"On Thursday night, mademoiselle, Miss Henderson is 'At Home'. The cards will be issued to-day. Come and practice 'Come Where my Love Lies Dreaming.' Captain Cavendish takes the tenor, and Lieutenant Blank the bass. We must charm our friends with it that night."
Miss Henderson did not invite all her dear five hundred friends that Thursday night—the cottage-rooms would not have held them. As it was, the pretty dining-room and parlor were well filled, and the heiress stood receiving her guests with the air of a royal princess holding a drawing-room. She looked brilliantly beautiful, in her dress of rich mauve silk sweeping the carpet with its trailing folds, its flounces of filmy black lace, a circlet of red gold in her dead black hair, twisted in broad shining plaits around her graceful head, a diamond necklace and cross blazing like a river of light around her swanlike throat, and a diamond bracelet flashing on one rounded arm. Speckport, ah! ever-envious Speckport, said these were but Australian brilliants, and that the whole set had not cost three hundred dollars in New York; but Speckport had nothing like them, and Speckport never looked on anything so beautiful as Olive Henderson that night. She was no longer wan and haggard; her dark cheeks had a scarlet suffusion under the brown skin, and the majestic eye a radiance that seemed more and more glorious every time you saw her.
No one could complain that night of caprice or coquetry, or partiality; all were treated alike; Tom Oaks, Lieutenant Blank, Mr. Val Blake, and Captain Cavendish; she had enchanting smiles, and genial hostess-like courtesies for all, love for none. Whatever beat in the heart throbbing against the amber silk, the lace and the diamonds of her bodice, she only knew—the beautiful dark face was a mask you could not read.
Miss Henderson's reception was a grand success; Mrs. Hill's supper something that immortalized her forever after in Speckport. The guests went home in the gray morning light with a dazed feeling that they had been under a spell all night, and were awakening uncomfortably from it now. They were under the spell of those magical smiles, of that entrancing face and voice—a spell they were powerless to withstand, which fascinated all against their better judgment, which made poor Tom Oaks wander up and down in the cold, before the cottage, until sunrise, to the imminent risk of catching his death; which made half a score of his young towns-men lose their sleep and their appetite, and which made Captain George Percy Cavendish pace up and down his room in a sort of fever for two mortal hours, thrilling with the remembrance of the flashing light in those black eyes, in the bewildering touch of those hands. For you see, Captain Cavendish, having set a net to entrap an heiress, was getting hopelessly entangled in its meshes himself, and was drunk with the draught he would have held to her lips.
And so the reeling world went round, and she who wove the spell, who turned the heads, and dazed the hot brains of these young men, lay tossing on a sleepless pillow, sleepless with the excitement of the dead hours, sleepless with something far worse than excitement—remorse!
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE SPELL OF THE ENCHANTRESS.
The changes which Mr. Darcy had prophesied were going on at Redmon. Before the middle of May, the transformation had begun. The weird old red-brick house, haunted by so many dismal associations, lay on the ground a great heap of broken bricks and mortar, and the villa was going up with a rapidity only surpassed by Aladdin's palace. Miss Henderson had drawn out the plans herself, and superintended the works, with a clear head and a bright eye for all shortcomings and deficiencies. She rode over every day from the cottage, mounted on her black steed Lightning, her black-velvet cap with its long scarlet-tipped plume flashing in among the workmen, as, with gathered-up skirt, she inspected the progress of the building.
She entered with a true womanly interest into the erection and beautifying of this new home, and had quite got over her superstitious awe of the place. Perhaps this was owing to an artfully-laid plan of that scheming lawyer, Mr. Darcy, who, being absurdly fond of the dark-eyed heiress, and fearful of her depriving Speckport of the light of her beautiful countenance, by flying off somewhere, resolved she should like Redmon, and reside there. Accordingly, about a week after Miss Henderson had gone to the cottage, he had gotten-up a picnic to Redmon—a select picnic, with the military band and a platform for dancing.