“But, I don’t!” said Rube. “I will know before I’m much older though, you can depend upon me for that! She’s with Miss Josey.”
Mell did not notice them beyond a casual glance. They had about them, incontestably, an enormous lot of style, but compared to Jerome, they were flat,—awfully flat. She caught a glimpse of him now, this swellest swell of the period, coming down the marble steps of the mansion.
Some one is with him—a lady. Yes, just as she thought, Clara Rutland. Here they come. She, so—so—almost ugly, and he, so—so—so Jerome-like. That’s the only way to express it. Jerome is more than simply handsome, more than merely graceful, more than a man among men—he’s a non-such, in a nut-shell!
But here he is, almost in speaking distance, and every step bringing him nearer. Isn’t he going to be surprised? Isn’t he going to be delighted? Isn’t he going to shake her hand and smile that impenetrable smile, and—?
How is this? Jerome has come and gone. He did not look at her—he did not once raise his eyes in passing.
Just ahead of this poky little vehicle, where Mell awaited the return of Miss Josey, stood a lordly equipage, all silver plate and shine, with a well-dressed groom standing in front of the champing, restive, mettlesome animal, as eager to be off and gone somewhere as the most restless of human hearts in a human bosom.
Into this nobby turnout Jerome assisted Miss Rutland, and then springing in himself, grasped the reins from the groom’s hands. For one awful moment (to Mell) the horse stood straight upon his hind legs, and then, obeying Jerome’s voice, who said in the quietest of tones, ‘Go on, Rhesus,’ gave one wild plunge and dashed ahead, leaving Mell with a stifled feeling, as if she was buried alive under twenty feet of volcanic ashes.
But what did it mean—his passing her without a sign of recognition? Jerome might be of a truant disposition, of unstable fancy, and superior in his own strength to most ordinary rules, but he couldn’t help knowing her face to face. There was a bare possibility that he had not really seen her; his sight, come to think of it, was none of the best, or, at least, he habitually wore an interesting little pince-nez dangling from his button-hole, and sometimes, though not often, stuck it across the bridge of his well-shaped nose with telling effect.
With such arguments, and much wanting to be convinced, Mell recovered her equipoise to some extent, managing to hear about half Miss Josey was saying, and to answer only once or twice very wildly at random. Arrived at their destination, she assisted her patroness in receiving and arranging the baskets; this important contingent of the day’s proceedings being satisfactorily disposed of, they followed the example of the crowd at large 270 and strolled about in search of some amusement. A more delightful location for a day’s outing it would be hard to find, the world over. On three sides of the principal grove, stretched an immense plateau, smooth as a flower-garden, and level as a plumb line, and on the fourth side a sudden, bold declivity, just as if a giant hand had pulled the clustering hills apart and left them wide asunder, laying bare the heart of a magnificent ravine. In this wild gorge were stupendous cliffs and brinks, shady shelves o’erhanging secluded and romantic nooks, enormous rocks holding plentiful treasures in moss and lichen, singularly constructed mounds, probably the remaining deposit of a prehistoric race, wild flowers in variety, wild scenery in perfection, and a beautiful stream of running water, wherein disported finny tribes in abundance. Nothing in the highest art of gardenesque could produce such results as this. A mere ramble amid such scenes of diverse picturesqueness—nature’s wear and tear in moods of passion—amounts to a study of geological architecture under favoring conditions.
Mell loved nature, but not as she loved Jerome. Her brains were crammed with wild speculations in regard to him, which accounts for the fact that she had no mind on that eventful day to invest in all those wonderful manifestations of nature’s power and nature’s mystery.