"Your figures are not provocative of insatiable appetite," returned
his wife, with inimitable sang-froid, staying her paper knife that
she might examine an engraving.
"Your appetite needs further excitants, then? So did mine until I
began to suspect that the history might be authentic, and not a
figment of the raconteur's imagination. The hero's name at first
disposed me to set down the entire relation as a fiction. It is
romantic enough to perfume a three-volume novel--Julius Lennox!"
Mabel's instinctive thought was for her husband, but, in turning to
him she could not but notice that Mrs. Aylett sat motionless, the
paper-cutter between two leaves, and her left hand pressed hard upon
the upper, but without attempting to sever them.
Herbert twisted his head upon the pillow until he faced the back of
the sofa, and a convulsion went through him, hardly quelled by the
clasp of Mabel's hand upon his.
"Julius Lennox!" reiterated Mr. Aylett, between the fragrant puffs,
"A lieutenant in the navy--the good-looking, but, as the sequel
proved, not over-steady, spouse of a lady who was the daughter of
another naval officer of similar rank. The latter was compelled to
leave the service on account of incipient idiocy, and retired, upon
half-pay, to an unfashionable quarter of a certain great city, where
his wife, a smart Yankee, opened a boarding-house for law and
medical students, and contrived not only to keep the souls and
bodies of her family together, but to marry off her two still single
daughters--the one to a barrister, the other to a physician. The
lovely Louise Lennox--a pretty alliteration, is it not?--remained
meanwhile under the paternal roof, her husband's ship being absent
most of the time, and the handsome Julius having unlimited
privileges in the line condemned by "Black-eyed Susan" in her
parting interview with her sailor lover--finding a mistress in
every port. It is woman's nature and wisdom to seek consolation for
such afflictions as the deprivation of the beloved one's society,
and the almost certainty that he is basking his faithless self in
the sunlight of another's eyes. Our heroine, being at once ardent
and philosophical, put the lex talionis into force by falling in
love with one of her mother's lodgers, a sprig of the legal
profession. The favored youth--so says my edition of the
romance--remained preternaturally unconscious of the sentiment he
had inspired, attributing her manifestations of partiality to
platonic regard, until she opened his modest eyes by proposing an
elopement. He had completed his professional studies, taken out a
license to practise law, was about to quit her and the city, and the
no-longer-adored Julius was coming home--a wreck in health and
purse--upon a six months' leave of absence. It must be owned the
Lady Louise had some excuse for a measure that seemed to have amazed
and horrified her cicisbeo. Recoiling from the proposition and
herself with the virtuous indignation that is ever aroused in the
manly bosom by similar advances, he packed up his trunk,
double-locked it and his heart, paid his bill, and decamped from the
dangerous precincts.