The two dogs came up to me, smelt all about me, then one of them laid a great paw in my lap, while the other put both feet on my shoulders, yawning mightily in my face showed fangs long enough and strong enough to give the king of the forest no mean battle.
I spent a charming evening with my new friend, and found him one I could gladly call such.
During the following winter, I dined with Jack—I had accepted his request to address him thus familiarly—at least one day in each week. His dinners were at the then unusual hour of seven, a habit acquired as he informed me in India. Jim was butler, and Dinah, his wife was cook. She was an artist of a kind to be found nowhere in the world, outside of old southern plantation halls. The table service was of pure china and cut glass. The menu was never extensive, thereby not conducing to over-indulgence, but everything was perfect of its kind, and cooked absolutely to a "T". A single bottle of wine was always served for us two, either of Rhine or one of the best clarets. My host and I never emptied more than two glasses each. At the end of each meal, Dinah and Jim came in as the table was being cleared off, and drank to our healths in glasses of the same set, and from the same wine used by the master.
Mr. Felden never smoked cigars at table, but we each had a jasmine Turkish pipe and puffed delicious Ladikiyah, received by him from Beyrout in hermetically sealed cans.
One evening when we were lolling back on softest chairs and enjoying to our full the fragrant weed, Jack said to me, "Paul," (this was the first and almost the only time, he thus called me,) "you have told me the sad, sweet story of your life. I propose, if you wish, to give you mine."
"I am very glad of it, and have been hoping you would."
For some minutes he was silent, and his noble face was lighted with what seemed an illumination from within, wholly different from that laid upon it by the mellow glow from the candelabra.
"I am thirty years old; have light auburn and very curly hair." I started, for his hair and beard were dark brown, almost black, and without even a wave. Without noticing my surprise, he continued, "My complexion is florid and my face without a scar."
"My goodness, Jack, you are making sport of me," I cried, for the man before me had a complexion of richest olive, and a terrible scar had been cut across his cheek, as he once laughingly intimated, by a tiger's claw.
"No, I am telling you simple facts. I am the son of a rich planter in ——," he did not name the state; "my father and my uncle owned adjoining estates of great value, and were as proud as they were rich. I was an only child. My uncle had but one, and that a daughter. Our parents inherited their fortunes from my grandfather, and at an early date they determined to unite the family wealth again by a marriage between my cousin Belle and myself. She was a pure blonde, one year my senior, very stately, very cold, and intensely proud. We grew up to consider ourselves as indissolubly betrothed. Belle treated it as calmly as if we had been married for years. This she did as soon as she was out of the school room. She never seemed to doubt the propriety of our engagement. She loved 'Clifton' and 'Brandon'—I will thus call the two plantations—she loved the two estates next to her father. Him she worshipped. These two loves filled her soul, and left no room for any other genuine affection. Yes; she loved herself, our name, our lineage, and her pride."