CHAPTER XII
The Raven of the Detroit Cottage in another Character.—Mrs. Winslow yearns for a retired Montreal Banker.—Love's Rivalry.—A mysterious Note.—The Response.—Another Trip to Port Charlotte by four Hearts that beat as one.—What Mr. Pinkerton, as one of the party, sees and hears.—"Jones of Rochester."—Le Compte and Mrs. Winslow resolve to fly to Paris, "the magnificent, the beautiful, the sublime!"—"My God, are they all that way?"
AT last the promised Saturday came, and there were at least three people in Rochester who looked forward to a pleasant day, and were up betimes that they might get an early start. Mrs. Winslow, from her sumptuous apartments, looked out upon the streets and the glorious morning as if it had come too soon—as it always does to those who have not clean hearts and clean lives—and, en déshabillé, gazed down through her rich lace curtains upon the early passers stepping off with a brisk tread to their separate labors, with a look of contempt.
Nature had been wantonly generous with Mrs. Winslow, and as she stood there in her loose morning robes, the first soft breaths that come with the sun from the far-off Orient playing hide-and-seek among the sumptuous hangings of her room, and giving just the least possible motion to her matchlessly luxuriant black hair, while the mellow and golden rays of the sun, which was just peeping over the roofs and the chimneys, shimmered upon her through the curtains, lighting her great gray eyes with a wondrous lustrousness, heightening the fine color of her face, and giving to her voluptuous form an added grace—this utterly lone woman had not in her heart an iota of tenderness for, or sympathy with, the glories without, and was as dead to every good thing in life as though carved from marble by some sculptor, as she really had been carved from stone, or ice, by nature. As she stood there by the window, regarding the passers with such a wise and ogreish air that Fox, behind the blinds in his window opposite, could not but couple her in his thoughts with some splendid beast of prey—if Mother Blake or the voluble Rev. Bland could have seen her, the years that had passed would have been swept away, and in the mature woman and the conscienceless adventuress would have been recognized the raven of the Detroit cottage, that, as Lilly Nettleton, in a habit that ravens have, glided noiselessly about the other sumptuous apartments, gathering together what pleased its fancy—not forgetting the money which was to have been used in the cursed church interests, and a gold watch, which the raven wore to this day—and then, kissing its beak to the heavily sleeping man, for all the world like a raven, had passed out into the storm and the night.
In a few moments she retired from the window, and after dressing passed out upon the street, and went to the falls for a short walk and an appetite, and then went to the Washington Hall restaurant, where she had quite frequently taken her meals since she had incidentally learned that Bristol was a retired Montreal banker, as gossip had it now among the Spiritualists; and it was evident that persons of that grade of recommendation were of peculiar interest to Mrs. Winslow. For hours of dalliance, the aristocratic though impecunious popinjay, Le Compte, would more than answer; but when it came to a matter of serious work, and when a new source of income was to be sought, Mrs. Winslow, being a shrewd and able professor of the art of fascination which secured her an independent and elegant livelihood, in connection with her ability to compel a large number of people to pay her for guessing at what had befallen them and what might befall them, she invariably sought gentlemen on the shady side of life, with judgment and discretion, who knew a good thing when they saw it, and who were both able and willing to carry their bank accounts into their aged knight-errantry.
Lyon was not a handsome man, but he had vast wealth. His weazen face, his grizzly hair, his repulsive, tobacco-stained mouth, were naught against him. His passion for her had brought her thousands upon thousands of dollars—would bring her, she hoped, as much more. Here was Bristol. He was not handsome, he was not a Canadian Adonis, he incessantly smoked a very ugly pipe fully as old as himself. But he had some way got the reputation of being "a retired Canadian banker" among these people, and Mrs. Winslow's heart warmed towards him the way it had towards a hundred others when she had wanted them to walk into her parlor as the ancient spider had desired of the fly.
So she had begun weaving a shining web of loving looks, of tender glances, of dreamy sighs, and of graceful manœuvres of a general character about the unsuspecting Bristol, that resulted in pecuniary profit to the old maids, who, nevertheless, with the quick instinct of three jealous women of economical build and mature years, had already begun to hate her as a rival, and pour into Bristol's alert ears sad tales about the splendid charmer, all of which were properly reported to me by the "retired Montreal banker," who had suddenly found himself a prize worthy to be sought for, and fought for, if necessary, by four determined women, one of whom hungered for his supposed wealth, and three of whom possessed the more desperate, life-long hunger whose appeasing is worth a severe struggle.
After her breakfast, which, unfortunately, had not given her an opportunity for bestowing a graceful nod or a winning smile upon Bristol, whom the old maids had furnished a superb breakfast in his own apartment, Mrs. Winslow returned to her rooms and seated herself at her windows, where she read the morning paper for a little time. She then disappeared from Fox's sight for a half-hour or so, when, just as he was about leaving his watch at his window he noticed her descend the stairs, and, after looking cautiously about for a moment, deposit a card behind her own sign, which was attached to the frame of the outer doorway leading to her rooms. As soon as she had retired, and before she could have returned to her windows, Fox slipped down and out across the street, and removing the card from its novel depository, saw written upon it:
"Le Compte:—Will be at the Garden with carriage at ten, prompt.