I glanced at my husband—his brow was dark as midnight. I looked at Dr. Clayton, there was a slight quivering of his lips, while his wife was pale as a water lily, and then I burst into a merry laugh, in which the gentlemen soon joined, though it would have puzzled us all to have told at what we were laughing.
After a few words of explanation as to why we were there, Dr. Clayton suddenly remembered himself, and leading me towards the lady, introduced her as “My wife, Mrs. Clayton.” She had been living in Florida with a cousin, at whose house they were married, about two weeks before, and they were now on their way to Boston, stopping for a few days in Charleston to see the city. I found her a very quiet, sensible woman, but as different from Dell Thompson, or Rosa Lee, as a person well could be, and I was wondering to myself how it was possible for a man to love so many people of opposite temperaments, when she said something about New England, and I asked if she were ever there.
“Oh, yes,” she answered, “I was born there, in Wilbraham, Mass. I was living with the grandmother of the first Mrs. Clayton at the time of her death.”
In a moment it all came to me; Dell had told me of Mabel Warrener, who had inherited her grandmother’s fortune, and now she sat there before me, Mrs. Clayton 2d. Surely the freaks of fortune are wonderful! Naturally refined and intelligent, Mabel had employed a part of her money in giving herself a good education, graduating at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, and going thence back to her home in Wilbraham, which she had fitted up with much taste, and where she was living when Dr. Clayton met her on his return from Georgia. Of her then he only thought as of a pleasant, agreeable woman; but when time, absence, and my marriage had softened the keenness of his disappointment, he often found his thoughts wandering towards the fair Mabel, who, upon inquiry, he learned had gone to Florida. Rose needed a mother, and he needed a wife; so, after an interchange of letters, he one morning started with his little girl for the “land of flowers,” where neither sickness, nor death, nor yet a Richard Delafield, came between him and his bride. They seemed very happy, for after a little Dr. Clayton recovered his equanimity, and appeared perfectly natural.
Not a word, however, did he say of the past, or in any way allude to Georgia, except once when he asked me if I did not think Rose resembled Jessie in a measure. I had thought of the same thing, though Rosa’s eyes were darker and her hair more of a chestnut brown. She was a sweet little creature, and if anything could have reconciled me to being the wife of Dr. Clayton, it would have been the fact that she was my daughter. But as I contrasted the two men, as my eye fell on Dr. Clayton’s handsome face and curly locks, and then rested on the dark features and raven hair of Richard, I felt that in him there was more of the true, the noble man, and my heart warmly approved me for the choice I had made.
Nearly all the morning we sat there talking on indifferent subjects, and when dinner was over, Mrs. Clayton came to my room, staying a long time, and gaining fast in my good opinion, when I saw how kind and friendly she was. She had heard the whole story, for she told me so, holding little Rose upon her lap and smoothing her silken curls.
“We cannot all love the same person,” she said in conclusion; “and I am so glad you refused him, for otherwise he would not have been my husband;” and her quiet eyes lighted up with a look of happiness which plainer than words could express told me that she had brought to Dr. Clayton no divided affections.
At the making of my toilet for the wedding she was present, aiding Bertha greatly by her own tasteful suggestions, and when at last I was dressed with perfect childish simplicity, she ran for her husband “to come and see if I didn’t look pretty.”
“Mrs. Delafield was always pretty to me,” was the doctor’s answer, and that was all he said.
They were to leave early next morning before I would be up, and so when the carriage was announced, we went to bid them good-bye.