THE HEIRESS OF REDMON ENTERS SOCIETY.
A pretty room--Brussels carpet on the floor, marble-topped table strewn
with gayly-bound books and photograph-albums, chairs and sofas cushioned
in green billiard-cloth, hangings of lace and damask on the windows, a
tall Psyche mirror, a dressing-table, strewn with ivory-backed brushes,
perfume bottles, kid gloves, and cambric handkerchiefs; and marble
mantel, adorned with delicate vases filled with flowers. You might have
thought it a lady's boudoir but for the pictures on the papered
walls--pictures of ballet-dancers and racehorses, with one or two Indian
scenes of pig-sticking, tiger and jackal hunts, and massacres of Sepoys,
and the pistols and riding-whips over the mantel, and the gentleman
standing at the window, looking out. He wore a captain's uniform, and
nothing could have set off his fine figure so well; and this lady-like
apartment was his, and told folios about the man's tastes and character.
He stood looking out on the lamp-lit street, with people passing
carelessly up and down, not looking at them, but thinking
deeply--thinking how the best-laid plans of his life had been defeated
by that invincible Fate, which was the only deity he believed in, and
laying fresh plans, so skillfully to be carried out as to baffle grim
Madam Fate herself. He was going to a party to-night--a party given by
Mrs. Darcy, to introduce the new heiress of Redmon to Speckportian
society.
Captain George Percy Cavendish, standing at the window, looking
abstractedly out at the starlit and gaslit street, was thinking. No one
had wished more to see the heiress than he. She was the fashion, the
sensation, the notoriety of the day. What eclat for him, not to speak of
the solid advantages in the way of dollars and cents, to carry off this
heiress, in fair and open combat, from all competitors. Tom Oaks, the
most insensible of mankind, had seen her but once, and had gone raving
about her ever since. Then, she was the heiress of Redmon, and Captain
Cavendish had vowed a vow long ago, that Redmon and its thousands should
be his, in spite of the very old Diable himself. Did he think
remorsefully of that other heiress who had staked all for him, and lost
the game? I doubt it.
A little toy of a clock on a Grecian bracket struck ten. There had been
a noisy mess-dinner to detain him, and he was late; but he did not mind
that. Mr. Johnson, his man, appeared, to assist him on with his
greatcoat, and Captain Cavendish started to behold his fate!
The drawing-room of the lawyer's house was filled when he entered--he
being himself the latest arrival. He stood near the door for some time,
watching the figures passing and re-passing, gliding in and out of the
dance--for they were dancing--glancing from one to the other of those
pretty mantraps, baited in rainbow-silk, jewelry, and artificial
flowers, for the capture of such as he. He was looking for the heiress,
but all of those faces were familiar, and almost all deigned him their
sweetest smiles in passing--for was there another marriageable man in
all Speckport as handsome as he? While he waited, Lieutenant the
Honorable L. H. Blank, in a brilliant scarlet uniform, approached with a
lady on his arm, and Captain Cavendish knew that he was face to face
with the heiress of Redmon! She had been dancing, and the lieutenant led
her to a seat, and left her to fulfill some request of hers. Captain
Cavendish looked at her, with an electric thrill flashing through every
nerve. Tom Oaks was right when he had called this woman glorious. It was
the only word that seemed to fit her, with her dark Assyrian beauty, her
flaming black eye, and superb wealth of dead-black hair. Yes, she was
glorious, this black-eyed divinity, who was dressed like the heroine of
a novel, in spotless white, floating like a pale cloud of mist all about
her, and emblematic of virgin innocence, perhaps; only this dark
daughter of the earth would hardly do to sit to an artist for an ideal
Innocence.
She was dressed with wonderful simplicity, with a coronal of vivid
scarlet berries and dark-green leaves in the shining braids of her black
hair, and a little diamond star, shining and scintillating on her
breast. Her nose might turn up, her forehead might be too broad and
high, her face too long and thin for classic beauty, but with all that
she was magnificent. There was a streaming light in her great black
eyes, a crimson glow on her thin cheeks, and a sort of subtle brilliant
electricity about her, not to be described, and not to be resisted. This
flashing-eyed girl was one of those women for whom worlds have been
lost--dark enchantresses not to be resisted by mortal man.
