"She said something in connection with my name," answered Jessie firmly, "that disturbed you. Now as you have disclosed so much, I must know all."

"I have made no disclosures." Dexter seemed annoyed.

"You said you were at Mrs. Denison's."

"Yes."

"And said it with a meaning. I noticed both tone and manner. You came directly here, according to your own admission, and asked for me. Not being well, I desired to be excused. But you would take no excuse. Your manner to the servant was not only disturbed, but imperative. To me it is constrained, and altogether different from anything I have hitherto noticed. So much is disclosed. Now I wish you to go on and tell the whole story. Then we shall understand each other. What has Mrs. Denison said about me that has so ruffled your feelings?"

There was no retreat for the perplexed young man. He must go forward in some path--straight or tortuous--manly or evasive. There was too much apparent risk in the former; and so he chose the latter. All at once his exterior changed. The clouded brow put on a sunny aspect.

"Forgive me, dear Jessie!" he said with ardor, and a restored tenderness of manner. "True love has ever a touch of jealousy; and something that Mrs. Denison intimated aroused that darker pa.s.sion.

But the shadowed hour has pa.s.sed, and I am in the clear sunlight again."

He raised her hand to his lips, and kissed it with fervor.

"What did she intimate?" asked Miss Loring. Her manner was less excited, and her tone less imperative.

"What I now see to be false," said Dexter. "I was disturbed because I imagined intrigue, and a purpose to rob me of something I prize more dearly than life--the love of my Jessie."

"Intrigue!" was answered; "you fill me with surprise. Mrs. Denison, if I understand her, is incapable of anything so dishonorable."

"I don't know." Mr. Dexter spoke with the manner of one in doubt, and as if questioning his own thoughts. "She has filled my mind with dark suspicions. Why, Jessie!" and he a.s.sumed a more animated exterior, "she went so far as to intimate a disingenuous spirit in you!"

"In me!" Miss Loring's surprise was natural. "Disingenuousness!"

"That word is not the true one," said Dexter. "What she said meant something more."

"What?"

"That you were--but I will not pain your ears, darling! Forgive my foolish indignation. Love with me is so vital a thing, that the remotest suspicion of losing its object, brings smarting pain. You are all the world to me, Jessie, and the intimation"--

"Of what, Leon?"

He had left the sentence unfinished. Dexter was holding one of her hands. She did not attempt to withdraw it.

"That you were false to me!"

The words caused Miss Loring to spring to her feet. Bright spots burned on her cheeks, and her eyes flashed.

"False to you! What did she mean by such words?" was demanded.

"It was the entering wedge of suspicion," said Dexter. "But the trick has failed. My heart tells me that you are the soul of honor.

If I was disturbed, is that a cause of wonder? Would not such an allegation against me have disturbed you? It would! But that your heart is pure and true as an angel's, I best know of all the living.

Dear Jessie!" and he laid a kiss upon her burning cheek.

"I shall never cease to blame myself for the part I have played this evening. Had I loved you less I had been calmer."

"False in what way?" asked Miss Loring, unsatisfied with so vague an answer.

"False to your vows, of course. What else could she mean?"

"Did she say that?"

"No--of course not. But she conveyed the meaning as clearly as if she had uttered the plainest language."

"What were her words?" asked Miss Loring.

"I cannot repeat them. She spoke with great caution, keeping remote, as to words, from the matter first in her thought, yet filling my mind with vague distrust, or firing it with jealousy at every sentence."

"Can you fix a single clear remark--something that I can repeat?"

"Not one. The whole interview impresses me like a dream. Only the disturbance remains. But let it pa.s.s as a dream, darling--a nightmare created by some spirit of evil. A single glance into your dear face and loving eyes rebukes my folly and accuses me of wrong.

We are all the world to each other, and no shadow even shall come again between our souls and happiness."

Jessie resumed her seat and questioned no farther. Was she satisfied with the explanation? Of course not. But her lover was adroit, and she became pa.s.sive.

"You cannot wonder now," he said, "that I was so anxious to see you this evening. I might have spared you this interview, and it would have been better, perhaps, if I had done so. But excited lovers are not always the most reasonable beings in the world. I could not have slept to-night. Now I shall find the sweetest slumber that has yet refreshed my spirit--and may your sleep, dearest, be gentle as the sleep of flowers! I will leave you now, for I remember that you are far from being well this evening. It will grieve me to think that my untimely intrusion, and this disturbing hour, may increase the pain you suffer or rob you of a moment's repose.--Good night, love!" and he kissed her tenderly. "Good night, precious one!" he added. "May angels be your companions through the dark watches, and bring you to a glorious morning!"

He left her, and moved towards the door; yet lingered, for his mind was not wholly at ease in regard to the state of Jessie's feelings.

She had not repelled him in any way--but his ardent words and acts were too pa.s.sively received. She was standing where he had parted from her, with her eyes upon the floor.

"Jessie!"

She looked up.

"Good night, dear!"

"Good night, Mr. Dexter."

"Mr. Dexter!" The young man repeated the words between his teeth, as he pa.s.sed into the street a moment afterwards. "Mr. Dexter! and in tones that were cold as an icicle!"

He strode away from the house of Mrs. Loring, but little comforted by his interview with Jessie, and with the fiend Jealousy a permanent guest in his heart.

CHAPTER X.

LEON DEXTER was not wrong in his suspicions. It was Hendrickson who visited Miss Loring on the evening of his interview with Mrs.

Denison. The young man had striven, with all the power he possessed, to overcome his fruitless pa.s.sion--but striven in vain.--The image of Miss Loring had burned itself into his heart, and become ineffaceable. The impression she had made upon him was different from that made by any woman he had yet chanced to meet, and he felt that, in some mysterious way, their destinies were bound up together. That, in her heart, she preferred him to the man who was about to sacrifice her at the marriage altar he no longer doubted.

"Is it right to permit this sacrifice?" The question had thrust itself upon him for days and weeks.

"Leon Dexter cannot fill the desire of her heart." Thus he talked with himself. "She does not love; and to such a woman marriage unblessed by love must be a condition worse than death. No--no! It shall not be! Steadily she is moving on, nerved by a false sense of honor; and unless some one comes to the rescue, the fatal vow will be made that seals the doom of her happiness and mine. It must not--shall not be! Who so fitting as I to be her rescuer? She loves me! Eyes, lips, countenance, tones, gestures, all have been my witnesses. Only an hour too late! Too late? No--no! I will not believe the words! She shall yet be mine!"

It was in this spirit, and under the pressure of such feelings, that Paul Hendrickson visited Jessie Loring on the night Dexter saw him enter the house. The interview was not a very long one, as the reader knows. He sent up his card, and Miss Loring returned for answer, that she would see him in a few moments. Full five minutes elapsed before she left her room. It had taken her nearly all that time to school her agitated feelings; for on seeing his name, her heart had leaped with an irrepressible impulse. She looked down into her heart, and questioned as to the meaning of this disturbance. The response was clear. Paul Hendrickson was more to her than any living man!