“I shall be glad to look in now and then at Orange Grove,” he replied, courteously, without a sign of his exultation at receiving the invitation that would enable him to comply with Thea’s timid request. The young ladies protested they would be delighted, but Mr. Cameron Bentley remained silent. He did not care to have Thea’s grave, attractive guardian at Orange Grove, lest he should spoil sport. But in blissful unconsciousness of the young sprig’s disapprobation, Norman went out to hand them to their carriage, and to give Thea one last grave glance that somehow set her heart beating madly, so that she scarcely heard the gallantries of the young man at her side, for Thea knew quite well that there was more than the love of brother or guardian in Norman de Vere’s lingering look. As for him, he went back to the library with the thought: “Little coquette, she has Cameron Bentley in her toils now. Well, I shall see for myself how far she goes in her flirtations, in spite of her denials of them.” With a frown he went back to his desk and resumed the perusal of Thea’s verses. The first one he took up had the suggestive heading: “IN AUTUMN DAYS. “My heart, ah! why regret Sweet spring’s first violet Dead underneath these drifts of red and gold, Where golden-rod doth wave O’er summer’s new-made grave Deep down within the dark and frosty mold? “Alas, alas! one knows That with the fading rose And with the rustling of the dead leaves down, The splendor soon will fade From mountain height and glade, And all the earth lie withered, bare, and brown. “So one would fain go back Along the spring-time’s track And bid the tender flowerets bloom again-- Recall the faded rose From under wintery snows To greet the patter of the summer rain. “Poor heart, how vain thy dream! As easy would it seem In winter time dead summer to recall, As in life’s autumn days Retracing youthful ways For him on whom the length’ning shadows fall!” “A thoughtful rhyme!” Norman de Vere muttered, throwing it from him with an impatient sigh. CHAPTER XXXIX. It was one of the hardest tasks that Norman de Vere set himself to stay away two days from Orange Grove and the blue-eyed beauty who had beguiled the heart from his breast in such artless fashion. He knew now, he owned it frankly to himself, that it was no brotherly love with which Thea West had inspired him. He who had thought his heart dead within his breast was in love now, ardently, romantically, as any boy of twenty, and the worst of it all was that he held his love as hopeless, deeming the disparity between them too great for him ever to win the girl’s heart. Perhaps it was her absence that forced upon him a realization of the truth, perhaps the simple verses that somehow lingered in his mind, repeating themselves over and over in the solitude of the night: