Jessamine: A Novel

A light roseate film hid her from Roy's eyes. The Ingleside, where she now knelt! his and hers! did she really love it so well as not to pine for the haunts of her girlhood? And what had pressed that cry from her that was still echoing through his heart-chambers? the appeal that would have meant in a loving wife uncontrollable yearning for the sympathy of him who best knew her needs and her sorrows?

"O, Roy!" she had said, hands outstretched as if to fasten upon his for support in the deep waters. It imported more—a million times more, that childlike wail—to him than all she had afterward expressed of gratitude and esteem. In that hour, consecrate forever by what his musings brought forth, he resolved to woo and win a second time the only woman he had ever loved; who he had believed was lost to him for all time, chained as she was to his side, forced into a relation she abhorred by vows her dying father and he—impatient, ruthless lover!—had put into her mouth. He would be very wary, very patient, but love like his must conquer in the end. Doubts might oppose him in the broad light of day and common-sense, but he would not be turned aside. He did not underrate the difficulties that lay in the way of this novel wooing. Jessie was no longer the fresh-hearted, impetuous girl who had laid her hand confidingly in his (his palm thrilled now in the recollection!) as he sat by her in the oriel-window, the shadows of the tossing jessamine-bells— "joy-bells," he called them—cast upon her white dress and the carpet by the April sunshine; the dewiness and scents of the Spring morning in the air; the "light that was never on land and sea" glorifying the eyes uplifted to his.

Faulty, but frank, with a mind stored with crude riches, a heart whose capacity for love and Love's sacrifices even he had divined rather than discovered—she had been easily won, though not lightly sought. Now, the luxuriant womanliness, the growth of which he marked from day to day in her physique, had not kept pace with the chastened development of her inner nature. If he had said in that early stage of "Love's Young Dream"—"She is like no other girl I ever met!" she was now a veritable unique—a gem a monarch might be proud to set in his diadem.

For all that, he would win her! Should she arise from her lowly place by the ingle, and without a word of explanation or excuse for what was past, again give him her hand, saying merely, "I love you!" he would let all that had been enigmatical in their intercourse go from his remembrance at once and entirely; would trust her with his honor and affections, above all and through all that might stagger his faith in another. Was his a pitiful, cringing spirit? Was it a high or a mean type of human love that made him, possessing his tried soul in more abundant patience, say in the prospect of the tedious and cautious, it might be the arduous, approach to the goal of his desires, that must be his, if he would make success a certainty;—

"And they seemed unto him but a few days for the love he had to her!"

CHAPTER XXIII.

Mrs. Orrin Wyllys had "run in very sociably" to chat for an hour with her dear cousin, Mrs. Fordham.

"Orrin brought me to the door," she said, divesting herself of her fur cloak, and untying the coquettish hood that half covered her head. "I knew Mr. Fordham would be at the meeting in the Town Hall. Orrin promised to meet him there. He can't bear for me to be alone, so he offered to leave me to a comfortable dish of gossip with you while he attended to the interests of the 'dear people.' Of course, it is very gratifying to have one's husband so popular, but I often tell Orrin that I don't see one-tenth nor one-hundredth part as much of him as I ought to. I don't believe there is another man in the United States who is so run after. Not that this surprises me," tittering and trying to blush. "I, of all people alive, ought to have most charity with such devotion. It is a consolation to be assured that he regrets these numerous draughts upon his time as much as I do, and I am not disposed to be jealous. I do think mutual confidence is just the sweetest thing in the world. Between married lovers, I mean. What are you so busy about?"

Jessie's work-basket was heaped with calico and flannel.

"Making clothes for some poor children," she answered. "If you will excuse me, I will go on with my work, as the garments are sadly needed."

"Certainly! I shall be more at my ease if you do not seem to mind my being here. You are the most industrious woman I know. It positively fatigues one to watch you. I suppose, though, there is everything in being trained to such habits from childhood. Now, I haven't a thing to do from morning to night, which is lucky, for I have always been so carefully waited upon from my cradle up to the present hour, when my darling husband will hardly let me put my foot to the ground without his assistance. You can't imagine how aux petits soins he is in the retirement of our sweet, sweet home! True, the house is large, preposterously large—as I told my dear, indulgent father when he bought it. And as Orrin is fond of style, and I have always been used to it, we keep up a ridiculous establishment when one considers the size of the family. Now, I dare say, you keep but two or three women-servants, and maybe no man at all, as you have no carriage of your own?"

