Mabel's Mistake

by Ann S. Stephens

"I did not look at James as I spoke. I felt that I neither colored or showed any emotion—it seemed as if I was only surprised and slightly disgusted at so much discussion concerning a servant.

"'Oh, you must not go, James,' his mother said. 'I should die of fright in twenty-four hours.'

"'I see that it would be out of the question,' returned he, in a voice that wavered between vexation and trouble.

"The General cast another quick glance toward me—that strange fleeting look which I had detected several times before, and which proved to me that the suspicions in my own mind, to which I could scarcely have given a name, in fact but vaguely understood, had a place in his.

"James turned to leave the room; the General had risen and was standing at a little distance from me, bending over a vase of flowers and inhaling their perfume with that love of all beautiful things which was one of his most prominent characteristics.

"In leaving the room, Mr. Harrington had to pass near him, and I distinctly heard the General say—'You surprise me! Imprudent, most imprudent.'

"James passed on as if he had not heard the words, but I saw his face, and I knew by the pale wrath that locked his features and glittered in his eyes, that not a syllable of that quiet remonstrance upon the glaring impropriety of his behavior, had escaped him.

"The General had evidently forgotten that I sat near enough to have overheard his remark, but as he turned and looked at me, I suppose he saw by the expression of my countenance that I had done so. He seemed troubled. I knew that he divined the vague suspicions that disturbed me, and was annoyed to think that any words of his should so clearly have shown me that he shared my ideas in regard to James' singular conduct.

"I left Mrs. Harrington and the General together, for I knew that she would wish to be alone with him to receive his farewell; for it was so seldom that he left her, and her nerves were so fragile and excitable from long illness, that this brief separation and journey were matters of painful import to her.

"But whatever the General's decision in any case might be, it was seen to be right in her eyes; and it was not wonderful that she trusted him so implicitly, for his manner to her was always perfect, his care and attention to her unvarying; besides all, his judgment was seldom at fault.