“And very handsome,” exclaimed Helen; adding, “so at least Malcolm writes me. He praises him highly, declares that he possesses great personal attractions, and is sure—I—we shall all like him much.”
“He did not name him in the few lines he wrote to me,” said Margaret.
“But he did to you, Eva, did he not?” remarked Helen, turning her brilliant eyes with a mocking glance upon her youngest sister.
A gush of tears came again into the eyes of Evangeline. She did not raise them from her employment, that her emotion might be seen by her sisters. She answered with a quivering lip, and in a low, faltering tone.
“I suppose Malcolm had not time to write to me. I have had no letter from him since he has been gone.”
Margaret smiled. She was not accustomed to laugh.
“You! Absurd! do you think he would write to you? what conceit!” she observed, with a gesture of contempt.
What other feeling should she entertain for a sister who possessed merely the cardinal virtues, and was utterly deficient in an appreciation of worldly pomps and vanities?
At this part of the conversation, there was a tap at the door of the apartment; it opened at the same moment, and an individual, attired in a suit of black of the most approved court dress cut, advanced into the room. The eyes of the family were turned upon him, but he scarcely appeared to be disposed to collapse under that honour. His neck was garnished with an unexceptionable cravat, which was arranged with such precision that it seemed to be wrought in alabaster and carved elaborately. His wig—for as he confessed to admiring confreres, he had dispensed with his “own ’air”—looked as though it had been subjected to a severe storm of whitewash and had been violently brushed. He approached his master, and, bending over him, said, in a confidential manner, yet with a gesture of grave but humble deference.
“Thet pesson is come, sir!”