“Has he—do you mean to say that he has visited you in Grotewell?” asked Mr. Sylvester, his eye upon the paper in his hand.
“Certainly; a few more interviews will settle it.”
The paper rustled in Mr. Sylvester’s grasp, but his voice was composed if not formal, as he observed, “She regards his attentions then with favor?”
“She wears his flowers in her bosom, and brightens like a flower herself when he is seen to approach. If allowed to go her way unhindered, I have but little doubt as to how it will end. Mr. Ensign is not handsome, but I am told that he has every other qualification likely to make a gentle creature like Paula happy.”
“He is a good fellow,” exclaimed Mr. Sylvester under his breath.
“And goodness is the first essential in the character of the man who is to marry Paula,” inexorably observed Miss Belinda. “An open, cheerful disposition, a clear conscience and a past with no dark pages in its history, must mark him who is to link unto his fate our pure and sensitive Paula. Is it not so, Mr. Sylvester?”
The advertisements in that morning’s Tribune must have been unusually interesting, judging from the difficulty which Mr. Sylvester experienced in withdrawing his eyes from them. “The man whom Paula marries,” said he at last, “can neither be too good, too kind, or too pure. Nor shall any other than a good, kind, and pure man possess her,” he added in a tone that while low, effectually hushed even the slow-to-be-intimidated Miss Belinda. In another moment Paula entered.
Oh, the morning freshness of some faces! Like the singing of birds in a prison, is the sound and sight of a lovely maiden coming into the grim, gray atmosphere of a winter breakfast room. Paula was exceptionally