“Me! Bless you, my dear—I never trouble myself about such matters. Why should you think so?”
“Oh, I know not. A mere random remark of mine. I thought I had some faint recollection of his flirtation with Laura last winter, and knowing your prudence, supposed you had made the necessary inquiries.”
“You are much mistaken. There never was any thing between them. He is music-mad, and used frequently to come to listen to Laura’s harp. I suppose he thought it but right therefore to show her some attention in public, and hence the world interpreted it into something else. But, I assure you, there was never any thing in it.”
“I never supposed there was. I always thought Laura was merely amusing herself. But how remarkably well she is looking to-night. Who is that distinguished looking man who is paying her such marked attention?”
“That is a Mr. Ernest, who has recently returned from abroad, and has come home a perfect virtuoso, and you know that Laura’s taste lies in the same way.”
“Yes, she certainly admires a mustache, for I notice that of late she encourages no one without that fashionable appendage.”
Whilst Miss Laura Bridgeman was listening complacently to the remarks of the mustached beau by her side, and her mother and Mrs. Grayson, a fashionable widow of no particular age, and childless, were discussing things as above, in another part of the room, where lights and music added to the witchery which bright eyes and lovely forms make, young Dawson was hanging over his newly betrothed.
In the meantime her mother was receiving the congratulations of troops of friends, for Henry Dawson was, in the phrase matrimonial, “the catch of the season.” He had long been an orphan—his fortune was large, his intellect fair and well cultivated, his person and address good, and his whole appearance decidedly gentlemanly and prepossessing. That he should have “fallen in love,” as the phrase goes, with his lively fiancée, none wondered, and save a few anxious mothers, who, like Mrs. Bridgeman, had marriageable daughters, all heartily congratulated him.
The family connection of Mrs. Davidson was most respectable; but left a widow, with limited means and a family of young daughters, she had been condemned to much and close economy to maintain appearances and give her daughters an education to fit them for their proper positions in the world. The three eldest were, as we have seen above, respectably married, and now it is not to be wondered that she rejoiced that her youngest was to be transferred from the narrow economy of her house to the comforts and luxuries which a wealthy husband could bestow.
Did our fair heroine entertain like views? They may have crossed her mind in some of her reveries, but they were but shadows. She had given a young, pure heart with all its rich, unworked mine of virgin gold, without one thought of earthly dross about it. She loved with all the ardent devotion of young love, the handsome, intelligent youth who wooed her with soft words and pleading looks. She loved him for what he was, or what she thought he was, and not for what he had. She knew that his love for her must be most disinterested, for she had naught but herself to give, and she was happy in the feeling of loving and of being beloved.