I WONDER WHO SHE CAN BE?
"The woman who deliberates is lost."
—Addison.
"I wonder who that pretty girl is Sir Barry Traleigh is talking with so earnestly down by the gate?" Blondine saunters into Dolores' pretty room to wait for her cousin to go down to tea.
"Any one you know?" asks Dolores, from the mirror where she is busy twisting her back hair up and sticking silver pins here and there through it.
"They have just hailed a carriage, and are driving off," Miss Gray says excitedly, from the window where she has seen Sir Barry and his pretty companion disappear.
"I suppose he has the liberty to go driving with, or talk to whom he chooses," Dolores retorts crossly.
She wonders who this fair unknown can be, and wonders still more why Sir Barry should be so interested in her—for interested he must be, if he would leave his tea. Still she is relieved to know she will not have to meet him again to-day anyway. She would like to tell Blondine that she and Sir Barry were good friends; but a feeling comes that Blondine will only laugh triumphantly at her and say "I knew it would be so." She is wakened from any further wonderment by Blondine.
"Hurry, Dolores, uncle Dick won't wait all the evening for you to get that bang of yours just fixed without a hair out of place, so come quick. I am as hungry as, as—who was the hungriest person you ever heard or read of, Dolores?"
"I am afraid I cannot say, dear. You plunge too deep for me to follow you," is Dolores' quiet answer.
The second tea gong sounds; they hurry down, to find uncle Dick emerging from the gentlemen's parlor, and just in time to hear his loud jovial voice remark to his companion—"I wonder, in the name of Olympus if my girls intend to come to their supper to-night?"
It is morning—a bright, deliciously warm morning—with light yellowish white clouds floating in the sky, and a soft, light wind coming in, bringing the scent of the salt waves to heal the diseases, and warm or thaw out the cold English tourists who are here seeking the heat of a warmer climate than their own. Dolores and Blondine are sitting on the pretty green bank, in sight of the remains of what the peasants call the "Bath of the Fairies," a Roman amphitheatre. Blondine is supposed to be sketching this picturesque spot; at least it is for that purpose that they have walked two long miles to Cimella this delightful morning. But the sketching is not progressing very rapidly; Blondine loses herself in a day dream. Sitting there under the old elm tree, resting her dark head against its friendly trunk, Blondine forgets the Abbey, likewise all other things worldly. The white lids droop lower and lower over the dark eyes, the breeze whispers a soft, gentle lullaby, all is stillness around. Dolores looks up from her book to ask how the abbey is progressing under Blondine's skilled fingers; but Dolores may save herself the trouble of speaking, for Miss Blondine is asleep. Then a wandering fit seizes Dolores; she wonders what is down yonder; perhaps some pretty cottage hidden from view by those jealous hedges of hawthorn; she will go and see. On and on, over the narrow beaten track goes Dolores, charmed onward by she knew not what; up little hills and down little paths she goes, and yet the ideal cottage she is hunting for fails to present itself.
Suddenly voices make her pause to listen. She is startled, for surely the tones are familiar. Only a hedge of cedar divides her from them, and unintentionally she is forced to listen to a conversation not intended for her ears, or else betray her presence, and Dolores would sooner do anything than stir.
"Do go back, Jantie, do for my sake: you will never regret it. Do make up your mind, for you cannot think how you worry me. I promise you faithfully I will publish the marriage in all the leading journals as soon as I can do so discreetly. Now, dear, you will go back to Scotland, to please me, won't you?" Sir Barry Traleigh's voice is full of tender pleading.
"Never again shall the finger of scorn be pointed toward me. No! I refuse to return home until I am an acknowledged wife. I say no! I shall never be despised for a sin of which I am innocent."
The girl's clear voice is raised in a passionate flow of rage and sorrow. They pass out of hearing, leaving Dolores pale and trembling.
Sir Barry here; and of course it is the girl Blondine had seen with him the previous afternoon; his wife, of whom he was ashamed. Of course she is his wife, and he is persuading her to go home, and promises to acknowledge her before the world some day. Ah! some day! And meanwhile he has been winning her—Dolores—heart; he, the husband of another woman. May Heaven forgive him; she never can. The sun dazzles her eyes, the day has lost its charm; she gets back somehow, to find Blondine awake, and wondering what had happened to her. Blondine's careless laugh is hushed at sight of the utterly wretched, hopeless look on Dolores' face.
"My dear! what is it?" she cries, springing to her feet, and taking Dolores' cold hands in both her warm ones. But Dolores turns her miserable face away from Blondine's enquiring glance.
"Oh, Blondine, Blondine; would to Heaven we had never seen this place. If I were only home—home, where there is no treachery or deception. Oh, Blondine, Blondine!"
Nothing can be more perplexed than Blondine's mind, as she has often thought there was no accounting for Dolores' conduct lately. Blondine hurries her sketch book into the little willow-basket.
