flashed.
“False to you! What did she mean by such words?” was demanded.
“It was the entering wedge of suspicion,” said Dexter. “But the trick has failed. My heart tells me that you are the soul of honor. If I was disturbed, is that a cause of wonder? Would not such an allegation against me have disturbed you? It would! But that your heart is pure and true as an angel’s, I best know of all the living. Dear Jessie!” and he laid a kiss upon her burning cheek.
“I shall never cease to blame myself for the part I have played this evening. Had I loved you less I had been calmer.”
“False in what way?” asked Miss Loring, unsatisfied with so vague an answer.
“False to your vows, of course. What else could she mean?”
“Did she say that?”
“No—of course not. But she conveyed the meaning as clearly as if she had uttered the plainest language.”
“What were her words?” asked Miss Loring.
“I cannot repeat them. She spoke with great caution, keeping remote, as to words, from the matter first in her thought, yet filling my mind with vague distrust, or firing it with jealousy at every sentence.”
“Can you fix a single clear remark—something that I can repeat?”
“Not one. The whole interview impresses me like a dream. Only the disturbance remains. But let it pass as a dream, darling—a nightmare created by some spirit of evil. A single glance into your dear face and loving eyes rebukes my folly and accuses me of wrong. We are all the world to each other, and no shadow even shall come again between our souls and happiness.”
Jessie resumed her seat and questioned no farther. Was she satisfied with the explanation? Of course not. But her lover was adroit, and she became passive.
“You cannot wonder now,” he said, “that I was so anxious to see you this evening. I might have spared you this interview, and it would have been better, perhaps, if I had done so. But excited lovers are not always the most reasonable beings in the world. I could not have slept to-night. Now I shall find the sweetest slumber that has yet refreshed my spirit—and may your sleep, dearest, be gentle as the sleep of flowers! I will leave you now, for I remember that you are far from being well this evening. It will grieve me to think that my untimely intrusion, and this disturbing hour, may increase the pain you suffer or rob you of a moment’s repose.—Good night, love!” and he kissed her tenderly. “Good night, precious one!” he added. “May angels be your companions through the dark watches, and bring you to a glorious morning!”
He left her, and moved towards the door; yet lingered, for his mind was not wholly at ease in regard to the state of Jessie’s feelings. She had not repelled him in any way—but his ardent words and acts were too passively received. She was standing where he had parted from her, with her eyes upon the floor.
“Jessie!”
She looked up.
“Good night, dear!”
“Good night, Mr. Dexter.”
“Mr. Dexter!” The young man repeated the words between his teeth, as he passed into the street a moment afterwards. “Mr. Dexter! and in tones that were cold as an icicle!”
He strode away from the house of Mrs. Loring, but little comforted by his interview with Jessie, and with the fiend Jealousy a permanent guest in his heart.
CHAPTER X.
LEON DEXTER was not wrong in his suspicions. It was Hendrickson who visited Miss Loring on the evening of his interview with Mrs. Denison. The young man had striven, with all the power he possessed, to overcome his fruitless passion—but striven in vain.—The image of Miss Loring had burned itself into his heart, and become ineffaceable. The impression she had made upon him was different from that made by any woman he had yet chanced to meet, and he felt that, in some mysterious way, their destinies were bound up together. That, in her heart, she preferred him to the man who was about to sacrifice her at the marriage altar he no longer doubted.
“Is it right to permit this sacrifice?” The question had thrust itself upon him for days and weeks.
“Leon Dexter cannot fill the desire of her heart.” Thus he talked with himself. “She does not love; and to such a woman marriage unblessed by love must be a condition worse than death. No—no! It shall not be! Steadily she is moving on, nerved by a false sense of honor; and unless some one comes to the rescue, the fatal vow will be made that seals the doom of her happiness and mine. It must not—shall not be! Who so fitting as I to be her rescuer? She loves me! Eyes, lips, countenance, tones, gestures, all have been my witnesses. Only an hour too late! Too late? No—no! I will not believe the words! She shall yet be mine!”
It was in this spirit, and under the pressure of such feelings, that Paul Hendrickson visited Jessie Loring on the night Dexter saw him enter the house. The interview was not a very long one, as the reader knows. He sent up his card, and Miss Loring returned for answer, that she would see him in a few moments. Full five minutes elapsed before she left her room. It had taken her nearly all that time to school her agitated feelings; for on seeing his name, her heart had leaped with an irrepressible impulse. She looked down into her heart, and questioned as to the meaning of this disturbance. The response was clear. Paul Hendrickson was more to her than any living man!
“He should have spared me an interview, alone,” she said to herself. “Better for both of us not to meet.”
This was her state of feeling, when after repressing, as far as possible, every unruly emotion, she left her room and took her way down stairs.
“Is not this imprudent?” The mental question arrested the footsteps of Miss Loring, ere she had proceeded five paces from the door of her chamber.
“Is not what imprudent?” was answered back in her thoughts.
“What folly is this!” she said, in self-rebuke, and passed onward.
“Miss Loring!” There was too much feeling in Hendrickson’s manner. But its repression, under the circumstances, was impossible.
