“White as a sheet and poor as a crow,” said Ben. “It’s a wearin’ on him, depend on’t. But she—I tell you she’s a dasher, with the blackest eyes and hair I ever seen.”
“Who?” fairly screamed Marian. “Who? Not Isabel? Oh, Ben, is Isabel there?” And Marian grew as white as Ben had described Frederic to be.
“Yes she is,” returned Ben. “She’s pretendin’ to teach that blind gal, but Frederic ain’t makin’ love to her—no such thing. So don’t go to faintin’ away, and I’ll begin at the beginning and tell you the hull story.”
Thus re-assured, Marian composed herself and listened, while Ben narrated every particular of his recent visit to Redstone Hall.
“I stopped at some of the houses in the neighborhood,” said he, “but I never as’t a question about the Raymonds, for fear of bein’ mistrusted. Come to think on’t, though, I did inquire the road, and they sent me through corn fields, and hemp fields, and mercy knows what; such a way as they have livin’ in the lots? But I kinder like it. Seems like a story, them big houses way off among the trees, with the whitewashed cabins round ’em lookin’ for all the world like a camp-meetin’ in the woods——”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted Marian; “but Frederic—won’t you ever reach him?”
“Not till I tell you about the dogs, and that jaw breakin’ chap they call Josh, with his cow hides, big as a scow-boat, I’ll bet,” was Ben’s answer; and finding it useless to hurry him, Marian summoned all her patience and waited while he waded through his introduction to the blacks, his attempt to be more of a Yankee than he really was, his sliver in his thumb, and, finally his addressing Frederic as Square and inquiring for his wife!
Marian was all attention now, and held her breath, lest she should lose a single word. When he came to Isabel, and described her glowing, sparkling beauty, she trembled in every joint, and felt as if she were turning to stone; but when he spoke of Alice, and the sweet, loving words she had said of the lost one, the cold, hard feeling passed away, and, covering her face with her hands, she wept aloud. Everything which Ben had seen or heard he told, omitting not a single point, but lengthening out his story with surmises and suspicions of his own.
“Alice and Dinah both,” said he, “told me Frederic wouldn’t marry till they knew for certain you was dead, and as he does know for certain, you can calkerlate on that Isabel’s bein’ an old maid for all of him.”
“I never supposed they’d think me drowned when I dropped my glove and handkerchief,” said Marian. “Did they inquire at the depot.”