CHAPTER XVII.

THE ROCHESTERS ARE INTRODUCED.

It was a fine day in October.

In a beautiful room in one of the apartment-houses in the Rue de Rivoli, in Paris, a handsome woman might have been seen sitting before a cheerful fire in the polished grate; for although the sun was shining brightly outside and the day was perfect, the air within the rooms, shut in, as they were, behind solid walls, was keen and chill.

The occupant of this room was, perhaps, forty-five years of age, though she looked younger. She had a small, finely shaped head, large, liquid brown eyes, and chestnut hair, in which it would have taken a keen eye to discover a thread of silver, rather delicately moulded features, and a clear, softly tinted complexion. She was tall and rather slight, although not angularly so, and there were in every movement an energy and an animation which, in a woman of her age, were extremely fascinating.

She was simply, though elegantly, clad in a heavy, lustreless black silk, that fitted her fine figure like a glove, while the soft white crape ruchings at her throat and wrist betrayed that she was in mourning.

Low slippers incased the well-shaped feet that rested upon a hassock. In her white hands, upon one of which there gleamed a massive wedding-ring and a costly diamond, she held some bright-colored fancy work, and, in the light of the glowing fire, surrounded by the rich hangings and elaborate furnishings of the room, she made a very attractive picture.

Presently the door behind her opened, and a girl of about twenty-two or twenty-three years swept into the apartment in a bright, breezy way that was like the rustling of the gayly tinted autumn leaves upon the trees outside.

“Mamma, such news as I have to tell you—you cannot guess, I am sure!” she cried as she threw herself into a low rocker opposite the elder woman and began to remove her beautifully fitting gloves.

She, too, was tall and slight, elegant in figure, perfect in her bearing; but, unlike her companion, she was very fair, with light hair, deep blue eyes, and a faultless complexion; and though her features were cast in a less delicate mould than her mother’s, she was an exquisitely beautiful girl.

She, too, was clad in black, but it was very becoming to her perfect complexion.

“News, Sadie?” returned the elder lady as her eyes rested with a look of pride and pleasure on the graceful figure opposite her. “I hope it is home news, then, for I am really hungry for something American.”

“It is decidedly American,” cried the young lady, with a clear, exultant laugh, “for I have met a gentleman from New York this morning.”

“Who?” demanded her mother eagerly.

“Guess.”

“I never could; don’t torture me with suspense, Sadie.”

“Well, then, a no less important personage than Dr. Truman Winthrop, the man whom Milton Hamilton decreed should be the husband of Albert Rochester’s daughter,” the girl answered, her blue eyes gleaming with a light that made them seem almost black, a peculiar smile wreathing her red lips.

“Sadie, you do not mean it!” exclaimed Mrs. Rochester, for the woman was no other than the widow of the late Albert Rochester, who had covenanted with his friend, Milton Hamilton, to unite, by the marriage of his only daughter with the namesake and heir of the latter, the magnificent estates of Brookside and Englehurst into one inheritance.

“Yes, I do,” responded the girl, with increasing animation. “I was in the Luxembourg with Mrs. Savage and Nell, when who should come along but Nell’s particular friend, Mr. Tillinghast—you have heard her speak of him—and with him another man, whom he introduced as Dr. Winthrop. You should have seen his start and look of surprise when he was presented to me,” and the young lady completed her sentence with an amused ripple of laughter.

“It is a little strange that we should always have thought of him by the name of Hamilton until last autumn, when he wrote to your father that he was coming abroad to meet us, and signed himself Truman Winthrop,” said Mrs. Rochester musingly.

“Well, I do not know, mamma; we have not known much about the Winthrops. Papa never met them. The most we have known was that one of the sons had been named for Mr. Hamilton, who had adopted and made him his heir; so it was natural, I suppose, that we should think of him as a Hamilton. It is possible that he resumed his family name again after his uncle’s death,” Miss Rochester argued thoughtfully.

“Well, I consider it a piece of unexampled good luck, your meeting him to-day,” the elder lady remarked, with animation. “I did not dream that he was on this side of the Atlantic and we should have been on our way to New York a week later. Do you suppose he has written to us again at Berlin that he was coming abroad, and, failing to get a reply, has been wandering about in search of us?”

“I am sure I have no idea,” mused the young lady. “I have always thought it very strange that we never heard anything after receiving that letter of appointment last year. It has struck me that he was very shy of us—that he dreaded to meet a woman whom some one else had picked out for him; and no one could blame him if he did. Still, he might at least have explained his delay in coming abroad.”

