“Wait an instant, Salome; you have almost ruined your dress.”
He was endeavoring to disentangle the shreds from the jagged edge of the spur, but she bent down, and, seizing the skirt in both hands, tore it away, leaving a large fragment trailing from the boot-heel.
“‘More haste, less speed.’ Patience is better than petulance, my young friend.”
His grave, reproving voice, rendered her defiant; and, with a forced, unnatural laugh, she bowed, and hurried away, saying, as she looked over her shoulder,—
“And spurs than persuasion? You mistake my nature.”
Dr. Grey had been riding, all the morning, across a broken stretch of country, where the roads were exceedingly insecure, and, as he removed the troublesome spur and laid it on the mantelpiece, he folded up the strip of muslin and put it into his pocket.
“I am waiting for you,” cried Muriel, from the hall door.
He sighed, and went to his buggy; but the cloud did not 190 melt from his brow, for, as he drove off, he noticed Salome’s gleaming eyes peering from the window of her room; and pity and pain mingled in the emotions with which he recalled his sister’s warning words.
“Muriel, here is your letter, and, better still, Gerard will be with us to-morrow. Diplomatic affairs brought him temporarily to Washington, and he will spend next week with us. I cordially congratulate you, my dear child, and hastened home to bring you the good news, which I felt assured you would prefer to receive without witnesses.”
Muriel’s blushing face was bent over her letter; but she put her hand on her guardian’s, and pressed it vigorously.