While Captain Cavendish stood there, magnetized and fascinated, a
ringing laugh at his elbow made him look round. It was Miss Laura Blair,
of course; no one ever laughed like that, but herself.
"Love at first sight, is it?" she asked, with a wicked look; "come
along, and I'll introduce you."
A moment after he was bowing to the dark divinity, and asking her to
dance. Miss Henderson assented, with a bewitching smile, and turned that
dark entrancing face of hers to Laura.
"Do you know I wanted you, and have sent my late partner off in search
of you. I suppose the poor fellow is scouring the house in vain. They
are going to take me to Redmon and around the town to-morrow, it seems,
and I want to know if you will come?"
Come! Laura's sparkling face answered before her words. The enchantress
had fascinated her as well as the rest; and, in a superb and gracious
sort of way, she seemed to have taken a fancy in turn to the
laughter-loving Bluenose damsel.
While Laura was speaking, Lieutenant Blank came up, looking dazed and
helpless after his search; and directly after him, Mr. Tom Oaks, who had
been hovering around Miss Henderson all the evening, like a moth round a
candle. Mr. Oaks wanted her to dance, and glared vindictively upon
Captain Cavendish on hearing she was engaged to that gentleman, who led
her off with a calm air of superiority, very galling to a jealous lover.
The dance turned out to be a waltz, and Miss Henderson waltzed as if she
had indeed been the ballet-dancer envious people said she was. She
floated--it was not motion--and the young officer, who was an excellent
waltzer himself, thought he never had such a partner before in his life.
Long after the rest had ceased, they floated round and round, the
cynosure of all eyes, and the handsomest pair in the room. Tom Oaks,
looking on, ground his teeth, and could have strangled the handsome
Englishman without remorse.
As he stood there glowering upon them, Mr. Darcy came along and slapped
him on the back.
"It's no use, Oaks. You can't compete with Cavendish! Handsome couple,
are they not?"
Mr. Oaks ground out something between his teeth, by way of reply, that
was very like an oath, and Mr. Darcy went on his way, laughing. Standing
there, scowling darkly, Mr. Oaks saw Captain Cavendish lead Miss
Henderson to the piano.
Miss Henderson was a most brilliant pianiste, and quite electrified
Speckport that night. Her white hands swept over the ivory keys, and a
storm of music surged through the room, and held them spell-bound.
Those who had stigmatized her as a ballet-dancer and a dress-maker were
staggered. Ballet-dancers and dressmakers, poor things! don't often play
the piano like that, or have Mendelssohn's and Beethoven's superbest
compositions at their finger-ends. In short, Miss Henderson bewitched
Speckport that night, even as she had bewitched poor Tom Oaks. Never had
a debut on the great stage of life been so successful. Where the
witchery lay, none could tell; she was not beautiful of feature or
complexion, yet half the people there thought her dazzlingly beautiful.
In short, Olive Henderson was not the sort of woman fire-side fairies
and household angels and perfect wives are made of, but the kind men go
mad for, and rarely marry. She was so brightly beautiful that she defied
criticism; and she moved in their midst a young empress, crowned with
the scarlet coronal and jetty braids, her diamond-star scintillating
rays of rainbow fire, and that smiling face of hers alluring all. Even
that slow Val Blake felt the spell of the sorceress, recanted his former
heresy, and protested he was as near being in love with her as he had
ever been with any one in his life.
The confession was made to Laura Blair, of all people in the world; but
the glamour was over her eyes, too, and she heard it without surprise,
almost without jealousy.
"Oh, she's splendid, Val," the young lady enthusiastically cried. "I
never loved any one so much in my life as I do her! How could you say
she was ugly?"
"Upon my word, I don't know," responded Mr. Blake helplessly; "I thought
she was at the time, but she don't seem like the same person. How that
Cavendish does stick to her, to be sure."
The cold pale dawn of the April day was lifting a leaden eye over the
bay and the distant hill-top, when the assembly broke up. It was four
o'clock of a cold and winter morning before the lights were fled, the
garlands dead, and the banquet-halls deserted. Speckport was very quiet
as the tired pleasure-seekers went wearily home, the chill sweeping wind
penetrating to the bone.
