"You would have said so, had you known her!" Mrs. Baxter winked away two unbidden tears that glazed her eyes, without forming and dropping—swallowed anew and very hard. "She always reminded me of a plaintive poem set to music. That is, in the later years of an existence which was all song and sunniness when it was fresh and new."
Orrin fluttered a few leaves; commented upon the grace and finish of a decoration here and there, and went back to the inscription. It was strongly like Jessie Kirke's writing, but the resemblance was undoubtedly accidental. The one line had been penned, he learned from the date, before she was born.
"She was the Helena to my Hermia," pursued the hostess. "We lived the same life until her marriage, which preceded mine by five years. She was my senior by some months, but in heart and soul we were twins!"—pressing her hands gradually together, beginning at the wrists, and passing upward to the finger-tips, to express the idea of oneness. "And by a most extra-or-di-nary coincidence, we both married clergymen!"
"Another evidence of the perfect harmony of soul existing between you. Did I understand you to say that she is not living?"
"Alas! she has been in her grave for fifteen years. I never saw her after her marriage, which was a surprise to all her friends. We anticipated a brilliant union for her. But she bestowed herself, her talents, her beauty, upon a clerical widower who was twelve years older than herself. My poor Ginevra! it was a strange ending to her sanguine dreams. Mr. Kirke was a scholarly man, it is true, and a thorough gentleman, and of his devotion to her there could be no doubt. It was such worship as few women can inspire. I believe that he tried faithfully to make her happy, but my personal acquaintanceship with him was very slight."
"Kirke!" repeated Orrin, more deliberately and with less emphasis than was his wont, and he was always the reverse of abrupt. His lazy articulation now was almost a drawl. "I know a gentleman—a clergyman of that name—Rev. Donald L. Kirke, resident, now, and I fancy for many years, at Dundee—"
"It is the very same!" Mrs. Baxter started tragically, and leaned gaspingly toward him, her throat swelling like a pouter pigeon's. "And you know him, you say? Tell me something about him—about his family! My sweet cousin left a child, I know. Does it still live? Dundee! yes! that was the quaint Scotch name of my Ginevra's new home. I have always associated it with 'The Cotter's Saturday Night.' You recollect 'Dundee's wild, warbling measures'? Do sit down and tell me all!"
"You should visit Dundee," said Orrin, sauntering back to the fireplace, but declining the seat she offered. "It is a beautiful valley—sheltered from storms by a barricade of picturesque hills. I was there in May, and the climate and flowers—especially the wealth of roses, reminded me of sunny Provence. I became quite well acquainted with Mr. Kirke. He is, as you describe him, a thorough gentleman—one of the genuine 'old school'—handsome, refined, and scholarly. His daughters, of whom there are two, are cultivated ladies. The younger—who is, I presume, the child to whom you refer—is, I have heard, very like her beautiful mother. You would be interested in her, first, for your cousin's sake, but very soon for her own. This matter of family likeness is a curious one. I see now what was the resemblance that puzzled me last Spring. Miss Jessie Kirke might easily be mistaken for your daughter."
"If she were, what a happy woman I should be!" cried the flattered lady, casting up her brown eyes, and raising her clasped hands to a level with her chin. "The relief afforded by your charming description is beyond expression. I have never dared inquire respecting my lost darling's babe. And she is really a Lanneau! Heaven bless her! I feared—how I feared! to hear that she had grown up an awkward rustic, whose faint likeness to her parent would pain, not gratify me. Therefore I have maintained no correspondence with Mr. Kirke since our exchange of letters immediately after his wife's decease. 'Jessie Kirke!' what a riante, piquante, bewitching name!"
"I wish you could prevail upon her father to entrust her to you for a time. She would be a feature in our society this winter. Her face and manners are strikingly attractive, and hers is a style of beauty that will improve with years and knowledge of the world. Her bearing and conversation have much of the fascination which is, I suspect, a family gift. She will grow handsomer until—I cannot say when. Women, like leaves, have their time to fade, and this trying season lies, with a large majority, a little on the bright side of thirty. The Lanneaus have not lost the secret they brought from fair France—the magic that purchases the gift of perennial youth."