Alisa Paige - A Book Sample - Page 30/33

She flushed angrily. "I have not that confidence--in kinsman."

For a moment their eyes met. Hers were hard as purple steel.

"Is that final?"

"Yes."

The muscles in his cheeks grew tense, then into his eyes came that

reckless glimmer which in the beginning she had distrusted--a gay,

irresponsible radiance which seemed to mock at all things worthy.

He said: "No, it is not final. I shall come back to you."

She answered him in an even, passionless voice:

"A moment ago I was uncertain; now I know you. You are what they

say you are. I never wish to see you again."

Celia Craig came back with the album. Berkley sprang to relieve

her of the big book and a box full of silhouettes, miniatures, and

daguerreotypes. They placed the family depository upon the table

and then bent over it together.

Ailsa remained standing by the window, looking steadily at nothing,

a burning sensation in both cheeks.

At intervals, through the intensity of her silence, she heard

Celia's fresh, sweet laughter, and Berkley's humorous and engaging

voice. She glanced sideways at the back of his dark curly head

where it bent beside Celia's over the album. What an insolently

reckless head it was! She thought that she had never before seen

the back of any man's head so significant of character--or the want

of it. And the same quality--or the lack of it--now seemed to her

to pervade his supple body, his well-set shoulders, his voice,

every movement, every feature--something everywhere about him that

warned and troubled.

Suddenly the blood burnt her cheeks with a perfectly

incomprehensible desire to see his face again. She heard her

sister-in-law saying:

"We Paiges and Berkleys are kin to the Ormonds and the Earls of

Ossory. The Estcourts, the Paiges, the Craigs, the Lents, the

Berkleys, intermarried a hundred years ago. . . . My grandmother

knew yours, but the North is very strange in such matters. . . .

Why did you never before come?"

He said: "It's one of those things a man is always expecting to do,

and is always astonished that he hasn't done. Am I unpardonable?"

"I did not mean it in that way."

He turned his dark, comely head and looked at her as they bent

together above the album.

"I know you didn't. My answer was not frank. The reason I never

came to you before was that--I did not know I would be welcomed."

Their voices dropped. Ailsa standing by the window, watching the

orioles in the maple, could no longer distinguish what they were

saying.