*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69780 ***

                             POPULAR NOVELS

                                   BY

                          MRS. MARY J. HOLMES.


                   TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE.
                   ENGLISH ORPHANS.
                   HOMESTEAD ON HILLSIDE.
                   ’LENA RIVERS.
                   MEADOW BROOK.
                   DORA DEANE.
                   COUSIN MAUDE.
                   MARIAN GREY.
                   EDITH LYLE.
                   DAISY THORNTON.
                   CHATEAU D’OR.
                   QUEENIE HETHERTON.
                   BESSIE’S FORTUNE.
                   MARGUERITE.
                   DARKNESS AND DAYLIGHT.
                   HUGH WORTHINGTON.
                   CAMERON PRIDE.
                   ROSE MATHER.
                   ETHELYN’S MISTAKE.
                   MILBANK.
                   EDNA BROWNING.
                   WEST LAWN.
                   MILDRED.
                   FORREST HOUSE.
                   MADELINE.
                   CHRISTMAS STORIES.
                   GRETCHEN.
                   DR. HATHERN’S DAUGHTERS.  (_New._)

 “Mrs. Holmes is a peculiarly pleasant and fascinating writer. Her books
  are always entertaining, and she has the rare faculty of enlisting the
  sympathy and affections of her readers, and of holding their attention
             to her pages with deep and absorbing interest.”


 Handsomely bound in cloth. Price, $1.50 each, and sent _free_ by mail on
                            receipt of price,

                                    BY
                       G. W. DILLINGHAM, PUBLISHER
                               SUCCESSOR TO
                     G. W. CARLETON & CO., New York.




                        MRS. HALLAM’S COMPANION.
                                  AND
                            THE SPRING FARM,
                            AND OTHER TALES.


                                   BY

                          MRS. MARY J. HOLMES

                               AUTHOR OF

 “TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE,” “’LENA RIVERS,” “GRETCHEN,” “MARGUERITE,” “DR.
                    HATHERN’S DAUGHTERS,” ETC., ETC.

[Illustration]

                               NEW YORK:

                     _G. W. Dillingham, Publisher_,

                               MDCCCXCVI.




                          COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY
                          MRS. MARY J. HOLMES.

                        [_All rights reserved._]




                                CONTENTS


                        MRS. HALLAM’S COMPANION
              Chapter                                Page
                   I. The Hallams                       9
                  II. The Homestead                    24
                 III. Mrs. Hallam’s Applicants         36
                  IV. Mrs. Fred Thurston               40
                   V. The Companion                    49
                  VI. On the Teutonic                  58
                 VII. Reginald and Phineas Jones       67
                VIII. Rex at the Homestead             79
                  IX. Rex Makes Discoveries            90
                   X. At Aix-les-Bains                 95
                  XI. Grace Haynes                    108
                 XII. The Night of the Opera          114
                XIII. After the Opera                 122
                 XIV. At the Beau-Rivage              131
                  XV. The Unwelcome Guest             139
                 XVI. Tangled Threads                 144
                XVII. On the Sea                      149
               XVIII. On Sea and Land                 158
                 XIX. “I, Rex, Take Thee, Bertha      163

                           THE SPRING FARM.
                   I. At the Farm House               169
                  II. Where Archie Was                174
                 III. Going West                      180
                  IV. On the Road                     184
                   V. Miss Raynor                     194
                  VI. The School Mistress             199
                 VII. At the Cedars                   205
                VIII. Max at the Cedars               209
                  IX. “Good-Bye, Max; Good-Bye.”      218
                   X. At Last                         225

                           THE HEPBURN LINE.
                   I. My Aunts                        235
                  II. Doris                           246
                 III. Grantley Montague and Dorothea  254
                  IV. Aleck and Thea                  268
                   V. Doris and the Glory Hole        278
                  VI. Morton Park                     280
                 VII. A Soliloquy                     291
                VIII. My Cousin Grantley              293
                  IX. Grantley and Doris              298
                   X. Thea at Morton Park             307
                  XI. The Crisis                      317
                 XII. The Missing Link                322
                XIII. The Three Brides                332
                 XIV. Two Years Later                 336

                          MILDRED’S AMBITION.
                   I. Mildred                         339
                  II. At Thornton Park                345
                 III. Incidents of Fifteen Years      352
                  IV. At the Farm House               358
                   V. The Bride                       365
                  VI. Mrs. Giles Thornton             374
                 VII. Calls at the Park               380
                VIII. Mildred and her Mother          387
                  IX. Gerard and his Father           395
                   X. In the Cemetery                 399
                  XI. What Followed                   405
                 XII. Love versus Money               409
                XIII. The Will                        414
                 XIV. Mildred and Hugh                418
                  XV. The Denouement                  424
                 XVI. Sunshine After the Storm        431




                        MRS. HALLAM’S COMPANION.




                               CHAPTER I.
                              THE HALLAMS.


Mrs. Carter Hallam was going to Europe,—going to Aix-les Bains,—partly
for the baths, which she hoped “would lessen her fast-increasing
avoirdupois, and partly to join her intimate friend, Mrs. Walker Haynes,
who had urged her coming and had promised to introduce her to some of
the best people, both English and American. This attracted Mrs. Hallam
more than the baths. She was anxious to know the best people, and she
did know a good many, although her name was not in the list of the four
hundred. But she meant it should be there in the near future, nor did it
seem unlikely that it might be. There was not so great a distance
between the four hundred and herself, as she was now, as there had been
between Mrs. Carter Hallam and little Lucy Brown, who used to live with
her grandmother in an old yellow house in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, and
pick berries to buy herself a pair of morocco boots. Later on, when the
grandmother was dead and the yellow house sold, Lucy had worked first in
a shoe-shop and then in a dry-goods store in Worcester, where, attracted
by her handsome face, Carter Hallam, a thriving grocer, had made her his
wife and mistress of a pretty little house on the west side of the city.
As a clerk she had often waited upon the West Side ladies, whom she
admired greatly, fancying she could readily distinguish them from the
ladies of the East Side. To marry a Hallam was a great honor, but to be
a West-Sider was a greater, and when both came to her she nearly lost
her balance, although her home was far removed from the aristocratic
quarters where the old families, the real West-Siders, lived. In a way
she was one of them, she thought, or at least she was no longer a clerk,
and she began to cut her old acquaintances, while her husband laughed at
and ridiculed her, wondering what difference it made whether one lived
on the east or west side of a town. He did not care whether people took
him for a nabob, or a fresh importation from the wild and woolly West;
he was just Carter Hallam, a jolly, easy-going fellow whom everybody
knew and everybody liked. He was born on a farm in Leicester, where the
Hallams, although comparatively poor, were held in high esteem as one of
the best and oldest families. At twenty-one he came into the possession
of a few thousand dollars left him by an uncle for whom he was named,
and then he went to the Far West, roughing it with cowboys and ranchmen,
and investing his money in a gold-mine in Montana and in lands still
farther west. Then he returned to Worcester, bought a small grocery,
married Lucy Brown, and lived quietly for a few years, when suddenly one
day there flashed across the wires the news that his mine had proved one
of the richest in Montana, and his lands were worth many times what he
gave for them. He was a millionaire, with property constantly rising in
value, and Worcester could no longer hold his ambitious wife.

It was too small a place for her, she said, for everybody knew everybody
else’s business and history, and, no matter how much she was worth,
somebody was sure to taunt her with having worked in a shoe-shop, if,
indeed, she did not hear that she had once picked berries to buy herself
some shoes. They must go away from the old life, if they wanted to be
anybody. They must travel and see the world, and get cultivated, and
know what to talk about with their equals.

So they sold the house and the grocery and traveled east and west, north
and south, and finally went to Europe, where they stayed two or three
years, seeing nearly everything there was to be seen, and learning a
great deal about ruins and statuary and pictures, in which Mrs. Hallam
thought herself a connoisseur, although she occasionally got the Sistine
Chapel and the Sistine Madonna badly mixed, and talked of the Paul
Belvedere, a copy of which she bought at an enormous price. When they
returned to America Mr. Hallam was a three times millionaire, for all
his speculations had been successful and his mine was still yielding its
annual harvest of gold. A handsome house on Fifth Avenue in New York was
bought and furnished in the most approved style, and then Mrs. Hallam
began to consider the best means of getting into society. She already
knew a good many New York people whom she had met abroad, and whose
acquaintance it was desirable to continue. But she soon found that
acquaintances made in Paris or Rome or on the Nile were not as cordial
when met at home, and she was beginning to feel discouraged, when chance
threw in her way Mrs. Walker Haynes, who, with the bluest of blood and
the smallest of purses, knew nearly every one worth knowing, and, it was
hinted, would for a _quid pro quo_ open many fashionable doors to
aspiring applicants who, without her aid, would probably stay outside
forever.

The daughter and grand-daughter and cousin of governors and senators and
judges, with a quiet assumption of superiority which was seldom
offensive to those whom she wished to conciliate, she was a power in
society, and more quoted and courted than any woman in her set. To be
noticed by Mrs. Walker Haynes was usually a guarantee of success, and
Mrs. Hallam was greatly surprised when one morning a handsome coupé
stopped before her door and a moment after her maid brought her Mrs.
Walker Haynes’s card. She knew all about Mrs. Walker Haynes and what she
was capable of doing, and in a flutter of excitement she went down to
meet her. Mrs. Walker Haynes, who never took people up if there was
anything doubtful in their antecedents, knew all about Mrs. Hallam, even
to the shoe-shop and the clerkship. But she knew, too, that she was
perfectly respectable, with no taint whatever upon her character, and
that she was anxious to get into society. As it chanced, Mrs. Haynes’s
funds were low, for business was dull, as there were fewer human moths
than usual hovering around the social candle, and when the ladies of the
church which both she and Mrs. Hallam attended met to devise ways and
means for raising money for some new charity, she spoke of Mrs. Hallam
and offered to call upon her for a subscription, if the ladies wished
it. They did wish it, and the next day found Mrs. Haynes waiting in Mrs.
Hallam’s drawing-room for the appearance of its mistress, her
quick-seeing eyes taking in every detail in its furnishing, and deciding
on the whole that it was very good.

“Some one has taste,—the upholsterer and decorator, probably,” she
thought, as Mrs. Hallam came in, nervous and flurried, but at once put
at ease by her visitor’s gracious and friendly manner.

After a few general topics and the mention of a mutual friend whom Mrs.
Hallam had met in Cairo, Mrs. Haynes came directly to the object of her
visit, apologizing first for the liberty she was taking, and adding:

“But now that you are one of us in the church, I thought you might like
to help us, and we need it so much.”

Mrs. Hallam was not naturally generous where nothing was to be gained,
but Mrs. Haynes’s manner, and her “now you are one of us,” made her so
in this instance, and taking the paper she wrote her name for two
hundred dollars, which was nearly one-fourth of the desired sum. There
was a gleam of humor as well as of surprise in Mrs. Haynes’s eyes as she
read the amount, but she was profuse in her thanks and expressions of
gratitude, and, promising to call very soon socially, she took her leave
with a feeling that it would pay to take up Mrs. Hallam, who was really
more lady-like and better educated than many whom she had launched upon
the sea of fashion. With Mrs. Walker Haynes and several millions behind
her, progress was easy for Mrs. Hallam, and within a year she was “quite
in the swim,” she said to her husband, who laughed at her as he had done
in Worcester, and called Mrs. Haynes a fraud who knew what she was
about. But he gave her all the money she wanted, and rather enjoyed
seeing her “hob-a-nob with the big bugs,” as he expressed it. Nothing,
however, could change him, and he remained the same unostentatious,
popular man he had always been up to the day of his death, which
occurred about three years before our story opens.

At that time there was living with him his nephew, the son of his only
brother, Jack. Reginald,—or Rex as he was familiarly called,—was a young
man of twenty-six, with exceptionally good habits, and a few days before
his uncle died he said to him:

“I can trust you, Rex. You have lived with me since you were fourteen,
and have never once failed me. The Hallams are all honest people, and
you are half Hallam. I have made you independent by my will, and I want
you to stay with your aunt and look after her affairs. She is as good a
woman as ever lived, but a little off on fashion and fol-de-rol. Keep
her as level as you can.”

This Rex had tried to do, rather successfully, too, except when Mrs.
Walker Haynes’s influence was in the ascendant, when he usually
succumbed to circumstances and allowed his aunt to do as she pleased.
Mrs. Haynes, who had profited greatly in a pecuniary way from her
acquaintance with Mrs. Hallam, was now in Europe, and had written her
friend to join her at Aix-les-Bains, which she said was a charming
place, full of titled people both English and French, and she had the
_entrée_ to the very best circles. She further added that it was
desirable for a lady traveling without a male escort to have a companion
besides a maid and courier. The companion was to be found in America,
the courier in London, and the maid in Paris; “after which,” she wrote,
“you will travel _tout-à-fait en princesse_. The _en princesse_ appealed
to Mrs. Hallam at once as something altogether applicable to Mrs. Carter
Hallam of New York. She was a great lady now; Sturbridge and the old
yellow house and the berries and the shoe-shop were more than thirty
years in the past, and so covered over with gold that it seemed
impossible to uncover them; nor had any one tried, so far as she knew.
The Hallams as a family had been highly respected both in Worcester and
in Leicester, and she often spoke of them, but never of the Browns, or
of the old grandmother, and she was glad she had no near relatives to
intrude themselves upon her and make her ashamed. She was very fond and
very proud of Reginald, who was to her like a son, and who with the
integrity and common sense of the Hallams had also inherited the innate
refinement and kindly courtesy of his mother, a Bostonian and the
daughter of a clergyman. As a rule she consulted him about everything,
and after she received Mrs. Haynes’s letter she showed it to him and
asked his advice in the matter of a companion.

“I think she would be a nuisance and frightfully in your way at times,
but if Mrs. Haynes says you must have one, it’s all right, so go ahead,”
Rex replied, and his aunt continued:

“But how am I to find what I want? I am so easily imposed upon, and I
will not have one from the city. She would expect too much and make
herself too familiar. I must have one from the country.”

“Advertise, then, and they’ll come round you like bees around honey,”
Rex said, and to this suggestion his aunt at once acceded, asking him to
write the advertisement, which she dictated, with so many conditions and
requirements that Rex exclaimed, “Hold on there. You will insist next
that they subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles, besides believing in
foreordination and everything in the Westminster Catechism. You are
demanding impossibilities and giving too little in return. Three hundred
dollars for perfection! I should say offer five hundred. ‘The
higher-priced the better’ is Mrs. Walker Haynes’s motto, and I am sure
she will think it far more tony to have an expensive appendage than a
cheap one. The girl will earn her money, too, or I’m mistaken; for Mrs.
Haynes is sure to share her services with you, as she does everything
else.”

He spoke laughingly, but sarcastically, for he perfectly understood Mrs.
Walker Haynes, whom his outspoken uncle had called “a sponge and a
schemer, who knew how to feather her nest.” Privately Rex thought the
same, but he did not often express these views to his aunt, who at last
consented to the five hundred dollars, and Rex wrote the advertisement,
which was as follows:

                                 “WANTED,

  “A companion for a lady who is going abroad. One from the country,
  between twenty and twenty-five, preferred. She must be a good
  accountant, a good reader, and a good seamstress. She must also have a
  sufficient knowledge of French to understand the language and make
  herself understood. To such a young lady five hundred dollars a year
  will be given, and all expenses paid. Address,

                                     “MRS. CARTER HALLAM,
                                         “No. — Fifth Avenue, New York,”

When Rex read this to his aunt, she said:

“Yes, that will do; but don’t you think it just as well to say _young
person_ instead of _young lady_?”

“No, I don’t,” Rex answered, promptly. “You want a lady, and not a
_person_, as you understand the word, and I wouldn’t begin by insulting
her.”

So the “lady” was allowed to stand, and then, without his aunt’s
knowledge, Rex added:

“Those applying will please send their photographs.”

“I should like to see the look of astonishment on aunt’s face when the
pictures come pouring in. There will be scores of them, the offer is so
good,” Rex thought, as he folded the advertisement and left the house.

That night, when dinner was over, he said to his aunt: “I have a project
in mind which I wish to tell you about.”

Mrs. Hallam gave a little shrug of annoyance. Her husband had been full
of projects, most of which she had disapproved, as she probably should
this of Rex, who continued:

“I am thinking of buying a place in the country,—the real country, I
mean,—where the houses are old-fashioned and far apart, and there are
woods and ponds and brooks and things.”

“And pray what would you do with such a place?” Mrs. Hallam asked.

Rex replied, “I’d make it into a fancy farm and fill it with blooded
stock, hunting-horses, and dogs. I’d keep the old house intact so far as
architecture is concerned, and fit it up as a kind of bachelor’s hall,
where I can have a lot of fellows in the summer and fall, and hunt and
fish and have a glorious time. Ladies will not be excluded, of course,
and when you are fagged out with Saratoga and Newport I shall invite
you, and possibly Mrs. Haynes and Grace, down to see the fox-hunts I
mean to have, just as they do in the Genesee Valley. Won’t it be fun?”

Rex was eloquent on the subject of his fancy farm. He was very fond of
the country, although he really knew but little about it, as he was born
in New York, and had lived there all his life with the exception of two
years spent at the South with his mother’s brother and four years at
Yale. His aunt, on the contrary, detested the country, with its woods,
and ponds, and brooks, and old-fashioned houses, and she felt very
little interest in Rex’s fancy farm and fox-hunts, which she looked upon
as wholly visionary. She asked him, however, where the farm was, and he
replied:

“You see, Marks, who is in the office with me, has a client who owns a
mortgage on some old homestead among the hills in Massachusetts. This
mortgage, which has changed hands two or three times and been renewed
once or twice, comes due in October, and Marks says there is not much
probability that the old man,—I believe he is quite old,—can pay it, and
the place will be sold at auction. I can, of course, wait and bid it off
cheap, as farms are not in great demand in that vicinity; but I don’t
like to do that. I’d rather buy it outright, giving the old fellow more
than it is worth rather than less. Marks says it is a rambling old
house, with three or four gables, and stands on a hillside with a fine
view of the surrounding country. The woods are full of pleasant drives,
and ponds where the white lilies grow and where I can fish and have some
small boats.”

“But where is it? In what town, I mean?” Mrs. Hallam asked, with a
slight tremor in her voice, which, however, Rex did not notice as he
answered:

“I don’t remember where Marks’s client said it was, but I have his
letter. Let me see.” And, taking the letter from his pocket, he glanced
at it a moment, and then said, “It is in Leicester, and not more than
five or six miles from the city of Worcester and Lake Quinsigamond,
where I mean to have a yacht and call it the Lucy Hallam for you. Why,
auntie, it has just occurred to me that you once lived in Worcester, and
Uncle Hallam, too, and that he and father were born in Leicester. Were
you ever there,—at the house where father was born, I mean? But of
course you have been.”

Rex had risen to his feet and stood leaning on the mantel and looking at
his aunt with an eager, expectant expression on his face. She was pale
to her lips as she replied:

“Yes, I was there just after I was married. Your uncle drove me out one
afternoon to see the place. Strangers were living there then, for his
father and mother were dead. He was as country mad as you are, and
actually went down upon his knees before the old well-sweep and bucket.”

“I don’t blame him. I believe I’d do the same,” Rex replied, and then
went on questioning her rapidly. “What was the house like? Had it a big
chimney in the centre?”

Mrs. Hallam said it had.

“Wide fireplaces?”

“Rather wide,—yes.”

“Kitchen fireplace, with a crane?”

“I don’t know, but most likely.”

“Little window-panes, and deep window-seats?”

“I think so.”

“Big iron door-latches instead of knobs?”

“Yes, and a brass knocker.”

“Slanting roof, or high?”

“It was a high gabled roof,—three or four gables, and must have been
rather pretentious when it was new.

“Rex,”—and Mrs. Hallam’s voice trembled perceptibly,—“the gables and the
situation overlooking the valley make me think that the place you have
in view is possibly your father’s old home.”

“By Jove,” Rex exclaimed, “wouldn’t that be jolly! I believe I’d give a
thousand dollars extra for the sake of having the old homestead for my
own. I wonder who the old chap is who lives there. I mean to go down and
see for myself as soon as I return from Chicago and we get the lawsuit
off our hands which is taking all Marks’s time and mine.”

Mrs. Hallam did not say what she thought, for she knew there was not
much use in opposing Rex, but in her heart she did not approve of
bringing the long-buried past up to the present, which was so different.
The Homestead was well enough, and Leicester was well enough, for Hallam
had been an honored name in the neighborhood, and Rex would be honored,
too, as a scion of the family; but it was too near Worcester and the
shoe-shop and the store and the people who had known her as a
working-girl, and who would be sure to renew the acquaintance if she
were to go there. She had no relatives to trouble her, unless it were a
certain Phineas Jones, who was so far removed that she could scarcely
call him a relative. But if he were living he would certainly find her
if she ventured near him, and cousin her, as he used to do in Worcester,
where he was continually calling upon her after her marriage and
reminding her of spelling-schools and singing-schools and circuses which
he said he had attended with her. How distasteful it all was, and how
she shrank from everything pertaining to her early life, which seemed so
far away that she sometimes half persuaded herself it had never been!

And yet her talk with Rex about the old Homestead on the hill had
stirred her strangely, and that night, long after her usual hour for
retiring, she sat by her window looking out upon the great city, whose
many lights, shining like stars through the fog and rain, she scarcely
saw at all. Her thoughts had gone back thirty years to an October day
just after her return from her wedding trip to Niagara, when her husband
had driven her into the country to visit his old home. How happy he had
been, and how vividly she could recall the expression on his face when
he caught sight of the red gables and the well-sweep where she told
Reginald he had gone down upon his knees. There had been a similar
expression on Rex’s face that evening when he talked of his fancy farm,
and Rex was in appearance much like what her handsome young husband had
been that lovely autumn day, when a purple haze was resting on the hills
and the air was soft and warm as summer. He had taken her first to the
woods and shown her where he and his brother Jack had set their traps
for the woodchucks and snared the partridges in the fall and hunted for
the trailing arbutus and the sassafras in the spring; then to the old
cider-mill at the end of the lane, and to the hill where they had their
slide in winter, and to the barn, where they had a swing, and to the
brook in the orchard, where they had a water-wheel; then to the well,
where he drew up the bucket, and, poising it upon the curb, stooped to
drink from it, asking her to do the same and see if she ever quaffed a
sweeter draught; but she was afraid of wetting her dress, and had drawn
back, saying she was not thirsty. Strangers occupied the house, but
permission was given them to go over it, and he had taken her through
all the rooms, showing her where he and Jack and Annie were born, and
where the latter had died when a little child of eight; then to the
garret, where they used to spread the hickory-nuts and butternuts to
dry, and down to the cellar, where the apples and cider were stored. He
was like a school-boy in his eagerness to explain everything, while she
was bored to death and heard with dismay his proposition to drive two or
three miles farther to the Greenville cemetery, where the Hallams for
many generations back had been buried. There was a host of them, and
some of the headstones were sunken and mouldy with age and half fallen
down, while the lettering upon them was almost illegible.

“I wonder whose this is?” he said, as he went down upon the ground to
decipher the date of the oldest one. “I can’t make it out, except that
it is seventeen hundred and something. He must have been an old
settler,” he continued, as he arose and brushed a patch of dirt from his
trousers with his silk handkerchief. Then, glancing at her as she stood
listlessly leaning against a stone, he said, “Why, Lucy, you look tired.
Are you?”

“No, not very,” she answered, a little pettishly; “but I don’t think it
very exhilarating business for a bride to be visiting the graves of her
husband’s ancestors.”

He did not hunt for any more dates after that, but, gathering a few wild
flowers growing in the tall grass, he laid them upon his mother’s grave
and Annie’s, and, going out to the carriage standing by the gate, drove
back to Worcester through a long stretch of woods, where the road was
lined on either side with sumachs and berry-bushes and clumps of
bitter-sweet, and there was no sign of life except when a blackbird flew
from one tree to another, or a squirrel showed its bushy tail upon the
wall. He thought it delightful, and said that it was the pleasantest
drive in the neighborhood and one which he had often taken with Jack
when they were boys; but she thought it horribly lonesome and poky, and
was glad when they struck the pavement of the town.

“Carter always liked the country,” she said to herself when her reverie
came to an end, and she left her seat by the window; “and Rex is just
like him, and will buy that place if he can, and I shall have to go
there as hostess and be called upon by a lot of old women in sun-bonnets
and blanket shawls, who will call me Lucy Ann and say, ‘You remember me,
don’t you? I was Mary Jane Smith; I worked in the shoe-shop with you
years ago.’ And Phineas Jones will turn up, with his cousining and
dreadful reminiscences. Ah me, what a pity one could not be born without
antecedents!”




                              CHAPTER II.
                             THE HOMESTEAD.


It stood at the end of a grassy avenue or lane a little distance from
the electric road between Worcester and Spencer, its outside chimneys
covered with woodbine and its sharp gables distinctly visible as the
cars wound up the steep Leicester hill. Just what its age was no one
knew exactly. Relic-hunters who revel in antiquities put it at one
hundred and fifty. But the oldest inhabitant in the town, who was an
authority for everything ancient, said that when he was a small boy it
was comparatively new, and considered very fine on account of its gables
and brass knocker, and, as he was ninety-five or six, the house was
probably over a hundred. It was built by a retired sea-captain from
Boston, and after his death it changed hands several times until it was
bought by the Hallams, who lived there so long and were so highly
esteemed that it came to bear their name, and was known as the Hallam
Homestead. After the death of Carter Hallam’s father it was occupied by
different parties, and finally became the property of a Mr. Leighton,
who rather late in life had married a girl from Georgia, where he had
been for a time a teacher. Naturally scholarly and fond of books, he
would have preferred teaching, but his young wife, accustomed to
plantation life, said she should be happier in the country, and so he
bought the Homestead and commenced farming, with very little knowledge
of what ought to be done and very little means with which to do it.
Under such circumstances he naturally grew poorer every year, while his
wife’s artistic tastes did not help the matter. Remembering her father’s
plantation with its handsome grounds and gardens, she instituted
numerous changes in and about the house, which made it more attractive,
but did not add to its value. The big chimney was taken down and others
built upon the outside, after the Southern style. A wide hall was put
through the centre where the chimney had been; a broad double piazza was
built in front, while the ground was terraced down to the orchard below,
where a rustic bridge was thrown across the little brook where Carter
and Jack Hallam had built their water-wheel. Other changes the ambitious
little Georgian was contemplating, when she died suddenly and was
carried back to sleep under her native pines, leaving her husband
utterly crushed at his loss, with the care of two little girls, Dorcas
and Bertha, and a mortgage of two thousand dollars upon his farm. For
some years he scrambled on as best he could with hired help, giving all
his leisure time to educating and training his daughters, who were as
unlike each other as two sisters well could be. Dorcas, the elder, was
fair and blue-eyed, and round and short and matter-of-fact, caring more
for the farm and the house than for books, while Bertha was just the
opposite, and, with her soft brown hair, bright eyes, brilliant
complexion, and graceful, slender figure, was the exact counterpart of
her beautiful Southern mother when she first came to the Homestead; but
otherwise she was like her father, caring more for books than for the
details of every-day life.

“Dorcas is to be housekeeper, and I the wage-earner, to help pay off the
mortgage which troubles father so much,” she said, and when she was
through school she became book-keeper for the firm of Swartz & Co., of
Boston, with a salary of four hundred dollars a year. Dorcas, who was
two years older, remained at home as housekeeper. And a very thrifty one
she made, seeing to everything and doing everything, from making butter
to making beds, for she kept no help. The money thus saved was put
carefully by towards paying the mortgage coming due in October. By the
closest economy it had been reduced from two thousand to one thousand,
and both Dorcas and Bertha were straining every nerve to increase the
fund which was to liquidate the debt.

It was not very often that Bertha indulged in the luxury of coming home,
for even that expense was something, and every dollar helped. But on the
Saturday following the appearance of Mrs. Hallam’s advertisement in the
New York _Herald_ she was coming to spend Sunday for the first time in
several weeks. These visits were great events at the Homestead, and
Dorcas was up as soon as the first robin chirped in his nest in the big
apple-tree which shaded the rear of the house and was now odorous and
beautiful with its clusters of pink-and-white blossoms. There was
churning to do that morning, and butter to get off to market, besides
the usual Saturday’s cleaning and baking, which included all Bertha’s
favorite dishes. There was Bertha’s room to be gone over with broom and
duster, and all the vases and handleless pitchers to be filled with
daffies and tulips and great bunches of apple-blossoms and a clump or
two of the trailing arbutus which had lingered late in the woods. But
Dorcas’s work was one of love; if she were tired she scarcely thought of
it at all, and kept steadily on until everything was done. In her
afternoon gown and white apron she sat down to rest awhile on the piazza
overlooking the valley, thinking as she did so what a lovely place it
was, with its large, sunny rooms, wide hall, and fine view, and how
dreadful it would be to lose it.

“Five hundred dollars more we must have, and where it is to come from I
do not know. Bertha always says something will turn up, but I am not so
hopeful,” she said, sadly. Then, glancing at the clock, she saw that it
was nearly time for the car which would bring her sister from the
Worcester station. “I’ll go out to the cross-road and meet her,” she
thought, just as she heard the sharp clang of the bell and saw the
trolley-pole as it came up the hill. A moment more, and Bertha alighted
and came rapidly towards her.

“You dear old Dor, I’m so glad to see you and be home again,” Bertha
said, giving up her satchel and umbrella and putting her arm caressingly
around Dorcas’s neck as she walked, for she was much the taller of the
two.

It was a lovely May afternoon, and the place was at its best in the warm
sunlight, with the fresh green grass and the early flowers and the apple
orchard full of blossoms which filled the air with perfume.

“Oh, this is delightful, and it is so good to get away from that close
office and breathe this pure air,” Bertha said, as she went from room to
room, and then out upon the piazza, where she stood taking in deep
inhalations and seeming to Dorcas to grow brighter and fresher with each
one. “Where is father?” she asked at last.

“Here, daughter,” was answered, as Mr. Leighton, who had been to the
village, came through a rear door.

He was a tall, spare man, with snowy hair and a stoop in his shoulders,
which told of many years of hard work. But the refinement in his manner
and the gentleness in his face were indicative of good breeding, and a
life somewhat different from that which he now led.

Bertha was at his side in a moment, and had him down in a rocking-chair,
and was sitting on an arm of it, brushing the thin hair back from his
forehead, while she looked anxiously into his face, which wore a more
troubled expression than usual, although he evidently tried to hide it.

“What is it, father? Are you very tired?” she asked, at last, and he
replied;

“No, daughter, not very; and if I were the sight of you would rest me.”

Catching sight of the corner of an envelope in his vest pocket, with a
woman’s quick intuition, she guessed that it had something to do with
his sadness.

“You have a letter. Is there anything in it about that hateful
mortgage?” she said.

“It is all about the mortgage. There’s a way to get rid of it,” he
answered, while his voice trembled, and something in his eyes, as he
looked into Bertha’s, made her shiver a little; but she kissed him
lovingly, and said very low:

“Yes, father. I know there is a way,” her lips quivering as she said it,
and a lump rising in her throat as if she were smothering.

“Will you read the letter?” he asked, and she answered:

“Not now; let us have supper first. I am nearly famished, and long to
get at Dor’s rolls and broiled chicken, which I smelled before I left
the car at the cross-roads.”

She was very gay all through the supper, although a close observer might
have seen a cloud cross her bright face occasionally, and a look of pain
and preoccupation in her eyes; but she laughed and chatted merrily,
asking about the neighbors and the farm, and when supper was over helped
Dorcas with her dishes and the evening work, sang snatches of the last
opera, and told her sister about the new bell skirt just coming into
fashion, and how she could cut over her old ones like it. When
everything was done she seemed to nerve herself to some great effort,
and, going to her father said:

“Now for the letter. From whom is it?”

“Gorham, the man who holds the mortgage,” Mr. Leighton replied.

“Oh-h, Gorham!” and Bertha’s voice was full of intense relief. “I
thought perhaps it was —— but no matter, that will come later. Let us
hear what Mr. Gorham has to say. He cannot foreclose till October,
anyhow.”

“And not then, if we do what he proposes. This is it,” Mr. Leighton
said, as he began to read the letter, which was as follows:

                                           “BROOKLYN, N. Y., May —, 18—.

  “MR. LEIGHTON:

  “DEAR SIR,—A gentleman in New York wishes to purchase a farm in the
  country, where he can spend a part of the summer and autumn, fishing
  and fox-hunting and so on. From what he has heard of your place and
  the woods around it, he thinks it will suit him exactly, and in the
  course of a few weeks proposes to go out and see it. As he has ample
  means, he will undoubtedly pay you a good price, cash down, and that
  will relieve you of all trouble with the mortgage. I still think I
  must have my money in October, as I have promised it elsewhere.

                                                  “Very truly,
                                                          “JOHN GORHAM.”

“Well?” Mr. Leighton said, as he finished reading the letter, and looked
inquiringly at his daughters.