Leaning against a lamp-post, opposite Mr. Darcy's house, and gazing with
ludicrous earnestness at one particular window of that mansion, was a
gentleman, whom the cold and uncomfortable dawn appeared to affect but
very little. The gentleman was Mr. Tom Oaks, his face flushed, his hair
tumbled, and his shirt-bosom in a limp and wine-splashed state, and the
window was that of Miss Henderson's room. Heaven only knows how these
mad lovers find out things; perhaps the passion gives them some
mysterious indication; but he knew the window of her room, and stood
there watching her morning-lamp burn, with an absorption that rendered
him unconscious of cold and sleet and fatigue. While he was gazing at
the light, with his foolish heart in his eyes, a hand was laid on his
shoulder, and a familiar voice sounded in his ear:
"I say, Oaks, old fellow! What are you doing here? You'll be laid up
with rheumatic fever, if you stand in this blast much longer."
Tom turned round, and saw Captain Cavendish's laughing face. The young
officer was buttoned up to the chin, and was smoking a cigar.
"It's no affair of yours, sir," cried Mr. Oaks, rather more fiercely
than the occasion seemed to warrant. "The street's free, I suppose!"
"Oh, certainly," said the captain, turning carelessly away; "only Miss
Henderson might consider it rather impertinent if she knew her window
was watched, and there is a policeman coming this way who may possibly
take you up on suspicion of burglary."
It is not improbable, if Captain Cavendish had not already been some
paces off, Tom's fist would have been in his face, and his manly length
measured on the pavement. Tom never knew afterward what it was kept him
from knocking the Englishman down, whom he already hated with the
cordial and savage hatred of a true lover. But the captain was not
knocked down, and walked home to his elegant rooms, a contemptuous smile
on his lips, but an annoyed feeling within. He was so confoundedly
good-looking, he thought, this big, blustering, noisy Tom Oaks, and so
immensely rich, and women had such remarkably bad taste sometimes that--
"Oh, pshaw!" he impatiently cried to himself, "what am I thinking of to
fear a rival in Tom Oaks--that overgrown, blundering idiot. What a
glorious creature she is! By Jove! If she were a beggar, those eyes of
hers might make her fortune!"
Early in the afternoon of the next day, the plain dark carryall of the
lawyer, containing himself and Miss Henderson, drove up to Mr. Blair's
for Laura.
Laura did not keep them long waiting; she ran down the steps, her pretty
face all smiles, and was helped in and driven off. Miss Henderson lay
back like a princess among the cushions, a black velvet mantle folded
around her, and looked languidly at the beauties of Speckport as Laura
pointed them out. Queen Street stared with all its eyes after the
heiress, and the young ladies envied Miss Blair her position, the
cynosure of all. The windows of Golden Row were luminous with eyes. If
the heiress of Redmon had been the pig-faced lady, she could hardly have
attracted more attention. But she might have been a duchess, instead of
an ex-seamstress, she was so unaffectedly and radically indifferent; she
looked at banks, and custom-houses, and churches, and squares, and men,
and women, with listless eyes, but never once kindled into interest.
Yes, once they did. It was when they reached the lower part of the town,
Cottage Street, in fact, and the bay, all alive with boats, and
schooners, and steamers, and ships, came in sight, its saline breath
sweeping up in their faces, and its deep, solemn, ceaseless roar
sounding in their ears. The heiress sat erect, and a vivid light kindled
in her wonderful eyes.
"Oh, the sea!" she cried; "the great, grand, beautiful sea! Oh, Laura! I
should like to live where its voice would sound always, night and day,
in my ears!"
She had grown so accustomed to hear every one the night before call Miss
Blair Laura, that the name came involuntarily, and Laura liked it best.
"It is down here Nathalie Marsh used to live," Laura said; "there is the
house. Poor Nathalie!"
"Mrs. Darcy was telling me of her. She was very pretty, was she not?"
"She was beautiful! Not like you," said Laura, paying a compliment with
the utmost simplicity; "but fair, with dark blue eyes, and long golden
curls, and the loveliest singer you ever heard. Every one loved her.
