Part 7 (2/2)

For a long time that night did Louis wait for his sister in his little bed, and when at last she came to give him her accustomed kiss he pushed the thick curls from off her face and said, ”I never saw you look so happy, Maude. Do you like that Mr. De Vere?”

”Which one?” asked Maude. ”There are two, you know.”

”Yes, I know,” returned Louis, ”but I mean the one with the voice.

Forgive me, Maude, but I sat ever so long at the head of the stairs, listening as he talked. He is a good man, I am sure. Will you tell me how he looks?”

Maude could not well describe him. She only knew that he was taller than J.C., and, as she thought, much finer looking, with deep blue eyes, dark brown hair, and a mouth just fitted to his voice. Farther than this she could not tell. ”But you will see him in the morning,”

she said. ”I have told him how gifted, how good, you are, and to-morrow, he says, he shall visit you in your den.”

”Don't let the other one come,” said Louis hastily, ”for if he can't endure red hands he'd laugh at my withered feet and the bunch upon my back; but the other one won't, I know.”

Maude knew so too, and somewhat impatiently she waited for the morrow, when she could introduce her brother to her friend. The morrow came, but, as was frequently the case, Louis was suffering from a severe pain in his back, which kept him confined to his room, so that Mr. De Vere neither saw him at all nor Maude as much as he wished to do. He had been greatly interested in her, and when at dinner he heard that she would not be down he was conscious of a feeling of disappointment. She was not present at supper either, but after it was over she joined him in the parlor, and, together with J.C. and Nellie, accompanied him to the graveyard, where, seating herself upon her mother's grave, she told him of that mother, and the desolation which crept into her heart when first she knew she was an orphan. From talking of her mother it was an easy matter to speak of her Vernon home, which she had never seen since she left it twelve years before, and then Mr. De Vere asked if she had met two boys in the cars on her way to Albany. At first Maude could not recall them, and when at last she did so her recollections were so vague that Mr. De Vere felt another pang of disappointment, though wherefore he could not tell, unless indeed, he thought there would be something pleasant in being remembered twelve long years by a girl like Maude Remington. He reminded her of her remark made to his cousin, and in speaking of him casually alluded to his evident liking for Nellie, saying playfully, ”Who knows, Miss Remington, but you may some time be related to me--not my cousin exactly, though Cousin Maude sounds well. I like that name.”

”I like it too,” she said impulsively, ”much better than Miss Remington, which seems so stiff.”

”Then let me call you so. I have no girl cousin in the world,” and leaning forward he put back from her forehead one of her short, glossy curls, which had been displaced by the evening breeze.

This was a good deal for him to do. Never before had he touched a maiden's tresses, and he had no idea that it would make his fingers tingle as it did. Still, on the whole, he liked it, and half-wished the wind would blow those curls over the upturned face again, but it did not, and he was about to make some casual remark when J.C., who was not far distant, called out, ”Making love, I do believe!”

The speech was sudden, and grated harshly on James' ear. Not because the idea of making love to Maude was utterly distasteful, but because he fancied she might be annoyed, and over his features there came a shadow, which Maude did not fail to observe.

”He does not wish to be teased about me,” she thought, and around the warm spot which the name of ”Cousin Maude” had made within her heart there crept a nameless chill--a fear that she had been degraded in his eyes. ”I must go back to Louis,” she said at last, and rising from her mother's grave she returned to the house, accompanied by Mr. De Vere, who walked by her side in silence, wondering if she really cared for J.C.'s untimely joke.

James De Vere did not understand the female heart, and wis.h.i.+ng to relieve Maude from all embarra.s.sment in her future intercourse with himself, he said to her as they reached the door: ”My Cousin Maude must not mind what J.C. said, for she knows it is not so.”

”Certainly not,” was Maude's answer, as she ran upstairs, hardly knowing whether she wished it were or were not so.

One thing, however, she knew. She liked to have him call her Cousin Maude; and when Louis asked what Mr. De Vere had said beneath the willows she told him of her new name, and asked if he did not like it.

”Yes,” he answered, ”but I'd rather you were his sister, for then maybe he'd call me brother, even if I am a cripple. How I wish I could see him, and perhaps I shall to-morrow.”

But on the morrow Louis was so much worse that in attending to him Maude found but little time to spend with Mr. De Vere, who was to leave them that evening. When, however, the carriage which was to take him away stood at the gate, she went down to bid him good-by, and ask him to visit them again.

”I shall be happy to do so,” he said; and then, as they were standing alone together, he continued: ”Though I have not seen as much of you as I wished, I shall remember my visit at Laurel Hill with pleasure. In Hampton there are not many ladies for whose acquaintance I particularly care, and I have often wished that I had some female friend with whom I could correspond, and thus while away some of my leisure moments. Will my Cousin Maude answer me if I should some time chance to write to her mere friendly, cousinly letters, of course?”

This last he said because he mistook the deep flush on Maude's cheek for an unwillingness to do anything which looked at all like ”making love.”

”I will write,” was all Maude had a chance to say ere Nellie joined them, accompanied by J.C., who had not yet terminated his visit at Laurel Hill, and as soon as his cousin left he intended removing to the hotel, where he would be independent of Dr. Kennedy, and at the same time, devote himself to the daughter or stepdaughter, just as he should feel inclined.

Some such idea might have intruded itself upon the mind of James, for, when at parting he took his cousin's hand, he said, ”You have my good wishes for your success with Nellie, but--”

”But not with t'other one, hey?” laughingly rejoined J.C., adding that James need have no fears, for there was not the slightest possibility of his addressing the milkman's heiress.

Alas for J.C.'s honesty! Even while he spoke there was treachery in his saucy eyes, for the milkman's heiress, as he called her, was not to him an object of dislike, and when, after the carriage drove away, he saw the shadows on her face, and suspected their cause, he felt a strong desire that his departure might affect her in a similar manner. That evening, too, when Nellie sang to him his favorite song, he kept one ear turned toward the chamber above, where, in a low, sweet voice, Maude Remington sang her suffering brother to sleep.

The next morning he removed to the hotel, saying he should probably remain there during the summer, as the air of Laurel Hill was highly conducive to his rather delicate health; but whether he meant the invigorating breeze which blew front the surrounding hills, or an heir of a more substantial kind, time and our story will show.

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