er?

CHAPTER XX.

Love that is ignorant, and hatred have almost the same ends.--BEN
JONSON.

What if Jasper Wilmarth should prove that ardently desired person, a
lover? Marcia Grandon wonders what she would do, what she had better
do? The years are beginning to fly apace. True, Gertrude married at
thirty, after she had lost her greatest attractions, and was quite
indifferent whether she pleased or not. Marcia is past twenty-six, and
it is but a step to thirty. If she could set up for a genius and have a
pretty house of her own, but the house is out of the question, and to
be confronted with Violet's youth and freshness every day in the year
is much too bitter! Jasper Wilmarth is not a man to be proud of in
society, unless it is for his very ugliness and the almost deformity.
She thinks of Venus and Vulcan. She might call him playfully her
Vulcan; at least, she could to her friends. She will have a house of
her own, she will be _Mrs._, and, after all, the world is much more
tolerant to married women than to spinsters of an uncertain age. She is
not invited with very young girls any more, but as Mrs. Wilmarth she
can ask them to her house and patronize them. Then married women are
allowed to flirt shamefully with _young_ men; and though Mr. Wilmarth
cannot dance, she may have other partners. Altogether, she would be
immeasurably better off, even if she did not care very much for him.
But there would be a spice of romance, and somehow she half believes
she could love him if she was _sure_, and if he loved her. She has
weakly and foolishly come to care for more than one who did not love
her, to whom the attention was merely pastime, or perhaps amusement.
She will be wary and learn first what his intentions really are.

So at the last moment she has a headache and will not go to Madame
Lepelletier's. Mrs. Grandon's invitation is for a week, and Eugene
takes her down in the morning, and loiters most of the day in the
seductive house. When Floyd and Violet are out of the way, Marcia
attires herself in a white cashmere dress and scarlet geraniums, and
steals down to the drawing-room wrapped in a Shetland shawl, nervous,
curious, and expectant. What if he should _not_ come?

It is not Jasper Wilmarth's intention to slight the gods. He is
scrupulously dressed, and understands the courtesies of society, if he
seldom has need of them. Marcia looks reasonably pretty in this
handsome room, where there is just enough lig