“The mystery was not cleared up when she came to me that night with a short, ‘How do you like my lover, Margery?’ I was forty years her senior, but she always called me Margery.
“ ‘I think he is the finest, most agreeable man I ever met,’ said I. ‘Is he your lover, Jacqueline? Are you going to marry him?’
“She turned about from the vase which she was denuding of its flowers, and gave me one of her sphinx-like looks. ‘You must ask papa,’ said she. ‘He holds the destinies of the Japhas in his hand, does he not?’
“ ‘Does he?’ I involuntarily whispered to myself; following the steady poise of her head and the assured movements of her graceful form, with a glance of doubt, but loving her all the same, O loving her all and ever the same!
“ ‘Your father is not the man to cross you when the object of your affections is as worthy as this gentleman. He loved your mother too fondly.’
“ ‘He did?’ She had turned quick as a flash and was looking me straight in the eyes.
“ ‘I never saw such union!’ I exclaimed, vaguely remembering that her mother’s name had always seemed to have power to move her. ‘There was no parade of it before the world; but here at their own fireside, it was heart to heart and soul to soul. It was not love it was assimilation.’
“The young girl rose upon me like a flame; her very eyes seemed to dart fire; her lips looked like living coals; she was almost appalling in her terrible beauty and superhuman passion. ‘Not love!’ she exclaimed, her every word falling like a burning spark, ‘not love but assimilation! Yet do you suppose if I told my father that my soul had found its mate; my heart its other half; that this, this nature,’ here she struck her breast as she would a stone, ‘had at last found its master; that the wayward spirit of which you have sometimes been afraid, was become a part of another’s life, another’s soul, another’s hope, do you suppose he would listen? Hush!’ she cried, seeing me about to speak. ‘You talk of love, what do you know of it, what does he know of it, who saw his young wife die, yet himself consented to live? Is love a sitting by the fire with hand locked in hand while the winter winds rage and the droning kettle sings? Love is a going through the fire, a braving of the winter winds, a scattering of the soul in sparks that the night and the tempest lick up without putting out the germ of the eternal flame. Love!’ she half laughed; ‘O, it takes a soul that has never squandered its treasure upon every passing beggar, to know how to love! Do you see that star?’ It was night as I have said and we were standing near an open window. ‘It has lost its moorings and is falling; when it descries the ocean it will plunge into it; so with some natures, they soar high and keep their orbit well, till an invisible hand turns them from their course and they fall, to be swallowed up, aye swallowed up, lost and buried in the great sea that has awaited them so long.’
“ ‘And you love—like this—’ I murmured, quailing before the power of her passion.
“ ‘Would it not be strange if I did not,’ she asked in an altered voice. ‘You say he is everything noble, handsome and attractive.’
“ ‘Yes, yes,’ I murmured, ‘but—’
“She did not wait to hear what lay behind that but. Picking up her flowers, she hastily crossed the room. ‘Did my young mother shriek from joy, when my father’s horses ran away with them along that deadly precipice at the side of the Southmore road? To lie for a few maddening moments on the breast of the man you love, earth reeling beneath you, heaven swimming above you, and then with a cry of bliss to fall heart to heart, down the hideous gap of some awful gulf, and be dashed into eternity with the cry still on your lips, that is what I call love and that is what I—’
“She paused, turned upon me the whole splendor of her face, seemed to realize to what an extent her impetuosity had lifted the veil with which she usually shrouded her bitterly suppressed nature, and calming herself with a sudden quick movement, gave me a short mocking courtesy and left the room.
“Do you wonder that for half the night I sat up brooding and alive to the faintest sounds!
“Next day Mr. Holt called again, and a couple of weeks after—long enough to enable Colonel Japha to make whatever inquiries he chose as to his claims as a gentleman of means and position—sent a formal entreaty for Jacqueline’s hand. I had never seen Colonel Japha more moved. His admiration for the young man was hearty and sincere. From a worldly point of view, as well as from all higher standpoints, the match was one of which he could be proud; and yet to speak the word that would separate from him the only creature that he loved, was hard as the cutting off an arm or the plucking out of an eye. ‘Do you think she loves him?’ asked he of me with a rare condescension of which he was not often guilty. ‘You are a woman and ought to understand her better than I. Do you think she loves him?’
“After the words I had heard