"Phoebe is our only servant," said Jessie, unperturbed at having to state the mortifying fact with which Mrs. Wyllys was already acquainted.

"Is it possible!" looking curiously about her through her gold eye-glass. "Yet everything about your little place is as neat as a pin. What a valuable creature she must be! I declare I must tell Orrin that! 'Five servants to wait upon two people, my love!' I said to him this very evening. 'It is frightful extravagance!' But he insists that I shall be relieved from all drudgery, knowing how delicately I have been reared. If I were fond of work, I should be puzzled how to employ myself at the hours when there are no visitors. When I am ennuyée in Orrin's absence, I have only to run across the street to my uncle's, Judge Provost's, to find plenty of society. What a houseful of children they have! I told Orrin yesterday, that it was lucky he never fancied Jeannie Provost (who, to whisper a secret, was just perfectly crazy after him!) My uncle has a large fortune, but it will be cut up by the rule of long division at his death. How fast you sew! Your protégés are some of your Dundee parishioners, I suppose?" condescendingly to the woman of low estate.

"No. The few poor there are so well cared for by their neighbors as not to require my help. This is work allotted me by the Managers of the Hamilton Charitable Society. There is much suffering here this winter."

"Ah!" indifferently. "Orrin doesn't approve of my attending these Women's Societies. He says it would unsex me—that he so admires my thorough womanliness! And, after all, when people can give money to the collectors and visitors and agents, and all that kind of nuisance, there is no use in doing anything else. The demands upon us in the name of charity, are just perfectly awful! I said to Orrin—dear, generous soul! this very morning—'My sweet love, you must positively bear in mind that we are not quite made of money!'"

A photograph upon a handsome easel attracted her attention, and the eye-glass was on duty.

"Is that a fancy picture, or a portrait?"

"It is a likeness of my sister."

"Indeed! Is she single or married? What is her name?"

"Her name is Eunice Kirke."

"Ah! a spinster! She is a very nice-looking person! As you were saying, the winter is severe! But the skating and sleighing are superb! I was on the ice several times last week with Orrin. He's such a splendid skater: I am so proud to be seen with him! I suppose you must have heard how much attention we attract whenever we appear?"

"I see very little of general society, this winter," Jessie politely evaded the inquiry. "I am not in the way of hearing about gay assemblies of any kind."

"Oh, yes! I forgot you were wearing black. But you shouldn't bury yourself too much, even to keep your house in this lovely order. I have seen you out driving several times with Mrs. Baxter, and said to Orrin what a convenience you must find her carriage. And while I think of it, do let me call by for you some day in the sleigh! Orrin and I have spoken of doing it, scores of times, but to confess the truth, we are just a little selfish! We so enjoy riding together, that we neglect our friends. Before I married Orrin, some officious friends advised me not to expect much attention from him after the wedding, 'because he was a ladies' man.' Such were notoriously indifferent to their wives' comfort, I was informed. Even my cousin—the Attorney-general's lady—said to me, 'My dear Hester! Mr. Wyllys is charming—but I am afraid he is too charming to take kindly to domesticity!' I nearly cried myself sick! But I turned a deaf ear to the croakers, and obeyed the dictates of my own heart. Now, I am reaping the reward of my wise action. It may sound boastful in me, but I don't believe my Orrin has his equal as a husband in the universe. His devotion to me is miraculous. I understand that we have the reputation of being the most love-sick couple in town, but I don't care! Let those that laugh win—and I have won! The women try to ridicule us because they are envious. It is not for me to say why the men do it!" A giggle and a violent sidewise toss of the head. "The worst they can say is, that we are more in love with one another now, than we were before our marriage. It is true, and we glory in it. My only fear is, that my darling husband may become too domestic in his perfect content with his wife and his home. It is very sweet and beautiful in him, but I often force him to go abroad, both with, and without me, to counteract this tendency."

