Jet: Her Face or Her Fortune, Chapters IX-XIII [pp. 409-420]

APPLETONS' JOURNAL.
from the H6tel Paradis. And she looks round her
with a start.
Not a trace of the donkey pilgrimage, not a trace
of any living form, is to be seen.
"So much for your short cut, Mr. Biron!" she
cries, a little tremor in her voice. "I cannot regret
it. I cannot regret anything so beautiful as Ollioules and the forests. But I know that night is coming on, and that there is a four-mile walk between us
and Esterel."
"By the time the sun is down, I undertake to say
that you shall be within shelter of the Paradis," answers Biron, quietly. "It is now half-past threeFate has timed it all for us to a nicety-and exactly
below, not a stone's-throw distant, lies the station of
Tamaris. The afternoon train from Toulon will
pass in half an hour, and, while our friends are
wearily plodding their way back with Stradella and
Ragout, you and I can return by rail, and reach the
hotel before them. This leaves us still thirty minutes to enjoy this scene. Are you dissatisfied?"
Dissatisfied! Standing thus, amid the freshness
of the woods, her hand on Biron's arm, the wild
pageantry of western sky before her, it is to Jet
Conyngham as though she stood upon the brink of
Eden.
And her eyes betray her.
Now, or nevermore, thinks the Reverend Laurence Biron, is the venture to be made, the one possible emancipation of his fettered, humiliated life to
be played for.
He remains for a minute irresolute-a minute of
tension so keen, of calculation so nice, to be almost
agony. Then, as though moved by uncontrollable
impulse, he throws his arms around the girl's slight
figure, draws her abruptly to his side, and kisses her.
CHAPTER XI.
AN,ESTHETIC CONSCIENCE.
"MY fate was decided in the first moment that I
saw you at Avignon, Miss Conyngham."
After the sacristan had led me astray. I accept the compliment, Mr. Biron. In that first moment it was dark as Erebus."
"I had seen you already in the salon of the hotel. Little though you suspected it, I had watched
your every movement, admired the feminine astuteness of your arguments as you brought your father,
inch by inch, to consent to your going out."
"And then followed me, of course with prophetic
knowledge that I should come to grief. Putting all
this nonsense aside (by-the-way " —Jet's cheek mantles —" never pay me another compliment from this
moment forth), what did you really and honestly
think of me that first evening in Avignon?"
"I thought your face the fairest that ever shone
on mortal man."
"I do not want to hear about my face. What
did you think of me, Jet Conyngham? It seemed
to me afterward I ought not to have taken your
arm."
"It did not seem so to me."
"Or have gone shopping with you before I knew
your name. That could not have been correct?"
"It was a great deal better than correct. It was
frank, ingenuous, unfearing, like yourself. The only
chill I got was when you took my card and wished
me good-night. You showed no human feeling whatsoever, no faintest curiosity as to whether Smith,
Jones, or Robinson, had been your companion.
You lifted your head in the air a great deal higher
than you lift it at this moment, Miss Conyngham, and
walked majestically away, leaving me morally and
physically in the cold."
The thirty minutes have not yet expired. The
lovers stand, still, at the same point of the forest;
the darkening fir-thickets behind, the pink and
opal glories of the sunset in front; the point whose
remembrance, married to Laurence Biron, or divided from him, must cut Jet Conyngham's life sharply in twain, as with a sword.
No formal declaration or acceptance has passed
between them-do formal declarations ever take
place save before the foot-lights? A kiss, a whispered word-a few seconds during which Biron's
arms locked her close. This is all Jet remembers of
the supreme crisis of her existence.
But none the less does Biron know that he has
won her irrevocably.
In the case of an heiress who chanced to be a
woman of the world as well as heiress, Mr. Biron
would scarcely feel satisfied without some exact promise, some definite mention of the sacred, reassuring
word, "marriage."
To have kissed Jet Conyngham, to have held her,
unrepulsed, in his arms, he knows, by some instinct
truer than himself, to be sufficient. The girl will be
his wife.
"And when I think that a short fortnight ago
we were strangers to each other," he whispers, tenderly, "my good-fortune seems beyond belief. How
have I deserved, how shall I ever deserve, such happiness as has fallen to me?"
"I might ask the same question. What can
there be in a foolish girl of my age that, out of the
whole world, you should have chosen me?"
Her humility almost occasions Mr. Biron a pang
of compunction. That Jet Conyngham, or any other woman, should care for him-well, rather than
wisely-is not surprising. Laurence Biron has not
reached his thirty-eighth year without testing his
own powers of fascination. It is her meek surrendering of wealth, her unconditional acceptance of a
man so notoriously bankrupt as himself, that wellnigh pricks his conscience.
"Your father may take a different view of my
merits from yours," he remarks, gravely. "We need
not consult him yet. For three or four days, whatever comes, let me know the taste of a Fool's Paradise! Your father may well hold you too young, too
fair, too gifted in every respect, to be thrown away
upon me."
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