Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/757

1868.] He had equivocated so adroitly as to bar cross-examination, he hoped; but Jessie's curiosity was not easily parried.

"Was that before, or after, she wrote to me?"

"Afterward. She told me all about it—how the sight of a keepsake given her by your mother had set her to thinking of their early and close intimacy, and that she had obeyed the impulse that bade her make inquiries about you, and ask you to visit her. Why do you wish to determine the date of my call?"

He knew as well before she answered as afterward.

"I would not go to Hamilton had you recalled to her mind the fact of my existence. If love for her lost friend did not prompt her to seek me out, I would not owe my recognition to the recommendation of another. No! not to yours!"

Had he not read aright her honest pride, her jealousy for her mother's memory, and her father's dignity? With what wise prevision he had detected the danger, and by his warning to Mrs. Baxter averted it!

Eunice, the beryl-eyed, also had her confidential talk with Mr. Wyllys that night.

"Father," she said, after supper, as he tarried for a moment in the dining- room, "I should like to speak with Mr. Wyllys for five minutes, when Jessie is not by. Can you contrive to call her out by-and-by?"

"I will," replied the father, without curiosity or hesitation.

Jessie was his pride and darling—very beautiful and gifted, in his eyes. He lavished upon her the wealth of a heart that had never known its own depth until he met her mother. Whatever might have been Ginevra Lanneau's faults and weaknesses; whatever the motives for her marriage and subsequent melancholy, this good and learned man had worshipped her with entireness of devotion; had mourned her with an intensity of anguish that bleached his locks, bent his stately form toward the earth that had swallowed up his idol, deafened him to the calls of ambition that urged him to leave a seclusion endeared to him as her home and her burial-place. But Eunice was his right hand, for all that. His trust in her discretion was implicit; his confidence in her ability to look after her young sister's temporal needs was not more firm than his persuasion that the matter of her communication to Mr. Wyllys was, in some way, essential to Jessie's weal. He asked no questions, formed no conjectures—only summoned his second daughter presently to his study, to ascertain privately what were her wishes touching the question of her proposed visit.

Eunice was sewing by the shaded lamp. Wyllys, while he talked to both sisters, looked quite as often at her as at Jessie. She wore a brown merino, that made no noise when she moved, and fell in classic folds about her when she sat or stood. A knot of blue ribbon joined a crimped ruffle above the high dress, and dainty frills of the same were at her wrists. The light, strained through the ground-glass shade, made her skin seem fair and fresh as that of a little child, while it did not blur the clear chiselling of her features. Her hands were shapely, her motions replete with quiet grace. The high-bred lady, stainless in deed as single in motive, spoke in the fearless, tranquil eyes, and composed demeanor.

"She rests me!" said the connoisseur in womanly loveliness, to his appreciative self. "If I were obliged to marry either, I am not sure she would not suit me better than this restless gipsey, who keeps one perpetually upon the qui vive by her sharp interrogations, her repartee and variable moods. To secure the perfection of enjoyment, a man should be able to flirt with one all day