Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/85

1868.] yond my expectation and desert. You do too much for me, Orrin! I am humbled, yet happy, when I recount your favors."

"Don't say favors! If you knew—"

He stopped.

"Knew what?" queried Jessie, innocently looking up.

He held her eyes for a second by the irresistible magnetism of his, then saying, with a short laugh, that sounded like bitter self-disdain, "What you will never hear from me!" commenced talking fast and gayly about other things. Mrs. Baxter ran in, opportunely, to give Jessie time to collect her thoughts.

Unobservant of the gravity of one of the parties to the broken tête-à-tête, and the forced liveliness of the other, the hostess dashed into a profusely illustrated description of the contre-temps that had detained her in her dressing-room. It was nothing less serious than the doctor's mistake in taking from her chamber-closet a bottle of ink instead of the bay-water she asked him to get.

"For my tender skin is frightfully chapped this winter, Mr. Wyllys, and there is no better remedy for this affliction than bay-water, as perhaps you know—you who are ignorant of nothing! 'Now, my dearest,' I said, 'may I trouble you to pour it upon my hands as I hold them over the basin? Gently, doctor, darling! 'When, presto! down came an inky deluge!" screaming with laughter, as she had with alarm when the mischance had occurred. "I have spent nearly an hour in endeavoring to efface the murky stains, and shall be forced to keep my gloves all the entire evening. Isn't it deplorable?"

The scarlet scarf was on duty again to-night—now tied about her waist, the knot at the side.

"I never feel quite dressed unless I have a speck of scarlet artfully brought into my costume," she had said to Jessie on the evening of her arrival. "It individualizes my attire, I should not know or be myself without it."

Jessie joined in her merriment, but her heart was beating hard and hurriedly. Orrin's sudden alternations of spirits and mysterious allusions were more than an enigma—they were a distress to her.

"If I knew!" she repeated mentally. "What was he about to say, and why did he look at me so intently? Why refuse to finish the sentence? I have wounded or offended him—but how?"

Self-condemnation was her first impulse when she noted a change in the demeanor of those she loved. Orrin ridiculed it as morbid trick of mind that might be cured by reproof or raillery. Roy bore with it patiently and hopefully, recognizing in it an hereditary strain of melancholy, which she would conquer or outlive in time. Her eyes were darker, her voice a tone lower, her smile a trifle more subdued all the evening, for the incident that preceded the festivities. Nobody complained of the change. She was new, handsome and sprightly—a triumvirate of recommendations that would have made her a belle had her "style" been less unique, her cast of thought and conversation commonplace as it was original. Orrin kept aloof from her, playing his part among the guests with his accustomed spirit and tact. But his eyes followed her furtively wherever she went, until she was provoked at herself for meeting them so often. He would suspect her of impertinent curiosity, accuse her of forwardness, or feel that he was under espionage. She would not look in his direction again. A resolution she was certain to break within three minutes after it was made, tempted to the infraction by the stealthy, yet piercing ray she imagined she could feel, when her