“I’ve put things together, and that’s the way they sum up to me. That young man with her can beat all of our boys, and he’s going to crown her.”
“Is he?” ejaculated Mell.
Let him dare to do it! Before Jerome Devonhough should place a victor’s crown on Clara Rutland’s head, she would—well, what would she do? “Anything!” muttered Mell, between her teeth.
Poor Mell! She had been to such an expensive school and learned so many things, and not one of them was of the slightest use to her in this sore strait. Could there not be established a new school for girls, differing materially from the old; founded upon a more adaptable basis, taught after a hitherto unknown method, and including prominently in its curriculum of studies, that branch of knowledge whose acquisition enables a woman to bear long, to suffer in silence, and in weakness to be strong? These are the practical issues in a woman’s daily life, and although in such a school she might not get her money’s worth in German gutturals and French verbs, she would, at least, have indulged in a less reckless expenditure of time in obtaining useless knowledge.
But let us not blame the schools over much, and without a just discrimination. Not all the fault lies at their door. Something there is amiss among the girls themselves. It may be, that they love and hate, and talk too much, even in one language.
In a girl of Mell’s temperament, love would not have been love, lacking jealousy, and its twin-feeling, revenge. More’s the pity, Mell!
That picnic dinner was splendid. Everybody enjoyed it but Mell, and it was not the young fisherman’s fault that she did not. Although he was in attendance upon another young lady, who seemed to know what to say, and said it incessantly, he kept an eye on Mell, and proffered her every tempting dish he could lay his hands upon. To no purpose; for Mell could not eat. She tried, and the very first mouthful paralyzed her ability to swallow. It was altogether as much as she could do to keep from sobbing aloud in the faces of all these omnivorous, happy people. What made it all the worse, at breakfast time she had been happier than they—too happy, in fact, to eat, and now, here at dinner, she was too miserable.
And there sat the author of all her misery, not twelve feet distant, perfectly oblivious to her proximity, nay, her very existence. Not by any chance did he ever look toward her, or show any consciousness of her presence. So devoted and so marked were his attentions to that uninteresting and anything but attractive Clara Rutland, that Mell heard it commented upon on all sides. These two, so sufficient unto themselves, were among the first to leave the festal board and wander off in sylvan haunts. Anon, all appetites were satisfied, and amid the buzzing of tongues and boisterous flashes of merriment, the multitude again dispersed. Unobserved and in a very unenviable frame of mind, the unhappy Mell stole away to herself. The paramount desire of her wounded spirit was to get beyond the ken of human eye. In a hidden recess screened by an overhanging rock, she sat down, the prey of such discordant and chaotic thoughts as wear away, in time, the bulwarks of reason. It was yesterday, no, the day before, no, longer, that he had called upon God to witness that she alone was dear to him, she only precious in his sight, and now, how stands the case? Ah, dear God, you heard him say it! Oh, All-seeing Eye, you have looked upon him this day, and will not a lightning blast from an indignant Heaven palsy the false tongue, whose words have no more meaning than loose rubble!
Into the heaviness of these thoughts, growing heavier with access of bitterness 272 as the moments sped, there came the ringing tones of a voice—a voice well known to Mell.