The Bondwoman. Ryan Marah Ellis

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ to find them reciprocal. Perhaps there is a betrothed somewhere to whom he has sworn allegiance in its most rigid form; is that the reason?”

      Mrs. McVeigh smiled. She rather liked to think her son not so susceptible as Frenchmen pretended to be.

      “I do not think there are any vows of allegiance,” she confessed; “but there is someone at home to whom we have assigned him since they were children.”

      “Truly? But I fancied the parents did not arrange the affairs matrimonial in your country.”

      “We do not; that is, not in a definite official way. Still, we are allowed our little preferences, and sometimes we can help or hinder in our own way. But this affair”–and she made a gesture towards the door of her son’s room, “this affair is in embryo yet.”

      “Good settlements?”

      “Oh, yes; the girl is quite an heiress and is the niece of his guardian–his guardian that was. Their estates join, and they have always been fond of each other; so you see we have reason for our hopes.”

      “Excellent!” agreed her friend, “and to conclude, I am to suppose of course she is such a beauty that she blinds his eyes to all the charms arrayed before him here.”

      “Well, we never thought of Gertrude as a beauty exactly; but she is remarkably good looking; all the Lorings are. I would have had her with me for this visit but that her uncle, with whom she lives, has been very ill for months. They, also, are of colonial French descent with, of course, the usual infusions of Anglo-Saxon and European blood supposed to constitute the new American.”

      “The new–”

      “Yes, you understand, we have yet the original American in our land–the Indian.”

      “Ah!” with a gesture of repulsion; “the savages; and then, the Africans! How brave you are, Claire. I should die of fear.”

      Mrs. McVeigh only smiled. She was searching through a portfolio, and finally extracted a photograph from other pictures and papers.

      “That is Miss Loring,” she said, and handed it to the Countess, who examined it with critical interest.

      “Very pretty,” she decided, “an English type. If she were a Parisian, a modiste and hairdresser would do wonders towards developing her into a beauty of the very rare, very fair order. She suggests a slender white lily.”

      “Yes, Gertrude is a little like that,” assented Mrs. McVeigh, and placed the photograph on the mantel beside that of the very charming, piquant face of a girl resembling Mrs. McVeigh. It was a picture of her daughter.

      “Only six weeks since I left her; yet, it seems like a year,” she sighed; and Fitzgerald Delaven, who had entered from the Lieutenant’s room, sighed ponderously at her elbow.

      “Well, Dr. Delaven, why are you blowing like a bellows?” she asked, with a smile of good nature.

      “Out of sympathy, my lady,” replied the young Irishman.

      “Now, how can you possibly sympathize understandingly with a mother’s feelings, you Irish pretender?” she asked with a note of fondness in her tones. “I sigh because I have not seen my little Evilena for six weeks.”

      “And I because I am never likely to see that lovely duplicate of yourself at all, at all! Ah, you laugh! But have you not noticed that each time I am allowed to enter this room I pay my devotions to that particular corner of the mantel?”

      “A very modern shrine,” observed the Countess; “and why should you not see the original of the picture some day. It is not so far to America.”

      “True enough, but I’ll be delving for two years here in the medical college,” he replied with lamentation in his tone. “And after that I’ll be delving for a practice in some modest corner of the world, and all the time that little lady will be counting her lovers on every one of her white fingers, and, finally, will name the wedding day for a better boy than myself, och hone! och hone!”

      Both the ladies laughed over his comical despair, and when Lieutenant McVeigh entered and heard the cause of it he set things right by promising to speak a good word for Delaven to the little girl across the water.

      “You are a trump, Lieutenant; sorry am I that I have no sister with which to return the compliment.”

      “She might be in the way,” suggested the Countess, and made a gesture towards the other picture. “You perceive; our friend need not come abroad for charming faces; those at home are worth courting.”

      “True for you, Madame;” he gave a look askance at the Lieutenant, and again turned his eyes to the photograph; “there’s an excuse for turning your back on the prettiest we have to offer you!” and then in an undertone, he added: “Even for putting aside the chance of knowing our so adorable Marquise.”

      The American did not appear to hear or to appreciate the spirit of the jest regarding the pictures, for he made no reply. The Countess, who was interested in everybody’s affairs, wondered if it was because the heiress was a person of indifference to him, or a person who was sacred; it was without doubt one or the other for which the man made of himself a blank wall, and discouraged discussion.

      Her carriage was just then announced; an engagement with Mrs. McVeigh was arranged for the following morning, and then the Countess descended the staircase accompanied by the Lieutenant and Delaven. She liked to make progress through all public places with at least two men in attendance; even a youthful lieutenant and an untitled medical student were not to be disdained, though she would, of course, have preferred the Lieutenant in a uniform, six feet of broad shouldered, good-looking manhood would not weigh in her estimation with the glitter of buttons and golden cord.

      The two friends were yet standing on the lower step of the hotel entrance, gazing idly after her carriage as it turned the corner, when another carriage containing two ladies rolled softly towards their side of the street, as if to stop at a jeweler’s two doors below.

      Delaven uttered a slight exclamation of pleasure, and stepped forward as if to speak, or open the door of their carriage. But the occupants evidently did not see him, and, moreover, changed their minds about stopping, for the wheels were just ceasing to revolve when the younger of the ladies leaned forward, spoke a brief word, and the driver sent the horses onward at a rapid trot past the hotel, and Delaven stepped back with a woeful grimace.

      “Faith! no chance to even play the lackey for her,” he grumbled. “There’s an old saying that ‘God is good to the Irish;’ but I don’t think I’m getting my share of it this day; unless its by way of being kept out of temptation, and sure, its never a Delaven would pray for that when the temptation is a lovely woman. Now wasn’t she worth a day’s journey afoot just to look at?”

      He turned to his companion, whose gaze was still on the receding carriage, and who seemed, at last, to be aroused to interest in something Parisian; for his eyes were alight, his expression, a mingling of delight and disappointment. At Delaven’s question, however, he attempted nonchalance, not very successfully, and remarked, as they re-entered the house, “There were two of them to look at, which do you mean?”

      “Faith, now, did you suppose for a minute it was the dowager I meant? Not a bit of it! Madame Alain, as I heard some of them call her, is the ‘gem of purest ray serene.’ What star of the heavens dare twinkle beside her?”

      “Don’t attempt the poetical,” suggested the other, unfeelingly. СКАЧАТЬ