University of Virginia Library

7. VII.

You are correct in your surmises. I am on
the most friendly terms with our neighbors. The
colonel and my father smoke their afternoon cigar
together in our sitting-room or on the piazza
opposite, and I pass an hour or two of the day or
the evening with the daughter. I am more and
more struck by the beauty, modesty, and intelligence
of Miss Daw.

You ask me why I do not fall in love with her.
I will be frank, Jack: I have thought of that.
She is young, rich, accomplished, uniting in herself
more attractions, mental and personal, than
I can recall in any girl of my acquaintance; but
she lacks the something that would be necessary
to inspire in me that kind of interest. Possessing
this unknown quantity, a woman neither
beautiful nor wealthy nor very young could bring
me to her feet. But not Miss Daw. If we were

shipwrecked together on an uninhabited island,
— let me suggest a tropical island, for it costs no
more to be picturesque,—I would build her a
bamboo hut, I would fetch her bread-fruit and
cocoanuts, I would fry yams for her, I would
lure the ingenuous turtle and make her nourishing
soups, but I would n't make love to her,
—not under eighteen months. I would like to
have her for a sister, that I might shield her and
counsel her, and spend half my income on threadlaces
and camel's-hair shawls. (We are off the
island now.) If such were not my feeling, there
would still be an obstacle to my loving Miss
Daw. A greater misfortune could scarcely befall
me than to love her. Flemming, I am about
to make a revelation that will astonish you. I
may be all wrong in my premises and consequently
in my conclusions; but you shall judge.

That night when I returned to my room after
the croquet party at the Daws', and was thinking
over the trivial events of the evening, I was
suddenly impressed by the air of eager attention
with which Miss Daw had followed my account
of your accident. I think I mentioned this to
you. Well, the next morning, as I went to mail

my letter, I overtook Miss Daw on the road to
Rye, where the post-office is, and accompanied
her thither and back, an hour's walk. The conversation
again turned on you, and again I remarked
that inexplicable look of interest which
had lighted up her face the previous evening.
Since then, I have seen Miss Daw perhaps ten
times, perhaps oftener, and on each occasion I
found that when I was not speaking of you, or
your sister, or some person or place associated
with you, I was not holding her attention. She
would be absent-minded, her eyes would wander
away from me to the sea, or to some distant
object in the landscape; her fingers would play
with the leaves of a book in a way that convinced
me she was not listening. At these moments
if I abruptly changed the theme,—I did it several
times as an experiment,—and dropped some
remark about my friend Flemming, then the
sombre blue eyes would come back to me instantly.

Now, is not this the oddest thing in the world?
No, not the oddest. The effect which you tell
me was produced on you by my casual mention
of an unknown girl swinging in a hammock is

certainly as strange. You can conjecture how
that passage in your letter of Friday startled me.
Is it possible, then, that two people who have
never met, and who are hundreds of miles apart,
can exert a magnetic influence on each other?
I have read of such psychological phenomena,
but never credited them. I leave the solution
of the problem to you. As for myself, all other
things being favorable, it would be impossible for
me to fall in love with a woman who listens to
me only when I am talking of my friend!

I am not aware that any one is paying marked
attention to my fair neighbor. The lieutenant
of the navy—he is stationed at Rivermouth—
sometimes drops in of an evening, and sometimes
the rector from Stillwater; the lieutenant
the oftener. He was there last night. I would
not be surprised if he had an eye to the heiress;
but he is not formidable. Mistress Daw carries
a neat little spear of irony, and the honest lieutenant
seems to have a particular facility for
impaling himself on the point of it. He is not
dangerous, I should say; though I have known
a woman to satirize a man for years, and marry
him after all. Decidedly, the lowly rector is not

dangerous; yet, again, who has not seen Cloth
of Frieze victorious in the lists where Cloth of
Gold went down?

As to the photograph. There is an exquisite
ivorytype of Marjorie, in passe-partout, on the
drawing-room mantel-piece. It would be missed
at once, if taken. I would do anything reasonable
for you, Jack; but I've no burning desire
to be hauled up before the local justice of the
peace, on a charge of petty larceny.

P. S.—Enclosed is a spray of mignonette,
which I advise you to treat tenderly. Yes, we
talked of you again last night, as usual. It is
becoming a little dreary for me.