Gretchen: A Novel

by Mary Jane Holmes

"You see, I have picked up your little girl and brought her home. Jump down, Jerry, and good-night to you," Mr. Tracy said as Harold came up to them.

She was on the ground in an instant, and he was soon galloping toward home, saying to himself:

"I don't believe I can even have a death-bed repentance. I have told too many lies for that, and worse than all, must go on lying to the end. I have sold my soul, for a life of luxury, which after all is very pleasant," he continued, as he drew near the house, which was brilliantly lighted up, while through the long windows of the dining-room he could see the table, with its silver and glass and flowers, and the cheerful blaze upon the hearth. There was company staying in the house, Mr. and Mrs. Raymond from Kentucky, father and mother to Fred; and Mr. and Mrs. St. Claire, and Grace Atherton, and Squire Harrington had been invited to dinner and were already in the dining-room when Frank entered it after a hasty toilet.

He had been out in the country and ridden further than he intended, he said, by way of apology, as he greeted his guests, and then took Mrs. Raymond in to dinner. Dolly was very fine that evening in claret velvet, with her new diamonds, which were greatly admired, Grace Atherton declaring that she liked them quite as well as the stolen ones, whose setting was rather passee.

"That is just why I prized them so much; it made them look like heir-looms, and as if one had always had a family," Dolly said.

Grace Atherton shrugged her still plump shoulders just a little, and thought of the first call she ever made upon Dolly, when the lady entertained her in her working-apron.

Dolly did not look now as if she had ever seen a working-apron, and was very bright and talkative, and entertaining, and all the more so because of her husband's silence. He was given to moods, and sometimes aggravated his wife to desperation when he left all the conversation to her.

"Do talk," she would say to him when they were alone. "Do talk to people and not sit so glum, with that great wrinkle between your eyes as if you were mad at something; and do laugh, too, when any body tells any thing worth laughing at, and not leave it all to me. Why, I actually giggle at times until I feel like a fool, while you never smile or act as if you heard a word. Look at me occasionally, and when I elevate my eye-brows—so—brace up and say something, if it isn't so cunning."

This elevating of the eyebrows and bracing up were matters of frequent occurrence, as Frank grew more and more silent and abstracted, and now, after he had sat through a very funny story told by Mr. St. Claire, and had not even smiled, or given any sign that he heard it, he suddenly caught Dolly's eye, and saw that both eyebrows, and nose, and chin were up as marks of unusual disapprobation, for how could she guess of what he was thinking as he sat with his head bent down, and his eyes seemingly half shut. But they came open wide enough, and his head was high enough when he saw Dolly's frown; and turning to Mrs. Raymond, he began to talk rapidly and at random. She had just returned from Germany, where she had left her daughter, Marion, in school, and Frank asked her of the country, and if she had visited Wiesbaden, and had there met or heard of any one by the name of Marguerite Heinrich.

Mrs. Raymond had spent some months in Wiesbaden, for it was there her daughter was at school, and she was very enthusiastic in her praises of the beautiful town. But she had never seen or heard of Marguerite Heinrich, or of any one by the name of Heinrich.