"Until the gentleman had received a positive and final acceptance, I should imagine such confidence premature."

Mrs. Palma spoke sternly, and withdrew her fingers from her daughter's clasp.

"As if there were even a ghost of a doubt as to the final acceptance!

As if I dared play this heavy fish an instant, with such a frail line? Ah, mamma! don't tease me by such tactics! I am but an insignificant mouse, and you and Mr. Congreve are such a grim pair of cats, that I should never venture the faintest squeak. Don't roll me under your velvet paws, and pat me playfully, trying to arouse false hopes of escape, when all the while you are resolved to devour me presently. Don't! I am a wiry mouse, proud and sensitive, and some mice, it is said, will not permit insult added to injury."

"Regina, are you ready? I shall take you to Mrs. Brompton's, and it is quite time to start."

Mrs. Palma looked impatiently at Regina, and as the latter rose to get her hat and wrappings from her own room, she saw the mother lean over the pillows, saw also that the white arms of the girl were quickly thrown up around her neck.

Soon after, she heard the front door-bell ring, and when she started down the steps, Olga called from her room:

"Come in. Mamma has to answer a note before she leaves home. When you go down, please ask Terry to give a half-bottle of that white wine with the bronze seal to Octave, and tell him to make and send up to me as soon as possible a wine-chocolate. Mrs. Tarrant's long-promised grand affair comes off to-night, and I must build myself up for the occasion."

"Are you feverish, Olga? Your cheeks are such a brilliant scarlet?"

"Only the fever of delicious excitement, which all young ladies of my sentimental temperament are expected to indulge, when a.s.sured that the perilous voyage of portionless maidenhood is blissfully ended in the comfortable harbour of affluent matrimony. Does that feel like ordinary fever?"

She put out her large well-formed hand, and, clasping it between her own, Regina exclaimed:

"How very cold! You are ill, or worse still, you are unhappy. Your heart is not in this marriage."

"My heart? It is only an automatic contrivance for propelling the blood through my system, and so long as it keeps me in becoming colour, I have no right to complain. The theory of hearts entering into connubial contracts, is as effete as Stahl's Phlogiston! One of the wisest and wittiest of living authors, recognizing the drift of the age, offers to supply a great public need, by--'A new proposition and suited to the tendencies of modern civilization, namely, to establish a universal Matrimonial Agency, as well ordered as the Bourse of Paris, and the London Stock Exchange. What is more useful and justifiable than a Bourse for affairs? Is not marriage an affair?

Is anything else considered in it but the proper proportions? Are not these proportions values capable of rise and fall, of valuation and tariff? People declaim against marriage brokers. What else, I pray you, are the good friends, the near relations who take tie field, except obliging, sometimes official brokers?' Now, Regina, 'M.

Graindorge,' who makes this proposal to the Parisian world, has lived long in America, and doubtless received his inspiration in the United States. Hearts? We modern belles compress our hearts, as the Chinese do their feet, until they become numb and dwarfed; and some even roast theirs before the fires of Moloch until they resemble human _pate de foie gras_. There are a great many valuable truths taught us in the ancient myths, and for rugged unvarnished wisdom commend me to the Scandinavian. Did you ever read the account of Iduna's captivity in the castle of Thia.s.si in Jotunheim?"

"I never did, and what is more, I never will, if it teaches people to think as harshly of the world as you seem to do."

"You sweet, simple blue-eyed dunce! How shamefully your guardian neglects your education! Never even heard of the Ellewomen? Why, they compose the most brilliant society all over the world. Iduna was a silly creature, with a large warm heart, and loved her husband devotedly; and in order to cure her of this arrant absurd folly she was carried away and shut up with the Ellewomen, very fair creatures always smiling sweetly. The more bitterly the foolish young wife wept and implored their pity, the more pleasantly they smiled at her; and when she examined them closely she found that despite their beauty they were quite hollow, were made with no hearts at all, and could compa.s.sionate no one. I have an abiding faith that they had Borgia hair, hazel eyes, red lips, and sloping white shoulders just like mine. They have peopled the world; a large colony settled in this country, we are nearly all Ellewomen now, and you are an ignorant, wretched little Iduna, _minus_ the apples, and must get rid of your heart at once, in order to smile constantly as we do."

"Olga, don't libel yourself and society so unmercifully. Don't marry Mr. Congreve. Think how horrible it must be to spend all your life with a man whom you do not love!"

"I a.s.sure you, that will form no part either of his programme, or of mine. I shall have my 'societies' (charitable, of course), my daily drives, my 'Luncheons,' and box the opera with occasional supper at Delmonico's; and Mr. Congreve will have his Yacht affairs, and Wall Street 'corners' to look after, and will of course spend the majority of his evenings at that fascinating 'Century,' which really is the only thing that your quartz-souled guardian cherishes any affection for."

"But Mr. Palma is not married, and when you are Mr. Congreve's wife, of course instead of going to his club, your husband will expect to remain at home with you."

"That might be possible in the old-fashioned parsonage where you imbibed so many queer outlandish doctrines; but I do a.s.sure you, we have quite outgrown such an intolerable orthodox system of penance.

