“This is for your mistress,” he said, thrusting the letter into the hand of the maid, and turning away hastily, but not so fast that he saw his wife spring upright, eagerly, to receive the missive. The door closed quickly on him and he went back to the parlor with a strangely heavy heart.
The little group of women started guiltily at his entrance, and he knew by their looks that they had been discussing him and his troubles; but no one said a word, only Louise Barry gave him a look of silent sympathy from her golden eyes that spoke volumes.
“What a stately beauty she is,” he thought, and suddenly remembered all that Molly had told him of her step-sister’s strange beauty.
“She is handsome; but her eyes with their strange yellow gleams make one think of a tigress,” he mused, and then he asked himself, soberly:
“If this one had come to Ferndale instead of that misguided girl could I have loved her as I loved that little enchantress?”
It almost seemed to him like a wrong to that handsome, high-born beauty when his heart impetuously answered no.
There came to him a memory of what his brother had said yesterday:
“What is there in a name that you should hate her so? She is the same girl you loved and married, call her by what name you will.”
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Miss Barry’s voice recalled him to the present. She was persuading his mother to share their opera-box that night.