Her beautiful eyes, now closed in heart-breaking reflections, like her other perfections defied descriptions and beggared eulogy!
Even Byron, grand-master in the art of portraying woman’s ravishing beauty, recorded his failure to describe the beauty of lovely eyes, and his words might well be appropriated for Miss Beattison:
“Her eye’s dark charm ’twere vain to tell
But gaze on that of the Gazelle,
It will assist thy fancy well.”
Suddenly the dark eyes opened widely, and the taper fingers clenched in a paroxysm of emotion.
“Oh, why should I waste myself upon a man who does not care for me?” she cried out bitterly. “What have I done that Heaven should grant me power to love only one man when it makes that man despise me, and prefer an ignorant Scotch country girl, whose love as compared with mine is as the shallow sea-shell to the bottomless ocean.”
“Oh, mademoiselle, give him up—let us go back, he is not worthy of you; there are a thousand handsomer, cleverer men—distinguished men too—who would kneel at your feet to-morrow—yes, mademoiselle, and put proud coronets there too; and splendid men, too, ah! if the poor companion could but choose! there are some ravishing gentlemen who visit you, and think you that I would run after a country doctor and break my heart when all the great world would come to me? Ah, mon Dieu, no.”
“Hush, madame,” replied the other, “you do not know what you are talking about. I know—of course I know, and the thought drives me nearly crazy with rage against myself—that I am doing an indelicate and unmaidenly thing in following up Dr. Dalrymple. Oh, I have fought against this love on my knees—yes, on my bended knees—but I cannot help myself. I love him, I love him, I love him! Even when I wore short dresses he was, all unknown to him, the idol of my childhood. Yes, I used to dream about him and pray God to give me him for a dear husband when I grew up. I remember him as he used to come up the church aisle on Sundays, and as he passed our cross-pew I used to redden until I fancied all the people in the church knew about my love for him. And during the sermon I never recollected the text, or remembered what the old clergyman said, I was just thinking of Richard (that is what I called him in my mind) and longing to run my fingers through his bonny curly brown hair. And oh when his moustache began to grow, as soon as I noticed it I insisted on being put into long dresses so that I might, as it were, keep in step with him; and when I went abroad it was still the same all the years I was away; nothing ever took his boyish image out of my heart. I did not flirt and carry on like other girls, I just thought of him and waited, oh, so patiently! until my education should be completed, and I could return home practically my own mistress.
“Now, madame, do you think that love like that is going to stop because a thing seems unmaidenly, when all the happiness of my life is concerned in the result? Do you know that Dr. Dalrymple is now on his way to see his fiancée, and that this is the most crucial period of my whole life? Oh, if I were a man, and our positions reversed, I would carry him off!”
Madame was in despair—she held up her wrinkled hands and exclaimed again and again, “mon Dieu, mon Dieu!” and then her womanly heart coming to her aid, she took the beautiful head between her hands and kissed it again and again. “God is good,” she said, softly but hopefully, “maybe it will all come right yet.”
Large tears—the advance guard of grief’s thunder shower which indicates but does not relieve the pent-up passion—gathered slowly and fell from Miss Beattison’s eyes, and the white teeth tried hard to restrain the quivering lip. But the effort was in vain, the rising sob refused to be quelled, and unable any longer to restrain her emotion, Miss Beattison covered her face and sobbed out her very soul on her old companion’s sympathetic shoulder.