“I love her more and more,” she said. “This sorrow draws me nearer to her, because it makes me think of my own dear mother who lost me in my childhood by a fate more sad than death.” It was not often that Thea referred to the mystery of her past, but of late her thoughts had dwelt more frequently upon it. She wondered if her parents were yet alive--if they missed and mourned the child so strangely lost. “If I could find my mother, I would like for her to resemble sweet Lady Edith,” she thought sometimes when she found a minute’s quiet in the whirl of gayety in which she was plunged--ball, opera, reception succeeding one another in bewildering rapidity. But suddenly it all came to an end. In her tulle gowns and bare throat and arms the beautiful girl caught cold in damp, foggy London, and that evening when she laid her fair head on Norman’s shoulder, with the plaintive words, “I am tired--my head aches,” was the beginning of weeks of illness and pain when Thea lay, hot and feverish and sometimes delirious, on her bed, while Lady Edith, giving up society entirely, nursed her with all a mother’s devotion. When the young wife began to get better the clever physician ordered her husband to take her back to Italy to recuperate. “She has had quite enough of dancing and flirting and damp, muggy air for the present; now she must have some months of rest and quiet,” he said, in his autocratic way that nobody dreamed of disputing--least of all Norman de Vere, to whom he had revealed a fact that made the strong man’s pulses beat high with joy, while it increased, if possible, his love and devotion for his beautiful bride. The hope that Camille had disappointed long ago was to be realized at last. There would be a child to perpetuate the name of De Vere. Lady Edith wept quietly at the news. “It recalls old days to me,” she said, pathetically. CHAPTER LII. Norman de Vere lost no time writing his mother the joyful news about Thea. He knew that it would make her very happy. He was not disappointed, for soon there came a letter from her breathing all her pleasure at the good news, and expressing her hope that they would come home soon, so that she could give her darling Thea a mother’s care. “I should like to go,” Thea said, thinking longingly of beautiful Verelands. Since she had left London and Lady Edith she had grown homesick. “Are you tired of Italy?” Norman asked, in some surprise. “No, I am not tired; only when one is sick one misses home,” she said. “And your dear mother, she must be lonely without us.” “That is true,” he said, grateful for her thought of his mother. “Well, when you get stronger, darling, we will go home.” So in six months after their marriage they turned their faces homeward. They stayed two days more in London, for the purpose of bidding Lord Stuart and his sister farewell, and Thea made them promise to visit her the next year. Lady Edith wept at parting, the girl had intwined herself so fondly around her heart.