Poor Natty!"
Tears came into Laura's eyes as she spoke of the friend she had loved,
and through their mist she did not see how Olive Henderson's face was
darkening.
"I never received such a shock as when I heard she was missing. I had
been with her a little before, and she had been talking so strangely and
wildly, asking me if I thought drowning was an easy death. It frightened
me; but I never thought she would do so dreadful a deed."
"There can be no doubt, I suppose, but that it was suicide?"
"Oh no! but she was delirious; she was not herself--my poor, poor Natty!
They talk of broken hearts--if ever any one's heart broke, it was hers!"
The strange, dark gloom falling like a pall on the face of the heiress,
darkened, but Laura did not notice.
"Was it," she hesitated, and averted her face; "was it the loss of this
fortune?"
"That, among other things; but I think she felt most of all about poor
Charley. Ah! what a handsome fellow he was, and so fond of fun and
frolic--every one loved Charley! I suppose Mrs. Darcy told you all the
story?"
"Yes. You are quite sure it wasn't he, after all, who committed the
murder?"
"Sure!" Laura cried, indignantly. "I am certain! If everybody hadn't
been a pack of geese, they would never have suspected Charley Marsh, who
wouldn't hurt a fly! No, it was some one else, and Val--I mean Mr.
Blake--says if ever Cherrie Nettleby is found, it will be sure to come
out!"
"And Mr. Blake supports Mrs. Marsh, Mrs. Darcy says. That is very good
of him."
Laura's eyes sparkled.
"Good! Val Blake's the best, the kindest-hearted, and most generous
fellow that ever lived. He has that off-hand, unpolished way, you know;
but at heart, he is as good, and kind, and tender as a woman!"
She spoke with an eagerness--this impulsive Laura--that told her secret
plainly enough; but the heiress was thinking of other things.
"She was engaged to Captain Cavendish--this Miss Marsh--was she not?"
she asked.
"Yes, I believe so; but it never was so publicly given out. He was her
shadow; and every one said it would be a match after Mrs. Leroy's
death, for she detested him."
"How did he act after she lost her fortune?"
"Well, the time was so short between that and her dreadful death, that
he had very little opportunity of doing anything; but the general
opinion was, the engagement would be broken off. In fact, he told Val
himself that she broke off, immediately after--for Natty was proud. He
went to the house every day, I know, until--Oh! _quand on parle de
diable_--there he is himself!"
Laura did not mean by this abrupt change that his Satanic Majesty was
coming, though it sounded like it. It was only one of his earthly
emissaries--Captain Cavendish, on horseback. Captain Cavendish looked
handsomer on horseback than anywhere else, a fact of which he was fully
convinced, and he rode up and lifted his hat to the ladies with gallant
grace.
"Good day to you, mesdemoiselles! I called at your house, Mr. Darcy, but
found Miss Henderson out! I trust I find you well, ladies, after last
night's fatigue?"
He addressed both, but he spoke only to one. That one lifted her dark
eyes and bowed distantly, almost coldly, and it was Laura who answered.
"Seven or eight hours' incessant dancing have no effect on such
constitutions as ours, Captain Cavendish! We have been showing Miss
Henderson the lions of Speckport!"
"And what does Miss Henderson think of those animals?"
"I like Speckport," she said, scarcely taking the trouble to lift her
proud eyes; "this part of it particularly."
She was in no mood for conversation, and took little pains to conceal
it. "Not at home to suitors," was printed plainly on those contracted
black brows, and in the somber depths of those gloomy eyes. Captain
Cavendish lifted his hat and rode on, and the distrait beauty just
deigned a formal bend of her regal head, and no more.
Laura smiled a little maliciously to herself, not at all sorry to see
the irresistible Captain Cavendish rather snubbed than otherwise. There
was nowhere to go now but to Redmon, and they drove along the quiet
road, in the gathering twilight of the short March afternoon. A gray and
eerie twilight, too, the low flat sky, of uniform leaden tint, hanging
dark over the black fields and moaning sea. The trees, all along the
road, stretched out gaunt, bare arms, and the cries of the whirling
sea-gulls came up in the cold evening blasts. They had fallen into
silence, involuntarily--the gloom of the hour and the dreary scene
weighing down the spirits of all. Something of the gloominess of the
flat dull landscape lay shadowed on the face of the heiress, as she
shivered behind her wraps in the raw sea-gusts.
