“Or is the child falling in love?” chimed in Alice; but without raising her eyes from her empty coffee-cup, in the bottom of which she was writing and re-writing her initials with the spoon.
To all the rest of the company these words seemed as light and careless as the wind. Not so to Mary. Her heart leaped; but, by some subtle process known only to women, she forbade the blood to mount into her cheek.
“I warn you to beware,” said Mr. Whacker. “Full many a heart has been lost in this house!”
“All hearts, I must believe,” rejoined Mary, with a bow and half-coquettish smile.
My grandfather placed his hand upon his heart and bent low over the table, amid the approving plaudits of the company. Charley did the same. “There are two of us,” he explained; “Uncle T-T-Tom and myself.”
“He is laughing now; how he seems to admire Mr. Frobisher! But why did he turn pale, just now, at the mention of Lucy’s name? I have never read anywhere of love’s producing that effect, certainly. Perhaps—perhaps, after all, he did not change color. My imagination, doubtless. No, I am not mistaken! Why, his brow is actually beaded with perspiration! incomprehensible enigma! would to heaven I had never met him! and yet—”
If any of my young readers shall be so indiscreet as to fall in love with enigmas, let them not lay the folly to my charge. I most solemnly warn them against it.
Poor little Mary watched the Don all that day with that scrutiny so piercing, and yet so unobtrusive, of which a woman’s eye alone is capable,—hopefully fearing to discover the truth of what she fearfully hoped was not true; but it was not before the sun had sunk low in the west, and she had begun to convince herself of the illusory character of her observations at the breakfast-table, that she got such reward as that of the woman who, after twenty years’ searching, at last found a burglar under her bed.
As the time approached at which the Poythress family should arrive (at their home across the river), my grandfather would go out upon the piazza every few minutes, and after looking across the broad river return and report that there were no signs of the carriage.
“It is not yet time by half an hour,” said Charley, looking at his watch.