"She said you might find me useful, Miss Jessie! I beg your pardon—Mrs. Fordham!" replied the girl, dropping a courtesy.
Jessie colored, Roy thought, painfully, at the as yet unfamiliar name. He interfered to save her further embarrassment, in the shape of congratulations.
"You will show her to her room, if you please, Phoebe. And then let her have a cup of tea. She has a headache. Your trunks will be sent up in the course of half an hour, Jessie, but I would not advise you to wait for them, or take the trouble of changing your travelling-dress. You must begin your life here by doing just as you choose in such matters."
He met her in the hall when she ran down, ten minutes later, fearful lest she had kept him waiting, and led her into the supper room; letting her take her place behind the tea-tray without one of the tenderly gallant speeches with which a bridegroom would naturally install his bride in the chair always appropriated by the mistress of heart and home. He was attentive to her wants, and talked as much as usual—perhaps more—in the endeavor to put her at her ease; telling how the flowers upon the tea-table and in her chamber were sent over at noon from Judge Provost's conservatory; that the silver service was a present from the Baxters, the bronze mantel-clock from Fanny Provost, who was very anxious to see her and resume their old intimacy. Selina Bradley had sent the chased silver butter-bowl, and other Hamilton families had testified their good-will by elegant and suitable gifts.
"I am every day more glad that you spent last winter here," he said. "You do not come as a stranger; have already pleasant associations with our town and its inhabitants, and gained a foothold, I find, in many hearts."
He had unwittingly dealt as direct a blow at the secret panel that hid the skeleton in her heart, as he had at Orrin Wyllys' indurated conscience the previous evening.
Jessie had no words in which to reply; sought to conceal her confusion by steadfastly regarding the pattern on her plate—one of a set of china Roy had purchased in Dresden, she discovered, presently, when she remarked upon its beauty.
"I had no idea you had such exquisite taste!" She made a bold attempt to break through the nameless but powerful constraint that kept down everything like easy or merry converse on her part. "I expect to be in a state of perpetual astonishment on that score for a long time to come. I did not know that learned scholars ever condescended to consider such petty details of domestic life as porcelain and carpets."
He put back his chair without replying directly to the compliment, at which, to her mortification, he looked rather pained than pleased.
"If you have finished your supper, perhaps you would like to go over the house?" he said, politely. "Or, if you are tired, we will postpone it until to-morrow."