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Updated: September 6, 2025
Laudersdale came sailing down the stairs. A week previously, when, to repay the civilities of their friends in the neighboring city, Mrs. McLean had made a little fancy-party, Helen, appearing as Champagne, all in rosy gauzes with a veiling foam of dropping silver lace, had begged Mrs.
Laudersdale to give her prominence by dressing for Port; and accordingly that lady had arrayed herself in velvet, out of which her shoulders rose like snow, and whose rich duskiness made her perfect pallor more apparent, while its sumptuous body of color was sprinkled with glittering crystal drops and coruscations; and wreathing her forehead with crisp vine-leaves and tendrils, she had bunched together in intricate splendor all the amethysts, carbuncles, garnets, and rubies in the house, for grape-clusters at the ear, till she seemed, with her smile and her sunshine, the express and incarnate spirit of vintage.
"That accounts," said Mrs. Laudersdale. "Yes. But just think what a life!" "He wouldn't stay, if he didn't like," replied Mrs. Laudersdale, to whom the words poverty and riches conveyed not the least idea. "I don't know.
Laudersdale, and wonder what sudden sprite had possessed her, since for neither man nor woman of the numerous party had she hitherto condescended to lift an unwonted eyelid; what they would have said to have seen her plunged in a strawberry-bed, gathering handfuls and raining them drop by drop into Helen Heath's mouth, to silence her while she herself might talk, her own fingers tipped with more sanguine shade than their native rose, her eyes full of the noon sparkle, and her lips parted with laughter, we cannot say.
Laudersdale had taught them how the Greek animated his statue. "And how was that?" asked Mr. Raleigh. "He took it out-doors, I fancy, and called the winds to curl about it.
"What are you doing, dear?" "Writing to Laudersdale," he said, in reply. "Why, what for? what can you be writing to him for?" "I think it best he should come and take his wife off my hands." "How absurd! how contemptible! how all you husbands band together like a parcel of slaveholders, and hunt down each other's runaways!" Mr. McLean laughed. "Now, John, you're not making mischief?"
Laudersdale adding by far the majority, possibly because her shining prey found destination in the same basket with Mr. Raleigh's, possibly because, as Helen had intimated, a sudden deftness had bewitched her fingers, so that neither dropping rod nor tangling reel detained her for an instant.
Laudersdale's eyes, and some unconscious excitement fanned a faint color to and fro on her cheek. At last the moon rose; the whole party, regardless of wet slippers, sauntered with Mr. Raleigh to the shore, where the little Arrow hung balancing on her restraining cord. Mrs. Laudersdale stepped in, Mr.
Raleigh bowed almost to the ground, without a word, then looked up and offered his hand. Mr. Laudersdale comprehended the whole matter at a heartbeat, and took it. Then they moved on toward other friends, whom, while waiting for knowledge of his wife's return from her walk, Mr. Laudersdale had not seen. Mr. Raleigh went in search of Capua, and ere long reappeared.
Laudersdale stood by an open casement; the servant who had carried her note came up the lawn and spoke to her from without. There was no one in the house, and he had left it on the library-table. The pressure of those tender little arms was yet warm about the mother's neck; she glanced sidelong at the sleeping child. "He shall never see that note!" she murmured, and slipped through the casement.
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