Infelice | Page 8

was all the while
breathing out deliciously sweet but vague hints,--now of eglantine, and
now of that subtle spiciness that dwells in daphnes, and anon plays
hide-and-seek in nutmeg geranium blooms.
Reluctance to admission of the suspicion of unworthiness in others is
the invariable concomitant of true nobility of soul in all pure and
exalted natures,--and with that genuine chivalry, which now, alas! is
welnigh as rare as the aumônière of pilgrims, the pastor bravely cast
around the absent woman the broad, soft ermine of his tender charity.
"Hannah, if your insinuations point to the lady who called here last
night, I can easily explain the suspicious fact of the handkerchief,
which certainly belongs to her; for the room was close, and my visitor,
having raised that window and leaned out for fresh air, doubtless
dropped her handkerchief without observing the loss."
"Do the initials 'O O' represent her name?" asked Mrs. Lindsay, whose
adroitly propounded interrogatories the previous evening had elicited
no satisfactory information.
"Do not ladies generally stamp their own monograms when marking

articles that compose their wardrobes?" He put the unlucky piece of
cambric in his pocket, and pertinacious Hannah suddenly stooped and
dealt Biörn a blow, which astonished the spectators even more than the
yelping recipient, who dropped something at her feet and crawled
behind his master.
"You horrid, greedy pest! Are you in league with the thieves, that you
must needs try to devour the signs and tell-tales they dropped in the
track of their dirty work? It is only a glove this time, sir, and it was all
crumpled, just so,--where I first saw it, when I ran out to hunt for
footprints. It was hanging on the end of a rose bush, yonder near the
snowball, and you see it was rather too far from the window here to
have fallen down with the handkerchief. Look, Miss Elise, your hands
are small, but this would pinch even your fingers."
She triumphantly lifted a lady's kid glove, brown in colour and
garnished with three small oval silver buttons, the exact mate of one
which Mr. Hargrove had noticed the previous evening, when the visitor
held up the ring for his inspection. Exulting in the unanswerable logic
of this latest fact, Hannah quite unintentionally gave the glove a
scornful toss, which caused it to fall into the fireplace, and down
between two oak logs, where it shrivelled instantaneously.
Unfortunately science is not chivalric, and divulges the unamiable and
ungraceful truth, that perverted female natures from even the lower
beastly types are more implacably vindictive, more subtly malicious,
more ingeniously cruel than the stronger sex; and when a woman
essays to track, to capture, or to punish--vae victis.
"Now, Biörn! improve your opportunity and heap coals of fire on
slanderous Hannah's head, by assuring her you feel convinced she did
not premeditatedly destroy traces, and connive at the escape of the
burglars, by burning that most important glove, which might have aided
us in identifying them."
As Mr. Hargrove caressed his dog, he smiled, evidently relieved by the
opportune accident; but Mrs. Lindsay looked grave, and an indignant
flush purpled the harsh, pitiless face of the servant, who sullenly turned
away, and busied herself in putting the furniture in order.

"Peyton, were the stolen papers of a character to benefit that person,--or
indeed any one but yourself, or your family?"
He knew the soft blue eyes of his sister were watching him keenly, saw
too that the old servant stood still, and turned her head to listen, and he
answered without hesitation:
"The box contained the deed to a disputed piece of property, those iron
and lead mines in Missouri,--and I relied upon it to establish my claim."
"Was the lady who visited you last night in any manner interested in
that suit, or its result?"
"Not in the remotest degree. She cannot even be aware of its existence.
In addition to the deed, I have lost the policy of insurance on this house,
which has always been entrusted to me and I must immediately notify
the company of the fact and obtain a duplicate policy. Elise, will you
and Hannah please give me my breakfast as soon as possible, that I
may go into town at once?"
Walking to the window, he stood for some moments, with his hands
folded behind him, and as he noted the splendour of the spectacle
presented by the risen sun shining upon temples and palaces of ice,
prism-tinting domes and minarets, and burnishing after the similitude
of silver stalactites and arcades which had built themselves into crystal
campaniles, more glorious than Giotto's,--the pastor said: "The physical
world, just as God left it,--how pure, how lovely, how entirely
good;--how sacred from His hallowing touch! Oh that the world of men
and women