Bertha, who was very pale, was the first to speak. “Do you want to leave
the old home?” she asked, and her father replied, in a choking voice,
“No, oh, no. I have lived here twenty-seven years, and know every rock
and tree and shrub, and love them all. I brought your mother here a
bride and a slip of a girl like you, who are so much like her that
sometimes when I see you flitting around and hear your voice I think for
a moment she has come back to me again. You were both born here. Your
mother died here, and here I want to die. But what is the use of
prolonging the struggle? I have raked and scraped and saved in every
possible way to pay the debt contracted so long ago, the interest of
which has eaten up all my profits, and I have got within five hundred
dollars of it, but do not see how I can get any further. I may sell a
few apples and some hay, but I’ll never borrow another dollar, and if
this New York chap offers a good price we’d better sell. Dorcas and I
can rent a few rooms somewhere in Boston, maybe, and we shall all be
together till I die, which, please God, will not be very long.”

His face was white, with a tired, discouraged look upon it pitiful to
see, while Dorcas, who cried easily, was sobbing aloud. But Bertha’s
eyes were round and bright and dry, and there was a ring in her voice as
she said, “You will _not_ die, and you will not sell the place. Horses
and dogs and fox-hunts, indeed! I’d like to see that New Yorker plunging
through the fields and farms with his horses and hounds, for that is
what fox-hunting means. He would be mobbed in no time. Who is he, I
wonder? I should like to meet him and give him a piece of my mind.”

She was getting excited, and her cheeks were scarlet as she kissed her
father again and said, “Write and tell that New Yorker to stay where he
is, and take his foxes to some other farm. He cannot have ours, nor any
one else. Micawber-like, I believe something will turn up; I am sure of
it; only give me time.”

Then, rising from her chair, she went swiftly out into the twilight,
and, crossing the road, ran down the terrace to a bit of broken wall,
where she sat down and watched the night gathering on the distant hills
and over the woods, and fought the battle which more than one unselfish
woman has fought,—a battle between inclination and what seemed to be
duty. If she chose, she could save the farm with a word and make her
father’s last days free from care. There was a handsome house in Boston
of which she might be mistress any day, with plenty of money at her
command to do with as she pleased. But the owner was old compared to
herself, forty at least, and growing bald; he called her Berthy, and was
not at all like the ideal she had in her mind of the man whom she could
love,—who was really more like one who might hunt foxes and ride his
horses through the fields, while she rode by his side, than like the
commonplace Mr. Sinclair, who had asked her twice to be his wife. At her
last refusal only a few days ago he had said he should not give her up
yet, but should write her father for his co-operation, and it was from
him she feared the New York letter had come when she saw it in her
father’s pocket. She knew he was honorable and upright and would be kind
and generous to her and her family, but she had dreamed of a different
love, and she could not listen to his suit unless it were to save the
old home for her father and Dorcas.

For a time she sat weighing in the balance her love for them and her
love for herself, while darkness deepened around her and the air grew
heavy with the scent of the apple-blossoms and the grove of pine-trees
not far away; yet she was no nearer a decision than when she first sat
down. It was strange that in the midst of her intense thinking, the
baying of hounds, the tramp of horses’ feet, and the shout of many
voices should ring in her ears so distinctly that once, as some bushes
stirred near her, she turned, half expecting to see the hunted fox
fleeing for his life, and, with an impulse to save him from his
pursuers, put out both her hands.

“This is a queer sort of hallucination, and it comes from that New York
letter,” she thought, just as from under a cloud where it had been
hidden the new moon sailed out to the right of her. Bertha was not
superstitious, but, like many others, she clung to some of the
traditions of her childhood, and the new moon seen over the right
shoulder was one of them. She always framed a wish when she saw it, and
she did so now, involuntarily repeating the words she had so often used
when a child:

                   “New moon, new moon, listen to me,
                   And grant the boon I ask of thee,”

and then, almost as seriously as if it were a prayer, she wished that
something might occur to keep the home for her father and herself from
Mr. Sinclair.

“I don’t believe much in the new moon, it has cheated me so often; but I
do believe in presentiments, and I have one that something will turn up.
I’ll wait awhile and see,” she said, as the silvery crescent was lost
again under a cloud. Beginning to feel a little chilly, she went back to
the house, where she found her father reading his evening paper.

This reminded her of a New York _Herald_ she had bought on the car of a
little newsboy, whose ragged coat and pleasant face had decided her to
refuse the chocolates offered her by a larger boy and take the paper
instead. It was lying on the table, where she had put it when she first
came in. Taking it up, she sat down and opened it. Glancing from page to
page, she finally reached the advertisements, and her eye fell upon that
of Mrs. Hallam.

“Oh, father, Dorcas, I told you something would turn up, and there has!
Listen!” and she read the advertisement aloud. “The very thing I most
desired has come. I have always wanted to go to Europe, but never
thought I could, on account of the expense, and here it is, all paid,
and five hundred dollars besides. That will save the place. I did not
wish the new moon for nothing. Something has turned up.”

“But, Bertha,” said the more practical Dorcas, “what reason have you to
think you will get the situation? There are probably more than five
hundred applicants for it,—one for each dollar.”

“I know I shall. I feel it as I have felt other things which have come
to me. Theosophic presentiments I call them.”

Dorcas went on: “And if it does come, I don’t see how it will help the
mortgage due in October. You will not get your pay in advance, and
possibly not until the end of the year.”

“I shall borrow the money and give my note,” Bertha answered, promptly.
“Anybody will trust me. Swartz & Co. will, anyway, knowing that I shall
come back and work it out if Mrs. Hallam fails me. By the way, that is
the name of the people who lived here years ago. Perhaps Mrs. Carter
belongs to the family. Do you know where they are, father?”

Mr. Leighton said he did not. He thought, however, they were all dead,
while Dorcas asked, “If you are willing to borrow money of Swartz & Co.,
why don’t you try Cousin Louie, and pay her in installments?”

“Cousin Louie!” Bertha repeated. “That would be borrowing of her proud
husband, Fred Thurston, who, since I have been a bread-winner, never
sees me in the street if he can help it. I’d take in washing before I’d
ask a favor of him. My heart is set upon Europe, if Mrs. Hallam will
have me, and you do not oppose me too strongly.”

“But I must oppose you,” her father said; and then followed a long and
earnest discussion between Mr. Leighton, Dorcas, and Bertha, the result
of which was that Bertha was to wait a few days and consider the matter
before writing to Mrs. Hallam.

That night, however, after her father had retired, she dashed off a
rough draught of what she meant to say and submitted it to Dorcas for
approval. It was as follows:

  “MRS. HALLAM:

  “MADAM,—I have seen your advertisement for a companion, and shall be
  glad of the situation. My name is Bertha Leighton. I am twenty-two
  years old, and was graduated at the Charlestown Seminary three years
  ago. I am called a good reader, and ought to be a good accountant, as
  for two years I have been book-keeper in the firm of Swartz & Co.,
  Boston. I am not very handy with my needle, for want of practice, but
  can soon learn. While in school I took lessons in French of a native
  teacher, who complimented my pronunciation and quickness to
  comprehend. Consequently I think I shall find no difficulty in
  understanding the language after a little and making myself
  understood. I enclose my photograph, which flatters me somewhat. My
  address is

                                  “BERTHA LEIGHTON,
                                      “No. — Derring St., Boston, Mass.”

“I think it covers the whole business,” Bertha said to Dorcas, who
objected to one point. “The photograph does not flatter you,” she said,
while Bertha insisted that it did, as it represented a much more
stylish-looking young woman than Mrs. Carter Hallam’s companion ought to
be. “I wonder what sort of woman she is? I somehow fancy she is a snob,”
she said; “but, snob me all she pleases, she cannot keep me from seeing
Europe, and I don’t believe she will try to cheat me out of my wages.”




                              CHAPTER III.
                       MRS. HALLAM’S APPLICANTS.


Several days after Mrs. Hallam’s advertisement appeared in the papers,
Reginald, who had been away on business, returned, and found his aunt in
her room struggling frantically with piles of letters and photographs
and with a very worried and excited look on her face.

“Oh, Rex,” she cried, as he came in, “I am so glad you have come, for I
am nearly wild. Only think! Seventy applicants, and as many photographs!
What possessed them to send their pictures?”

Rex kept his own counsel, but gave a low whistle as he glanced at the
pile which filled the table.

“Got enough for an album, haven’t you? How do they look as a whole?” he
asked.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. Such a time as I have had reading their
letters, and such recommendations as most of them give of themselves,
telling me what reverses of fortune they have suffered, what church they
belong to, and how long they have taught in Sunday-school, and all that,
as if I cared. But I have decided which to choose; her letter came this
morning, with one other,—the last of the lot, I trust. I like her
because she writes so plainly and sensibly and seems so truthful. She
says she is not a good seamstress and that her picture flatters her,
while most of the others say their pictures are not good. Then she is so
respectful and simply addresses me as ‘Madam,’ while all the others
_dear_ me. If there is anything I like, it is respect in a servant.”

“Thunder, auntie! You don’t call your companion a servant, do you?” Rex
exclaimed, but his aunt only replied by passing him Bertha’s letter.
“She writes well. How does she look?” he asked.

“Here she is.” And his aunt gave him the photograph of a short,
sleepy-looking girl, with little or no expression in her face or eyes,
and an unmistakable second-class air generally.

“Oh, horrors!” Rex exclaimed. “This girl never wrote that letter. Why,
she simpers and squints and is positively ugly. There must be some
mistake, and you have mixed things dreadfully.”

“No, I haven’t,” Mrs. Hallam persisted. “I was very careful to keep the
photographs and letters together as they came. This is Bertha
Leighton’s, sure, and she says it flatters her.”

“What must the original be!” Rex groaned.

His aunt continued, “I’d rather she’d be plain than good-looking. I
don’t want her attracting attention and looking in the glass half the
time. Mrs. Haynes always said, ‘Get plain girls by all means, in
preference to pretty ones with airs and hangers-on.’”

“All right, if Mrs. Haynes says so,” Rex answered, with a shrug of his
shoulders, as he put down the photograph of the girl he called
Squint-Eye, and began carelessly to look at the others.

“Oh-h!” he said, catching up Bertha’s picture. “This is something like
it. By Jove, she’s a stunner. Why don’t you take her? What splendid eyes
she has, and how she carries herself!”

“Read her letter,” his aunt said, handing him a note in which, among
other things, the writer, who gave her name as Rose Arabella Jefferson,
and claimed relationship with Thomas Jefferson, Joe Jefferson and
Jefferson Davis, said she was a member in good standing of the First
Baptist Church, and spelled Baptist with two _b_’s. There were also
other mistakes in orthography, besides some in grammar, and Rex dropped
it in disgust, but held fast to the photograph, whose piquant face,
bright, laughing eyes, and graceful poise of head and shoulders
attracted him greatly.

“Rose Arabella Jefferson,” he began, “blood relation of Joe Jefferson,
Thomas Jefferson, and Jefferson Davis, and member in good standing in
the First Baptist Church, spelled with a _b_ in the middle, you never
wrote that letter, I know; and if you did, your blue blood ought to
atone for a few lapses in grammar and spelling. I am sure Mrs. Walker
Haynes would think so. Take her, auntie, and run the risk. She is from
the country, where you said your companion must hail from, while
Squint-Eye is from Boston, with no ancestry, no religion, and probably
the embodiment of clubs and societies and leagues and women’s rights and
Christian Science and the Lord knows what. Take Rose Arabella.”

But Mrs. Hallam was firm. Rose Arabella was quite too good-looking, and
Boston was country compared with New York. “Squint-Eye” was her choice,
provided her employers spoke well of her; and she asked Rex to write to
Boston and make inquiries of Swartz & Co., concerning Miss Leighton.

“Not if I know myself,” Rex answered. “I will do everything reasonable,
but I draw the line on turning detective and prying into any girl’s
character.

He was firm on this point, and Mrs. Hallam wrote herself to Swartz &
Co., and then proceeded to tear up and burn the numerous letters and
photographs filling her table. Rose Arabella Jefferson, however, was not
among them, for she, with other pretty girls, some personal friends and
some strangers, was adorning Rex’s looking-glass, where it was greatly
admired by the housemaid as Mr. Reginald’s latest fancy.

A few days later Mrs. Hallam said to Rex, “I have heard from Swartz &
Co., and they speak in the highest terms of Miss Leighton. I wish you
would write for me and tell her I have decided to take her, and that she
is to come to me on Friday, June —, as the Teutonic sails the next
morning.”

Reginald did as he was requested, thinking the while how much he would
rather be writing to Rose Arabella, _Babtist_ and all, than to Bertha
Leighton. But there was no help for it; Bertha was his aunt’s choice,
and was to be her companion instead of his, he reflected, as he directed
the letter, which he posted on his way down town. The next day he
started for the West on business for the law firm, promising his aunt
that if possible he would return in time to see her off; “and then,” he
added, “I am going to Leicester to look after my fancy farm.”




                              CHAPTER IV.
                          MRS. FRED THURSTON.


Bertha waited anxiously for an answer to her letter; when it did not
come she grew very nervous and restless, and began to lose faith in the
new moon and her theosophical presentiments, as she called her
convictions of what was coming to pass. A feeling of dread began also to
haunt her lest, after all, the man with the bald head, who called her
Berthy, might be the only alternative to save the homestead from the
auctioneer’s hammer. But the letter came at last and changed her whole
future. There was an interview with her employers, who, having received
Mrs. Hallam’s letter of inquiry, were not surprised. Although sorry to
part with her, they readily agreed to advance whatever money should be
needed in October, without other security than her note, which she was
to leave with her father.

There was another interview with Mr. Sinclair, who at its close had a
very sorry look on his face and a suspicion of suppressed tears in his
voice as he said, “It is hard to give you up, and I could have made you
so happy, and your father, too. Good-bye, and God bless you. Mrs.
Thurston will be disappointed. Her heart was quite set upon having you
for a neighbor, as you would be if you were my wife. Good-bye.”

The Mrs. Thurston alluded to was Bertha’s cousin Louie, from the South,
who, four years before had spent part of a summer at the Homestead. She
had then gone to Newport, where she captured Fred Thurston, a Boston
millionaire, who made love to her hotly for one month, married her the
next, swore at her the next, and in a quiet but decided manner had
tyrannized over and bullied her ever since. But he gave her all the
money she wanted, and, as that was the principal thing for which she
married him, she bore her lot bravely, became in time a butterfly of
fashion, and laughed and danced and dressed, and went to lunches and
teas and receptions and dinners and balls, taking stimulants to keep her
up before she went, and bromide, or chloral, or sulfonal, to make her
sleep when she came home. But all this told upon her at last, and after
four years of it she began to droop, with a consciousness that something
was sapping her strength and stealing all her vitality. “Nervous
prostration,” the physician called it, recommending a change of air and
scene, and, as a trip to Europe had long been contemplated by Mr.
Thurston, he had finally decided upon a summer in Switzerland, and was
to sail some time in July. Mrs. Thurston was very fond of her relatives
at the Homestead, and especially of Bertha, who when she was first
married was a pupil in Charlestown Seminary and spent nearly every
Sunday with her. After a while, however, and for no reason whatever
except that on one or two occasions he had shown his frightful temper
before her, Mr. Thurston conceived a dislike for Bertha and forbade
Louie’s inviting her so often to his house, saying he did not marry her
poor relations. This put an end to any close intimacy between the
cousins, and although Bertha called occasionally she seldom met Louie’s
husband, who, after she entered the employment of Swartz & Co., rarely
recognized her in the street. Bread-winners were far beneath his notice,
and Bertha was a sore point between him and his wife, who loved her
cousin with the devotion of a sister and often wrote, begging her to
come, if only for an hour.

But Bertha was too proud to trespass where the master did not want her,
and it was many weeks since they had met. She must go now and say
good-bye. And after Mr. Sinclair left her she walked along Commonwealth
Avenue to her cousin’s elegant house, which stood side by side with one
equally handsome, of which she had just refused to be mistress. But she
scarcely glanced at it, or, if she did, it was with no feeling of regret
as she ran up the steps and rang the bell.

Mrs. Thurston was at home and alone, the servant said, and Bertha, who
went up unannounced, found her in her pleasant morning room, lying on a
couch in the midst of a pile of cushions, with a very tired look upon
her lovely face.

“Oh, Bertha,” she exclaimed, springing up with outstretched hands, as
her cousin came in, “I am so glad to see you! Where have you kept
yourself so long? And when are you coming to be my neighbor? I saw Mr.
Sinclair last week, and he still had hopes.”

Bertha replied by telling what the reader already, knows, and adding
that she had come to say good-bye, as she was to sail in two weeks.

“Oh, how could you refuse him, and he so kind and good, and so fond of
you?” Louie said.

Bertha, between whom and her cousin there were no domestic secrets,
replied:

“Because I do not love him, and never can, good and kind as I know him
to be. With your experience, would you advise me to marry for money?”

Instantly a shadow came over Louie’s face, and she hesitated a little
before she answered:

“Yes, and no; all depends upon the man, and whether you loved some one
else. If you knew he would swear at you, and call you names, and storm
before the servants, and throw things,—not at you, perhaps, but at the
side of the house,—I should say no, decidedly; but if he were kind, and
good, and generous, like Charlie Sinclair, I should say yes. I did so
want you for my neighbor. Can’t you reconsider? Who is Mrs. Hallam, I
wonder? I know some Hallams, or a Hallam,—Reginald. He lives in New
York, and it seems to me his aunt’s name is Mrs. Carter Hallam. Let me
tell you about him. I feel like talking of the old life in Florida,
which seems so long ago.”

She was reclining again among the cushions, with one arm under her head,
a far-away look in her eyes, and a tone in her voice as if she were
talking to herself rather than to Bertha.

“You know my father lived in Florida,” she began, “not far from
Tallahassee, and your mother lived over the line in Georgia. Our place
was called Magnolia Grove, and there were oleanders and yellow jasmine
and Cherokee roses everywhere. This morning when I was so tired and felt
that life was not worth the living, I fancied I was in my old home
again, and I smelled the orange blossoms and saw the magnolias which
bordered the avenue to our house, fifty or more, in full bloom, and Rex
and I were playing under them. His uncle’s plantation joined ours, and
when his mother died in Boston he came to live with her brother at
Grassy Spring. He was twelve and I was nine, and I had never played with
any boy before except the negroes, and we were so fond of each other. He
called me his little sweetheart, and said he was going to marry me when
he was older. When he was fourteen, his uncle on his father’s side, a
Mr. Hallam, from New York, sent for him, and he went away, promising to
come back again when he was a man. We wrote to each other a few times,
just boy and girl letters, you know. He called me Dear Louie and I
called him Dear Rex, and then, I hardly know why, that chapter of my
life closed, never to be reopened. Grandfather, who owned Magnolia
Grove, lost nearly everything during the war, so that father, who took
the place after him, was comparatively poor, and when he died we were
poorer still, mother and I, and had to sell the plantation and move to
Tallahassee, where we kept boarders,—people from the North, mostly, who
came there for the winter. I was sixteen then, and I tried to help
mother all I could. I dusted the rooms, and washed the glass and china,
and did a lot of things I never thought I’d have to do. When I was
eighteen Rex Hallam came to Jacksonville and ran over to see us. If he
had been handsome as a boy of fourteen, he was still handsomer as a man
of twenty-one, with what in a woman would be called a sweet graciousness
of manner which won all hearts to him; but as he is a man I will drop
the sweet and say that he was kind alike to everybody, old and young,
rich and poor, and had the peculiar gift of making every woman think she
was especially pleasing to him, whether she were married or single,
pretty or otherwise. He stopped with us a week, and because I was so
proud and rebellious against our changed circumstances, and so ashamed
to have him find me dusting and washing dishes, I was cold and stiff
towards him, and our old relations were not altogether resumed, although
he was very kind. Sometimes for fun he helped me dust, and once he wiped
the dishes for me and broke a china teapot, and then he went away and I
never saw him again till last summer, when I met him at Saratoga. Fred,
who was with him in college, introduced us to each other, supposing we
were strangers. You ought to have seen the look of surprise on Rex’s
face when Fred said, ‘This is my wife.’

“Why, Louie,” he exclaimed, “I don’t need an introduction to you,” then
to my husband, “We are old friends, Louie and I;” and we told him of our
early acquaintance.

“For a wonder, Fred did not seem a bit jealous of him, although savage
if another man looked at me. Nor had he any cause, for Rex’s manner was
just like a brother’s, but oh, such a brother! And I was so happy the
two weeks he was there. We drove and rode and danced and talked
together, and never but once did he refer to the past. Then, in his
deep, musical voice, the most musical I ever heard in a man, he said, ‘I
thought you were going to wait for me,’ and I answered, ‘I did wait, and
you never came.’

“That was all; but the night before he went away he was in our room and
asked for my photograph, which was lying upon the table. He had quite a
collection, he said, and would like to add mine to it, and I gave it to
him. Fred knew it and was willing, but since then, when he is in one of
his moods, he taunts me with it, and says he knew I was in love with Rex
all the time,—that he saw it in my face, and that Rex saw it, too, and
despised me for it while pretending to admire me, and because he knew
Rex despised me and he could trust him, he allowed me full liberty just
to see how far I would go and not compromise myself. I do not believe it
of Rex: he never despised any woman; but it is hard to hear such things,
and sometimes when Fred is worse than usual and I have borne all I can
bear, I go away and cry, with an intense longing for something
different, which might perhaps have come to me if I had waited, and I
hear Rex’s boyish voice just as it sounded under the magnolias in
Florida, where we played together and pelted each other with the white
petals strewing the ground.

“I am not false to Fred in telling this to you, who know about my
domestic life, which, after all, has some sunshine in it. Fred is not
always cross. Every one has a good and a bad side, a Jekyll and Hyde,
you know, and if Fred has more Hyde than Jekyll, it is not his fault,
perhaps. I try him in many ways. He says I am a fool, and that I only
care for his money, and if he gives me all I want I ought to be
satisfied. Just now he is very good,—so good, in fact, that I wonder if
he isn’t going to die. I believe he thinks I am, I am so weak and tired.
I have not told you, have I, that we, too, are going to Europe before
long? Switzerland is our objective point, but if I can I will persuade
Fred to go to Aix, where you will be. That will be jolly. I wonder if
your Mrs. Hallam can be Rex’s aunt.”

“Did you ever see her?” Bertha asked, and Louie replied:

“Only in the distance. She was in Saratoga with him, but at another
hotel. I heard she was a very swell woman with piles of money, and that
when young she had made shoes and worked in a factory, or something.”

“How shocking!” Bertha said, laughingly, and Louie rejoined:

“Don’t be sarcastic. You know I don’t care what she used to do. Why
should I, when I have dusted and washed dishes myself, and waited on a
lot of Northern boarders, with my proud Southern blood in hot rebellion
against it? If Mrs. Hallam made shoes or cloth, what does it matter, so
long as she is rich now and in the best society? She is no blood
relation to Rex, who is a gentleman by birth and nature both. I hope
Mrs. Carter is his aunt, for then you will see him; and if you do, tell
him I am your cousin, but not how wretched I am. He saw a little in
Saratoga, but not much, for Fred was very guarded. Hark! I believe I
hear him coming.”

There was a bright flush on her cheeks as she started up and began to
smooth the folds of her dress and to arrange her hair.

“Fred does not like to see me tumbled,” she said, just as the portière
was drawn aside and her husband entered the room.

He was a tall and rather fine-looking man of thirty, with large, fierce
black eyes and an expression on his face and about his mouth indicative
of an indomitable will and a temper hard to meet. He had come in, he
said, to take Louie for a drive, as the day was fine and the air would
do her good; and he was so gracious to Bertha that she felt sure the
Jekyll mood was in the ascendant. He asked her if she was still with
Swartz & Co., and listened with some interest while Louie told him of
her engagement with Mrs. Carter Hallam, and when she asked if that lady
was Rex’s aunt, he replied that she was, adding that Rex’s uncle had
adopted him as a son and had left a large fortune.

Then, turning to Bertha, he said, “I congratulate you on your
prospective acquaintance with Rex Hallam. He is very susceptible to
female charms, and quite indiscriminate in his attentions. Every woman,
old or young, is apt to think he is in love with her.”

He spoke sarcastically, with a meaning look at his wife, whose face was
scarlet. Bertha was angry, and, with a proud inclination of her head,
said to him:

“It is not likely that I shall see much of Mr. Reginald Hallam. Why
should I, when I am only his aunt’s hired companion, and have few charms
to attract him?”

“I am not so sure of that,” Fred said, struck as he had never been
before with Bertha’s beauty, as she stood confronting him.

She was a magnificent-looking girl, who, given a chance, would throw
Louie quite in the shade, he thought, and under the fascination of her
beauty he became more gracious than ever, and asked her to drive with
them and return to lunch.

“Oh, do,” Louie said. “It is ages since you were here.”

But Bertha declined, as she had shopping to do, and in the afternoon was
going home to stay until it was time to report herself to Mrs. Hallam.
Then, bidding them good-bye, she left the house and went rapidly down
the avenue.




                               CHAPTER V.
                             THE COMPANION.


Bertha kept up very bravely when she said good-bye to her father and
Dorcas and started alone for New York; but there was a horrid sense of
loneliness and homesickness in her heart when at about six in the
afternoon she rang the bell of No. — Fifth Avenue, looking in her sailor
hat and tailor-made gown and Eton jacket of dark blue serge more like
the daughter of the house than like a hired companion. Peters, the
colored man who opened the door, mistook her for an acquaintance, and
was very deferential in his manner, while he waited for her card. By
mistake her cards were in her trunk, and she said to him, “Tell Mrs.
Hallam that Miss Leighton is here. She is expecting me.”

Mrs. Hallam’s servants usually managed to know the most of their
mistress’s business, for, although she professed to keep them at a
distance, she was at times quite confidential, and they all knew that a
Miss Leighton was to accompany her abroad as a companion. So when Peters
heard the name he changed his intention to usher her into the
reception-room, and, seating her in the hall, went for a maid, who took
her to a room on the fourth floor back and told her that Mrs. Hallam had
just gone in to dinner with some friends and would not be at liberty to
see her for two or three hours.

“But she is expecting you,” she said, “and has given orders that you can
have your dinner served here, or if you choose, you can dine with Mrs.
Flagg, the housekeeper, in her room in the front basement. I should go
there, if I were you. You’ll find it pleasanter and cooler than up here
under the roof.”

Bertha preferred the housekeeper’s room, to which she was taken by the
maid. Mrs. Flagg was a kind-hearted, friendly woman, who, with the quick
instincts of her class, recognized Bertha as a lady and treated her
accordingly. She had lived with the Hallams many years, and, with a
natural pride in the family, talked a good deal of her mistress’s wealth
and position, but more of Mr. Reginald, who had a pleasant word for
everybody, high or low, rich or poor.

“Mrs. Hallam is not exactly that way,” she said, “and sometimes snubs
folks beneath her; but I’ve heard Mr. Reginald tell her that civil words
don’t cost anything, and the higher up you are and the surer of yourself
the better you can afford to be polite to every one; that a gold piece
is none the less gold because there is a lot of copper pennies in the
purse with it, nor a real lady any the less a lady because she is kind
of chummy with her inferiors. He’s great on comparisons.”

As Bertha made no comment, she continued, “He’s Mrs. Hallam’s nephew, or
rather her husband’s, but the same as her son;” adding that she was
sorry he was not at home, as she’d like Miss Leighton to see him.

When dinner was over she offered to take Bertha back to her room, and as
they passed an open door on the third floor she stopped a moment and
said, “This is Mr. Reginald’s room. Would you like to go in?”

Bertha did not care particularly about it, but as Mrs. Flagg stepped
inside, she followed her. Just then some one from the hall called to
Mrs. Flagg, and, excusing herself for a moment, she went out, leaving
Bertha alone. It was a luxuriously furnished apartment, with signs of
masculine ownership everywhere, but what attracted Bertha most was a
large mirror which, in a Florentine frame, covered the entire chimney
above the mantel and was ornamented with photographs on all its four
sides. There were photographs of personal friends and prominent artists,
authors, actors, opera-singers, and ballet-dancers, with a few of horses
and dogs, divided into groups, with a blank space between. Bertha had no
difficulty in deciding which were his friends, for there confronting
her, with her sunny smile and laughing blue eyes, was Louie’s picture
given to him at Saratoga, and placed by the side of a sweet-faced,
refined-looking woman wearing a rather old-style dress, who, Bertha
fancied, might be his mother.

“How lovely Louie is,” she thought, “and what a different life hers
would have been had her friendship for Reginald Hallam ripened into
love, as it ought to have done!” Then, casting her eyes upon another
group, she started violently as she saw herself tucked in between a
rope-walker and a ballet-dancer. “What does it mean? and how did my
picture get here?” she exclaimed, taking it from the frame and wondering
still more when she read upon it, “Rose Arabella Jefferson, Scotsburg.”

“Rose Arabella Jefferson!” she repeated. “Who is she? and how came her
name on my picture? and how came my picture in Rex Hallam’s possession?”
Then, remembering that she had sent it by request to Mrs. Hallam, she
guessed how Rex came by it, and felt a little thrill of pride that he
had liked it well enough to give it a place in his collection, even if
it were in company with ballet-girls. “But it shall not stay there,” she
thought. “I’ll put it next to Louie’s, and let him wonder who changed
it, if he ever notices the change.”

Mrs. Flagg was coming, and, hastily putting the photograph between
Louie’s and that of a woman who she afterwards found was Mrs. Carter
Hallam, she went out to meet the housekeeper, whom she followed to her
room.

“You will not be afraid, as the servants all sleep up here. We have six
besides the coachman,” Mrs. Flagg said as she bade her good-night.

“Six servants besides the coachman and housekeeper! I make the ninth,
for I dare say I am little more than that in my lady’s estimation,”
Bertha thought, as she sat alone, watching the minute-hand of the clock
creeping slowly round, and wondering when the grand dinner would be over
and Mrs. Hallam ready to receive her. Then, lest the lump in her throat
should get the mastery, she began to walk up and down her rather small
quarters, to look out of the window upon the roofs of the houses, and to
count the chimneys and spires in the distance.

It was very different from the lookout at home, with its long stretch of
wooded hills, its green fields and meadows and grassy lane. Once her
tears were threatening every moment to start, when a maid appeared and
said her mistress was at liberty to see her. With a beating heart and
heightened color, Bertha followed her to the boudoir, where, in amber
satin and diamonds Mrs. Hallam was waiting, herself somewhat flurried
and nervous and doubtful how to conduct herself during the interview.
She was always a little uncertain how to maintain a dignity worthy of
Mrs. Carter Hallam under all circumstances, for, although she had been
in society so long and had seen herself quoted and her dinners and
receptions described so often, she was not yet quite sure of herself,
nor had she learned the truth of Rex’s theory that gold was not the less
gold because in the same purse with pennies. She had never forgotten the
shoe-shop and the barefoot girl picking berries, with all the other
humble surroundings of her childhood, and because she had not she felt
it incumbent upon her to try to prove that she was and always had been
what she seemed to be, a leader of fashion, with millions at her
command. To compass this she assumed an air of haughty superiority
towards those whom she thought her inferiors. She had never hired a
companion, and in the absence of her mentor, Mrs. Walker Haynes, she did
not know exactly how to treat one. Had she asked Rex, he would have
said, “Treat her as you would any other young lady.” But Rex held some
very ultra views, and was not to be trusted implicitly. Fortunately,
however, a guest at dinner had helped her greatly by recounting her own
experience with a companion who was always getting out of her place, and
who finally ran off with a French count at Trouville, where they were
spending the summer.

“I began wrong,” the lady said. “I was too familiar at first, and made
too much of her because she was educated and superior to her class.”

Acting upon this intimation, Mrs. Hallam decided to commence right.
Remembering the picture which Rex called Squint-Eye, she had no fear
that the original would ever run off with a French count, but she might
have to be put down, and she would begin by sitting down to receive her.
“Standing will make her too much my equal,” she thought, and, adjusting
the folds of her satin gown and assuming an expression which she meant
to be very cold and distant, she glanced up carelessly, but still a
little nervously, as she heard the sound of footsteps and knew there was
some one at the door. She was expecting a very ordinary-looking person,
with wide mouth, half-closed eyes, and light hair, and when she saw a
tall, graceful girl, with dark hair and eyes, brilliant color, and an
air decidedly patrician, as Mrs. Walker Haynes would say, she was
startled out of her dignity, and involuntarily rose to her feet and half
extended her hand. Then, remembering herself, she dropped it, and said,
stammeringly, “Oh, are you Miss Leighton?”

“Yes, madam. You were expecting me, were you not?” Bertha answered, her
voice clear and steady, with no sound of timidity or awe in it.

“Why, yes; that is—sit down, please. There is some mistake,” Mrs. Hallam
faltered. “You are not like your photograph, or the one I took for you.
They must have gotten mixed, as Rex said they did. He insisted that your
letter did not belong to what I said was your photograph and which he
called Squint-Eye.”

Here it occurred to Mrs. Hallam that she was not commencing right at
all,—that she was quite too communicative to a girl who looked fully
equal to running off with a duke, if she chose, and who must be kept
down. But she explained about the letters and the photographs until
Bertha had a tolerably correct idea of the mistake and laughed heartily
over it. It was a very merry, musical laugh, in which Mrs. Hallam joined
for a moment. Then, resuming her haughty manner, she plied Bertha with
questions, saying to her first, “Your home is in Boston, I believe?”

“Oh, no,” Bertha replied. “My home is in Leicester, where I was born.”

