"To think of your ever getting married, Percy, and to Mr. Norval, of all men!" said Miss Leta Wilber. "Why, we thought him engaged to the beauty and belle of last winter, Miss Agnes Lorton."

"Well, yes, Leta, old girls like you and I are rather off the cards: we don't expect to catch the prizes generally--we leave that for these younger ones, like Jennie and Lucille," said Percy, coolly.

"A Roland for your Oliver, Leta!" laughed Jennie Wayne. "I never venture to break a lance with Percy: she always has an arrow in reserve to pierce you with. I suppose you've found that out, Mr. Norval?"

"Found what out? I fear I don't follow you, Miss Jennie," said he.

"That she's very able to take her own part, this little cousin of ours,"

said she, her beautiful face scarlet at his manner.

"Is she, though? Well, I like that amazingly, do you know?"

"Like ill-tempered people?" said Miss Leta, snappishly. "Is it possible?"

"Ill-tempered people?" with a wellbred stare. (Is there such a thing?) "No, indeed! Why, birdie"--and he leaned over, and, taking her hand, raised it to his lips--"to think of any one calling you ill-tempered!"

"You silly boy!" laughed she. "I'll take my hand if you please, and don't you believe but what you've married a termagant."

The girls said afterward, in recounting the scene, it was simply disgusting. Leta vowed, "The little baggage must be a witch and throw spells over people. Look what fools she's made of our boys for years, and Ross Norval, with all his splendid endowments, is just as bad."

"And he did use to admire your form, Leta," said Jennie, maliciously.

"I've seen him waltz you until it was hard to tell which face that long blonde moustache belonged to."

"Ditto, cousin, and worse, if gossips speak the truth. But don't let's say ugly things to each other. We both hoped to win him once, and we have both lost him. The little wretch will watch him like a hawk, and never let him come near a body."

"Oh dear!" said her sister Laura, "if I only knew I was to do a German with him to-night, I'd be happy: he holds one better than any man I know; and if Percy will let him dance with a body occasionally, I'd as leave she should have him as the rest of you."

"Unless he'd chosen yourself, Laura, I suppose?"

"Well, yes, that would have made a difference, even to my laziness, especially if she'd have made dear old Harry stay at home by marrying him."

That's the way they talked, yet in a couple of weeks after each house had sent her an invitation to a large party--"for you and Mr. Norval, dear Percy"--and the invitation-cards stated the fact.

"It's my Viking they want," laughed she: "they take his mouse in for the sake of securing him. He's such a credit to the family!"

"Well, it's your Viking they won't get," said he.

"Now, Ross, don't be a bother, dear, and complicate matters. They will say--and be glad of the chance--that it's my fault. You've such a pa.s.sion for dancing, they will say I prevented your coming. And besides, as I dance so little, you'll ask them as much as ever?"

"How do you know I am so fond of it, Percy?"

"I've watched you too many years not to know that. You forget that, though a flower unnoticed and unseen--a very wall-flower in fact--I have been a looker-on in Vienna. I might have made a point of that, Ross, if I'd thought in time, and 'hung i' the walls of Venice, a sightly flower.' You were the bright particular star, or sun, in whose light all the fairest flowers disported themselves. Why, I could tell you every woman--that is, of your own set--you've been what Jennie calls 'bad about,' for years." He held up his hand deprecatingly: she laughed gayly. "Never fear. I don't intend to name them: I have not time to go over such a thing of shreds and patches. Ah! the hopes I've watched you raise to heaven and then dash to earth!"

"Oh, Percy, I don't wonder that you are afraid to trust me now: I am paying the penalty of my years of folly."

"That's nonsense, Ross. I don't believe in fashionable women's hearts. You were too good for them, and they led you on always," she said, almost pa.s.sionately.

"That's my good darling trying to excuse her sinner. But how was it you never danced at any of those parties? Harry and Mac are both good dancers, and Sheldon's the best waltzer I ever saw. How is it you never danced with them?"

"With them, indeed! Why, that would have been an aggravation past enduring to my rich relations. Sheldon had actually the insolence to tell his sister Leta that I was the best waltzer in society. Think of the prize you've got, young man!"

"I do always, sweetheart," he said, answering her gay tone with a grave one. "Did you waltz much with Sheldon and the others?"

"I never waltzed with any of them in my life. Why, Ross, I never let them speak to me at parties, except by turns to take me out to supper and home."

"But how have you managed to keep up your waltzing then?"

"Oh, Mr. Vanity, men are not all. Esther and I waltzed constantly: then I used to help Lucille, who is my favorite cousin, 'along in her paces;' and the children at our school-parties doat on me as a partner. Would you like to know who was the last man, and indeed almost the only one, I ever went round a room with?" and her face turned crimson, though she laughed.

"Indeed I should--curse him!" he said under his breath.

