A very neat little chamber on the second floor, which adjoined Bell's and had been standing empty except when occupied by chance visitors, was arranged for the young girl as soon as she entered the household, and she took possession of it with apparent satisfaction. And what a little "box" she made of it at once. The very next day she went into the street, without any consultation with Bell, and made purchases of not less than a hundred dollars worth of pictures and articles of vertu, to ornament it. It was not difficult to see, at once, that though she might be indolently content without the surroundings of luxury, yet it was only with them, and with them in somewhat aristocratic profusion, that she could be spiritedly happy. When she had added her purchases to the comforts and even luxuries already in her chamber, she ran into Bell's room with something approaching to excitement upon her face, and called her in to see the arrangement. Bell literally clapped her hands in delight, the young Virginian girl had shown such exquisite taste and made the little room look so much like a cross between the sleeping chamber of a very young princess, a museum, and an art gallery. She had imagination enough to fancy how the scene would appear, with the room so ornamented, the light turned low and filtering through the white porcelain shade of the burner, and that singularly beautiful little head lying in sleep on the white pillow, the calm, childlike features in repose, and the blonde hair a little dishevelled and insensibly fading away into the white upon which it rested.
There were some articles of vertu, a very small statue of Washington among them, lying on the bureau and not yet arranged. Bell Crawford went up to the bureau and examined them, while Marion was arranging a different loop to the curtains of her bed, which would enable her to look out, before she rose, on a handsome little steel engraving of the white-plumed Henry the Fourth at the battle of Ivry, which she had just placed in position on the wall. Among the articles on the bureau lay a locket, in gold with a band of blue enamel crossing it diagonally. It was unclasped, and almost without a thought whether she was doing right or wrong, Bell (as woman, and even man, will often do in such cases) took it up in her hand, threw open the case and looked at the face of the miniature within. This was simply the head from an admirable carte de visite, artistic enough to have been made by Gurney or Fredericks, and showing that it must have been taken within a very few months,—cut out in a circle and placed within the glass. The face was that of a man who might have been thirty years of age, dark complexioned but strongly handsome, indicating size and sinew in figure, with the cheek-bones a little high, fiery dark eyes under heavy brows, heavy black hair worn long and curling, and a very heavy and yet graceful dark moustache. In the picture he had a broad white collar turned down under the velvet of his dark coat, giving him a peculiar look which may have been Southern or South-western and was certainly not of the North and the "great citie." Bell Crawford had only a moment to notice the picture, and though she supposed it to be the portrait of some near relative of the young girl, she could not help thinking how completely and exactly her opposite it was in every particular—black hair for blonde, strength for fragility, and the fire of those dark eyes for the calm, childlike innocence of Marion Hobart's.
Only a moment sufficed to make these observations: the next instant the young girl saw the picture in her hand and sprung down from the chair upon which she had been standing, with an agitation entirely different from anything which she had before exhibited. Her pale face was for the instant deeply flushed—Bell Crawford was sure of it—and there was something more passionate than usual in the sad eyes. Her lips trembled, and her hostess grew both pained and alarmed in the belief that she was about to utter harsh and angry words. But if the eyes of Bell had not been mistaken, and there had really been such an agitation raging in the breast of the young girl, certainly a most remarkable change had come over her before she had taken the two or three steps forward and reached the bureau where Miss Crawford was standing. She was herself again, completely; and her words, when they came, were such as might have been expected of her from previous observation.
"Please do not look at that!" she said, reaching out her hand to take it. Then she instantly added: "But you have seen it. It was my own fault. I should not have left it lying open in that manner. I did not wish you to see it, or any one."
"I am really sorry," said Bell. "I took it up without thinking, and I hope that you will not think that I wished to pry into any secret of yours." She was a little ashamed at her slight breach of etiquette, and a good deal pained; and her strange guest seemed to be at once aware of both feelings. Before Bell knew what she was about to do, Marion had thrust the locket into her bosom, then laid (not thrown) her arms around her neck, and kissed her on the cheek.
"Please do not be hurt or angry with me," she said, her voice very low and her whole manner childlike. "It was not wrong for you to look at the picture. It was wrong in me to pain you. It is the picture of a very dear friend—of my family." There was the least instant of hesitation before adding the last three words. "If you do not wish very much, I will not tell you his name, for—for reasons that you would not understand." Another slight instant of hesitation in the middle of the sentence.
"Oh, by no means—do not tell me the name. You would pain me if you did so," answered Bell. "Now let us forget all about it, and only think of the wilderness of pretty things that you have been buying, to make this room the very neatest in the house."
"Do you think so?" said Marion. "I am very glad if you like them. I am very glad when I please any one, and very unhappy when I do not. I do not quite know how to arrange them all. Will you help me?" and in a moment more the episode of the picture seemed to be quite forgotten in the bestowal of the remainder of Marion's "art-treasures."
Saturday afternoon saw a marked event in the history of the Crawford family, in the crossing by Richard of the threshold of the outer door, for the first time in so many weeks. He was weak, faint and feeble, but the racking pains of his disease seemed hourly to leave him more completely. He had no more thought of leaving the house, however, than of flying, until the tempter appeared in the shape of his brother. John had been reading over the morning paper, a little late; and after the news had been thoroughly exhausted, he had happened upon the programme of the music at the Central Park.
"Hallo!" he said. "Here, Dick! Dodworth's Band at the Central Park this afternoon. I have heard plenty of what they called music, all the while that I have been gone; but not Dodworth. Let's go up and hear it! Besides, I want to see how much more they have wasted on the Park."