“In Leicester!” Mrs. Hallam replied, her voice indicative of surprise
and disapprobation. “You wrote me from Boston. Why did you do that?”

Bertha explained why, and Mrs. Hallam asked next if she lived in the
village or the country.

“In the country, on a farm,” Bertha answered, wondering at Mrs. Hallam’s
evident annoyance at finding that she came from Leicester instead of
Boston.

It had not before occurred to her to connect the Homestead with Mrs.
Carter Hallam, but it came to her now, and at a venture she said, “Our
place is called the Hallam Homestead, named for a family who lived there
many years ago.”

She was looking curiously at Mrs. Hallam, whose face was crimson at
first and then grew pale, but who for a moment made no reply. Here was a
complication,—Leicester, and perhaps the old life, brought home to her
by the original of the picture so much admired by Rex, who had it in
mind to buy the old Homestead, and was sure to admire the girl when he
saw her, as he would, for he was coming to Aix-les-Bains some time
during the summer. If Mrs. Hallam could have found an excuse for it, she
would have dismissed Bertha at once. But there was none. She was there,
and she must keep her, and perhaps it might be well to be frank with her
to a certain extent. So she said at last, “My husband’s family once
lived in Leicester,—presumably on your father’s farm. That was years
ago, before I was married. My nephew, Mr. Reginald” (she laid much
stress on the _Mr._, as if to impress Bertha with the distance there was
between them), “has, I believe, some quixotic notion about buying the
old place. Is it for sale?”

The fire which flashed into Bertha’s eyes and the hot color which
stained her cheeks startled Mrs. Hallam, who was not prepared for
Bertha’s excitement as she replied, “For sale! Never! There is a
mortgage of long standing on it, but it will be paid in the fall. I am
going with you to earn the money to pay it. Nothing else would take me
from father and Dorcas so long. We heard there was a New York man
wishing to buy it, but he may as well think of buying the Coliseum as
our home. Tell him so, please, for me. Hallam Homestead is _not_ for
sale.”

As she talked, Bertha grew each moment more earnest and excited and
beautiful, with the tears shining in her eyes and the bright color on
her cheeks. Mrs. Hallam was not a hard woman, nor a bad woman; she was
simply calloused over with false ideas of caste and position, which
prompted her to restrain her real nature whenever it asserted itself, as
it was doing now. Something about Bertha fascinated and interested her,
bringing back the long ago, with the odor of the pines, the perfume of
the pond-lilies, and the early days of her married life. But this
feeling soon passed. Habit is everything, and she had been the
fashionable Mrs. Carter Hallam so long that it would take more than a
memory of the past to change her. She must maintain her dignity, and not
give way to sentiment, and she was soon herself, cold and distant, with
her chin in the air, where she usually carried it when talking to those
whom she wished to impress with her superiority.

For some time longer she talked to Bertha, and learned as much of her
history as Bertha chose to tell. Her mother was born in Georgia, she
said; her father in Boston. He was a Yale graduate, and fonder of books
than of farming. They were poor, keeping no servants; Dorcas, her only
sister, kept the house, while she did what she could to help pay
expenses and lessen the mortgage on the farm. All this Bertha told
readily enough, with no thought of shame for her poverty. She saw that
Mrs. Hallam was impressed with the Southern mother and scholarly father,
and once she thought to speak of her cousin, Mrs. Louie, but did not,
and here she possibly made a mistake, for Mrs. Hallam had a great
respect for family connections, as that was what she lacked. She had
heard of Mrs. Fred Thurston, as had every frequenter of Saratoga and
Newport, and once at the former place she had seen her driving in her
husband’s stylish turnout with Reginald at her side. He was very
attentive to the beauty whom he had known at the South, and Mrs. Hallam
had once or twice intimated to him that she, too, would like to meet
her, but he had not acted upon the hint, and she had left Saratoga
without accomplishing her object. Had Bertha told of the relationship
between herself and Louie, it might have made some difference in her
relations with her employer. But she did not, and after a little further
catechising Mrs. Hallam dismissed her, saying, “As the ship sails at
nine, it will be necessary to rise very early; so I will bid you
good-night.”

The next morning Bertha breakfasted with Mrs. Flagg, who told her that,
as a friend was to accompany Mrs. Hallam in her coupé to the ship, she
was to go in a street-car, with a maid to show her the way.

“Evidently I am a hired servant and nothing more,” Bertha thought; “but
I can endure even that for the sake of Europe and five hundred dollars.”
And, bidding good-bye to Mrs. Flagg, she was soon on her way to the
Teutonic.




                              CHAPTER VI.
                            ON THE TEUTONIC.


Bertha found Mrs. Hallam in her state-room, which was one of the largest
and most expensive on the ship. With her were three or four ladies who
were there to say good-bye, all talking together and offering advice in
case of sickness, while Mrs. Hallam fanned herself vigorously, as the
morning was very hot.

“Are you not taking a maid?” one of the ladies asked, and Mrs. Hallam
replied that Mrs. Haynes advised her to get one in Paris, adding, “I
have a young girl as companion, and I’m sure I don’t know where she is.
She ought to be here by this time. I dare say she will be more trouble
than good. She seems quite the fine lady. I hardly know what I am to do
with her.”

“Keep her in her place,” was the prompt advice of a little,
common-looking woman, who was once a nursery governess, but was now a
millionaire, and perfectly competent to advise as to the proper
treatment of a companion.

Just then Bertha appeared, and was stared at by the ladies, who took no
further notice of her.

“I am glad you’ve got here at last. What kept you so long?” Mrs. Hallam
asked, a little petulantly, while Bertha replied that she had been
detained by a block in the street cars, and asked if there was anything
she could do.

“Yes,” Mrs. Hallam answered. “I wish you would open my sea trunk and
satchel, and get out my wrapper, and shawl, and cushion, and toilet
articles, and salts, and camphor. I am sure to be sick the minute we get
out to sea.” And handing her keys to Bertha, she went with her friends
outside, where the crowd was increasing every moment.

The passenger-list was full, and every passenger had at least half a
dozen acquaintances to see him off, so that by the time Bertha had
arranged Mrs. Hallam’s belongings, and gone out on deck, there was
hardly standing room. Finding a seat near the purser’s office, she sat
down and watched the surging mass of human beings, jostling, pushing,
crowding each other, the confusion reaching its climax when the order
came for the ship to be cleared of all visitors. Then for a time they
stood so thickly around her that she could see nothing and hear nothing
but a confused babel of voices, until suddenly there was a break in the
ranks, and a tall young man, who had been fighting his way to the plank,
pitched headlong against her with such force that she fell from the
seat, losing her hat in the fall, and striking her forehead on a sharp
point near her.

“I beg your pardon; are you much hurt? I am so sorry, but I could not
help it, they pushed me so in this infernal crowd. Let me help you up,”
a pleasant, manly voice, full of concern, said to her, while two strong
hands lifted her to her feet, and on to the seat where she had been
sitting. “You are safe here, unless some other blunderhead knocks you
down again,” the young man continued, as he managed to pick up her hat.
“Some wretch has stepped on it, but I think I can doctor it into shape,”
he said, giving it a twist or two, and then putting it very carefully on
Bertha’s head hind side before. “There! It is all right, I think,
though, upon my soul, it does seem a little askew,” he added, looking
for the first time fully at Bertha, who was holding her hand to her
forehead, where a big bump was beginning to show.

Her hand hid a portion of her face, but she smiled brightly and
gratefully upon the stranger, whose manner was so friendly and whose
brown eyes seen through his glasses looked so kindly at her.

“By Jove, you are hurt,” he continued, “and I did it. I can’t help you,
as I’ve got to go, but my aunt is on board,—Mrs. Carter Hallam; find
her, and tell her that her awkward nephew came near knocking your brains
out. She has every kind of drug and lotion imaginable, from morphine to
Pond’s extract, and is sure to find something for that bump. And now I
must go or be carried off.”

He gave another twist to her hat and offered her his hand, and then ran
down the plank to the wharf, where, with hundreds of others, he stood,
waving his hat and cane to his friends on the ship, which began to move
slowly from the dock. He was so tall that Bertha could see him
distinctly, and she stood watching him and him alone, until he was a
speck in the distance. Then, with a feeling of loneliness, she started
for her state-room, where Mrs. Hallam, who had preceded her, was looking
rather cross and doing her best to be sick, although as yet there was
scarcely any motion to the vessel.

Reginald, whose train was late, had hurried at once to the ship, which
he reached in time to see his aunt for a few moments only. Her last
friend had said good-bye, and she was feeling very forlorn, and
wondering where Bertha could be, when he came rushing up, bringing so
much life and sunshine and magnetism with him that Mrs. Hallam began to
feel doubly forlorn as she wondered what she should do without him.

“Oh, Rex,” she said, laying her head on his arm and beginning to cry a
little, “I am so glad you have come, and I wish you were going with me.
I fear I have made a mistake starting off alone. I don’t know at all how
to take care of myself.”

Rex smoothed her hair, patted her hand, soothed her as well as he could,
and told her he was sure she would get on well enough and that he would
certainly join her in August.

“Where is Miss Leighton? Hasn’t she put in an appearance?” he asked, and
his aunt replied, with a little asperity of manner:

“Yes; she came last night, and she seems a high and mighty sort of
damsel. I am disappointed, and afraid I shall have trouble with her.”

“Sit down on her if she gets too high and mighty,” Rex said, laughingly,
while his aunt was debating the propriety of telling him of the mistake
and who Bertha was.

“I don’t believe I will. He will find it out soon enough,” she thought,
just as the last warning to leave the boat was given, and with a hurried
good-bye Rex left her, saying, as he did so:

“I’ll look a bit among the crowd, and if I find your squint-eyed damsel
I’ll send her to you. I shall know her in a minute.”

Here was a good chance to explain, but Mrs. Hallam let it pass, and Rex
went his way, searching here and there for a light-haired, weak-eyed
woman answering to her photograph.

But he did not find her, and ran instead against Bertha, with no
suspicion that she was the girl he had told his aunt to sit on, and for
whom that lady waited rather impatiently after the ship was cleared.

“Oh!” she said, as Bertha came in. “I have been waiting for you some
time. Did you have friends to say good-bye to? Give me my salts, please,
and camphor, and fan, and a pillow, and close that shutter. I don’t want
the herd looking in upon me; nor do I think this room so very desirable,
with all the people passing and repassing. I told Rex so, and he said
nobody wanted to see me in my night-cap. He was here to say good-bye.
His train got in just in time.”

Bertha closed the shutters and brought a pillow and fan and the camphor
and salts, and then bathed the bruise on her forehead, which was
increasing in size and finally attracted Mrs. Hallam’s attention.

“Are you hurt?” she asked, and Bertha replied, “I was knocked down in
the crowd by a young man who told me he had an aunt, a Mrs. Hallam, on
board. I suppose he must have been your nephew.”

“Did you tell him who you were?” Mrs. Hallam asked, with a shake of her
head and disapproval in her voice.

“No, madam,” Bertha replied. “He was trying to apologize for what he had
done, and spoke to me of you as one to whom I could go for help if I was
badly hurt.”

“Yes, that is like Reginald,—thinking of everything,” Mrs. Hallam said.
After a moment she added, “He has lived with me since he was a boy, and
is the same as a son. He will join me in Aix-les-Bains in August. Miss
Grace Haynes is there, and I don’t mind telling you, as you will
probably see for yourself, that I think there is a sort of understanding
between him and her. Nothing would please me better.”

“There! I have headed off any idea she might possibly have with regard
to Rex, who is so democratic and was so struck with her photograph,
while she,—well, there is something in her eyes and the lofty way she
carries her head and shoulders that I don’t like; it looks too much like
equality, and I am afraid I may have to sit on her, as Rex bade me do,”
was Mrs. Hallam’s mental comment, as she adjusted herself upon her couch
and issued her numerous orders.

For three days she stayed in her state-room, not because she was
actually sea-sick, but because she feared she would be. To lie perfectly
quiet in her berth until she was accustomed to the motion of the vessel
was the advice given her by one of her friends, and as far as possible
she followed it, while Bertha was kept in constant attendance, reading
to her, brushing her hair, bathing her head, opening and shutting the
windows, and taking messages to those of her acquaintances able to be on
deck. The sea was rather rough for June, but Bertha was not at all
affected by it, and the only inconvenience she suffered was want of
sufficient exercise and fresh air. Early in the morning, while Mrs.
Hallam slept, she was free to go on deck, and again late in the evening,
after the lady had retired for the night. These walks, with going to her
meals, were the only recreation or change she had, and she was beginning
to droop a little, when at last Mrs. Hallam declared herself able to go
upon deck, where, by the aid of means which seldom fail, she managed to
gain possession of the sunniest and most sheltered spot, which she held
in spite of the protestations of another party who claimed the place on
the ground of first occupancy. She was Mrs. Carter Hallam, and she kept
the field until a vacancy occurred in the vicinity of some people whom
to know, if possible, was desirable. Then she moved, and had her reward
in being told by one of the magnates that it was a fine day and the ship
was making good time.

Every morning Bertha brought her rugs and wraps and cushions and
umbrella, and after seeing her comfortably adjusted sat down at a
respectful distance and waited for orders, which were far more frequent
than was necessary. No one spoke to her, although many curious and
admiring glances were cast at the bright, handsome girl who seemed quite
as much a lady as her mistress, but who was performing the duties of a
maid and was put down upon the passenger-list as Mrs. Hallam’s
companion. As it chanced, there was a royal personage on board, and one
day when standing near, Bertha, who was watching a steamer just
appearing upon the horizon, he addressed some remark to her, and then,
attracted by something in her face, or manner, or both, continued to
talk with her, until Mrs. Hallam’s peremptory voice called out:

“Bertha, I want you, Don’t you see my rug is falling off?”

There was a questioning glance at the girl thus bidden and at the woman
who bade her, and then, lifting his hat politely to the former, the
stranger walked away, while Bertha went to Mrs. Hallam, who said to her
sharply:

“I wonder at your presumption; but possibly you did not know to whom you
were talking?”

“Oh, yes, I did,” Bertha replied. “It was the prince. He speaks English
fluently, and I found him very agreeable.”

She was apparently as unconcerned as if it had been the habit of her
life to consort with royalty, and Mrs. Hallam looked at her wonderingly,
conscious in her narrow soul of an increased feeling of respect for the
girl whom a prince had honored with his notice and who took it so coolly
and naturally. But she did not abate her requirements or exactions in
the least. On the contrary, it seemed as if she increased them. But
Bertha bore it all patiently, performing every task imposed upon her as
if it were a pleasure, and never giving any sign of fatigue, although in
reality she was never so tired in her life as when at last they sailed
up the Mersey and into the docks at Liverpool.

At Queenstown she sent off a letter to Dorcas, in which, after speaking
of her arrival in New York and the voyage in general, she wrote, “I
hardly know what to say of Mrs. Hallam until I have seen more of her.
She is a great lady, and great ladies need a great deal of waiting upon,
and the greater they are the greater their need. There must be something
Shylocky in her nature, and, as she gives me a big salary, she means to
have her pound of flesh. I am down on the passenger-list as her
companion, but it should be maid, as I am really that. But when we reach
Paris there will be a change, as she is to have a French maid there. It
will surprise you, as it did me, to know that she belongs to the Hallams
for whom the Homestead was named and who father thought were all dead.
Her husband was born there. Where she came from I do not know. She is
very reticent on that point. I shouldn’t be surprised if she once worked
in a factory, she is so particular to have her position recognized. Such
a scramble as she had to get to the captain’s table; though what good
that does I cannot guess, inasmuch as he is seldom there himself. I am
at _Nobody’s_ table, and like it, because I am a nobody.

“Do you remember the letter father had, saying that some New Yorker
wanted to buy our farm and was coming to look at it? That New Yorker is
cousin Louie’s Reginald Hallam, of whom I told you, and Mrs. Carter’s
nephew; not in the least like her, I fancy, although I have only had the
pleasure of being knocked down by him on the ship. But he was not to
blame. The crowd pushed him against me with such force that I fell off
the seat and nearly broke my head. My hat was crushed out of all shape,
and he made it worse trying to twist it back. He was kindness itself,
and his brown eyes full of concern as they looked at me through the
clearest pair of rimless glasses I ever saw. He did not know who I was,
of course, but I am sure he would have been just as kind if he had. I
can understand Louie’s infatuation for him, and why his aunt adores him.

“But what nonsense to be writing with Queenstown in sight, and this
letter must be finished to send off. I am half ashamed of what I have
said of Mrs. Hallam, who when she forgets what a grand lady she is, can
be very nice, and I really think she likes me a little.

“And now I must close, with more love for you and father than can be
carried in a hundred letters. Will write again from Paris. Good-bye,
good-bye.

                                                                “BERTHA.

“P. S. I told you that if a New Yorker came to buy the farm you were to
shut the door in his face. But you may as well let him in.”




                              CHAPTER VII.
                      REGINALD AND PHINEAS JONES.


After bidding his aunt good-bye, Reginald went home for a few moments,
and then to his office, where he met for the first time Mr. Gorham, the
owner of the Leighton mortgage, and learned that the place was really
where his father used to live and that the Homestead was named for the
Hallams. This increased his desire to own it, and, as there was still
time to catch the next train for Boston, he started for the depot and
was soon on his way to Worcester, where he arrived about four in the
afternoon. Wishing to make some inquiries as to the best means of
reaching Leicester, he went to a hotel, where he found no one in the
office besides the clerk except a tall, spare man, with long, light hair
tinged with gray, and shrewdness and curiosity written all over his
good-humored face. He wore a linen duster, with no collar, and only an
apology for a handkerchief twisted around his neck. Tipping back in one
chair, with his feet in another, he was taking frequent and most
unsuccessful aims at a cuspidor about six feet from him.

“Good-afternoon,” he said, removing his feet from the chair for a
moment, but soon putting them back, as he asked if Reginald had just
come from the train, and whether from the East or the West. Then he told
him it was an all-fired hot day, that it looked like thunder in the
west, and he shouldn’t wonder if they got a heavy shower before night.

To all this Reginald assented, and then went to the desk to register,
while the stranger, on pretense of looking at something in the street,
also arose and sauntered to the door, managing to glance at the register
and see the name just written there.

Resuming his seat and inviting Rex to take a chair near him, he began:
“I b’lieve you’re from New York. I thought so the minute you came in. I
have traveled from Dan to Beersheba, and been through the war,—was a
corp’ral there,—and I generally spot you fellows when I first put my eye
on you. I am Phineas Jones,—Phin for short. I hain’t any real
profession, but am jack at all trades and good at none. Everybody knows
me in these parts, and I know everybody.”

Rex, who began to be greatly amused with this queer specimen, bowed an
acknowledgment of the honor of knowing Mr. Jones, who said, “Be you
acquainted in Worcester?”

“Not at all. Was never here before,” was Rex’s reply, and Phineas
continued: “Slow old place, some think, but I like it. Full of nice
folks of all sorts, with clubs, and lodges, and societies, and no end of
squabbles about temperance and city officers and all that. As for
music,—my land, I’d smile to see any place hold a candle to us. Had all
the crack singers here, even to the diver.”

Rex, who had listened rather indifferently to Phineas’s laudations of
Worcester, now asked if he knew much of the adjoining towns,—Leicester,
for instance.

“Wa-all, I’d smile,” Phineas replied, with a fierce assault upon the
cuspidor. “Yes, I would smile if I didn’t know Leicester. Why, I was
born there, and it’s always been my native town, except two or three
years in Sturbridge, when I was a shaver, and the time I was to the war
and travelin’ round. Pleasant town, but dull,—with no steam cars nigher
than Rochdale or Worcester. Got stages and an electric car to
Spencer;—run every half hour. Think of goin’ there?”

Rex said he did, and asked the best way of getting there.

“Wa-all, there’s four ways,—the stage, but that’s gone; hire a team and
drive out,—that’s expensive; take the steam cars for Rochdale, or
Jamesville, and then drive out,—that’s expensive, too; or take the
electric, which is cheaper, and pleasanter, and quicker. Know anybody in
Leicester?”

Rex said he didn’t, and asked if Phineas knew a place called Hallam
Homestead.

“Wa-all, I’d smile if I didn’t,” Phineas replied. “Why, I’ve worked in
hayin’-time six or seven summers for Square Leighton. He was ’lected
justice of the peace twelve or fifteen years ago, and I call him Square
yet, as a title seems to suit him, he’s so different-lookin’ from most
farmers,—kind of high-toned, you know. Ort to have been an aristocrat.
As to the Hallams, who used to own the place, I’ve heard of ’em ever
since I was knee-high; I was acquainted with Carter; first-rate feller.
By the way, your name is Hallam. Any kin?”

Rex explained his relationship to the Hallams, while the smile habitual
to Phineas’s face, and which, with the expressions he used so often, had
given him the _sobriquet_ of Smiling Phin, broadened into a loud laugh
of genuine delight and surprise, and, springing up, he grasped Rex’s
hand, exclaiming: “This beats the Dutch! I’m glad to see you, I be. I
thought you was all dead when Carter died. There’s a pile of you in the
old Greenville graveyard. Why, you ’n’ I must be connected.”

Rex looked at him wonderingly, while he went on: “You see, Carter
Hallam’s wife was Lucy Ann Brown, and her great-grandmother and my
great-grandfather were half-brother and sister. Now, what relation be I
to Lucy Ann, or to you?”

Rex confessed his inability to trace so remote a relationship on so hot
a day, and Phineas rejoined:

“’Tain’t very near, that’s a fact, but we’re related, though I never
thought Lucy Ann hankered much for my society. I used to call her
cousin, which made her mad. She was a handsome girl when she clerked it
here in Worcester and roped Carter in. A high stepper,—turned up her
nose when I ast her for her company. That’s when she was bindin’ shoes,
before she knew Carter. I don’t s’pose I could touch her now with a
ten-foot pole, though I b’lieve I’ll call the fust time I’m in New York,
if you’ll give me your number. Blood is blood. How is the old lady?”

Here was a chance for Rex to inquire into his aunt’s antecedents, of
which he knew little, as she was very reticent with regard to her early
life. He knew that she was an orphan and had no near relatives, and that
she had once lived in Worcester, and that was all. The clerkship and the
shoe-binding were news to him; he did not even know before that she was
Lucy Ann, as she had long ago dropped the _Ann_ as too plebeian; but,
with the delicacy of a true gentleman, he would not ask a question of
this man, who, he was sure, would tell all he knew and a great deal
more, if urged.

“I wonder what Aunt Lucy would say to being visited and cousined by this
Yankee, who calls her an old lady?” he thought, as he said that she was
very well and had just sailed for Europe, adding that she was still
handsome and very young-looking.

“You don’t say!” Phineas exclaimed, and began at once to calculate her
age, basing his data on a spelling-school in Sturbridge when she was
twelve years old and had spelled him down, a circus in Fiskdale which
she had attended with him when she was fifteen, and the time when he had
asked for her company in Worcester. Naturally, he made her several years
older than she really was.

But she was not there to protest, and Rex did not care. He was more
interested in his projected purchase than in his aunt’s age, and he
asked if the Hallam farm were good or bad.

“Wa-all, ’taint neither,” Phineas replied. “You see, it’s pretty much
run down for want of means and management. The Square ain’t no kind of a
farmer, and never was, and he didn’t ort to be one, but his wife
persuaded him. My land, how a woman can twist a man round her fingers,
especially if she’s kittenish and pretty and soft-spoken, as the
Square’s wife was. She was from Georgy, and nothin’ would do but she
must live on a farm and have it fixed up as nigh like her father’s
plantation as she could. She took down the big chimbleys and built some
outside,—queer-lookin’ till the woodbine run up and covered ’em clear to
the top, and now they’re pretty. She made a bath-room out of the
but’try, and a but’try out of the meal-room. She couldn’t have niggers,
nor, of course, nigger cabins, but she got him to build a lot of other
out-houses, which cost a sight,—stables, and a dog-kennel.”

“Dog-kennels!” Rex interrupted, feeling more desirous than ever for a
place with kennels already in it. “How large are they?”

“There ain’t but one,” Phineas said, “and that ain’t there now. It was
turned into a pig-pen long ago, for the Square can’t abide dogs; but
there’s a hen-house, and smoke-house, and ice-house, and house over the
well, and flower-garden with box borders, and yard terraced down to the
orchard, with brick walls and steps, and a dammed brook——”

“A what?” Reginald asked, in astonishment.

“Wa-all, I should smile if you thought I meant disrespect for the Bible;
I didn’t. I’m a church member,—a Free Methodist and class-leader, and
great on exhortin’ and experiencin’, they say. I don’t swear. You spelt
the word wrong, with an _n_ instead of two _m_’s, that’s what’s the
matter. That’s the word your aunt Lucy Ann spelt me down on at the
spellin’-school. We two stood up longest and were tryin’ for the medal.
I was more used to the word with an _n_ in it than I am now, and got
beat. What I mean about the brook is that it runs acrost the road into
the orchard, and Mis’ Leighton had it dammed up with boards and stones
to make a waterfall, with a rustic bridge below it, and a butternut tree
and a seat under it, where you can set and view nature. But bless your
soul, such things don’t pay, and if Mis’ Leighton had lived she’d of
ruined the Square teetotally, but she died, poor thing, and the Square’s
hair turned white in six months.”

“What family has Mr. Leighton?” Rex asked, and Phineas replied:

“Two girls, that’s all; one handsome as blazes, like her mother, and the
other—wa’all, she is nice-lookin’, with a motherly, venerable kind of
face that everybody trusts. She stays to hum, Dorcas does, while——” Here
he was interrupted by Rex, who, more interested just then in the farm
than in the girls, asked if it was for sale.

“For sale?” Phineas replied. “I’d smile to see the Square sell his farm,
though he owes a pile on it; borrows of Peter to pay Paul, you know, and
so keeps a-goin’; but I don’t believe he’d sell for love nor money.”

“Not if he could get cash down and, say, a thousand more than it is
worth?” Rex suggested.

Staggered by the thousand dollars, which seemed like a fortune to one
who had never had more than a few hundred at a time in his life, Phineas
gasped:

“One thousand extry! Wa-all, I swan, a thousand extry would tempt some
men to sell their souls; but I don’t know about it fetchin’ the Square.
Think of buyin’ it?”

Rex said he did.

“For yourself?”

“Yes, for myself.”

“_You_ goin’ to turn farmer?” and Phineas looked him over from head to
foot. “Wa-all, if that ain’t curi’s. I’d smile to see you, or one of
your New York dudes, a-farmin’ it, with your high collars, your long
coats and wide trouses and yaller shoes and canes and eye-glasses, and
hands that never done a stroke of hard work in your lives. Yes, I
would.”

Rex had never felt so small in his life as when Phineas was drawing a
picture he recognized as tolerably correct of most of his class, and he
half wished his collar was a trifle lower and his coat a little shorter,
but he laughed good-humoredly and said, “I am afraid we do seem a
useless lot to you, and I suppose we might wear older-fashioned clothes,
but I can’t help the glasses. I couldn’t see across the street without
them.”

“I want to know,” Phineas said. “Wa-all, they ain’t bad on you, they’re
so clear and hain’t no rims to speak of. They make you look like a
literary feller, or more like a minister. Be you a professor?”

Rex flushed a little at the close questioning, expecting to be asked
next how much he was worth and where his money was invested, but he
answered honestly, “I wish I could say yes, but I can’t.”

“What a pity! Come to one of our meetin’s, and we’ll convert you in no
time. What persuasion be you?”

Reginald said he was an Episcopalian, and Phineas’s face fell. He hadn’t
much faith in Episcopalians, thinking their service was mere form, with
nothing in it which he could enjoy, except that he did not have to sit
still long enough to get sleepy, and there were so many places where he
could come in strong with an Amen, as he always did. This opinion,
however, he did not express to Reginald. He merely said, “Wa-all,
there’s good folks in every church. I do b’lieve the Square is pious,
and he’s a ’Piscopal. Took it from his Georgy wife, who had a good many
other fads. You have a good face, like all the Hallams, and I b’lieve
they died in the faith. Says so, anyway, on their tombstones; but
monuments lie as well as obituaries. But I ain’t a-goin’ to discuss
religious tenants, though I’m fust-rate at it, they say. I want to know
what _you_ want of a farm?”

Rex told him that he had long wished for a place in the country, where
he could spend a part of each year with a few congenial friends, hunting
and fishing and boating, and from what he had heard of the Homestead, he
thought it would just suit him, there were so many hills and woods and
ponds around it.

“Are there pleasant drives?” he asked, and Phineas replied:

“Tip-top, the city folks think. Woods full of roads leading nowhere
except to some old house a hundred years old or more, and the older they
be the better the city folks like ’em. Why, they actu’lly go into the
garrets and buy up old spinning-wheels and desks and chairs; and, my
land, they’re crazy over tall clocks.”

Rex did not care much for the furniture of the old garrets unless it
should happen to belong to the Hallams, and he asked next if there were
foxes in the woods, and if he could get up a hunt with dogs and horses.

Phineas did not smile, but laughed long and loud, and deluged the
cuspidor, before he replied:

“Wa-all, if I won’t give up! A fox-hunt, with hounds and horses, tearin’
through the folks’s fields and gardens! Why, you’d be mobbed. You’d be
tarred and feathered. You’d be rid on a rail.”

“But,” Rex exclaimed, “I should keep on my own premises. A man has a
right to do what he pleases with his own,” a remark which so affected
Phineas that he doubled up with laughter, as he said:

“That’s so; but, bless your soul, the Homestead farm ain’t big enough
for a hunt. It takes acres and acres for that, and if you had ’em the
foxes wouldn’t stop to ask if it’s your premises or somebody else’s.
They ain’t likely to take to the open if they can help it, but with the
dogs to their heels and widder Brady’s garden right before ’em they’d
make a run for it. Her farm jines the Homestead, and ’twould be good as
a circus to see the hounds tearin’ up her sage and her gooseberries and
her violets. She’d be out with brooms and mops and pokers; and, besides
that, the Leicester women would be up in arms and say ’twas cruel for a
lot of men to hunt a poor fox to death just for fun. They are great on
Bergh, Leicester women are, and they might arrest you.”

Reginald saw his fox-hunts fading into air, and was about to ask what
there was in the woods which he could hunt without fear of the widow
Brady or the Bergh ladies of the town, when Phineas sprang up,
exclaiming:

“Hullo! there’s the Square now. I saw him in town this mornin’ about
some plasterin’ I ort to have done six weeks ago.”

And he darted from the door, while Rex, looking from the window, saw an
old horse drawing an old buggy in which sat an old man, evidently intent
upon avoiding a street-car rapidly approaching him, while Phineas was
making frantic efforts to stop him. But a car from an opposite direction
and a carriage blocked his way, and by the time these had passed the old
man and buggy were too far up the street for him to be heard or to
overtake them.

“I’m awful sorry,” he said, as he returned to the hotel. “He was alone,
and you could of rid with him as well as not and saved your fare.”

Rex thanked him for his kind intentions, but said he did not mind the
fare in the least and preferred the electric car. Then, as he wished to
look about the city a little, he bade good-bye to Phineas, who
accompanied him to the door, and said: “Mabby you’d better mention my
name to the Square as a surety that you’re all right. He hain’t traveled
as much as I have, nor seen as many swells like you, and he might take
you for a confidence man.”

Rex promised to make use of his new friend if he found it necessary, and
walked away, while Phineas looked after him admiringly, thinking,
“That’s a fine chap; not a bit stuck up. Glad I’ve met him, for now I
shall visit Lucy Ann when she comes home. He’s a little off, though, on
his farm and his fox-hunts.”

Meanwhile, Reginald walked through several streets, and at last found
himself in the vicinity of the electric car, which he took for
Leicester. It was a pleasant ride, and he enjoyed it immensely,
especially after they were out in the country and began to climb the
long hill. At his request he was put down at the cross-road and the
gabled house pointed out to him. Very eagerly he looked about him as he
went slowly up the avenue or lane bordered with cherry-trees on one
side, and on the other commanding an unobstructed view of the country
for miles around, with its valleys and thickly wooded hills.

“This is charming,” he said, as he turned his attention next to the
house and its surroundings.

How quiet and pleasant it looked, with its gables and picturesque
chimneys under the shadow of the big apple-tree in the rear and the big
elm in the front! He could see the out-buildings of which Phineas had
told him,—the well-house, the hen-house, the smoke-house, the ice-house
and stable,—and could hear the faint sound of the brook in the orchard
falling over the dam into the basin below.

“I wish I had lived here when a boy, as my father and uncle did,” he
thought, just as a few big drops of rain fell upon the grass, and he
noticed for the first time how black it was overhead, and how
threatening were the clouds rolling up so fast from the west.

It had been thundering at intervals ever since he left Worcester, and in
the sultry air there was that stillness which portends the coming of a
severe storm. But he had paid no attention to it, and now he did not
hasten his steps until there came a deafening crash of thunder, followed
instantaneously by a drenching downpour of rain, which seemed to come in
sheets rather than in drops, and he knew that in a few minutes he would
be wet through, as his coat was rather thin and he had no umbrella. He
was still some little distance from the house, but by running swiftly he
was soon under the shelter of the piazza, and knocking at the door, with
a hope that it might be opened by the girl who Phineas had said “was
handsome as blazes.”




                             CHAPTER VIII.
                         REX AT THE HOMESTEAD.


