"Why were you not at the Hoyts' last Tuesday?" said she.
"I was not invited, and, strange to state, I am a little diffident about going under such circumstances."
"Ah, you are! how singular! But I wish you had been there, if it was only to see Betty Goodwin. You used to know her. It is such a short time ago that she was a little girl. Now she is out of school and as important as anybody. You should have seen the attention she had, and her perfect self-possession. It makes me feel extremely antiquated. Am I very much wrinkled?"
Barwood gazed with admiration at her animated face. She was to him the personification of youth and beauty. The notion of age and wrinkles in her regard was inconceivable.
"Why, of course," said he; "Methuselah wasn't a circumstance."
She dismissed the subject with a little pout.
"I am so glad you have come early," she resumed. "I wish the others would imitate your example."
"The others? What others?"
"Mr. Hyson, the Hoyt boys, Mr. Brown, Fanny Davis, and the rest. You did not suppose you were to do them alone, I hope."
"Do what alone? I don't understand."
"Why, the tableaux--Evangeline. Did you not get my message yesterday?"
"I got no message. Am I to be implicated in tableaux?"
"Why, certainly. You are to be Evangeline's father. They are for the benefit of the French wounded. I sent Carter to tell you yesterday. We are to arrange the preliminaries this evening."
Barwood saw that if he would not postpone his purpose no time was to be lost. The visitors might arrive at any moment.
Literature is full of the embarrassments of the marriage proposal. To all who are not borne along by an impetuous impulse it is a trying ordeal. Barwood was too self-conscious ever to be transported out of himself.
"I have something to say to you, Miss Nina," he began, "which I have come from town expressly to say. It is of the greatest moment to me."
She continued to look straight before her at the glowing evening sky, and so did he. The crickets and katydids had commenced their chorus and the tree-toads their long rhythm. Fire-flies flitted in the uncertain light. There came from the woods the call of the owl and the whippoorwill.
"We have sometimes laughed together at sentiment," he continued, "and voted it an invention of the story-books; but there are times--there is a sentiment--which--in short, dear Nina, I have come to ask you to be my little wife. I have loved you almost since our first meeting."
"Oh, Mr. Barwood," said she, looking hastily towards him, with heightened color and a tone of regret, "you must not say so. I cannot let you go on."
"I must go on," said he. "I have never felt so strongly upon any subject as this. I know I am not worthy of such happiness, yet I cannot bear the thought of losing it. Consider our long friendship. You will be mine?
Oh, say so, Nina!" In the terrible dread that his petition was already refused, he became a little incoherent.
Nina, a tender-hearted young lady, was by this time in tears. His evident distress, and her recognition of the great compliment he had paid her, would have commanded almost any return save the one he asked.
But the sacrifice was too great. She had not thought it would ever be necessary to change their relation of friendship.
"I am very sorry to have to say what is painful to you," said she, with a sob only half repressed. "I want you to be always my friend. I shall be very unhappy if our friendship is to be broken, but _I_ cannot--you will find some other"--
"Do not speak further," he interrupted, impetuously. "You have not yet said no. Reserve your answer; take time to consider. Let me still hope."
"No," she began, "I ought"--but wheels and merry voices were heard at the gate. "Oh! I cannot let them see me now," she said, and hurried away. In a moment more the Robinsons' carriage was at the steps. When Nina came down with a sweet, subdued manner, there was a jolly party of ten or twelve in the drawing-room. Mars Brown was already amusing everybody with his absurd posturing.
"I want to be Evangeline," said he, wrapping a lady's shawl about him and sitting on the arm of a chair in a collapsed attitude. "No, on second thought, I want to be Basil the blacksmith." He made imitations of tremendous muscular power with a tack-hammer that happened in his way for a sledge. Everybody on such occasions has his own notions of the picturesque. A deal of talking was required in arranging the various scenes. Evangeline must manifest a "celestial brightness," according to the lines. "I don't think you do it quite right," said Julia Robinson.
"You should smile a little."
"Oh no, not at all; she should have an earnest, far off look," said another critic.
"Of course she should," said Mars Brown, rumpling his hair and contorting his features into an expression of idiotic vacancy; "something this way."
"We ought to have a real artist to arrange them," said Nina; "what would I give if old Mr. Megilp were here."
"Did you know Megilp?" exclaimed Barwood.
"Why, of course I did. He was my drawing teacher at Richmond for years."
"What a small world it is, to be sure," said Barwood, giving vent to a favorite reflection. The mention of Megilp brought back for a moment a remembrance of their last meeting and conversation, and the strange pursuit into which it had led him.
The signing of the marriage contract was selected by the amateurs as an appropriate subject for illustration.
"We must have a table," said Miss Travers. "At one side sits the notary, lifting his pen from the document which he has just signed, and at the other her father, pushing toward the notary a roll of money in payment."
"Here you are," said George Wigwag, taking his place and assuming the appropriate gesture; "here's your notary; bring on your old gentleman and his money."
"A roll of old copper cents would be just the thing," said Miss Travers.
"They look antique enough."
"Will some gentleman deposit with the treasurer a roll of antique copper cents?" said Brown, passing a hat. "No gentleman deposits a roll of copper cents. Very well, then the wedding can't go on."
"Do you think I'll sign marriage contracts for copper?" said Wigwag.
"No indeed; I'm not that kind of a notary."
"I will bring down some of papa's curiosity coins from his cabinet,"
said Nina. "I don't believe he will scold me, just for once."
She returned in a moment with a dozen or more silver pieces, and placed them on the table by Barwood. He began to examine them carelessly.
"I did not know your father was a numismatist," said he.
"Oh yes," said Nina, "he always had a great taste in that way. His collection now is nothing. When we broke up in Richmond most of it was sold off. He retained only a few of the most valuable pieces, which he keeps in a case in his room. I don't know much about such things, for my part. Here is one that is considered curious. It was taken out of a wreck on the California coast, I believe, and was the last papa bought before his failure. I think it is Russian, perhaps, or Arabic--no, let me see"--
Barwood, with an abstracted air, took it to examine. Suddenly he uttered a strange exclamation and fell back in his chair, pale, trembling, almost fainting.
_The coin was a Jewish shekel, with a cross cut through at one side._
He pleaded sudden illness, and rode hastily homeward in a state of indescribable agitation.
V.
YOUNG FORTINBRAS.