"Yes, sister," replied Evelyn. Then suddenly her lips quivered and a tear rolled down the lovely curve of her cheek.

"Why, Evelyn, precious, what is the matter?" asked Maria.

"Nothing," muttered Evelyn. Then suddenly, to her sister's utter astonishment, the young girl sprang up and ran out of the room.

Maria was sure that she heard a m.u.f.fled sob. She thought for a second of following her, then she had some work to do before the afternoon session, and she also had a respect for others' desires for secrecy, possibly because of her long carrying about of her own secret. She sat at her table with her forehead frowning uneasily, and wrote, and did not move to follow Evelyn.

Evelyn, when she rushed out of the cla.s.s-room, took instinctively her way towards a little but dense grove in the rear of the academy. It was a charming little grove of firs and maples, and there were a number of benches under the trees for the convenience of the pupils.

It was rather singular that there was n.o.body there. Usually during the noon-hour many ate their luncheons under the shadow of the trees.

However, the wind had changed, and it was cool. Then, too, the reunions among the old pupils were probably going on to better advantage in the academy, and many had their luncheons at a near-by restaurant. However it happened, Evelyn, running with the tears in her eyes, her heart torn with strange, new emotion which as yet she could not determine the nature of, whether it was pain or joy, found the grove quite deserted. The cold sunlight came through the golden maple boughs and lay in patches on the undergrowth of drying golden-rod and asters. Under the firs and pines it was gloomy, and a premonition of winter was in the air. Evelyn sat down on a bench under a pine-tree, and began to weep quite unrestrainedly. She did not know why. She heard the song of the pine over her head, and it seemed to increase her apparently inconsequent grief. In reality she wept the tears of the world, the same which a new-born child sheds.

Her sorrow was the mysterious sorrow of existence itself. She wept because of the world, and her life in it, and her going out of it, because of its sorrow, which is sweetened with joy, and its joy embittered with sorrow. But she did not know why she wept. Evelyn was cast on very primitive moulds, and she had been very unrestrained, first by the indifference of her mother, then by the love of her father and sister and aunt. It was enough for Evelyn that she wished to weep that she wept. No other reason seemed in the least necessary to her. In front of where she sat was a large patch of sunlight overspreading a low growth of fuzzy weeds, which shone like silver, and a bent thicket of dry asters which were still blue although withered.

All at once Evelyn became aware that this patch of sunlight was darkened, and she looked up in a sweet confusion. Her big, dark eyes were not in the least reddened by her tears; they only glittered with them. Her lips, slightly swollen, only made her lovelier.

Directly before her stood the new princ.i.p.al, and he was gazing down at her with a sort of consternation, pity, and embarra.s.sment.

Wollaston was in reality wishing himself anywhere else. A woman's tears aroused in him pity and irritation. He wished to pa.s.s on, but it seemed too impossible to do so and leave this lovely young creature in such distress without a word of inquiry. He therefore paused, and his slightly cold, blue eyes met Evelyn's brilliant, tearful ones with interrogation.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" he asked. "Shall I call any one? Are you ill?"

Evelyn felt hurt and disturbed by his look and tone. New tears welled up in her eyes. She shook her head with a slight pout. Wollaston pa.s.sed on. Evelyn raised her head and gazed after him with an indescribable motion, the motion of a timid, wild thing of the woods, which pursues, but whose true instinct is to be pursued. Suddenly she rose, and ran after him, and was by his side.

"I am ashamed you should have seen--" she said, brokenly. "I was crying for nothing."

Wollaston looked down at her and smiled. She also was smiling through her tears. "Young ladies should not cry for nothing," he said, with a whimsical, school-master manner.

"It seems to me that nothing is the most terrible thing in the whole world to cry for," replied Evelyn, with unconscious wisdom, but she still smiled. Again her eyes met the young man's, and her innocently admiring gaze was full upon his, and that happened which was inevitable, one of the chain of sequences of life itself. His own eyes responded ardently, and the girl's eyes fell before the man's.

At the same time there was no ulterior significance in the man's look, which was merely in evidence of a pa.s.sing emotion to which he was involuntarily subject. He had not the slightest thought of any love, which his look seemed to express for this little beauty of a girl, whose name he did not even know. But he slackened his pace, and Evelyn walked timidly beside him over the golden net-work of sunlight in the path. Evelyn spoke first.

"You came from Edgham, Mr. Lee," she said.

Wollaston looked at her. "Yes. Do you know anybody there?"

Evelyn laughed. "I came from there myself," she said, "and so did my sister, Maria. Maria is one of the teachers, you know."

Evelyn wondered why Mr. Lee's face changed, not so much color but expression.

"Oh, you are Miss Edgham's sister?" he exclaimed.

"Yes. I am her sister--her half-sister."

"Let me see; you are in the senior cla.s.s."

"Yes," replied Evelyn. Then she added, "Did you remember my sister?"

"Oh yes," replied Wollaston. "We used to go to school together."

"She cannot have altered," said Evelyn. "She always looks just the same to me, anyway."

"She does to me," said Lee, and there was in inflection in his voice which caused Evelyn to give a startled glance at him. But he continued, quite naturally, "Your sister looks just as I remember her, only, of course, a little taller and more dignified."

"Maria is dignified," said Evelyn, "but of course she has taught school a long time, and a school-teacher has to be dignified."

"Are you intending to teach school?" asked Lee, and even as he asked the question he felt amused. The idea of this flower-like thing teaching school, or teaching anything, was absurd. She was one of the pupils of life, not one of the expounders.

