“She might as well come at once,” was her final remark, as satisfied at last with the lay of every ribbon she swept in finished elegance from the room. “ Mrs. Kittredge’s reception comes off a week from Thursday, and I should like to see how a dark beauty with a fair skin would look in that new shade of heliotrope.”
And so the battle was over and the victory won; for Mrs. Sylvester for all her seeming indifference was never known to change a decision she had once made. As he realized the fact, as he meditated that ere long this very room which had been the scene of so much frivolity and the witness to so many secret heartburnings, would reecho to the tread of the pure and innocent child, whose mind had flights unknown to the slaves of fashion, and in whose heart lay impulses of goodness that would satisfy the long smothered cravings of his awakened nature, he experienced a feeling of relenting towards the wife who had not chosen to thwart him in this the strongest wish of his childless manhood, and crossing to her dressing table, he dropped among its treasures a costly ring which he had been induced to purchase that day from an old friend who had fallen into want. “She will wear it,” murmured he to himself, “for its hue will make her hand look still whiter, and when I see it sparkle I will remember this hour and be patient.” Had he known that she had yielded to this wish out of a certain vague feeling of compunction for the disappointments she had frequently occasioned him and would occasion him again, he might have added a tender thought to the rich and costly gift with which he had just endowed her.
“I expect a young cousin of mine to spend the winter with me and pursue her studies,” were the first words that greeted his ears as an hour or so later he entered the parlor where his wife was entertaining what few guests had been anxious enough for a sight of Mrs. Sylvester’s newly furnished drawing-room, to brave the now rapidly falling snow. “I hope that you and she will be friends.”