The day had been longer and lonelier to Dorcas than the previous one,
for then she had gone with Bertha to the train in Worcester, and after
saying good-bye, had done some shopping in town and made a few calls
before returning home. She had then busied herself with clearing up
Bertha’s room, which was not an altogether easy task. Bertha was never
as orderly as her sister, and, in the confusion of packing, her room was
in a worse condition than usual. But to clear it up was a labor of love,
over which Dorcas lingered as long as possible. Then when all was done
and she had closed the shutters and dropped the shades, she knelt by the
white bed and amid a rain of tears prayed God to protect the dear sister
on sea and land and bring her safely back to the home which was so
desolate without her. That was yesterday; but to-day there had been
comparatively nothing to do, for after an early breakfast her father had
started for Boylston, hoping to collect a debt which had long been due
and the payment of which would help towards the mortgage. After he had
gone and her morning work was done, Dorcas sat down alone in the great,
lonely house and began to cry, wondering what she should do to pass the
long hours before her father’s return.

“I wish I had Bertha’s room to straighten up again,” she thought. “Any
way I’ll go and look at it.” And, drying her eyes, she went up to the
room, which seemed so dark and close and gloomy that she opened the
windows and threw back the blinds, letting in the full sunlight and warm
summer air. “She was fond of air and sunshine,” she said to herself,
remembering the many times they had differed on that point, she
insisting that so much sun faded the carpets, and Bertha insisting that
she would have it, carpets or no carpets. Bertha was fond of flowers,
too, and in their season kept the house full of them. This Dorcas also
remembered, and, going to the garden, she gathered great clusters of
roses and white lilies, which she arranged in two bouquets, putting one
on the bureau and the other on the deep window-seat, where Bertha used
to sit so often when at home, and where one of her favorite books was
lying, with her work-basket and a bit of embroidery she had played at
doing. The book and the basket Dorcas had left on the window-seat with
something of the feeling which prompts us to keep the rooms of our dead
as they left them. At the side of the bed and partly under it she had
found a pair of half-worn slippers, which Bertha was in the habit of
wearing at night while undressing, and these she had also left, they
looked so much like Bertha, with their worn toes and high French heels.
Now as she saw them she thought to put them away, but decided to leave
them, as it was not likely any one would occupy the room in Bertha’s
absence.

“There, it looks more cheerful now,” she said, surveying the apartment
with its sunlight and flowers. Then, going down-stairs she whiled away
the hours as best she could until it was time to prepare supper for her
father, whose coming she watched for anxiously, hoping he would reach
home before the storm which was fast gathering in the west and sending
out flashes of lightning, with angry growls of thunder. “He will be
hungry and tired, and I mean to give him his favorite dishes,” she
thought, as she busied herself in the kitchen. With a view to make his
home-coming as pleasant as possible, she laid the table with the best
cloth and napkins and the gilt band china, used only on great occasions,
and put on a plate for Bertha, and a bowl of roses in the centre, with
one or two buds at each plate, “Now, that looks nice,” she thought,
surveying her work, with a good deal of satisfaction, “and father will
be pleased. I wish he would come. How black the sky is getting, and how
angry the clouds look!” Then she thought of Bertha on the sea, and
wondered if the storm would reach her, and was silently praying that it
would not, when she saw old Bush and the buggy pass the windows, and in
a few moments her father came in looking very pale and tired. He had had
a long ride for nothing, as the man who owed him could not pay, but he
brightened at once when he saw the attractive tea-table and divined why
all the best things were out.

“You are a good girl, Dorcas, and I don’t know what I should do without
you now,” he said, stroking Dorcas’s hair caressingly, and adding, “Now
let us have supper. I am hungry as a bear, as Bertha would say.”

Dorcas started to leave the room just as she heard the sound of the bell
and knew the electric car was coming up the hill. Though she had seen it
so many times, she always stopped to look at it, and she stopped now and
saw Reginald alight from it and saw the conductor point towards their
house as if directing him to it. “Who can it be?” she thought, calling
her father to the window, where they both stood watching the stranger as
he came slowly along the avenue. “How queerly he acts, stopping so much
to look around! Don’t he know it is beginning to rain?” she said, just
as the crash and downpour came which sent Rex flying towards the house.

“Oh, father!” Dorcas exclaimed, clutching his arm, “don’t you know, Mr.
Gorham wrote that the New Yorker who wanted to buy our farm might come
to look at it? I believe this is he. What shall we do with him? Bertha
told us to shut the door in his face.”

“You would hardly keep a dog out in a storm like this. Why, I can’t see
across the road. I never knew it rain so fast,” Mr. Leighton replied, as
Rex’s knock sounded on the door, which Dorcas opened just as a vivid
flash of lightning lit up the sky and was followed instantaneously by a
deafening peal of thunder and a dash of rain which swept half-way down
the hall.

“Oh, my!” Dorcas said, holding back her dress; and “Great Scott!” Rex
exclaimed, as he sprang inside and helped her close the door. Then,
turning to her, he said, with a smile which disarmed her at once of any
prejudice she might have against him, “I beg your pardon for coming in
so unceremoniously. I should have been drenched in another minute. Does
Mr. Leighton live here?”

Dorcas said he did, and, opening a door to her right, bade him enter.
Glancing in, Rex felt sure it was the best room, and drew back, saying,
apologetically, “I am not fit to go in there, or indeed to go anywhere.
I believe I am wet to the skin. Look,” and he pointed to the little
puddles of water which had dripped from his coat and were running over
the floor.

His concern was so genuine, and the eyes so kind which looked at Dorcas,
that he did not seem like a stranger, and she said to him, “I should say
you were wet. You’d better take off your coat and let me dry it by the
kitchen fire or you will take cold.”

“She _is_ a motherly little girl, as Phineas Jones said,” Rex thought,
feeling sure that this was not the one who was “handsome as blazes,” but
the nice one, who thought of everything, and if his first smile had not
won her his second would have done so, as he said, “Thanks. You are very
kind, but I’ll not trouble you to do that, and perhaps I’d better
introduce myself. I am Reginald Hallam, from New York, and my father
used to live here.”

“Oh-h!” Dorcas exclaimed, her fear of the dreaded stranger who was
coming to buy their farm vanishing at once, while she wondered in a
vague way where she had heard the name before, but did not associate it
with Louie Thurston’s hero, of whom Bertha had told her.

He was one of the Hallams, of whom the old people in town thought so
much, and it was natural that he should wish to see the old Homestead.
At this point Mr. Leighton came into the hall and was introduced to the
stranger, whom he welcomed cordially, while Dorcas, with her hospitable
instincts in full play, again insisted that he should remove his wet
coat and shoes before he took cold.

“They are a little damp, that’s a fact; but what can I do without them?”
Reginald replied, beginning to feel very uncomfortable, and knowing that
in all probability a sore throat would be the result of his bath.

“I’ll tell you,” Dorcas said, looking at her father. “He can wear the
dressing-gown and slippers Bertha gave you last Christmas.” And before
Rex could stop her she was off up-stairs in her father’s bedroom, from
which she returned with a pair of Turkish slippers and a soft gray
cashmere dressing-gown with dark blue velvet collar and cuffs.

“Father never wore them but a few times; he says they are too fine,” she
said to Rex, who, much against his will, soon found himself arrayed in
Mr. Leighton’s gown and slippers, while Dorcas carried his wet coat and
shoes in triumph to the kitchen fire.

“Well, this is a lark,” Rex thought as he caught sight of himself in the
glass. “I wonder what Phineas Jones would say if he knew that instead of
being taken for a confidence man I’m received as a son and a brother and
dressed up in ‘the Square’s’ best clothes.”

Supper was ready by this time, and without any demur, which he knew
would be useless, Rex sat down to the table which Dorcas had made so
pretty, rejoicing now that she had done so, wondering if their guest
would notice it, and feeling glad that he was in Bertha’s chair. He did
notice everything, and especially the flowers and the extra seat, which
he occupied, and which he knew was not put there for him, but probably
for the handsome girl, who would come in when the storm was over, and he
found himself thinking more of her than of the blessing which Mr.
Leighton asked so reverently, adding a petition that God would care for
the loved one wherever and in whatever danger she might be.

“Maybe that’s the girl; but where the dickens can she be that she’s in
danger?” Rex thought, just as a clap of thunder louder than any which
had preceded it shook the house and made Dorcas turn pale as she said to
her father:

“Oh, do you suppose it will reach her?”

“I think not,” Mr. Leighton replied; then turning to Rex, he said, “My
youngest daughter, Bertha, is on the sea,—sailed on the Teutonic this
morning,—and Dorcas is afraid the storm may reach her.”

“Sailed this morning on the Teutonic!” Rex repeated. “So did my aunt,
Mrs. Carter Hallam.”

“Mrs. Carter Hallam!” and Dorcas set down her cup of tea with such force
that some of it was spilled upon the snowy cloth. “Why, that is the name
of the lady with whom Bertha has gone as companion.”

It was Rex’s turn now to be surprised, and explanations followed.

“I supposed all the Hallams of Leicester were dead, and never thought of
associating Mrs. Carter with them,” Mr. Leighton said, while Rex in turn
explained that as Miss Leighton’s letter had been written in Boston and
he had addressed her there for his aunt it did not occur to him that her
home was here at the Homestead.

“Did you see her on the ship, and was she well?” Dorcas asked, and he
replied that, as he reached the steamer only in time to say good-bye to
his aunt, he did not see Miss Leighton, but he knew she was there and
presumably well.

“I am sorry now that I did not meet her,” he added, looking more closely
at Dorcas than he had done before, and trying to trace some resemblance
between her and the photograph he had dubbed Squint-Eye.

But there was none, and he felt a good deal puzzled, wondering what
Phineas meant by calling Dorcas “handsome as blazes.” She must be the
one referred to, for no human being could ever accuse Squint-Eye of any
degree of beauty. And yet how the father and sister loved her, and how
the old man’s voice trembled when he spoke of her, always with pride it
seemed to Rex, who began at last himself to feel a good deal of interest
in her. He knew now that he was occupying her seat, and that the
rose-bud he had fastened in his button-hole was put there for her, and
he hoped his aunt would treat her well.

“I mean to write and give her some points, for there’s no guessing what
Mrs. Walker Haynes may put her up to do,” he thought, just as he caught
the name of Phineas and heard Mr. Leighton saying to Dorcas:

“I saw him this morning, and he thinks he will get up in the course of a
week and do the plastering.”

“Not before a week! How provoking!” Dorcas replied, while Rex ventured
to say:

“Are you speaking of Phineas Jones? I made his acquaintance this
morning, or rather he made mine. Quite a character, isn’t he?”

“I should say he was,” Dorcas replied, while her father rejoined:

“Everybody knows Phineas, and everybody likes him. He is nobody’s enemy
but his own, and shiftlessness is his great fault. He can do almost
everything, and do it well, too. He’ll work a few weeks,—maybe a few
months,—and then lie idle, visiting and talking, till he has spent all
he earned. He knows everybody’s business and history, and will sacrifice
everything for his friends. He attends every camp-meeting he can hear
of, and is apt to lose his balance and have what he calls the power. He
comes here quite often, and is very handy in fixing up. I’ve got a
little job waiting for him now, where the plastering fell off in the
front chamber, and I dare say it will continue to wait. But I like the
fellow, and am sorry for him. I don’t know that he has a relative in the
world.”

Rex could have told of his Aunt Lucy, and that through her, Phineas
claimed relationship to himself, but concluded not to open up a subject
which he knew would be obnoxious to his aunt. Supper was now over, but
the rain was still falling heavily, and when Rex asked how far it was to
the hotel, both Mr. Leighton and Dorcas invited him so cordially to
spend the night with them, that he decided to do so, and then began to
wonder how he should broach the real object of his visit. From all
Phineas had told him, and from what he had seen of Mr. Leighton, he
began to be doubtful of success, but it was worth trying for, and he was
ready to offer fifteen hundred dollars extra, if necessary. His coat and
shoes were dry by this time, and habited in them he felt more like
himself, and after Dorcas had removed her apron, showing that her
evening work was done, and had taken her seat near her father, he said:

“By the way, did Mr. Gorham ever write to you that a New Yorker would
like to buy your farm?”

“Yes,” Mr. Leighton replied, and Rex continued:

“I am the man, and that is my business here.”

“Oh!” and Dorcas moved uneasily in her chair, while her father answered,
“I thought so.”

Then there was a silence, which Rex finally broke, telling why he wanted
that particular farm and what he was willing to give for it, knowing
before he finished that he had failed. The farm was not for sale, except
under compulsion, which Mr. Leighton hoped might be avoided, explaining
matters so minutely that Rex had a tolerably accurate knowledge of the
state of affairs and knew why the daughter had gone abroad as his aunt’s
companion, in preference to remaining in the employ of Swartz & Co.

“Confound it, if I hadn’t insisted upon aunt’s offering five hundred
instead of three hundred, as she proposed doing, Bertha would not have
gone, and I might have got the place,” he thought.

Mr. Leighton continued, “I think it would kill me to lose the home where
I have lived so long, but if it must be sold, I’d rather you should have
it than any one I know, and if worst comes to worst, and anything
happens to Bertha, I’ll let you know in time to buy it.”

He looked so white and his voice shook so as he talked that Rex felt his
castles and fox-hunts all crumbling together, and, with his usual
impulsiveness, began to wonder if Mr. Leighton would accept aid from him
in case of an emergency. It was nearly ten o’clock by this time, and Mr.
Leighton said, “I suppose this is early for city folks, but in the
country we retire early, and I am tired. We always have prayers at
night. Bring the books, daughter, and we’ll sing the 267th hymn.”

Dorcas did as she was bidden, and, offering a Hymnal to Rex, opened an
old-fashioned piano and began to play and sing, accompanied by her
father, whose trembling voice quavered along until he reached the
words,—

                    “Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee
                    For those in peril on the sea.”

Then he broke down entirely, while Dorcas soon followed, and Rex was
left to finish alone, which he did without the slightest hesitancy. He
had a rich tenor voice; taking up the air where Dorcas dropped it, he
sang the hymn to the end, while Mr. Leighton stood with closed eyes and
a rapt expression on his face.

“I wish Bertha could hear that. Let us pray,” he said, when the song was
ended, and, before he quite knew what he was doing, Rex found himself on
his knees, listening to Mr. Leighton’s fervent prayer, which closed with
the petition for the safety of those upon the deep.

As Rex had told Phineas Jones, he was not a professor, and he did not
call himself a very religious man. He attended church every Sunday
morning with his aunt, went through the services reverently, and
listened to the sermon attentively, but not all the splendors of St.
Thomas’s Church had ever impressed him as did that simple, homely
service in the farm house among the Leicester hills, where his “Amen” to
the prayer for those upon the sea was loud and distinct, and included in
it not only his aunt and Bertha, but also the girl whom he had knocked
down, who seemed to haunt him strangely.

“If I were to have much of this, Phineas would not be obliged to take me
to one of his meetings to convert me,” he thought, as he arose from his
knees and signified his readiness to retire.




                              CHAPTER IX.
                         REX MAKES DISCOVERIES.


It was Mr. Leighton who conducted Rex to his sleeping-room, saying, as
he put the lamp down upon the dressing-bureau: “There’s a big patch of
plaster off in the best chamber, where the girls put company, so you are
to sleep in here. This is Bertha’s room.”

Rex became interested immediately. To occupy a young girl’s room, even
if that girl were Squint-Eye, was a novel experience, and after Mr.
Leighton had said good-night he began to look about with a good deal of
curiosity. Everything was plain, but neat and dainty, from the pretty
matting and soft fur rug on the floor, to the bed which looked like a
white pin-cushion, with its snowy counterpane and fluted pillow-shams.

“It is just the room a nice kind of a girl would be apt to have, and it
doesn’t seem as if a great, hulking fellow like me ought to be in it,”
he said, fancying he could detect a faint perfume such as he knew some
girls affected. “I think, though, it’s the roses and lilies. I don’t
believe Squint-Eye goes in for Lubin and Pinaud and such like,” he
thought, just as he caught sight of the slippers, which Dorcas had
forgotten to remove when she arranged the room for him.

“Halloo! here are Cinderella’s shoes, as I live,” he said, taking one of
them up and handling it gingerly as if afraid he should break it.
“French heels; and, by Jove, she’s got a small foot, and a well-shaped
one, too. I wouldn’t have thought that of Squint-Eye,” he said, with a
feeling that the girl he called Squint-Eye had no right either in the
room or in the slipper, which he put down carefully, and then continued
his investigations, coming next to the window-seat, where the
work-basket and book were lying. “Embroiders, I see. Wouldn’t be a woman
if she didn’t,” he said, as he glanced at the bit of fancy work left in
the basket. Then his eye caught the book, which he took up and saw was a
volume of Tennyson, which showed a good deal of usage. “Poetical, too!
Wouldn’t have thought that of her, either. She doesn’t look it.” Then
turning to the fly-leaf, he read, “Bertha Leighton. From her cousin
Louie. Christmas, 18—.”

“By George,” he exclaimed, “that is Louie Thurston’s handwriting. Not
quite as scrawly as it was when we wrote the girl and boy letters to
each other, but the counterpart of the note she sent me last summer in
Saratoga, asking me to ride with her and Fred. And she calls herself
cousin to this Bertha! I remember now she once told me she had some
relatives North. They must be these Leightons, and I have come here to
find them and aunt’s companion too. Truly the world is very small. Poor
little Louie! I don’t believe she is happy. No woman could be that with
Fred, if he _is_ my friend. Poor little Louie!”

There was a world of pathos and pity in Rex’s voice as he said, “Poor
little Louie!” and stood looking at her handwriting and thinking of the
beautiful girl whom he might perhaps have won for his own. But if any
regret for what might have been mingled with his thoughts, he gave no
sign of it, except that the expression of his face was a shade more
serious as he put the book back in its place and prepared for bed, where
he lay awake a long time, thinking of Louie, and Squint-Eye, and the
girl he had knocked down on the ship, and Rose Arabella Jefferson, whose
face was the last he remembered before going to sleep.

The next morning was bright and fair, with no trace of the storm visible
except in the freshened foliage and the puddles of water standing here
and there in the road, and Rex, as he looked from his window upon the
green hills and valleys, felt a pang of disappointment that the place he
so coveted could never be his. Breakfast was waiting when he went down
to the dining-room, and while at the table he spoke of Louie and asked
if she were not a cousin.

“Oh, yes,” Dorcas said, quickly, a little proud of this grand relation.
“Louie’s mother and ours were sisters. She told Bertha she knew you.
Isn’t she lovely?”

Rex said she was lovely, and that he had known her since she was a
child, and had been in college with her husband. Then he changed the
conversation by inquiring about the livery-stables in town. He would
like, he said, to drive about the neighborhood a little before returning
to New York, and see the old cemetery where so many Hallams were buried.

“Horses enough, but you’ve got to walk into town to get them. If old
Bush will answer your purpose you are quite welcome to him,” Mr.
Leighton said.

“Thanks,” Rex replied. “I am already indebted to you for so much that I
may as well be indebted for more. I will take old Bush, and perhaps Miss
Leighton will go with me as a guide.”

This Dorcas was quite willing to do, and the two were soon driving
together through the leafy woods and pleasant roads and past the old
houses, where the people came to the doors and windows to see what fine
gentleman Dorcas Leighton had with her. Every one whom they met spoke to
Dorcas and inquired for Bertha, in whom all seemed greatly interested.

“Your sister must be very popular. This is the thirteenth person who has
stopped you to ask for her,” Rex said, as an old Scotchman finished his
inquiries by saying, “She’s a bonnie lassie, God bless her.”

“She is popular, and deservedly so. I wish you knew her,” was Dorcas’s
reply; and then as a conviction, born he knew not when or why, kept
increasing in Rex’s mind, he asked, “Would you mind telling me how she
looks? Is she dark or fair? tall or short? fat or lean?”

Dorcas answered unhesitatingly, “She is very beautiful,—neither fat nor
lean, tall nor short, dark nor fair, but just right.”

“Oh-h!” and Rex drew a long breath as Dorcas went on: “She has a lovely
complexion, with brilliant color, perfect features, reddish-brown hair
with glints of gold in it in the sunlight, and the handsomest eyes you
ever saw,—large and bright and almost black at times when she is excited
or pleased,—long lashes, and carries herself like a queen.”

“Oh-h!” Rex said again, knowing that Rose Arabella Jefferson had fallen
from her pedestal of beauty and was really the Squint-Eye of whom he had
thought so derisively. “Have you a photograph of her?” he asked, and
Dorcas replied that she had and would show it to him if he liked.

They had now reached home, and, bringing out an old and well-filled
album, Dorcas pointed to a photograph which Rex recognized as a
facsimile of the one his aunt had insisted belonged to Miss Jefferson.
He could not account for the peculiar sensations which swept over him
and kept deepening in intensity as he looked at the face which attracted
him more now than when he believed it that of Rose Arabella of
Scotsburg.

“I wish you would let me have this. I am a regular photo-fiend,—have a
stack of them at home, and would like mightily to add this to the lot,”
he said, remembering that the one he had was defaced with Rose
Arabella’s name.

But Dorcas declined. “Bertha would not like it,” she said, taking the
album from him quickly, as if she read his thoughts and feared lest he
would take the picture whether she were willing or not.

It was now time for Rex to go, if he would catch the next car for
Worcester. After thanking Mr. Leighton and Dorcas for their hospitality
and telling them to be sure and let him know whenever they came to New
York, so that he might return their kindness, he bade them good-bye,
with a feeling that although he had lost his fancy farm and fox-hunts,
he had gained two valuable friends.

“They are about the nicest people I ever met,” he said, as he walked
down the avenue. “Couldn’t have done more if I had been related. I ought
to have told them to come straight to our house if they were ever in New
York, and I would if it were mine. But Aunt Lucy wouldn’t like it. I
wonder she didn’t tell me about the mistake in the photographs when I
was on the ship. Maybe she didn’t think of it, I saw her so short a
time. I remember, though, that she did say that Miss Leighton was rather
too high and mighty, and, by George, I told her to sit down on her! I
_have_ made a mess of it; but I will write at once and go over sooner
than I intended, for there is no telling what Mrs. Haynes may put my
aunt up to do. I will not have that girl snubbed; and if I find them at
it, I’ll——”

Here he gave an energetic flourish of his cane in the air to attract the
conductor of the fast-coming car, and posterity will never know what he
intended doing to his aunt and Mrs. Walker Haynes, if he found them
snubbing that girl.




                               CHAPTER X.
                           AT AIX-LES-BAINS.


There was a stop of a few days at the Metropole in London, where Mrs.
Hallam engaged a courier; there was another stop at the Grand in Paris,
where a ladies’ maid was secured; and, thus equipped, Mrs. Hallam felt
that she was indeed traveling _en prince_ as she journeyed on to Aix,
where Mrs. Walker Haynes met her at the station with a very handsome
turnout, which was afterwards included in Mrs. Hallam’s bill.

“I knew you would not care to go in the ’bus with your servants, so I
ventured to order the carriage for you,” she said, as they wound up the
steep hill to the Hôtel Splendide.

Then she told what she had done for her friend’s comfort and the
pleasure it had been to do it, notwithstanding all the trouble and
annoyance she had been subjected to. The season was at its height, and
all the hotels were crowded, especially the Splendide. A grande duchesse
with her suite occupied the guestrooms on the first floor; the King of
Greece had all the second floor south of the main entrance; while
English, Jews, Spaniards, Greeks, and Russians had the rooms at the
other end of the hall; consequently Mrs. Hallam must be content with the
third floor, where a salon and a bedchamber, with balcony attached, had
been reserved for her. She had found the most trouble with the salon,
she said, as a French countess was determined to have it, and she had
secured it only by engaging it at once two weeks ago and promising more
per day than the countess was willing to give for it. As it had to be
paid for whether occupied or not, she had taken the liberty to use it
herself, knowing her friend would not care. Mrs. Hallam didn’t care,
even when later on she found that the salon had been accredited to her
since she first wrote to Mrs. Haynes that she was coming and asked her
to secure rooms. She was accustomed to being fleeced by Mrs. Haynes,
whom Rex called a second Becky Sharp. The salon business being settled,
Mrs. Haynes ventured farther and said that as she had been obliged to
dismiss her maid and had had so much trouble to fill her place she had
finally decided to wait until her friend came, when possibly the
services of one maid would answer for both ladies.

“Gracie prefers to wait upon herself,” she continued, “but I find it
convenient at times to have some one do my hair and lay out my dresses
and go with me to the baths, which I take about ten; you, no doubt, who
have plenty of money, will go down early in one of those covered chairs
which two men bring to your room. It is a most comfortable way of doing,
as you are wrapped in a blanket quite _en déshabille_ and put into a
chair, the curtains are dropped, and you are taken to the bath and back
in time for your first _déjeûner_, and are all through with the baths
early and can enjoy yourself the rest of the day. It is rather
expensive, of course, and I cannot afford it, but all who can, do. The
Scrantoms from New York, the Montgomerys from Boston, the Harwoods from
London, and old Lady Gresham, all go down that way; quite a high-toned
procession, which some impertinent American girls try to kodak. I shall
introduce you to these people. They know you are coming, and you are
sure to like them.”

Mrs. Haynes knew just what chord to touch with her ambitious friend, who
was as clay in her hands. By the time the hotel was reached it had been
arranged that she was not only to continue to use the salon, but was
also welcome to the services of Mrs. Hallam’s maid, Celine, and her
courier, Browne, and possibly her companion, although on this point she
was doubtful, as the girl had a mind of her own and was not easily
managed.

“I saw that in her face the moment I looked at her, and thought she
might give you trouble. She really looked as if she expected me to speak
to her. Who is she?” Mrs. Haynes asked, and very briefly Mrs. Hallam
told all she knew of her,—of the mistake in the photographs, of
Reginald’s admiration of the one which was really Bertha’s, and of his
encounter with her on the ship.

“Hm; yes,” Mrs. Walker rejoined, reflectively, and in an instant her
tactics were resolved upon.

Possessed of a large amount of worldly wisdom and foresight, she boasted
that she could read the end from the beginning, and on this occasion her
quick instincts told her that, given a chance, this hired companion
might come between her and her plan of marrying her daughter Grace to
Rex Hallam, who was every way desirable as a son-in-law. She had seen
enough of him to know that if he cared for a girl it would make no
difference whether she were a wage-earner or the daughter of a duke, and
Bertha might prove a formidable rival. He had admired her photograph and
been kind to her on the boat, and when he met her again there was no
knowing what complications might arise if, as was most probable, Bertha
herself were artful and ambitious. And so, for no reason whatever except
her own petty jealousy, she conceived a most unreasonable dislike for
the girl; and when Mrs. Haynes was unreasonable she sometimes was guilty
of acts of which she was afterwards ashamed.

Arrived at the hotel, which the ’bus had reached before her, she said to
Bertha, who was standing near the door, “Take your mistress’s bag and
shawl up to the third floor, No. —, and wait there for us.”

Bertha knew it was Celine’s place to do this, but that demoiselle, who
thus far had not proved the treasure she was represented to be, had
found an acquaintance, to whom she was talking so volubly that she did
not observe the entrance of her party until Bertha was half-way up the
three flights of stairs, with Mrs. Hallam’s bag and wrap as well as her
own. The service at the Splendide was not the best, and those who would
wait upon themselves were welcome to do so, and Bertha toiled on with
her arms full, while Mrs. Hallam and Mrs. Haynes took the little coop of
a lift and ascended very leisurely.

“This is your room. I hope you will like it,” Mrs. Haynes said, stopping
at the open door of a large, airy room, with a broad window opening upon
a balcony, where a comfortable easy-chair was standing. Mrs. Hallam sank
into it at once, admiring the view and pleased with everything. The
clerk at the office had handed her a letter which had come in the
morning mail. It was from Rex, and was full of his visit to the
Homestead, the kindness he had received from Mr. Leighton and Dorcas,
and the discovery he had made with regard to Bertha.

“I wonder you didn’t tell me on the ship that I was right and you
wrong,” he wrote. “You did say, though, that she was high and mighty,
and I told you to sit on her. But don’t you do it! She is a lady by
birth and education, and I want you to treat her kindly and not let Mrs.
Haynes bamboozle you into snubbing her because she is your companion. I
sha’n’t like it if you do, for it will be an insult to the Leightons and
a shame to us.” Then he added, “At the hotel in Worcester I fell in with
a fellow who claimed to be a fortieth cousin of yours, Phineas Jones. Do
you remember him? Great character. Called you cousin Lucy Ann,—said you
spelled him down at a spelling-match on the word ‘dammed,’ and that he
was going to call when you got home. I didn’t give him our address.”

After reading this the view from the balcony did not look so charming or
the sunlight so bright, and there was a shadow on Mrs. Hallam’s face
caused not so much by what Rex had written of the Homestead as by his
encounter with Phineas Jones, her abomination. Why had he, of all
possible persons, turned up? And what else had he told Rex of her
besides the spelling episode? Everything, probably, and more than
everything, for she remembered well Phineas’s loquacity, which sometimes
carried him into fiction. And he talked of calling upon her, too! “The
wretch!” she said, crushing the letter in her hands, as she would have
liked to crush the offending Phineas.

“No bad news, I hope?” Mrs. Haynes said, stepping upon the balcony and
noting the change in her friend’s expression.

Mrs. Hallam, who would have died sooner than tell of Phineas Jones,
answered, “Oh, no. Rex has been to the Homestead and found out about
Bertha, over whom he is wilder than ever, saying I must be kind to her
and all that; as if I would be anything else.”

“Hm; yes,” Mrs. Haynes replied, an expression which always meant a great
deal with her, and which in this case meant a greater dislike to Bertha
and a firmer resolve to humiliate her.

It was beginning to grow dark by this time. Reentering her room, Mrs.
Hallam asked, “Where is Celine? I want her to open my trunk and get out
a cooler dress; this is so hot and dusty.”

But Celine was not forthcoming, and Bertha was summoned in her place. At
the Metropole Bertha had occupied a stuffy little room looking into a
court, while at the Grand in Paris she had slept in what she called a
closet, so that now she felt as if in Paradise when she took possession
of her room, which, if small and at the rear, looked out upon grass and
flowers and the tall hills which encircle Aix on all sides.

“This is delightful,” she thought, as she leaned from the window
inhaling the perfume of the flowers and drinking in the sweet, pure air
which swept down the green hillside, where vines and fruits were
growing. She, too, had found a letter waiting for her from Dorcas, who
detailed every particular of Reginald’s visit to the Homestead, and
dwelt at some length upon his evident admiration of Bertha’s photograph
and his desire to have it.

“I don’t pretend to have your psychological presentiments,” Dorcas
wrote, “but if I had I should say that Mr. Hallam would admire you when
he sees you quite as much as he did your picture, and I know you will
like him. You cannot help it. He will join you before long.”

Bertha knew better than Dorcas that she should like Rex Hallam, and
something told her that her life after he came would be different from
what it was now. For Mrs. Hallam she had but little respect, she was so
thoroughly selfish and exacting, but she did not dislike her with the
dislike she had conceived in a moment for Mrs. Haynes, in whom she had
intuitively recognized a foe, who would tyrannize over and humiliate her
worse than her employer. During her climb up-stairs she had resolved
upon her course of conduct towards the lady should she attempt to
browbeat her.

“I will do my best to please Mrs. Hallam, but I will not be subject to
that woman,” she thought, just as some one knocked, and in response to
her “Come in,” Mrs. Haynes appeared, saying, “Leighton, Mrs. Hallam
wants you.”

“Madam, if you are speaking to me, I am _Miss Leighton_,” Bertha said,
while her eyes flashed so angrily that for a moment Mrs. Haynes lost her
self command and stammered an apology, saying she was so accustomed to
hearing the English employees called by their last names that she had
inadvertently acquired the habit.

There was a haughty inclination of Bertha’s head in token that she
accepted the apology, and then the two, between whom there was now war,
went to Mrs. Hallam’s room, where Bertha unlocked a trunk and took out a
fresher dress. While she was doing this, Mrs. Hallam again stepped out
upon the balcony with Mrs. Haynes, who said;

“It is too late for _table d’hôte_, but I have ordered a nice little
extra dinner for you and me, to be served in our salon. I thought you’d
like it better there the first night. Grace has dined and gone to the
Casino with a party of English, who have rooms under us. The king is to
be there.”

“Do you know him well?” Mrs. Hallam asked, pleased at the possibility of
hobnobbing with royalty.

“Ye-es—no-o. Well, he has bowed to me, but I have not exactly spoken to
him yet,” was Mrs. Haynes’s reply, and then she went on hurriedly, “I
have engaged seats for lunch and dinner for you, Grace and myself in the
_salle-à-manger_, near Lady Gresham’s party, and also a small table in a
corner of the breakfast-room where we can be quite private and take our
coffee together, when you do not care to have it in your salon. Grace
insists upon going down in the morning, and of course, I must go with
her.”

“You are very kind,” Mrs. Hallam said, thinking how nice it was to have
all care taken from her, while Mrs. Haynes continued:

“Your servants take their meals in the servants’ hall. Celine will
naturally prefer to sit with her own people, and if you like I will
arrange to have places reserved with the English for your courier
and—and——”

She hesitated a little, until Mrs. Hallam said, in some surprise:

“Do you mean Miss Leighton?”

Then she went on. “Yes, the courier and Miss Leighton; he seems a very
respectable man,—quite superior to his class.”

Here was a turn in affairs for which even Mrs. Hallam was not prepared.
Heretofore Bertha had taken her meals with her, nor had she thought of a
change; but if Mrs. Walker Haynes saw fit to make one, it must be right.
Still, there was Rex to be considered. Would he think this was treating
Bertha as she should be treated? She was afraid not, and she said,
hesitatingly, “Yes, but I am not sure Reginald would like it.”

“What has he to do with it, pray?” Mrs. Haynes asked, quickly.

Mrs. Hallam replied, “Her family was very nice to him, and you know he
wrote me to treat her kindly. I don’t think he would like to find her in
the servants’ hall.”

This was the first sign of rebellion Mrs. Haynes had ever seen in her
friend, and she met it promptly.

“I do not see how you can do differently, if you adhere to the customs
of those with whom you wish to associate. Several English families have
had companions, or governesses, or seamstresses, or something, and they
have always gone to the servants’ hall. Lady Gresham has one there now.
Miss Leighton may be all Reginald thinks she is, but if she puts herself
in the position of an employee she must expect an employee’s fare, and
not thrust herself upon first-class people. You will only pay
second-class for her if she goes there.”

Lady Gresham and the English and paying second-class were influencing
Mrs. Hallam mightily, but a dread of Rex, who when roused in the cause
of oppression would not be pleasant to meet, kept her hesitating, until
Bertha herself settled the matter. She had heard the conversation,
although it had been carried on in low tones and sometimes in whispers.
At first she resolved that rather than submit to this indignity she
would give up her position and go home; then, remembering what Mrs.
Hallam had said of Reginald, who was sure to be angry if he found her
thus humiliated, she began to change her mind.

“I’ll do it,” she thought, while the absurdity of the thing grew upon
her so fast that it began at last to look like a huge joke which she
might perhaps enjoy. Going to the door, she said, while a proud smile
played over her face, “Ladies, I could not help hearing what you said,
and as Mrs. Hallam seems undecided in the matter I will decide for her,
and go to the servants’ hall, which I prefer. I have tried first-class
people, and would like a chance to try the second.”

She looked like a young queen as she stood in the doorway, her eyes
sparkling and her cheeks glowing with excitement, and Mrs. Haynes felt
that for once she had met a foe worthy of her.

“Yes, that will be best, and I dare say you will find it very
comfortable,” Mrs. Hallam said, admiring the girl as she had never
admired her before, and thinking that before Rex came she would manage
to make a change.

That night, however, she had Bertha’s dinner sent to her room, and also
made arrangements to have her coffee served there in the morning, so it
was not until lunch that she had her first experience as second-class.
The hall, which was not used for the servants of the house, who had
their meals elsewhere, was a long room on the ground-floor, and there
she found assembled a mixed company of nurses, maids, couriers, and
valets, all talking together in a babel of tongues, English, French,
German, Italian, Russian, and Greek, and all so earnest that they did
not see the graceful young woman who, with a heightened color and eyes
which shone like stars as they took in the scene, walked to the only
vacant seat she saw, which was evidently intended for her, as it was
next the courier Browne. But when they did see her they became as silent
as if the king himself had come into their midst, while Browne rose to
his feet, and with a respectful bow held her chair for her until she was
seated, and then asked what he should order for her. Browne, who was a
respectable middle-aged man and had traveled extensively with both
English and Americans, had seen that Bertha was superior to her
employer, and had shown her many little attentions in a respectful way.
He had heard from Celine that she was coming to the second salon, and
resented it more, if possible, than Bertha herself, resolving to
constitute himself her protector and shield her from every possible
annoyance. This she saw at once, and smiled gratefully upon him. No one
spoke to her, and silence reigned as she finished her lunch and then
left the room with a bow in which all felt they were included.

“By Jove, Browne, who is that person, and how came she here? She looks
like a lady,” asked an English valet, while two or three Frenchmen
nearly lost their balance with their fierce gesticulations, as they
clamored to know who the grande mademoiselle was.

Striking his fist upon the table to enforce silence, Browne said:

“She is a Miss Leighton, from America, and far more a lady than many of
the bediamonded and besatined trash above us. She is in my party as
madam’s companion, and whoever is guilty of the least impertinence
towards her in word or look will answer for it to me; to _me_, do you
understand?” And he turned fiercely towards a wicked-looking little
Frenchman, whose bad eyes had rested too boldly and too admiringly upon
the girl.

“_Mon Dieu, oui, oui, oui!_” the man replied, and then in broken English
asked, “Why comes she here, if she be a lady?”

It was Celine who answered for Browne:

“Because her mistress is a cat, a nasty old cat,—as the English say. And
there is a pair of them. I heard them last night saying she must be put
down, and they have put her down here. I hate them, and mine most of
all. She tries to get me cheap. She keeps me fly-fly. She gives me no
_pourboires_. She sleeps me in a dog-kennel. Bah! I stay not, if good
chance come. _L’Amèricaine_ hundred times more lady.”

This voluble speech, which was interpreted by one to another until all
had a tolerably correct idea of it, did not diminish the interest in
Bertha, to whom after this every possible respect was paid, the men
always rising with Browne when she entered the dining-hall and remaining
standing until she was seated. Bertha was human, and such homage could
not help pleasing her, although it came from those whose language she
could not understand, and who by birth and education were greatly her
inferiors. It was something to be the object of so much respect, and
when, warmed by the bright smile she always gave them, the Greeks, and
the Russians, and the Italians, not only rose when she entered the hall,
but also when she passed them outside, if they chanced to be sitting,
she felt that her life had some compensations, if it were one of
drudgery and menial service.

True to her threat, Celine left when a more desirable situation offered,
and Mrs. Hallam did not fill her place. “No need of it, so long as you
have Miss Leighton and pay her what you do,” Mrs. Haynes said; and so it
came about that Bertha found herself companion in name only and
waiting-maid in earnest, walking demurely by the covered chair which
each morning took Mrs. Hallam to her bath, combing that lady’s hair,
mending and brushing her clothes, carrying messages, doing far more than
Celine had done, and doing it so uncomplainingly that both Mrs. Hallam
and Mrs. Haynes wondered at her. At last, however, when asked to
accompany Mrs. Haynes to the bath, she rebelled. To serve her in that
way was impossible, and she answered civilly, but decidedly, “No, Mrs.
Hallam. I have done and will do whatever you require for yourself, but
for Mrs. Haynes, nothing. She never spares an opportunity to humiliate
me. I will not attend her to her bath. I will give up my place first.”
That settled it, and Bertha was never again asked to wait upon Mrs.
Haynes.




                              CHAPTER XI.
                             GRACE HAYNES.


“Bravo, Miss Leighton! I did not suppose there was so much spirit in
you, when I saw you darning madam’s stockings and buttoning her boots.
You are a brick and positively I admire you. Neither mamma nor Mrs
Hallam needs any one to go with them, any more than the sea needs water.
But it is English, you know, to have an attendant, and such an
attendant, too, as you. Yes, I admire you! I respect you! Our door was
open, and I heard what you said; so did mamma, and she is furious; but I
am glad to see one woman assert her rights.”

It was Grace Haynes, who, coming from her bedroom, joined Bertha, as she
was walking rapidly down the hall and said all this to her. Bertha had
been nearly two weeks at Aix, and, although she had scarcely exchanged a
word with Grace, she had often seen her, and remembering what Mrs.
Hallam had said of her and Reginald, had looked at her rather
critically. She was very thin and wiry, with a pale face, yellow hair
worn short, large blue eyes, and a nose inclined to an upward curve. She
was a kind-hearted, good-natured girl, of a pronounced type both in
dress and manner and speech. She believed in a little slang, she said,
because it gave a point to conversation, and she adored baccarat and
rouge-et-noir, and a lot more things which her mother thought highly
improper. She had heard all that her mother said of Bertha, and, quick
to discriminate, she had seen how infinitely superior she was to Mrs.
Hallam and had felt drawn to her, but was too much absorbed in her own
matters to have any time for a stranger. She was a natural flirt, and,
although so plain, always managed to have, as she said, two or three
idiots dangling on her string. Just now it was a young Englishman, the
grandson of old Lady Gresham, whom she had upon her string, greatly to
the disgust of her mother, with whom she was not often in perfect
accord.

Linking her arm in Bertha’s as they went down the stairs, she continued,
“Are you going to walk? I am, up the hill. Come with me. I’ve been dying
to talk to you ever since you came, but have been so engaged, and you
are always so busy with madam since Celine went away. Good pious work
you must find it waiting on madam and mamma both! I don’t see how you do
it so sweetly. You must have a great deal of what they call inward and
spiritual grace. I wish you’d give me some.”

Grace was the first girl of her own age and nation who had spoken to
Bertha since she left America, and she responded readily to the friendly
advance.

“I don’t believe I have any inward and spiritual grace to spare,” she
said. “I only do what I hired out to do. You know I must earn my wages.”

“Yes,” Grace answered, “I know, and I wish I could earn wages, too. It
would be infinitely more respectable than the way we get our money.”

“How do you get it?” Bertha asked, and Grace replied, “Don’t you know?
You have certainly heard of high-born English dames who, for a
consideration, undertake to hoist ambitious Americans into society?”

Bertha had heard of such things, and Grace continued, “Well, that is
what mamma does at home on a smaller scale; and she succeeds, too.
Everybody knows Mrs. Walker Haynes, with blood so blue that indigo is
pale beside it, and if she pulls a string for a puppet to dance, all the
other puppets dance in unison. Sometimes she chaperons a party of young
ladies, but as these give her a good deal of trouble, she prefers people
like Mrs. Hallam, who without her would never get into society. Society!
I hate the word, with all it involves. Do you see that colt over there?”
and she pointed to a young horse in an adjoining field. “Well, I am like
that colt, kicking up its heels in a perfect abandon of freedom. But
harness it to a cart, with thills and lines and straps and reins, and
then apply the whip, won’t it rebel with all its might? And if it gets
its feet over the traces and breaks in the dash-board who can blame it?
I’m just like that colt. I hate that old go-giggle called society, which
says you mustn’t do this and you must do that because it is or is not
proper and Mrs. Grundy would be shocked. I like to shock her, and I’d
rather take boarders than live as we do now. I’d do anything to earn
money. That’s why I play at baccarat.”

“Baccarat!” Bertha repeated, with a little start.

“Yes, baccarat. Don’t try to pull away from me. I felt you,” Grace said,
holding Bertha closer by the arm. “You are Massachusetts born and have a
lot of Massachusetts notions, of course, and I respect you for it, but I
am Bohemian through and through. Wasn’t born anywhere in particular, and
have been in your so-called first society all my life and detest it. We
have a little income, and could live in the country with one servant
comfortably, as so many people do; but that would not suit mamma, and so
we go from pillar to post and live on other people, until I am ashamed.
I am successful at baccarat. They say the old gent who tempted Eve helps
new beginners at cards, and I believe he helps me, I win so often. I
know it isn’t good form, but what can I do? If I don’t play baccarat
there’s nothing left for me but to marry, and that I never shall.”

“Why not?” Bertha asked, becoming more and more interested in the
strange girl talking so confidentially to her.

“Why not?” Grace repeated. “That shows that you are not in it,—the swim,
I mean. Don’t you know that few young men nowadays can afford to marry a
poor girl and support her in her extravagance and laziness? She must
have money to get any kind of a show, and that I haven’t,—nor beauty
either, like you, whose face is worth a fortune. Don’t say it isn’t;
don’t fib,” she continued, as Bertha tried to speak. “You know you are
beautiful, with a grande-duchesse air which makes everybody turn to look
at you, even the king. I saw him, and I’ve seen those Russians and
Greeks, who are here with some high cockalorums, take off their hats
when you came near them. Celine told me how they all stand up when you
enter the _salle-à-manger_. I call that genuine homage, which I’d give a
good deal to have.”

She had let go Bertha’s arm and was walking a little in advance, when
she stopped suddenly, and, turning round, said, “I wonder what you will
think of Rex Hallam.”

Bertha made no reply, and she went on: “I know I am talking queerly, but
I must let myself out to some one. Rex is coming before long, and you
will know then, if you don’t now, that mamma is moving heaven and earth
to make a match between us; but she never will. I am not his style, and
he is far more likely to marry you than me. I have known him for years,
and could get up a real liking for him if it would be of any use, but it
wouldn’t. He doesn’t want a washed-out, yellow-haired girl like me.
Nobody does, unless it’s Jack Travis, old Lady Gresham’s grandson, with
no prospects and only a hundred pounds a year and an orange grove in
Florida, which he never saw, and which yields nothing, for want of
proper attention. He says he would like to go out there and rough it;
that he does not like being tied to his grandmother’s apron-strings; and
that, give him a chance, he would gladly work. I have two hundred
dollars a year more. Do you think we could live on that and the
climate?”

They had been retracing their steps, and were near the hotel, where they
met the young Englishman in question, evidently looking for Miss Haynes.
He was a shambling, loose-jointed young man, but he had a good face, and
there was a ring in his voice which Bertha liked, as he spoke first to
Grace and then to herself, as Grace presented him to her. Knowing that
as a third party she was in the way, Bertha left them and went into the
hotel, while they went down into the town, where they stayed so long
that Lady Gresham and Mrs. Haynes began to get anxious as to their
whereabouts. Both ladies knew of the intimacy between the young people,
and both heartily disapproved of it. Under some circumstances Mrs.
Haynes would have been delighted to have for a son-in-law Lady Gresham’s
grandson. But she prized money more than a title, and one hundred pounds
a year with a doubtful orange grove in Florida did not commend
themselves to her, while Lady Gresham, although very gracious to Mrs.
Haynes, because it was not in her nature to be otherwise to any one, did
not like the fast American girl, who wore her hair short, carried her
hands in her pockets like a man, and believed in women’s rights. If Jack
were insane enough to marry her she would wash her hands of him and send
him off to that orange grove, where she had heard there was a little
dilapidated house in which he could try to live on the climate and one
hundred a year. Some such thoughts as these were passing through Lady
Gresham’s mind, while Mrs. Haynes was thinking of Grace’s perversity in
encouraging young Travis, and of Reginald Hallam, from whom Mrs. Hallam
had that morning had a letter and who was coming to Aix earlier than he
had intended doing. Nearly all his friends were out of town, he wrote,
and the house was so lonely without his aunt that she might expect him
within two or three weeks at the farthest. He did not say what steamer
he should take, but, as ten days had elapsed since his letter was
written, Mrs. Hallam said she should not be surprised to see him at any
time, and her face wore an air of pleased expectancy at the prospect of
having Rex with her once more. But a thought of Bertha brought a cloud
upon it at once. She had intended removing her from the second-class
_salle-à-manger_ before Rex came, but did not know how to manage it.

“The girl seems contented enough,” she thought, “and I hear has a great
deal of attention there,—in fact, is quite like a queen among her
subjects; so I guess I’ll let it run, and if Rex flares up I’ll trust
Mrs. Haynes to help me out of it, as she got me into it.”




                              CHAPTER XII.
                        THE NIGHT OF THE OPERA.


It was getting rather dull at the Hôtel Splendide. The novelty of having
a king in their midst, who went about unattended in citizen’s dress, and
bowed to all who looked as if they wished him to bow to them, was
wearing off, and he could go in and out as often as he liked without
being followed or stared at. The grand duchess, too, whose apartments
were screened from the great unwashed, had had her Sunday dinner-party,
with scions of French royalty in the Bourbon line for her guests, and a
band of music outside. The woman from Chicago, who had flirted so
outrageously with her eyes with the Russian, while his little wife sat
by smiling placidly and suspecting no evil because the Chicagoan
professed to speak no language but English, of which her husband did not
understand a word, had departed for other fields. The French count, who
had beaten his American bride of three weeks’ standing, had also gone,
and the hotel had subsided into a state of great respectability and
circumspection.

“Positively we are stagnating, with nothing to gossip about except Jack
and myself, and nothing going on in town,” Grace Haynes said to Bertha,
with whom she continued on the most friendly terms.

But the stagnation came to an end and the town woke up when it was known
that Miss Sanderson from San Francisco was to appear in opera at the
Casino. Everybody had heard of the young prima donna, and all were
anxious to see her. Mrs. Hallam took a box for Mrs. Haynes, Grace, and
herself, but, although there was plenty of room, Bertha was not included
in the party. Nearly all the guests were going from the third floor,
which would thus be left entirely to the servants, and Mrs. Hallam, who
was always suspecting foreigners of pilfering from her, did not dare
leave her rooms alone, so Bertha must stay and watch them. She had done
this before when Mrs. Hallam was at the Casino, but to-night it seemed
particularly hard, as she wished to see Miss Sanderson so much that she
would willingly have stood in the rear seats near the door, where a
crowd always congregated. But there was no help for it, and after seeing
Mrs. Hallam and her party off she went into the salon, and, taking an
easy-chair and a book, sat down to enjoy the quiet and the rest. She was
very tired, for Mrs. Hallam had kept her unusually busy that day,
arranging the dress she was going to wear, and sending her twice down
the long, steep hill into the town in quest of something needed for her
toilet. It was very still in and around the hotel, and at last, overcome
by fatigue and drowsiness, Bertha’s book dropped into her lap and she
fell asleep with her head thrown back against the cushioned chair and
one hand resting on its arm. Had she tried she could not have chosen a
more graceful position, or one which showed her face and figure to
better advantage, and so thought Rex Hallam, when, fifteen or twenty
minutes later, he stepped into the room and stood looking at her.

Ever since his visit to the Homestead he had found his thoughts
constantly turning to Aix-les-Bains, and had made up his mind to go on a
certain ship, when he accidentally met Fred Thurston, who was stopping
in New York for two or three days before sailing. There was an
invitation to dinner at the Windsor, and as a result Rex packed his
trunk, and, securing a vacant berth, sailed for Havre with the Thurstons
a week earlier than he had expected to sail. Fred was sick all the
voyage and kept his berth, but Louie seemed perfectly well, and had
never been so happy since she was a child playing with Rex under the
magnolias in Florida as she was now, walking and talking with him upon
the deck, where, with her piquant, childish beauty, she attracted a
great deal of attention and provoked some comment from the censorious
when it was known that she had a husband sick in his berth. But Louie
was guiltless of any intentional wrong-doing. She had said to Bertha in
Boston, that she believed Fred was going to die, he was so good; and,
with a few exceptions, when the Hyde nature was in the ascendant, he had
kept good ever since. He had urged Rex’s going with them quite as
strongly as Louie, and when he found himself unable to stay on deck, he
had bidden Louie go and enjoy herself, saying, however:

“I know what a flirt you are, but I can trust Rex Hallam, on whom your
doll beauty has never made an impression and never will; so go and be
happy with him.”

This was not a pleasant thing to say, but it was like Fred Thurston to
say it, and he looked curiously at Louie to see how it would affect her.
There was a flush on her face for a moment, while the tears sprang to
her eyes. But she was of too sunny a disposition to be miserable long,
and, thinking to herself, “Just for this one week I will be happy,” she
tied on her pretty sea-cloak and hood, and went on deck, and was happy
as a child when something it has lost and mourned is found again. At
Paris they separated, the Thurstons going on to Switzerland, and Rex to
Aix-les-Bains, laden with messages of love to Bertha, who had been the
principal subject of Louie’s talk during the voyage. In a burst of
confidence Rex had told her of Rose Arabella Jefferson’s photograph, and
Louie had laughed merrily over the mistake, saying:

“You will find Bertha handsomer than her picture. I think you will fall
in love with her; and—if—you—do——” she spoke the last words very slowly,
while shadow after shadow flitted over her face as if she were fighting
some battle with herself; then, with a bright smile, she added, “I shall
be glad.”

Rex’s journey from Paris to Aix was accomplished without any worse
mishap than a detention of the train for three hours or more, so that it
was not until his aunt had been gone some time that he reached the
hotel, where he was told that Mrs. Hallam and party were at the Casino.

“I suppose she has a salon. I will go there and wait till she returns,”
Rex said, and then followed a servant up-stairs and along the hall in
the direction of the salon.

He had expected to find it locked, and was rather surprised when he saw
the open door and the light inside, and still more surprised as he
entered the room to find a young lady so fast asleep that his coming did
not disturb her. He readily guessed who she was, and for a moment stood
looking at her admiringly, noting every point of beauty from the long
lashes shading her cheeks to the white hand resting upon the arm of the
chair.

“Phineas was right. She is handsome as blazes, but I don’t think it is
quite the thing for me to stand staring at her this way. It is taking an
unfair advantage of her. I must present myself properly,” he thought,
and, stepping into the hall, he knocked rather loudly upon the door.

Bertha awoke with a start and sprang to her feet in some alarm as, in
response to her “Entrez,” a tall young man stepped into the room and
stood confronting her with a good deal of assurance.

“You must have made a mistake, sir. This is Mrs. Hallam’s salon,” she
said, rather haughtily, while Rex replied:

“Yes, I know it. Mrs. Hallam is my aunt, and you must be Miss Leighton.”

“Oh!” Bertha exclaimed, her attitude changing at once, as she recognized
the stranger. “Your aunt is expecting you, but not quite so soon. She
will be very sorry not to have been here to meet you. She has gone to
the opera. Miss Sanderson is in town.”

“So they told me at the office,” Rex said, explaining that he had
crossed a little sooner than he had intended, but did not telegraph his
aunt, as he wished to surprise her. He then added, “I am too late for
dinner, but I suppose I can have my supper up here, which will be better
than climbing the three flights of stairs again. That scoop of an
elevator has gone ashore for repairs, and I had to walk up.”

Ringing the bell, he ordered his supper, while Bertha started to leave
the salon, saying she hoped he would make himself comfortable until his
aunt returned.

“Don’t go,” he said, stepping between her and the door to detain her.
“Stay and keep me company. I have been shut up in a close railway
carriage all day with French and Germans, and am dying to talk to some
one who speaks English.”

He made her sit down in the chair from which she had risen when he came
in, and, drawing another near to her, said, “You do not seem like a
stranger, but rather like an old acquaintance. Why, for a whole week I
have heard of little else but you.”

“Of me!” Bertha said, in surprise.

He replied, “I crossed with Mr. and Mrs. Fred Thurston. She, I believe,
is your cousin, and was never tired of talking of you, and has sent more
love to you than one man ought to carry for some one else.”

“Cousin Louie! Yes, I knew she was coming about this time. And you
crossed with her?” Bertha said, thinking what a fine-looking man he was,
while there came to her mind what Louie had said of his graciousness of
manner, which made every woman think she was especially pleasing to him,
whether she were old or young, pretty or plain, rich or poor. He talked
so easily and pleasantly and familiarly that it was difficult to think
of him as a stranger, and she was not sorry that he had bidden her stay.

When supper was on the table he looked it over a moment, and then said
to the waiter, “Bring dishes and napkins enough for two;” then to
Bertha, “If I remember the _table d’hôtes_ abroad, they are not of a
nature to make one refuse supper at ten o’clock; so I hope you are ready
to join me.”

Bertha had been treated as second-class so long that she had almost come
to believe she _was_ second-class, and the idea of sitting down to
supper with Rex Hallam in his aunt’s salon took her breath away.

“Don’t refuse,” he continued. “It will be so much jollier than eating
alone, and I want you to pour my coffee.”

He brought her a chair, and before she realized what she was doing she
found herself sitting opposite him quite _en famille_, and chatting as
familiarly as if she had known him all her life. He told her of his
visit to the Homestead, his drive with Dorcas, and his meeting with
Phineas Jones, over which she laughed merrily, feeling that America was
not nearly so far away as it had seemed before he came. When supper was
over and the table cleared, he began to talk of books and pictures,
finding that as a rule they liked the same authors and admired the same
artists.

“By the way,” he said, suddenly, “why are you not at the opera with my
aunt? Are you not fond of music?”

“Yes, very,” Bertha replied, “but some one must stay with the rooms.
Mrs. Hallam is afraid to leave them alone.”

“Ah, yes. Afraid somebody will steal her diamonds, which she keeps
doubly and trebly locked, first in a padded box, then in her trunk, and
last in her room. Well, I am glad for my sake that you didn’t go. But
isn’t it rather close up here? Suppose we go down. It’s a glorious
moonlight night, and there must be a piazza somewhere.”

Bertha thought of the broad, vine-wreathed piazza, with its easy-chairs,
where it would be delightful to sit with Reginald Hallam, but she must
not leave her post, and she said so.

“Oh, I see; another case of the boy on the burning deck,” Rex said,
laughing. “I suppose you are right; but I never had much patience with
that boy. I shouldn’t have stayed till I was blown higher than a kite,
but should have run with the first sniff of fire. You think I’d better
go down? Not a bit of it; if you stay here, I shall. It can’t be long
now before they come. Zounds! I beg your pardon. Until I said _they_, I
had forgotten to inquire for Mrs. Haynes and Grace. They are well, I
suppose, and with my aunt?”

Bertha said they were, and Rex continued:

“Grace and I are great friends. She’s a little peculiar,—wants to vote,
and all that sort of thing,—but I like her immensely.”

Then he talked on indifferent subjects until Mrs. Hallam was heard
coming along the hall, panting and talking loudly, and evidently out of
humor. The elevator, which Rex said had been drawn off for repairs, was
still off, and she had been obliged to walk up the stairs, and didn’t
like it. Bertha had risen to her feet as soon as she heard her voice,
while Rex, too, rose and stood behind her in the shadow, so his aunt did
not see him as she entered the room, and, sinking into the nearest
chair, said, irritably:

“Hurry and help me off with my things. I’m half dead. Whew! Isn’t that
lamp smoking? How it smells here! Open another window. The lift is not
running, and I had to walk up the stairs.”

“I knew it stopped earlier in the evening, but supposed it was running
now. I am very sorry,” Bertha said, and Mrs. Hallam continued:

“You ought to have found out and been down there to help me up.”

“I didn’t come any too soon,” Rex thought, stepping out from the shadow,
and saying, in his cheery voice, “Halloo, auntie! All tuckered out,
aren’t you, with those horrible stairs! I tried them, and they took the
wind out of me.”

“Oh, Rex, Rex!” Mrs. Hallam cried, throwing her arms around the tall
young man, who bent over her and returned her caresses, while he
explained that he did not telegraph, as he wished to surprise her, and
that he had reached the hotel half an hour or so after she left it.

“Why didn’t you come at once to the Casino? There was plenty of room in
our box, and you must have been so dull here.”

Rex replied: “Not at all dull, with Miss Leighton for company. I ordered
my supper up here and had her join me. So you see I have made myself
quite at home.”

“I see,” Mrs. Hallam said, with a tone in her voice and a shutting
together of her lips which Bertha understood perfectly.

She had gathered up Mrs. Hallam’s mantle and bonnet and opera-glass and
fan and gloves by this time; and, knowing she was no longer needed, she
left the room just as Mrs. Haynes and Grace, who had heard Rex’s voice,
entered it.




                             CHAPTER XIII.
                            AFTER THE OPERA.


The ladies slept late the next morning, and Rex breakfasted alone and
then went to the salon to meet his aunt, as he had promised to do the
night before. It was rather tiresome waiting, and he found himself
wishing Bertha would come in, and wondering where she was. As a young
man of position and wealth and unexceptionable habits, he was a general
favorite with the ladies, and many a mother would gladly have captured
him for her daughter, while the daughter would not have said no if asked
to be his wife. This he knew perfectly well, but, he said, the daughters
didn’t fill the bill. He wanted a real girl, not a made-up one, with
powdered face, bleached hair, belladonna eyes, and all the obnoxious
habits so fast stealing into the best society. Little Louie Thurston had
touched his boyish fancy, and he admired her more than any other woman
he had ever met; Grace Haynes amused and interested him; but neither she
nor Louie possessed the qualities with which he had endowed his ideal
wife, who, he had come to believe, did not exist. Thus far everything
connected with Bertha Leighton had interested him greatly, and the two
hours he had spent alone with her had deepened that interest. She was
beautiful, agreeable, and real, he believed, with something fresh and
bright and original about her. He was anxious to see her again, and was
thinking of going down to the piazza, hoping to find her there, when his
aunt appeared, and for the next hour he sat with her, telling her of
their friends in New York and of his visit to the Homestead, where he
had been so hospitably entertained and made so many discoveries with
regard to Bertha.

“She is a great favorite in Leicester,” he said, “and I think you have a
treasure.”

“Yes, she serves me very well,” Mrs. Hallam replied, and then changed
the conversation, just as Grace knocked at the door, saying she was
going for a walk into town, and asking if Rex would like to go with her.

It was a long ramble they had together, while Grace told him of her
acquaintances in Aix, and especially of the young Englishman, Jack
Travis, and the Florida orange grove on which he had sunk a thousand
dollars with no return.

“Tell him to quit sinking, and go and see to it himself,” Rex said.
“Living in England or at the North and sending money South to be used on
a grove, is much like a woman trying to keep house successfully by
sitting in her chamber and issuing her orders through a speaking tube,
instead of going to the kitchen herself to see what is being done
there.”

Rex’s illustrations were rather peculiar, but they were sensible. Grace
understood this one perfectly, and began to revolve in her mind the
feasibility of advising Jack to go to Florida and attend to his business
himself, instead of talking through a tube. Then she spoke of Bertha,
and was at once conscious of an air of increased interest in Reginald,
as she told him how much she liked the girl and how strangely he seemed
to be mixed up with her.

“You see, Mrs. Hallam tells mamma everything, and so I know all about
Rose Arabella Jefferson’s picture. I nearly fell out of my chair when I
heard about it; and I know, too, about your knocking Miss Leighton down
on the Teutonic——”

“Wha-at!” Rex exclaimed; “was that Ber—Miss Leighton, I mean?”

“Certainly that was Bertha. You may as well call her that when with me,”
Grace replied. “I knew you would admire her. You can’t help it. I am
glad you have come, and I hope you will rectify a lot of things.”

Rex looked at her inquiringly, but before he could ask what she meant,
they turned a corner and came upon Jack Travis, who joined them, and on
hearing that Rex was from New York began to ask after his orange grove,
as if he thought Reginald passed it daily on his way to his business.

“What a stupid you are!” Grace said. “Mr. Hallam never saw an orange
grove in his life. Why, you could put three or four United Kingdoms into
the space between New York and Florida.”

“Reely! How very extraordinary!” the young Englishman said, utterly
unable to comprehend the vastness of America, towards which he was
beginning to turn his thoughts as a place where he might possibly live
on seven hundred dollars a year with Grace to manage it and him.

When they reached the hotel it was lunch-time, and after a few touches
to his toilet Rex started for the _salle-à-manger_, thinking that now he
should see Bertha, in whom he felt a still greater interest since
learning that it was she to whom he had given the black eye on the
Teutonic. “The hand of fate is certainly in it,” he thought, without
exactly knowing what the _it_ referred to. Mrs. Hallam and Mrs. Haynes
and Grace were already at the table when he entered the room and was
shown to the only vacant seat, between his aunt and Grace.

“This must be Miss Leighton’s place,” he said, standing by the chair. “I
do not wish to keep her from her accustomed seat. Where is she?” and he
looked up and down both sides of the long table, but did not see her,
“Where is she?” he asked again, and his aunt replied “She is not coming
to-day. Sit down, and I will explain after lunch.”

“What is there to explain?” he thought, as he sat down and glanced first
at his aunt’s worried face, then at Grace, and then at Mrs. Haynes.

Then an idea occurred to him which almost made him jump from his chair.
He said to Grace:

“Does Miss Leighton lunch in her room?”

“Oh, no,” Grace replied.

“Doesn’t she come here?” he persisted.

“Your aunt will explain. I would rather not,” Grace said.

There was something wrong, Rex was sure, and he finished lunch before
the others and left the salon just in time to see Bertha half-way up the
second flight of stairs. Bounding up two steps at a time, he soon stood
beside her, with his hand on her arm to help her up the next flight.

“I have not seen you this morning. Where have you kept yourself?” he
asked, and she replied:

“I have been busy in your aunt’s room.”

“Where is her maid?” was his next question, and Bertha answered:

“She has been gone some time.”

“And _you_ fill her place?”

“I do what Mrs. Hallam wishes me to.”

“Why were you not at lunch?”

“I have been to lunch.”

“_You have!_ Where?”

“Where I always take it.”

“And _where_ is that?”

There was something in Rex’s voice and manner which told Bertha that he
was not to be trifled with, and she replied, “I take my meals in the
servants’ hall, or rather with the maids and nurses and couriers. It is
not bad when you are accustomed to it,” she added, as she saw the
blackness on Reginald’s face and the wrath in his eyes. They had now
reached the door of Mrs. Hallam’s room, and Mrs. Hallam was just leaving
the elevator in company with Mrs. Haynes, who very wisely went into her
own apartment and left her friend to meet the storm alone.

And a fierce storm it was. At its close Mrs. Hallam was in tears, and
Rex was striding up and down the salon like an enraged lion. Mrs. Hallam
had tried to apologize and explain, telling how respectful all the
couriers and valets were, how much less it cost, and that Mrs. Haynes
said the English sent their companions there, and governesses too,
sometimes. Rex did not care a picayune for what the English did; he
almost swore about Mrs. Haynes, whose handiwork he recognized; he
scorned the idea of its costing less, and said that unless Bertha were
at once treated as an equal in every respect he would either leave the
hotel or join her in the second-class salon and see for himself whether
those rascally Russians and Turks and Frenchmen looked at her as they
had no business to look.

