“Beautiful—beautiful Marian! Yes, I will call her Marian here on paper, with no one to see it but you. ’Tis a sweet, feminine name, Fred;—the name, too, of your lost wife. I told her that story the other night, and she cried great tears, which looked like pearls upon her cheek.
“Do write soon, and give me your advice—though what I want of it is more than I can tell. I only know that I feel strangely about the region of my waistbands, and every time I see Miss Grey, I feel a heap worse, as you folks say. She is of low origin, I know, and this would make a difference with a man as proud as you, but I don’t care. Marian Grey has bewitched me, I verily believe, until I am—I don’t know what.
“Do write, Fred, and tell me what I am, and what to do. But pray don’t preface your letter with long-winded remarks about marrying my equal—looking higher than a peddler’s sister, and all that nonsense, for it will be lost on me. I never can get higher than Marian’s blue eyes unless indeed I reached her hair, at which point I should certainly yield, and go over to the enemy at once.”
This letter reached Frederic one rainy afternoon, when he had nothing to do but to read it, laugh over it, reflect upon and answer it. Will Gordon’s description of Marian Grey thrilled him with a strange feeling of pleasure, imperceptibly sending his thoughts after another Marian, and involuntarily he said, aloud, “If she had been like this picture Will has drawn, I should not be here so lonely and desolate.”
Frederic Raymond was prouder far than Will Gordon, and his feelings at first rebelled against his friend’s taking for a bride the sister of unpolished, uneducated Ben. “But it is his own matter,” he said; “I see plainly that he is in love, so I will write at once and tell him what is the ‘trouble.’”
Accordingly he commenced a letter, in which after expressing his happiness that his college friend had not persisted in shutting his eyes to all female charms, he wrote:
“I should prefer your wife to be somewhat nearer your equal in point of family, it is true, but your description of Marian Grey won my heart entirely, and you have my consent to offer yourself at once. By so doing, you will probably deprive Alice of her governess and me of a pleasant companion, for I had made an arrangement with Ben to have Miss Grey with us next year. But no matter for that. Woo and win her just the same, and Heaven grant you a happier future than my past has been.
“‘Beautiful! beautiful Marian!’ you said, and without knowing why, my heart responded to it. She is beautiful, I am sure, and your description of her is just what I would like to apply to my own wife—my lost Marian! You see I have withdrawn my allegiance from black haired dark eyed maidens, and gone over to laughing blue eyes and auburn tresses.
“By the way, speaking of the dark eyed maidens reminds me that Agnes Gibson’s husband is dead, and she is sole heiress of all his fortune, except a legacy which he left to Miss Huntington, who lived in his family at the time of his death. Poor old man! Rumor says he led a sorry life with both of them, but at the last his young wife cajoled him into making his will, and was really kind to him. She is at her father’s now, and Miss Huntington is there also. I called upon them yesterday, and have hardly recovered yet from the chilling reception I met with from the latter.
“But pardon me, Will, for this digression, when I was to write of nothing save Marian Grey. The name reminded me of my own wife, and that, as a matter of course, suggested Isabel. Give my compliments to Miss Grey, and tell her that, under the circumstances, I release her from her engagement with myself, and that, if she is a sensible girl, as I suppose she is, she will not keep you on your knees longer than necessary. Let me hear of your success or failure, and, on no account, forget to invite me to the wedding. It is possible I may be obliged to come North on business, in the course of a few weeks, and, if so, I shall certainly call on you for the sake of seeing this wonderful Marian Grey.