In other words, I had ideas of my own on the subject of love. As the six-year-old New Yorker said, when he was asked if he had no one little girl whom he loved better than any one else in the world, "show me the boy of my age in New York that hasn't!" so I can say, show me the girl of seventeen who does not think herself an adept in all the signs and tokens of true love. And I soon settled it in my own mind, that, when brought to the test of severe and impartial criticism, Mr. Marshall did not exhibit one evidence of real love, beyond an apparent preference for my society. That the preference was apparent and not real his abstraction and indifference convinced me. At first, considering it a duty I owed to society to talk to those with whom I was thrown, unless they would kindly relieve me of this obligation, I tasked myself to weariness to find some topic of mutual interest between my constant attendant and myself. My remarks were all politely listened and replied to, and then he fell back into his state of reverie and silence. If there had not been a shade of melancholy about him, I should hardly have felt so patiently towards him for engrossing so much of my time, while his thoughts were evidently far away. But I had settled it in my own mind that he had been in love, and that the lady of his love had died—this accounted for his sadness and abstraction; and that some resemblance between the lost lady and myself attracted him to me.
This little romance gave him quite an interest to me, which was somewhat lessened by the discovery that he shared in the village love of gossip. I found that the only subjects that could interest him at all were the petty daily events that occurred to Virginia and myself, for we were constantly together. About these he was never weary of hearing, and would ask me the minutest questions, and by his pleased attention beguile me into long talks about such mere trifles that I used to blush to recall them, and then, as soon as I entered on some topic of higher or more general interest, it needed but little discernment to discover that courtesy alone prompted the attention he gave me.
At last I began to grow quite weary of attentions which I could not persuade myself were prompted by anything but recollections of the dead, and spoke of Lieutenant Marshall to Virginia, my only confidant, constantly, as "that tiresome man." Perhaps it was owing to her desire to relieve me of one of my heaviest burdens that she so often made one in our tête-à-têtes, and by infusing a great deal more spirit and life in our conversation, assisted me greatly. I do not know how it happened, but we both brightened wonderfully when Virginia joined us, and although I might have been half asleep with intense dulness a few moments before, I generally found myself very soon wide awake, and with auditors so attentive and easily pleased that I began to be quite uplifted with elevated ideas of my own newly developed conversational powers. One evening, there was a little gathering of young people in a house where the hostess did not approve of dancing. We were all seated in a stiff circle round the room doing our best to amuse and be amused by rational conversation. The appearance of things was very unpromising, and the lady of the house seemed quite uneasy; at last she proposed a promenade, and anything to break up the monotony was eagerly caught at. The ladies and gentlemen, like prisoners marching for exercise, were soon walking in at one door and out at another with great precision and order. I expected Mr. Marshall to ask me to join the staid procession, but perhaps marching seemed too much like work to him, for he proposed instead a game of backgammon. This had always appeared to me an uninteresting, rattling, flighty sort of a game; but to amuse so sorrow-stricken a man I would even have played checkers.
Before we had finished the first game, I felt a hand lightly resting on my shoulder, and looking round, saw Virginia seated close behind me. This was very kind in her, and I felt it to the depths of my heart. She was a great favorite in Louden, and to leave all who would have exerted themselves to please and amuse her, to sit quietly with me in a dull corner looking over a game of backgammon, was an effort of friendship of which I hardly thought that, in similar circumstances, I should have been capable. When the game was ended, I made a movement to close the board, but Mr. Marshall asked me so earnestly for one more, just one more, that I consented. However, I took an opportunity, while he was stooping to pick up some of the men that had dropped, to whisper. "You need not stay here, Virginia. You'll be dreadfully tired, and I don't mind much being left alone; there's Charles Foster looking quite distressed because you won't walk with him."
"No, dear," said Virginia, very affectionately, "there is not a person in the room I like half so well to stay with as you."
A stranger, far away from home, these words of affection from one whom I had loved from the first, touched me powerfully, and almost involuntarily I pressed my lips to her cheek as it was bent towards me. Fortunately this little effusion passed unobserved, and Mr. Marshall and I resumed our game. But I turned several times to look at Virginia, attracted by a beauty in her that I had never noticed before. Her features were regular and her countenance pleasing, but her complexion was so colorless, and her expression so composed and unvarying, that I had never heard her called even pretty; but that night she looked positively beautiful. Her lips were crimson, her cheeks delicately flushed, and there was a glow and light over her whole face, and a glittering sparkle in her eye, as though some internal flame was informing her whole being with warmth and brightness. I did not wonder that Mr. Marshall was so struck by the change that his eyes rested often and admiringly upon her, so that he hardly seemed to know what he was doing.
"Virginia! Pauline! do come here," said a laughing girl, looking in from the piazza to which the whole party but our little group had retreated. I started up to obey the summons, for the sounds of merriment and laughter, mingled with the notes of a favorite negro melody, drew me with an irresistible attraction. Mr. Marshall and Virginia did not move.
"Finish my game for me, will you?" said I to Virginia; "I will return in a moment." But my moment lengthened into nearly half an hour, for four gentlemen of the party who were noted for their musical skill had been persuaded to send for their instruments and sing and play for us. This they did so well that it was with reluctance that at last I fulfilled my promise of returning.
Virginia was playing with the backgammon men as I entered, and Lieutenant Marshall was talking to her in a low tone.
"There he is, just as tiresome as ever," thought I; but we do not live in the palace of Youth now, so that I said, as I approached them—