Oswald Langdon | Page 8

weeks.
Upon Tuesday Sir Donald and Esther drove to the station. A girl friend
was expected on a visit from London.
Oswald spent the day in walking about the grounds and viewing the
rare beauties of Northfield. Aware that much of interest was being seen
by him for the first time, yet he experienced a strange sense of
familiarity with many objects in this changing panorama. He took an
extended stroll along the banks of the lake. He stops and soliloquizes:
"Still the same unaccountable sensation! When and where have I
witnessed the counterpart of that timbered bank beyond the curve, with
the jutting wooded point in the distance? Why should the waters of a
running stream, with the glare of myriad lights, appear in the
background of this real landscape view? What have I done that a
fleeing, skulking form like my own flits back and forth in the distant
outlines? Where have I seen that despairing female face?"
With insistent sense of some fateful impending ill, Oswald returned to
Northfield.
Having been gone several hours, the sun was setting when he reached
the mansion grounds. Coming up a flower-fringed path, wondering at
the chimeras of the afternoon, he saw Esther seated on a bench near a
rosebush, and stepped toward her with a pleasant greeting, but cut it

short with a startled, "Well!"
The surprised cause of Oswald's exclamation blushed as she looked
into his strangely excited countenance.
Thinking there was some mistake of identity at the base of this incident,
Esther presented Oswald to her friend from London, Miss Alice
Webster.
With much pleasant tact, Esther managed to divert the minds of her
young friends from this little mistaken affair to subjects more
agreeable.
"Miss Webster has lived in London several years, and is an intimate
friend of my cousins dwelling there. She called upon them during my
recent visit. I pressed Alice to spend a few weeks at Northfield. We
look for a most delightful time.
"How nice it will be that Mr. Langdon can be here and help us to enjoy
this treat! What lovely trips on horseback! Such sails on the lake! Miss
Webster sings divinely."
Esther's exquisite face shone with genuine anticipation, and Alice
seemed hopeful of perfect happiness.
Oswald did not just like the prospect. Though this London acquisition
to Northfield's select circle was an uncommonly pretty young woman
of twenty-two, tall, and a most strikingly interesting brunette, Oswald
had little disposition to be promiscuous in his tastes for female charms.
To his discriminating vision Esther Randolph was the ideal of all he
deemed desirable in womanly loveliness. If Oswald Langdon had been
consulted as to the advisability of this expected visit, Alice Webster at
that time would have been in London.
However, there were matters in the Randolph social set which had
taken shape without his molding hand.
Oswald considerately decided not to veto any absolute decrees of fate,

but felt that innocent, generous-hearted Alice Webster was an
interloper and a positive barrier to his purposes.
Let none fancy that this chafing, impetuous suitor, so impatient toward
any and all obstacles, permitted ocular evidence of these sentiments to
casual view. All was masked by the most refined, manly courtesy and
held in check by habitual self-control.
From the first Alice admired Oswald Langdon. His conduct toward her
was the perfection of manly consideration. Conscious of his
unreasonable resentment against her presence at Northfield at this
particular time, he made amends by strenuous efforts to entertain this
handsome girl.
For nearly two weeks the time of these interesting young people was
occupied in varying rounds of social pleasure. The three seldom were
separated, except when Esther was called away to superintend some
household matter or joined Sir Donald.
Oswald planned many ways to be alone with Esther, but found such
seclusion impossible. Not that there was apparent disposition on her
part to thwart any of his plans, but on the contrary, Esther seemed
acquiescent in every whim of her guests.
Alice was happy in Oswald's company, and did not disguise her
sentiments.
Having been so considerate, Oswald could not now be indifferent
without causing sensitive pain.
Though Esther had concluded that her life's purpose never would
permit anything more than Platonic regard for Oswald Langdon, yet
she often wished that duty's path might be less nar-* *row and exacting.
The cost of living with sole reference to a high spiritual ideal never
seemed so great as when she saw this fascinating, manly suitor,
evidently seeking her hand, but failing of proper encouragement,
turning his attention to another. Beyond this suppressed pain,
evidenced by slightly quivering lips, there was little to disturb Esther's

fixed resolve.
When Oswald had despaired of again seeing Esther except in company
of Alice, and was thinking of going home to await