“To something of the same effect you answered before, and the result was the disagreeable experience at Miss Brown’s.”
Dennis’s brow contracted a little, but he said, heroically, “I will go to Miss Brown’s again if you wish it.”
“How self-sacrificing you are!” she replied, with a half-mischievous smile.
“Not as much so as you imagine,” he answered, flushing slightly.
“Well, set your mind at rest on that score. Though not very merciful, as you know, I would put no poor soul through that ordeal again. In this case you will only have to encounter one of the tormentors you met on that occasion, and I will try to vouch for her better behavior.” Then she added, seriously: “I hope you will not think the task beneath you. You do not seem to have much of the foolish pride that stands in the way of so many Americans, and then”—looking at him with a pleading face—“I have so set my heart upon it, and it would be such a disappointment if you were unwilling!”
“You need waste no more ammunition on one ready to surrender at discretion,” he said.
“Very well; then I shall treat you with all the rigors of a prisoner of war. I shall carry you away captive to my new castle on the north side and put you at your old menial task of hanging pictures and decorating in various ways. As eastern sovereigns built their palaces and adorned their cities by the labors of those whom the fortunes of war threw into their hands, so your skill and taste shall be useful to me; and I, your head taskmistress,” she added, with her insinuating smile, “will be ever present to see that there is no idling, nothing but monotonous toil. Had you not better have stood longer in the defensive?”
Dennis held out his hands in mock humility and said: “I am ready for my chains. You shall see with what fortitude I endure my captivity.”
“It is well that you should show it somewhere, for you have not done so in your resistance. But I parole you on your honor, to report at such times as I shall indicate and papa can spare you;” and with a smile and a lingering look that seemed, as before, directed to his face rather than himself, she passed out.
That peculiar look often puzzled him, and at times he would go to a glass and see if there was anything wrong or unusual in his appearance. But now his hopes rose higher than ever. She had been very gracious, certainly, and invited intimate companionship. Dennis felt that she must have read his feelings in his face and manner, and, to his ingenuous nature, any encouragement seemed to promise all he hoped.
For a week after this he scarcely saw her, for she was very busy making preliminary arrangements for the occupation of her new home. But one afternoon she suddenly appeared, and said, with affected severity, “Report tomorrow at nine a.m.”
Dennis bowed humbly. She gave him a pleasant smile over her shoulder, and passed away as quickly as she had come. It seemed like a vision to him, and only a trace of her favorite perfume (which indeed ever seemed more an atmosphere than a perfume) remained as evidence that she had been there.
At five minutes before the time on the following day he appeared at the new Ludolph mansion. From an open window Christine beckoned him to enter, and welcomed him with characteristic words—“In view of your foolish surrender to my power, remember that you have no rights that I am bound to respect.”
“I throw myself on your mercy.”
“I have already told you that I do not possess that trait; so prepare for the worst.”
She was dressed in some light summer fabric, and her rounded arms and neck were partially bare. She looked so white and cool, so self-possessed, and, with all her smiles, so devoid of warm human feeling, that Dennis felt a sudden chill at heart. The ancient fable of the sirens occurred to him. Might she not be luring him on to his own destruction? At times he almost hoped that she loved him; again, something in her manner caused him to doubt everything. But there were not, as in the case of Ulysses and his crew, friendly hands to bind and restrain, or to put wax in his ears, and soon the music of her voice, the strong enchantment of the love she had inspired, banished all thought of prudence. His passion was now becoming a species of intoxication, a continued and feverish excitement, and its influence was unhappy on mind and body. There was no rest, peace, or assurance in it, and the uncertainty, the tantalizing inability to obtain a definite satisfying word, and yet the apparent nearness of the prize, wore upon him. Sometimes, when late at night he sat brooding over his last interview, weighing with the nice scale of a lover’s anxiety her every look and even accent, his own haggard face would startle him.
Then again her influence was not morally good, and his interest declined in everything save what was connected with her.
Conscience at times told him that he was more bent on gaining her love for himself than in winning it for God. He satisfied himself by trying to reason that when he had won her affection his power for good would be greater, and thus, while he ever sought to look and suggest his own love in nameless little ways, he made less and less effort to remind her of a better love than even his. Moreover, she never encouraged any approach to sacred themes, sometimes repelling it decidedly, and so, though he would scarcely acknowledge it, the traitorous fear sprung up, that in speaking of God’s love he might mar his chances of speaking of his own.
In the retirement of his own room, his reveries grew longer, and his
