Elsie's Girlhood Part 53

"I hope to go on and to graduate in another year."

"Oh, Wal, I'm so glad! so thankful you have'nt followed in poor Arthur's footsteps."

"He wouldn't let me, Elsie; he actually wouldn't. I know I'm lacking in self-reliance and firmness, and if Art had chosen to lead me wrong, I'm afraid he'd have succeeded. But he says, poor fellow! that it's enough for one to be a disgrace to the family, and has tried to keep me out of temptation. And you can't think how much my correspondence with you has helped to keep me straight. Your letters always did me so much good."

"Oh, thank you for telling me that!" she cried, with bright, glad tears glistening in her eyes.

"No, 'tis I that owe thanks to you," he said, looking down meditatively at the carpet and twirling his watch-key between his finger and thumb.

"Poor Art! this ought to have been his last year, and doubtless would if he had only kept out of bad company."

"Ah, Wal, I hope that you will never forget that 'evil communications corrupt good manners.'"

"I hope not, Elsie. I wish you could stay and attend our commencement.

What do you say? Can't you? It comes off in about a fortnight."

"No, Wal. I'm longing to get away, and papa has engaged our pa.s.sage in the next steamer. But perhaps we may return in time to see you graduate next year."

"What, in such haste to leave America! I'm afraid you're losing your patriotism," he said playfully.

"Ah, it is no want of love for my dear native land that makes me impatient to be gone!" she answered half sadly.

"And are you really to be gone a year?"

"So papa intends, but of course everything in this world is uncertain."

"I shall look anxiously for my European letters, and expect them to be very interesting."

"I'll do my best, Wal," she said languidly, "but I don't feel, just now, as if I could ever write anything worth reading."

"I think I never saw you so blue," he said in a lively, jesting tone.

"I must tell you of the fun we fellows have, and if it doesn't make you wish yourself one of us--Well," and he launched out into an animated description of various practical jokes played off by the students upon their professors or on each other.

He succeeded at length in coaxing some of the old brightness into the sweet face, and Mr. and Mrs. Dinsmore, mounting the stairs on their return from their walk, exchanged glances of delighted surprise at the sound of a silvery laugh which had not greeted their ears for days.

Walter received a hearty welcome from both. His visit, though necessarily short, was of real service to Elsie, doing much to rouse her out of herself and her grief; thus beginning the cure which time and change of scene--dulling the keen edge of sorrow and disappointment, and giving pleasant occupation to her thoughts--would at length carry on to completion.

CHAPTER XXIII.

"The shaken tree grows firmer at the roots; So love grows firmer for some blasts of doubt."

It was two years or more since the Oaks had suffered the temporary loss of its master and mistress, yet they had not returned; they still lingered on foreign sh.o.r.es, and Mrs. Murray, who had been left at the head of household affairs, looked in vain for news of their home-coming.

She now and then received a short business letter from Mr. Dinsmore or of directions from Rose; or a longer one from the latter or Elsie, giving entertaining bits of travel, etc.; and occasionally Adelaide would ride over from Roselands and delight the old housekeeper's heart by reading aloud a lively gossipy epistle one or the other had addressed to her.

How charmed and interested were both reader and listener; especially when they came upon one of Rose's graphic accounts of their presentation at court--in London, Paris, Vienna, or St.

Petersburg--wherein she gave a minute description of Elsie's dress and appearance, and dwelt with motherly pride and delight upon the admiration everywhere accorded to the beauty and sweetness of the lovely American heiress.

It was a great gratification to Adelaide's pride in her niece to learn that more than one coronet had been laid at her feet; yet she was not sorry to hear that they had been rejected with the gentle firmness which she knew Elsie was capable of exercising.

"But what more could the bairn or her father desire? would he keep the sweet la.s.sie single a' her days, Miss Dinsmore?" asked Mrs. Murray when Adelaide told her this.

"No," was the smiling rejoinder; "I know he would be very loath to resign her; but this is Elsie's own doing. She says the man for whom she would be willing to give up her native land must be very dear indeed, that her hand shall never be given without her heart, and that it still belongs more to her father than to any one else."

"Ah, that is well, Miss Adelaide. I hae been sorely troubled aboot my sweet bairn. I never breathed the thoct to ither mortal ear, but when they cam hame frae that summer in the North, she was na the blythe young thing she had been; and there was that in the wistfu' and hungered look o' her sweet een--when she turned them whiles upon her father--that made me think some ane he didna approve had won the innocent young heart."

"Ah, well, Mrs. Murray, whatever may have been amiss then, is all over now. My sister writes me that Elsie seems very happy, and as devotedly attached to her father as ever, insisting that no one ever can be so dear to her as he."

Mrs. Dinsmore's last letter was dated Naples, and there they still lingered.

One bright spring day they were out sight-seeing, and had wandered into a picture-gallery which they had visited once or twice before.

Rose had her husband's arm. Elsie held her little brother's hand in hers.

"Sister," said the child, "look at those ladies and gentlemen. They are English, aren't they?"

"Yes; I think so," Elsie answered, following the direction of his glance; "a party of English tourists. No, one of the gentlemen looks like an American."

"That one nearest this way? I can only see his side face, but I think he is the handsomest. Don't you?"

"Yes; and he has a fine form too, an easy, graceful carriage, and polished manners," she added, as at that moment he stooped to pick up a handkerchief, dropped by one of the ladies of his party, and presented it to its owner.

Elsie was partial to her own countrymen, and unaccountably to herself, felt an unusual interest in this one. She watched him furtively, wondering who he was, and thinking that in appearance and manners he compared very favorably with the counts, lords, and dukes who in the past two years had so frequently hovered about her, and hung upon her smiles.

But her father called her attention to something in the painting he and Rose were examining, and when she turned to look again for the stranger and his companions, she perceived that they were gone.

"Papa," she asked, "did you notice that party of tourists?"

"Not particularly. What about them?"

"I am quite certain one of the gentlemen was an American; and I half fancied there was something familiar in his air and manner."

"Ah! I wish you had spoken of it while he was here, that I might have made sure whether he were an old acquaintance. But come," he added, taking out his watch, "it is time for us to return home."

The Dinsmores were occupying an old palace, the property of a n.o.ble family whose decayed fortunes compelled the renting of their ancestral home. In the afternoon of the day of their visit to the picture-gallery Mr. Dinsmore and his daughter were seated in its s.p.a.cious saloon, she beside a window overlooking the street, he at a little distance from her, and near to a table covered with books, magazines, and newspapers. That day had brought him a heavy mail from America, and he was examining the New York and Philadelphia dailies with keen interest.

Elsie was evidently paying no heed to what might be pa.s.sing in the street. A bit of fancy work gave employment to her fingers, while her thoughts were busy with the contents of a letter received from her Aunt Adelaide that morning.

It brought ill news. Arthur had been seriously injured by a railroad accident and, it was feared, was crippled for life. But that was not all. d.i.c.k Percival--whom Enna had married nearly two years before--had now become utterly bankrupt, having wasted his patrimony in rioting and drunkenness, losing large sums at the gaming-table; and his young wife, left homeless and dest.i.tute, had been compelled to return to her father's house with her infant son.

Mr. Dinsmore uttered a slight exclamation.

"What is it, papa?" asked Elsie, lifting her eyes to meet his fixed upon her with an expression of mingled grat.i.tude and tenderness.

"Come here," he said, and as she obeyed he drew her to his knee, pa.s.sing his arm about her waist, and, holding the paper before her, pointed to a short paragraph which had just caught his eye.