“Shame on me to laugh about it,” she resumed, looking very grave. “It has cost too much suffering to laugh about. And yet,” she ran on, rippling again into golden laughter, “I can’t help it. I’m so happy! And it is such a pleasure to have found the track of the fox that stole the grapes! Well, Fernando! you’re a nice young man! And oh, Cupid, Cupid, you weren’t painted with the bandaged eyes for nothing, you rogue! But, bless me, here am I chattering to myself, and Emily to be covered, dinner nearly ready, and I not dressed.”
She broke off to hasten to a bureau, from a lower drawer of which she took a grey silk coverlet to lay over Emily, and went swiftly from the room.
Emily was sleeping deeply, with a faint color in her pallid and lovely face. Bending over her, Muriel covered her with the quilt, and kissing her forehead softly as a spirit, darkened the room, and left her. Then going down to her mother, and warning her not to disturb the sleeper, she hurried up to her chamber, and finished dressing herself just as Bridget, a comely little Irish girl who waited at table when they dined alone, came up to summon her to dinner.
Charmingly attired in a robe of black silk, with an open corsage of snowy lace, and looking more radiantly fair than ever, Muriel came down to dinner, and during the meal entertained her mother with a circumstantial account of her noon adventure. The story, of course, made a sensation, as the popular phrase goes; but as far as Muriel was concerned, Mrs. Eastman listened without shuddering or chiding. She had such perfect confidence in her daughter’s ability to take care of herself, and such a conviction that everything she did befitted her—for, like Shakspeare’s Cleopatra, Muriel shed the artistic grace of her nature on all her actions, and compelled them to become her ornaments—that she heard the part she had played in the wild scene not only without discomposure, but with considerable pride and admiration, thinking at the same time how proud Mr. Eastman would have been of the way his child had borne herself. As he would, for his wishes for Muriel were well expressed in the noble lines of Ben Jonson, of which he was very fond:
“I meant the day-star should not brighter ride,
Nor shed like influence from his lucent seat:
I meant she should be courteous, facile, sweet,
Free from that solemn vice of greatness, pride!
I meant each softest virtue there should meet,
Fit in that softer bosom to abide: