"Yes, I have been there--to her home, I mean," Mark rejoined, and Juno continued: "Only for a moment, though. You should have stayed, like Will, to appreciate it fully. I wish you could hear him describe the feather beds in which he slept--that is, describe them before he decided to take Katy; for after that he was chary of his remarks, and the feathers by some marvelous process were changed into hair, for what he knew or cared."
Mark hesitated a moment, and then said, quietly: "I have stayed there all night, and have tested that feather bed, but found nothing disparaging to Helen, who was as much a lady in the farmhouse as here in the city."
There was a look of withering scorn on Juno's face as she replied: "As much a lady as here! That may very well be; but, pray, how long since you took to visiting Silverton so frequently--becoming so familiar as to spend the night?"
There was no mistaking the jealousy which betrayed itself into every tone of Juno's voice as she stood before Mark a fit picture of the enraged goddess whose name she bore. Soon recollecting herself, however, she changed her mode of attack, and said, laughingly: "Seriously, though, this Miss Lennox seems a very nice girl, and is admirably fitted, I think, for the position she is to fill--that of a country physician's wife," and in the black eyes there was a wicked sparkle as Juno saw that her meaning was readily understood, Mark looking quickly at her and asking if she referred to Dr. Grant.
"Certainly; I imagine that was settled as long ago as we met him in Paris. Once I thought it might have been our Katy, but was mistaken. I think the doctor and Miss Lennox well adapted to each other--it is an excellent match."
There was for a moment a dull, heavy pain at Mark's heart, caused by that little item of information which made him so uncomfortable. On the whole he did not doubt it, for everything he could recall of Morris had a tendency to strengthen the belief. Nothing could he more probable, thrown together as they had been, without other congenial society, and nothing could be more suitable.
"They are well matched," Mark thought, as he walked listlessly through Mrs. Reynolds' parlors, seeing only one face, and that the face of Helen Lennox, with the lily in her hair, just as it looked when she had tied the apron about his neck and laughed at his appearance.
Helen was not the ideal which in his boyhood Mark had cherished of the one who was to be his wife, for that was of a more brilliant, beautiful woman, a woman more like Juno, with whom he had always been on the best of terms, giving her some reason, it is true, for believing herself the favored one; but ideals change as years go on, and Helen Lennox had more attractions for him now than the most dashing belle of his acquaintance.