At this point Bertha, who had no suspicion of what was taking place in
the salon, and who wished to speak to Mrs. Hallam, knocked at the door.
Rex opened it with the intention of sending the intruder away, but when
he saw Bertha he bade her come in, and, standing with his back against
the door, went over the whole matter again and told her she was to join
them at dinner.

“And if there is no place for you at my aunt’s end of the table there is
at the other, and I shall sit there with you,” he said.

He had settled everything satisfactorily, he thought, when a fresh
difficulty arose with Bertha herself. She had listened in surprise to
Rex, and smiled gratefully upon him through the tears she could not
repress, but she said, “I cannot tell you how much I thank you for your
sympathy and kind intentions. But really I am not unhappy in the
servants’ hall, nor have I received the slightest discourtesy. Browne,
our courier, has stood between me and everything which might have been
unpleasant, and I have quite a liking for my companions. And,”—here her
face hardened and her eyes grew very dark,—“nothing can induce me to
join your party as you propose while Mrs. Haynes is in it. She has
worried and insulted me from the moment she saw me. She suggested and
urged my going to the servants’ hall against your aunt’s wishes, and has
never let an opportunity pass to make me feel my subordinate position. I
like Miss Haynes very much, but her mother ——” there was a toss of
Bertha’s head indicative of her opinion of the mother, an opinion which
Rex fully shared, and if he could he would have turned Mrs. Haynes from
the hotel bag and baggage.

But this was impossible. He could neither dislodge her nor move Bertha
from her decision, which he understood and respected. But he could take
her and his aunt away from Aix and commence life under different
auspices in some other place. He had promised to join a party of friends
at Chamonix, and he would go there at once, and then find some quiet,
restful place in Switzerland, from which excursions could be made and
where his aunt could join him with Bertha. This was his plan, which met
with Mrs. Hallam’s approval. She was getting tired of Aix, and a little
tired, too, of Mrs. Haynes, who had not helped her into society as much
as she had expected. Lady Gresham, though civil, evidently shunned the
party, presumably because of Grace’s flirtation with Jack, while very
few desirable people were on terms of intimacy with her, and the
undesirable she would not notice. In fresh fields, however, with Rex,
who took precedence everywhere, she should do better, and she was quite
willing to go wherever and whenever he chose. That night at dinner she
told Mrs. Haynes her plans, and that Rex was to leave the next day for
Chamonix.

“So soon? I am surprised, and sorry, too; Grace has anticipated your
coming so much and planned so many things to do when you came. She will
be so disappointed. Can’t we persuade you to stop a few days at least?”
Mrs. Haynes said, leaning forward and looking at Rex with a very
appealing face, while Grace stepped on her foot and whispered to her:

“For heaven’s sake, don’t throw me at Rex Hallam’s head, and make him
more disgusted with us than he is already.”

The next morning Rex brought his aunt a little, black-eyed French girl,
Eloïse, whom he had found in town, and who had once or twice served in
the capacity of maid. He had made the bargain with her himself, and such
a bargain as he felt sure would ensure her stay in his aunt’s service,
no matter what was put upon her. He had also enumerated many of the
duties the girl was expected to perform, and among them was waiting upon
Miss Leighton equally with his aunt. He laid great stress upon this,
and, in order to secure Eloïse’s respect for Bertha, he insisted if the
latter would not go to the same table with Mrs. Haynes she should take
her meals in the salon. To this Bertha reluctantly consented, and at
dinner she found herself installed in solitary state in the handsome
salon and served like a young empress by the obsequious waiter, who,
having seen the color of Reginald’s gold, was all attention to
Mademoiselle. It was a great change, and in her loneliness she half
wished herself back with her heterogeneous companions, who had amused
and interested her, and to some of whom she was really attached. But
just as dessert was served Rex came in and joined her, and everything
was changed, for there was no mistaking the interest he was beginning to
feel in her; it showed itself in ways which never fail to reach a
woman’s heart. At his aunt’s earnest entreaty he had decided to spend
another night at Aix, but he left the next morning with instructions
that Mrs. Hallam should be ready to join him whenever he wrote her to do
so.

“And mind,” he said, laying a hand on each of her shoulders, “don’t you
bring Mrs. Haynes with you, for I will not have her. Pension her off, if
you want to, and I will pay the bill; but leave her here.”




                              CHAPTER XIV.
                          AT THE BEAU-RIVAGE.


                    “BEAU-RIVAGE, OUCHY, SWITZERLAND, August 4, 18—.
                        “To MISS BERTHA LEIGHTON, Hôtel Splendide,
                                                Aix-les-Bains, Savoie.
                      “Fred is dying, and I am ill in bed. Come at once.
                                                “LOUIE THURSTON.”

This was the telegram which Bertha received about a week after Rex’s
departure for Chamonix, and within an hour of its receipt her trunk was
packed and she was ready for the first train which would take her to
Ouchy. Mrs. Hallam had made no objection to her going, but, on the
contrary, seemed rather relieved than otherwise, for since the
revolution which Rex had brought about she hardly knew what to do with
Bertha. The maid Eloïse had proved a treasure, and under the combined
effects of Rex’s _pourboire_ and Rex’s instructions, had devoted herself
so assiduously to both Mrs. Hallam and Bertha that it was difficult to
tell which she was serving most. But she ignored Mrs. Haynes entirely,
saying that Monsieur’s orders were for _his_ Madame and _his_
Mademoiselle, and she should recognize the rights of no third party
until he told her to do so. In compliance with Rex’s wishes, very
decidedly expressed, Mrs. Hallam now took all her meals in the salon
with Bertha, but they were rather dreary affairs, and, although sorry
for the cause, both were glad when an opportunity came for a change.

“Certainly it is your duty to go,” Mrs. Hallam said, when Bertha handed
her the telegram, while Mrs. Haynes also warmly approved of the plan,
and both expressed surprise that Bertha had never told them of her
relationship to Mrs. Fred Thurston.

They knew Mrs. Fred was a power in society, and Mrs. Haynes had met her
once or twice and through a friend had managed to attend a reception at
her house, which she described as magnificent. To be Mrs. Fred
Thurston’s cousin was to be somebody, and both Mrs. Hallam and Mrs.
Haynes became suddenly interested in Bertha, the latter offering her
advice with regard to the journey, while the former suggested the
propriety of sending Browne as an escort. But Bertha declined the offer.
She could speak the language fluently and would have no difficulty
whatever in finding her way to Ouchy, she said, but she thanked the
ladies for their solicitude and parted with them, apparently, on the
most amicable terms. Grace accompanied her to the station, and while
waiting for the train said to her confidentially, “I expect there will
be a bigger earthquake bye-and-bye than Rex got up on your account. Jack
and I are engaged. I made up my mind last night to take the great,
good-natured, awkward fellow and run my chance on seven hundred dollars
a year. It will come off early in the autumn, and we shall go to Florida
and see what we can do with that orange grove. Jack will have to work,
and so shall I, and I shall like it and he won’t, but I shall keep him
at it, trust me. Can you imagine mother’s disgust when I tell her? She
really thinks that I have a chance with Rex. But that is folly. Play
your cards well. I think you hold a lore hand. There’s your train. Write
when you get there, Good-bye.”

There was a friendly parting, a rush through the gate for the carriages,
a slamming of doors, and then the train sped on its way, bearing Bertha
to a new phase of life in Ouchy.

Thurston had been sick all the voyage, and instead of resting in Paris,
as Rex had advised him and Louie had entreated him to do, he had started
at once for Geneva and taken a severe cold on the night train. Arrived
at the Beau-Rivage in Ouchy, he refused to see a physician until his
wife came down with nervous prostration and one was called for her.
Louie had had rather a hard time after Rex left her in Paris, for, as if
to make amends for his Jekyll mood on the ship, her husband was
unusually unreasonable, and worried her so with sarcasm and taunts and
ridicule that her heart was very sore when she reached Ouchy. The
excitement of the voyage, with Reginald as her constant companion, was
over, and she must again take up the old life, which seemed drearier
than ever because everything and everybody were so strange, and she
found herself constantly longing for somebody to speak a kind and
sympathetic word to her. In this condition of things it was not strange
that she succumbed at last to the extreme nervous depression which had
affected her in Boston, and which was now so intensified that she could
scarcely lift her head from the pillow.

“I am only tired,” she said to the physician, a kind, fatherly old man,
who asked her what was the matter. “Only tired of life, which is not
worth the living.” And her sad blue eyes looked up so pathetically into
his face that the doctor felt moved with a great pity for this young,
beautiful woman, surrounded with every luxury money could buy, but whose
face and words told a story he could not understand until called to
prescribe for her husband; and then he knew.

Thurston had made a fight against the illness which was stealing over
him and which he swore he would defy. Drugs and doctors were for silly
women like Louie, who must be amused, he said, but he would have none of
them. “Only exert your will and you can cheat Death himself,” was his
favorite saying, and he exerted his will, and went to Chillon, rowed on
the lake in the moonlight, took a Turkish bath, and next day had a
chill, which lasted so long and left him so weak that he consented to
see the doctor, but raved like a madman when told that he must go to bed
and stay there if he wished to save his life.

“I don’t know that I care particularly about it. I haven’t found it so
very jolly,” he said; then, after a moment, he added, with a bitter
laugh, “Tell my wife I am likely to shuffle off this mortal coil, and
see how it affects her.”

He was either crazy, or a brute, or both, the doctor thought, but he
made him go to bed, secured the best nurse he could find, and was there
early the next morning to see how his patient fared. He found him so
much worse that when he went to Louie he asked if she had any friends
near who could come to her, saying, “If you have, send for them at
once.”

Louie was in a state where nothing startled her, and without opening her
eyes she said, “Am I going to die?”

“No,” was the doctor’s reply, and she continued, “Is my husband?”

“I hope not, but he is very ill and growing steadily worse. Have you any
friend who will come to you?”

“Yes,—my cousin, Miss Leighton, at Aix,” Louie answered; and she
dictated the telegram, which the doctor wrote after asking if she had no
male friend.

For a moment she hesitated, thinking of Reginald, who would surely come
if bidden, and be so strong and helpful. But that would not do; and she
answered, “There is no one. Bertha can do everything.”

So Bertha was summoned, and the day after the receipt of the telegram
she was at the Beau-Rivage, feeling that she had not come too soon when
she saw how utterly prostrated Louie was, and how excited and
unmanageable Thurston was becoming under the combined effects of fever
and his dislike of his nurse, who could not speak a word of English,
while he could understand very little French. Frequent altercations were
the result, and when Bertha entered the sick-room there was a fierce
battle of words going on between the two, Victoire trying to make the
patient take his medicine, while Fred sat bolt upright in bed, the
perspiration rolling down his face as he fought against the glass and
hurled at the half-crazed Frenchman every opprobrious epithet in the
English language. As Bertha appeared the battle ceased, but not until
the glass with its contents was on the floor, where Thurston had struck
it from Victoire’s hand.

“Ah, Bertha,” he gasped, as he sank exhausted upon his pillow, “did you
drop from heaven, or where? and won’t you tell this idiot that it is not
time to take my medicine? I know, for I have it written down in good
English. Blast that French language, which nobody can understand! I
doubt if they do themselves, the gabbling fools, with their _parleys_
and _we-we’s_.”

It did not take Bertha long to bring order out of confusion. She was a
natural nurse, and when the doctor came and she proposed to take
Victoire’s place until a more suitable man was found, her offer was
accepted. But it was no easy task she had assumed, and after two days
and nights, during which she was only relieved for a few hours by John,
Thurston’s valet, when sleep was absolutely necessary, she was
thoroughly worn out. Leaving the sick man in charge of John, she started
for a ramble through the grounds, hoping that the air and exercise would
rest and strengthen her. The Thurston rooms were at the rear of a long
hall on the second floor, and, as the other end was somewhat in shadow,
she only knew that some one was advancing towards her as she went
rapidly down the corridor. Nor did she look up until a voice which sent
a thrill through every nerve said to her, “Good-afternoon, Miss
Leighton. Don’t you know me?” Then she stopped suddenly, while a cry of
delight escaped her, as she gave both her hands into the warm, strong
ones of Rex Hallam, who held them fast while he questioned her rapidly
and told her how he chanced to be there. He had joined his party at
Chamonix, where they had stayed for several days, crossing the
Mer-de-Glace and making other excursions among the mountains and
glaciers. He had then made a flying trip to Interlaken, Lucerne, and
Geneva, in quest of the place to which he meant to remove his aunt, and
had finally thought of Ouchy, where he knew the Thurstons were, and to
which he had come in a boat from Geneva. Learning at the office of his
friend’s illness, he had started at once for his room, meeting on the
way with Bertha, whose presence there he did not suspect. While he
talked he led her near to a window, where the light fell full upon her
face, showing him how pale and tired it was.

“This will not do,” he said, when he had heard her story. “I am glad I
have come to relieve you. I shall write to Aix to-day that I am going to
stay here, where I can be of service to Fred and Louie, and to you too.
You will not go back, of course, while your cousin needs you. And now go
out into the sunshine, and bye-and-bye I’ll find you somewhere in the
grounds.”

He had taken matters into his own hands in his masterful way, and Bertha
felt how delightful it was to have some one to lean upon, and that one
Rex Hallam, whose voice was so full of sympathy, whose eyes looked at
her so kindly, and whose hands held hers so long and seemed so unwilling
to release them. With a blush she withdrew them from his clasp. Leaving
her at last, he walked down the hall, entering Louie’s room first and
finding her asleep, with her maid in charge. For a moment he stood
looking at her white, wan face, which touched him more than her fair
beauty had ever done, for on it he could read the story of her life, and
a great pity welled up in his heart for the girl who seemed so like a
lovely flower broken on its stem.

“Poor little Louie!” he said, involuntarily, and at the sound of his
voice Louie awoke, recognizing him at once, and exclaiming:

“Oh, Rex! I was dreaming of you and the magnolias. I am so glad you are
here! You will stay, won’t you? I am afraid Fred is going to die, he is
so bad, and then what shall I do?”

She gave him her hand, which he did not hold as long as he had held
Bertha’s, nor did the holding it affect him the same. Bertha’s had been
warm and full of life, with something electrical in their touch, which
sent the blood bounding through his veins and made him long to kiss
them, as well as the bright face raised so eagerly to his. Louie’s hand
was thin and clammy, and so small that he could have crushed it easily,
as he raised it to his lips with the freedom of an old-time friend, and
just as he would have done had Fred himself been present. He told her he
should stay as long as he was needed, and after a few moments went to
see her husband, who was beginning to grow restless and to fret at
Bertha’s absence. But at sight of Reginald his mood changed, and he
exclaimed joyfully:

“Rex, old boy, I wonder if you know how glad I am to see you. I do
believe I shall get well now you are here, though I am having a big
tussle with some confounded thing,—typhoid, the doctor calls it; but
doctors are fools. How did you happen to drop down here?”

Rex told him how he chanced to be there, and that he was going to stay,
and then, excusing himself, went in quest of Bertha, whom he found
sitting upon a rustic seat which was partially concealed by a clump of
shrubbery. It was a glorious afternoon, and Rex, who was very fond of
boating, proposed a row upon the lake, to which Bertha consented.

“I have had too many races with Harvard not to know how to manage the
oars myself,” he said, as he handed Bertha into the boat, and dismissing
the boy, pushed off from the shore.

It was a delightful hour they spent together gliding over the smooth
waters of the lake, and in that time they became better acquainted than
many people do in years. There was no coquetry nor sham in Bertha’s
nature, while Rex was so open and frank, and they had so much in common
to talk about, that restraint was impossible between them. Poor Rose
Arabella Jefferson was discussed and laughed over, Rex declaring his
intention to find her some time, if he made a pilgrimage to Scotsburg on
purpose. Then he spoke of the encounter on the ship, and said:

“I can’t tell you how many times I have thought of that girl before I
knew it was you, or how I have wanted to see her and apologize properly
for my awkwardness. Something seems to be drawing us together
strangely.” Then he spoke again of his visit to the Homestead, while
Bertha became wonderfully animated as she talked of her home, and Rex,
watching her, felt that he had never seen so beautiful a face as hers,
or listened to a sweeter voice. “I wonder if I am really falling in
love,” he thought, as he helped her from the boat, while she was
conscious of some subtle change wrought in her during that hour on Lake
Geneva, and felt that life would never be to her again exactly what it
had been.




                              CHAPTER XV.
                          THE UNWELCOME GUEST.


Thurston was very ill with typhoid fever, which held high carnival with
him physically, but left him mentally untouched. One afternoon, the
fifth after Rex’s arrival, the two were alone, and for some time Fred
lay with his eyes closed and an expression of intense thought upon his
face. Then, turning suddenly to Rex, he said, “Sit close to me. I want
to tell you something.”

Rex drew his chair to the bedside, and Fred continued, “That idiot of a
doctor has the same as told me I am going to die, and, though I don’t
believe him, I can’t help feeling a little anxious about it, and I want
you to help me get ready.”

“Certainly,” Rex answered, with a gasp, entirely misunderstanding Fred’s
meaning, and wishing the task of getting his friend ready to die had
devolved on some one else. “We hope to pull you through, but it is
always well to be prepared for death, and I’ll help you all I can. I’m
afraid, though, you have called upon a poor stick. I might say the
Lord’s Prayer with you, or, better yet,” and Rex grew quite cheerful,
“there’s a young American clergyman in the hotel. I will bring him to
see you. He’ll know just what to say.”

“Thunder!” Fred exclaimed, so energetically that Rex started from his
chair. “Don’t be a fool. I shall die as I have lived, and if there is a
hereafter, which I doubt, I shall take my chance with the rest. I don’t
want your clergy round me, though I wouldn’t object to hearing you say,
‘Our Father.’ It would be rather jolly. I used to know it with a lot of
other things, but I quit it long ago,—left all the praying to Louie, who
goes on her knees regularly night and morning in spite of my ridicule.
Once, when she was posing beautifully, with her long, white
dressing-gown spread out a yard or so on the floor, I walked over it on
purpose to irritate her, but didn’t succeed. I never did succeed very
well with Louie. But it is more my fault than hers, although I was
fonder of her than she ever knew. She never pretended to love me. She
told me she didn’t when she promised to marry me, and when I asked her
if any one stood between us she said no, but added that there was
somebody for whom she could have cared a great deal if he had cared for
her. I did not ask her who it was, but I think I know, and she would
have been much happier with him than with me. Poor Louie! maybe she will
have a chance yet; and if she does I am willing.”

His bright, feverish eyes were fixed curiously on Rex, as he went on,
“It’s for Louie and her matters I want help, not for my soul; that’s all
right, if I have one. Louie is a child in experience, and you must see
to her when I am gone, and stand by her till she goes home. There’ll be
an awful row with the landlord, and no end of expense, and a terrible
muss to get me to America. My man, John, will take what there is left of
me to Mount Auburn, if you start him right. Louie can’t go, and you must
stay with her and Bertha. If Mrs. Grundy kicks up a row about your
chaperoning a handsome girl and a pretty young widow,—and, by Jove,
Louie will be that,—bring your aunt to the rescue; that will make it
square. And now about my will. I made one last summer, and left
everything to Louie on condition that she did not marry again. That was
nonsense. She will marry if the right man offers;—wild horses can’t hold
her; and I want you to draw up another will, with no conditions, giving
a few thousands to the Fresh Air Fund and the Humane Society. That will
please Louie. She’s great on children and horses. What is it about a
mortgage on old man Leighton’s farm? Louie wanted me to pay it and keep
Bertha from going out to service, as she called it. But I was in one of
my moods, and swore I wouldn’t. I am sorry now I didn’t. Maybe I have a
soul, after all, and that is what is nagging me so when I think of the
past. I wish I knew how much the mortgage was.”

“I know; I can tell you,” Rex said, with a great deal of animation, as
he proceeded to narrate the particulars of the mortgage and his visit to
the Homestead, while Fred listened intently.

“Ho-ho,” he said, with a laugh, when Rex had finished. “Is that the way
the wind blows? I thought maybe—but never mind. Five hundred, is it?
I’ll make it a thousand, payable to Bertha at once. You’ll find
writing-materials in the desk by the window. And hurry up; I’m getting
infernally tired.”

It did not take long to make the will, and when it was finished, Rex and
Mr. Thurston’s valet John and Louie’s maid Martha, all Americans,
witnessed it. After that Fred, who was greatly exhausted, fell into a
heavy sleep, and when he awoke Bertha was alone with him. He seemed very
feverish, and asked for water, which she gave him, and then bathed his
forehead and hands, while he said to her faintly, “You are a trump. I
wish I’d made it two thousand instead of one; but Louie will make it
right. Poor Louie! she’s going to be so disappointed. It’s a big joke on
her. I wonder how she will take it.”

Bertha had no idea what he meant, and made no reply, while he continued,
“Say, how does a fellow feel when he has a soul?”

Bertha felt sure now that he was delirious, but before she could answer
he went on, “I never thought I had one, but maybe I have. I feel so
sorry for a lot of things, and mostly about Louie. Tell her so when I am
dead. Tell her I wasn’t half as bad a sort as she thought. It will be
like her to swathe herself in crape, with a veil which sweeps the
ground. Tell her not to. Black will not become her. Think of Louie in a
widow’s cap!”

Weak as he was, he laughed aloud at the thought of it, and then began to
talk of the prayer which had “forgive” in it, and which Rex was to say
with him.

“Do you know it?” he asked, and, with her heart swelling in her throat,
Bertha answered that she did, and asked if she should say it.

He nodded, and Rex, who at that moment came unobserved to the door,
never forgot the picture of the kneeling girl and the wistful, pathetic
expression on the face of the dying man as he tried to say the words
which had once been familiar to him.

“Amen! So be it! Finis! I guess that makes it about square. Tell Louie I
prayed,” he whispered, faintly, and never spoke again until the early
morning sunlight was shining on the lake and the hills of Savoy, when he
started suddenly and called, “Louie, Louie! Where are you? I can’t find
you. Oh, Louie, come to me.”

But Louie was asleep in her room across the long salon, and when, an
hour later, she awoke, Bertha told her that her husband was dead.




                              CHAPTER XVI.
                            TANGLED THREADS.


As Thurston had predicted, there was a great deal of trouble and no end
of expense; but Rex attended to everything, while Bertha devoted herself
to Louie, who had gone from one hysterical paroxysm into another until
she was weaker and more helpless than she had ever been, but not too
weak to talk continually of Fred, who, one would suppose, had been the
tenderest of husbands. All she had suffered at his hands was forgotten,
wiped out by the message he had left for her and by knowing that his
last thoughts had been of her. But she spurned the idea of not wearing
black, and insisted that boxes of mourning dresses and bonnets and caps
should be sent to her on approbation from Geneva and Lausanne, until her
room looked like a bazaar of crape, and not only Bertha and Martha, the
maid, but Rex was more than once called in for an opinion as to what
would be most suitable. It was rather a peculiar position in which Rex
found himself,—two young ladies on his hands, with one of whom he was in
love, while the other would unquestionably be in love with him as soon
as her first burst of grief was over and she had settled the details of
her wardrobe. But he did not mind it; in fact, he found it delightful to
be associated daily with Bertha, and to be constantly applied to for
sympathy and advice by Louie, who treated him with the freedom and
confidence of a sister, and he would not have thought of a change, if
Bertha had not suggested it. She had been told of the bequest which
secured the Homestead from sale and made it no longer necessary for her
to return to Mrs. Hallam, and she wrote at once asking to be released
from her engagement, but saying she would keep it if her services were
still desired.

It was a very gracious reply which Mrs. Hallam returned to her, freeing
her from all obligations to herself, while something in the tone of the
letter made Bertha suspect that all was not as rose-colored at Aix as it
had been, and that Mrs. Hallam would be glad to make one of the party at
Ouchy. This she said to Rex, suggesting that he should invite his aunt
to join them, and urging so strongly the propriety of either bringing
her to him, or going himself to her, that he finally wrote to his aunt
to come to him, and immediately received a reply that she would be with
him the next day. Rex met her at the station in Lausanne, and Bertha
received her at the hotel as deferentially and respectfully as if she
were still her hired companion, a condition which Mrs. Hallam had made
up her mind to ignore, especially as it no longer existed between them.
Taking both Bertha’s hands in hers, she kissed her effusively and told
her how much better she was looking since she left Aix.

“And no wonder,” she said. “The air there was not good, and either that
or something made me very nervous, so that I did things for which I am
sorry, and which I hope you will forget.”

This was a great concession which Bertha received graciously, and the
two were on the best of terms when they entered Louie’s room. Louie had
improved rapidly during the week, and was sitting in an easy-chair by
the window, clad in a most becoming tea-gown fashioned at Worth’s for
the first stages of deep mourning, and looking more like a girl of
eighteen than a widow of twenty-five. Notwithstanding her husband’s
assertion that black would not become her, she had never been half so
lovely as she was in her weeds, and her face was never so fair as when
framed in her little crêpe bonnet and widow’s cap, which sat so jauntily
on her golden hair. “Dazzlingly beautiful and altogether irresistible,”
was Mrs. Hallam’s opinion as the days went by, and Louie grew more and
more cheerful and sometimes forgot to put Fred’s photograph under her
pillow, and began to talk less of him and more to Rex, whose attentions
she claimed with an air of ownership which would have amused Bertha if
she could have put from her the harrowing thought of what might be a
year hence, when the grave at Mount Auburn was not as new, or Louie’s
loss as fresh, as they were now.

“He cannot help loving her,” she would say to herself, “and I ought to
be glad to have her happy with him.”

But she was not glad, and it showed in her face, whose expression Rex
could not understand. Louie’s was one of those natures which, without
meaning to be selfish, make everything subservient to them. She was
always the centre about which others revolved, and Rex was her willing
slave, partly because of Thurston’s dying charge, and partly because he
could not resist her pretty appealing ways, and would not if he could.
But he never dreamed of associating his devotion to her with Bertha’s
growing reserve. She was his real queen, without whom his life at Ouchy
would have been very irksome, and when she suggested going home, as
Dorcas had written urging her to do, he protested against it almost as
strenuously as Louie. She must stay, both said, until she had seen
something of Europe besides Aix and Ouchy. So she stayed, and they spent
September at Interlaken and Lucerne, October in Paris, and November at
the Italian lakes, where she received a letter from Grace, written in
New York and signed “Grace Haynes Travis.”

“We were married yesterday,” she wrote, “and to-morrow we start for our
Florida cabin and orange grove, near Orlando, where so many English
people have settled. Mother gave in handsomely at the last, when she
found there was no help for it, and I actually won over Lady Gresham,
who used to think me a Hottentot, and always spoke of me as ‘that
dreadful American girl.’ She invited mother and me to her country house,
The Limes, near London, and suggested that Jack and I be married there.
But I preferred New York; so she gave us her blessing and a thousand
pounds, and mother, Jack, and I sailed three weeks ago in the Umbria.
When are you coming home? and how is that pretty little Mrs. Thurston? I
saw her once, and thought her very lovely, with that sweet, clinging,
helpless manner which takes with men wonderfully. I have heard that she
was an old flame of Rex Hallam’s, or rather a young one, but I’ll trust
you to win him, although as a widow she is dangerous; so, in the words
of the immortal Weller, I warn you, ‘Bevare of vidders.’”

There was much more in the same strain, and Bertha laughed over it, but
felt a pang for which she hated herself every time she looked at Louie,
whose beauty and grace drew about her many admirers besides Rex, in
spite of her black dress and her frequent allusions to “dear Fred, whose
grave was so far away.” She was growing stronger every day, and when in
December Rex received a letter from his partner saying that his presence
in New York was rather necessary, she declared herself equal to the
journey, and said that if Rex went she should go too. Consequently the
1st of January found them all in London, where they were to spend a few
days, and where Rex brought his aunt a letter, addressed, bottom side
up, to “Mrs. Lucy Ann Hallam, Care of Brown, Shipley & Co., London.
_Post Restant._”

There was a gleam of humor in Rex’s eyes as he handed the missive to his
aunt, whose face grew dark as she studied the outside, and darker still
at the inside, which was wonderful in composition and orthography.
Phineas Jones had been sent out to Scotland by an old man who had some
property there and who knew he could trust Phineas to look after it and
bring him back the rental, which he had found it hard to collect. After
transacting his business, Phineas had decided to travel a little and
“get cultivated up, so that his cousin Lucy Ann shouldn’t be ashamed of
him.” Had he known where she was, he would have joined her, but, as he
did not he wrote her a letter, which had in it a great deal about
Sturbridge and the old yellow house and the huckleberry pasture and the
circus and the spelling-school, all of which filled Mrs. Hallam with
disgust. She was his only blood kin extant, he said, and he yearned to
see her, but supposed he must wait till she was back in New York, when
he should pay his respects to her at once. And she wouldn’t be ashamed
of him, either. He knew what was what, and had hob-a-nobbed with
nobility, who took a sight of notice of him. He was going to sail the
10th in the Germanic, he said, and if she’d let him know when she was
coming home he’d be in New York on the wharf to meet her.

As it chanced, the Germanic was the boat in which the Hallam party had
taken passage for the 10th, but Mrs. Hallam suddenly discovered that she
had not seen enough of London; Rex could go, if he must, but she should
wait for the next boat of the same line. Rex had no suspicion as to the
real reason for her change of mind, and, as a week or two could make but
little difference in the business calling him home, he stayed, and when
the next boat of the White Star line sailed out of the docks of
Liverpool it carried the party of four: Louie, limp and tearful as she
thought of her husband who had been with her when she crossed before;
Mrs. Hallam, excited and nervous, half expecting to see Phineas pounce
upon her, and haunted with a presentiment that he was somewhere on the
ship; and Rex, with Bertha, hunting for the spot where he had first seen
her and knocked her down.




                             CHAPTER XVII.
                              ON THE SEA.


It was splendid weather for a few days, and no one thought of being
sea-sick, except Mrs. Hallam, who kept her room, partly because she
thought she must, and partly because she could not shake off the feeling
that Phineas was on board. She had read the few names on the
passenger-list, but his was not among them, nor did she expect to find
it, as he had sailed two weeks before. Still, she would neither go on
deck nor into the dining-saloon, and without being really ill, kept her
berth and was waited upon by Eloïse, who was accompanying her home.
Louie, who was still delicate and who always shrank from cold, stayed
mostly in the salon. But the briny, bracing sea air suited Bertha, and
for several hours each day she walked the deck with Rex, whose arm was
sometimes thrown around her when the ship gave a great lurch, or when on
turning a corner they met the wind full in their faces. Then there were
the moonlight nights, when the air was full of frost and the waves were
like burnished silver, and in her sealskin coat and cap, which Louie had
bought for her in Geneva, Bertha was never tired of walking and never
thought of the cold, for, if the exercise had not kept her warm, the
light which shone upon her from Rex’s eyes when she met their gaze would
have done so. Perhaps he looked the same at Louie,—very likely he
did,—but for the present he was hers alone, and she was supremely happy
while the fine, warm weather lasted and with it the companionship on
deck. But suddenly there came a change.

Along the western coast of the Atlantic a wild storm had been raging,
and when it subsided there it swept towards the east, gathering force as
it went, and, joined by the angry winds from every point of the compass,
it was almost a cyclone when it reached the Teutonic. But the great ship
met it bravely, mounting wave after wave like a feather, then plunging
down into the green depths below, then rising again and shaking off the
water as if the boiling sea were a mere plaything and the storm gotten
up for its pastime. The passengers, who were told that there was no real
danger, kept up their courage while the day lasted, but when the night
came on and the darkness grew deeper in the salon, where nearly all were
assembled, many a face grew white with fear as they listened to the
howling of the wind and the roaring of the sea, while wave after wave
struck the ship, which sometimes seemed to stand still, and then,
trembling in every joint, rose up to meet the angry waves which beat
upon it with such tremendous force.

Early in the day Louie had taken to her bed, where she lay sobbing
bitterly, while Bertha tried to comfort her. As the darkness was
increasing and the noise overhead grew more and more deafening, Rex
brought his aunt to the salon, where, like many of the others, she sat
down upon the floor, clinging to one of the chairs for support. Then he
went to Louie and asked if he should not take her there too.

“No, no! oh, no!” she moaned. “I’d rather die here, if you will stay
with me.”

Just then a roll of the ship sent her out upon the floor, where every
movable thing in the room had gone before her. After that she made no
further resistance, but suffered Bertha to wrap her waterproof around
her, and was then carried by Rex and deposited upon one end of a table,
where she lay, too much frightened to move, with Rex supporting her on
one side and Bertha on the other. And still the storm raged on, and the
white faces grew whiter as the question was asked, “What will the end
be?” In every heart there was a prayer, and Rex’s mind went back to that
night at the Homestead and the prayers for those in peril on the deep.
Were they praying now, and would their prayers avail, or would the sad
news go to them that their loved one was lying far down in the depths of
the sea?

“Oh, if I could save her!” he thought, moving his hand along upon the
table until it touched and held hers in a firm clasp which seemed to
say, “For life or death you are mine.”

Just then Louie began to shiver, and moaned that she was cold.

“Wait a minute, darling,” Bertha said, “and I will bring you a blanket
from our state-room, if I can get there.”

