"Do you not care at all, Celia?" he asked, after a moment's silence.
Celia lifted her eyes. "Care?" she cried, "I have always cared,--through everything! When I thought you knew and believed the cruel charge against my father; when I knew his heart was broken; when he was dead,--when I wanted to hate you, still I cared. Have you cared like that?"
This vehement confession, with its note of defiance, was bewildering. Allan hesitated before this unapproachable, tempestuous Celia. Then he drew his chair nearer. "Celia, dear heart, do not speak so; I have not been tried like you, but give me the chance and see how I will atone for the past."
Suddenly Celia held out her hand; "Oh, Allan, I am so very bad-tempered. I seem always determined to quarrel," she said, with a laugh that was half a sob.
This was enough, the strain was broken; Allan forsook the arm-chair for the settle.
It was perhaps some fifteen minutes later when he asked Celia if she remembered the magician, and the tiger with three white whiskers. "What a brave little girl you were," he added.
"Does that mean you will no longer follow me blindly?"
She laughed. "What made you think of it?" she asked.
"Rosalind inquired the other day if I was the boy."
"Allan, I don't know why I told the children that story."
"At least it gave me the courage to try my fate."
"I don't think it required much courage."
"You don't know," Allan replied, smiling over her head. "But now, dearest, we are going to begin again and live in a fairy tale and forget all the hard and cruel things. Do you know, I had a vision that day, in the library of the old house? I saw a fire of blazing logs, and you and I sat before it, and we weren't quarrelling."
"Dear old house! I can't bear to look at it now," Celia sighed.
"I am sorry to hear that, for I was planning to live there."
"I bought it through an agent. I thought perhaps I might want to sell again if--if things did not come out as I hoped."
"I have thought of nothing else since the day I saw you on the stairs with your arm around Belle."
"How unhappy I was! I did not dream that you still cared. It seems so long ago. Did you know your mother came to see me, Allan?"
"Yes. She has keen eyes; she knew what it meant to me. Poor mother!"