Jessamine. Marion Harland
which was a surprise to all her friends. We anticipated a brilliant union for her. But she bestowed herself, her talents, her beauty, upon a clerical widower who was twelve years older than herself. My poor Ginevra! it was a strange ending to her sanguine dreams. Mr. Kirke was a scholarly man, it is true, and a thorough gentleman, and of his devotion to her there could be no doubt. It was such worship as few women can inspire. I believe that he tried faithfully to make her happy, but my personal acquaintanceship with him was very slight."
"Kirke!" repeated Orrin, more deliberately and with less emphasis than was his wont, and he was always the reverse of abrupt. His lazy articulation now was almost a drawl. "I know a gentleman—a clergyman of that name—Rev. Donald L. Kirke, resident, now, and I fancy for many years, at Dundee—"
"It is the very same!" Mrs. Baxter started tragically, and leaned gaspingly toward him, her throat swelling like a pouter pigeon's. "And you know him, you say? Tell me something about him—about his family! My sweet cousin left a child, I know. Does it still live? Dundee! yes! that was the quaint Scotch name of my Ginevra's new home. I have always associated it with 'The Cotter's Saturday Night.' You recollect 'Dundee's wild, warbling measures'? Do sit down and tell me all!"
"You should visit Dundee," said Orrin, sauntering back to the fireplace, but declining the seat she offered. "It is a beautiful valley—sheltered from storms by a barricade of picturesque hills. I was there in May, and the climate and flowers—especially the wealth of roses, reminded me of sunny Provence. I became quite well acquainted with Mr. Kirke. He is, as you describe him, a thorough gentleman—one of the genuine 'old school'—handsome, refined, and scholarly. His daughters, of whom there are two, are cultivated ladies. The younger—who is, I presume, the child to whom you refer—is, I have heard, very like her beautiful mother. You would be interested in her, first, for your cousin's sake, but very soon for her own. This matter of family likeness is a curious one. I see now what was the resemblance that puzzled me last Spring. Miss Jessie Kirke might easily be mistaken for your daughter."
"If she were, what a happy woman I should be!" cried the flattered lady, casting up her brown eyes, and raising her clasped hands to a level with her chin. "The relief afforded by your charming description is beyond expression. I have never dared inquire respecting my lost darling's babe. And she is really a Lanneau! Heaven bless her! I feared—how I feared! to hear that she had grown up an awkward rustic, whose faint likeness to her parent would pain, not gratify me. Therefore I have maintained no correspondence with Mr. Kirke since our exchange of letters immediately after his wife's decease. 'Jessie Kirke!' what a riante, piquante, bewitching name!"
"I wish you could prevail upon her father to entrust her to you for a time. She would be a feature in our society this winter. Her face and manners are strikingly attractive, and hers is a style of beauty that will improve with years and knowledge of the world. Her bearing and conversation have much of the fascination which is, I suspect, a family gift. She will grow handsomer until—I cannot say when. Women, like leaves, have their time to fade, and this trying season lies, with a large majority, a little on the bright side of thirty. The Lanneaus have not lost the secret they brought from fair France—the magic that purchases the gift of perennial youth."
"Fie! fie! how you digress! I am dying for information of my beloved young cousin, and you launch into irrelevant gallantries—flattery that is thrown away, let me tell you, upon one of my age and gravity!" frowned Mrs. Baxter with her forehead, her lips openly refractory, and her eyes dancing with delight. "Do sit down and tell me more!"
"I cannot, thank you! I have already bored you with a visit three times as long as I meant it should be. Your cousin does the family credit. I can award her no higher praise. Au revoir!"
"One second!" she entreated, detaining him. "The discoveries of this evening seem trifles to you. To me they are an Event! I shall write to the precious lamb to-morrow. Please give me her address in full."
Orrin dictated, and she wrote it upon her ivory tablets.
"Perhaps it would be as well not to mention me in connection with this renewal of your intercourse with Mr. Kirke's family," he said, carelessly. "Your friendship will be the more welcome if it is supposed that it has its root in your fond recollection of your lamented relative. Excuse the suggestion—but from what I have seen of father and daughters, I am inclined to think them sensitive and proud—as they have a right to be. Your tact hardly needed this hint, however. There is a ring! I have loitered here shamefully! Do you know that your beautiful drawing-room is likened, about town, to Circe's cave?"
CHAPTER VI.
Mr. Wyllys was careful not to repeat his visit within a week. He could trust to the natural growth of the seed he had sown, and he was too politic to appear solicitous, on his own account, for the resumption of cousinly intercourse between the houses of Baxter and Kirke. He did not overrate his influence with the would-be leader of Hamilton society. Four days after his party call, he had a note from Jessie.
"Dear Cousin Orrin:
"I enclose a letter received last night from Mrs. Baxter, wife of the President of Marion College. She is, I have learned from this, my nearest living relative, outside my immediate family circle, being my mother's first cousin. I never heard of her until the arrival of this communication. My father knew her, years ago, but did not remember whom she had married. I little imagined when I listened to Roy's praises of his friend, Dr. Baxter, that I had any personal interest in, or connection with his family. Mrs. Baxter writes, you see, in an affectionate strain, and is urgent in her request that I should pass the winter with her. My father and sister agree with me that you are the proper person to consult with regard to my answer to the invitation. You are, doubtless, acquainted with Mrs. Baxter, and are certainly more au fait to the usages of Hamilton polite society than we are.
"Tell me freely what you think I ought to do—freely as if I were in blood, as I am in heart,
"Your Kinswoman,
"Jessie Kirke."
"Here is an example of hereditary transmission that would stagger Wendell Holmes himself!" thought Orrin, scanning the epistle, letter by letter. "The chirography of the girl, who could not write at the time of her mother's death, is precisely similar to hers—as similar as it is unlike that of the sister by whom she was educated. It is a nut to crack for those who carp at the idea that the handwriting is a criterion of character, who attribute variety of penmanship to educational influences entirely. What has my fair 'kinswoman' inherited from her matronal progenitor besides her features and carriage, and these sloping, slender Italian characters, I wonder? It may be worth my while to investigate the question as a psychological phenomenon."
To secure the facilities for doing this, he resolved to run down to Dundee the next day.
The early train he had condemned in the spring, started now before daylight, and he called himself a fool, as he took his place in the cold, smoky car, for making the journey at all. Being mortal, he was liable to these spasms of prudence and faltering of purpose, during which he held serious questioning with Common-sense—leaving feeling out of the discussion—whether he were not squandering time and thought in prosecuting his favorite pastime of winning and wasting hearts. He knew that, viewed in the dead white light of sober judgment, tested by commercial rates, his ambition to stand chief victor in Cupid's lists, would be ignoble and unremunerative. He felt that he would himself thus rate it, had he no other aim in life. Aware, as he was, that he kept step with his fellows in business pursuits, that he was intellectually the peer of those the crowd called masters, he did not let the thought of adverse criticism of his affaires du coeur weigh too heavily with him. It was easy to persuade himself that since the world's conquerors and prophets, sages, warriors, and saints, had, each in his time, esteemed the love of woman the worthiest meed of valor, learning, and piety; had fought, gone mad, and made shipwreck of faith, to gain and wear the prize, leaving upon record the aspiration "to waste life upon her perfect lips," alongside of heroic epics and religious meditations—his