This was no easy task, for the ship was plunging fearfully, and always
at an angle which made walking difficult. Twice Bertha fell upon her
knees, and once struck her head against the side of the passage, but she
reached the room at last, and, securing the blanket, was turning to
retrace her steps, when a wave heavier than any which had preceded it
struck the vessel, which reeled with what one of the sailors called a
double X, pitching and rolling sidewise and endwise and cornerwise all
at once. To stand was impossible, and with a cry Bertha fell forward
into the arms of Rex Hallam.

“Rex!” she said, involuntarily, and “Bertha!” he replied, showering
kisses upon her face, down which the tears were running like rain.

She had been gone so long that he had become alarmed at her absence, and
with great difficulty had made his way to the state-room, which he
reached in time to save her from a heavy fall. Both were thrown upon the
lounge under the window, where they sat for a moment, breathless and
forgetful of their danger, Bertha was the first to speak, saying she
must go to Louie, but Rex held her fast, and, steadying himself as best
he could, drew her face close to his, and said, “This is not a time for
love-making, but I may never have another chance, and, if we must die,
death will be robbed of half its terrors if you are with me, my darling,
my queen, whom I believe I have loved ever since I saw your photograph
and thought it was poor Rose Arabella Jefferson.”

He could not repress a smile at the remembrance of that scion of the
Jeffersons, but Bertha did not see it. Her head was lying upon his
breast, and he was holding to the side of the door to keep from being
thrown upon the floor as he urged his suit and then waited for her
answer. Against the windows and the dead-lights the waves were dashing
furiously, while overhead was a roar like heavy cannonading, mingled
with the hoarse shouts of voices calling through the storm. But Rex
heard Bertha’s answer, and at the peril of his limbs folded her in his
arms and said, “Now we live or die together; and I think that we shall
live.”

Naturally they forgot the blanket and everything else as they groped
their way back to the door of the salon, where Rex stopped suddenly at
the sound of a voice heard distinctly enough for him to know that some
one was praying loudly and earnestly, and to know, too, who it was whose
clear, nasal tones could be heard above the din without.

“Phineas Jones!” he exclaimed. “Great Cæsar! how came he here?” And he
struggled in with Bertha to get nearer to him.

Phineas had been very ill in Liverpool, and when the Germanic left he
was still in bed, and was obliged to wait two weeks longer, when he took
passage on the same ship with Mrs. Hallam. Even then he was so weak that
he did not make up his mind to go until an hour before the ship sailed.
As there were few passengers, he had no difficulty in securing a berth,
where during the first days of the voyage he lay horribly sea-sick and
did not know who were on board. He had been too late for his name to be
included in the passenger-list, and it was not until the day of the
storm that he learned that Mrs. Hallam and Rex and Bertha were on the
ship. To find them at once was his first impulse, but when the cyclone
struck the boat it struck him, too, with a fresh attack of sea-sickness,
from which he did not rally until night, when he would not be longer
restrained. Something told him, he said, that Lucy Ann needed him,—in
fact, that they all needed him in the cabin, and he was going there. And
he went, nearly breaking his neck. Entering the salon on his hands and
knees, he made his way to the end of the table on which Louie lay, and
near which Mrs. Hallam was clinging desperately to a chair as she
crouched upon the floor. It was at this moment that the double X which
had sent Bertha into Rex’s arms struck the ship, eliciting shrieks of
terror from the passengers, who felt that the end had come. Steadying
himself against a corner of the table, Phineas called out, in a loud,
penetrating voice:

“Silence! This is no time to scream and cry. It is action you want. Pray
to be delivered, as Jonah did. The captain and crew are doing their
level best on deck. Let us do ours here, and don’t you worry. We shall
be heard. The Master who stilled the storm on Galilee is in this boat,
and not asleep, either, in the hindermost part. If He was, no human
could get to Him, with the ship nearly bottom side up. He is in our
midst. I know it, I feel it; and you who are too scart to pray, and you
who don’t know how, listen to me. Let us pray.”

The effect was electric, and every head was bowed as Phineas began the
most remarkable prayer which was ever offered on shipboard. He was in
deadly earnest, and, fired with the fervor and eloquence which made him
so noted as a class-leader, he informed the Lord of the condition they
were in and instructed Him how to improve it. Galilee, he said, was
nothing to the Atlantic when on a tear as it was now, but the voice
which had quieted the waters of Tiberias could stop this uproar. He
presumed some of them ought to be drowned, he said, but they didn’t want
to be, and were going to do better. Then he confessed every possible sin
which might have been committed by the passengers, who, according to his
statement, were about the wickedest lot, take them as a whole, that ever
crossed the ocean. There were exceptions, of course. There were near and
dear friends of his, and one blood kin, on board, for whom he especially
asked aid. He had not looked upon the face of his kinswoman for years,
but he had never forgotten the sweet counsel they took together when
children in Sturbridge, and he would have her saved anyway. Like
himself, she was old and stricken in years, but——

“Horrible!” came in muffled tones from something at his feet, and,
looking down, he saw the bundle of shawls, which, in its excitement, had
loosened its hold on the chair and was rolling down the inclined plane
towards the centre of the room.

Reaching out his long arm, he pulled it back, and, putting his foot
against it, went on with what was now a prayer of thanksgiving. Those
who have been in a storm at sea like the one I am describing, will
remember how quick they were to detect a change for the better, as the
blows upon the ship became less frequent and heavy and the noise
overhead began to subside.

Phineas was the first to notice it, and, with his foot still firmly
planted against the struggling bundle to keep it in place, he exclaimed,
in a voice which was almost a shriek:

“We are saved! We are saved! Don’t you feel it? Don’t you hear it?”

They did hear it and feel it, and with glad hearts responded to the
words of thanksgiving which Phineas poured forth, saying the answer to
his prayer had come sooner than he expected, and acknowledging that his
faith had been weak as water. Then he promised a forsaking of their
sins, and a life more consistent with the doctrine they professed, for
them all, adapting himself as nearly as he could to the forms of worship
familiar to the different denominations he knew must be assembled there.
For the Presbyterians there was a mention made of foreordination and the
Westminster Catechism, for the Baptists, immersion, for the Methodists,
sanctification, for the Roman Catholics, the Blessed Virgin; but he
forgot the Episcopalians, until, remembering, with a start, Rex and Lucy
Ann, he wound up with:

“From pride, vainglory and hypocrisy, good Lord deliver us. Amen.”

The simple earnestness of the man so impressed his hearers that no one
thought of smiling at his ludicrous language, and when the danger was
really over and they could stand upon their feet, they crowded around
him as if he had been their deliverer from deadly peril, while Rex
introduced him as his particular friend. This stamped him as somebody,
and he at once became a sort of lion. We are all more or less
susceptible to flattery, and Phineas was not an exception; he received
the attentions with a very satisfied air, thinking to himself that if
his recent prayers had so impressed them, what would they say if they
could hear him when fully under way at a camp-meeting?

“Where’s your aunt?” he asked Rex, suddenly, while Rex looked round for
her, but could not find her.

More dead than alive, Mrs. Hallam had clung to the chair in momentary
expectation of going down, never to rise again, and in that awful hour
it seemed to her that everything connected with her life had passed
before her. The old, yellow house, the grandmother to whom she had not
always been kind, the early friends of whom she had been ashamed, the
husband she had loved, but whom she had tried so often, all stood out so
vividly that it seemed as if she could touch them.

“Everything bad,—nothing good. May God forgive it all!” she whispered
more than once, as she lay waiting for the end and shuddering as she
thought of the dark, cold waters so soon to engulf her.

In this state of mind she became conscious that some one was standing so
close to her that his boots held down a portion of her dress, but she
did not mind it, for at that moment Phineas began his prayer, to which
she listened intently. She knew it was an illiterate man, that his boots
were coarse, that his clothes were saturated with an odor of cheap
tobacco, and that he belonged to a class which she despised because she
had once been of it. But as he prayed she felt, as she had never felt
before, the Presence he said was there with him, and thought nothing of
his class, or his tobacco, or his boots. He was a saint, until he spoke
of Sturbridge and his blood kin who was old and stricken in years. Then
she knew who the saint was, and as soon as it was possible to do so she
escaped to her state-room, where Rex found her in a state of great
nervous excitement. She could not and would not see Phineas that night,
she said. Possibly she might be equal to it in the morning. With that
message Phineas, who was hovering around her door, was obliged to be
content, but before he retired, every one with whom he talked knew that
Mrs. Hallam was his cousin Lucy Ann, whom he used to know in Sturbridge
when she was a girl.




                             CHAPTER XVIII.
                            ON SEA AND LAND.


Naturally the captain and officers made light of the storm after it was
over, citing, as a proof that it was not so very severe, the fact that
within four hours after it began to subside the ship was sailing
smoothly over a comparatively calm sea, on which the moon and stars were
shining as brightly as if it had not so recently been stirred to its
depths. The deck had been cleared, and, after seeing Louie in her berth,
Bertha went up to join Rex, who was waiting for her. All the past peril
was forgotten in the joy of their perfect love, and they had so much to
talk about and so many plans for the future to discuss that the midnight
bells sounded before they separated.

“It is not very long till morning, when I shall see you again, nor long
before you will be all my own,” Rex said, holding her in his arms and
kissing her many times before he let her go.

She found Louie asleep, and when next morning Bertha arose as the first
gong sounded, Louie was still sleeping, exhausted with the excitement of
the previous day. She was evidently dreaming, for there was a smile on
her lips which moved once with some word Bertha could not catch,
although it sounded like “Rex.”

“I wonder if she cares very much for him,” Bertha thought, with a twinge
of pain. “If she does, I cannot give him up, for he is mine,—my Rex.”

She repeated the name aloud, lingering over it as if the sound were very
pleasant to her, and just then Louie’s blue eyes opened and looked
inquiringly at her.

“What is it about Rex?” she asked, smiling up at Bertha in that pretty,
innocent way which children have of smiling when waking from sleep. “Has
he been to inquire for me?” she continued; and, feeling that she could
no longer put it off, Bertha knelt beside her and told her a story which
made the bright color fade from Louie’s face and her lips quiver in a
grieved kind of way as she listened to it.

When it was finished she did not say a word, except to ask if it was not
very cold.

“I am all in a shiver. I think I will not get up. Tell Martha not to
come to me. I do not want any breakfast,” she said, as she turned her
face to the wall.

For a moment Bertha lingered, perplexed and pained,—then started to
leave the room.

“Wait,” Louie called, faintly, and when Bertha went to her she flung her
arms around her neck and said, with a sob, “I am glad for you, and I
know you will be happy. Tell Rex I congratulate him. And now go and
don’t come back for ever so long. I am tired and want to sleep.”

When she was alone, the little woman buried her face in the pillows and
cried like a child, trying to believe she was crying for her husband,
but failing dismally. It was for Rex, whom she had held dearer than she
knew, and whom she had lost. But with all her weakness Louie had a good
deal of common sense, which soon came to her aid. “This is
absurd,—crying for one who does not care for me except as a friend. I’ll
be a woman, and not a baby,” she thought, as she rung for Martha to come
and dress her. An hour later she surprised Bertha and Rex, who were
sitting on a seat at the head of the stairs, with a rug thrown across
their laps, concealing the hands clasped so tightly beneath it. Nothing
could have been sweeter than her manner as she congratulated Rex
verbally, and then, sitting down by them, began to plan the grand
wedding she would give them if they would wait until poor Fred had been
dead a little longer, say a year.

Rex had his own ideas about the wedding and waiting, but he did not
express them then. He had settled in his own mind when he should take
Bertha, and that it would be from the old house in which he began to
have a feeling of ownership.

Meanwhile Mrs. Hallam had consented to see Phineas, whom Rex took to her
state-room. What passed at the interview no one knew. It did not last
long, and at its close Mrs. Hallam had a nervous headache and Phineas’s
face wore a troubled and puzzled expression. He would never have known
Lucy Ann, she had altered so, he said. Not grown old, as he supposed she
would, but different somehow. He guessed she was tuckered out with
fright and the storm. She’d be better when she got home, and then they’d
have a good set-to, talking of the old times. He was going to visit her
a few days.

This accounted for her headache which lasted the rest of the voyage, so
that she did not appear again until they were at the dock in New York.
Handing her keys to Rex, she said, “See to my trunks, and for heaven’s
sake—keep that man from coming to the house, if you have to strangle
him.”

She was among the first to leave the ship, and was driving rapidly home,
while Phineas was squabbling with a custom-house officer over some
jewelry he had bought in Edinburgh as a present for Dorcas, and an
overcoat in London for Mr. Leighton, and which he had conscientiously
declared.

“I’m a class-leader,” he said, “and I’d smile to see me lie, and when
they asked me if I had any presents I told ’m yes, a coat for the
’Square, and some cangorms for Dorcas, and I swan if they didn’t make me
trot ’em out and pay duty, too; and they let more’n fifty trunks full of
women’s clothes go through for nothin’. I seen ’m. Where’s Lucy Ann? I
was goin’ with her,” he said to Rex, who could have enlightened him with
regard to the women’s clothes which “went through for nothin’,” but
didn’t.

“Mr. Jones,” he said, buttonholing him familiarly as they walked out of
the custom-house, “my aunt has gone home. She is not feeling well at
all, and, as the house is not quite in running order, I do not think
you’d better go there now. I’ll take you to dine at my club, or, better
yet, to the Waldorf, where Mrs. Thurston and Miss Leighton are to stop,
and to-morrow we will all go on together, for I’m to see Mrs. Thurston
home to Boston, and on my way back shall stop at the Homestead. I am to
marry Miss Bertha.”

“You be! Well, I’m glad on’t; but I do want to see Lucy Ann’s house, and
I sha’n’t make an atom of trouble. She expects me,” Phineas said, and
Rex replied, “I hardly think she does. Indeed, I know she doesn’t, and I
wouldn’t go if I were you.”

Gradually the truth began to dawn upon Phineas, and there was a pathos
in his voice and a moisture in his eyes as he said, “Is Lucy Ann ashamed
of _me_? I wouldn’t have believed it, and she my only kin. I’d go
through fire and water to serve her. Tell her so, and God bless her.”

Rex felt a great pity for the simple-hearted man to whom the glories of
a dinner at the Waldorf did not quite atone for the loss of Lucy Ann,
whom he spoke of again when after dinner Rex went with him to the hotel,
where he was to spend the night.

“I’m an awkward critter, I know,” he said, “and not used to the ways of
high society, but I’m respectable, and my heart is as big as an ox.”

Nothing, however, rested long on Phineas’s mind, and the next morning he
was cheerful as ever when he met his friends at the station, and
committed the unwonted extravagance of taking a chair with them in a
parlor car, saying as he seated himself that he’d never been in one
before, and that he found it tip-top.




                              CHAPTER XIX.
                      “I, REX, TAKE THEE, BERTHA.”


The words were said in the old Homestead about a year from the time when
we first saw Bertha walking along the lane to meet her sister and
holding in her hand the newspaper which had been the means of her
meeting with Rex Hallam. The May day had been perfect then, and it was
perfect now. The air was odorous with the perfume of the pines and the
apple-blossoms, and the country seemed as fresh and fair as when it
first came from the hands of its Creator. The bequest which Fred had
made to Bertha, and which he wished he had doubled, had been quadrupled
by Louie, who, when Bertha declined to take so much, had urged it upon
her as a bridal present in advance. With that understanding Bertha had
accepted it, and several changes had been made in the Homestead, both
outside and in. Bertha’s room, however, where Rex had once slept,
remained intact. This he insisted upon, and it was in this room that he
received his bride from the hands of her bridesmaids. It was a very
quiet affair, with only a few intimate friends from Worcester and
Leicester, and Mrs. Hallam from New York. Bertha had suggested inviting
Mrs. Haynes, but Rex vetoed that decidedly. She had been the direct
cause of so much humiliation to Bertha that he did not care to keep her
acquaintance, he said. But Mrs. Haynes had no intention to be ignored by
the future Mrs. Rex Hallam, and one of the handsomest presents Bertha
received came from her, with a note of congratulation. Louie and Phineas
were master and mistress of ceremonies, Louie inside and Phineas
outside, where he insisted upon caring for the horses of those who drove
from Worcester and the village.

He’d “smile if he couldn’t do it up ship-shape,” he said, and he came at
an early hour, gorgeous in swallowtail coat, white vest, stove-pipe hat,
and an immense amount of shirt-front, ornamented with Rhine-stone studs.
In his ignorance he did not know that a dress-coat was not just as
suitable for morning as evening, and had bought one second-hand at a
clothing-store in Boston. He wanted to make a good impression on Lucy
Ann, he said to Grace, who had been at the Homestead two or three days,
and who, declaring him a most delicious specimen, had hobnobbed with him
quite familiarly. She told him she had no doubt he would impress Lucy
Ann; and he did, for she came near fainting when he presented himself to
her, asking what she thought of his outfit, and how it would “do for
high.” She wanted to tell him that he would look far better in his
every-day clothes than in that costume, but restrained herself and made
some non-committal reply. Since meeting him on the ship she had had time
to reflect that no one whose opinion was really worth caring for would
think less of her because of her relatives, and she was a little ashamed
of her treatment of him. Perhaps, too, she was softened by the sight of
the old homestead, which had been her husband’s home, or Grace Travis’s
avowal that she wished she had just such a dear codger of a cousin,
might have had some effect in making her civil and even gracious to the
man who, without the least resentment for her former slight of him,
“Cousin Lucy Ann”-ed her continually and led her up to salute the bride
after the ceremony was over.

There was a wedding breakfast, superintended by Louie, who, if she felt
any regret for the might-have-been, did not show it, and was bright and
merry as a bird, talking a little of Fred and a great deal of Charlie
Sinclair, whom business kept from the wedding and whose lovely present
she had helped select. The wedding trip was to extend beyond the Rockies
as far as Tacoma, and to include the Fair in Chicago on the homeward
journey. The remainder of the summer was to be spent at the Homestead,
where Rex could hunt and fish and row to his heart’s content, if he
could not have a fox-hunt. Both he and Bertha wished a home of their own
in New York, but Mrs. Hallam begged so hard for them to stay with her
for a year at least that they consented to do so.

“You may be the mistress, or the daughter of the house, as you please,
only stay with me,” Mrs. Hallam said to Bertha, of whom she seemed very
fond.

Evidently she was on her best behavior, and during the few days she
stayed at the Homestead she quite won the hearts of both Mr. Leighton
and Dorcas, and greatly delighted Phineas by asking him to spend the
second week in July with her. In this she was politic and managing. She
knew he was bound to come some time, and, knowing that the most of her
calling acquaintance would be out of town in July, she fixed his visit
at that time, making him understand that he could not prolong it, as she
was to join Rex and Bertha in Chicago on the 15th. Had he been going to
visit the queen, Phineas could not have been more elated or have talked
more about it.

“I hope I sha’n’t mortify Lucy Ann to death,” he said, and when in June
Louie came for a few days to the Homestead, he asked her to give him
some points in etiquette, which he wrote down and studied diligently,
till he considered himself quite equal to cope with any difficulty, and
at the appointed time packed his dress-suit and started for New York.

This was Monday, and on Saturday Dorcas was surprised to see him walking
up the avenue from the car.

He’d had a tip-top time, he said, and Lucy Ann did all she could to make
it pleasant.

“But, my!” he added, “it was so lonesome and grand and stiff; and didn’t
Lucy Ann put on the style! But I studied my notes, and held my own
pretty well. I don’t think I made more than three or four blunders. I
reached out and got a piece of bread with my fork, and saw a
thunder-cloud on Lucy Ann’s face; and I put on my dress-suit one morning
to drive to the Park, but took it off quicker when Lucy Ann saw it.
Dress-coats ain’t the thing in the morning, it seems. I guess they ain’t
the thing for me anywhere. But my third blunder was wust of all, though
I don’t understand it. Between you ’n’ I, I don’t believe Lucy Ann has
much company, for not a livin’ soul come to the house while I was there,
except one woman with two men in tall boots drivin’ her. Lucy Ann was
out and the nigger was out, and I went to the door to save the girls
from runnin’ up and down stairs so much. I told her Mis’ Hallam wa’n’t
to home, and I rather urged her to come in and take a chair, she looked
so kind of disappointed and tired, and curi’s, too, I thought, as if she
wondered who I was; so I said, ‘I’m Mis’ Hallam’s cousin. You better
come in and rest. She’ll be home pretty soon.’

“‘Thanks,’ she said, in a queer kind of way, and handed me a card for
Lucy Ann, who was tearin’ when I told her what I’d done. It was the
servants’ business to wait on the door when Peters was out, she said,
and on no account was I to ask any one in if she wasn’t there. That
ain’t my idea of hospitality. Is’t yours?”

Dorcas laughed, and said she supposed city ways were not exactly like
those of the country. Phineas guessed they wasn’t, and he was glad to
get where he could tip back in his chair if he wanted to, and eat with
his knife, and ask a friend to come in and sit down.

A few days later Dorcas and her father, with Louie, started for Chicago
to join the Hallams. For four weeks they reveled in the wonders of the
beautiful White City. After that Mrs. Hallam returned to her lonely
house in New York, while Rex and Bertha and Louie went back to the old
Homestead. There they spent the remainder of the summer, and there
Bertha lingered until the hazy light of October was beginning to hang
over the New England hills and the autumnal tints to show in the woods.
Then Rex, who had spent every Sunday there, took her to her new home,
where her reception was very different from what it had been on her
first arrival. Then she was only a hired companion, dining with the
housekeeper and waiting on the fourth floor back for her employer to
give her an audience. Now she was a petted bride, the daughter of the
house, with full authority to go where she pleased, do what she pleased,
and make any change she pleased, from the drawing-room to the handsome
suite which had been fitted up for her. But she made no change, except
in Rex’s sleeping-apartment, where she did take the pictures of
ballet-dancers, rope-walkers, and sporting men from the mirror-frame,
and substituted in their place those of her father, Dorcas, and Grace.
She would have liked to remove her own picture, with “Rose Arabella
Jefferson” written upon it, but Rex interfered. It seemed to him, he
said, a connecting link between his bachelor life and the great joy
which had come to him, and it should stay there, Rose Arabella and all.

Mr. Leighton and Dorcas have twice visited Bertha in her home, and been
happy there because she was so happy. But both were glad to go back to
the old house under the apple-trees and the country life which they like
best. Bertha, on the contrary, takes readily to the ways of the great
city, although she cares but little for the fashionable society that is
so eager to take her up, and prefers the companionship of her husband
and the quiet of her home to the gayest assemblage in New York.
Occasionally however, she may be seen at some afternoon tea, or dinner,
or reception, where Mrs. Hallam is proud to introduce her as “my
nephew’s wife,” while Mrs. Walker Haynes, always politic and persistent,
speaks of her as “my friend, that charming Mrs. Reginald Hallam.”




                            THE SPRING FARM.




                               CHAPTER I.
                           AT THE FARM HOUSE.


It was a very pleasant, homelike old farm house, standing among the New
England hills, with the summer sunshine falling upon it, and the summer
air, sweet with the perfume of roses and June pinks, filling the wide
hall and great square rooms, where, on the morning when our story opens,
the utmost confusion prevailed. Carpets were up; curtains were down;
huge boxes were standing everywhere, while into them two men and a boy
were packing the furniture scattered promiscuously around, for on the
morrow the family, who had owned and occupied the house so long, were to
leave the premises and seek another home in the little village about two
miles away. In one of the lower rooms in the wing to the right, where
the sunshine was the brightest and the rose-scented air the sweetest, a
white-faced woman lay upon a couch looking at and listening to a lady
who sat talking to her, with money and pride and selfishness stamped
upon her as plainly as if the words had been placarded upon her back.
The lady was Mrs. Marshall-More, of Boston, whose handsome country house
was not far from the red farm house, which, with its rich,
well-cultivated acres, had, by the foreclosure of a mortgage she held
upon it, recently come into her possession, or rather into that of her
half brother, who had bidden it off for her.

Mrs. Marshall-More had once been plain Mrs. John More, but since her
husband’s death, she had prefixed her maiden name, with a hyphen to the
More, making herself Mrs. Marshall-More, which, she thought, had a very
aristocratic look and sound. She was a great lady in her own immediate
circle of friends in the city, and a greater lady in Merrivale, where
she passed her summers, and her manner toward the little woman on the
couch was one of infinite superiority and patronage, mingled with a show
of interest and pity. She had driven to the farm house that morning,
ostensibly to say good-bye to the family, but really to go over the
place which she had coveted so long as a most desirable adjunct to her
possessions. What she was saying to the white-faced woman in the widow’s
cap was this:

“I am very sorry for you, Mrs. Graham, and I hope you do not blame me
for foreclosing the mortgage. I had to have the money, for Archie’s
college expenses will be very heavy, and then I am going to Europe this
summer, and I did not care to draw from my other investments.”

“Oh, no, I blame no one, but it is very hard all the same to leave the
old home where I have been so happy,” Mrs. Graham replied, and Mrs.
Marshall-More went on: “I am glad to hear you say so, for the Merrivale
people have been very ill-natured about it and I have heard more than
once that I hastened the foreclosure and intend to tear down the old
house and build a cottage, which is false.”

To this Mrs. Graham made no reply, and Mrs. Marshall-More continued:

“You will be much better off in the village than in this great rambling
house, and your children will find employment there. Maude must be
eighteen, and ought to be a great help to you. I hear she is a
sentimental dreamer, living mostly in the clouds with people only known
to herself, and perhaps she needed this change to rouse her to the
realities of life.”

“Maude is the dearest girl in the world,” was the mother’s quick protest
against what seemed like disapprobation of her daughter.

“Yes, of course,” was Mrs. Marshall-More’s response. “Maude is a nice
girl and a pretty girl and will be a great comfort to you when she wakes
up to the fact that life is earnest and not all a dream, and in time you
will be quite as happy in your new home as you could be here, where it
must be very dreary in the winter, when the snow-drifts are piled up to
the very window ledges, and the wind screams at you through every
crevice.”

“Oh-h,” Mrs. Graham said, with a shudder, her thoughts going back to the
day when the blinding snow had come down in great billows upon the
newly-made grave in which she left her husband, and went back alone to
the desolate home where he would never come again.

It had been so terrible and sudden, his going from her. Well in the
morning, and dead at night; killed by a locomotive and brought to her so
mangled that she could never have recognized him as her husband. People
had called him over-generous and extravagant, and perhaps he was, but
the money he spent so lavishly was always for others, and not for
himself, and as the holder of the heavy mortgage on his farm had been
content with the interest and never pressed his claim, he had made no
effort to lessen it, even after he knew it passed into the hands of Mrs.
Marshall-More, who had often expressed a wish to own the place known as
the Spring Farm, and so-called from the numerous springs upon it. She
would fill it with her city friends and set up quite an English
establishment, she said; and now it was hers, to all intents and
purposes, for though the deed was in her brother’s name, it was
understood that she was mistress of the place and could do what she
liked with it. Of the real owner, Max Gordon, her half-brother, little
was known, except the fact that he was very wealthy and had for years
been engaged to a lady who, by a fall from a horse, had been crippled
for life. It was also rumored that the lady had insisted upon releasing
her lover from his engagement, but he had refused to be released, and
still clung to the hope that she would eventually recover. Just where he
was at present, nobody knew. He seldom visited his sister, although she
was very proud of him and very fond of talking of her brother Max, who,
she said, was so generous and good, although a little queer. He had
bidden off the Spring Farm because she asked him to do so, and a few
thousand dollars more or less were nothing to him; then, telling her to
do what she liked with it, he had gone his way, while poor Lucy Graham’s
heart was breaking at the thought of leaving the home which her husband
had made so beautiful for her. An old-fashioned place, it is true, but
one of those old-fashioned places to which our memory clings fondly, and
our thoughts go back with an intense longing years after the flowers we
have watered are dead, and the shrubs we have planted are trees pointing
to the sky. A great square house, with a wing on either side, a wide
hall through the center and a fireplace in every room. A well-kept lawn
in front, dotted with shade trees and flowering shrubs, and on one side
of it a running brook, fed by a spring on the hillside to the west;
borders and beds and mounds of flowers;—tulips and roses and pansies and
pinks and peonies and lilies and geraniums and verbenas, each blossoming
in its turn and making the garden and grounds a picture of beauty all
the summer long. No wonder that Lucy Graham loved it and shrank from
leaving it, and shrank, too, from Mrs. Marshall-More’s attempts at
consolation, saying only when that lady arose to go, “It was kind in you
to come and I thank you for it; but just now my heart aches too hard to
be comforted. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, I shall call when you get settled in town, and if I can be of
any service to you I will gladly do so,” Mrs. Marshall-More said, as she
left the room and went out to her carriage, where she stood for a moment
looking up and down the road, and saying to herself, “Where can Archie
be?”




                              CHAPTER II.
                           WHERE ARCHIE WAS.


A long lane wound away to the westward across a strip of land called the
mowing lot, through a bit of woods and on to a grassy hillside, where,
under the shade of a butternut tree, a pair of fat, sleek oxen were
standing with a look of content in their large, bright eyes as if well
pleased with this unwonted freedom from the plough and the cart. Against
the side of one of them a young girl was leaning, with her arm thrown
across its neck and her hand caressing the long, white horn of the dumb
creature which seemed to enjoy it. The girl was Maude Graham, and she
made a very pretty picture as she stood there with her short, brown hair
curling in soft rings about her forehead; her dark blue eyes, her
bright, glowing face, and a mouth which looked as if made for kisses and
sweetness rather than the angry words she was hurling at the young man,
or boy, for he was only twenty, who stood before her.

“Archie More,” she was saying, “I don’t think it very nice in you to
talk to me in that patronizing kind of way, as if you were so much my
superior in everything, and trying to convince me that it is nothing for
us to give up the dear old place where every stone and stump means
somebody to me, for I know them all and have talked with them all, and
called them by name, just as I know all the maiden ferns and water
lilies and where the earliest arbutus blossoms in the spring. Oh,
Archie, how can I leave Spring Farm and never come back again! I think I
hate you all for taking it from us, and especially your uncle Max.”

Here she broke down entirely, and laying her face on the shining coat of
the ox began to cry as if her heart would break, while Archie looked at
her in real distress wondering what he should say. He was a city-bred
young man, with a handsome, boyish face, and in a way very fond of
Maude, whom he had known ever since he was thirteen and she eleven, and
he first came to Merrivale to spend the summer. They had played and
fished together in the brook, and rowed together on the pond and
quarreled and made up, and latterly they had flirted a little, too,
although Archie was careful that the flirting should not go too far, for
he felt that there was a vast difference between Archie More, son of
Mrs. Marshall-More, and Maude Graham, daughter of a country farmer. And
still he thought her the sweetest, prettiest girl he had ever seen, a
_jolly lot_ he called her, and he writhed under her bitter words, and
when she cried he tried to comfort her and explain matters as best he
could. But Maude was not to be appeased. She had felt all the time that
the place need not have been sold, that it was a hasty thing, and though
she did not blame Archie, she was very sore against Mrs. Marshall-More
and her brother, and her only answer to all Archie could say, was:

“You needn’t talk. I hate you all, and your uncle Max the most, and if I
ever see him I’ll tell him so, and if I don’t you may tell him for me.”

Archie could keep silent and hear his mother blamed and himself, but he
roused in defense of his uncle Max.

“Hate my uncle Max,” he exclaimed. “Why, he is the best man that ever
lived, and the kindest. He knew nothing of you, or how you’d feel, when
he bought the place; if he had he wouldn’t have done it; and if he could
see you now, crying on that ox’s neck, he would give it back to you.
That would be just like him.”

“As if I’d take it,” Maude said, scornfully, as she lifted up her head
and dashed the tears from her eyes with a rapid movement of both hands.
“No, Archie More, I shall never take Spring Farm as a gift from any one,
much less from your uncle Max; but I shall buy it of him some day if he
keeps it long enough.”

“You?” Archie asked, and Maude replied, “Yes, I, why not? I know I am
poor now, but I shall not always be so. People call me crazy, a dreamer,
a crank, and all that, because they cannot see what I see; the people
who are with me always, my friends; and I know their names and how they
look and where they live; Mrs. Kimbrick, with her fifty daughters, all
Eliza Anns, and Mrs. Webster, with her fifty daughters, all Ann Elizas,
and Angeline Mason, who comes and talks to me in the twilight, wearing a
yellow dress; they are real to me as you are, and do you think I am
crazy and a crank because of that?”

Archie said he didn’t, but he looked a little suspiciously at the girl
standing there so erect, her eyes shining with a strange light as she
talked to him of things he could not understand. He had heard of this
Mrs. Kimbrick and Mrs. Webster before, with their fifty daughters each,
and had thought Maude queer, to say the least. He was sure of it now as
she went on:

“Is the earth crazy because there is in it a little acorn which you
can’t see, but which is still there, maturing and taking root for the
grand old oak, whose branches will one day give shelter to many a tired
head? Of course not; neither am I, and some time these brain children,
or brain seeds, call them what you like, will take shape and grow, and
the world will hear of them, and of me; and you and your mother will be
proud to say you knew me once, when the people praise the book I am
going to write.”

“A book!” and Archie laughed incredulously, it seemed so absurd that
little Maude Graham should ever become an author of whom the world would
hear.

“Yes,” she answered him decidedly. “A book! Why not? It is in me; it has
been there always, and I can no more help writing it than you can help
doing,—well, nothing, as you always have. Yes, I shall write a book, and
you will read it, Archie More, and thousands more, too; and I shall put
Spring Farm in it, and you, and your uncle Max. I think I shall make him
the villain.”

