He turned with alacrity. In his relief he could have kissed the snowy neck held so erectly before him, as he drew around it the shawl he had hastily lifted from the chair at his side. But that would not have suited this calm and languid beauty who disliked any too overt tribute to her charms and saved her caresses for her bird. Besides it would look like gratitude, and gratitude would be misplaced towards a wife who had just indicated her acceptance of his offer to receive a relative of her own into his house.
"She might as well come at once," was her final remark, as satisfied at last with the lay of every ribbon she swept in finished elegance from the room. "Mrs. Kittredge's reception comes off a week from Thursday, and I should like to see how a dark beauty with a fair skin would look in that new shade of heliotrope."
And so the battle was over and the victory won; for Mrs. Sylvester for all her seeming indifference was never known to change a decision she had once made. As he realized the fact, as he meditated that ere long this very room which had been the scene of so much frivolity and the witness to so many secret heart-burnings, would reëcho to the tread of the pure and innocent child, whose mind had flights unknown to the slaves of fashion, and in whose heart lay impulses of goodness that would satisfy the long smothered cravings of his awakened nature, he experienced a feeling of relenting towards the wife who had not chosen to thwart him in this the strongest wish of his childless manhood, and crossing to her dressing table, he dropped among its treasures a costly ring which he had been induced to purchase that day from an old friend who had fallen into want. "She will wear it," murmured he to himself, "for its hue will make her hand look still whiter, and when I see it sparkle I will remember this hour and be patient." Had he known that she had yielded to this wish out of a certain vague feeling of compunction for the disappointments she had frequently occasioned him and would occasion him again, he might have added a tender thought to the rich and costly gift with which he had just endowed her.
"I expect a young cousin of mine to spend the winter with me and pursue her studies," were the first words that greeted his ears as an hour or so later he entered the parlor where his wife was entertaining what few guests had been anxious enough for a sight of Mrs. Sylvester's newly furnished drawing-room, to brave the now rapidly falling snow. "I hope that you and she will be friends."
Curious to see what sort of a companion his wife was thus somewhat prematurely providing for Paula, he hastily advanced towards the little group from which her voice had proceeded, and found himself face to face with a brown-haired girl whose appealing glance and somewhat infantile mouth were in striking contrast to the dignity with which she carried her small head and managed her whole somewhat petite person.
"Miss Stuyvesant! my husband!" came in musical tones from his wife, and somewhat surprised to hear a name that but a moment before had been the uppermost in his mind, he bowed with courtesy and then asked if he was so happy as to speak to a daughter of Thaddeus Stuyvesant.
"If it will give you especial pleasure I will say yes," responded the little miss with a smile that irradiated her whole face. "Do you know my father?"
"There are but few bankers in the city who have not that pleasure," replied he with an answering look of regard. "I am especially happy to meet his daughter in my house to-night."
There was something in his manner of saying this and in the short inquiring glance which at every opportunity he cast upon her bright young face with its nameless charm of mingled appeal and reserve, that astonished his wife.
"Miss Stuyvesant was in the carriage with Mrs. Fitzgerald," said that lady with a certain dignity she knew well how to assume. "I am afraid if it had not been for that circumstance we should not have enjoyed the pleasure of her presence." And with the rare tact of which she was certainly a mistress, as far as all social matters were concerned, she left the aspiring magnate of Wall Street to converse with the daughter of the man whom all New York bankers were expected to know, and hastened to join a group of ladies discussing ceramics before a huge placque of rarest cloissone.
Mr. Sylvester followed her with his eyes; he had never seen her look more vivacious; had the hope of seeing a young face at their board touched some secret chord in her nature as well as his? Was she more of a woman than he imagined, and would she be, though in the most superficial of ways, a mother to Paula? Flushed with the thought, he turned back to the little lady at his side. She was gazing in an intent and thoughtful way at an engraving of Dubufe's "Prodigal Son" that adorned the wall above her head. There was something in her face that made him ask:
"Is that a favorite picture of yours?"
She smiled and nodded her small and delicate head.
"Yes sir, it is indeed, but I was not looking at the picture so much as at the face of that dark-haired girl that sits in the centre, with that far-away expression in her eyes. Do you see what I mean? She is like none of the rest. Her form is before us, but her heart and her interest are in some distant clime or forsaken home to which the music murmured at her side recalls her. She has a soul above her surroundings, that girl; and her face is indescribably pathetic to me. In the recesses of her being she carries a memory or a regret that separates her from the world and makes certain moments of her life almost holy."
"You look deep," said Mr. Sylvester, gazing down upon the little lady's face with strongly awakened interest. "You see more perhaps than the painter intended."
"No, no; possibly more than the engraving expresses, but not more than the artist intended. I saw the original once, when as you remember it was on exhibition here. I was a wee thing, but I never forgot that girl's face. It spoke more than all the rest to me; perhaps because I so much honor reserve in one who holds in his breast a great pain or a great hope."
The eye that was resting upon her, softened indescribably. "You believe in great hopes," said he.
The little figure seemed to grow tall; and her face looked almost beautiful. "What would life be without them?" she answered.
"True," returned Mr. Sylvester; and entering into the conversation with unusual spirit, was astonished to find how young she was and yet how thoroughly bright and self-possessed.
"Lovely girls are cropping up around me in all directions," thought he; "I shall have to correct my judgment concerning our young ladies of fashion if I encounter many more as sensible and earnest-hearted as this." And for some reason his brow grew so light and his tone so cheerful that the ladies were attracted from all parts of the room to hear what the demure Miss Stuyvesant could have to say to the grave master of the house, to call forth such smiles of enjoyment upon his usually melancholy countenance.
Take it all together, the occasion though small was one of the pleasantest of the season, and so Mrs. Sylvester announced when the last carriage had driven away, and she and her husband stood in the brilliantly lighted library, surveying a new cabinet of rare and antique workmanship which had been that day installed in the place of honor beneath my lady's picture.
"I thought you seemed to enjoy it, Ona," her husband remarked.
"O, it was an occasion of triumph to me," she murmured. "It is the first time a Stuyvesant has crossed our threshold, mon cher."
"Ha," he exclaimed, turning upon her a brisk displeased look. He was proud and considered no man his superior in a social sense. "Do you acknowledge yourself a parvenue that you rejoice at the entrance of any one special person into your doors?"
"I thought," she replied somewhat mortified, "that you betrayed unusual pleasure yourself at her introduction."
"That may be; I was glad to see her here, for her father is one of the most influential directors in the bank of which I shortly expect to be made president."
The nature of this disclosure was calculated to be especially gratifying to her, and effectually blotted out any remembrance of the break by which it had been introduced. After a few hasty inquiries, followed by a scene of quite honest mutual congratulation, the gratified wife left her husband to put out the lights himself or call Samuel as he might choose, and glided up stairs to delight the curious Sarah with the broken soliloquies and inconsequent self-communings which formed another