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Updated: May 16, 2025
Such reflections as these trooped in solemn order before my mental vision as I sat staring into the coals, that frosty morning after the Merivales' entertainment. Every circumstance of the preceding night rehearsed itself in my memory. I repeated Arthur Campbell's every word. I had not forgotten one. I recalled Mr.
I had been wondering about him and questioning his motives within myself as I plodded through the sprinkled streets and now, he was standing before me, a real personage, the substance of a dreamy memory of him which I had been dwelling upon since my departure from the Merivales'. When we had stopped and saluted one another an awkward silence ensued.
And yet, there is an exquisite pleasure for us in the weaving of those delicate golden webs that are destined to be torn so rudely asunder by a prosy and matter-of-fact reality. The thoughts suggested by Arthur Campbell's gracious offering took a firm and exclusive hold of my mind, from the moment I saw it, until I sat beside him in the Merivales' vast drawing-room.
It was the fifteenth of March and the Merivales' "Musical" was to commence at eight o'clock. The wind blew fiercely through the stiff, naked boughs of the giant maples, and drifted the light powdery snow madly on before it. I had been in-doors all day listening to the weird wailing of the ceaseless wind as it whistled down the chimneys and swept past the house corners.
I have met many Alice Merivales, since my youth, who cast their stylish shadows ominously over the lives of many a Florrie Grant, and I have tried to sustain the weaker one, whenever it was in my power, the evil, I regret to see, is unabating. A new generation of little maidens is springing up around us, are they, too, destined to follow the beaten track their elders have trodden so unworthily?
As they left the drawing-room they were met at the door by two other young misses who, at sight of them, raised their chins considerably above their natural level, and swept in without condescending to bestow even an accidental glance upon them. From where I sat I observed all this quietly, and with an effort to suppress a smile of bland amusement, I arose and greeted my new-comers the Merivales!
"I would not like to lose it now, it is older than you are, Amey," he observed, without changing his sonorous voice. "Is it indeed?" I answered, not knowing what else to say. "I lost it on the day of the Merivales' last 'At Home," he went on, as if talking to himself, "I had it when I came in here, and I missed it when I went out." "You were not here on that day, were you?"
When I awoke the morning after the Merivales' Musical, the forenoon was already pretty well advanced and a light, warm fire was burning in my room. Outside, the winter wind was shrieking plaintively, and over every pane of the window were dense layers of frosty ferns and grasses. It wanted a few minutes for the half hour after ten by the prattling little time-piece on the mantel.
It was the forgotten locket I had found in the library on that March afternoon before the Merivales' musical. A change passed over my own face at sight of it, and it was with some agitation I answered Hortense's timid question: "It is a strange thing how you came by this. I have never seen it but once, the night I found it, until now."
In this brainless boy who was, and ever must be an alien to the finer susceptibilities and nobler aspirations of true and sturdy manhood, the Merivales were pleased to see, a full and happy realization of all their fondest hopes. Alice would be courted and flattered in the highest circles; was not that what their dream had been from the first? And Alice herself was seemingly satisfied.
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