“I doubt very much, Mr. Legare, whether such a folly, as you rightly term it, has originated in any brain but your own. I was present at the only interview your father has ever had with this young woman, and only the books, and how to bind them, was the subject of conversation. It was brief and business-like, nothing more.”
“Can I see the young woman?”
“We are not in the habit of exhibiting our employees, Mr. Legare,” said W——, with considerable hauteur. “But if you choose to walk about the bindery with me, you can see every person in it, while examining my work, machinery, and so forth; but I will not permit any remarks made that can hurt the feelings of an employee.”
“I would be the last to do it, sir; and you need not point out this prodigy—if she is so very beautiful, and so superior in her grace and manners, I am sure I shall be able to discover her without aid.”
“Very well, Mr. Legare. We will pass through the various departments, as visitors frequently do.”
The young man assented, and with Mr. W—— moved through the large hall, looking at folders, sewers, gilders, and pasters, all busy at their various tasks, and examined with rather a careless eye all the newly-patented machinery for cutting and pressing, though Mr. W—— strove to point out the great improvements of the age as well as he could.
They had passed through a greater part of the bindery, and young Legare had looked with a surprised eye on many a pretty form and interesting face, for he, like too many of the upper or non-laboring class, had imbued the idea that beauty and labor, grace and toil, intellect and worth, could not go hand in hand, or indeed have any connection.
They now came to where a young girl, with her braided hair, dark as night, wound around a finely poised head, sat with her face toward a window—a screen on either side partially shutting her in from general observation. She was bent over some scattered pages, evidently arranging them, and young Legare, glancing at the pages, saw that they were old, in a foreign language, and had belonged to a pile of torn and faded magazines that lay on the table to her left.
One glance at that form, at the shapely head, and graceful neck and shoulders, and a start of surprise, a flush in his face, told that Legare had found the wonderful girl of whom his father had spoken.
Hearing steps close to her table, the beautiful girl turned to see who was there, and, seeing Mr. W—— with a stranger by his side, turned again to her work. But that one glance revealed to young Legare such a face as he had never seen before—a face wonderfully beautiful and full of expression.