Jessie stitched on diligently, with a half smile the visitor mistook for pleased interest in her theme, when it was in reality, made up of amusement and contempt. She could have had no surer evidence of how completely she had outgrown girlish foibles and unworthy rivalries; how firmly established she was upon her new plane of principle, reasoning, and views, than the equanimity with which she suffered Hester's patronage and open exultation over herself. Her contemptuous amusement in retrospection, embraced the would-be belle, who, although "nothing but a poor minister's daughter," had vied with the heiress in style and popularity. She even had a passing thought of ridicule for the memory of the dark-green walking dress, trimmed with fur, and the sweeping green plume. Such paltry contests as they looked to her now! such an insignificant opponent was this brainless, conceited creature before her!

Her boasting Mrs. Fordham valued at its true worth. Through Mrs. Baxter she had learned that the exactions, caressings, and braggadocio of Wyllys's bride made him the laughing stock of his associates. Her fortune was settled upon herself in terms that put it beyond his management, and his graceful insouciance had occasionally proved insufficient to cover his chagrin at her unsparing use of the power this arrangement gave her. Elated to rapture at her success in securing him, she paraded their mutual affection ad nauseam in whatever company they entered; people said, dragged him abroad against his will in order to do this. In the large circle of her husband's acquaintances, she was received with a degree of distinction, she chose to believe was homage to her charms and worth, and superadded to the egregious vanity and pretension of the heiress, her complacency in the dignity of the married woman was ludicrous beyond description.

She was arrayed to-night in a blue Irish poplin, bordered on overskirt, sleeves and basque with ermine; there were diamonds in her ears, upon her fingers, and clustered in her brooch, and artificial flowers in her hair.

"How I envy you for the easy time you have with your dress;" she remarked, incidentally to Jessie. "That is the only advantage one has in wearing mourning. You cannot imagine what a deal of time and labor I must expend upon my toilette. Orrin is even harder to please in these matters than I am. If he had his way I should always be in full dress."

Her voice had always upon Jessie a peculiar and unpleasant effect, akin to that produced by the touch of some viscid substance. But she was Mrs. Orrin Wyllys. This was the end of his "dream of fair women!" to become the petted henchman of a homely, selfish, arbitrary, silly, and wealthy wife.

"How can you endure to touch that coarse work?" was her next essay, with a gesture of her be-ringed fingers like filliping off an obnoxious insect. "Why, that is a flannel petticoat—isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Does Mr. Fordham ever catch you at that sort of sewing?"

"Sometimes."

Jessie had her quiet little smile of satisfaction at the thought of the delightful evenings she had had since this task was commenced, for Roy read aloud to her while she sewed.

"I am astonished he tolerates it! Orrin is so fastidious; has such an exalted appreciation of my refinement, that I wouldn't dare let him see me handle such a garment. I think the more careful we are to maintain a certain degree of modest reserve in the presence of our husbands, the more we shrink from all things common and unclean, the better they will love us. I dread lowering myself to the level of a commonplace woman in my beloved Orrin's eyes; would keep myself his divinity while I can. But I know I am an exception in this respect, that with most married couples, disenchantment comes with the wane of the honeymoon."

Jessie understood the thrust conveyed in the borrowed phrases, enunciated with monkey-like gravity. She had had others like it from the same source. The narrow soul and heart of the speaker had never let her forgive Mrs. Fordham for having once played in her sight the part of chief favorite upon Orrin's list of belles. He had glossed over the circumstance of his pointed attentions to the country girl, by representing her relations to his cousin; had sworn sounding oaths, more loud than deep, that he had never whispered to her of love—and his wife listened and disbelieved. At any rate, the Hamilton wiseacres gave the poorer woman the credit of the conquest, and the knowledge of this was the Banquo at Hester's coronation-feast.

"But you and our good cousin Roy are such awfully practical people!" ran on the chatterer. "I have told Orrin twenty times that I didn't believe your husband kissed you once a week. I should be disconsolate if mine did not kiss me whenever he went out and came in—not to mention dozens of times besides. However, as my blessed, charitable old love says, people differ wonderfully in temperament. Now, we are so ardent!"

"As you say, diversity of temperament accounts for much that seems singular in action," remarked Jessie, composedly.

There was a strange aching at her heart as she said it. Looking at the flat, flaccid visage of her interlocutor, she would have declared it to be impossible for her to wound her by this inane twaddle, peppered with weak spite. Yet she had set a nerve ajar.

"If I had a husband—"the "practical" woman was saying to herself—"his kisses would be too dear and sacred to be counted over and boasted of to others. If I had a husband! Heaven help me! I have none!"

