Some said her chief attraction was in her great black eyes, which were so soft and gentle in their expression at times, and then again sparkled and shone with excitement; while it was whispered that they could on occasion blaze, and flash, and snap with anger and scorn.
Few, however, ever saw the flash and the blaze, and to most of the people in the neighborhood Georgie Burton was the kind, sympathetic, frank-hearted woman who, though a devotee of fashion, would always lend a listening ear to a tale of woe, or step aside from her own pleasure to minister to others.
She was very tall, and her blue-black hair fell in heavy masses of curls about her face and neck, giving her a more youthful appearance at first sight than a closer inspection would warrant. Her complexion, though dark, was clear, and smooth, and bright,—so bright in fact, that there had been whispers of artificial roses and enamel. But here rumor was wrong. Georgie’s complexion was all her own, kept bright and fair by every possible precaution and care. Constant exercise in the open air, daily baths, and a total abstinence from stimulants of any kind, together with as regular habits as her kind of life would admit, were the only cosmetics she used, and the result proved the wisdom of her course.
She was not Mrs. Freeman Burton’s daughter; she was her niece, and had been adopted five years before our story opens. But never was an own and only child loved and petted more than Mrs. Burton loved and petted the beautiful girl, who improved so fast under the advantages given her by her doting aunt.
For two years she had been kept in school, where she had bent every energy of mind and body to acquiring the knowledge necessary to fit her for the world which awaited her outside the school-room walls. And when at last she came out finished, and was presented to society as Mr. Freeman Burton’s daughter and heir, she became a belle at once; and for three years had kept her ground without yielding an inch to any rival.
To Mr. Burton she was kind and affectionate, and he would have missed her very much from his household; while to Mrs. Burton she was the loving, gentle, obedient daughter, who knew no will save that of her mother.
“A perfect angel of sweetness,” Mrs. Burton called her, and no person was tolerated who did not tacitly, at least, accord to Georgie all the virtues it was possible for one woman to possess. The relations between Maude and Georgie were kind and friendly, but not at all familiar or intimate. Georgie was too reserved and reticent with regard to herself and her affairs to admit of her being on very confidential terms with any one, and so Maude knew very little of her real character, and nothing whatever of her life before she came to live with her aunt, except what she learned from Mrs. Burton, who sometimes talked of her only sister, Georgie’s mother, and of the life of comparative poverty from which she had rescued her niece. At these times Georgie would sit motionless as a statue, with her hands locked together, and a peculiar expression in her black eyes, which seemed to be looking far away at something seen only to herself. She was not at all communicative, and even her aunt did not know exactly what the business was which had called her so suddenly to Chicago; but she was aware that it concerned some child, and that she had left it undone and turned back with Charlie; and when at last she came and was ushered into Mrs. Churchill’s room, where Mrs. Burton was, both ladies called her a self-denying angel, who always considered others before herself.
There was a flush on Georgie’s cheeks, and then her eyes went through the window, and off across the river, with that far away, abstracted look which Maude had noticed so often, and speculated upon, wondering of what Georgie was thinking, and if there was anything preying upon her mind.
Mrs. Churchill was very fond of Georgie, and she held her hand fast locked in her own, and listened with painful heart-throbs while she told what she knew of the terrible disaster which had resulted in Charlie’s lying so cold and dead in the room below.
“I left Buffalo the same morning Charlie did,” she said, “but did not know he was on the train until the accident.”