"Finish your sentence, Miriam. The report that your faithful spies, Laura Stanbury and George Gaston, have brought to you in your solitude. They are very observing, truly," she pursued. "Creatures that never penetrate beneath the surface, though. Self-deluders, I fancy, however, rather than story-tellers."
"Do you pretend to deny it, Evelyn? Now, look me in the eyes and say 'No' if you dare," and I grasped her slender wrists playfully. She opened her large, blue eyes and fixed them full on mine, responsively.
"No! Now you have the unmitigated truth. Ah, Miriam, I have no wish to interfere with you," and she leaned forward and kissed my cheek tenderly, disengaging her hands as she did so. Her manner had so changed to me of late that she was growing rapidly into my affections, and I returned her embrace cordially.
In the next moment we were laughing merrily together over the ridiculous schemes of the elder Bainrothe, so transparent that every one understood them perfectly, motive and all, and which my father winked at evidently, rather than favored or encouraged, as our charlatan thought he did—"Cagliostro," as we habitually called him.
"The fact is, prophetess, the person in question would not suit you at all, with your grand ways and notions and prospects. I have fathomed his depth pretty successfully, and I find him full of shoals and shallows. Pretty well for a flirtation, though, and to keep one's hand in, but unavailable any further."
"Having brought him to his knees, you are perfectly willing to pass him over to me as a bond-slave. Is that the idea, Evelyn?"
"Exactly, Miriam; you are always so penetrating! But don't tell, for the world. Old Bainrothe would never forgive me; and, as I once before told you in one of my savage moods, his enmity is dire—satanic!"
"I am not afraid of Cagliostro, or his animosity," I answered; "never was, Evelyn, as you know. The best way to disarm him is to confront him boldly. He is like a lion in that alone. I wish, though, he would give me a little of his elixir of life, for dear papa; he has never looked himself since that attack, though better, certainly,—oh, decidedly better, of course, than I dared to hope at one time ever to see him again. Yet I am very anxious."
"Papa is well enough, Miriam; you only imagine these things. At fifty, you know, most men begin to break a little; then they rally again and look almost as well as ever in a few years, up to sixty or seventy. Look at Mr. Lodore! He looked older when we first knew him than he does now; and so did Dr. Pemberton."
"That is because they have both filled out and grown more florid and healthy; but papa is withering away, Evelyn; shrinking day by day—his very step has changed recently. Oh, I hope, I hope I may be deceived!" And I covered my face with my hands, praying aloud, as I did sometimes irresistibly when greatly excited. "God grant, God grant us his precious life!" I murmured. "Spare him to his children!"