"'Jane Lanneau, from Ginevra.' I have surely seen that handwriting before! *Ginevra,'" he repeated slowly, and the pretty name fell musically from his tongue. "There is poetry in the word!"
"You would have said so, had you known her!" Mrs. Baxter twinkled away an unbidden tear, and swallowed anew. "She always reminded me of a plaintive poem set to music."
Orrin fluttered a few leaves and went back to the inscription. It was strangely like Jessie Kirke's writing; but the resemblance was accidental, of course.
"She was the Helena to my Hermia!" pursued the hostess. We lived the same life until her marriage, which preceded mine by five years. She was my senior, but in heart and soul we were twins," pressing her hands gradually together, beginning at the wrists, and passing upward to the finger-tips, to express the idea of oneness; "and, by a remarkable coincidence, we both married clergymen."
"Another evidence of the perfect harmony of soul existing between you. Is she living?"
"Alas, no! She has been in her grave for fifteen years. I never saw her after her marriage, which was a surprise to all her friends. We anticipated a brilliant union for her. But she bestowed herself, her talents, her beauty, upon a clerical widower, fifteen years her senior. My poor Ginevra! it was a strange ending to her sanguine dreams. I believe, however, that Mr. Kirke was very devoted to her, and tried to make her happy; but my own acquaintance with him was slight."
"Kirke!" repeated Orrin, more deliberately, and with less emphasis than was his habit, and he was always the reverse of abrupt. "I know a gentleman—a clergyman of that name. He lives in Beechdale, Pennsylvania."
Mrs. Baxter started, tragically, and leaned toward him. "Tell me something about him! about his family! My sweet cousin left a child, I know. Does she still live? Her home was in Beechdale!"
"You should visit it," said Orrin, sauntering back to the fire-place, but declining the seat she offered. "It is a beautiful valley. Mr. Kirke is a gentleman of the old school—handsome, refined, and scholarly. His daughters are cultivated ladies. The younger—who is, I presume, the child to whom you refer—is, I have heard, very like her beautiful mother. I see now what was the resemblance that puzzled me last summer. She might easily be mistaken for your daughter."
"The relief afforded by your charming description is beyond expression!" cried the flattered hostess, casting up her brown eyes, and raising her clasped hands to a level with her chin. "I have never dared inquire respecting my lost darling's babe!" I feared to hear that she had grown up an awkward rustic, whose faint likeness to her parent would pain, not gratify me. Therefore, I have maintained no correspondence with Mr. Kirke since our exchange of letters immediately after his wife's decease."
"I wish you could prevail upon him to entrust his favorite child to you for a few weeks. She would be a feature in our society this winter. Her face and manners are striking now. The latter have much of the fascination which is, I suspect, a family trait. She will grow handsomer, until—I cannot say when. Women have their time to fade, like leaves; and the fatal season lies, with most of them, a little on the sunny side of thirty. The Lanneaus have not lost the
