"I thought you would tell me whatever it was best for me to know,"
replied Mabel, drying her eyes.
If she had said that she was too well-trained to assail him with
interrogatories he had not invited, it would have been nearer the
mark.
"There is nothing relating to her which I desire to conceal," he
rejoined, with some stiffness, "or she would never have become my
promised wife. She is a Miss Dorrance, the daughter of a widow
residing in the vicinity of Boston, Massachusetts. I met her first
at Trenton Falls, where a happy accident brought me into association
with her party. I travelled with them to the Lakes and among the
White Mountains, and, while in Boston, visited her daily. We were
betrothed a week ago, and having, as I have observed, an aversion to
protracted engagements, I prevailed upon her to appoint the tenth of
next mouth as our marriage day. There you have the story in brief. I
have not Mrs. Sutton's talents as a raconteur, nor her disposition
to turn hearts inside out for the edification of her auditors."
"Does she--Miss Dorrance--look like anybody I know?" asked Mabel,
hesitating to declare herself dissatisfied with the skeleton
love-tale, yet uncertain how to learn more.
"A roundabout way of asking if she is passable in appearance,"
Winston said, with his smile of conscious superiority. "Judge for
yourself!" taking from his pocket a miniature.
"How beautiful! What a very handsome woman?" the sister exclaimed at
sight of the pictured face.
"You are correct. She is, moreover, a thorough lady, and
highly-educated. Ridgeley will have a queenly mistress. The likeness
is considered faithful, but it does not do her justice."
He took it from Mabel, and they scanned it together; she resting
against his shoulder. She felt his chest heave twice; heard him
swallow spasmodically in the suppression of some mighty emotion, and
the palpable effort drew her very near to him. She never doubted
from that moment, what she had more cause in after days to believe,
that he loved the woman he had won with a fervor of passion that
seemed foreign to his temperament as the evidence of it was to his
conduct.
The September sun was near the horizon, and between the bowed
shutters one slender, gilded arrow shot athwart the portrait,
producing a marvellous and sinister change in its expression. The
large, limpid eyes became shallow and cunning; the smile lurking
about the mouth was the more treacherous and deadly for its
sweetness; while the burnished coils of hair brushed away from the
temples had the opaline tints and sinuous roll of a serpent.