"No, I think not," said Evelyn. Then she said, "I have never thought about it." Then an incomprehensible little blush flamed upon her cheeks. Evelyn was thinking that she should be married instead of doing anything else, but that the man did not consider. He was singularly unversed in feminine nature.

A bell rang from the academy, and Evelyn turned about with reluctance. "There is the bell," said she. She was secretly proud although somewhat abashed at being seen walking back to the academy with the new princ.i.p.al. Addie Hemingway was looking out of a window, and she said to the other girl, the same whom she had addressed in the chapel:

"See, Evelyn Edgham has got him in tow already."

That night, when Maria and Evelyn arrived home, Aunt Maria asked Evelyn how she liked the new princ.i.p.al. "Oh, he's perfectly splendid," replied Evelyn. Then she blushed vividly. Aunt Maria noticed it and gave a swift glance at Maria, but Maria did not notice it at all. She was so wrapped in her own dreams that she was abstracted. After she went to bed that night she lay awake a long time dreaming, just as she had done when she had been a little girl.

Her youth seemed to rush back upon her like a back-flood. She caught herself dreaming of love-scenes in that same little wood where Wollaston and Evelyn had walked that day. She never thought of Evelyn and the possibility of her thinking of Wollaston. But Evelyn, in her little, white, maiden bed, was awake and dreaming too. Outside the wind was blowing and the leaves dropping and the eternal stars shining overhead. It seemed as if so much maiden-dreaming in the house should make it sound with song, but it was silent and dark to the night. Only the reflection of the street-lamp made it evident at all to occasional pa.s.sers. It is well that the consciousness of human beings is deaf to such emotions, or all individual dreams would cease because of the multiple din.

Chapter x.x.xII

Evelyn, as the weeks went on, did not talk as much as she had been accustomed to do. She did not pour her confidences into her sister's ears. She never spoke of the new princ.i.p.al. She studied a.s.siduously, and stood exceedingly well in all her cla.s.ses. She had never taken so much pains with her pretty costumes. When her mother sent her a Christmas present of a Paris gown, she danced with delight. There was to be a Christmas-tree in the academy chapel, and she planned to wear it. Although it was a Paris gown it was simple enough, a pretty, girlish frock of soft white cloth, with touches of red. "I can wear holly in my hair, and it will be perfectly lovely," Evelyn said. But she came down with such a severe cold and sore throat at the very beginning of the holidays that going to Westbridge was out of the question. Evelyn lamented over the necessity of her staying at home like a child. She even cried.

"I wouldn't be such a baby," said Aunt Maria. At times Aunt Maria could not quite forgive Evelyn for being Ida Slome's child, especially when she showed any weakness. She looked severely now at poor Evelyn, in her red house-wrapper, weeping in her damp little handkerchief. "I should think you were about ten," she said.

Evelyn wiped her eyes and sniffed. Her throat was very sore, and her cold was also in her head. Her pretty lips were disfigured with fever-sores. Her eyes were inflamed.

"You wouldn't want to go looking the way you do, anyhow," said Aunt Maria, pitilessly.

After Aunt Maria went out of the room, Maria, who was putting some finishing-touches to the gown which she herself was to wear to the Christmas-tree, went over to her sister and knelt down beside her.

"Poor darling," she said. "Don't you want me to stay at home with you?"

Evelyn pushed her away gently, with a fresh outburst of tears. "No,"

she said. "Don't come so close, Maria, or you will catch it.

Everybody says it is contagious. No, I wouldn't have you stay at home for anything. I am not a pig, if I am disappointed. But Aunt Maria need not be so cross."

"Aunt Maria does not mean to be cross, sweetheart," said Maria, stroking her sister's fluffy, dark head. "Are you sure that you do not want me to stay home with you, dear?"

"Perfectly sure," replied Evelyn. "I want you to go so you can tell me about it."

Evelyn had not the slightest idea of jealousy of Maria. While she admired her, it really never occurred to her, so naive she was in her admiration of herself, that anybody could think her more attractive than she was and fall in love with her, to her neglect. She had not the least conception of what this Christmas-tree meant to her older sister: the opportunity of seeing Wollaston Lee, of talking with him, of perhaps some attention on his part. Maria was to return to Amity on the last trolley from Westbridge. It was quite a walk from the academy. She dreamed of Wollaston's escorting her to the trolley-line. She dressed herself with unusual care when the day came. She had a long, trailing gown of a pale-blue cloth and a blue knot for her yellow hair. She also had quite a pretentious blue evening cloak. Christmas afternoon a long box full of pale-yellow roses arrived. There was a card enclosed which Maria caught up quickly and concealed without any one seeing her. Wollaston had sent her the roses. Her heart beat so hard and fast that it seemed the others must hear it. She bent over the roses. "How perfectly lovely!"

she said.

Aunt Maria took up the box and lifted the flowers out carefully.

"There isn't any card," she said. "I wonder who sent them?" All at once a surmise seized her that Professor Lane, who was said to be regaining his health in Colorado, had sent an order to the Westbridge florist for these flowers. Simultaneously the thought came to Evelyn, but Eunice, who was in the room, looked bewildered. When Maria carried the roses out to put them in water, she turned to her sister-in-law. "Who on earth do you suppose sent them?" she whispered.

Aunt Maria looked at her, and formed Professor Lane's name noiselessly with her lips, giving her at the same time a knowing nod.

Eunice looked at Evelyn, who also nodded, although with a somewhat disturbed expression. She still did not feel quite reconciled to the idea of her sister's loving Professor Lane.

"I didn't know," said Eunice.