Meadow Brook

by Mary Jane Holmes

“You have seen each other before, I believe,” said Mr. Delafield, looking curiously at both of us, while Mrs. Lansing, in much surprise, exclaimed, “Seen each other! Where, pray?”

I waited for Ada to answer, and after staring at me a moment, she replied, quite indifferently, “Miss Lee’s face does seem familiar, and if I mistake not, I met her once or twice in Boston”—and this was all she said, if I except a glance, half entreating, half threatening, which she threw at me from beneath her long, drooping eyelashes. This glance I did not then understand, but I now know it to have been prompted by a dread lest I should tell of her engagement with Herbert Langley, and thus betray her to Mr. Delafield, to whom, it seems, she had positively denied the whole, solemnly assuring him that there had never been between them anything more serious than a mere friendly acquaintance. When, therefore, she saw me, her fears were awakened, and knowing that I had her secret in my possession, she looked upon me with suspicion and dislike, while I, wholly unconscious of her feelings, had not the least intention of ever speaking of the past, unless circumstances should render it necessary. But of this she was not aware, and that night, in the privacy of her room, she communed with herself as to the best means of counteracting anything which I might say concerning her conduct in Boston, deciding at last that the surest way of accomplishing her object was to brand me as a person whose word could not be trusted! And this she deemed an easy task, inasmuch as no one there had ever seen or heard of me before. Strange, too, as it may seem, there was mingled with her distrust of me a slight shade of jealously lest Mr. Delafield should in any way notice me. True, I was a poor obscure girl, earning my daily bread, and on no point could I compete with her save one, and that was age, I being, as she well knew, eight or nine years her junior. To be old and unmarried was with her almost a crime, and as year after year passed on, leaving her still Ada Montrose, her horror of single blessedness increased, while at the same time she seemed to look upon those much younger than herself as almost her enemies, especially if they came between her and Mr. Delafield, who, as the world goes, was at the age of thirty-one more likely to choose a girl of eighteen than one of twenty-seven. This, then, was my fault. I was young and had also in my possession a secret which she did not wish to have divulged, for well she knew that one as upright and honorable as Mr. Delafield would despise a woman who could stoop to a falsehood as she had done.

“No, it shall not be!” said she, as she sat alone in her room with her face resting upon her hands; “it shall not be! I will thwart her and she shall never triumph over me, as did her pale-faced sister, but for whom I might now have borne the title of Mrs. instead of trembling lest some one should ask how old I am!” And the proud belle felt a pang of envy towards my poor widowed sister whose heart was buried in the grave of her unfortunate husband.

Not that she (Ada) had ever cared particularly for Herbert Langley, but women of the world sometimes bestow their hand where the heart cannot be given, and thus might she have done had not circumstances prevented, for she had then no hope of ever winning her guardian.

Here, ere we proceed farther, it may be well to relate briefly her past history, going back to the time when on his death-bed her father had not only given her to the charge of Mr. Delafield, but had also made a request that, if it were consistent with his feelings, Richard would one day make her his wife. As we have said elsewhere, Mr. Delafield was a great admirer of beauty, and when he looked upon the exceedingly lovely face of the youthful Ada, and thought of her as a lonely orphan, his heart was touched, and he found no difficulty in promising to protect her, and also to make her his wife, if, upon a more intimate acquaintance, he found her all he could wish her to be. That he did not find her thus was proved by the fact that nearly ten years had elapsed since her father’s death, and she was Ada Montrose still, while he, as he grew older, seemed less likely to find any one who fully came up to his standard of excellence, beauty, in reality, now being of minor importance, notwithstanding his sister’s assertion that he would never marry one who had not a pretty face.

Upon this point, however, Ada had some doubts; for if beauty were what he desired, she still possessed it to an uncommon degree, and it did not seem to move him in the least. Rumor, indeed, said they were on the eve of marriage, but she knew better, for never yet had he really told her in earnest that he loved her. It is true that years before, when she first came a weeping orphan to Cedar Grove, he had devoted himself to her entirely, feeling, perhaps, a little proud of his ward, to whom he sometimes talked of love, or hinted vaguely of the time when she would be his bride, as they wandered together beneath the whispering pines, which grew around his home, and once, when she was in Boston, he had actually made up his mind to offer himself immediately and take her to Sunny Bank as its mistress. To this resolution he was urged by her cousin, a strong-minded woman, who, in visiting at Cedar Grove, had labored to impress upon him the sense of the duty he owed not only to her father but to Ada herself, who was represented as loving him devotedly, and who was said to have made a vow never to marry unless it were her guardian. Very artfully, too, did Mrs. Johnson insinuate that her illness, of which they had heard, had its origin in “hope deferred which maketh the heart sick.”

The knowledge that a beautiful girl loves you—nay, is dying for you, is sufficient, I suppose, to touch the feelings of men less susceptible to female charms than Richard Delafield, and acting upon the impulse of the moment, he started off without, however, leaving any word as to his destination. Arrived in Boston, he went to the Revere House, where, as we know, he casually heard of Ada’s engagement with Herbert Langley. To say he was not disappointed would hardly be just, for his self-pride was touched in knowing that Ada had given her affections to another, and that other not a very worthy object, if the word of his gossiping informer was to be trusted. Too much displeased even to see her, he had left the city immediately, declaring that he would never again think of marriage with any one.

As the reader will remember, Ada heard of him through one of her acquaintance, and from something her cousin had written, she half guessed the nature of his visit. Accordingly on her return to Georgia she several times in his presence laughingly referred to the gossiping story, which, she said, some of the Bostonians got up concerning her and a millionaire, positively denying it, and wishing people would let her alone! But all this was to no purpose. Mr. Delafield’s impulse had subsided, and though his manner towards her was always kind, affectionate, and brotherly, he never spoke to her of love or marriage, except sometimes to ask her teasingly if “if they were not both of them almost old enough to get married.”

Still she did not despair, for of his own accord he had accompanied her and her cousin to Europe, whither he had always intended to go, and though he had left them some months before, Mrs. Johnson was willing to leave Paris, where Ada’s beauty attracted much attention from the polite Frenchmen, she would not believe he was at all weary of her, but rather, as he had said, that his business required his immediate return to America.

Latterly Mrs. Lansing had in a measure espoused her cause, and knowing, as she did, of the recent repairs at Sunny Bank, said by Richard to be for the benefit of his bride, she began again to entertain sanguine hopes of eventually becoming Mrs. Delafield, provided the governess did not, by her foolish tattling, mar her prospects.