"The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness."--SHAKSPEARE.
Edward had met and held his desired interview with his business
acquaintance, seen him aboard his train, and was standing watching it as
it steamed away and disappeared in the distance, when a feminine voice,
close at hand, suddenly accosted him.
"O Mr. Travilla! how are you? I consider myself very fortunate in
finding you here."
He turned toward the speaker, and was not too greatly pleased at sight
of her.
"Ah! good-evening, Miss Deane," he said, taking her offered hand, and
speaking with gentlemanly courtesy. "In what can I be of service to
you?"
"By inviting me to Ion to spend the night," she returned laughingly.
"I've missed my train, and was quite in despair at the thought of
staying alone over night in one of the miserable little hotels of this
miserable little village. So I was delighted to see your carriage
standing there, and you yourself beside it; for, knowing you to be one
of the most hospitable of men, I am sure you will be moved to pity, and
take me home with you."
Edward's heart sank at thought of Zoe, but, seeing no way out of the
dilemma, "Certainly," he said, and helped his self-invited guest to a
seat in his carriage, placed himself by her side, and bade the coachman
drive on to Ion.
"Now, really, this is very good in you, Mr. Travilla," remarked Miss
Deane: "there is no place I like better to visit than Ion, and I begin
to think it was rather a fortunate mishap--missing my train."
"Very unfortunate for me, I fear," sighed Edward to himself. "The loss
of her drive will be a great disappointment to Zoe, and the sight of
such a guest far from making it up to her. I am thankful the visit is to
be for only a night."
Aloud he said, "I fear you will find it less pleasant than on former
occasions,--in fact, rather lonely; as all the family are
absent--spending the winter at Viamede, my mother's Louisiana
plantation--except my wife and myself."
"Ah! but your wife is a charming little girl,--I never can think of her
as a woman, you know,--and you are a host in yourself," returned the
lady laughingly.
Zoe's callers had left; and she, having donned hat and cloak, not to
keep her husband a single moment, was at the window watching for his
coming, when the carriage came driving up the avenue, and drew up at the
door.
She hurried out, expecting to find no one there but himself, and to be
at once handed to a seat in the vehicle, and the next minute be speeding
away with him, enjoying her drive all the more for the little
disappointment that had preceded it.
What, then, was her chagrin to see a visitor handed out, and that
visitor the woman for whom she had conceived the most violent antipathy!
"Miss Deane, my dear," Edward said, with an entreating look at Zoe,
which she did not see, her eyes being at that instant fixed upon the
face of her uninvited and unwelcome guest.
"How do you do, my dear Mrs. Travilla? I hope you are glad to see me?"
laughed the intruder, holding out a delicately gloved hand, "your
husband has played the Good Samaritan to me to-night--saving me from
having to stay in one of those wretched little hotels in the village
till two o'clock to-morrow morning."
"I am in usual health, thank you. Will you walk in?" returned Zoe in a
freezing tone, and utterly ignoring the offered hand. "Will you step
into the parlor? or would you prefer being shown to your room first?"
"The latter, if you please," Miss Deane answered sweetly, apparently
quite unaware that Zoe's manner was in the least ungracious.
"Dinah," said Zoe, to a maid-in-waiting, "show Miss Deane to the room
she occupied on her last visit. Carry up her satchel, and see that she
has every thing she wants."
Having given the order, Zoe stepped out to the veranda where Edward
still was, having staid behind to give directions in regard to the
horses.
"Zoe, love, I am very sorry," he said, as the man turned his horses'
heads, and drove away toward the stables.
"O Edward! how could you?" she exclaimed reproachfully, tears of
disappointment and vexation springing to her eyes.
"Darling, I really could not help it," he replied soothingly, drawing
her to him with a caress, and went on to tell exactly what had occurred.
"She is not a real lady," said Zoe, "or she never would have done a
thing like that."
"I agree with you, love," he said; "but I was sorry your reception of
her was so extremely ungracious and cold."
