Part 3 (1/2)
She thought of this dread possibility with a sudden chill of horror, and while she hesitated, he took her face between her hands and kissed her on the mouth.
Steps were heard coming down the path.
”They're on,” he said with a little laugh. ”Good-by, Viva!”
He vaulted the fence and was gone.
”What are you doing here, Vivian?” demanded her father.
”I was saying good-by to Morton,” she answered with a sob.
”You ought to be ashamed of yourself--philandering out here in the middle of the night with that scapegrace! Come in the house and go to bed at once--it's ten o'clock.”
Bowing to this confused but almost equally incriminating chronology, she followed him in, meekly enough as to her outward seeming, but inwardly in a state of stormy tumult.
She had been kissed!
Her father's stiff back before her could not blot out the radiant, melting moonlight, the rich sweetness of the flowers, the tender, soft, June night.
”You go to bed,” said he once more. ”I'm ashamed of you.”
”Yes, father,” she answered.
Her little room, when at last she was safely in it and had shut the door and put a chair against it--she had no key--seemed somehow changed.
She lit the lamp and stood looking at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were star-bright. Her cheeks flamed softly. Her mouth looked guilty and yet glad.
She put the light out and went to the window, kneeling there, leaning out in the fragrant stillness, trying to arrange in her mind this mixture of grief, disapproval, shame and triumph.
When the Episcopal church clock struck eleven, she went to bed in guilty haste, but not to sleep.
For a long time she lay there watching the changing play of moonlight on the floor.
She felt almost as if she were married.
CHAPTER II.
BAINVILLE EFFECTS.
Lockstep, handcuffs, ankle-ball-and-chain, Dulltoil and dreary food and drink; Small cell, cold cell, narrow bed and hard; High wall, thick wall, window iron-barred; Stone-paved, stone-pent little prison yard-- Young hearts weary of monotony and pain, Young hearts weary of reiterant refrain: ”They say--they do--what will people think?”
At the two front windows of their rather crowded little parlor sat Miss Rebecca and Miss Josie Foote, Miss Sallie being out on a foraging expedition--marketing, as it were, among their neighbors to collect fresh food for thought.
A tall, slender girl in brown pa.s.sed on the opposite walk.
”I should think Vivian Lane would get tired of wearing brown,” said Miss Rebecca.
”I don't know why she should,” her sister promptly protested, ”it's a good enough wearing color, and becoming to her.”