“By the way, Mrs. Grey, I forgot to tell you that I met Mr. Sinclair down-stairs, and he begged me to inquire if you had received a message from him. Can I be of service in taking him your reply?”
“O poor man! I quite forgot him,” exclaimed the easily diverted Clara, as she stooped to pick up the neglected flowers. “Thank you for your kind offer, but I had better run down myself, and apologize for my apparent rudeness.” And, hastily wiping her eyes, she threw a shawl over her shoulders and a becoming white rigolette about her head, and with a graceful bow of apology she left the room.
“Extraordinary woman!” thought the doctor. “One would suppose that a dying brother would be an excuse, even to that puppy Sinclair. I wish he had had to wait longer—it wouldn't have hurt him a bit—he has never had half enough of it to do. And what the devil is he coming here for now, anyhow?” he added to his former charitable reflections, as he went to join Assunta in her faithful vigil beside the unconscious and apparently dying man.
Mr. Sinclair met Mrs. Grey at the foot of the stairs with an assumption of interest and anxiety which successfully concealed his inward impatience. But truly it would have been difficult to resist that appealing face, with its traces of recent tears and the flush caused by excited feeling.
As a general thing, with all due deference to poetic opinion, “love is (not) loveliest when embalmed in tears.” But Mrs. Grey was an exception to many rules. Her emotion was usually of the April-shower sort, gentle, refreshing, even beautifying. Very little she knew of the storm of suffering which desolates the heart, and whose ravages leave a lasting impression upon the features. Such emotions also sometimes, but rarely, leave a beauty behind them; but it is a beauty not of this world, the beauty of holiness; not of Mrs. Grey's kind, for it never would have touched Mr. Sinclair as hers did now.
“My dear Mrs. Grey,” he said, taking her hand in both his, “how grieved I am to see you showing so plainly the results of care and watching! Privileged as he must be who is the recipient of such angelic ministrations, I must yet protest—as a friend, I trust I have a right to do so—against such over-exertion on your part. You will be ill yourself; and then who or what will console me?”
Mr. Sinclair knew this was a fiction. He knew well enough that Mrs. Grey had never looked fresher or prettier in her life. But the rôle he had assigned to himself was the dangerously tender one of sympathy; and where a sufficient occasion for displaying his part was not supplied, he must needs invent one.
Clara was not altogether deceived, for, as she put her lace-bordered [pg 070] handkerchief to her eyes, from which the tears began again to flow, she replied:
“You are mistaken, Mr. Sinclair. I am quite well, and not at all fatigued; while dear Assunta is thin and pale, and thoroughly worn out with all she has done. I can never be grateful enough to her.”
Had the lady raised her eyes, she might have been astonished at the expression of contempt which curled Mr. Sinclair's somewhat hard mouth, as he rejoined: