Then she told how sometime after she had interrupted Frederic in the parlor, just as he was asking Isabel to be his wife, and had almost convinced him again of Marian’s existence.
“Blessed Alice,” said Marian, involuntarily. “You have been Miss Lindsey’s good angel, and kept her husband from falling.”
“I couldn’t help it,” answered Alice. “I most knew she was alive; and I was so glad when he started for New York. I was sure he’d find her; and he did. She took care of him a few days and his voice sounded so low and sad when he told me of her, and how she left him when Isabel came. Your brother Ben—the nice man who gave me the bracelet—telegraphed for her to go; and you would suppose she was crazy—she flew around so, ordering the negroes, and knocking Dud down flat, because he couldn’t run fast enough to get out of her way. That made Aunt Hetty, his grandmother, mad, and she yellowed Isabel’s collar that she was ironing. If I hadn’t been blind I should have cried myself so those dreadful days when we expected to hear Frederic was dead, for next to Marian I love him the best. He’s real good to me now; and when I asked him once what made him pet me so much more than he used to, he said, ‘Because our dear, lost Marian loved you, and you loved her.’”
“Did he say that? Did he call her his ‘dear, lost Marian?’” and the eyes of the speaker sparkled with delight, while across her mind there flitted the half-formed resolution that before the sun had set Frederic Raymond should know the whole.
Ere Alice could answer this question, there was a loud ring at the door, and a servant brought to Miss Grey Isabel Huntington’s card.
“I knew she’d call,” said Alice. “She wants to see how you look; but I don’t care, for Frederic says you’re a heap the handsomest; I asked him last night after you quit playing, and had left the room.”
The knowledge that Frederic Raymond preferred her face to that of Isabel, rendered Marian far more self-possessed than she would otherwise have been, as she went down to meet her visitor, whose call was prompted from mere curiosity, and not from any friendliness she felt towards Marian Grey. Isabel had heard much of Marian’s beauty from those who met her since her arrival at Riverside, and she had come to see if rumor were correct. During the last three years she had not improved materially, for her disappointment in failing to win Frederic Raymond had soured a disposition never particularly amiable, and she was now a censorious, fault-finding woman of twenty-five, on the lookout for a husband, and trembling lest the dreaded age of thirty should find her still unmarried. For Frederic Raymond she affected a feeling of contempt; insinuating that he was mean—that his property was not gained honestly; that she knew something which she could tell but shouldn’t—all of which had but little effect in a place where he was so much better known than herself. And still, had Frederic Raymond evinced the slightest interest in her, she would gladly have met him more than half the way, for the love she really felt for him once had never died away. And even now she watched him often through blinding tears as he passed her cottage door. The story of Marian’s existence she had repudiated at first and in the excitement of going south, and the incidents connected with her sojourn there, she had failed to speak of it even to Mrs. Rivers, choosing rather to make her friends believe that she had deliberately refused the owner of Redstone Hall. Recently, however, and since her arrival at Riverside, she had indirectly circulated the story, and Frederic had more than once been questioned as to its authenticity. Greatly to Isabel’s chagrin he took no pains to conceal the fact, but frankly spoke of Mrs. Raymond, as a person who had been, and who he hoped was still a living reality. Very narrowly Isabel watched the proceedings at Riverside, and when she heard that Alice’s new governess was in some way connected with the “gawky peddler,” whom she remembered well, she sneered at her as a person of no refinement, marvelling greatly at the praises bestowed upon her. At last, curious to see for herself, she donned her richest robes, and now in the parlor at Riverside, sat awaiting the appearance of Miss Grey.
“Let her be what she will, Frederic can’t marry her, and that’s some consolation,” she thought, just as a tripping footstep announced the approach of Marian, and, assuming her haughtiest manner, she arose, and bowed to Frederic Raymond’s wife.
They had met before, but there was no token of recognition between them now, and as strangers they greeted each other, Marian’s hand trembling slightly as she offered it to Isabel—for she knew that this was not their first meeting. Coldly, inquisitively and almost impudently, the haughty Isabel scrutinized the graceful creature, mentally acknowledging that she was beautiful, and hating her for it. With great effort Marian concealed her agitation, and answered carelessly the first few common-place remarks addressed to her, as to how she liked Riverside, and if this were her first visit there.
“No,” she answered to this last question—“I came here once with Ben, who, you remember, was once at Redstone Hall.”