“Describe him to me, Sadie. Is he nice-looking?” asked Mrs. Rochester with eager interest.

“Mamma, he is grand—a perfect king in appearance! I believe he is the handsomest man I have ever seen,” the young lady returned with a glowing face. “Only,” she added, “he seemed strangely sad, as if he had recently met with some great trouble, and there was a wide band upon his hat. There must have been some recent death in his family.”

“Perhaps that is the secret of his long delay in coming abroad,” said Mrs. Rochester. “However,” she added, a peculiar gleam in her dark eyes as they met her daughter’s, “it is rather fortunate for us, for we can manage things our own way now. You think you will like him?”

“‘Like?’ It is a strange word to use in connection with him,” said Miss Rochester, with a flush.

“Then there will be nothing disagreeable to you in fulfilling the conditions of the will, provided the gentleman is also agreeable?” questioned Mrs. Rochester, bestowing a searching glance upon her companion.

“No, indeed!” she answered decidedly. “If I am any judge, Dr. Winthrop is a man who would not meet his equal among a thousand. Any woman might feel proud to win him for her husband, even without the very tempting plum that his uncle has left him.”

“Well, well! I should say this was a case of love at first sight,” said Mrs. Rochester, laughing; “and it is evident that you will do your utmost to make yourself agreeable.”

“Yes, if he gives me the opportunity; but I am not going to throw myself at him, much as I desire to become mistress of that double fortune,” responded the girl haughtily, but with an anxious frown upon her brow.

“Well, he might go the world over and never find as handsome a wife as you would make him, Sadie,” returned her mother, bestowing a proud glance upon her daughter. “For my sake, as well as your own, you must try to win him, for you know the will says that I can have full control of the income of fifty thousand only upon the consummation of the marriage. What an abominable will it is!” she added indignantly; “and what a couple of fools those two men were! Do you believe Dr. Winthrop will call upon us?”

“I cannot tell,” responded Miss Rochester thoughtfully; “he looked too sad to-day to care to make new acquaintances. I should really like to know what his trouble is. He did not seem disposed to talk with any of us; but after the introductions were over he passed on and appeared to be absorbed in the pictures, although once or twice, as I was talking with Mr. Tillinghast, I caught him regarding me with a curious glance.”

“He was probably taking the measure of the wife whom his uncle had selected for him,” Mrs. Rochester observed; adding, “I wonder if he knows that Mr. Rochester is dead?”

“I don’t know; but he was evidently surprised to learn that we were in Paris.”

“Yes, we were in Berlin when he wrote that he would join us, and doubtless he imagined that we were still there. I should suppose he would call; I do not see how he can do otherwise—it would really seem rude in him to avoid us, even though he should not wish to fulfil the conditions of the will,” Mrs. Rochester gravely observed.

Yes, Dr. Winthrop was in Paris.

He had met a friend at Interlaken, and together they had made a tour of the Alps and of Germany, and now were intending to spend a little time in Paris, after which they were to go on to Italy.

He had been greatly astonished when he was so unexpectedly introduced to Miss Sadie Rochester in the Luxembourg.

The meeting had also been a great shock to him, for it brought vividly to his memory all the past and opened afresh the wounds caused by his recent loss.

He had not given any special thought to the Rochesters since his marriage. He had expected, as we already know, to go abroad to meet them the previous fall, but his duties in New York had prevented. Then as soon as the epidemic in that city had subsided, he had gone to keep a long-deferred appointment with his friend Dr. Cutler, of Boston, after which he intended to join his family abroad and meet the lady whom his uncle and his mother were so anxious he should marry.

Meantime Mr. Rochester, who had long been in poor health, had died suddenly, and Mrs. Rochester—who, by the way, was a second wife—never having liked Berlin, but having always been eager for the gayeties of the French capital, made arrangements as soon as possible to come to Paris, where she and her daughter had remained ever since.

Being in mourning, they could not go into society very much, but they managed to have a pleasant time visiting various points of interest and mingling in a quiet way with a few Americans whom they found in Paris.

Dr. Winthrop, after having sent his father home with his brother, had begun a sort of aimless wandering, and had been so absorbed in his grief that he had not given a thought to the Rochesters.

He knew that he had broken the conditions of his uncle’s will by marrying Salome; and even had he realized that he could still marry Miss Rochester, or given it any thought whatever, he probably would have imagined that she would not now entertain any desire for the union, knowing that he had already chosen some one in preference to her and given the affection of his heart to another.

