Mabel's Mistake

by Ann S. Stephens

"Be still, Agnes, do not make me angry again. You and I must work together. Tell me, did you succeed in quieting General Harrington's inquiries regarding the letters of recommendation?"

"Did I succeed?" answered Agnes, with a smile that crept over her young lips like a viper. "The old General is more pliable than the son. Oh, yes, when he began questioning me of the whereabouts of our kind friends who think so much of us, you know, I put forth all the accomplishments you have taught me, and wiled him from the subject in no time. You have just questioned my beauty, mammy. I doubt if he did then, for his eyes were not off my face a moment. What fine eyes the old gentleman has, though! I think it would be easier to obey you in that quarter than the other."

As she uttered the last words with a reckless lift of the head, the slave-woman made a spring at her, and grasping the scornfully uplifted shoulder, bent her face—which was that of a fiend—close to the young girl's ear: "Beware, girl, beware!" she whispered, "you are treading among adders."

"I think you are crazy," was the contemptuous reply, as Agnes released her shoulder from the gripe of that fierce hand. "My shoulder will be black and blue after this, and all for a joke about a conceited old gentleman whom we are both taking in. Did you not tell me to delude him off the subject if he mentioned those letters of recommendation again?"

The woman did not answer, but stood bending forward as if ashamed of her violence, but yet with a gleam of rage lingering in her black eyes.

"Have you done?" said Agnes, arranging her velvet sacque, which had been torn from its buttons in front, by the rude handling she had received.

"You must not speak in that way again," answered the old woman in a low voice, "I did not mean to hurt you, child, but General Harrington is not a man for girls like you to joke about."

"This is consistent, upon my word," answered the girl with a short scornful laugh. "You teach me to delude the old gentleman into a half-flirtation. He meets me in the grounds—begins to ask about the persons from whom we obtained those precious recommendations, and when I attempt to escape the subject, persists in walking by me till I led him a merry dance up the steepest hill that could be found, and left him there out of breath, and in the midst of a protestation that I was the loveliest person he had ever seen. Loveliest—no, that was not it—the most bewitching creature! these were the last words I remember, for that moment Benson's boat hove in sight, and there sat madam looking fairly at us. If they had been a moment later, I'm quite sure the old fellow would have been down upon his knees in the dead leaves."

The slave-woman listened to this flippant speech in cold silence. She was endowed with a powerful will, matched with pride that was almost satanic. She saw the malicious pleasure with which Agnes said all this, and would not gratify it by a single glance. With all her wicked craft, the young girl was no match for the woman.

"You have acted unwisely," she said with wonderful self-command; "never trifle with side issues when they can possibly interfere with the main object. I wished to evade General Harrington's close scrutiny into our antecedents; to soothe the lion, not goad him. Be careful of this a second time!"