“Yes, she certainly is very handsome; but I do not agree with you in thinking that she lacks aplomb. Granville, if you have finished your cigar, we will adjourn to the parlor, where the ladies are taking their tea.”
Dr. Grey collected his letters and walked away, followed by his guest; and, a moment after, a low, scornful laugh, floated in through the window which opened on the little flower-garden.
Miss Jane had requested Salome to gather the seeds of some 202 apple and nutmeg geraniums that were arranged on a shelf near the western window of the library; and, while stooping over the china jars, and screened from observation by a spreading lilac-bush, the girl had heard the conversation relative to herself.
Excessive vanity had never been numbered among the faults that marred her character, but Dr. Grey’s indifference to personal attractions, which strangers admitted so readily, piqued, and thoroughly aroused a feeling that was destined to bring countless errors and misfortunes in its train; and, henceforth,—
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“There was not a high thing out of heaven, Her pride o’ermastereth not.” |
Hitherto the love of one man had been the only boon she craved of heaven; but now, conscious that the darling hope of her life was crushed and withering under Dr. Grey’s relentless feet, she resolved that the admiration of the world should feed her insatiable hunger,—a maddening hunger which one tender word from his true lips would have assuaged,—but which she began to realize he would never utter.
During the last eighteen hours, a mournful change had taken place in her heart, where womanly tenderness was rapidly retreating before unwomanly hate, bitterness, and blasphemous defiance; and she laughed scornfully at the “idiocy” that led her to weary heaven with prayers for the preservation of a life that must ever run as an asymptote to her own. How earnestly she now lamented an escape, for which she had formerly exhausted language in expressing her gratitude; and how much better it would have been if she could mourn him as dead, instead of jealously watching him,—living without a thought of her.
All the girlish sweetness and freshness of her nature passed away, and an intolerable weariness and disappointment usurped its place. Since her acquaintance with Dr. Grey, he had been her sole Melek Taous, adored with Yezidi fervor; but to-day she overturned, and strove to revile and desecrate 203 the idol, to whose vacant pedestal she lifted a colossal vanity. Her bruised, numb heart, seemed incapable of loving any one, or anything, and a hatred and contempt of her race took possession of her.
The changing hues of Muriel’s tell-tale face when Mr. Granville arrived, and the excessive happiness that could not be masked, had not escaped Salome’s lynx vision; and very accurately she conjectured the real condition of affairs, relative to which Dr. Grey had never uttered a syllable. Bent upon mischief, she had, malice prepense, dressed herself with unusual care, and arranged her hair in a new style of coiffure, which proved very becoming.
Now, as the hum of conversation mingled with the sound of Muriel’s low, soft laugh, reached her from the parlor, her chatoyant eyes kindled, and she hastily went in to join the merry circle.