Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/537

1868.] "One would suppose pianos were given away every day! And you should value the instrument the more highly because it is the gift of your great admirer and true friend, Mr. Wyllys. I assure you, Mr. Fordham, nothing could exceed his care of, and devotion to her while you were over the seas and far away."

"True friend!" echoed the doctor's dryest, most rasping tones. "Humph!"

"Now, my love, I do implore that you will not drag forward that most unjust and unreasonable prejudice in the present company!" cried his wife, in a nervous flutter from her bonnet-crown to her gaiter-tips. "If I have failed to convince you that it is groundless and absurd, oblige me by withholding the expression of it, at any rate, here and now!"

"My good Jane!" returned the imperturbable spouse, where"where [sic] else could the truth be so fitly spoken as in the hearing of judicious friends? I am sorry to say, Mr. Fordham, that my excellent wife and myself do not agree respecting Mr. Wyllys's character and actions."

"Doctor! doctor!" ejaculated the frantic woman, plunging forward at an angle of forty-five degrees to pluck his sleeve; "you forget that you are addressing Mr. Wyllys's cousin!"

"A candid man, and a fair judge of human nature and motives, nevertheless," her lord went on to say, with a stiff little bow in the direction of the person named. "The only safe rule among friends is candor. It is seldom I attribute sinister purposes to one whom I do not know certainly to be malevolent or hypocritical; but from the moment I heard Mr. Wyllys caution Mrs. Baxter not to allude, in her letter of invitation to our Jessie here, to information he had supplied relative to her person, residence, and education, I distrusted the singleness of his desire for the resumption of Mrs. Baxter's intercourse with the family of her early friend. When the invited guest arrived, and I learned that the terms of their previous intercourse entitled him to become her cavalier on all occasions—her preceptor and referee in doubtful cases of conscience and conduct; when I compared this circumstance with his careless and apparently accidental mention of her to Mrs. Baxter; his pretended indifference to her coming, I made up my mind that he was particularly interested in her for some reason he did not care to divulge. I believe still that this was the case. I believe that, knowing her to be betrothed to his cousin, he strove, consciously and systematically, to win her from her allegiance. I thank God he did not succeed; that she has given herself and her happiness into the keeping of a true and honorable gentleman!"

"I am grateful to you, doctor, for your staunch friendship for myself, and paternal guardianship of my wife." Roy's pleasant tones reached Jessie's ears like an angelic benediction through the seething chaos that seemed swallowing her up. "I am glad, moreover, that you have introduced the subject of your misgivings regarding my cousin's behavior while I was away. I appointed him my proxy before I left my betrothed and native land. The attentions that misled you into doubts of his right dealing were paid in that character. I cannot have you undervalue the 'true and honorable gentleman' I know Orrin Wyllys to be. He is my friend!"

The doctor tugged at his cravat-bow, and stared into the chandelier. Mrs. Baxter gulped down all the solicitude she could swallow, and threw the rest into the deprecating look she cast upon Roy. He stood before his zealous old superior—courteous, kind, but earnest in defence of his absent friend—the model of