“I could not well forget him. His odd Yankee ways furnished gossip for many a day among the negroes.” And Isabel tossed her head scornfully, as if Ben Burt were a creature far beneath her notice.
After a little, she spoke of Mr. Raymond, asking Marian, finally, what she thought of him, and saying she supposed she knew he was a married man.
“I know he has been married, but is there any certainty that his wife is still living?” asked Marian, for the sake of hearing her visitor’s remarks.
“Any certainty! Of course there is,” said Isabel, experiencing at once a pang of jealousy lest the humble Marian Grey had dared to think of Frederic as a widower, and hence a marriageable man. “Of course she’s living, though, I must say, he takes no great pains to find her. He did look for her a little, I believe, after he was sick in New York; but he did it more to divert his mind from a very mortifying disappointment than from any affection he felt for her, and it was this which prompted him to go to New York at all.”
“What disappointment?” Marian asked, faintly, and, affecting to be embarrassed, Isabel replied:
“It would be unbecoming in me to say what the nature of it was, and I referred to it thoughtlessly. Pray, forget it, Miss Grey;” and she turned the leaves of a handsomely bound volume lying on the table with well feigned modesty.
Marian understood her at once, and was glad that Isabel was too intent upon an engraving to observe her agitation. Notwithstanding what Alice said, Frederic had offered himself to Isabel, and her refusal had sent him to New York, where he hoped to forget his mortification, and where sickness had overtaken him. In the kindness of her heart, Isabel had come to him, and the words of affection which she had heard her speak to Frederic were prompted by pity, rather than love, as she then supposed. And after Isabel had left him, he had looked for her merely by way of excitement, and not because he cared to find her. Such were the thoughts which flashed upon Marian’s mind and destroyed at once her half-formed resolution of telling Frederic that night. She did not know Isabel, and she could not understand why she should be guilty of a falsehood to her—a perfect stranger.
“He is not learning to love me, after all,” was the sad cry of her heart; and, when she spoke again, there was a plaintive tone in her voice, and Isabel wondered she had not observed before how mournful it was. And, as they sat talking, there came along the graveled walk a step familiar to them both, and the color deepened on their cheeks; while in the kindling light which shone in the eyes of blue, and flashed from the eyes of black, there was a spark of jealousy, as if each were reading the secret thoughts of the other.
Frederic had returned from the city earlier than was his custom, for he usually spent the entire day; but there was something now to draw him home besides the blind girl, and he was conscious of quickening his footsteps as he drew near his house, and of watching eagerly for the flutter of a mourning robe, or the sight of a sunny face, which, he knew, would smile a welcome. He heard her voice in the parlor, and ere he was aware of it, he stood in the presence of Isabel. Narrowly Marian watched him, marvelling somewhat at his perfect self-possession; for Isabel was to him an object of such indifference that he experienced far less emotion in meeting her than in speaking to Marian Grey, and asking if she had been lonely.
“You men are so vain,” said Isabel, with a toss of her head, “and think we miss you so much. Now I’ll venture to say Miss Grey has not thought of you in a day. Why should she?”