The china-blue eyes of the shallow pate over there would have glittered with malicious delight in her own shrewdness, had she guessed how near to the truth was her description of the external intercourse of those whom the church and the world named as one.

"It is awfully nice to be married!" she rattled on, growing more and more confidential. "There is such solid comfort in the reflection that your destiny is accomplished. No more need for anxiety and setting one's cap, and all that. I shall never forget the delicious peace that filled my whole soul when I first heard myself called 'Mrs. Wyllys!' when I appreciated that the irrevocable step was taken. Still, it seems very sudden. It is just a year since I heard Orrin spoken of as your beau—a funny mistake, as you know, but I didn't then. Oh! how angry I was! for I had determined, even then, that he should fall in love with me. Maybe you recollect the time? It was one day when we were playing billiards at Judge Provost's, and somebody—Fanny, I believe—said he was your teacher. Afterward, the girls began talking about Mr. Fordham's attentions to another young lady—never supposing that he was engaged to you all the time. By the way—did I ever tell you that my dear, upright, kind-hearted husband charged me to mention to you that that was all a foolish mistake?"

"What was a mistake?"

Jessie looked up, arresting the swift, even motion of her fingers.

"Why, the story of Mr. Fordham's engagement to Maria Dunn, a young lady of our city."

"I recollect that you stated it as a fact," returned Jessie, pointedly. "She was an intimate friend of yours, you said, and that you had the tale directly from her. You said, moreover, that Mr. Fordham had called upon you, in company with her."

Hester's thin skin was mottled with mulberry.

"Well, yes! we were a good deal together, at one time, and she certainly did lead me to believe that Mr. Fordham was in love with her—now I come to think of it. I have forgotten the exact circumstances, but there was some talk about it and she did all she could to excite sympathy, until she took a fancy to marry another man. A miserably poor match she made—a clerk upon a salary of two thousand dollars! and her father with seven children! Then, she vowed there had never been any attachment between herself and Mr. Fordham. She was related to the friends he was visiting, and he happened to act as her escort once or twice. For my part, I am sure he never gave her reason to think that he cared a rush for her. She was one of those girls who are always running after the men, and fancy that every gentleman who looks at them is going to propose on the spot. If there is one creature whom I despise above all others, it is a woman who thinks marriage the chief end of her existence. I really thought I had spoken to you about this, long ago. Dear Orrin told me to do it, just after we were married. He said you might allude to the affair in talking with Mr. Fordham, and I might be drawn into a libel-suit or fuss of some kind. I can't see how I came to forget it—I am usually so particular in following his advice!"

Jessie gathered nothing intelligible from the monologue after this. The gleam of her needle was a dull spark before her eyes, and the viscid drawl had some vague association in her mind with the slimy trail of a snake. Once, the slender steel broke between her fingers. Twice she understood, from the other's interrogative intonation that she waited a reply, and she supplied one at random.

A sharp thought aroused her at last, to put a question in her turn.

"You say Mr. Wyllys told you to correct the unfavorable impression he fancied this story might have produced upon my mind. When did he first refer to the subject?"

"O, for that matter, he asked me about it before we were engaged. And, wasn't I properly frightened when I found you had told tales out of school? Of course, I made as light of it as possible, and when he paid his first visit to B——, I set it all straight by telling him I was certain it was a fabrication. I had had reasons for doubting Maria's veracity and honor in other respects. Would you believe it? The girl actually tried to attract Orrin's notice, after she knew he was engaged to ME!"

Jessie had no means of determining how much, or how little truth there was in this statement. It mattered nothing to her who had been the more culpable in the deception practised upon her—the intriguing husband, or the foolish wife. It was probable both had prevaricated grossly and maliciously. It was certain that they had together wrought her great and irreparable harm. The long-delayed explanation was worse than useless. The one maligned by the mischievous gossip had been cast off, and alienated. She should never have the courage to confess the whole wrong to him now.

Unless—

CHAPTER XXIV.

When Roy returned his cousin was with him.

Mrs. Wyllys launched herself into the hall at sound of their voices, her bright azure train 'wide dispread;' her arms extended like the yards of a ship.

"My darling!" casting her entire weight against his chest, a hand upon each shoulder, and putting up a tight knot of a mouth for the kiss marital. "What an eternity you have been absent! I have been ever so uneasy about you!"

