"She was Marguerite Heinrich when a girl in Weisbaden, but she had another name afterward, when she was married."
"You are talking of something you know nothing about. Can't you let Gretchen alone?" Arthur said, petulantly; and springing up, he began to pace the room in a state of great excitement, while Jerrie sat motionless, with a far-off look in her eyes, as if she were seeing in a vision things she could not retain, they passed so rapidly before her, and were so hazy and indistinct.
The likeness she had seen in the glass was gone now. She was not like Arthur at all; it was madness in her to have thought so. And she was not like Gretchen either. Her mother was lying under the little pine tree which she and Harold had planted above the lonely grave. Her mother had been dark, and coarse, and bony, and a peasant woman—so Ann Eliza Peterkin, who had heard it from her father, had told her once, when angry with her, and Harold, when sorely pressed, had admitted as much to her.
"Dark, with large, hard hands," he had said; and Jerrie, had answered indignantly:
"But hard and black as they were, they always touched me gently and tenderly, and sometimes I believe I can remember just how lovingly and carefully they wrapped the old cloak around me to keep me warm. Dear mother, what do I care how black she was, and coarse. She was mine, and gave her life for me."
This was when Jerrie was a child, and now that she was older she was seeking to put away this woman with the dark face and the coarse hands, and substitute in her place a fairer, sweeter face, with hands like wax, and features like a Madonna. But only for a few moments, and then the wild dream vanished, and the sad, pale face, the low voice, the music, the trees, the flowers, the sick-room, the death-bed, the woman who died, and the woman who served, all went out together into the darkness, and she was Jerrie Crawford again, wearing her commencement dress to please the man still pacing the floor abstractedly, and paying no heed to her when she went out to change her dress for the blue muslin she had worn through the day.
When she returned to the parlor she found him at the tea-table, which had been laid during her absence. Taking her seat opposite to him she made his tea, and buttered his toast, and chatted, and laughed until she succeeded in bringing back a quiet expression to the face which bore no likeness now to her own. He was talking of the commencement exercises, and regretting that he could not be present.
"I may not be home," he said. "And if I am, I shall not come. Crowds kill me, and smells kill me, and we are sure to have both, but Harold will be here, and he is better than forty old coves like me. It is astonishing what a fancy I have taken to that young man. I don't see a fault in him, except that he is too infernally proud. Think of his refusing to take any more money from me unless I would accept his note promising to pay it back in time—just as if he ever can or will."
"Indeed he will," Jerrie exclaimed, rousing at once in Harold's defense. "He will pay every dollar, and I shall help him."
"You!" and Arthur laughed, merrily. "How will you help him, I'd like to know."