"Mr. Regulus in love! that would be a farce."
"I have seen that farce performed," said Dr. Harlowe, who happened to come in at that moment, and caught her last words. "I have seen Mr. Regulus as much in love as—let me see," glancing at me, "as Richard Clyde."
Much as I liked Dr. Harlowe I felt angry with him for an allusion, which always called the cloud to Ernest's brow, and the blush to my cheek.
"Do tell me the object of his romantic passion?" cried Edith, who seemed excessively amused at the idea.
"Am I telling tales out of school?" asked the doctor, looking merrily at me. "Do you not know the young enchantress, who has turned all the heads in our town, not excepting the shoemaker's apprentice and the tailor's journeyman? Poor Mr. Regulus could not escape the fascination. The old story of Beauty and the Beast,—only Beauty was inexorable this time."
"Gabriella!" exclaimed Edith, with unutterable astonishment; "he always called her his child. Who would have believed it? Why, Gabriella, how many victims have your chariot wheels of conquest rolled over?"
"I am afraid if I had not been a married man, she would have added me to the number," said the doctor, with much gravity. "I am not certain that Mrs. Harlowe is not jealous, in secret, of my public devotion."
Who would believe that light words like these, carelessly uttered, and forgotten with the breath that formed them, should rankle like arrows in a breast where reason was enthroned? But it was even so. The allusion to Richard Clyde, the revelation of Mr. Regulus' romantic attachment, even the playful remarks of Dr. Harlowe relative to his wife's jealousy, were gall and wormwood, embittering the feelings of Ernest. He frowned, bit his lip, rose, and walked into the piazza. His mother's eyes followed him with that look which I had so often seen before our marriage, and which I now understood too well. I made an involuntary movement to follow him, but her glance commanded me to remain. The doctor, who was in a merry mood, continued his sportive remarks, without appearing to notice the darkened countenance and absence of Ernest. I talked and smiled too at his good-humored sallies, that he might not perceive my anxious, wounded feelings.
A little while after Mr. Regulus called, and Ernest accompanied him to the parlor door with an air of such freezing coldness, I wonder it did not congeal his warm and unsuspecting heart. And there Ernest stood with folded arms, leaning back against the wall just within the door, stern and silent, casting a dark shadow on my soul. Poor Mr. Regulus,—now he knew he had been my lover, he would scarcely permit him to be my friend.
"Oh!" thought I, blushing to think how moody and strange he must seem to others,—"surely my happiness is based on sand, since the transient breath of others can shake it from its foundation. If it depended on myself, I would guard every look, word, and action, with never sleeping vigilance;—but how can I be secured against the casual sayings of others, words unmeaning as a child's, and as devoid of harm? I might as well make cables of water and walls of foam, as build up a fabric of domestic felicity without confidence as the foundation stone."