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Laudersdale and Helen Heath had crept down the stairs during this dialogue, and now stood interested spectators of the scene. Mrs. McLean came running down behind them. "Forgotten me, Capua?" said she. "Lors, Miss Kate!" he replied, scraping his foot and pulling off his hat, "Cap never f'gets his friends, though you've growed. How d'ye do, Miss Kate?" "Nicely, thank you. And how's your wife?"
If he would have called, the sound died a murmur in his throat. His eyes were on the advancing figure; it seemed as if that object were to be forever branded on the retina. Still as he gazed, he was aware of another form, one sitting on the quay, unseen in shadow like himself, and seeing what he saw, and motionless as he. Would Mrs. Laudersdale dip her hands in murder?
Raleigh and I had the pleasure of being shipwrecked together," was the reply; and except that Mrs. Laudersdale required another napkin where her cup had spilled, all went on smoothly. Mrs. Laudersdale took Marguerite entirely to herself for a while.
Moreover, Fate had woven his lot, it seemed, inextricably among those whom he would shun; for Mr. Laudersdale himself was deeply interested in the Osprey's freight, and it would be incumbent upon him to extend his civilities to Mr. Raleigh. But Mr. Raleigh was not one to be cozened by circumstances more than by men.
Care and responsibility were not theirs; the matron and her servants alone received such guests; the long summer-days were to come and go with them as joyously as with Bacchus and his crew. Behold the party domesticated a fortnight at the Bawn, as it was afterward dubbed. Mr. Laudersdale had returned to New York that morning, and his wife had not been met since.
"And here are those which, if not daffodils, yet "'Come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty," he said, giving her a basket of hepaticas and winter-green. Marguerite danced away with the purple trophy, and, emptying a carafe into a dish of moss that stood near, took them to Mrs. Laudersdale, and, sitting on the footstool, began to rearrange them.
"Pretty boy!" thought Mrs. Laudersdale; "beautiful picture!" and she flitted on. But Roger Raleigh was not a boy, although sleep, that gives back to all stray glimpses of their primal nature, endowed him peculiarly with a look of childlike innocence unknown to his waking hours.
"She buried a little box of old keepsakes at its foot, after her brother had examined them, a ring or two, a coin from which she broke and kept one half" "Oh, yes! we found the little box, found it when Mr. Heath was in Martinique, all rusted and moulded and falling apart, and he wears that half of the coin on his watch-chain. See!" Mrs. Laudersdale glanced up indifferently, but Mrs.
The best of it all is, that, if he breaks the condition, there's no accounting for the caprices of wills, part of it goes to a needy institution, and part of it inalienably to Mrs. McLean, who" "Is an institution, too." "Who is not needy. There, isn't that a pretty little conte?" "Very," said Mrs. Laudersdale, having listened with increasing interest.
Raleigh could not have been more unfortunate than he was in meeting her, since it gave him reason and excuse henceforth for visiting the Bawn at all seasons. The table was at last removed, the dew began to fall, Mrs. Laudersdale shivered and withdrew toward the house. "Incessu patet dea," Mr. Raleigh remembered.
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