He had been struck with Miss Rochester’s exceeding beauty that morning when he was introduced to her, while the quick flush which had mantled her cheek on being presented to him told him that she at once associated him with the strange contract which Mr. Rochester and his uncle had made in connection with them.

He had been a little surprised, too, by her graciousness of manner, by the smile of pleasure and glance of admiration with which she had greeted him.

He had always pictured her as meeting him with coldness, if not with hauteur. Almost any refined and sensitive woman, he thought, would resent being so summarily disposed of to a man whom she had never seen, and of whose character she was in total ignorance.

She certainly would be indignant, he told himself, when, after failing to keep his appointment a year ago, or to notify either herself or her father that he had violated the conditions of his uncle’s will, she should learn of his marriage.

“I ought to have written to Mr. Rochester and explained the affair to him,” he mused, after returning to his hotel that day; “but so many things crowded themselves upon me that I did not think anything about the matter. I must acquaint him now, and formally renounce all claim to Miss Rochester’s hand, so that he can change the provisions of his will in her favor if he wishes; for of course, with my crushed heart and broken life, I cannot marry any woman. What an unpleasant position for her! for her flush to-day told me that she imagined my errand abroad was to seek her. She is truly a beautiful girl. I wonder who she is in mourning for?—her mother, perhaps. I will write at once, state plainly just how I am situated, and then take myself away from Paris with all possible dispatch.”

He put his resolution into effect at once. He wrote a full account of the past year; told what had prevented his keeping his appointment for the previous year, of his visit to Boston, and the events which led to his marriage, and the sad incidents that had since so embittered his life. He stated that he had fully intended to meet Miss Rochester, and, if they had been mutually pleased with each other, comply with his uncle’s wishes by asking her to be his wife; but now, under the circumstances, he felt obliged to waive all claims to her hand, since it would be but a mockery and an insult to any woman to offer her his hand when his heart was so filled with the image of another, his life and his hopes so blighted by the loss of his wife, even if he himself did not recoil from such a union.

It was a frank and manly letter, written with all the delicacy and feeling that would naturally be expected from one so innately true and noble, and having sealed and addressed it, he dispatched it by a special messenger to the hotel where he had overheard Miss Rochester say she was stopping.

He had arranged with his friend, Mr. Tillinghast, for a drive in the suburbs the next day, and as he did not like to disappoint him, he decided to keep this engagement and leave the following morning for Italy.

He was still very sad; life seemed to have no special attraction for him—he had no ambition but to kill time and keep himself from thinking of the past.

He had lost his interest in his profession, and cared nothing for the hospitals, as one would naturally expect. He rather shunned them, for even the sight of one brought back to his mind so much that was associated with Salome that he could not bear to enter.

The next morning, between eight and nine o’clock, a letter addressed to “Albert Rochester, Esq.,” was handed to Mrs. Rochester—it had arrived too late the evening before to be given to her, and she seldom arose before eight.

“What can be the meaning of this?” she exclaimed, as she read the superscription, and grew slightly pale at the now unaccustomed sight of her husband’s name upon a letter.

“What is the matter?” inquired Miss Rochester, looking up from the morning paper.

“A letter addressed to your father.”

“Open it and read it—then you will know the meaning of it,” was the practical suggestion of the younger lady.

“There is no postmark upon it, either,” continued Mrs. Rochester, as she broke the seal. “Why, how strange! it is from some one who does not know that Mr. Rochester is not living,” she added, with a puzzled air, as she began to read, and then she turned at once to the signature to ascertain who had written the letter.

“Sadie, it is from Dr. Winthrop!” she exclaimed, a moment later.

“Why, mamma!” and the girl flushed a vivid scarlet, for something seemed to tell her at once that the contents of the epistle related in some way to herself.

“Read it aloud—of course it must be something about that contract,” she murmured, beginning to tremble with excitement.

Mrs. Rochester obeyed, and both women immediately became absorbed in the romantic story which the young physician had written, to account for his long silence and his apparent neglect of them, together with the explanation of his sudden departure from Paris.

“What a wonderful—almost improbable story!” Mrs. Rochester cried, when she had finished reading the letter; “and,” she added, with white lips and a frowning brow, “I suppose this settles your fate as well as mine regarding that fifty thousand.”

“Yes—oh, mamma!” and Sadie Rochester suddenly slipped from her chair and lay white and senseless upon the floor at her mother’s feet.