"Your honorable self, at Madame's school-party;" and she sprang away from his outstretched hands with a mocking laugh.

The day of the party she wrote a few little violet-perfumed notes, and sent them off. This is a specimen:

"DEAR DOCTOR: You have so often wanted to know your 'nebulous child,'

and been indignant that she hid her face from you behind her veil of clouds, you will be pleased to know that the sunshine has dispelled the clouds, and made her at last able to meet the starry train of which you are the sun. Will you greet Ross Norval's bride at the Wilber party to-night as the child you have trained and been so good to in the past, and who, ever honoring you, is still your loving child for the future?

If you'll ask me prettily to-night, I'll sing the foolish words I made for the sweet, tripping Languedoc air you sent me last year. I am, now and ever,

"MIRA CANAM."

In consequence of these notes, when Ross led his wife into the room, arrayed in a crimson cloud of his choosing, which made even her brown face a picture, all her bronze hair, her husband's glory, floating round her far below her waist, confined lightly here and there by diamond cl.u.s.ters, which sparkled like stars amidst its creped luxuriance--"Daring to dress in the very height of the fashion," said Leta, "and all those diamonds on her--his mother's, of course;" and of course they were--the consequence, I say, was, that first one distinguished man and then another met her with a warm greeting--"deucedly warm," thought the jealous fellow, who was so uncertain of her yet, and wanted all of her--and were introduced to "my husband." Taking for granted that "my husband" was glad to get her off his hands, they took possession of her, to his infinite disgust.

These were the men with whom she could talk, whose minds struck diamond flashes from her own, whose thoughts she had followed for years, and who looked upon her as their peer, and deferred to her opinion on many things.

And she, knowing Ross was her amazed listener, was stirred to do her best before him--glad her triumph over her relatives should be in his presence and brought to her through his means. It may not have been a lovely thing in her to desire or enjoy a victory, but ah! it is so natural, and my little heroine had had hard lines meted out to her for years. Besides, no woman is free, you know, from vanity: only men are that.

She stood near the door of the dancing-room. Ross came to her after every dance, but it was always, "Not me yet, Ross--Leta, or Jennie," or whoever stood nearest her. Even the girl to whom report had given him (with reason) the year before was, at her open entreaty, which he could not evade, his partner; but half the time he stood beside her, forgetful of the dance in listening to the conversation in which she bore so large a part.

A lull in the music after supper announced the suspension of dancing hostilities for a time, that due strength might be gathered for the last waltz, and then the German. The time was occupied by a very weak tenor, who came to an ignominious end in the middle of "Spirito Gentil." Miss Jennie Barton and her cousin Laura gave a sweet duo, in rather a tearing style, Jennie being a fast young lady everyhow; another lady sang a Scottish ballad as if it had been manipulated by Verdi; then one of the gentlemen said, "Mr. Norval, I hope you will lay your commands on your wife to sing for us."

"_I_ hope that will not be needed," he said, bowing (thinking with a pang, "They all know her better than I do"). "I am sure she will do equally well if we all beg the favor of her."

"She has promised me to sing," said Dr. B----, "my pretty Languedoc air, which she has--"

"Now that's enough, you foolish old doctor!" and she went to the piano.

"Foolish old doctor!" He was the great gun of the scientific world: the people about looked aghast at such impertinence, but the "great gun" only laughed and said, "I am mute if you command."

How her hands trembled as she began! This was her last and greatest card: by it she had always felt she must hold him to her for ever, or lose her husband's love in time. She had never touched the piano before him or sung a note, but much of her leisure since their return to New York had been taken up, when he was out, in keeping herself in practice against the time when she should have a chance to play for him and sing to him. She played the sweet air, with its Mozart-like, mournful cadences, entirely through ere she felt nerved enough to begin. Then she sang in such a voice as made the most indifferent pause--a voice that was like purple velvet for richness, as sweet as the breath of an heliotrope to which the sun had just said adieu, as clear as the notes of an English skylark--this little song:

"See, love! the rosy radiance gleams Athwart the sunset sky: List, love! and hear the bird's sweet notes In lingering cadence die.

Clasp, love, thy clinging hands in mine, And, holding fast by me, Trust, love! I will be true, my dove, Be ever true to thee-- So true, sweetheart, I'll be, Sweetheart, to thee!

"Come, love! I waiting pine so long, And weary watch for thee: Dear love! amidst my darkest night Thy star-like face I see.

Heart's love! ah, come thou close to me: I'll shelter thee from harms, From every foe or secret woe, Close clasped within my arms: Lie safe from all alarms, Sweetheart, with me."

While they listened to her, those careless men and women, they thought they began to understand why this little, plain girl had won Ross Norval.

While everybody praised her, he stood utterly silent, too moved for words she saw, and refusing to sing again, she went up to him as the band began to play. "My waltz, Ross," she said. He put his arm around her with a loving gesture that made those about them smile, and whirled her off.