VANE’S strategy was doubtless perfect; but in the morning he found a note sealed and superscribed in a charmingly pretty feminine hand. “Dear Mr. Vane,” it began, “Miss Roster’s skating party has been given up. She begged me to tell you; but, as I have not seen you, I feel obliged to send you this note. If you have nothing better to do, why will not you come that evening? It is so long since we have read together.—Winifred Thomas.”
“Now,” thought Vane, “why should Miss Roster send word to him by Miss Thomas?” He felt that he could not be positively rude, so at eight in the evening he presented himself. Miss Thomas was apparently alone in the house. She was sitting in the parlor, with no light but that of the fire, into which she was looking with her deep blue eyes; her face was pale, except that one cheek was rosy with the heat, imperfectly screened from the flame with her fan. She received Vane coldly; he drew up a chair, noticing, as he did so, her foot, which was covered only with a slipper and a thin web of open-work black stocking, and was very pretty.
Miss Thomas seemed distraite and depressed; he had never seen her in that mood before, and sought in vain to draw her into conversation. She answered only in monosyllables and still looked dreamily into the fire. Vane felt as if he had unwittingly offended her. Finally, just as he rose to go—
“Why are you so strange to-night?”
“I—I?” stammered Vane.
“Yes.” She lifted her small head and looked full at him. It seemed as if there was a tear lost somewhere in the depth of her eyes. Vane became conscious that he was a brute, and thought for the first time, odd as it may seem, of the walk which he had asked her to take the Sunday before. He had forgotten the walk entirely.
“I had suddenly to go to Pittsburg.” This was true; but he had returned on the Saturday. And yet he felt that he must say something, if only to suppress his growing inclination to take her hand in his.
“What do you mean?” said she wonderingly. They were both sitting; Vane staring at her helplessly.
“Why, when I broke our engagement to go to walk——” Truly he was floundering more than ever.
“Oh! were we engaged to go to walk?”
A pretty mess he had made of it indeed.
“I am only too glad you have forgotten,” he said; and then rising, with an awkward bow, he got himself and his shattered reputation for savoir faire out of the room. After putting on his overcoat, he turned back to the threshold of the parlor. “Will you go to walk next Sunday?” he asked bluntly.
“I must go to church that afternoon. I am so sorry.”
Vane bowed again, and took his departure more piqued than he was willing to acknowledge. As he went down the steps he heard a few chords upon the piano. It was the beginning of the love-song from Francesca da Rimini. After all, he thought, why should he be offended? She had behaved just as he should have wished her to. He could hardly expect her to acknowledge that she had waited for him in vain. How pretty she had looked in the firelight!
The next Sunday, about sunset, as he and John were returning from a long walk in the country, two figures came out of a small church on Sixth Avenue, well known for the excellence of its music. Miss Thomas was one, the other John recognized as Ten Eyck. She did not seem to see them, but the two walked rapidly ahead of them the length of the block, and then turned down a side street. Vane pretended to be wholly unconscious of the scene. John alone gave a grunt of surprise. And for two weeks or more Vane treated Miss Thomas with alternate neglect and familiarity when he met her in society; the former when he found it possible to avoid her, the latter when he was necessarily thrown with her. One night at a german she gave him a favor. Vane, after dancing with her, felt obliged, in common politeness, to talk with her for a few moments. He sought refuge in that sort of clumsy pleasantry which our English models have taught us to call chaff; she said nothing, but looked at him wonderingly, with large troubled eyes. She seemed as if grieved at his manner and too proud to reproach him with it. Could she really love the man? thought Vane. How could she? He felt as if the suspicion did her an injury. Vane’s heart melted to her as he came home that night. He had mentally judged her as he would have judged a woman in one of his cynical French comedies. He had treated her like a character in a seventeenth century memoir. And how much above such judgment was this sweet American girl! She was fond of her friends, and true to them, and frank to him, so that he saw that she cared for him. What did she know of the world, or of older societies, or the women in his wicked French memoirs? She lived in new, pure, honest America; not in the chronicles of the Œil-de-bœuf. And Vane felt that the best amends he could make was to ask her to become his wife. When he hinted this intention to Haviland that philosopher, for the first and only time in his life, improvised a couplet:
“Jamais la femme ne varie,
Bien fol est toujours qui s’y fie.”
Having got off this gâtha, John retired to his pipe, and became, like a Hindoo god, impassive, ugly, and impenetrable.