The less married people see of each other these days, the fewer scalps dangle around the hearthstone. The customs of the matrimonial world have changed since that distant time when sacrificing to Juno as the G.o.ddess of Wedlock, the gall was so carefully extracted from the victim and thrown behind the altar; implying that in married life all anger and bitterness should be exterminated. If Tacitus could revisit this much-civilized world of the nineteenth century, I wonder if he could find a nation who would tempt him to repeat what he once wrote concerning the sanct.i.ty of marriage among the Germans? 'There vice is not laughed at, and corruption is not called the fashion.'

Mr. Silas Congreve is much too enlightened to prefer his slippers at home to his place at the club. As for sitting up as a rival in the 'Century,' female vanity never soared to so sublime a height of folly! and if Erle Palma were married forty times, his darling club would still hold the first place in his flinty affections. It must be a most marvellously attractive place, that bewitching 'Century,'

to magnetize so completely the iron of his nature. I have my suspicion that one reason why the husbands cling so fondly to its beloved precincts is because it corresponds in some respects to the wonderful 'Peacestead' of the aesir, whose strongest law was that 'no angry blow should be struck, and no spiteful word spoken within its limits.' Hence it is a tempting retreat from the cyclones and typhoons that sometimes sing among a man's Lares and Penates. In view of my own gilded matrimonial future, I reverently salute my ally--the 'Century!' There! Mamma calls you. Go trill like a canary at the Cantata, and waste no sighs on the smiling Ellewoman you leave behind you. Tell Octave to hurry my wine-chocolate."

She drew the girl to her, looked at her with sparkling merry eyes, and kissed her softly on each cheek.

When Regina reached the door and looked back, she saw that Olga had thrown herself face downward on the bed, and the hands were clasped above the tanged ma.s.s of ruddy hair.

During the drive, Mrs. Palma was unusually cheerful, almost loquacious, and her companion attributed the agreeable change in her generally reticent manner to maternal pride and pleasure in the contemplated alliance of her only child.

No reference was made to the subject, and when they reached Mrs.

Brompton's, Regina was not grieved to learn that the rehearsal had been postponed until he following day, in consequence of the sickness of Professor Hurtzsel.

"Then Farley must take you home, after I get out at Mrs. St. Clare's.

The carriage can return for me about four o'clock."

"That will not be necessary. I wish to go and see Mrs. Mason, who has been out of town since July, and I can very easily walk. She has changed her lodgings."

"Have you consulted Erle on the subject?"

"No, ma'am; but I do not think he would object."

"At least it would be best to obtain his permission, for only last week when you stayed so long at that floral establishment, he said he should forbid your going out alone. Wait till to-morrow."

"To-morrow I shall have no time, and all my studies are over for to-day. Why should he care? He allows me to go to Mrs. Mason's in the carriage."

"It is entirely your own affair, but my advice is to consult him. At this hour he is probably in his office; drive down and see him, and if he consents, then go. Here is Mrs. St. Clare's. Farley, take Miss Orme to Mr. Palma's office, and be sure you are back here at half-past three. Don't keep me waiting."

Never before had Regina gone to the law-office, and to-day she very reluctantly followed the unpalatable advice; but the urgency of Mrs.

Palma's manner constrained obedience. When the carriage stopped, she went in, feeling uncomfortable and embarra.s.sed, and secretly hoping that her guardian was absent. At a large desk near the door sat a young man intently copying some papers, and as the visitor entered, he rose and stared. "Is Mr. Palma here?"

"He will be in a few moments. Take a seat."

Hoping to escape before his return, she said hastily: "I have not time to wait. Can you give me a pencil and piece of paper? I wish to leave a note."

There were two desks in the apartment, but glancing at their dusty appearance, and then at the dainty pearl-tinted gloves of the stranger, the young man answered hesitatingly:

"You will find writing materials on the desk in the next room. The door is not locked."

She hurried in, sat down before the desk where a number of papers were loosely scattered, and took up a pen lying near a handsome bronze inkstand.

How should she commence? She had never written him a line, and felt perplexed. While debating whether she should say Dear Mr. Palma or My Dear Guardian, her eyes wandered half unconsciously about the apartment, until they were arrested by a large portrait hanging over the mantlepiece. It was a copy of the picture her mother had directed to be painted by Mr. Harcourt, and which had been sent to Europe.

This copy differed in some respects from the original portrait; Hero had been entirely omitted, and in the hands of the painted girl were cl.u.s.ters of beautiful snowy lilies.

Surprised and gratified that he deemed her portrait worthy of a place in his office, she hastily wrote on a sheet of legal cap:

"DEAR MR. PALMA,--Having no engagements until to-morrow, I wish to spend the afternoon with Mrs. Mason, who has removed to No.

900, East ---- Street, but Mrs. Palma advised me to ask your permission. Hoping that you will not object to my making the visit, without having waited to see you, I am,

"Very respectfully Your ward, REGINA ORME."

Leaving it open on the desk, where he could not fail to see it, she glanced once more at the portrait, and hurried away, fearful of being intercepted ere she reached the carriage.

"Drive to No. 900, East ---- Street."

The carriage had not turned the neighbouring corner, when Mr. Palma leisurely approached his office door, with his thoughts intent upon an important will case, which was creating much interest and discussion among the members of the Bar, and which in an appeal form he had that day consented to argue before the Supreme Court. As he entered the front room, the clerk looked up.

"Stuart, has Elliott brought back the papers?"

"Not yet, sir. There was a young lady here a moment ago. Did you meet her?"