Jessamine. Marion Harland
of stone in Mr. Fordham's hand. "I think there's ore in it."
Roy inspected it closely.
"Miss Jessie"—he gave her no more familiar address in the hearing of common acquaintances—"is your father in his study?"
"I believe so," she replied, eyeing the intruder less amiably than her lover had done, in the anticipation of the prolonged interruption.
"Mr. Kirke has an acid that will test this in a few minutes," continued Fordham to the boy. "Will you excuse me for a little while?" turning to Jessie with a smile loving for herself, and entreating her forbearance for his protégé.
Her ill-humor vanished instantly under the benignant ray.
"Certainly!" she replied, nodding cordially to the bashful lad. "He is the noblest man God ever made!" she said aloud, when she was alone.
She leaned back in her easy chair, her hands folded in blissful contentment, enjoying the breeze from the mountains, the sunset clouds, the incense from the flower-garden, and the hum of the mill-wheel, mentally recapitulating her hero's perfections, until her heart ached with happy sighs, and she saw the landscape through an iridescent haze.
"I am a baby!" was her indignant ejaculation, as she cleared her eyes with an impatient brush of her hand. "I grow more ridiculous every day!"
As a means of growing wiser, she fell to watching her sister and Orrin Wyllys, who were busy tying up wandering rose-bushes in Eunice's pet labyrinth. Mr. Wyllys had his back to Jessie, when she first observed them. He was fastening back a branch which Miss Kirke held in its place, and their hands were very close together. It may have been this circumstance, it may have been the heat of the day, or the reflection of a bunch of pink moss-roses overhead—it could hardly have been anything which her companion was saying which brought the delicate roseate flush to the face usually pale and calm. His attitude was far too dignified and respectful to hint the possibility of gallant badinage on his part. Bonâ-fide love-making was, of course, out of the question, since they had not known each other ten days.
"Euna is handsome!" mused her sister in complacent affection. "What a high-bred face and bearing she has! She looks the lady in her morning-gowns of print and dimity; but that lawn with the forget-me-not sprig becomes her rarely. I am glad I insisted upon her putting it on. But she wouldn't let me fasten the lilies-of-the-valley in her hair! Her only fault is a tendency to primness. She and Mr. Wyllys get on admirably together. He evidently admires her, and it is a treat to her to have the society of a cultivated gentleman. I know," smiling and blushing anew, "it is a salvo to my conscience to see them satisfied with each other's company, needing Roy and myself as little as we need them. I should else blame myself for our seeming selfishness."
Rambling on discursively, she struck upon an idea, too fraught with delightsome mischief not to urge her to immediate action. Eunice had turned her head away, and Orrin was concealed by a tall shrub. The grassy alley leading from the porch to where they were standing would not give back the sound of footsteps. How frightened and amazed the careful elder sister would be, if she were to steal down the walk and present herself before her! How solemnly Orrin would look on while she submitted to be lectured for her imprudence, and how she, in the end would triumph over her custodians, Roy included (who, by the way, was staying away an unconscionable time), when she should demonstrate that she knew better than they what she could do and bear; that she was none the worse for the escapade that had wrought their consternation. She only regretted that she must lose the sight of Roy's horrified visage when he should return to discover her flight.
Her eyes gleaming with mirth, she arose cautiously, favoring the unused joint, and stepped off the low piazza. Even when she felt the cool, delicious turf under foot, she steadied herself by grasping the nearest objects that offered a support. First it was a clump of box, then the stout prickly branches of a Japan apple-tree, then a fan-shaped trellis, which would by and by be covered with Cyprus vines. She would do nothing rashly—would come to her own by degrees. But when another step would bring her within arms' length of the florists, she trod firmly upon both feet, and feeling neither pain nor weakness, laughed aloud in wicked glee, and took that step. She saw Eunice start and grow white; saw Orrin's grave yet courtly surprise as he advanced to offer his arm. Ere he could reach her, the treacherous ankle gave way with a wrench that drove breath and sense in one quick shuddering breath from her body.
As they left her, she heard, like a strain of far-off music, a voice say in her ear, "My poor child!" had a dizzy thought that strong arms—stronger than Eunice's—received her.
Then, all was a blank until she awoke upon her lounge, hair and face dripping with wet; the scent of sal volatile tingling in her nostrils, and a cluster of anxious faces about her. Eunice's was the first she knew, Roy's next. He was on his knees by her, chafing her hands. She pulled them feebly from his hold, and clasped them about his neck, hiding her eyes upon his bosom.
"O, Roy! I was very wrong! very foolish! Don't scold me."
"Hush! hush!" he said, soothingly. "Nobody thinks of scolding you! If you apologize to any one, it must be to this gentleman. He brought you into the house, and I suspect his arms want looking after more than your foot does."
He laughed, not quite steadily, in saying it, and Jessie felt his fingers tighten upon hers. She flushed up rosily—was herself again, as she looked around for Orrin. He was in the rear of the family party, as was seemly, but his eyes were bent upon her with a singular fixedness—the irids closing in upon a spark that flashed and pierced like steel. Involuntarily, she shut hers, for a second, as if blinded.
He came forward at that.
"Don't believe him!" said the same voice that had sent its echo through her swoon. "I am none the worse for the slight exertion. I consider myself very fortunate in having been near enough to help you, when you fainted—am very thankful that you are better. Come with me, Roy! Here is the doctor! If he scolds you, Miss Jessie, please consider me your champion."
The doctor, being an old friend, did scold the "madcap," who had, he for a while averred, undone his and Nature's fortnight's work. Relenting, finally, at Jessie's pretty show of penitence, he confessed that less harm had been done than he had expected, and contented himself with sentencing the delinquent to two days' strict confinement to the sofa, and "serious meditation upon what might have been the result of her imprudence—her reckless step."
"My misstep, you mean," said the incorrigible patient. "If I had not lain here so long already as to forget how to walk straightly and squarely, and to maintain the centre of gravity, this would not have happened."
Altogether, the evening was gayer than usual to all. Jessie's spirits were exuberant to a degree her sister feared was hysterical, and Orrin seconded her sallies with a quieter humor, that amused the rest and enchanted her.
"It was worth my while to faint!" she owned to him, sotto voce, when he came up to say "Good-night." "I wish I had done it before!"
Her cheeks were red with excitement; her eyes laughed up into his with arch meaning that was very bewitching and very indiscreet. His pupils contracted suddenly to the blue spark, and his left palm covered the little hand he held within his right.
"You are very kind!" was all he said with his lips.
"What treason are you two whispering there?" questioned Roy.
"Nothing that concerns you in the least!" answered Jessie, saucily. "We will keep our own counsel—won't we?" to Orrin.
He was too sensible to lie awake thinking, at an hour when people with accommodating consciences and gutta-percha hearts are wont to sleep soundly. Nor had he ever contracted the unsafe and irrational habit of talking audibly to himself—one to which poor Jessie was addicted. Yet he had his thoughts as he put out the candle in his bedroom that night.
"She is either a born flirt, and over-anxious to practise her calling, or she is the most charming, because most novel compound of naïveté, cleverness, and feeling that has crossed my path for many a day. In either case, she is a study."
The best and the