BREAKFAST WITH OUR GUEST.
Mrs. Dennison was late the next morning. Indeed, she generally was late.
It was sure to produce a little excitement when she entered, if the
family were grouped in expectation, and her system of elegant
selfishness rendered any consideration of the convenience of others a
matter of slight importance. She was always lavish in apologies, those
outgrowths of insincerity; and, in fact, managed to weave a sort of a
fascination out of her own faults.
This certainly was the case here. If Mr. Lee was resolute about anything
in his household, it was that punctuality at meals should be observed:
indeed, I have seldom seen him out of humor on any other subject. But
this morning he had been moving about in the upper hall a full hour,
glancing impatiently at the papers which always reached us before
breakfast, and walking up and down with manifest annoyance. Yet the
moment that woman appeared with her coquettish little breakfast-cap just
hovering on the back of her head, and robed in one of the freshest and
most graceful morning dresses you ever saw, his face cleared up. With a
smile that no one could witness without a throb of the heart, he
received her apologies and compliments all mingled together on her lips
like honey in the heart of a flower, as if they had been favors of which
we were all quite undeserving.
We went down to breakfast at last; but just as we were sitting down, our
guest took a fancy to run out on the terrace and gather a handful of
heliotrope which she laid by her plate, exhaling the odor sensuously
between the pauses of the meal. I don't know what the rest thought of
all this, but I was disgusted. It is a strong word, I know, but I have
no other for the repulsion that seizes upon me even now when I think of
that woman. Her very passion for flowers, to me almost a heavenly taste
in itself, was so combined with materialism, that the perfume of the
heliotrope sickened me.
Jessie did not seem to sympathize in these feelings, nor care that her
own choice flower-plot had been rifled of its sweetest blossoms. In
fact, the fascination of that woman's manner seemed more powerful with
her than it had proved with the proud, strong man who sat opposite me.
Jessie, the darling, either because she did not like the restraint, or,
what was more like her, wishing to give me dignity in the household,
always insisted that I should preside at the table; Mrs. Lee, from her
feeble state of health, being at all times unequal to the task. Three
times did that insatiable woman return her coffee-cup: first, for an
additional lump of sugar, again for a few drops more cream, and then for
the slightest possible dilution of its strength. While I performed these
smiling behests, she sat brushing a branch of heliotrope across her
lips, exclaiming at the beauty of the scene from an opposite window, and
behaving generally like an empress who had honored her subjects with a
visit, and was resolved to put them quite at ease in her presence.
But Jessie could not see things in this light. She was evidently as well
pleased with her guest as she had been the night before, but, though she
smiled and joined in the pleasant conversation, I saw by the heavy
shadows under her eyes that some anxiety disturbed her. The fact that
she had made an appointment to ride with a suitor whom she must reject
accounted sufficiently for this; Jessie had the finest traits of a
purely proud nature, and the idea of giving pain was to her in itself a
great trial. Still, these observations only applied to the undercurrent
that morning; on the surface everything was sparkling and pleasant.
Mr. Lee was more than usually animated, and, before the meal was ended,
quite a war of complimentary badinage had commenced and was kept up
between him and our guest.
Jessie always went to her mother after breakfast. So, immediately on
quitting the table, she stole away to the tower, looking a little
serious, but not more so than her peculiar trial of the day accounted
for.
I followed her directly, leaving Mrs. Dennison and Mr. Lee on the square
balcony, on which the early sunshine lay in golden warmth.
Mrs. Lee had not rested well; her eyes, usually so bright, were heavy
from want of sleep; and the pillow, from which she had not yet risen,
bore marks of a thousand restless movements, which betrayed unusual
excitement.