XX.
The morrow found the colonel calling again on Miss Heath. Before doing so he took his friend the major's advice, and visited a tonsorial artist in order to present a less savage and more prepossessing appearance. This time he found the young lady at home. As he awaited the return of the domestic who took his card and was about to usher him in, the suspense, the mingled joy and apprehension of meeting, was almost unbearable. He was shown into sumptuous parlors, so filled with paintings and statues that they looked like exhibition rooms, where he found Edna in company with some friends. In a perfectly self-possessed way she came forward to receive him, and she did it so coolly, and introduced him with such an air of indifference to the other visitors present, that poor Mark's heart was chilled. Her appearance, also, surprised and displeased him. She looked, with her fair hair twisted into Medusæan wildness and decorated with broad gold band and dangling sequins; with her delicate ears weighted by Byzantine pendants, and throat circled by a snake-like coil of dead gold,—like an Assyrian princess, beautifully barbaric. But her jaded eyes, and pale cheeks bereft of bloom, told of late hours and departing freshness.
Miss Mumbie was there, and attired much in the same way. There were also two gentlemen present.
"I believe you are already acquainted with Captain Gildersleeve, Ada," said Edna to Miss Mumbie, who bowed rather distantly in reply. "Mr. Jobson—Captain Gildersleeve," she continued, introducing Mark to one of the gentlemen.
"Captain!" exclaimed Mr. Jobson; "why, Miss Heath, this is Colonel Gildersleeve. Didn't I meet him last November when I went down to the front to see my brother? Colonel, of course, delighted to meet you. Don't you recollect Captain Jobson's brother, and the row with your orderly about the shaving brush?"
"Oh, I beg pardon," said Edna, coloring slightly. "I've been away so long that I really forgot Mr. Gildersleeve's present rank."
"Forgot!" returned Jobson, who was a dashing stockbroker, and had all the brusquerie of his class; "why, I thought everybody knew how the colonel got his promotion. Why, Miss Heath, he's one of the best known and most serviceable officers in the army. I heard the commander-in-chief himself speak in the highest and most complimentary terms of him; said he, 'That lame devil of a cavalry colonel on H——'s staff is worth all—'"
"My dear sir," interrupted Mark, blushing, and anxious to turn the conversation, though with a secret throb of pleased vanity in his inmost heart, "I remember you now very well. You came up to City Point the day after our skirmish with Hoke's brigade, when poor Archer was shot and your brother wounded."
"To be sure I did," said Jobson; "and some of you fellows at headquarters—I don't say it was you—gave me some of the vilest whiskey, that nearly cut me in two. Why, Miss Heath—"