"You are fainting!"
"No; I am—better now."
Hepsy made a desperate effort, and conquered her emotion.
Chester, always delicately thoughtful of the feelings of others, except when his enthusiasm carried him away, proceeded with his description, every word of which burned like fire in the poor girl's heart. And he—fond soul!—deemed that he was pouring the balm of comfort and the precious ointment of joy upon her spirit! For how could he pause to consider and know that every charm he ascribed to the professor's daughter demonstrated to the unhappy creature more and more vividly, and with terrible force, that she was utterly unlovely and unblest? Contrasted with the enchanting valley of his love, how arid and desolate a desert seemed her life!
Meanwhile Miss Josephine Smith had early discovered the absence of Chester from the circle, and looked about to find him. She could not rest where he was not. Becoming thirsty again, she made another errand to the water-pail in the kitchen; but she drank only of the cup of disappointment. As soon, therefore, as she could do so, without making her conduct marked, she sought her loadstar in the parlor.
"How dreadfully tholitary you are to-night!" she exclaimed, with a smile which showed all her teeth. "Do extricate yourself from that frightfully lonethome corner."
She suddenly discovered that, still beyond the chair in which Chester was seated, there was another, not unoccupied.
"Ho, ho! what charmer have you there? You are getting to be an awfully dethperate flirt, Chethter Royden. Oh! nobody but Hepthy!"
"Nobody but my good cousin Hepsy," replied Chester, coldly.
"Dear me! I wouldn't have thuthpicioned you could be tho fathinated with her!" she cried, in a tone she deemed cuttingly sarcastic.