"Would you have had me play the hypocrite, Ned?" she asked indignantly.
"No, Zoe, I should be very far from approving of that," he answered
gravely: "but while it was right and truthful not to express pleasure
which you did not feel, at her coming, you might, on the other hand,
have avoided absolute rudeness; you might have shaken hands with her,
and asked after her health and that of her father's family."
"I treated her as well as she deserved; and it does not make her any the
more welcome to me, that she has already been the means of drawing down
upon me a reproof from my husband's lips," Zoe said in tremulous tones,
and turning away from him with her eyes full of tears.
"My words were hardly intended as that, little wife," Edward responded
in a kindly tone, following her into the hall, catching her in his arms,
and imprinting a kiss on her ruby lips.
"And I wanted my drive with you so badly," she murmured, half hiding her
face on his breast; "but she has robbed us of that, and--O Ned! is she
to come between us again, and make us quarrel, and be so dreadfully
unhappy?" Her voice was full of tears and sobs before she had ended.
"No, no; I could not endure that any more than you," he said with
emotion, and clasping her very close: "and it is only for to-night you
will have to bear the annoyance of her presence; she is to leave in the
morning."
"Is she? that is some comfort. I hope somebody will come in for the
evening, and share with us the infliction of her society," Zoe said,
concluding with a forlorn attempt at a laugh.
"Won't you take off that very becoming hat and cloak, Mrs. Travilla, and
spend the evening?" asked Edward playfully.
"Thank you. I believe I will, if you will accompany me to the
dressing-room," she returned, with a smiling look up into his face.
"That I will with pleasure," he said, "provided you will reward me with
some assistance with my toilet."
"Such as brushing your hair, and tying your cravat? Yes, sir, I will:
it's a bargain."
And so, laughing and chatting, they went up to their own private
apartments.
Halt an hour later they came down again together, to find Miss Deane in
the parlor, seated by a window overlooking the avenue.
"There's a carriage just drawing up before your front entrance," she
remarked: "the Roselands family carriage, I think it is."
Zoe gave her husband a bright, pleased look. It seemed her wish for an
addition to their party for the evening had been granted.
The next moment the room-door was thrown, open, and Dr. Conly and Miss
Ella were announced.
They were cordially welcomed, asked to tea, and staid the evening,
greatly relieving Zoe in the matter of entertaining her unwelcome guest,
who devoted herself to the doctor, and left Edward to his wife and
cousin, a condition of things decidedly agreeable to Zoe.
A little after nine the Roselands carriage was announced; and the doctor
and Ella took their departure, Edward and Zoe accompanying them to the
outer door.
The sky was black with clouds, and the wind roaring through the trees on
the lawn.
"We are going to have a heavy storm. I think," remarked Arthur, glancing
upward: "there is not a star to be seen, and the wind blows almost a
gale. I hope no patient of mine will want the doctor very badly
to-night," he added with a slight laugh. "Step in out of the wind,
cousin Zoe, or you may be the very one to send for me."
Doing as directed, "No, indeed," she said: "I'm sure I couldn't have the
heart to call anybody up out of a warm bed to face such a cutting wind
as this."
"No, no; never hesitate when there is a real necessity," he returned,
speaking from his seat in the carriage, where he had already taken his
place beside his sister, whom Edward had handed in. "Good-night, and
hurry in, both of you, for my sake if not for your own."
But they lingered a moment till the carriage turned, and drove swiftly
down the avenue.
"I am so glad they came," remarked Zoe, as Edward shut the door and
locked it for the night.
"Yes," he said: "they added a good deal to the pleasure of the evening.
As we couldn't be alone together, three guests were more acceptable than
one."
"Decidedly; and that one was delighted, I'm sure, to have an opportunity
to exercise her conversational gifts for the benefit of a single man
instead of a married one."
"Zoe, love, don't allow yourself to grow bitter and sarcastic," Edward
said, turning toward her, laying a hand lightly, affectionately, upon
her shoulder, and gazing down into her eyes with a look of grave
concern.
