There was a world of pathos and pity in Rex’s voice as he said, “Poor little Louie!” and stood looking at her handwriting and thinking of the beautiful girl whom he might perhaps have won for his own. But if any regret for what might have been mingled with his thoughts, he gave no sign of it, except that the expression of his face was a shade more serious as he put the book back in its place and prepared for bed, where he lay awake a long time, thinking of Louie, and Squint-Eye, and the girl he had knocked down on the ship, and Rose Arabella Jefferson, whose face was the last he remembered before going to sleep.
The next morning was bright and fair, with no trace of the storm visible except in the freshened foliage and the puddles of water standing here and there in the road, and Rex, as he looked from his window upon the green hills and valleys, felt a pang of disappointment that the place he so coveted could never be his. Breakfast was waiting when he went down to the dining-room, and while at the table he spoke of Louie and asked if she were not a cousin.
“Oh, yes,” Dorcas said, quickly, a little proud of this grand relation. “Louie’s mother and ours were sisters. She told Bertha she knew you. Isn’t she lovely?”
Rex said she was lovely, and that he had known her since she was a child, and had been in college with her husband. Then he changed the conversation by inquiring about the livery-stables in town. He would like, he said, to drive about the neighborhood a little before returning to New York, and see the old cemetery where so many Hallams were buried.
“Horses enough, but you’ve got to walk into town to get them. If old Bush will answer your purpose you are quite welcome to him,” Mr. Leighton said.
“Thanks,” Rex replied. “I am already indebted to you for so much that I may as well be indebted for more. I will take old Bush, and perhaps Miss Leighton will go with me as a guide.”
This Dorcas was quite willing to do, and the two were soon driving together through the leafy woods and pleasant roads and past the old houses, where the people came to the doors and windows to see what fine gentleman Dorcas Leighton had with her. Every one whom they met spoke to Dorcas and inquired for Bertha, in whom all seemed greatly interested.
“Your sister must be very popular. This is the thirteenth person who has stopped you to ask for her,” Rex said, as an old Scotchman finished his inquiries by saying, “She’s a bonnie lassie, God bless her.”
“She is popular, and deservedly so. I wish you knew her,” was Dorcas’s reply; and then as a conviction, born he knew not when or why, kept increasing in Rex’s mind, he asked, “Would you mind telling me how she looks? Is she dark or fair? tall or short? fat or lean?”
Dorcas answered unhesitatingly, “She is very beautiful,—neither fat nor lean, tall nor short, dark nor fair, but just right.”