Ann Nettleby stood at her own door as the party drove by. The cottage
looked forlorn and stripped, too, with only bare poles where the
scarlet-runners used to climb, and a dismal entanglement of broom
stalks, where the roses and sweetbrier used to flourish. Mr. Darcy drew
rein for a moment to nod to the girl.
"How d'ye do, Ann! Any news from that runaway Cherrie yet?"
"No, sir," said Ann, her eyes fixed curiously on the heiress.
"Is this Redmon?" asked Miss Henderson, looking over the cottage at the
red brick house. "What a dismal place!"
Dismal, surely, if house ever was! All the shutters were closed, all the
doors fastened, no smoke ascending from the broken chimneys, no sound of
life within or without; not even a dog, to humanize the ghostly solitude
of the place. Black, and grim, and ghostly, it reared its gloomy front
to the gloomy sky; the stripped and skeleton trees moaning weirdly about
it, an air of decay and desolation over all. Forlorn and deserted, it
looked like a haunted house, and such Speckport believed it to be. The
two young ladies leaning on Mr. Darcy's arms as they walked up the
bleak, bare avenue, between the leafless trees, drew closer to his side,
in voiceless awe. The rattling branches seemed to catch at the heiress
as she passed them, to catch savagely at this new mistress, out of whose
face every trace of color had slowly died away.
"It's a dismal old barrack," Mr. Darcy said, trying to laugh; "but you
two girls needn't look like ghosts about it. If the sun was shining now,
I dare say you would be laughing at its grimness, both of you."
"I don't know," said the heiress, "I cannot conceive this place anything
but ghostly and gloomy. I should be afraid of that murdered woman or
that drowned girl coming out from under those black trees in the dead of
night. I shall never like Redmon."
"Oh, pooh!" said Mr. Darcy, "yes, you will. When the sun is shining and
the grass is green, and the birds singing in these old trees, you'll
sing a different tune, Miss Olive. We'll have a villa here, and this old
rookery out of the way, and fine doings up here, and, after a while, a
wedding, with Laura here, for bridesmaid, and myself to give you away.
Won't we, Laura?"
"I'm sure I don't know, sir. Who do you want to give her away to?"
"Well, I'm not certain. There's Tom Oaks looney about her; and there's
that good-looking Englishman, all you girls are dying for. You like
soldiers, don't you, Miss Olive?"
"Not particularly. Especially soldiers who never smell powder except on
parade-day, and whose only battles are sham ones. I like those poor
fellows who are fighting and dying down South, but carpet-knights I
don't greatly affect.
"That's a rap over the head, Mr. Darcy," cried Laura, with sparkling
eyes. "I wish he heard you, Miss Henderson."
"He might if he liked," said the heiress, scornfully.
"Well," said the lawyer, taking the "rap" good-humoredly, "he can make
whom he marries, 'my lady,' some day. Is not that an inducement, my
dear?"
"Is he of the nobility, then?" asked Olive Henderson, indifferently, and
not replying to the question.
"He is next heir to a baronetcy. Lady Olive Cavendish does not sound
badly, does it?"
"He used to come here often enough in the old days," Laura said,
looking at the gloomy old mansion; "he was all devotion to poor
Nathalie."
Miss Henderson's beautiful short upper-lip curled.
"He seems to have got wonderfully well over it in so brief a time, for a
love so devoted."
"It is man's nature, my dear," said Mr. Darcy; "here's the house, will
you go through?"
Laura absolutely screamed at the idea.
"Good gracious, Mr. Darcy! I would not go in for all the world. Don't
go, Olive--I mean Miss Henderson."
"Oh, call me Olive! I hate Miss Henderson. No, I don't care for going
in--the place has given me the horrors already."
As they walked back to the carriage, Laura asked her what she thought of
Mr. Darcy's plan of the villa.
