"His earnest manner quite convinced me that however he might seem, his sister was really very near his heart, and 'albeit unused to the melting mood,' I felt my eyes fill with tears, as I turned and ran up to Mary's room to comfort her poor heart. She was comforted and quieted, though she declined leaving her room till after Mr. Gardner's departure; and I left her, at her own request, to silent reflection.
"And now you will think all the trouble was over. But did ever faint heart win fair ladie? Never. And Mr. Gardner's heart did not sink when he was told the true story of Mary's indifference and aversion. Both brother and lover had deceived themselves, or rather they had not thought about it. But now that he did think about it, Mr. Gardner was not inclined to relinquish the pursuit. He knew that women were fickle and strange beings, and oft-times refused the very happiness they were dying to possess. Whether Mary were of this species he knew not, but at all events the prize was worth trying for. So he told Mr. Dunbar he would not trouble Mary more at present, but leave it to time. Time did a great many things. Time might make him acceptable to the very heart that now tossed him as a scorned thing away.
"Now Alice, my dear child, don't give up my Mary, nor think her a heartless being, when I tell you that in six months from that time she became Mrs. Gardner. A very lovely bride she was, too—pale as a snow-drop, and graceful as the lake-lily. She smiled, too, with a sort of contented smile, not radiant, not heartfelt, not joyous; there were no deeps of her being stirred as she stood calm and passionless by the altar, and promised to love and honor Mr. Gardner, but a very quiet and pensive sort of pleasure. A part of her soul seemed to have been buried with the past, and to have been forcibly crushed down with all its young ardor and bloom forever; but above it was an everyday being, full of determination to do her duty, to make her husband happy, and be as happy herself as she could. So she was married; and so she stepped into a handsome carriage with Mr. Gardner, and the bridemaids and groomsmen followed in another; and never was there a gayer and merrier cavalcade than at Mary Dunbar's marriage.
CHAPTER II.
"Now, my dear girls, you must skip over a few years, during which I neither saw nor heard of Mary Dunbar. I returned from a journey which I had been taking, and was glad to feel that Mr. Gardner's house lay in my nearest route home. I longed to see Mary in her new character, now that she had had time to feel and perform her duties, and proposed to be with her for a few days, that I might form my own opinion touching this 'mariage de convenance.'
"Mr. Gardner's house was one of some pretension originally; that is to say, it had been built in the style of country gentlemen in New England forty years ago. A row of white-pine pillars surrounded the house from roof to basement, and formed a piazza-walk very convenient in a dull day. Six chimneys crowned the roof, and the whole arrangement was tasteful and imposing. There was a terrace of green turf all round the house, and the offices and out-buildings were at a short distance from the main building. As the stage-coach wound up the avenue, I noticed in the disposition of the grounds and shrubbery the evident hand of female taste. Fantastic arbors, almost hid behind clematis and honeysuckle; little white arches supporting twining roses of twenty sorts, and trees arranged in picturesque groups, gave a character of beautiful wildness to the scenery.
"I fancied Mary the presiding genius of the place as I last had seen her, white and bright, with a little rose-tint on her cheek, caught from nature and the happy quiet of her life—for I had heard that she rejoiced in an infant, whose beauty and promise I knew must renew all the affectionate sympathies of her woman's heart.
"The stage-coach stopped. A servant opened the door, and to my inquiry for Mrs. Gardner, answered hesitatingly, that 'he believed she did not wish to see company.' How much of apprehension was compressed into that brief moment. What could have happened to her? Much might have happened, and I not know it, for I had been living in great seclusion, and had had no correspondence with Mary. However, I gave my card to the man, and bade him take it to Mrs. Gardner, meanwhile sitting with a throbbing heart in the carriage.
"The man returned in a short time with a message requesting me to stop, and to have my trunks taken off. Not a welcoming voice or face met me—and in silence I followed the servant to the parlor. Mary was sitting there; some fire was in the grate, though it was in July; and she hovered over it as if she sought to warm her heart enough to show proper feeling at the sight of an old friend.
"'Mary Dunbar!' I cried out, with my arms outspread, for the figure before me of hopelessness and gloom gave me a feeling almost heart-breaking.