The girl sprang to her feet, looking at Queenie in great affright.
“You were about to faint. You are ill?” cried Jess, in alarm.
“It was only a momentary faintness, dear,” murmured Queenie.
But the truth of the matter was that Jess had described John Dinsmore
so accurately, just as she had seen him when she had parted from him on
the golden sands at Newport, that never-to-be-forgotten evening when
she had flung from her the heart and the love in it that she would have
afterward given worlds, had she possessed them, to recall.
She wondered if Jess could by any possible means have ever met the real
John Dinsmore; but in the next breath she told herself that it could
not have been; the girl was just conjuring up this mental photograph
of the hero who could win her heart purely from her imagination, never
dreaming that there had been a man in existence who had fitted that
description exactly.
Thus, assured that Queenie’s indisposition was but momentary, and that
she really cared for her to go on with her narrative, Jess continued:
“My life might have gone on for long years more in just that dreary
fashion, had not a singular event happened. A lawyer--your parent’s
friend, Lawyer Abbot, suddenly appeared at the plantation one day,
and asked for the housekeeper of Blackheath Hall. I overheard the
conversation between them, and his mission there, which was to tell her
that the master of Blackheath Hall had just died abroad, and to inform
her as to the conditions of his will, which was, that the girl Jess
(meaning me) who was then on the plantation, and who had made it her
home there, for many years, was to receive half of his entire fortune,
providing she married, within the ensuing twelve months, his heir, and
nephew, John Dinsmore.
“To cut a long story short, Queenie, this John Dinsmore soon came down
to Blackheath Hall for the purpose of ‘looking me over,’ as he wrote
the housekeeper that he would do. From the first moment we met, I took
a most terrible dislike to him, although he was the greatest dandy
imaginable.
“There was something about him which seemed to warn me not to trust
him, and to fly from him--I cannot explain what it was. As was
expected of him, he asked me to marry him; and by dint of persuasion
from the housekeeper, I, at length, reluctantly consented, although
every throb of my heart seemed to speak and tell me that if I married
him I would rue it--rue it--rue it! I felt so terribly about it that
it seemed to me I must get away amidst new scenes to get up courage to
take the fatal plunge into the turbulent sea of matrimony.
“For a wonder, Mrs. Bryson, the old housekeeper of Blackheath Hall, did
not oppose my strange notion, as she termed it; instead, she consulted
with Lawyer Abbot, and the result was that they concluded to send me to
visit you in New York.”
At this point in her narrative Jess stopped confusedly, turning from
red to white, her heart throbbing so tumultuously that Queenie could
not help hearing it.
“Go on, my dear,” she said, sweetly. “You cannot tell how interested I
am; it is better than reading a love story from a novel.”
“You would think so if you knew what happened next,” thought Jess, but
she dared not put that thought into speech. She said, instead:
“As you may have heard, my visit to you was intercepted on the very
morning I was to take the train in company with Lawyer Abbot, for New
York, by a telegram informing us that you were away, and would not
return for a few weeks.
“My disappointment was so keen that, to assuage my great grief and dry
my tears, Lawyer Abbot proposed that I should go somewhere, now that I
was all ready to go, and proposed sending me to a relative of his, on a
farm.
“I hailed this eagerly--anything to get away from Blackheath Hall.
Well, I was kindly received by the good farmer, and his wife and
daughter, and there I spent the happiest days that I had ever known.
I was loath to tear myself away from the place even when I received a
letter from Lawyer Abbot, stating that you were now at home, in New
York, and that he was coming to conduct me there at once. Ah, Queenie,
when I left that farm, I left all the happiness that I had ever known
behind me. I wrote to the man to whom I had betrothed myself that I
wished to break the engagement; that it was impossible to ever marry
him now, for I found that we were as wide apart as though we had never
met, and that I had never had any love for him, and that he was to
consider the matter irrevocably settled.
“That is all my story, Queenie,” she concluded, and the girl that bent
over her never dreamed that the most thrilling chapter in little Jess’
life history had been omitted from the tale. No one in the wide world
would have guessed that little Jess had left--a husband on that lonely
farm whom she had learned to love with all the strength of her young
heart.
She had obeyed his instructions to the letter, not to let any human
being know of her marriage until he gave her permission to do so.
