“Another little incident of that hour remains engraven upon my memory. She had been showing to the gentlemen a rare plant that stood in the front parlor window, and was dilating upon its marvels, when Mr. Robert Holt, her accepted lover, took in his clasp the small white hand wandering so invitingly among the leaves of the huge palm, and glancing at the finger which should have worn his ring, looked inquiringly into her face.
“‘O,’ said she, interrupting her little speech to draw away her hand, ‘you miss your diamond? I have it, sir. It lies very safe in my pocket; it is a beautiful gem, but your ring does not fit me.’
“The way she said those words and the air with which she tossed back her head, must have made one heart in that room beat joyously, but it did not reassure me or subdue my secret apprehension.
“‘Not fit!’ her lover responded; and begged her to allow him to try it on and see, but she shook her head with wilful coquetry, and turning to the piano, commenced singing a gay little song that was like silver bells, shaken by a sudden and mighty tempest.
“Even the Colonel felt the change in his daughter, though he never guessed the cause, and came and went during the evening that followed, with certain odd sighs that made my heart ache with strange forebodings. Only her lover was unconscious, or if he felt the new and wayward force and fire in her manner, attributed it to his own presence and unspeakable devotion. Mr. Roger Holt, on the contrary, thoroughly understood it. Though he was strangely calm, as calm now as he had previously been alert and fiery, he never lost a gleam of her eye in his direction, or a turn of her form towards the chair where he sat. But the smile with which he contemplated her was not pleasant to me. It was informed with self-consciousness, and a certain hard triumph, that made it almost sinister. ‘She has given her hand to the true man,’ I mused, ‘wherever her heart may be. But had she given it?’ I began to doubt as I began to muse. With that uncontrollable will of hers, she was capable of anything; did she intend to break with Robert, now that she had seen Roger? I detected no signs of it beyond the evident delight they took in each other’s presence. They were guilty of no further conversation of a secret or intimate character, and when with the striking of the clock at ten, Mr. Robert Holt rose to leave, his brother followed without any demur, even preceding him in his departure and limiting his farewell to a short brotherly pressure of Jacqueline’s fair hand.
“But much may be conveyed in a pressure, or so I began to think as I heard the low laugh that rippled from Jacqueline’s lips as she turned to go up to her room; and if I had been her mother—
“But that is not what you want to hear. Enough that I did not follow her, that I did not even acquaint Colonel Japha with my fears, that indeed I did nothing but lie awake, praying and asking what I ought to do. There had been so little said; there had been so little done. A word, a sentence between them, the interchange of a couple of songs, and—What else that I could communicate to another?
“A week, two weeks passed, and her look of wilful happiness did not fly. She was flooded with notes from her accepted lover, whose handwriting I had learned by this time to distinguish, but not one, so far as I could learn, from any other source; yet her feet tripped lightly through the house, and her form had a rich grace in its every movement, that bespoke a mind settled in some deep joy or quiet determination. I felt the impenetrability of a secretly cherished hope, whenever I looked at her. If I had not known to the contrary, I should have said that her prospective marriage had become to her a dream of unfathomable delight. Whence then came this rapture? Through what communication was born this secret hope? I could not guess, I could only watch and wait.
“Meanwhile some random guesses at the truth had been made by the neighbors. Jacqueline had a lover. That lover was a gentleman; but the Colonel was critical; he had refused his consent and the young people had parted. Such was the talk, begotten perhaps by the persistency with which Jacqueline remained in the house, and the almost severe look with which Colonel Japha trod the streets of his native village, which he soon felt would lose all their charm in the departure of his only child. I scarcely ventured out more than Jacqueline; for I have but little control over my feelings and did not know what I would do, if any one should closely press me with questions.
“The unexpected discovery that our pretty young servant girl was in the habit of stealing into Jacqueline’s room late at night, was the first thing that startled me into asking whether or not my supposition was true, that Jacqueline received no messages from Mr. Robert Holt. And scarcely had I become certain that a clandestine correspondence was being carried on between them through the medium of this girl, then the climax came, and knowledge on my part and secrecy on hers availed no longer.