She was a little late in appearing at the super-table,for her return from the wanderings of the afternoon had required more time than she supposed.She was very weary;moreover,the hours spent in solitude with nature had quieted her overstrung nerves.The sun had shone upon her,though the world seemed to frown.Flowers had looked shyly and sweetly into her face as if they saw nothing there to criticise.She had plucked a few and fastened them into her breast-pin,and their faint perfume was like a low,soothing voice.She was in a softened and receptive mood,and a kind word,even a kind glance,might have tuned the scale in favor of better thoughts and better living.
But she did not receive them.Her coming to the table was greeted with an ominous silence,for each one was conscious of thoughts so greatly to her prejudice that they scarcely wished to meet her eye.Mrs.Mayhew looked excessively worried and anxious.Stanton was flushed and angry.The artist was icy as he only knew how to be when he deemed there was sufficient occasion;and in his opinion,the presence of the prospective and willing bride of the man who had attempted his life,and,what was far worse,insulted the woman he most honored,was occasion,indeed.
From time to time he gave her a cold,curious glance,as one might look at some strange,abnormal thing for which there is no accounting;but his slight scrutiny was no longer furtive.He looked at her openly as he would at an OBJECT,and not at a woman whose feelings he would not wound for the world.His thought was:"A creature akin to Sibley deserves no consideration,and can put in no just claim for delicacy."Indeed he felt a peculiar vindictiveness towards her to-night,because she had so thwarted him,and was about to carry her extraordinary dower of beauty to the moral slough that seemingly awaited her.Therefore,his glance swept carelessly over her with a cold indifference that chilled her very soul.
But these transient glances caught enough to trouble him with a vague uneasiness.Although he was steeled against her by prejudice and anger,something in her appearance so pleaded in her favor that misgivings would arise.Once he thought she met his eyes with something like an appeal in her own,but he would not look long enough to be sure.A moment later he was vexed with himself that he had not.
The silence or the forced remarks at the table were equally oppressive,and Ida immediately felt that she was the cause of the restraint.
She was about to leave the table in order to relieve them of her presence,when Miss Burton unexpectedly entered and took her chair,which hitherto had been vacant.She was a little pale and wan,but this only made her look the more interesting,and both Stanton and Van Berg welcomed her as they would the sunshine after a dreary storm.Even Mrs.Mayhew seemed to find a wonderful relief in her coming,and added her voluble congratulations.
"I have had nervous headaches myself,and know how to sympathize with you,"she concluded.
"She does not know how to sympathize with me,"sighed her daughter.
The sigh caught Van Berg's attention,and he was surprised to see that the maiden's eyes were full of tears.She bowed her head a moment to hide them,and then abruptly left the table and the room.
The artist's misgivings ended in something like compunction,as he thought:"Her tears are caused by the contrast between the icy reception we gave her,and the cordial welcome we have just given Miss Burton.Confound it all!I wish I knew the exact truth,or that she would leave for parts unknown where I could never see her again."Miss Burton glanced wistfully after the retreating maiden,but no explanation was offered.Then,as if feeling that she had lost a day's opportunity for diffusing sunshine,she became more genial and brilliant than Van Berg had ever known her to be.They lingered long at the table;Mr.Burleigh and others joined them.Their laughter rang out and up to the dusky room in which poor Ida was sobbing,"I wish I were dead and out of every one's way."Van Berg laughed with the others,but never for a moment did he lose the uneasy consciousness that he might possibly be misjudging Ida Mayhew.Although Mr.Burleigh's portly form occupied her chair,it did not prevent him from seeing a pale tearful face that was far too beautiful,far too free from all gross and sensual elements,to harmonize with the character he was supposing her to possess.He re-called what she had said about the "fragrance"of the rose-bud he had torn and tossed away,rising to him like "a low,timid appeal for mercy."Had she shyly and timidly appealed to him for a kinder judgement that evening,and had he been too blind and prejudiced to see anything save the stains left by Sibley's name?If she proposed to go to Sibley,why was she not like him in manner?It was strange that one akin to such a fellow should fasten wild flowers on her bosom,and still more strange that they should be so becoming.
The cool and sagacious Van Berg,who so prided himself on his correct judgment,was decidedly perplexed and perturbed.