He was looking at her hands, which lay white, and warm, and glittering in her lap. She was silent.
“What a superb ruby, Miss Grace! It might be a dew-drop from a pomegranate in Paradise.”
She smiled at the extravagant conceit, while he took her hand as he spoke, and admired the ring. The white, warm hand remained passive in his.
“Let me come nearer to Paradise,” he said, half-abstractedly, as if he were following his own thoughts, and he pressed his lips to the fingers upon which the ruby gleamed.
Miss Grace Plumer was almost frightened. This was a very different performance from Mr. Sligo Moultrie’s—very different from any she had known. She felt as if she suggested, in some indescribable way, strange and beautiful thoughts to Abel Newt. He looked and spoke as if he addressed himself to the thoughts she had evoked rather than to herself. Yet she felt herself to be both the cause and the substance. It was very sweet. She did not know what she felt; she did not know how much she dared. But when he went away she knew that Abel Newt was appointed first flirter, vice Sligo Moultrie removed.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. — THE DAY AFTER THE WEDDING.
“On the 23d instant, Alfred Dinks, Esq., of Boston, to Fanny, oldest daughter of Boniface Newt, Esq., of this city.”
Fanny wrote the notice with her own hands, and made Alfred take it to the papers. In this manner she was before her mother-in-law in spreading the news. In this manner, also, as Boniface Newt, Esq., sat at breakfast, he learned of his daughter’s marriage. His face grew purple. He looked apoplectic as he said to his wife,