Ethelyn's Mistake

by Mary Jane Holmes

Mrs. Dobson had left her glasses in the kitchen, so she did not notice the white, stony face, so startling in its expression, as her visitor followed her on up the broad staircase into the spacious hall above, and on still further, till they came to the door of Richard's room, which Hannah had left open. Then for a moment Ethelyn hesitated. It seemed almost like a sacrilege for her feet to tread the floor of that private room, for her breath to taint the atmosphere of a spot where the new wife would come. But Mrs. Dobson led her on until she stood in the center of Richard's room, surrounded by the unmistakable paraphernalia of a man, with so many things around her to remind her of the past. Surely, this was her own furniture; the very articles he had chosen for the room in Camden. It was kind in Richard to keep and bring them here, where everything was so much more elegant--kind, too, in him to redeem her piano. It showed that for a time, at least, he had remembered her; but alas! he had forgotten her now, when she wanted his love so much. There were great blurring tears in her eyes, and she could not distinctly see the picture on the walk which Mrs. Dobson said was the first Mrs. Markham, asking if she was not a beauty.

"Rather pretty, yes," Ethie said, making a great effort to speak naturally, and adding after a moment: "I suppose it will be taken down when the other Mrs. Markham comes."

In Mrs. Dobson's mind the other Mrs. Markham only meant Melinda, and she replied:

"Why should it? She knows it is here. She knew the other lady and liked her, too."

"She knew me? Who can it be?" Ethie asked herself, remembering that the name she had heard at Clifton was a strange one to her.

"This, now, is the very handsomest part of the whole house," Mrs. Dobson said, throwing open a door which led from Richard's room into a suite of apartments which, to Ethie's bewildered gaze, seemed more like fairyland than anything real she had ever seen. "This the governor fitted up expressly for his wife and I'm told he spent more money here than in all the upper rooms. Did you ever see handsomer lace? He sent to New York for them," she said, lifting up one of the exquisitely wrought curtains festooned across the arch which divided the boudoir from the large sleeping room beyond. "This I call the bridal chamber," she continued, stepping into the room where everything was so pure and white. "But, bless me, I forgot that I put on a lot of bottles to heat: I'll venture they are every one of them shivered to atoms. Hannah is so careless. Excuse me, will you, and entertain yourself a while. I reckon you can find your way back to the parlor."

Ethelyn wanted nothing so much as to be left alone and free to indulge in the emotions which were fast getting the mastery of her. Covering her face with her hands, as the door closed after Mrs. Dobson, she sat for a moment bereft of the power to think or feel. Then, as things became more real, as great throbs of heat and pain went tearing through her temples, she remembered that she was in Richard's house, up in the room which Mrs. Dobson had termed the bridal chamber, the apartments which had been fitted up for Richard's bride, whoever she might be.

"I never counted on this," she whispered, as she paced up and down the range of rooms, from the little parlor or boudoir to the dressing room beyond the bedroom, and the little conservatory at the side, where the choicest of plants were in blossom, and where the dampness was so cool to her burning brow.

It did not strike her as strange that Richard should have thought of all this, nor did she wonder whose taste had aided him in making such a home. She did not wonder at anything except at herself, who had missed so much and fallen into such depths of woe.

"Oh, Richard!" she sighed, as she went back to the bridal chamber. "You would pity me now, and forgive me, too, if you knew what I am suffering here in your home, which can never, never be mine!"