"Forgive me! I did not mean to censure you," I said; "I was only speaking generally—too generally, perhaps, for individual courtesy. This is a theory of mine which as yet I have had no opportunity to put in practice, for I have never been attached to a dissipated man." I smiled. "I dare say I too should drop such a man like a pestilence."
"I hope so. But the best way is to avoid all intimacy with such men from the first. You are very young. Let me give you my advice on this subject before you form any attachment: keep your affections for a worthy object, if you keep them locked up forever. Better be alone than mismated."
"This is to shut the cage after the bird has flown," I thought, sadly; but I thanked her, and promised to profit by her good counsel.
We were fast friends ever after, and, when she went away to her distant Western home, Carry Ormsby bore some memorials of her summer friend away with her, in the shape of books, plate, and jewels, such as her simple means could have ill afforded. I felt that I could not have devised any means more sure to gratify her worthy uncle, to whom such gifts had been dross. He was a widower—the father of sons—indifferent to show, and, besides that, unwilling to incur obligations from any one, such as gifts entail on some minds.
There are persons made to give and others to receive, and neither can do the work of the other gracefully. He and I were both of the same order, so we accorded perfectly.
The autumn and winter passed very quietly. In Mrs. Stanbury and Laura I again found my chief consolation. George Gaston was in the South, for his health, on his own decayed plantation, with his uncle, who took charge of it. But, in the spring, as Dr. Pemberton had stated, they were all to go to Europe for some years. Laura would be married in Paris, if at all. Every thing depended on some investigations Mr. Gerald Stanbury was to make in person as to the character and position of her betrothed. "For a Prussian nobleman may be a Prussian boot-black for aught I know," he observed, "and without derogation to his dignity, no doubt, in that land of pipes and fiddlers. But an American sovereign requires something better than that when he gives away the hand of the princess, his relative, and endows her with a goodly dowry. Every man, we feel, is a king in America."
Our circle of society was much enlarged by Evelyn after our first year of mourning had expired. She insisted on taking me with her in turn to Washington, Boston, and Saratoga Springs, then at their acme of fashion. Mr. Bainrothe, who had by this time glided back into his old grooves of apparent sociability in our household, accompanied us, and did all in his power, it seemed, to promote our enjoyment and success.
Yet it was astonishing what an icy barrier still remained between us two, and how perfectly I managed, without a conscious effort, to set a limit to his approaches, even while treating him with apparent courtesy and confidence.
Something in his eye, his manner, had become extremely unpleasant to me since our social relations had been resumed. There was a controlled ardor in his expression of face and even in his demeanor that I could not reconcile with his position toward me nor understand, and yet which froze my blood in spite of my best endeavors to repel the thoughts suggested.
"I am very morbid and fanciful, certainly," I said to myself, "even to think such a thing possible. At his age, and knowing full well my opinion of him, my sentiments toward him—he surely would not dare—!" I could not even in my own heart finish out a conjecture that dyed my face and throat crimson, or mahogany-color, as Evelyn would have averred contemptuously could she have witnessed my solitary confusion.