"And why?" said Mr. Read.
"Mr. Dermott informed me last night that he had secured three tickets for the concert of Monday evening, and requested permission to call for Josephine and myself. I told him that she had expressed anxiety to attend, and that I was disengaged. She was not in the parlor when he left, and he entrusted the invitation to me. He will be here this forenoon for her answer. As things now stand, his visit will be extremely mal-apropos. I shall decline for myself; she can do the same."
Josephine prudently lowered her eye-lids, but her lips were white with rage. She had especial reasons for desiring to go to this concert. Every body was running mad after the principal performer:—absence from necessity would be a pitiable infliction;—to stay away from choice, irrefragable proof of want of taste. To be escorted thither by Mr. Dermott, would give her an éclat the devotion of a score of Pembertons could not produce. In seeking to mortify another, she had pulled down this heavy chagrin upon her own head,—common fate of those who would make the hearts and backs of their fellows the rounds of their ladder to revenge or to fame.
Even Mr. Read was momentarily disconcerted. "I will procure you a ticket," he said, consolingly.
That tongue was used to falsehood, yet it did not move as glibly as was its wont, as she replied, "I do not care to go, sir."
"That is fortunate," said Ida, "as every seat was taken yesterday. You do not object to my withdrawing now?"
The shot had gone home; her enmity was gratified; she had not been anxious to attend from the first, and therefore was not disappointed; she did not suffer from pained sensibility; the frequency of these encounters had inured her to ambushed attack; she was fast becoming a match for them in stoicism, and surpassed them in satire; in this skirmish she had borne flying colours from the field; but had the contrary of all these things been true, she could not have been more wretched. She hated, as spirits like hers only can hate, her cold-hearted persecutors, and exulted in their defeat; yet close upon triumph came a twinge of remorse and a sense of debasement.
"I am sinking to their level! I could compete with them upon no other ground. They are despicable in their worldliness and malice; shall I grovel and hiss with them? It seems inevitable—debarred as I am from all associations which can elevate and clear my mind. Oh! the low envy in that girl's face as she named my 'suitor!' Destitute of mental wants herself, she thinks of nothing but courtship and a settlement! But this matter must be arranged."
She opened her writing-desk. Her chamber was her retreat and sanctum, and she had lavished much taste and time in fitting it up. All its appurtenances spoke of genius and refinement. With a poetic love for warm colors and striking contrasts, crimson and black relieved, each the other, in her carpet and curtains. The bedstead, seats and tables, fashioned into elegant and uncommon forms by her orders, were draped and cushioned with the same Tyrian hue. Books and portfolios were heaped and strewed upon the shelves and stands; and in one corner, upon a wrought bronze tripod, was an exquisite statuette—a girl kneeling beside an empty cage, the lifeless songster stark and cold in her hand. Several of Ida's schoolmates were with her when she purchased it from an itinerant Italian. They saw in the expression of hopeless sadness, only regret for her bird. Ida noted that her gaze was not upon its ruffled plumes, but to its silent home; and that one hand lay upon her heart. Looking more narrowly she discerned upon the pedestal the simple exclamation, "Et mon coeur!"
Henceforward it had become her Lares. She had scattered flowers over it, kissed it weepingly, and with lips rigid in stern despair, laid her hot brow to the white forehead of the voiceless mourner. She must have something to love, and the insensate image was dear, because it told of a grief such as hers. Now, after she dipped her pen in the standish, she paused to contemplate it,—the red light bathing it in a life-like glow,—and the blood receded from her face, as she uttered aloud its touching complaint, "Et mon coeur!"