“Can I do anything for you?” asked the orphan, observing the cloud on the old lady’s brow.
“Yes, dear; sit down here and talk to me. I feel lonely, now that Ulpian is away so constantly. He seems very uneasy about that woman at ‘Solitude,’ and I never saw him manifest so much anxiety about any one. By the by, Salome, tell me something concerning her.”
“I have already told you all I know of her.”
“Wherein consists her attractiveness?”
“Who said she was attractive? She is handsome, and there is something peculiar and startling about her, but she is by no means a beauty. I have heard Dr. Grey say that she possessed remarkable talent, but I have been favored with no exhibition of it. Why do you not question your brother? Doubtless it would afford him much pleasure to furnish an inventory of her charms and accomplishments, and dilate upon them ad libitum.”
“What makes you so savage?”
“Simply because there happens to be a touch of the wild beast in my nature, and I have not a doubt that if the doctrine of metempsychosis be true, I was a tawny dappled leopardess or a green-eyed cougar in the last stage of my existence. Miss Jane, sometimes I feel as if it would be a luxury—a relief—to crunch and strangle something or somebody,—which is not an approved trait of orthodox Christian character, to say nothing of meek gentility and lady-like refinement.”
She laughed with a degree of indescribable scorn and bitterness that was pitiable indeed in one so young.
“There is an evil fit on Saul.” 277
“Yes; and you are neither my harp nor my David.”