She re-entered the sitting-room, hanging by her clasped hands upon his arm, and warbling in her thin falsetto,—

"Now you have come, all my fears are removed,
Let me forget that so long you have roved!"

It was not in human nature, even such a gentlemanly nature as Roy's, to remain unmoved by the spectacle. His risible muscles were still rebellious when he invited Orrin to seat himself near the fire, and observed in tones that would waver, despite politeness and pity, that "the night was very cold."

An awkward little pause ensued. Orrin's chair was at Jessie's right hand, and he turned slightly in that direction while stooping to warm his hands at the blazing hearth, as if expecting some hospitable demonstration from her. She folded her work as neatly as if handling satin instead of flannel, laid it within her basket and set it back, and, with a word of apology, left the room to order refreshments for the guests. On her return, she entered from the parlors that she might more easily reach a divan on the opposite side of the hearth from Orrin. Hester was whispering to her husband, and Roy, whose seat was next that Jessie had taken, glanced down at her with a smile of cheerful greeting, as she made the exchange. She met it with eyes that well-nigh destroyed his composure. Mournful to wretchedness; appealing to supplication, they seemed to lay her soul open to his regards; to ask of him—was it succor or forgiveness? it could not be affection!

She, at least, ought to have known Wyllys too well to imagine—if she thought of him at all—that the silent by-play would pass unnoticed and uncomprehended by him. In his bachelorhood, the expression of aversion to his proximity, and the mute resort to her husband's protection, would have amused and incited him to the exercise of more potent fascinations. But Jessie's demeanor, of late, had irked him unreasonably. He could have supported an overt show of vindictiveness better than the dignified indifference that baffled his attempts to re-establish their confidential relations. Manoeuvre as he might, and as he did, he could never see her for one instant alone, and this, he was sure, was not accidental. Upon one pretext or another, he called at the cottage at all hours—most frequently when he knew Roy was engaged in his professional duties. "Mrs. Fordham begged to be excused," occasionally; oftener kept him waiting below until the, to him, inopportune burst of Mrs. Baxter into the parlor, or Fanny Provost's entrance through the side-porch next her home, prevented a tête-à-tête.

He could not believe that she had taken her, whom he swore at inwardly as a "chattering cockatoo," into her confidence in a matter so delicate as her unextinguished passion for himself, but it was plain that the coincidences which damaged his plans were somebody's work. For a while he derived some compensation for his disappointment from the additional evidence thus furnished him by the short-sighted novice in scheming, that her shyness was the fruit of cowardice; that lively coals of love for him still lurked beneath the ashes with which she would fain keep them smothered. But his best powers of finesse had not elicited a flash from these. Adroit references to scenes and words which she could not recall without emotion, if the wonted fires were still there, had produced as little visible effect as did his ardent protestations of cousinly attachment. She treated him as she did a dozen other gentlemen—neither worse nor better. Mortification and amazement at his non-success were but human. Displeasure and the inclination to retaliate upon the instrument of his discomfiture were unprofessional, and the display of them impolitic to the last degree. That he admitted these feelings, was to be accounted for plausibly only upon the hypothesis that contact with the sour whey of his wife's temper had not improved his own. In times past, he had been too rational, as well as too firmly entrenched in his self-appreciation, to descend to serious meditation upon the practice of a quality so vulgar, and usually so unremunerative as revenge. Two whole months had gone by since he laid his plans of advance upon the fortification of matronly propriety and womanly pride, and he had not gained an inch that he could discover.

It was fortunate for Jessie's self-respect that in her harshest judgment of his motives and character, she never surmised what was his present purpose. With her natural propensity to blame herself for the sins others committed against her, she would have leaped to the inference that he had seen warrant in her former indiscretion and inconstancy, for the belief that neither moral nor religious principle would serve her successfully in resisting his declaration of undiminished attachment; that she who had played false to the lover, would be unfaithful to the husband, if a similar magnet were presented to her vacillating heart. She saw, indeed, that he courted her notice and friendship; believed that she read in his conduct lingering fears that she might yet betray his perfidy to Roy, if she were not propitiated by such sugarplums of attention as other women liked. The conviction of his cowardice had dealt the heaviest blow at the idol that crumbled into common dust on that September day. All vestige of godhood had departed beneath the shock. A brave man might sin; a good man might, under extreme provocation, be cruel. The caitiff who slunk away, whining, at sight of the lifted scourge which should punish him for the crime he could not deny, must forfeit love with esteem.

