“She has a pretty niece,” said he, “who I’m told is heiress to her property, and is called a very nice girl.”
So, at the proper time, I lounged in one morning, and found a very charming, cosy, home-like parlor, arranged with all those little refined touches and artistic effects by which people of certain tastes and habits at once recognize each other in all parts of the world, as by the tokens of freemasonry. I felt perfectly acquainted with Mrs. McIntyre from the first glance at her parlor,—where the books, the music, the birds, the flowers, and that everlasting variety of female small-work prepared me for a bright, chatty, easy-going, home-loving kind of body, such as I found Mrs. McIntyre to be. She was, as English and Scotch ladies are apt to be, very oddly dressed in very nice and choice articles. It takes the eye of the connoisseur to appreciate these oddly dressed Englishwomen. They are like antique china; but a discriminating eye soon sees the real quality that underlies their quaint adornment. Mrs. McIntyre was scrupulously, exquisitely neat. All her articles of dress were of the choicest quality. The yellow and tumbled lace that was fussed about her neck and wrists might have been the heirloom of a countess; her satin gown, though very short and very scanty, was of a fabulous richness; and the rings that glittered on her withered hands were of the fashion of two centuries ago, but of wonderful brilliancy.
She was very gracious in her reception, as my letter was from an old friend, and said many obliging things of me; so I was taken at once to her friendship, with the frankness 465 characteristic of people of her class when they make up their minds to know you at all.
“I must introduce you to my Mary,” she said; “she has just gone into the garden to cut flowers for the vases.”
In a moment more “Mary” entered the room, with a little white apron full of flowers, and a fresh bloom on her cheeks; and I was—as the reader has already anticipated—to my undisguised amazement, formally introduced to Miss Mary McIntyre, our second girl.
Of all things for which I consider women admirable, there is no trait which fills me with such positive awe as their social tact and self-command. Evidently this meeting was quite as unexpected to Mary as to me; but except for a sudden flash of amused astonishment in the eyes, and a becoming flush of complexion, she met me as any thoroughbred young lady meets a young man properly presented by her maternal guardian.
For my part, I had one of those dreamy periods of existence in which people doubt whether they are awake or asleep. The world seemed all turning topsy-turvy. I was filled with curiosity, which I could with difficulty keep within the limits of conventional propriety.
“I see, Mr. Seymour, that you are very much astonished,” said Mary to me, when Mrs. McIntyre had left the room to give some directions to the servants.
“Upon my word,” said I, “I never was more so; I feel as if I were in the midst of a fairy tale.”
“Nothing so remarkable as that,” she said. “But since I saw you, a happy change, as I need not tell you now, has come over my life through the coming of my mother’s sister to America. When my mother died, my aunt was in India. The letters that I addressed to her in Scotland were a long time in reaching her, and then it took a long time for her to wind up her affairs there, and find her way to this country.”