"I shall think about it," was the reply. "Meantime, Mr. Darcy, I wish
you would look out for a nice house for me, one with a garden attached,
and a stable, and in some nice street, with a view of the water."
"But, dear me!" said Laura, "I should think it would be ever so much
nicer and handier to board. It will be such a bother, housekeeping and
looking after servants, and all that kind of thing. If I were you I
would board."
She turned upon Laura Blair, her eyes, her face, her voice, so
passionate, that that young lady quite recoiled.
"Laura!" she cried out, in that passionate voice, "I must have a home. A
home, do you hear, not a boarding-house. Heaven knows I have had enough
of them to last me my life, and the sound of the word is hateful to me.
I must have a home where I will be the mistress, free to do as I please,
to come and go as I like, to receive my friends and go to them as it
suits me, unasked and unquestioned. I must have a home of my own, or I
shall die."
Mr. Darcy looked out a house for the heiress; and after a fortnight's
search, found one to suit. It belonged to a certain major, who was going
with his bride, a fair Speckportian, home to old England, on a prolonged
leave of absence. It was to be let, all ready furnished; it was situated
around the corner from Golden Row, commanding a fine view of the
harbor, and with two most essential requisites, a garden and a stable.
It was a pretty little cottage house, with a tiny drawing-room opening
into a library, and a parlor opening into a dining-room. There was a
wide hall between, with a delightful glass porch in front, a garden
fronting the street, and the door at the other end of the hall opening
into a grass-grown backyard. Altogether it was a pleasant little house,
and Miss Henderson took it at once, as it stood, on the major's own
terms, and made arrangements for removing there at once.
"I must have a horse, Laura, you know," she said to Miss Blair, as they
inspected the cottage together, for the two girls had grown more and
more intimate, with every passing day. "I must have a horse, and a man
to take care of him; and besides, I shall feel safer with a man in the
house. Then I must have a housekeeper, some nice motherly old lady, who
will take all that trouble off my hands; and a chambermaid, who must be
pretty, for one likes to have pretty things about one; and I shall get
new curtains and pictures, and send to Boston for a piano and lots of
music, and oh, Laura! I shall be just as happy as a queen here all day
long."
She waltzed round the room where they were alone, in her new glee, for
she was as fitful of temper as an April day--all things by turns, and
nothing long. Laura, who was lolling back in a stuffed rocker, looked at
her lazily. "A housekeeper, Olly! There's Mrs. Hill, that widow you told
me once you thought had such a pleasant face. She is the widow of a
pilot, and has no children. She lives with her brother-in-law, Mr.
Clowrie, and would be glad of the place."
Miss Henderson gave a last whirl and wheeled breezily down upon a
lounge.
"Would she? But perhaps she wouldn't suit. I want some one that can get
up dinners, and oversee everything when I have a party. I must have a
cook, too--I forgot that."
Laura laughed.
"If you went dinnerless one day, you would be apt to remember it
afterward. Mrs. Hill is quite competent to a dinner, or any other
emergency, for she was housekeeper in some very respectable English
family, before she married that pilot. I am sure she would suit, and I
know she would like to come."
"And I know I would like to have her. I'll go down to Mr. Clowrie's
to-morrow, and make her hunt me up a cook and housemaid, and stableman.
I shall want a gardener, too--that's another thing I forgot."
"Old Nettleby will do that. I say, Olly, you ought to give us a
house-warming."
"I mean to; but they never can dance in these little rooms. Oh, how nice
it is to have a house of one's own!"
Laura wondered at the morbid earnestness of Miss Henderson on this
subject. She knew very little of the prior history of the heiress,
beyond that from great wealth she had fallen to great poverty, and had
had unpleasant experience in New York boarding-houses; the probable
origin of this desperate heart-sick longing for a house of her own--a
home where she would be the mistress, the sovereign queen.
Mrs. Hill, the pilot's widow, was very glad of Miss Henderson's offer,
and gratefully closed with it at once. Perhaps the bread of dependence,
never very sweet, was unusually bitter, when sliced by the fair hand of
Miss Catty. She was a tall, portly old lady, with a fair, pleasing,
unwrinkled face, and kindly blue eyes, that had a motherly tenderness in
them for the rich young orphan girl.