Wyllys' mood, at sight of the rapid signal or query that passed from husband to wife, was the exact reverse of amiable, and he was not pacified by Hester's conduct. Hitching her chair close to her lord's, she stroked his hair and beard, smiling affectedly, in amorous languishment, at her lately purchased vassal, and purring like a cat. So soon as he could decently seek deliverance from the absurd situation, Orrin slipped from under the crawling fingers, and began to examine the books upon the centre-table.

"Isn't he looking well?" said his tormentor to Roy, showing all her prominent teeth in the affectionate leer she sent after him.

"Very well. His health has always been excellent, I believe," rejoined Roy. "Although his active habits have hindered the gain of so much as a pound of superfluous flesh."

It hurt him to see his gay and gallant clansman in the humiliating position of a led bear, at the mercy of a marmoset, but he could not be anything but civil in his own house.

"Oh! Oh! don't hint at the possibility of his ever getting fat! I think lean people are just too sweet! I wouldn't have him altered by the change of a single hair in his mustache. Women ought to think their husbands perfect, oughtn't they, Cousin Jessie?"

"If they are perfect!" was the reply.

Mrs. Wyllys accomplished a compound toss of her head; her ear-rings fairly jingling, and the flowers in her sandy braids and frizettes quivering like aspens in an east wind.

"That is rank heresy! Love that isn't blind is no love at all. I wouldn't give a fig for the constancy of a wife who could detect the slightest flaw in the man she has promised to love, honor, and obey. Would you now, Mr. Fordham?"

"If you would have my candid opinion, I should prefer intelligent and discriminating esteem to blind adoration," was the courteous rejoinder, at which the lady bridled.

"I might have expected some such answer in this staid, matter-of-fact household! Now, Orrin and I—"

"You are true to your penchant for Mrs. Norton, I perceive!" Orrin interrupted her unceremoniously, looking across at Jessie. "This is a handsome English edition of her poems."

"Yes! I have had it for several years."

"Is that an implication that you would not procure it now, if you did not possess it?"

"I imply nothing, except that she is popular with most young girls."

"Woman, then, in her maturity of mind and affection, grows out of the taste for the 'female Byron'—for that is Mrs. Norton's sobriquet in the literary world?" he said, interrogatively, and in suave deference to her judgment. "What some contend poetry should be,—the lyrical, expression of passion,—sounds extravagant to one who has studied life for herself. Must this be so? Are there no recesses far down in the heart where the dew will lie all day? Because we have learned to think in sober and weighty prose, must we blush to remember that our souls once melted through our eyes as we sang, 'Thy Name was Once the Magic Spell,' or read, 'The Tryst,' and 'I Cannot Love Thee?'"

"I have a song, called—'I do not Love Thee,'" interposed Mrs. Wyllys. "It is just the sweetest thing you ever heard. Let me see! How does the air go?" humming. "I do not love thee! No! I do not love thee!"

"I am tempted to doubt the decline of your admiration for our poetess," pursued Wyllys to Jessie, with royal disregard of his beloved's vocalization. "The book opens of itself at the last-named poem."

"Do read it aloud, lovey!" begged Hester, eagerly. "I should so like to hear it! And he does read poetry so exquisitely!" to the Fordhams. "It is just perfectly delightful to listen to him! I tell him that was the way he captivated me, with his reading and his singing. They are too sweet!"

"Let us have it, Orrin!" said Roy, good-humoredly, desirous to relieve him from the saccharine shower. "I never read it, I think. But I was always 'matter-of-fact,' as Mrs. Wyllys has already discovered. Perhaps the 'lyrical expression of passion' had less hold upon my adolescent imagination than it generally has upon impressible youth."

He resigned himself patiently to the hearing of an ultra-pathetic love-song.

Jessie knew every line of the poem already. She had said it over to herself, scores of times, last Summer, tossing wakefully upon her pillow at midnight, until the pine boughs seemed to have caught the rhythm; or pacing the garden walks with hurrying feet; or hanging over the railing of the rustic foot-bridge. But she could not help listening, as the cunning modulations of the reader drew out the simple fervor of each line.

