saw her start, flush, and then turn pale. It was the work of an instant. His eyes followed the direction of hers, but failed to recognize any individual among the group of persons near them as the one who thus affected her by his presence. He left her in one of the parlors, while he made arrangements for rooms. In a few minutes he returned. She was sitting as he had left her, seeming scarcely to have stirred during his absence. Her eyes were on the floor, and when he said, “Come, Jessie!” she started and looked up at him, in a confused way.
“Our apartments are ready; come.”
He had to speak a second time before she seemed to comprehend his meaning. She arose like one in deep thought, and moved along by her husband’s side, leaving the parlor, and going up to the rooms which had been assigned to them. The change in her countenance and manner was so great, that her husband could not help remarking upon it.
“Are you not well, Jessie?” he asked, as she sat down with a weary air.
“Not very well,” she answered—yet with a certain evasion of tone that repelled inquiry.
Mr. Dexter scanned her countenance sharply. She lifted her eyes at the moment to his face, and started slightly at the unusual meaning she saw therein. A flush betrayed her disturbed condition; and a succeeding pallor gave signs of unusual pain.
“Will you see a physician!”
“No—no!” she answered, quickly; “it was a momentary sickness—but is passing off now.” She arose as she said this, and commenced laying aside her travelling garments. Mr. Dexter sat down, and taking a newspaper from his pocket, pretended to read; but his jealous eyes looked over the sheet, and rested with keen scrutiny on the face of his wife whenever it happened to be turned towards him. That she scarcely thought of his presence, was plain from the fact that she did not once look at him. Suddenly, as if some new thought had crossed his mind, Mr. Dexter arose, and after making some slight changes in his dress, left the apartment and went down stairs. He was evidently in search of some one; for he passed slowly, and with wary eyes, along the passages, porticos and parlors. The result was not satisfactory. He met several acquaintances, and lingered with each in conversation; but the watchful searching eyes were never a moment at rest.
The instant Mr. Dexter left the room, there was a change in his wife. The half indifferent, almost listless manner gave place to one that expressed deep struggling emotions. Her bent form became erect, and she stood for a little while listening with her eyes upon the door, as if in doubt whether her husband would not return. After the lapse of two or three minutes, she walked to the door, and placing her fingers on the key, turned it, locking herself in. This done, she retired slowly towards a lounge by the window, nearly every trace of excitement gone, and sitting down, was soon so entirely absorbed in thought as scarcely to show a sign of external life.
It was half an hour from the time Mr. Dexter left his wife, when he returned. His hand upon the lock aroused her from the waking dream into which she had fallen. As she arose, her manner began to change, and, ere she had reached the door, the quicker flowing blood was restoring the color to her cheeks. She had passed through a long and severe struggle; and woman’s virtue, aided by woman’s pride and will, had conquered.
Mrs. Dexter spoke to her husband cheerfully as he came in, and met his steady, searching look without a sign of confusion. He was at fault. Yet not deceived.
“Are you better?” he asked.
“Much better,” she replied; and turning from him, went on with the arrangement of her toilet, which had been suspended from the period of her husband’s absence, until his return. Mr. Dexter passed into their private parlor, adjoining the bedroom, and remained there until his wife had finished dressing.
“Shall we go down?” he inquired, as she came in looking so beautiful in his eyes that the very sight of her surpassing loveliness gave him pain. The Fiend was in his heart.
“Not now,” she replied “I am still fatigued with the day’s travel, and had rather not see company at present.”
She glanced from the window.
“What a sublimity there is in the ocean!” she said, with an unusual degree of interest in her manner, when speaking to her husband. “I can never become so familiar with its grandeur and vastness, as to look upon its face without emotion. You remember Byron’s magnificent apostrophe?—
“‘Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll.’”
And she repeated several of the stanzas from “Childe Harold,” with an effect that stirred her husband’s feelings more profoundly than they had ever been stirred by nature and poetry before.
“I have read and heard that splendid passage many times, but never with the meaning and power which your voice has lent to the poet’s words,” said Dexter, gazing with admiration upon his wife.
He sat down beside her, and took her hand in his. Her eyes wandered to his face, and lingered there as if she were searching the lineaments for a sign of something that her heart could take hold upon and cling to. And it was even so; for she felt that she needed strength and protection in an hour of surely coming trial. A feeble sigh and a drooping of the eyelids attested her disappointment. And yet as he leaned towards her she did not sit more erect, but rather suffered her body to incline to him. He still retained her hand, and she permitted him to toy with it, even slightly returning the pressure he gave.
“You shall be my teacher in the love of nature.” He spoke with a glow of true feeling. “The lesson of this evening I shall never forget. Old ocean will always wear a different aspect in my eyes.”
“Nature,” replied Mrs. Dexter, “is not a mere dead symbol.—It is something more—an outbirth from loving principles—the body of a creating soul. The sea, upon whose restless surface we are gazing, is something more than a briny fluid, bearing ships upon its bosom—something more than a mirror for the arching heavens—something more than a symbol of immensity and eternity. There is a truth in nature far deeper, more divine, and of higher significance.”
She paused, and for some moments her thoughts seemed floating away into a world, the real things of which our coarser forms but feebly represent.
“It must be so. I feel that it is so; yet what to you seems clear as the sunbeams, hides itself from me in dusky shadows. But say on Jessie. Your words are pleasant to my ears.”
Mrs. Dexter seemed a little surprised at this language, for she turned her eyes from the sea to his face, and looked at him with a questioning gaze for some moments.
