“Well, well,” laughed her husband, “she ought soon to to be an expert in it then; Paula is a famous little mathematician.”
A silence followed this response; Mrs. Sylvester was fitting in her ear-rings. “I suppose,” said she when the operation was completed, “that the snow will prevent half the people from coming to-night.” It was a reception evening at the Sylvester mansion. “But so long as Mrs. Fitzgerald does not disappoint me, I do not care. What do you think of the setting of these diamonds?” she inquired, leaning forward to look at herself more closely, and slowly shaking her head till the rich gems sparkled like fire.
“It is good,” came in short, quick tones from the lips of her husband.
“Well, I don’t know, there might be a shade more of enamel on the edge of that ring. I shall speak to the jeweller about it to-morrow. But what were we talking about?” she dreamily asked, still turning her head from side to side before the mirror.
“We were talking about adopting your cousin in the place of our child who is dead,” replied her husband with some severity, pausing in the middle of the floor which he was pacing, to honor her with a steady glance.
“O yes! Dear me! what an awkward clasp that man has given to these rings after all. You will have to fasten them for me.” Then as he stepped forward with studied courtesy, yawned just a trifle and remarked, “No one could ever take the place of one’s own child of course. If Geraldine had lived she would have been a blonde, her eyes were blue as sapphires.”
He looked in his wife’s face and his hands dropped. He thought of the day when those eyes, blue as sapphires indeed, flashed burning with death’s own fever, from the little crib in the nursery, while with this same cool and self-satisfied countenance, the wife and mother before him had swept down the broad stairs to her carriage, murmuring apologetically as she gathered up her train, “O you needn’t trouble yourself to look after her, she will do very well with Sarah.”
She may have thought of it too, for the least little bit of real crimson found its way through the rouge on her cheek as she encountered the stern look of his eye, but she only turned a trifle more towards the glass, saying, “I forgot you do not admire the rôle of waiting maid. I will try and manage them myself, seeing that you have banished Sarah.”
He exerted his self-control and again for the thousandth time buried that ghastly memory out of sight, actually forcing himself to smile as he gently took her hand from her ear and began deftly to fasten the rebellious ornaments.
“You mistake,” said he, “love can ask any favor without hesitation. I do not object to waiting upon my own wife.”