"She will spend the whole night like this," her mother whispered, drawing me away. "The nurse watches her steadily and Bayard occupies the next room, but they are never disturbed. She dozes quietly the whole night long. To-morrow she will know you and talk to you. You must go to your room now, my dear, for you are tired and travel-worn. Come, I will show you the way," she added, putting her arm around my waist and leading me out of the room.
When we reached the door we were met by the timid hero of the sitting-room, who now found himself almost in our arms. He was making a stealthy entrance, and we a stealthy exit, and we came upon one another so suddenly that we all three stood motionless and silent for an awkward second or so.
Madame de Beaumont relieved the stupid situation by saying, "Miss Hampden, this is my son, I suppose you know him already by name."
I was too surprised to say or do anything appropriate. I merely raised my eyes and inclined my head a little, and worked my way through the door with an impatience almost equal to that with which he had flown from the room which we had invaded an hour or so before.
In a few minutes more I was safe and secure in my own apartment, free to sit down quietly and make out a calm realization of the whole state of affairs for my own private benefit. The figure I had just left standing in the opposite doorway came back to me now, more clearly-defined in memory than he was to my corporal eyes as they rested on him. He was a handsome fellow, very handsome, but how strange looking, with his rich embroidered gown falling about him in heavy folds, and his cap shoved back off his brow, throwing his marked features into exquisite relief, this was Hortense's brother of whom she had never spoken to me, whose name I had never heard until to-night! This was Bayard de Beaumont!
I stood up and began to unfasten my trinkets, and my eyes were instinctively raised to a picture which hung over the mirror beside me. It consisted of two photographs in a pretty delicate frame, one was Bayard's, the other was a woman's, not his mother's, nor his sister's. It was of some one I had never seen. I raised the lamp above my head and scrutinized it. It was a beautiful face, but one of cold, passive loveliness. There was something in the handsome mouth which made me wince as I looked upon it, and those large speaking eyes. What a depth theirs was, too deep, I thought, too alluring, might not one get lost in such labyrinths as these?
I gazed upon the picture until my hand, exhausted, trembled with the lighted lamp it held, and even then I had not seen it half enough but I turned away and went on in moody thoughtfulness with my final preparations for retiring.
I knelt and said my evening prayers, with many a struggle against teasing distractions, I must admit.
Such a queer nature was mine! I do not know whether others resemble me or not in this respect, but from my young girlhood, I have always been led away by those faces, books, sounds or pictures, that are suggestive of any kind of deep or pent up emotion. I know not exactly whether it be that I look upon them as associated in some dim distant way with my own uneventful life, yet how could that be? What have vagrant strains of unfamiliar music conceived by unknown minds, and played by unseen hands to do with the mechanism of one undreamt of human soul? What can those heart-moving pages of the authors I love, have to do with the issue of an existence of which they have never heard nor thought? What part could these fascinating faces have played in the personal drama of my life, when they have never been called upon to bestow even the tame smile of conventional greeting upon me? What bearing could those speaking pictures have upon the story of my individual experience when they are often the only reflection of days long past and forgotten, children of some pensive artist's fancy that never had another life outside of his conception, than that infused by brush or chisel? Yet it always seems to me that as I look into those books and faces, or as I lend my ear to those engaging sounds, some chord vibrates within me that makes me feel as if my memory were struggling to awake from some lethargy: scenes and sorrows of my yesterdays come back for a short moment to my vivid recollection, and seem to hang around these powerful incentives in a misty halo. It may be the caprice of an extravagant imagination, it may be the freak of a foolish fancy, an empty day-dream, an idle reverie, but to me while it lasts, it is sweeter than any reality.
Thus was it with this picture that hung upon my bedroom wall that night. I could not take my eyes from it. There I lay, tired and travel-worn, on an easy bed; but the light burned beside me and I could not sleep. Something held my gaze fixed upon the opposite wall. I could but stare and wonder at the curious loveliness of that woman's face, and ask myself doubtfully over and over again whether such beauty always engenders proportionate happiness for its possessor.