Once or twice her slight fingers pressed against his palm, with unconscious warmth. Her face, meanwhile, lifted above the darkness of her mourning robes, was sweet and brilliant as some early dew-washed flower.

Thurston fixed his gaze upon her eyes, whose dark-blue depths were full of a rich, liquid light. His clasp tightened about her hand.

"I will give you my help," he said, with a new note in his voice that was a sort of husky throb; "I will give it to you gladly. But I am afraid you will not accept it when it is offered."

"Yes," returned Claire, still not guessing the truth, "I will accept it most willingly, since it comes from one whom I know to be my friend and well-wisher."

"That is not what I mean," Thurston objected. He rose as he spoke, still holding Claire's hand.

She looked at him wonderingly. She perceived his changed manner.

"Explain," she said. "How do you mean that you will help me?"

"I will help you as my wife," Thurston replied. He looked as grave, as gray, as bronzed, as always; but his voice was in a hoa.r.s.e flurry. "I will help you, as my wife, to be something more than a great lady. You shall be that, if you choose, but you shall be more. Your ambition is made of finer stuff than you know. I will help you to see just how fine it is."

The instant that he began to speak thus Claire had drawn away her hand.

She did not rise. But she now looked up at him, and shook her head with negative vehemence.

"No, no!" she said. The words rang sharply.

X.

Not long afterward Claire found herself alone. Thurston had gone. She felt her cheeks burn as she sat and stared at the floor. His declaration had strangely shocked her, at first, for the entire man, as it were, had undergone a transformation so abrupt and radical as to wear a hue of actual miracle; and it is only across a comfortable lapse of centuries that the human mind can regard such manifestations with anything like complacency. Balaam could not have been more bewildered and disturbed when the a.s.s spoke. Claire had never thought of Thurston as capable of a live sentiment toward any woman. She had taken it for granted that all this part of his nature was in dignified decay, like his hair and complexion. She had drifted unconsciously, somehow, into the conviction that his pa.s.sions, if he had ever felt them, were now like the lavendered relics that we shut away in chests. She had warmed to him with a truly filial ardor, and this sudden ruin of their mutual relations now gave her acute stings of regret.

But Thurston, who had managed to depart from her with a good deal of nice repose of visage and demeanor, also contrived, with that skill born of wide social experience, to make their next meeting by far less awkward than Claire herself had nervously antic.i.p.ated. Sophia and Mrs.

Bergemann were both present on this occasion. He looked at Claire in so ordinary a way, and spoke with so much apparent ease and serenity, that her self-possession was fed by his, and her dread swiftly became thankful relief.

Through the days that followed, Claire and Thurston gradually yet firmly resumed their past agreeable converse. Of course matters could never be the same between them. He stood toward her, inevitably, in a new light; a cloak had fallen from him; she was not quite sure whether she liked him less or more, now that she knew him as the man who had asked her to be his wife; but in reality she did like him much more, and this was because, being a woman, she constantly divined his admiration beneath the intimate yet always guarded courtesy of his manner.

Their former chats were resumed, steadily interrogative on her side, complaisantly responsive on his. As Winter softened into Spring, the dissipations of Sophia decreased. She had more evenings at home, and not a few of her devotees would pay her visits during the hours of nine and eleven. It frequently happened that Thurston would enter the drawing-room at such times. He always talked with Claire, who would often emerge from back recesses on his arrival. Both Sophia and her mother would occasionally deliver themselves of comments upon the evident preference of their legal adviser. But Mrs. Bergemann was much more outspoken than her daughter. Sophia could not bring herself to believe that there was "anything in it," as her own phrase repeatedly went. She thought Beverly Thurston "just as nice as he could be"; but the slender and blooming beauty of Claire made to her young eyes anomalous contrast with Thurston's _fade_ though attractive appearance.

"Good gracious, Ma!" she once a.s.severated, in private debate, "Claire wouldn't ever think of marrying a man old enough to be her father!"

