Thelma

M >> Marie Corelli >> Thelma


"I don't tare!" she said, with pretty defiance. "I do love oo, Zordie,
and I will marry oo!"

George held her fondly to his breast as though she were some precious
fragile flower of which not a petal must be injured.

"All right!" he answered gaily, though his voice trembled somewhat, "I
accept! You shall be my little wife, Thelma. Consider it settled!"

Apparently she did so consider it, for from that day, whenever she was
asked her name, she announced herself proudly as "Zordie's 'ittle wife,
Thelma"--to the great amusement of her father, Sir Philip, and that
other Thelma, on whom the glory of motherhood had fallen like a new
charm, investing both face and form with superior beauty and an almost
divine serenity. But "Zordie's wife" took her _sobriquet_ very
seriously,--so much so, indeed, that by-and-by "Zordie" began to take it
rather seriously himself--and to wonder whether, after all, marriages,
unequal in point of age, might not occasionally turn out well. He
condemned himself severely for the romanticism of thinking such
thoughts, even while he indulged in them, and called himself "an old
fool," though he was in the actual prime of manhood, and an exceedingly
handsome fellow withal.

But when the younger Thelma came back at the age of sixteen from her
convent school at Arles,--the same school where her mother had been
before her,--she looked so like her mother, so very like, that his heart
began to ache with the old, wistful, passionate longing he fancied he
had stilled for ever. He struggled against this feeling for a while,
till at last it became too strong for him,--and then, though he told
himself it was absurd,--that a man past forty had no right to expect to
win a girl's first love, he grew so reckless that he determined to risk
his fate with her. One day, therefore, he spoke out, scarcely knowing
what he said, and only conscious that his pulses were beating with
abnormal rapidity. She listened to his tremulous, rather hesitating
proposal with exceeding gravity, and appeared more surprised than
displeased. Raising her glorious blue eyes--eyes in which her mother's
noble, fearless look was faithfully reflected, she said simply, just in
her mother's own quaint way--

"I do not know why you talk about this at all. I thought it was all
settled long ago!"

"Settled!" faltered Lorimer astonished,--he was generally
self-possessed, but this fair young lady's perfect equanimity far
surpassed his at that moment--"Settled! My darling! my child--I am so
much older than you are--"

"I don't like _boys_!" she declared, with stately disdain. "I was your
wife when I was little--and I thought it was to be the same thing now I
am big! I told mother so, and she was quite pleased. But of course, if
you don't want me--"

She was not allowed to finish her sentence, for Lorimer, with a sudden
rush of joy that almost overpowered him, caught her in his arms and
pressed the first lover's kiss on her pure, innocently smiling lips.

"Want you!" he murmured passionately, with a strange sweet mingling of
the past and present in his words. "I have always wanted--Thelma!"