The Lady of the Ice | Page 6

think it was to
come off so soon. Some luck has turned up, I suppose."
"Luck!" repeated Jack, with an indescribable accent.

"I assure you, though I've never had the pleasure of seeing Miss
Phillips, yet, from your description, I admire her quite fervently, and
congratulate you from the bottom of my heart."
"Miss Phillips!" repeated Jack, with a groan.
"What's the matter, old chap?"
"It isn't--her!" faltered Jack.
"What!"
"She'll have to wear the willow."
"You haven't broken with her--have you?" I asked.
"She'll have to forgive and forget, and all that sort of thing. If it was
Miss Phillips, I wouldn't be so confoundedly cut up about it."
"Why--what is it? who is it? and what do you mean?"
Jack looked at me. Then he looked down, and frowned. Then he looked
at me again; and then he said, slowly, and with powerful effort:
CHAPTER IV.
"IT'S--THE--THE WIDOW! IT'S MRS.--FINNIMORE!!!"
Had a bombshell burst--but I forbear. That comparison is, I believe,
somewhat hackneyed. The reader will therefore be good enough to
appropriate the point of it, and understand that the shock of this
intelligence was so overpowering, that I was again rendered speechless.
"You see," said Jack, after a long and painful silence, "it all originated
out of an infernal mistake. Not that I ought to be sorry for it, though.
Mrs. Finnimore, of course, is a deuced fine woman. I've been round
there ever so long, and seen ever so much of her; and all that sort of
thing, you know. Oh, yes," he added, dismally; "I ought to be glad, and,
of course, I'm a deuced lucky fellow, and all that; but--"

He paused, and an expressive silence followed that "but."
"Well, how about the mistake?" I asked.
"Why, I'll tell you. It was that confounded party at Doane's. You know
what a favorite of mine little Louie Berton is--the best little thing that
ever breathed, the prettiest, the--full of fun, too. Well, we're awfully
thick, you know; and she chaffed me all the evening about my
engagement with Miss Phillips. She had heard all about it, and is crazy
to find out whether it's going on yet or not. We had great fun--she
chaffing and questioning, and I trying to fight her off. Well; the
dancing was going on, and I'd been separated from her for some time,
and was trying to find her again, and I saw some one standing in a
recess of one of the windows, with a dress that was exactly like Louie's.
Her back was turned to me, and the curtains half concealed her. I felt
sure that it was Louie. So I sauntered up, and stood for a moment or
two behind her. She was looking out of the window; one hand was on
the ledge, and the other was by her side, half behind her. I don't know
what got into me; but I seized her hand, and gave it a gentle squeeze.
"Well, you know, I expected that it would be snatched away at once. I
felt immediately an awful horror at my indiscretion, and would have
given the world not to have done it. I expected to see Louie's flashing
eyes hurling indignant fire at me, and all that. But the hand didn't move
from mine at all!"
Jack uttered this last sentence with the doleful accents of a
deeply-injured man--such an accent as one would employ in telling of a
shameful trick practised upon his innocence. "It lay in mine," he
continued. "There it was; I had seized it; I had it; I held it; I had
squeezed it; and--good Lord!--Macrorie, what was I to do? I'll tell you
what I did--I squeezed it again. I thought that now it would go; but it
wouldn't. Well, I tried it again. No go. Once more--and once again. On
my soul, Macrorie, it still lay in mine. I cannot tell you what thoughts I
had. It seemed like indelicacy. It was a bitter thing to associate
indelicacy with one like little Louie; but--hang it!--there was the awful
fact. Suddenly, the thought struck me that the hand was larger than
Louie's. At that thought, a ghastly sensation came over me; and, just at

that moment, the lady herself turned her face, blushing, arch, with a
mischievous smile. To my consternation, and to my--well, yes--to my
horror, I saw Mrs. Finnimore!"
"Good Lord!" I exclaimed.
"A stronger expression would fail to do justice to the occasion," said
Jack, helping himself to a glass of beer. "For my part, the thrill of
unspeakable horror that was imparted by that shock is still strong
within me. There, my boy, you have my story. I leave the rest to your
imagination."
"The rest? Why, do you mean to say that this is all?"
"All!" cried