Chapter VII: Pride

Miss Drusilla’s wonder grew and grew when, after dinner, they all returned to the parlor, Nina treated her husband more distantly than she would have done an ordinary stranger. Her courtesy was all of the most stately fashion. She played at his request on the grand piano, but it was with automaton-like precision, and the brilliant pieces she selected had nothing sweet or tender in them. Miss Drusilla thought of the pathetic song “If” that was oftenest on the girl’s lips, and she marvelled within herself.

“Perhaps it is only maidenly shyness, after all. His sudden coming has frightened the child,” she reflected. “He should have written.”

And she said, on the impulse of the moment:

“How was it, Talbot, that you did not write to apprise us of your coming?”

“I did,” he replied. “And have you not received my letter?”

“It is more than a year ago since we have received a line from you. We had begun to believe that you must have died abroad.”

He flushed scarlet at her curt tone and sour look.

“And you both believe me a villain of the deepest dye,” he said, flashing a swift look from her face to Nina’s. “But, indeed, I am not so bad as that. I wrote to you and Nina--not very often, for I received no replies--but at least several times within the last year. My last letter--dated from Baltimore two days ago--bade you expect me to-day.”

“We did not receive it,” announced Miss Drusilla, with no abatement of her frigid air.

“I see that you are skeptical on the subject,” he said, with some chagrin. “But I really wrote, although my letters have perhaps miscarried. But you, Aunt Drusilla, and you, Nina, might have written to say that you had not heard from me.”

He looked across at the pale, beautiful face of his wife. She answered, almost inaudibly:

“I wrote--often.”

“But I did not receive your letters”--he said, quickly. “You see, I have been yachting for a year and more--the guest of my friend, Cameron, from Baltimore. He came abroad with some friends, and I came back with them. I thought that my roving life explained the non-reception of letters from home, but you should have received mine; I cannot understand why you did not.”

There was a momentarily stern expression on his face and he thought:

“I gave Cameron my letters to forward. What did he do with them? Has there been treachery any where?”

He said to himself that this was the reason of Nina’s cold reserve and dignity. She resented with a woman’s pride his long absence and his strange silence. She would forgive him now that she knew the reason.

But when he looked at her he saw no change in the cold proud face with its flower-like lips and great slumbrous dark eyes whose thick drooping fringe hid the fire and passion within her. He decided that there was something else yet. Nina was not glad to have him home again. She did not love him now as the girl Nina had loved her boyish playfellow long ago.

“There are many changes in five years. What if she, too, has learned to love another?” he thought, feeling suddenly hot and cold, and distinctly angry all together.

He walked hastily over to the window, drew back the heavy curtains of velvet and lace, and looked out. A full moon was lighting the bare March landscape into dreary splendor. The glass roof of the long conservatory was silvered by its beams. The terraced walks beneath the window shone whitely and coldly. Farther on, the great white-capped waves of the mysterious sea rolled on with a hollow murmur to the ocean. He looked back at Nina with a sudden impulse.

“Are you afraid of the chilly night, or will you put a wrap on, and walk on the terrace with me?” he asked.

She raised her dark eyes to his face with an air of surprise, and shivered perceptibly.

“It is too cold. Pray excuse me,” she replied, while Miss Drusilla hopped up with an audible sniff, and said with dignity:

“If I am _de trop_, pray excuse me, I’ll retire.”