A steely-blue ray shot from beneath his eyelashes in her direction, as he turned a leaf. She did not see it. Perfectly still, yet attentive, she had leaned her head against the high back of her husband's chair, and was looking straight before her.

found no expression in attitude and feature.

The reader's voice mellowed; the emphasis of suppressed emotion was more artistic and effective.

"Was'nt it too funny that she didn't give in to such a splendid fellow?" queried Hester, sniffing away the emotion she had tried to sop up with her laced handkerchief. "I never can hear dear Orrin read without crying, no matter what the subject is. I couldn't have helped falling in love with him, I know. It was queer, now!" fretfully, as she saw Jessie's countenance. "I don't see what there is amusing about it!"

Jessie held her head erect—a movement full of spirit and gladness—and laughed. It was no mirthless sound, but a ripple of real joyousness.

"Very queer!" she answered, merrily. "Mr. Wyllys! we must call upon you to explain the phenomenon. You evidently understand it. You read the poem con amore."

She sprang up to serve her guests from the waiter Phoebe had placed upon the table. Roy followed her.

"They tell me you make a delicious article of domestic wine, Mrs. Fordham—of elderberries, or grapes, or currants—or something," said Mrs. Wyllys, bent upon patronage at every turn. "I hope you are going to treat us to some of it now."

"'They' are mistaken!" returned Jessie, the merry ring yet in her voice. "I never attempted anything of the kind. The best substitute I can offer you for the beverage you had promised yourself, is Rhenish or Marsala which Mr. Fordham procured abroad."

"I can answer for her, I believe, Mrs. Wyllys, that her efforts in that line have been confined to the brewing of flax-seed lemonade, and sage tea!" chimed in Roy.

Whereat Jessie laughed again, as she had not done at Orrin's adventure with the gargle.

Wyllys arose to receive a glass of wine from her hand, and, in taking it, looked steadily, reproachfully, passionately, into her eyes. They sustained the scrutiny without quailing, a glint of roguish defiance playing within them, and her lips curling at the corners, as she turned away. He had a misgiving then that his power over her was at an end. This was not acting, but the flashing of a stream where the sunshine reached to its bed; was filtrated through pure, sweet waters. If she were disenchanted, he knew whom he had to thank for it. He could have hated his Hester for the over-fondness that had made him ridiculous to optics which erst surveyed him with timid and worshipful reverence, as Semelé may have regarded high Jove.

He was not sorry he had wedded as he did. He had too just an appreciation of the inconveniences of living beyond one's means; the difficulties that environ a man of expensive tastes and a moderate income, and the thousand goods of wealth, to regret the investment, which had assuredly yielded more than cent. per cent., whether he estimated either the affection or the money he had put into the speculation. He was wise in his generation. Hester was the richest spoil that had ever been laid in his way, and he had not hesitated as to the line of duty. But he did wish she had not wheedled him into this visit, that she might have another opportunity to play the fool herself, and force a like part upon him. Jessie's laughter had stung him unreasonably, and in his avarice of the praise of his kind, he grudged the loss of a moiety of Roy's affectionate admiration.

Fordham did not return to the sitting-room when he had escorted his guests to the outer door. He bade his wife "Good-night," in the hall.

"Must you work to-night?" she asked, imploringly. "I meant—I hoped—that is, I thought we would have a pleasant chat over my fire."

Her manner was agitated, her eye restless; but he scarcely noted this, or that she stammered strangely in preferring the petition.

"Don't tempt me!"

He would have made his answer playful. It was a sickly show, and repulsed Jessie more effectually than sternness would have done.

With a burning blush, she dropped the hand she had laid lightly on his sleeve; murmured an apology, and hurried upstairs, forgetting that she had intended to sit for a while longer in the lower room. In her own chamber, she walked the floor in an agony of shame and despair.

"He would never have my love now, if it were offered him!" she said, wringing her hands. "He knows me too well! The glamour of that happy love-summer has gone! gone! To-night, I feel further off from him than ever. He despises me as I deserve! But righteous punishment is as hard to bear as unjust condemnation. And I have suffered so much, and so long! I could have been wholly frank with him, if he had but gone and sat with me ten minutes—if he had been himself, instead of shrinking from my touch—rejecting my companionship."

"The book opened of itself at that place!" Roy was thinking at that moment. He had been to the sitting-room for the volume, carried it into the library, and re-read the poem again and yet again, detecting what he imagined was a tear blister on the second page. "What can I do? What course is left to me save that which I am pursuing? Am I still odious to her?"

