Then Bee arose and rustled softly about the room, making her simple toilet before going to the saloon to join the guests.
CHAPTER LXV.
ISHMAEL'S WOE.
Ishmael sat in the shadows of his room overwhelmed with shame and sorrow and despair. He had heard every cruel word; they had entered his ears and pierced his heart. And not only for himself he bowed his head and sorrowed and despaired, but for her; for her, proud, selfish, sinful, but loving, and oh, how fatally beloved!
It was not only that he worshiped her with a blind idolatry, and knew that she returned his passion with equal strength and fervor, and that she would have waited for him long years, and married him at last but for the cloud upon his birth. It was not this—not his own misery that crushed him, nor even her present wretchedness that prostrated him—no! but it was the awful, shapeless shadow of some infinite unutterable woe is Claudia's future, and into which she was blindly rushing, that overwhelmed him. Oh, to have saved her from this woe, he would gladly have laid down his life!
The door opened and Jim, his especial waiter, entered with two lighted candles on a tray. He sat them on the table and was leaving the room, when Ishmael recalled him. What I am about to relate is a trifle perhaps, but it will serve to show the perfect beauty of that nature which, in the midst of its own great sorrow, could think of the small wants of another.
"Jim, you asked me this morning to write a letter for you, to your mother, I think."
"Yes, Master Ishmael, I thank you, sir; whenever you is at leisure, sir, with nothing to do; which I wouldn't presume to be in a hurry, sir, nor likewise inconvenience you the least in the world."
"It will not inconvenience me, Jim; it will give me pleasure, whenever you can spare me half an hour," replied Ishmael, speaking with as much courtesy to the poor dependent as he would have used in addressing his wealthiest patron.