"And I want you to find me a cook, and a groom, and a housemaid, Mrs.
Hill," Olive said; "and the girl must be pretty. I mean to have nothing
but pretty things about me. I am going to the cottage on Monday, and you
must have them all before then."
Mrs. Hill was a treasure of a housekeeper. Before Saturday night she had
engaged a competent cook, whose husband knew all about horses, and took
the place of groom and coachman. She got, too, a chambermaid, with a
charmingly pretty face and form; and the new window-draperies of snowy
lace and purple satin were festooned from their gilded cornices; and the
new furniture was arranged; and the new pictures, lonely little
landscape-scenes, hung around the walls. It was a perfect little bijou
of a cottage, and the heiress danced from room to room on Monday morning
with the glee of a happy child delighted with its new toy, and hugged
Laura at least a dozen times over.
"Oh, Laura, Laura, how happy I am! and how happy I am going to be here!
I feel as if this great big world were all sunshine and beauty, and I
were the happiest mortal in it!"
"Yes, dear," said Laura, "but don't strangle me, if you can help it. The
rooms are beautiful, and your dear five hundred are dying to behold
them. When does that house-warming come off?"
Miss Henderson was whirling round and round like a crazy teetotum, and
now stopped before Miss Blair with a sweeping courtesy that ballooned
her dress all out around her.
"On Thursday night, mademoiselle, Miss Henderson is 'At Home'. The cards
will be issued to-day. Come and practice 'Come Where my Love Lies
Dreaming.' Captain Cavendish takes the tenor, and Lieutenant Blank the
bass. We must charm our friends with it that night."
Miss Henderson did not invite all her dear five hundred friends that
Thursday night--the cottage-rooms would not have held them. As it was,
the pretty dining-room and parlor were well filled, and the heiress
stood receiving her guests with the air of a royal princess holding a
drawing-room. She looked brilliantly beautiful, in her dress of rich
mauve silk sweeping the carpet with its trailing folds, its flounces of
filmy black lace, a circlet of red gold in her dead black hair, twisted
in broad shining plaits around her graceful head, a diamond necklace and
cross blazing like a river of light around her swanlike throat, and a
diamond bracelet flashing on one rounded arm. Speckport, ah!
ever-envious Speckport, said these were but Australian brilliants, and
that the whole set had not cost three hundred dollars in New York; but
Speckport had nothing like them, and Speckport never looked on anything
so beautiful as Olive Henderson that night. She was no longer wan and
haggard; her dark cheeks had a scarlet suffusion under the brown skin,
and the majestic eye a radiance that seemed more and more glorious every
time you saw her.
No one could complain that night of caprice or coquetry, or partiality;
all were treated alike; Tom Oaks, Lieutenant Blank, Mr. Val Blake, and
Captain Cavendish; she had enchanting smiles, and genial hostess-like
courtesies for all, love for none. Whatever beat in the heart throbbing
against the amber silk, the lace and the diamonds of her bodice, she
only knew--the beautiful dark face was a mask you could not read.
Miss Henderson's reception was a grand success; Mrs. Hill's supper
something that immortalized her forever after in Speckport. The guests
went home in the gray morning light with a dazed feeling that they had
been under a spell all night, and were awakening uncomfortably from it
now. They were under the spell of those magical smiles, of that
entrancing face and voice--a spell they were powerless to withstand,
which fascinated all against their better judgment, which made poor Tom
Oaks wander up and down in the cold, before the cottage, until sunrise,
to the imminent risk of catching his death; which made half a score of
his young towns-men lose their sleep and their appetite, and which made
Captain George Percy Cavendish pace up and down his room in a sort of
fever for two mortal hours, thrilling with the remembrance of the
flashing light in those black eyes, in the bewildering touch of those
hands. For you see, Captain Cavendish, having set a net to entrap an
heiress, was getting hopelessly entangled in its meshes himself, and was
drunk with the draught he would have held to her lips.
And so the reeling world went round, and she who wove the spell, who
turned the heads, and dazed the hot brains of these young men, lay
tossing on a sleepless pillow, sleepless with the excitement of the dead
hours, sleepless with something far worse than excitement--remorse!