The girl at the spring smiled down upon him from the wall; seemed to hold out the green leaf-cup for his acceptance. He could see the glisten of the water upon it; fancy that he heard in the stillness the tinkle of the bright beads as they fell into the basin. The eyes that gave back her look were very patient, but just now it was a patience that had in it much of the weariness of hope deferred.

"I have put a cup of bitterness to your lips, my bird of beauty!" was his unselfish lament.

Mr. Wyllys "had builded better than he knew," that evening.

"I wouldn't be as cold-blooded as that woman, for all the gold of Golconda!" exclaimed Hester, before the steps of the Fordham cottage were cold from the touch of her Parisian gaiters.

"Maybe you mean diamonds," said her husband curtly. "It is a safe plan not to use terms unless you are certain they are correct."

"Gold or diamonds, it makes no difference! I don't pick my words when I am out of patience. It's precious little she has of either commodity, I guess!" laughing spitefully.

"Take care of that rough place in the crossing," cautioned Wyllys, in a less acrimonious tone, thus reminded what store his spouse possessed of the valuables specified, and, by inevitable association of ideas, of his profitable investment.

"She frets me always!" continued the sweet creature, hanging, according to custom, basket-wise upon his arm. "This evening she was positively rude. How provokingly she laughed at that sweet piece you read so divinely that I was in tears all the way through. You meant it for her, I could see well enough, you smart, sly creature! And it served her just right! I as good as told her she did not care a snap for her husband, before you came in. And she took it as coolly as if I had paid her a compliment. It is awful what scared consciences some people have. I take to myself the credit of having seen through her from the beginning, when that horrid old matchmaker, Mrs. Baxter, who always puts me in mind of a grinning hyena, was trying to put her off on you. As if you would have married a girl who was next door to a beggar! What is it, petty?"

"I trod on a pebble!"

He had almost flung her arms from their hold. For he remembered the story he had told Jessie in the conservatory, of the woman who was married for her money, and gloried in it.

"What a pity!" gabbled his owner. "I am morally certain that she married Mr. Fordham, poor fellow! to get a home. If that isn't disgustingly immoral—a perfect sale of one's self in the shambles, as you may say, I don't know what is. To be sure, your cousin is one of the very quiet, non-exacting kind, and I hope doesn't suffer as you would, darling love, if she were your wife!" pinching his arm with her claw-like fingers. "For you and I are such turtles, dearie!"

CHAPTER XXV.

Spring was forward in Hamilton that year. Mrs. Baxter, walking on the presidential portico at noon of a bright day in the third week of April complimented the extraordinary benignity of that usually coy month, by sporting the first white dress of the season.

A knot of irreverent students collected about the window of one of the college dormitories, catching glimpses of her snowy draperies fluttering from pillar to pillar of the porch, made merry over profane pleasantries, touching, "flourishing almond trees," and "antique angels."

"Wonder if she wears that red flannel night-cap to ward off the rheumatism!" said one, directing his puny arrow of wit at the "individualizing" scarlet scarf, now wound into a turban about her classic head, the silken fringes sweeping her shoulder.

"It is a piratical flag!" rejoined another. "And there! she is signalling some poor wretch on to his doom!"

The Lady President had waved her handkerchief to some one in or near the college, and halted at the top of the front steps to receive him.

"Who is the latest victim?" asked those in the rear of the party, as the foremost craned his neck to peer upon the campus.

"One who is able to take care of himself," was the response. "No less a personage than his Royal Highness."

This sobriquet, let me explain, was applied to Professor Fordham in no unkind or depreciatory spirit by his classes. Originally intended as a play upon his Christian name, it grew into popular esteem as descriptive of their pride in his manly carriage and knightly demeanor. The quintette at the window watched him with interest and admiration now, as he strode along the gravelled avenue leading to the Presidents' house.

"He would march up to the cannon's mouth in the same style," commented the chief speaker. "Did you ever see better shoulders?"

"Did you ever see a better man?" interrogated the fifth of the group—a grave senior, who had not spoken before.

And to the honor of the watchers, as of the watched, be it recorded that a hearty acquiescence in his verdict followed the question.

The goodly man found abundant favor, likewise in Mrs. Baxter's eyes, as she invited him to enter her abode.