"I suppose we had better get back," she says as calmly as her confused feelings will allow, and Dolores wearily assents. Certainly the bright day which promised so much pleasure is falling most woefully short of its fulfillment.
"Tell me what ails you, dear; are you ill? Come, tell me all about it, won't you, Dolores." But Dolores shakes her pretty head; she does not seem inclined to tell any one anything. Blondine gives her up in despair. She is beginning to think herself, perhaps it would have been better not to have come here; and yet what was there, here in bright, pleasant, sunny Nice, that the most fastidious could object to? Poor Blondine gives this second problem up as hopeless as the first.
"I suppose you are pretty well packed. You know we start by the five-fifteen coach this afternoon; so look lively, my dears."
Uncle Dick's pompous figure is standing in the gateway, and uncle Dick's merry grey eyes look enquiringly at Dolores' pale face.
"What's up now? Too much high jinks seems to use you up soon, young lady."
Major Gray goes in for pink cheeks and red lips, like blooming Blondine's, for instance. He admires Dolores immensely, but she might have been a marble statue now, for all the pink there is in her face; she looks positively 'chalky.'
"Uncle Dick, we are surely not off so soon?" Blondine exclaims.
"Yes, my dear, but we are; we have been gone a good round year now. See, we have done Marseilles, Naples, Cannes, Monaco, Mentone, San Remo, Pegli, Genoa, Spezia, Lucca, Pisa, Leghorn, Serrento, Capri and Nice, and I feel as if I should enjoy the sight of home faces again. So hurry now, so we won't be late."
Uncle Dick rolls off down street at a dashing pace, full of glee at having got over the question of departure. He had expected to be assailed by an avalanche of refusals at leaving Italy for a long while yet. It has all been gotten over with so smoothly, that Major Gray could at this moment have shaken hands with his greatest enemy—if such a being existed, which was doubtful—and said "hope you're well," with genuine warmth.
Passing through the hall Blondine sees Mrs. St. James seated in her parlor, the doors open, with dear Florrie, dear Bessie, dear Nattie, and all the other dears, sitting about consoling the bereaved lady. Arial looks exceedingly handsome in her dress of deep crape. An interesting looking woman at all times, just now she is doubly so, receiving the sympathy of endless numbers of friends over her recent loss. Blondine steps in the room to tell Mrs. St. James of their going, and to say farewell. Not so Dolores; she hurries to her rooms, gives her maid all due instructions concerning luggage, and then speeds away to the pretty burying ground, to pause beside a tiny grave; a broken pillar of granite, with the simple words "My son Roy," marking the resting place of her little lost friend.
Dolores gathers a few forget-me-nots from around the mound—flowers that in after years will remind her of this tiny grave in Italy. Here her resolution is taken to forgive—she cannot forget—two persons whom she firmly believes are at war against her; then with a long, last, lingering glance around, she goes.
Blondine hails the sight of Dolores with joy. Will she just lend a hand for a minute, to see if all is ready? Poor Blondine would never get over the world with doing her own packing is very evident, from the sight that meets Dolores' eyes. Things always contrived to get mixed up so queerly; her best bonnets and boots, the desk with the ink and mucilage bottles, generally reposed calmly upon her most dainty pair of gloves. Now she cannot find her pearl-handled knife, the ivory opera glasses, or her silver nut crackers. Dolores searches around with the eyes of a professional detective, and at length discovers the missing articles in the pocket of Blondine's riding habit; the knife was found in the window sash, where it had been put to keep it from rattling the night before when the wind blew.
The last trunk is strapped, the hasty search around for farewell words to friends (of which there are shoals); the coach is at the door; they are off, going by the famous Cornice route for the last time. Its many scenic beauties will scarcely ever fade from Blondine's admiring eyes; her memory will never fail on that score. Much disgusted is uncle Dick at not having seen "that boy Traleigh," and wonders if he will "turn up," ere they leave; but Traleigh fails to "turn up," greatly to Dolores satisfaction.
Uncle Dick is in high glee, to find that a steamer sails the following morning, and Blondine turns pale when some one suggests to Major Gray that they may look forward to a pretty "tumbly" voyage, as gales seem the proper thing during the past week.
Dolores cheers up at the mention of home, becomes absorbed in purchasing numerous foreign trifles for Zoe, talks learnedly on the wretchedness of foreign cooking, and altogether appears the cheerful, but not gushing Dolores of old.
The passage across was, as predicted, rather inclined to be "tumbly," indeed, at times most uncomfortably so. Blondine declares if Heaven will ever spare her to get on land once more, never would human persuasion entice her across old Atlantic again. Uncle Dick was delighted with the pitch and toss and knock down of the angry waters, and Dolores laughingly declares, "uncle Dick you were born for a sailor but became spoilt in the drilling."