Theo: A Sprightly Love Story Part 14

"Theodora," was the calm reply.

An odd silence of a moment, and then the eyes of the two women met each other, in one long, steady look; Lady Throckmorton's profoundly searching, wonderingly questioning; Priscilla Gower's steadfast, calm, almost defiant.

Then Lady Throckmorton spoke.

"I will stay," she said, "and she shall stay with me."

"Thank you," with another slight bend of the handsome head. "I am going now to speak to Mr. Oglethorpe. When I open the door will you send Miss North, Theodora, to me?"

"Yes," answered her ladyship.

So Priscilla Gower crossed the narrow landing, and went into the sick-room, and her ladyship summoned Theodora North, and bade her wait, not telling her why. What pa.s.sed behind the closed doors only three people can tell, and those three people are Denis Oglethorpe, his wife, and the woman who, in spite of her coldness, was truer to him than he dared be to himself. There was no sound of raised or agitated voices, all was calm and seemingly silent. Fifteen minutes pa.s.sed--half an hour; nearly an hour, and then Priscilla Gower stepped out upon the landing, and Lady Throckmorton spoke to Theo.

"Go to her," was her command. "She wants you."

The poor child arose mechanically and went out. She did not understand why she was wanted--she scarcely cared. She merely went because she was told. But when she looked up at Priscilla Gower, she caught her breath and drew back. But Priscilla held out her hand to her.

"Come," she commanded. And before Theo had time to utter a word, she was drawn into the chamber, and the door closed.

Denis was lying upon a pile of pillows, and pale as he was, she saw, in one instant, that something had happened, and that he was not unhappy, whatever his fate was to be.

"I have been telling Mr. Oglethorpe," Priscilla said to her, "all that you have done, Theodora. I have been telling him how you forgot the world, and came to him when he was at the world's mercy. I have told him, too, that five years ago he made a great mistake which I shared with him. It was a great mistake, and it had better be wiped out and done away with, and we have agreed what it shall be. So I have brought you here--"

All the blood in Theodora North's heart surged into her face, in a great rush of anguish and bewilderment.

"No! no!" she cried out. "No! no! only forgive him, and let me go. Only forgive him, and let him begin again. He must love you--he does love you. It was my fault--not his. Oh--"

Priscilla stopped her, smiling, in a half-sad way.

"Hush!" she said, quietly. "You don't understand me. The fault was only the fault of the old blunder. Don't try to throw your happiness away, Theodora. You were not made to miss it. I have not been blind all these months. How could I be? I only wanted to wait and make sure that this was not a blunder, too. I have known it from the first. Theo, I have done now--the old tangle is unravelled. Go to him, Theo, he wants you."

The next instant the door closed upon Priscilla, as she went out, and Theodora North understood clearly what she had before never dared to dream of.

There was one brief, breathless pause, and then Denis Oglethorpe held out his arms.

"My darling," he said. "Mine, my own."

She slipped down by his side, beautiful, tremulous, with glowing cheeks and tear-wet eyes. She remembered Priscilla Gower then.

"Oh, my love!" she cried. "She is better than I am, braver and more n.o.ble; but she can never love you better, or be more faithful and true than I will be. Only try me; only try me, my darling."

Three months subsequently, when Pamela and Priscilla had settled down again to the routine of their old lives, there was a quiet wedding celebrated at Paris--a quiet wedding, though it was under Lady Throckmorton's patronage.

In their tender remembrance of Priscilla Gower, it was made a quiet wedding--so quiet, indeed, that the people who made the young English beauty's romance a topic of conversation and nine days' wonder, scarcely knew it had ended.

And in Broome street, Priscilla Gower read the announcement in the paper, with only the ghost of a faint pang.

"I suppose I am naturally a cold woman," she wrote to Pamela North, with whom she sustained a faithful correspondence. "I will acknowledge, at least, to a certain lack of enthusiasm. I can be faithful, but I cannot be impa.s.sioned. It is impossible for me to suffer as your pretty Theo could, as it is equally impossible for me to love as she did. I have lost something, of course, but I have not lost all."

Between these two women there arose a friendship which was never dissolved. Perhaps the one thing they had in common, drew them toward each other; at any rate, they were faithful; and even when, three years later, Priscilla Gower married a man who loved her, and having married him, was a calmly happy woman, they were faithful to each other still.

THE END.

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By Horatio Alger, Jr. The Boy's Writer

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