Not Pretty, But Precious

Full

took place, and the curtain now rises on a far different scene--a dinner-party i

ll as their great estates--such was the lady who presided over the brilliant festivity we are about to describe. She had been left for many years a widow, and her surviving children--two sons, Clement and Horace--were both of mature age; Horace, the younger, being just thirty years old, and Clement, the elder, some seven years his senior. Mrs. Rutherford herself was a few years over sixty. A year or two before the period at which our story opens a terrible

ly probable that she, the oldest surviving representative of the old Knickerbocker family the Van Vleydens, an acknowledged leader of society by the triple right of wealth, birth and intellect, should be inclined to welcome very warmly as a daughter-in-law the penniless beauty who had been occupied for some months past in teaching Mrs. Archer's little daughters the rudiments of French and music. Moreover, the investigations and inquiries respecting the young lady's origin which she had at once caused to be instituted on hearing of her son's engagement, had revealed a state of affairs which had placed Miss Nugent in a very unenviable light. Her parents were well born, though poor. She was the daughter of a curate in the North of England, who had lost his young wife by heart disease when Marion was but a few months old, and two years later Mr. Nugent died of consumption, leaving his little daughter to the care of his unmarried and elderly brother, the Reverend Walter Nugent, who, though the living he held was but a small one, contrived to rear and educate his niece as his own child. He had only

lterable, she had with commendable wisdom accepted the situation, and resolved to so order the conduct of herself and her relatives as to give the sca

retty, lively little coquette, not in the least sobered by some thirteen years of married life, offered to drive him out in her little phaeton. "John has just given me a new pair of ponies," she said--"such perfect beauties and so gentle that I long to drive them." So the pretty, stylish equipage, with its fair driver and faultless appointments, made its first appearance on the

ere enjoy the distractions of literature and society. For a few days after he made his first appearance there his lovely hostess was all attention and devotion; but, finding that he was anything but an agreeable or impressionable companion, she soon wearied of his society. Mr. Archer, shortly after the accident had taken place, had been summoned from home by important business connected with some mining property which he possessed, and which necessitated his presence in the interior of Pennsylvania; so Mrs. Archer, thus left with

not exactly do to leave him alone all the time. I wish him to receive every attention while he is in the house, of course; but as for sitting for hours at a time with him in that stuffy little library--just in the height o

the other ten years of age, and both much addicted to flirtation and da

s it flowed in melodious verses from her lips. Then came a day when the book was laid aside, and the impassioned utterances of poetry gave place to the more prosaic but not less fervent accents of a newly-awakened passion. Cold, silent and morose as Clement Rutherford had always been, it had so happened that but few women had ever attempted to attract him, notwithstanding his wealth and social position; and the interested motives of

culous kind of a way. Good gracious! how indignant old Mrs. Rutherford will be! and I shall be blamed for the whole affair, no doubt. I wish John had never brought the man here--I never did like him; a

none of the usual courtesies and observances should be neglected. The bridal gifts from the Rutherford family, if less splendid, were as numerous as they would have been had Mr. Rutherford married a member of his

able residence. His mother's splendid home was not thrown open to receive him and his un

by Mrs. Rutherford in honor of her new daught

Mrs. John Archer, to whom Mrs. Rutherford had in this fashion testified her forgiveness, and who had accepted the proffered olive-branch with delight, wearing, in order to do honor to the occasion, an exquisite dress, fresh from one of the most renowned ateliers of Parisian fashion. Mrs. Rutherford, as usual, notwithstanding her infirmity, presided with unfailing grace and dignity; and in her splendid dress of black satin, brocaded with bouquets of flowers in their natural hues, her cap and collar of priceless old point lace, and her antiquely set but magnificent ornaments of sapphires and diamonds, she still looked a queen of society. A well-trained servant

t decidedly dull." This latter accusation was more truthful than such charges usually are. Mrs. Clement Rutherford did feel unusually stupid. She was ennuyé by the long, formal, stately dinner; she knew but few of the persons present; and her point-lace fan was frequently called into requisition to conceal her yawns. The game had been served before her next neigh

turned ghastly pale. She gasped convulsively, half

y. The guests sprang up, the waiters hurried fo

l be better in a few moments. Let me beg of you, my friends, to resum

eturning animation seemed to bring with it a strange and overwhelming sorrow. When the servant had retired, leaving her alone with her son, she refused to answer any of his queries, and burying her face in her pillow, she wept with convulsive and irrepressible vi

rac

s it, m

your brother's wife--minutely, as though a

the habit of thus minutely describing per

ries constantly when she talks. The lower part of her face is somewhat too thin for perfect beauty, and the chin is inclined to be pointed, and the cheeks are rather hollow, but the upper part is superb. Her brow is low and broad, and she folds back from it the heavy waves of her black hair in the plainest possible style. Her eyes are her chief beaut

d

r the portrait

though I had se

ery strikingly, particularly in t

r lived to see this day!" And Mrs. Rutherford wrung

n perplexity. "Whom do you mean

who has thrust herself into our midst, br

, then,

r tear-bathed eyes, as though sight were restored to her,

is without a remedy? Clement is married: what words of mine can divorce him? And who will believe the evidence of a blind

mother's couch and fol

-tell me all. If this woman whom my brother has married be a

hat be p

I will devote myself to your servi

ome near me, Horace--nearer

iled from New York for Brest, numbering