She neither flushed nor paled,nor did the delicate lines of expression in her face quiver or change.But as she held the parcel in her hand her whole being seemed to undergo some exquisite suffusion.As the medicines which the Arabian physician had concealed in the hollow handle of the mallet permeated the languid royal blood of Persia,so some volatile balm of youth seemed to flow in upon her with the contact of that strange missive and transform her weary spirit.
"Jack!"she called,in a high clear voice.But Jack had already gone from the balcony when she reached it with an elastic step and a quick youthful swirl and rustling of her skirt.He was lighting his cigar in the garden.
"Jack,"she said,leaning half over the railing,"come back here in an hour and we'll talk over that matter of yours again."Jack looked up eagerly and as if he might even come up then,but she added quickly,"In about an hour--I must think it over,"and withdrew.
She re-entered the sitting-room,shut the door carefully and locked it,half pulled down the blind,walking once or twice around the table on which the parcel lay,with one eye on it like a graceful cat.Then she suddenly sat down,took it up with a grave practical face,examined the postmark curiously,and opened it with severe deliberation.It contained a manuscript and a letter of four closely written pages.She glanced at the manuscript with bright approving eyes,ran her fingers through its leaves and then laid it carefully and somewhat ostentatiously on the table beside her.
Then,still holding the letter in her hand,she rose and glanced out of the window at her bored brother lounging towards the beach and at the heaving billows beyond,and returned to her seat.This apparently important preliminary concluded,she began to read.
There were,as already stated,four blessed pages of it!All vital,earnest,palpitating with youthful energy,preposterous in premises,precipitate in conclusions,--yet irresistible and convincing to every woman in their illogical sincerity.There was not a word of love in it,yet every page breathed a wholesome adoration;there was not an epithet or expression that a greater prude than Mrs.Ashwood would have objected to,yet every sentence seemed to end in a caress.There was not a line of poetry in it,and scarcely a figure or simile,and yet it was poetical.Boyishly egotistic as it was in attitude,it seemed to be written less OFhimself than TO her;in its delicate because unconscious flattery,it made her at once the provocation and excuse.And yet so potent was its individuality that it required no signature.No one but John Milton Harcourt could have written it.His personality stood out of it so strongly that once or twice Mrs.Ashwood almost unconsciously put up her little hand before her face with a half mischievous,half-deprecating smile,as if the big honest eyes of its writer were upon her.
It began by an elaborate apology for declining the appointment offered him by one of her friends,which he was bold enough to think had been prompted by her kind heart.That was like her,but yet what she might do to any one;and he preferred to think of her as the sweet and gentle lady who had recognized his merit without knowing him,rather than the powerful and gracious benefactress who wanted to reward him when she did know him.The crown that she had all unconsciously placed upon his head that afternoon at the little hotel at Crystal Spring was more to him than the Senator's appointment;perhaps he was selfish,but he could not bear that she who had given so much should believe that he could accept a lesser gift.All this and much more!Some of it he had wanted to say to her in San Francisco at times when they had met,but he could not find the words.But she had given him the courage to go on and do the only thing he was fit for,and he had resolved to stick to that,and perhaps do something once more that might make him hear again her voice as he had heard it that day,and again see the light that had shone in her eyes as she sat there and read.And this was why he was sending her a manuscript.She might have forgotten that she had told him a strange story of her cousin who had disappeared--which she thought he might at some time work up.
Here it was.Perhaps she might not recognize it again,in the way he had written it here;perhaps she did not really mean it when she had given him permission to use it,but he remembered her truthful eyes and believed her--and in any event it was hers to do with what she liked.It had been a great pleasure for him to write it and think that she would see it;it was like seeing her himself--that was in HIS BETTER SELF--more worthy the companionship of a beautiful and noble woman than the poor young man she would have helped.This was why he had not called the week before she went away.But for all that,she had made his life less lonely,and he should be ever grateful to her.He could never forget how she unconsciously sympathized with him that day over the loss that had blighted his life forever,--yet even then he did not know that she,herself,had passed through the same suffering.But just here the stricken widow of thirty,after a vain attempt to keep up the knitted gravity of her eyebrows,bowed her dimpling face over the letter of the blighted widower of twenty,and laughed so long and silently that the tears stood out like dew on her light-brown eyelashes.
