One Thursday evening James Seaton's goddess sat alone with her papa, and—being a young lady of fair abilities, who had gone through her course of music and other studies, taught brainlessly, and who was now going through a course of monotonous pleasures, and had not accumulated any great store of mental resources—she was listless and languid, and would have yawned forty times in her papa's face, only she was too well-bred. She always turned her head away, when it came, and either suppressed it, or else hid it with a lovely white hand. At last, as she was a good girl, she blushed at her behavior, and roused herself up, and said she, "Papa, shall I play you the new quadrilles?"
Papa gave a start and a shake, and said, with well-feigned vehemence, "Ay, do, my dear," and so composed himself—to listen; and Helen sat down and played the quadrilles.
The composer had taken immortal melodies, some gay, some sad, and had robbed them of their distinctive character and hashed them till they were all one monotonous rattle. But General Rolleston was little the worse for all this. As Apollo saved Horace from hearing a poetaster's rhymes, so did Somnus, another beneficent little deity, rescue our warrior from his daughter's music.
She was neither angry nor surprised. A delicious smile illumined her face directly; she crept to him on tiptoe, and bestowed a kiss, light as a zephyr, on his gray head. And, in truth, the bending attitude of this supple figure, clad in snowy muslin, the virginal face and light hazel eyes beaming love and reverence, and the airy kiss, had something angelic.
She took her candle, and glided up to her bedroom. And, the moment she got there, and could gratify her somnolence without offense, need we say she became wide-awake? She sat down and wrote long letters to three other young ladies, gushing affection, asking questions of the kind nobody replies to, painting, with a young lady's colors, the male being to whom she was shortly to be married, wishing her dear friends a like demigod, if perchance earth contained two; and so to the last new bonnet and preacher.
She sat over her paper till one o'clock, and Seaton watched and adored her shadow.
When she had done writing, she opened her window and looked out upon the night. She lifted those wonderful hazel eyes toward the stars, and her watcher might well be pardoned if he saw in her a celestial being looking up from an earthly resting place toward her native sky.
At two o'clock she was in bed, but not asleep. She lay calmly gazing at the Southern Cross and other lovely stars shining with vivid but chaste fire in the purple vault of heaven.
While thus employed she heard a slight sound outside that made her turn her eyes toward a young tree near her window. Its top branches were waving a good deal, though there was not a breath stirring. This struck her as curious, very curious.
While she wondered, suddenly an arm and a hand came in sight, and after them the whole figure of a man, going up the tree.