"How girlish she looks," he whispered to his heart, "and how pure! I do not see how I ever ventured to address her with the words of earthly passion, though the angels know there is more of heaven than earth in our love. My own Annie—my own wife!"
Blending with the odor of a japonica, leaning from a slender vase on the ormolu table, almost kissing the cheek of its human sister, came a refreshing breath of oriental perfume from the supper-room—the breath of the rarest Flower of Delight, steeping in its silver urn. The light, the luxury of his home diffused a sense of physical enjoyment through the physician's nerves, while the sight of his wife, in her fresh and innocent beauty, thrilled his spirit.
"How happy I am—how fortunate in every thing! Blessed Annie! In my absence she solaces herself with my picture;" and, thinking to call up the still frequent blush to her face by betraying her in this secret occupation, he stole softly and peeped over her shoulder.
It was not his own face upon which his eyes fell, smiling back at his bride from its framework of jewels—it was that of Maurice Gurnell. And he never knew before that she had such a miniature in her possession; yet now it flashed through his brain that he had seen that very locket in Maurice's own keeping a short time before he left for Europe, and that he, Maurice, had asked him if he thought the likeness good, for he had gotten it painted for his betrothed, if he should ever have one.
Just as these thoughts were printing themselves in letters of fire upon his blank mind, the breath which he caught with a gasp from his breast fluttered his wife's light tresses, and she sprung to her feet, with only a passing look of embarrassment. The next instant she laughed her girlish laugh, and threw her arms about his neck, kissing him twice or thrice without waiting to find if he kissed her in return. The locket at which she had been gazing had disappeared within the folds of her dress, slipped into her pocket, or, perhaps, into the bosom beating against his own.
Dr. Carollyn endured her embraces, but he did not return them; he stood like one in a dream—past, present and future swept over him like the storm-sand over a desert, obliterating all traces of what has been—changing the landscape so that he who had lived there a lifetime can not recognize a familiar feature. It was Annie's arms that he felt about him, and Annie's words of welcome sounding in his ears. But who was Annie? Was she the wife in whose utter absence of guile of every kind he trusted as he trusted in God and immortality? or was it Annie, suddenly revealed to him in a character so different, that he felt toward her as toward a disliked and suspected stranger? His wife—yet his lip could not frame the word—his heart revolted at it.
"What is the matter, Leger? Are you ill?"
"No; only hungry."
She laughed; she was too accustomed to his affection to take offense now at some little passing cloud of ill-temper.
"I believe you are, and weary, too. But you needn't be cross about it. Come, tea has been waiting some time, I believe."