"She might do worse, now, Sophia," protested Mrs. Bergemann, with the coolly formulated style of talk and thought which marks so many matrons when they discuss matrimonial subjects. "You just leave Claire alone.

Wait and see what she'll do. He's taken a shine to her. Recollect, she ain't got a cent, poor dear girl. He'd make a splendid husband. I guess he'll propose soon. I hope he will, too. He's a real ellergant gentleman. Just think how we trust him with rents and mortgages and things. I declare I don't scarcely know half what he does with my own property."

"Pshaw, Ma," responded Sophia, with vast contempt. "Claire wouldn't look at him that way. She's young, like me. She may be as poor as a church-mouse, but she isn't going to sell herself like that. Now do be quiet."

Mrs. Bergemann became obediently quiet. But she continued to have her private opinions. Meanwhile Claire and Thurston held their brief or long interviews, as chance favored.

Matters had rearranged themselves between them on the old basis. There was a change, and yet not a change. Claire spoke with all her former freedom. Thurston listened and replied with all his former concession.

A certain admirer of Sophia's had of late deserted her, and sought the attention of Claire whenever occasion permitted. His name was Brady. His father was the owner of a large and popular emporium on Sixth Avenue. He was an only child, and supplied with a liberal allowance. The mercantile success of his father had been comparatively recent. He was now three-and-twenty; his early education had been one long, persistent neglect. After the money had begun to flow into the paternal coffers, Brady had gone abroad, and seen vice and little else in the various European capitals, and finally, coming home again, had slipped, by a most natural and facile process, into just that ill-bred, wealthy, low-toned set of which poor, rich Sophia Bergemann was one of the leading spirits.

Claire could hardly endure the attentions of Brady. She was civil to him because of her two hostesses, whose perception in all matters of social degree seemed hopelessly obtuse. But Brady had fallen in love with her, severely and effusively, and she soon had good cause to know it. He was very tall and slim of figure, with a face whose utter smoothness would have been the despair of a mercenary barber. His large ears, jutting from a bullet-shaped head, gave to this head, at a little distance away, the look of some odd, uncla.s.sic amphora. He spoke very indifferent English, and always kept the last caprice of slang in glib readiness, as a tradesman will keep his newest goods where he can soonest reach them.

He was excessively purse-proud, and liked to tell you the price of the big sunken diamond worn on his little finger; of the suite of rooms at his expensive hotel; of the special deep-olive cigars, dotted with a lighter yellow speck, which lined his ivory cigar-case. He possessed, in truth, all the cardinal vulgarities. He was lavishly conceited; he paid no deference to age; he had not a vestige of gallantry in his deportment toward women; his self-possession was so frangible that a blow could shatter it, but his coa.r.s.e wrath would at once rise from the ruin, like the foul aroma from a broken phial. At such times he would scowl and be insolent, quite regardless of s.e.x, years, or general superiority on the part of the offender. Indeed, he admitted no superiority. The shadow of the Sixth Avenue emporium hedged him, in his own shallow esteem, with impregnable divinity.

"I think," said Thurston, speaking of him one day to Claire, "that he is truly an abominable creature. The ancients used to believe that monsters were created by the union of two commingling elements, such as earth and heaven. But to-day in America we have a horrid progeny growing up about us, resultant from two forces, each dangerous enough by itself, but both deadly when they meet. I mean Wealth and Ignorance. This Brady is their child. If he were merely a poor man, his illiteracy would be endurable.

If he were merely illiterate, we could stand his opulence. But he is both very uneducated and very rich. The combination is a horror. He is our modern way of being devoured by dragons, minotaurs, and giants."

Claire laughed, and presently shook her head in gentle argumentative protest. "I think there is a flaw in your theory," she said, "and I'll tell you why. There are the Bergemanns. Sophia, I admit, is not precisely uncultivated--that is, she has had good chances of instruction and not profited by them. This may mean little, yet it is surely better than having had no chances at all. But Mrs. Bergemann--she is both rich and ignorant, poor dear woman. And yet she is very far from a monster.

