the tears from her cheeks and looked at him half wistfully under the long black fringes of her lashes.

“You must blame Kitty, really,” she said, “I--I did not know that I was actually attired as a bride coming to the arms of a husband. You see I was unnerved, agitated, by your sudden coming, and I did not notice what my poor, silly Kitty was putting on me. I am ashamed to think that she has made me remind you of that long past event that you----that I----would both so gladly forget. If you will excuse me I will go and change this inappropriate dress,” and she pulled angrily at the silvery loops of white satin ribbon.

“It is not inappropriate, and I will not excuse you,” said Talbot, in a very winning voice. He had already gathered the scattered orange blossoms from the floor, and now he came up to her and said gently:

“Nina, let me put these back, please.”

She could have killed herself for yielding, but when he laid his hand lightly but firmly on her shoulder she could not say him nay. An electric thrill ran over her and she remained perfectly still and silent while he fastened the wax-white flowers again upon her corsage and in the soft curls of her hair, retaining a single one himself which he placed with the rose-bud and heliotrope upon his coat. While he was yet bending over her, dinner was announced, and drawing her white hand through his arm, he led her to the dining room.

Miss Drusilla, who was waiting for them, studied the two faces anxiously. Talbot’s had certainly acquired a more animated expression, but Nina was very unlike herself, pale, _distrait_, almost proud.

“What is the matter with the child? Is she already disappointed with her wretch of a husband?” the old maid wondered within herself.