“So there little Jess’ romance seems to end,” murmured Queenie. The
girl nodded and hid her face, painful with rosy blushes, upon the
shoulder of her false friend.
“Now I am going to tell you a little romance which will no doubt
surprise you very much, Jess,” declared Queenie, “and I will begin with
the statement that I know John--John Dinsmore, the lover whom you have
so foolishly discarded--very well.”
“You know him?” gasped Jess, opening her great, dark, velvety eyes very
wide and wonderingly.
Queenie nodded assent, adding: “I knew all about his courtship, for he
made a confidant of me, writing me all about it, as we were such very
old friends.”
Before Jess could speak she went on hurriedly: “You are making the
greatest mistake of your life, dear, in attempting to break your
engagement with him, for he loves you so passionately that he can never
live without you--he said that in his letter to me--that if anything
happened to part you, that he would shoot himself, and put an end to
his sorrow and despair.”
“I am greatly surprised that you know him, and like him so well,”
cried Jess, impatiently.
“I like him so well I have asked him to visit us at my country seat
to which I am going next week, bearing you with me. He was more than
surprised to hear that you were coming to New York to visit me, of all
people, and accepted the invitation by return mail.
“I suppose I am telling tales out of school when I also tell you that
the dear fellow was well-nigh heartbroken because you had bound those
whom you left behind you with a solemn promise not to divulge to him
your destination. Strange how he found it out, wasn’t it?”
Jess had sprung to her feet trembling like a leaf. “I cannot see him,
indeed I cannot, Queenie,” she cried in an agitated voice, “and I
assure you, oh, so earnestly, that the marriage can never, never take
place!”
“Fie, fie!” cried Queenie, “I will not listen to anything like that.
You have taken an aversion to him, but that is certain to wear off when
you know him better. You know, dear, that there is a whole world of
truth in the old saying that ‘the course of true love never does run
smooth.’ You are sure to have your little differences at first--love
tiffs, as some call them--but it will all come out all right in the
end. I am sure you are too sensible a girl, Jess, to want to back out
now, after your _fiancé_ has made every arrangement for his wedding
with you. It would be the height of impropriety, dear.”
“Will you believe me that I can never, never marry him now, Queenie?”
whispered the girl, earnestly. “Do not let him come. I do not want to
see him. I will not see him.”
“Do not be so willful, Jess,” exclaimed her friend, gathering her
arched brows into a decided frown. “I have asked him to come, and
I cannot recall the invitation without hurting my old friend and
playfellow to the very depths of his honest, loving heart. I could not
be so cruel when you have no just cause to offer as to why you do not
wish to meet him again, save a prejudice which should not exist. Surely
you cannot find so much fault with him for loving you so devotedly;
that is a trait to recommend, not one to blame. As you go through life,
Jess, you will learn one of its greatest lessons, and that is, never to
despise an honest, true love, for indeed there is little enough of it
to be met with.”
“All that you say is true from your point of view, Queenie,” returned
the girl, in a distressed, husky voice, “but I repeat, I can never
marry him now--never!”
“You would rather see a splendid fortune flung to the winds!” said
Queenie, impatiently, and with something very like a covert sneer in
her voice. “Remember, if you throw him over, you make not only a beggar
of yourself for life, but a beggar of him, and that you have no right
to do.
“He has always looked upon himself as his uncle’s heir, and you, by
your action, would change that, willfully and pitilessly. You would
wreck him for life, not only in his heart’s affection, but in his
worldly prospects. And last, but by no means least, you would defy the
will and the wish of the man who gave you shelter at Blackheath Hall
all these years, instead of having you sent to some foundling’s home.
Surely your gratitude to him deserves compliance with his wise decree.”
Queenie had used all her weapons of argument, and she stopped short,
looking at Jess to see the effect of her words upon her. Jess was as
pale as a snowdrop, and great tears trembled on her long, curling
lashes.
“It can never be,” she reiterated in a trembling voice. “I beg of you
to say no more about it, Queenie. Only let me have my way in not seeing
him, if you would be kind to me.”
“I refuse to wound the man who loves you so dearly by giving him such a
cruel message,” replied Queenie, coldly and harshly.