She is a sweet, comfortable, motherly person. She would not harm a fly." Claire put her head a little sideways, and looked with winsome challenge at her companion; she a.s.sumed pretty airs and graces with him, nowadays, which she had never dealt in before the occurrence of a certain momentous episode. "What have you to say," she went on, "in answer to my rather shrewd objection? Doesn't it send you quite into a corner."

"Well, I confess that it rather floors me to have Mrs. Bergemann cited against me," he said, smiling. "I am afraid that I must yield. I am afraid that my theory is torn in tatters. I must congratulate you on your destructive instincts."

He spoke these words with his usual robust sort of languor, in which there was never a single trace of affectation or frivolity. At the same time a secret feeling of wonder possessed him; he was thinking how swiftly active had been the change in Claire since their first acquaintance. She had told him every particular of her past life, so far as concerned its opportunities of instruction. He marveled now, as he had repeatedly done on recent occasions, at her remarkable power to grasp new phrases, new forms of thought, new methods of inquiry. She had never, from the first, shown a gleam of coa.r.s.eness. But she had often been timid of speech and falteringly insecure of expression. Yet latterly all this was altered. Thurston had a sense of how phenomenal was the improvement. It was plain that the books in the library, and Claire's power of fleet reading, had wrought this benefit upon a mind which past study and training had already rendered flexibly receptive.

And yet all of the explanation did not lie here; at least half of it lurked in the fact that she had quitted drudgery, need, and depression.

Her mental shutters had been flung open, and the sunshine let to stream in through the cas.e.m.e.nts. A few days later she had suspected the existence of Brady's pa.s.sion. He made no attempt, on his own side, to conceal his preference for her society. Claire saw love in his prominent, slate-colored eyes; she saw it in the increased awkwardness of his motions when he either walked or sat near her; she saw it in his bluff yet repressed bravado of manner, as though he were at surly odds with himself for having been suddenly cut off in the flower of his vainglorious bachelorhood. She had grown sharper-sighted for the detection of these tender signs. And even in Brady their tenderness was unmistakable. His clownish crudity had softened, in all its raw lines.

The effect might be compared to those graceful disguises in which we have seen moonlight clothe things that repel us under the glare of day.

One morning when Claire came down to breakfast she found a huge basket of Jacqueminot roses awaiting her, with Brady's card attached to it. She flushed, for a moment, almost as red as the florid, velvety petals themselves. Then she said, equally addressing Mrs. Bergemann and Sophia:

"How strange that he sent them to _me_! There may have been some mistake."

"Oh, not a bit of it!" Sophia exclaimed. "He's dead gone about you, Claire. I've seen it lately. So has Ma." Here the young lady turned toward her mother, and lifted an admonishing finger. "Now, Ma, don't you say a thing!"

But Mrs. Bergemann would say a number of things. Her amiability was so expansive, and made such a radius of glow and warmth all about her, that she rarely found it possible to dislike anybody. She had failed to realize that Brady was an offensive clod. In her matrimonial concern for Claire, the fact that he would one day, as the only child of his father, inherit a vast fortune, reared itself before her with irresistible temptation.

"Upon my word," she declared, "I don't know as any girl _had_ ought to refuse a fellow as awful well-off as he is. Sophia's always talking of his great big ears, and his boastful ways, and his style of getting into tantrums about nothin' whatever. But still, I guess he might make a good husband. He might be just the kind that'll tame down and behave 'emselves after marriage. And they say he ain't a bit mean; he ain't got _that_ fault, anyhow. And I guess he'd buy a manshun on the Avenu for any girl he took, and just make her shine like a light-house with di'monds, and roll round in her carriage, and be high an' mighty as you can find. _I'd_ think twice, Claire, if _I_ was you, before I let him slip. That is, I mean if you don't decide you'd rather have Mr.