She colored under it, and turned away with a pout that almost spoiled
the beauty of her fair face. She was more than ever impatient to be rid
of their self-invited guest.
"She always sets Ned to scolding me," was the bitter thought in her
heart as she went slowly back to the parlor, where they had left Miss
Deane, Edward following, sighing inwardly at the change in his darling
always wrought by that unwelcome presence in the house.
"How the wind roars down the chimney!" Miss Deane remarked as her host
and hostess re-entered the room, where she was comfortably seated in an
easy-chair beside the glowing grate. "I fear to-morrow will prove a
stormy day; but in that case I shall feel all the more delighted with my
comfortable quarters here,--all the more grateful to you, Mr. Travilla,
for saving me from a long detention in one of those miserable little
country taverns, where I should have died of _ennui_."
"You seem kindly disposed, my dear madam, to make a great deal of a
small service," returned Edward gallantly.
But Zoe said not a word. She stood gazing into the fire, apparently lost
in thought; but the color deepened on her cheek, and a slight frown
contracted her brows.
Presently she turned to her guest, saying courteously, "You must be
weary with your journey, Miss Deane: would you like to retire?"
"Thank you, I should," was the reply; and thereupon the good-nights were
said, and they sought their respective rooms.
"You are not displeased with me, dear?" Zoe asked, lifting her eyes
inquiringly to her husband's face as she stood before their
dressing-room fire with his arm about her waist: "you are looking so
very grave."
"No, dearest, I am not disposed to find fault with you," he said, softly
caressing her hair and cheek with his disengaged hand; "though I should
be glad if you could be a trifle more cordial to our uninvited guest."
"It's my nature to act just as I feel; and, if there's a creature on
earth I thoroughly detest, it is she!" returned the child-wife with
almost passionate vehemence. "I know she hates me,--for all her purring
manner and sweet tones and words,--and that she likes nothing better
than to make trouble between my husband and me."
"My dear child, you really must try not to be so uncharitable and
suspicious," Edward said in a slightly reproving tone. "I do not
perceive any such designs or any hypocrisy in her conduct toward you."
"No: men are as blind as a bat in their intercourse with such women;
never can see through their designs; always take them to be as sweet and
amiable as they pretend to be. It takes a woman to understand her own
sex."
"Maybe so," he said soothingly; "but we will leave the disagreeable
subject for to-night at least, shall we not?"
"Yes; and, oh, I do hope the weather to-morrow will not be such as to
afford her an excuse for prolonging her stay!"
"I hope not, indeed, love," he responded; "but let us resolve, that, if
it does, we will try to bear the infliction patiently, and give our
self-invited guest no right to accuse us of a lack of hospitality toward
her. Let us not forget or disobey the Bible injunction, to 'use
hospitality one to another without grudging.'"
"I'll try not to. I'll be as good to her as I can, without feeling that
I am acting insincerely."
"And that is all I ask, love. Your perfect freedom from any thing
approaching to deceit is one of your greatest charms, in your husband's
eyes," he said, tenderly caressing her. "It would, I am sure, be quite
impossible for me to love a wife in whose absolute truth and sincerity I
had not entire confidence."
"And you do love me, your foolish, faulty little wife?" she said, in a
tone that was a mixture of assertion and inquiry, while her lovely eyes
gazed searchingly into his.
"Dearly, dearly, my sweet!" he said, smiling fondly down upon her. "And
now to bed, lest these bright eyes and rosy cheeks should lose something
of their brilliance and beauty."
"Suppose they should," she said, turning slightly pale, as with sudden
pain. "O Ned! if I live, I must some day grow old and gray and wrinkled,
my eyes dim and sunken: shall you love me then, darling?"
"Better than ever, love," he whispered, holding her closer to his heart;
"for how long we shall have lived and loved together! We shall have come
to be as one indeed, each with hardly a thought or feeling unshared by
the other."