“Why, Jeannette, I never dreamed of any thing else. I would sooner cut off my right hand than interfere with you, in any respect. Our two courses are entirely different. You have one object and one species of game to hunt down, while I have another. We shall not clash!” and seeing the features of the other relax from exhausted passion, she leaned forward with a pleasing smile.
“Just to think, you stormy child! I had hastened home to tell you of my good fortune, and you so overpower me as to make me forget all I had to tell. You have frightened me sadly, Jeannette, and all about nothing. But I’ve got him—I think he’s booked at last!”
“Pooh!” said the other, sinking into a chair. “Well, I asked you ever so long ago; how did you manage it? You seem to have had a great deal more trouble this time than usual. He does not seem to have been very civil to you heretofore, I should think.”
“No!” said the other, in a low, hoarsened tone, while the blood mounted in crimson flush to her forehead, not to her cheeks. This nice discrimination is very necessary to a true apprehension of such a character. “No, he has acted like a sullen cub, heretofore, a perfect young white bear, with his insolent pride, and clumsy haughtiness! He is the most insulting and impracticable boor I ever took hold of!”
“Ah! I perceive you are splenetic!”
“No! It is simply annoying, that the insufferable fellow should give me so much trouble. Why, only think, he positively refused to be introduced to me—said I was a shallow adventuress, and that he did not wish to know me—even when our Doctor Weasel went to him, with a special request on my part for such an introduction!”
“Oh, yes! but our Doctor is proverbially awkward in such matters. No doubt he spoiled it all in the manner of the request.”
“Well, but you know, if the Doctor is awkward, he’s got money, and as long as he believes in Fourier and Swedenborg as devotedly as he does now, we can use his purse. But to proceed: That sullen Southerner not only refused to be introduced to me, in the most insulting terms, but when I wrote him three or four of my most irresistible billet-doux, that never failed before, he treated them with what I suppose he meant to be silent contempt, for he did not answer one of them, though I had taken the pains to place them all upon his table with my own hands, during his absence, and find out all I could concerning him at the same time.
“I found the key-note, however; the boy loved his mother, and has been playing hyæna with the rest of the world ever since she died, and been endeavoring to imagine himself a misanthrope, with a life dedicated since solely to the ambition of achieving, in her name, good for mankind. This discovery, privately made, put me fully in possession of all I wanted to know of his weakness. I saw he was earnest and chivalrous, as his origin implies, and proudly secretive, so far as the privacies of his life were concerned. So I at once felt that this incrustation of reserve with which he had fenced about his life, could only be broken down by a coup de main.
“I determined to come down upon him, by surprise, in spite of everything. I called on him, and sent our trusty Doctor up to bring him to the parlor per force. The ruse succeeded so far as to effect an introduction; but, to tell you the truth,” and her forehead fairly blazed while she spoke, “I never was treated with such insolent and frozen hauteur in my life before! I went away with my ears tingling and blood on fire, but I cursed him in my very heart, and swore to have a woman’s vengeance! You remember how sick I was that night. Oh, God! such furies as tortured me! I scarcely slept; but a happy thought came to me just about morning.