Thurston, who _does_ seem fond o' you, though I ain't said so before in your hearing, dear, and who's an ellergant gentleman, of course, even if he is a bit too old for a fresh young thing like yourself."

Claire laughed, in a high key, trying to conceal her nervousness. "Oh, Mr. Thurston is quite too old, Mrs. Bergemann," she said. "Please be sure of that."

The rich hue of the roses haunted her all day, even when she was not near them. Their splendid crimson seemed like a symbol of the luxury that she might be called upon to refuse. She had heard about the emporium on Sixth Avenue. It made her bosom flutter when she thought of being the mistress of a great mansion, and wearing diamonds and rolling about in her carriage. Then she remembered Thurston's words concerning this man who had sent her the roses. Was he so much of a monster, after all? Might she not be able to humanize him? For a long time she was in a very perturbed state. During this interval it almost seemed to her that if he should ask her to marry him she would nerve herself and answer 'yes.'

That afternoon she did not go to drive with Sophia. Mrs. Bergemann went in her place. Claire sat beside one of the big plate-gla.s.s windows of her delightful chamber, and watched the clattering streams of carriages pa.s.s below. Some of these she had now grown to remember and recognize; a few of them possessed a dignity of contour and equipment that pleased her greatly. She would have liked to lean back upon the cushions of some such vehicle, and have its footman jauntily touch his hat while he received her order from within, after he had shut the shining door with a hollow little clang. The door should have arms and crest upon it; she would strongly prefer a door with arms and crest.

Suddenly, while watching from the window, she saw a flashy brougham, with yellow wheels, a light-liveried coachman and a large, high-stepping horse in gilded harness, pause before the Bergemanns' stoop. The next instant Brady sprang out, and soon a mellow bell-peal sounded below.

Claire sat and wondered whether he who had sent her the roses would now solicit her company. It even occurred to her that he might have pa.s.sed Sophia and Mrs. Bergemann on the avenue, and hence have drawn the conclusion that she would be at home alone.

She was quite right in this a.s.sumption. The grand Michael presently brought up Mr. Brady's card. Claire hesitated for an instant, and then said that she would see the gentleman.

She found Brady in the reception-room. He was dressed with an almost gaudy smartness, which brought all his misfortunes of face and figure into bolder relief. He wore a suit of clothes that might have been quiet as a piece of tapestry, but was surely a.s.sertive in its pattern when used for coat and trousers; his cravat was of scarlet and blue satin, and a pin was thrust into it which flashed and glittered so that you could not at first perceive it to be a c.o.c.k's head wrought of diamonds, with a little carcanet of rubies for the red comb. He had a number of brilliant rings on his big-knuckled hands, and the sleeve-b.u.t.tons that secured his low, full wristbands were a blaze of close-bedded gems at every chance recession of his sleeve. As he greeted Claire it struck her that his expression was unwontedly sulky, even for him. He appeared like a person who had been put darkly out of humor by some aggravating event.

"How are you, Miss Twining?" he said, holding Claire's hand till she herself withdrew it. "I hope you're well. I hope you're as well as they make 'em."

Claire sat down while she answered: "I am very well, Mr. Brady." Her visitor at once seated himself beside her, leaning his face toward her own. "I am sorry that both Mrs. Bergemann and Sophia are out," she went on, with the desire to bridge an awkward inters.p.a.ce of silence.

"Oh, _I_ ain't, not a bit," said Brady, ardently contradictory. "I'm glad of it, Miss Twining. I wanted to have a little chin with you." He laughed at his own slang, crossed his long legs, and leaned back on the lounge which Claire was also occupying. At the same time he turned his face toward his companion.

Claire felt that decency now compelled her to offer a certain acknowledgment. "I want to thank you for those lovely flowers," she said. "They were beautiful, and it was very kind of you to send them."

He began to sway his head slightly from side to side. It was his way of showing nearly every emotion, whether embarra.s.sment, perplexity, chagrin, or even mollification.

"Come, now," he began, "you didn't really think a lot about 'em, did you?"