"While I was reasoning thus, she made me another mock courtesy, and explaining her presence by saying she was a cousin of Miss Dudleigh's, ventured to remark that, if Master Felt would be kind enough to state his errand, she would be glad to carry it to Miss Dudleigh. I answered confusedly, but with a fervor she could not fail to understand, and following up this effort by another, led her into a conversation in which my responses gradually became such as she should expect from a gentleman and an equal.
"For with her, notwithstanding her beauty, and the sense of splendor and luxury which breathed from her mysterious presence, I never felt that sense of personal inferiority I experienced at first with Miss Dudleigh. Whether I recognized then, as now, the lack of those high qualities which lift one mortal above another, I do not know. I am only certain that, while I regarded her as a woman to be obeyed, to be loved, to be followed through life, through death, into whatsoever regions of horror, danger, and pain she might lead me, I never looked upon her as a being out of my world or beyond my reach, except so far as her caprice might carry her.
"It was therefore with the fixed determination to force from her some of the interest she had awakened in me, that I grasped at this first opportunity of conversation; and in spite of her unrest—she did not want to linger—held her to the spot till I had made her feel that a man had come into her life whose will meant something, and to whom, if she did not subdue the light of her glances, she must give account for every added throb she caused to beat in his proud heart.
"This done I let her go, for Miss Dudleigh was not well and needed her, and the door closed behind her mysterious smile, and the sound of her steps died out in the hall, and in fancy only could I behold her supple, dark-clad form go up the broad staircase, projecting itself now against the golden daylight falling through one window, and now against the clustering vines that screened another, till she disappeared in regions of which I knew nothing and whither even my daring imagination presumed not to follow. And the vision never left my eyes nor her form my heart, and I went out in my turn, a burning, eager, determined man, where in a short half hour before I had entered cold and self-satisfied, without hope and without exaltation.
"This was the beginning. In a week the earth and sky held nothing for me but that woman. Her name, which I had not learned at our first interview, was Marah Leighton—a fitting watch-word for a struggle that could terminate only with my life! For I had got to the pass that this woman must be mine. I would have her for my wife or see her dead; she should never leave the town with another. Yes; homely as I was, without recommendation of family, or more means than enough to keep a wife from want, I boldly entered upon this determination, and in the face of some dozen lovers, that at the first revelation of her beauty began to swarm about her steps, pressed my claims and pushed forward my suit till I finally gained a hearing, and after that a promise, which, if vague, was more than any of her other lovers could boast of, or why did they all gradually withdraw from the struggle, leaving me alone in my homage?
"The uncertainties of her position (she was an orphan and dependent upon Miss Dudleigh for subsistence) had added greatly to my tenderness for her. It also added to my hope. For if I were poor, she was poorer, and ought to find in the managing of my humble home a satisfaction she could not experience in the enjoyment of a relative's bounty, even if that relative was a woman like Honora Dudleigh. And yet one doubts an exultant happiness; and as I grew to know her better, I realized that if I ever did succeed in making her mine, I must see to it that my fortunes bettered, as she would never be happy as a poor man's wife, even if that man brought her independence and love.
"She loved splendor, she loved distinction, she loved the frivolities of life. Not with a childish pleasure or even a girlish enthusiasm, but with a woman's strong and determined spirit. I have seen her pace through and through those great halls just for the pleasure of realizing their spaciousness; and though the sight made my heart cringe, I have admired her step and the poise of her head as much as if she had been the queen of it all, and I her humblest vassal. Then her luxury! It showed as plainly in her poverty as it could have done in wealth. If it were flowers she handled, it was as a goddess would handle them. None were too beautiful, or too costly, or too rare for her restless fingers to pluck, or her dainty feet to tread on. Had she possessed jewels, she would have worn them like roses, and flung them away almost as freely if they had displeased her or she had grown weary of them. Love was to her a jewel, and she wore it just now because it suited her fancy to do so; but would not the day come when she would grow tired of it or demand another, and so fling it and me to the dogs?
"I did not ask. I was permitted to walk at her side, and pay her my court, and now and then, when the humor took her, to press her hand or drop a kiss upon the rosy palm; and while I could do this, was it for me to question a future which seemed more likely to hold fewer pleasures than more?
"But I grow diffuse; I must return to facts. Honora Dudleigh, who saw my devotion, encouraged it. I wondered at it sometimes, for she knew the smallness of my fortune, and must have known the nature of the woman I expected to share it. But as time passed I wondered less, for her woman's intuition must have told her, what observation had as yet failed to tell me, that there was trouble in the air, and that Marah needed a protector.
"The day that I first recognized this fact made an era in my life. I had been so happy, so at ease with myself, so sure of her growing confidence and of my coming happiness. That I had cause for this, the conduct of her friends and the jealousy of her lovers seemed to prove. Though she gave no visible token of her regard, she clung to me as to a support, and allowed my passion the constant feast of her presence and the stimulation of her voice.