She was very hard upon poor Max, whose only offense was that he had
bidden off Spring Farm to please his sister, but Archie was ready to
defend him again.

“If you knew uncle Max,” he said, “you would make him your hero instead
of your villain, for a better man never lived. He is kindness itself and
the soul of honor. Why, when he was very young he was engaged to a girl
who fell from a horse and broke her leg, or her neck, or her back, I’ve
forgotten which. Anyhow, she cannot walk and has to be wheeled in a
chair, but Max sticks to her like a burr, because he thinks he ought. I
am sure I hope he will never marry her.”

“Why not?” Maude asked, and he replied:

“Because, you see, Max has a heap of money, and if he never marries and
I outlive him, some of it will come to me. Money is a good thing, I tell
you.”

“I didn’t suppose you as mean as that, Archie More! and I hope Mr. Max
will marry that broken-backed woman, and that she will live a thousand
years! Yes, I do!”

The last three words were emphasized with so vigorous blows on the back
of the ox, that he started away suddenly, and Maude would have fallen if
Archie had not caught her in his arms.

“Now, Maude,” he said, as he held her for a moment closely to him,
“don’t let’s quarrel any more. I’m going away to-morrow to the
Adirondacks, then in the fall to college, and may not see you again for
a long time; but I sha’n’t forget you. I like you the best of any girl
in the world; I do, upon my honor.”

“No, you don’t. I know exactly what you think of me, and always have,
but it does not matter now,” Maude answered vehemently. “You are going
your way, and I am going mine, and the two ways will never meet.”

And so, quarreling and making up, but making up rather more than they
quarreled, the two went slowly along the gravelly lane until they
reached the house where Mrs. Marshall-More was standing with a very
severe look upon her face, as she said to her son:

“Do you know how long you have kept me waiting?”

Then to Maude:

“Been crying? I am sorry you take it so hard. Believe me, you will be
better off in the village. Neither your mother nor you could run the
farm, and you will find some employment there. I hear that Mrs. Nipe is
wanting an apprentice and that she will give small wages at first, which
is not usual with dressmakers. You’d better apply at once.”

“Thank you,” Maude answered quickly. “I do not think I shall learn
dressmaking,” and Maude looked at the lady as proudly as a queen might
look upon her subject. “Mrs. More, do you think your brother would
promise to keep Spring Farm until I can buy it back?” she continued.

The idea that Maude Graham could ever buy Spring Farm was so
preposterous that Mrs. Marshall-More laughed immoderately, as she
replied, “Perhaps so. I will ask him; or you can do it yourself. I don’t
know where he is now. I seldom do know, but anything addressed to his
club, No. —, —— Street, Boston, will reach him in time. And now we must
go. Good-bye.”

She offered the tips of her fingers to the girl who just touched them,
and then giving her hand to Archie said, “Good-bye, Archie, I am sorry
we quarreled so, and I did not mean half I said to you. I hope you will
forget it. Good-bye; I may never see you again.”

If Archie had dared he would have kissed the face which had never looked
so sweet to him as now; but his mother’s eyes were upon him and so he
only said “Good-bye,” and took his seat in the carriage with a feeling
that something which had been very dear had dropped out of his life.




                              CHAPTER III.
                              GOING WEST.


It was a very plain but pretty little cottage of which Mrs. Graham took
possession with her children, Maude and John, who was two years younger
than his sister. As most of the furniture had been sold it did not take
them long to settle, and then the question arose as to how they were to
live. A thousand dollars was all they had in the world, and these Mrs.
Graham placed in the savings bank against a time of greater need, hoping
that, as her friends assured her, something would turn up. “If there was
anything I could do, I would do it so willingly,” Maude was constantly
saying to herself, while busy with the household duties which now fell
to her lot and to which she was unaccustomed. During her father’s life
two strong German girls had been employed in the house and Maude had
been as tenderly and delicately reared as are the daughters of
millionaires. But now everything was changed, and those who had known
her only as an idle dreamer and devourer of books, were astonished at
the energy and capability which she developed. But these did not
understand the girl or know that all the stronger part of her nature had
been called into being by the exigencies of the case. Maude’s love for
her mother was deep and unselfish, and for her sake she tried to make
the most and the best of everything. Stifling with a smile born of a sob
all her longings for the past, she turned her thoughts steadily to the
one purpose of her life,—buying Spring Farm back! But how? The book she
was going to write did not seem quite so certain now. Her brain children
had turned traitors and flown away from the sweeping, dusting,
dishwashing and bedmaking which fell to her lot and which she did with a
song on her lips lest her mother should detect the heartache which was
always with her, even when her face was the brightest and her song the
sweetest. She had written to Archie’s uncle without a suspicion that she
did not know his real name. As he was a brother of Mrs. More, whose
maiden name was Marshall, his must be Marshall too, she reasoned,
forgetting to have heard that Mrs. More was only a half-sister and that
there had been two fathers. Of course, he was Max Marshall, and she
addressed him as follows:

                                                “MERRIVALE, July —, 18—.

  “MR. MAX MARSHALL:

  “DEAR SIR,—I am Maude Graham, and you bought my old home, Spring Farm,
  and it nearly broke my own and mamma’s heart to have it sold. I don’t
  blame you much now for buying it, but I did once, and I said some hard
  things about you to Archie More, your nephew, which he may repeat to
  you. But I was angry then at him and everybody, and I am sorry that I
  said them. I am only eighteen and very poor, but I shall be rich some
  day,—I am sure of it,—and able to buy Spring Farm, and I want you to
  keep it for me and not sell it to any one else. It may be years, but
  the day will come when I shall have the money of my own. Will you keep
  the place till then? I think I shall be happier and have more courage
  to work if you write and say you will.

                                      “Yours truly,      “MAUDE GRAHAM.”

After this letter was sent and before she had reason to expect an
answer, Maude began to look for it, but none came, and the summer
stretched on into August and the house at Spring Farm was shut up, for
Mrs. Marshall-More was in Europe, and Maude’s great anxiety was to find
something to do for her own and her mother’s support. Miss Nipe, the
dressmaker, would give her a dollar a week while she was learning the
trade, and this, with the three dollars per week which her brother John
was earning in a grocery store, would be better than nothing, and she
was seriously considering the matter, when a letter from her mother’s
brother, who lived “out West,” as that portion of New York between the
Cayuga Bridge and Buffalo was then called, changed the whole aspect of
her affairs and forged the first link in the chain of her destiny. He
could not take his sister and her children into his own large family, he
wrote, but he had a plan to propose which, he thought, would prove
advantageous to Maude, if her mother approved of it and would spare her
from home. About six miles from his place was a school, which his
daughter had taught for two years, but as she was about to be married,
the position was open to Maude at four dollars a week and her board,
provided she would take it.

“Maude is rather young, I know,” Mr. Ailing wrote in conclusion, “but no
younger than Annie was when she began to teach, so her age need not
stand in the way, if she chooses to come. The country will seem new and
strange to her; there are still log-houses in the Bush district; indeed,
the school-house is built of logs and the people ride in lumber wagons
and are not like Bostonians or New Yorkers, but they are very kind, and
Maude will get accustomed to them in time. My advice is that she
accept.”

At first Mrs. Graham refused to let her young daughter go so far from
home, but Maude was persistent and eager. Log-houses and lumber wagons
had no terrors for her. Indeed, they were rather attractions than
otherwise, and fired her imagination, which began at once to people
those houses of the olden time with the Kimbricks and the Websters, who
had forsaken her so long. Four dollars a week seemed a fortune to her,
and she would save it all, she said, and send it to her mother, who
unwillingly consented at last and fortunately found a gentleman in town
who was going to Chicago and would take charge of Maude as far as
Canandaigua, where she was to leave the train and finish her journey by
stage. But on the evening of the day before the one when Maude was to
start, the gentleman received word that his son was very ill in Portland
and required his immediate presence.

“I can go alone,” Maude said courageously, though with a little sinking
of the heart. “No one will harm me. Crossing the river at Albany is the
worst, but I can do as the rest do, and after that I do not leave the
car again until we reach Canandaigua.”

“Don’t feel so badly, mamma,” she continued, winding her arms around her
mother’s neck and kissing away her tears. “I am not afraid, and don’t
you know how often you have said that God cared for the fatherless, and
I am that, and I shall ask Him all the time I am in the car to take care
of me, and He will answer. He will hear. I’m not a child. I am eighteen
in the Bible and a great deal older than that since father died. Don’t
cry, darling mamma, and make it harder for me. I must go to-morrow, for
school begins next Monday.”

So, for her daughter’s sake, Mrs. Graham tried to be calm, and Maude’s
little hair trunk was packed with the garments, in each of which was
folded a mother’s prayer for the safety of her child; and the morning
came, and the ticket was bought, and the conductor, with whom Mrs.
Graham had a slight acquaintance, promised to see to the little girl as
far as Albany, where he would put her in charge of the man who took his
place. Then the good-byes were said and the train moved on past the
village on the hillside, past the dear old Spring Farm which she looked
at through blinding tears as long as a tree-top was in sight, past the
graveyard where her father was lying, past the meadows and woods and
hills she loved so well, and on towards the new country and the new life
of which she knew so little.




                              CHAPTER IV.
                              ON THE ROAD.


Those were the days when the Boston train westward-bound moved at a
snail’s pace compared with what it does now, and twenty-four hours
instead of twelve were required for the trip from Merrivale to
Canandaigua, so that the afternoon was drawing to a close when the cars
stopped in Greenbush and the passengers alighted and rushed for the boat
which was to take them across the river. This, and re-checking her
trunk, was what Maude dreaded the most, and her face was very white and
scared and her heart beating violently as she followed the crowd,
wondering if she should ever find her trunk among all that pile of
baggage they were handling so roughly, and if it would be smashed to
pieces when she did, and if she should get into the right car, or be
carried somewhere else. She had lost sight of the conductor. Her head
was beginning to ache, and there was a lump in her throat every time she
thought of her mother and John, who would soon be taking their simple
evening meal and talking of her.

“I wonder if I can bear it,” she said to herself, as she sat in the
cabin the very image of despair, clasping her hand-bag tightly and
looking anxiously at the people around her as if in search of some
friendly face, which she could trust.

She had heard so much before leaving home of wolves in sheep’s or rather
men’s clothing, who infest railway trains, ready to pounce upon any
unsuspecting girl who chanced to fall in their way, and had been so much
afraid that some of the wolves might be on her train, lying in wait for
her, that she had resolutely kept her head turned to the window all the
time with a prayer in her heart that God would let no one speak to and
frighten her. And thus far no one had spoken to her, except the
conductor, but God must have deserted her now, for just as they were
reaching the opposite shore, a gentleman, who had been watching her ever
since she crouched down in the shadowy corner, and who had seen her wipe
the tears away more than once, came up to her and said, “Are you alone,
and can I do anything for you?”

“Yes,—no; oh, I don’t know,” Maude gasped as she clutched her bag, in
which was her purse, more tightly, and looked up at the face above her.

It was such a pleasant face, and the voice was so kind and reassuring,
that she forgot the wolves and might have given him her bag, purse,
check and all, if the conductor had not just then appeared and taken her
in charge. Lifting his hat politely the stranger walked away, while
Maude went to identify her trunk.

“Will you take a sleeper?” the conductor asked.

And she replied: “Oh, no. I can’t afford that.”

So he found her a whole seat in the common car, and telling her he would
speak of her to the new conductor, bade her good-bye, and she was left
alone.

Very nervously she watched her fellow passengers as they came hurrying
in,—men, mostly, it seemed to her,—rough-looking men, too, for there had
been a horserace that day at a point on the Harlem road, and they were
returning from it. Occasionally some one of them stopped and looked at
the girl in black, who sat so straight and still, with her hand-bag held
down upon the vacant seat beside her as if to keep it intact. But no one
offered to take it, and Maude breathed more freely as the crowded train
moved slowly from the depot. After a little the new conductor came and
spoke to her and looked at her ticket and went out, and then she was
really alone. New England, with its rocks and hills and mountains, was
behind her. Mother, and John, and home were far away, and the lump in
her throat grew larger, and there crept over her such a sense of
dreariness and homesickness, that she would have cried outright if she
dared to. There were only six women in the car besides herself. All the
rest were _wolves_; she felt sure of that, they talked and laughed so
loud, and spit so much tobacco-juice. They were so different from the
stranger on the boat, she thought, wondering who he was and where he had
gone. How pleasantly he had spoken to her, and how she wished——She got
no further, for a voice said to her:

“Can I sit by you? Every other seat is taken.”

“Yes, oh, yes. I am so glad,” Maude exclaimed involuntarily in her
delight at recognizing the stranger, and springing to her feet she
offered him the seat next to the window.

“Oh, no,” he said, with a smile which would have won the confidence of
any girl. “Keep that yourself. You will be more comfortable there. Are
you going to ride all night?”

“Yes, I am going to Canandaigua,” she replied.

“To Canandaigua!” he repeated, looking at her a little curiously; but he
asked no more questions then, and busied himself with adjusting his bag
and his large traveling shawl, which last he put on the back of the
seat,, more behind Maude than himself.

Then he took out a magazine, while Maude watched him furtively, thinking
him the finest looking man she had ever seen, except her father, of
whom, in his manner, he reminded her a little. Not nearly so old,
certainly, as her father, and not young like Archie either, for there
were a few threads of grey in his mustache and in his brown hair which
had a trick of curling slightly at the ends under his soft felt hat. Who
was he? she wondered. The initials on his satchel were “M. G.,” but that
told her nothing. How she hoped he was going as far as she was, she felt
so safe with him, and at last, as the darkness increased and he shut up
his book, she ventured to ask:

“Are you going far?”

“Yes,” he replied, with a twinkle of humor in his blue eyes, “and if
none of these men get out, I am afraid I shall have to claim your
forbearance all night, but I will make myself as small as possible.
Look,” and with a laugh he drew himself close to the arm of the seat,
leaving quite a space between them; but he did not tell her that he had
engaged a berth in the sleeper, which he had abandoned when he found her
there alone, with that set of roughs, whose character he knew.

“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these ye have done
it unto me,” would surely be said to him some day, for he was always
giving the cup of water, even to those who did not know they were
thirsting until after they had drunk of what he offered them. Once he
brought Maude some water in a little glass tumbler, which he took from
his satchel, and once he offered her an apple which she declined lest
she should seem too forward; then, as the hours crept on and her eyelids
began to droop, he folded his shawl carefully and made her let him put
it behind her head, suggesting that she remove her hat, as she would
rest more comfortably without it.

“Now sleep quietly,” he said, and as if there were something mesmeric in
his voice, Maude went to sleep at once and dreamed she was at home with
her mother beside her, occasionally fixing the pillow under her head and
covering her with something which added to her comfort.

It was the stranger’s light overcoat which, as the September night grew
cold and chill, he put over the girl, whose upturned face he had studied
as intently as she had studied his. About seven o’clock the conductor
came in, lantern in hand, and as its rays fell upon the stranger, he
said, “Hello, Gordon, you here? I thought you were in the sleeper. On
guard, I see, as usual. Who is the lamb this time?”

“I don’t know; do you?” the man called Gordon replied.

“No,” the conductor said, turning his light full upon Maude; then, “Why,
it’s a little girl the Boston conductor put in my care; but she’s safer
with you. Comes from the mountains somewhere, I believe. Guess she is
going to seek her fortune. She ought to find it, with that face. Isn’t
she pretty?” and he glanced admiringly at the sweet young face now
turned to one side, with one hand under the flushed cheek and the short
rings of damp hair curling round her forehead.

“Yes, very,” Gordon replied, moving uneasily and finally holding a
newspaper between Maude and the conductor’s lantern, for it did not seem
right to him that any eyes except those of a near friend should take
this advantage of a sleeping girl.

The conductor passed on, and then Gordon fell asleep until they reached
a way station, where the sudden stopping of a train roused him to
consciousness, and a moment after he was confronted by a young man, who,
at sight of him, stopped short and exclaimed:

“Max Gordon, as I live! I’ve hunted creation over for you and given you
up. Where have you been and why weren’t you at Long Branch, as you said
you’d be when you wrote me to join you there?”

“Got tired of it, you were so long coming, so I went to the Adirondacks
with Archie.”

“Did you bring me any letters?” Max replied, and his friend continued,
“Yes, a cart load. Six, any way,” and he began to take them from his
side pocket. “One, two, three, four, five; there’s another somewhere.
Oh, here ’tis,” he said, taking out the sixth, which looked rather
soiled and worn. “I suppose it’s for you,” he continued, “although it’s
directed to Mr. Max Marshall, Esq., and is in a school-girl’s
handwriting. It came long ago, and we chaps puzzled over it a good
while; then, as no one appeared to claim it, and it was mailed at
Merrivale, where your sister spends her summers, I ventured to bring it
with the rest. If you were not such a saint I’d say you had been
imposing a false name upon some innocent country girl, and, by George, I
believe she’s here now with your ulster over her! Running off with her,
eh? What will Miss Raynor say?” he went on, as his eyes fell upon Maude,
who just then stirred in her sleep and murmured softly, “Our Father, who
art in Heaven.”

She was at home in her little white-curtained bedroom, kneeling with her
mother and saying her nightly prayer, and, involuntarily, both the young
men bowed their heads as if receiving a benediction.

“I think, Dick, that your vile insinuation is answered,” Max said, and
Dick rejoined, “Yes, I beg your pardon. Under your protection, I s’pose.
Well, she’s safe; but I must be finding that berth of mine. Will see you
in the morning. Good-night.”

He left the car, while Max Gordon tried to read his letters as best he
could by the dim light near him. One was from his sister, one from
Archie, three on business, while the last puzzled him a little, and he
held it awhile as if uncertain as to his right to open it.

“It must be for me,” he said at last, and breaking the seal he read
Maude’s letter to him, unconscious that Maude was sleeping there beside
him.

Indeed, he had never heard of Maude Graham before, and had scarcely
given a thought to the former owners of Spring Farm. His sister had a
mortgage upon it; the man was dead; the place must be sold, and Mrs.
More asked him to buy it; that was all he knew when he bid it off.

“Poor little girl,” he said to himself. “If I had known about you, I
don’t believe I’d have bought the place. There was no necessity to
foreclose, I am sure; but it was just like Angie; and what must this
Maude think of me not to have answered her letter. I am so sorry;” and
his sorrow manifested itself in an increased attention to the girl, over
whom he adjusted his ulster more carefully, for the air in the car was
growing very damp and chilly.

It was broad daylight when Maude awoke, starting up with a smile on her
face and reminding Max of some lovely child when first aroused from
sleep.

“Why, I have slept all night,” she exclaimed, as she tossed back her
wavy hair; “and you have given me your shawl and ulster, too,” she
added, with a blush which made her face, as Max thought, the prettiest
he had ever seen.

Who was she, he wondered, and once he thought to ask her the question
direct; then he tried by a little _finessing_ to find out who she was
and where she came from, but Maude’s mother had so strongly impressed it
upon her not to be at all communicative to strangers, that she was
wholly non-committal even while suspecting his design, and when at last
Canandaigua was reached he knew no more of her history than when he
first saw her, white and trembling on the boat. She was going to take
the Genesee stage, she said, and expected her uncle to meet her at Oak
Corners in Richland.

“Why, that is funny,” he said. “If it were not that a carriage is to
meet me, I should still be your fellow-traveler, for my route lies that
way.”

And then he did ask her uncle’s name. She surely might tell him so much,
Maude thought, and replied:

“Captain James Alling, my mother’s brother.”

Her name was not Alling, then, and reflecting that now he knew who her
uncle was he could probably trace her, Max saw her into the stage, and
taking her ungloved hand in his held it perhaps a trifle longer than he
would have done if it had not been so very soft and white and pretty,
and rested so confidingly in his, while she thanked him for his
kindness. Then the stage drove away, while he stood watching it, and
wondering why the morning was not quite so bright as it had been an hour
ago, and why he had not asked her point-blank who she was, or had been
so stupid as not to give her his card.

“Max Gordon, you certainly are getting into your dotage,” he said to
himself. “A man of your age to be so interested in a little unknown
girl! What would Grace say? Poor Grace. I wonder if I shall find her
improved, and why she has buried herself in this part of the country.”

As he entered the hotel a thought of Maude Graham’s letter came to his
mind, and calling for pen and paper he dashed off the following:

                                          CANANDAIGUA, September —, 18—.

  MISS MAUDE GRAHAM,—Your letter did not reach me until last night, when
  it was brought me by a friend. I have not been in Boston since the
  first of last July, and the reason it was not forwarded to me is that
  you addressed it wrong, and they were in doubt as to its owner. My
  name is Gordon, not Marshall, as you supposed, and I am very sorry for
  your sake and your mother’s that I ever bought Spring Farm. Had I
  known what I do now I should not have done so. But it is too late, and
  I can only promise to keep it as you wish until you can buy it back.
  You are a brave little girl and I will sell it to you cheap. I should
  very much like to know you, and when I am again in Merrivale I shall
  call upon you and your mother, if she will let me.

                                       With kind regards to her I am
                                                       Yours truly,
                                                           “MAX GORDON.”

The letter finished, he folded and directed it to Miss Maude Graham,
Merrivale, Mass., while she for whom it was intended was huddled up in
one corner of the crowded stage and going on as fast as four fleet
horses could take her towards Oak Corners and the friends awaiting her
there. Thus strangely do two lives sometimes meet and cross each other
and then drift widely apart; but not forever, in this instance, let us
hope.




                               CHAPTER V.
                              MISS RAYNOR.


About a mile from Laurel Hill, a little village in Richland, was an
eminence, or plateau, from the top of which one could see for miles the
rich, well-cultivated farms in which the town abounded, the wooded hills
and the deep gorges all slanting down to a common centre, the pretty
little lake, lying as in the bottom of a basin, with its clear waters
sparkling in the sunshine. And here, just on the top of the plateau,
where the view was the finest, an eccentric old bachelor, Paul Raynor,
had a few years before our story opens, built himself a home after his
own peculiar ideas of architecture, but which, when finished and
furnished, was a most delightful place, especially in the summer when
the flowers and shrubs, of which there was a great profusion, were in
blossom, and the wide lawn in front of the house was like a piece of
velvet. Here for two years Paul Raynor had lived quite _en prince_, and
then, sickening with what he knew to be a fatal disease, he had sent for
his invalid sister Grace, who came and stayed with him to the last,
finding after he was dead that all his property had been left to her,
with a request that she would make the Cedars, as the place was called,
her home for a portion of the time at least. And so, though city bred
and city born, Grace had stayed on for nearly a year, leading a lonely
life, for she knew but few of her neighbors, while her crippled
condition prevented her from mingling at all in the society she was so
well fitted to adorn. As the reader will have guessed, Grace Raynor was
the girl, or rather woman, for she was over thirty now, to whom Max
Gordon had devoted the years of his early manhood, in the vain hope that
some time she would be cured and become his wife. A few days before the
one appointed for her bridal she had been thrown from her horse and had
injured her spine so badly that for months she suffered such agony that
her beautiful hair turned white; then the pain ceased suddenly, but left
her no power to move her lower limbs, and she had never walked since and
never would. But through all the long years Max had clung to her with a
devotion born first of his intense love for her and later of his sense
of honor which would make him loyal to her even to the grave. Knowing
how domestic he was in his tastes and how happy he would be with wife
and children, Grace had insisted that he should leave her and seek some
other love. But his answer was always the same. “No, Grace, I am bound
to you just as strongly as if the clergyman had made us one, and will
marry you any day you will say the word. Your lameness is nothing so
long as your soul is left untouched, and your face, too,” he would
sometimes add, kissing fondly the lovely face which, with each year,
seemed to grow lovelier, and from which the snowy hair did not in the
least detract.

But Grace knew better than to inflict herself upon him, and held fast to
her resolve, even while her whole being went out to him with an intense
longing for his constant love and companionship. Especially was this the
case at the Cedars, where she found herself very lonely, notwithstanding
the beauty of the place and its situation.

“If he asks me again, shall I refuse?” she said to herself on the
September morning when Maude Graham was alighting from the dusty stage
at Oak Corners, two miles away, and the carriage sent for Max was only
an hour behind.

How pretty she was in the dainty white dress, with a shawl of scarlet
wool wrapped around her, as she sat in her wheel chair on the broad
piazza, which commanded a view of the lake and the green hills beyond.
Not fresh and bright and glowing as Maude, who was like an opening rose
with the early dew upon it, but more like a pale water lily just
beginning to droop, though very sweet and lovely still. There was a
faint tinge of color in her cheek as she leaned her head against the
cushions of her chair and wondered if she should find Max the same
ardent lover as ever, ready to take her to his arms at any cost, or had
he, during the past year, seen some other face fairer and younger than
her own.

“I shall know in a moment if he is changed ever so little,” she thought,
and although she did not mean to be selfish, and would at any moment
have given him up and made no sign, there was a throb of pain in her
heart as she tried to think what life would be without Max to love her.
“I should die,” she whispered, “and please God, I shall die before many
years and leave my boy free.”

He was her boy still, just as young and handsome as he had been thirteen
years ago, when he lifted her so tenderly from the ground and she felt
his tears upon her forehead as she writhed in her fearful pain. And now
when at last he came and put his arms around her and took her face
between his hands and looked fondly into it as he questioned her of her
health, she felt that he was unchanged, and thanked her Father for it.
He was delighted with everything, and sat by her until after lunch,
which was served on the piazza, and asked her of her life there and the
people in the neighborhood, and finally if she knew of a Capt. Alling.

“Capt. Alling,” she replied; “why, yes. He lives on a farm about two
miles from here and we buy our honey from him. A very respectable man, I
think, although I have no acquaintance with the family. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, nothing; only there was a girl on the train with me who told me she
was his niece,” Max answered indifferently, with a vigorous puff at his
cigar, which Grace always insisted he should smoke in her presence. “She
was very pretty and very young. I should like to see her again,” he
added, more to himself than to Grace, who, without knowing why, felt
suddenly as if a cloud had crept across her sky.

Jealousy had no part in Grace’s nature, nor was she jealous of this
young, pretty girl whom Max would like to see again, and to prove that
she was not she asked many questions about her and said she would try
and find out who she was, and that she presumed she had come to attend
the wadding of Capt. Alling’s daughter, who was soon to be married. This
seemed very probable, and no more was said of Maude until the afternoon
of the day following, which was Sunday. Then, after Max returned from
church and they were seated at dinner he said abruptly, “I saw her
again.”

“Saw whom?” Grace asked, and he replied, “My little girl of the train.
She was at church with her uncle’s family. A rather ordinary lot I
thought them, but she looked as sweet as a June pink. You know they are
my favorite flowers.”

“Yes,” Grace answered slowly, while again a breath of cold air seemed to
blow over her and make her draw her shawl more closely around her.

But Max did not suspect it, and pared a peach for her and helped her to
grapes, and after dinner wheeled her for an hour on the broad plateau,
stooping over her once and caressing her white hair, which he told her
was very becoming, and saying no more of the girl seen in church that
morning. The Allings had been late and the rector was reading the first
lesson when they came in, father and mother and two healthy, buxom
girls, followed by Maude, who, in her black dress looked taller and
slimmer than he had thought her in the car, and prettier, too, with the
brilliant color on her cheeks and the sparkle in the eyes which met his
with such glad surprise in them that he felt something stir in his heart
different from anything he had felt since he and Grace were young. The
Allings occupied a pew in front of him and on the side, so that he could
look at and study Maude’s face, which he did far more than he listened
to the sermon. And she knew he was looking at her, too, and always
blushed when she met his earnest gaze. As they were leaving the church
he managed to get near her, and said, “I hope you are quite well after
your long journey, Miss——.”

“Graham,” she answered, involuntarily, but so low that he only caught
the first syllable and thought that she said _Grey_.

She was Miss Grey, then, and with this bit of information he was obliged
to be content. Twice during the week he rode past the Alling house,
hoping to see the eyes which had flashed so brightly upon him on the
porch of the church, and never dreaming of the hot tears of homesickness
they were weeping in the log school-house of the Bush district, where
poor Maude was so desolate and lonely. If he had, he might, perhaps,
have gone there and tried to comfort her, so greatly was he interested
in her, and so much was she in his mind.

He stayed at the Cedars several days, and then finding it a little
tiresome said good-bye to Grace and went his way again, leaving her with
a vague consciousness that something had come between them; a shadow no
larger than a man’s hand, it is true, but still a shadow, and as she
watched him going down the walk she whispered sadly, “Max is slipping
from me.”




                              CHAPTER VI.
                          THE SCHOOL MISTRESS.


The setting sun of a raw January afternoon was shining into the dingy
school-room where Maude sat by the iron-rusted box stove, with her feet
on the hearth, reading a note which had been brought to her just before
the close of school by a man who had been to the postoffice in the
village at the foot of the lake. It was nearly four months since she
first crossed the threshold of the log school-house, taking in at a
glance the whole dreariness of her surroundings, and feeling for the
moment that she could not endure it. But she was somewhat accustomed to
it now, and not half so much afraid of the tall girls and boys, her
scholars, as she had been at first, while the latter were wholly devoted
to her and not a little proud of their “young school ma’am,” as they
called her. Everybody was kind to her, and she had not found “boarding
round” so very dreadful after all, for the fatted calf was always killed
for her, and the best dishes brought out, while it was seldom that she
was called upon to share her sleeping-room with more than one member of
the family. And still there was ever present with her a longing for her
mother and for Johnnie and a life more congenial to her tastes. Dreaming
was out of the question now, and the book which was to make her famous
and buy back the old home seemed very far in the future. Just how large
a portion of her thoughts was given to Max Gordon it was difficult to
say. She had felt a thrill of joy when she saw him in church, and a
little proud, too, it may be, of his notice of her. Very minutely her
cousins had questioned her with regard to her acquaintance with him,
deploring her stupidity in not having ascertained who he was. A
relative, most likely, of Miss Raynor, in whose pew he sat, they
concluded, and they told their cousin of the lady at the Cedars, Grace
Raynor, who could not walk a step, but was wheeled in a chair, sometimes
by a maid and sometimes by a man. The lady _par excellence_ of the
neighborhood she seemed to be, and Maude found herself greatly
interested in her and in everything pertaining to her. Twice she had
been through the grounds, which were open to the public, and had seen
Grace both times in the distance, once sitting in her chair upon the
piazza, and once being wheeled in the woods by her man-servant, Tom. But
beyond this she had not advanced, and nothing could be farther from her
thoughts than the idea that she would ever be anything to the lady of
the Cedars. Max Gordon’s letter had been forwarded to her from
Merrivale, but had created no suspicion in her mind that he and her
friend of the train were one. She had thought it a little strange that
he should have been in Canandaigua the very day that she arrived there,
and wished she might have seen him, but the truth never dawned upon her
until some time in December, when her mother wrote to her that he had
called to see them, expressing much regret at Maude’s absence, and when
told where she was and when she went, exclaiming with energy, as he
sprang to his feet, “Why, madam, your daughter was with me in the
train,—a little blue-eyed, brown-haired girl in black, who said she was
Captain Alling’s niece.”

“He seemed greatly excited,” Mrs. Graham wrote, “and regretted that he
did not know who you were. He got an idea somehow that your name was
_Grey_, and said he received your letter with you asleep beside him. He
is a splendid looking man, with the pleasantest eyes and the kindest
voice I ever heard or saw.”

“Ye-es,” Maude said slowly, as she recalled the voice which had spoken
so kindly to her, and the eyes which had looked so pleasantly into her
own. “And that was Max Gordon! He was going to the Cedars, and Miss
Raynor is the girl for whom he has lived single all these years. Oh-h!”

She was conscious of a vague regret that her stranger friend was the
betrothed husband of Grace Raynor, who, at that very time, was thinking
of her and fighting down a feeling as near to jealousy as it was
possible for her to harbor. In the same mail with Maude’s letter from
her mother there had come to the Cedars one from Max, who said that he
had discovered who was his _compagnon da voyage_.

  “She is teaching somewhere in your town,” he wrote “and I judge is not
  very happy there. Can’t you do something for her, Grace? It has
  occurred to me that to have a girl like her about you would do you a
  great deal of good. We are both getting on in years, and need
  something young to keep us from growing old, and you might make her
  your companion. She is very pretty, with a soft, cultivated voice, and
  must be a good reader. Think of it, and if you decide to do it,
  inquire for her at Captain Alling’s. Her name is Maude Graham.

                                              Yours lovingly,
                                                                  “MAX.”

This was Max’s letter, which Grace read as she sat in her cosy
sitting-room with every luxury around her which money could buy, from
the hot house roses on the stand beside her to the costly rug on which
her chair was standing in the ruddy glow of the cheerful grate fire. And
as she read it she felt again the cold breath which had swept over her
when Max was telling her of the young girl who had interested him so
much. And in a way Grace, too, had interested herself in Maude, and
through her maid had ascertained who she was, and that she was teaching
in the southern part of the town. And there her interest had ceased. But
it revived again on the receipt of Max’s letter and she said, “I must
see this girl first and know what she is like. A woman can judge a woman
better than a man, but I wish Max had not said what he did about our
growing old. Am I greatly changed, I wonder?”

She could manage her chair herself in the house, and wheeling it before
a long mirror, she leaned eagerly forward and examined the face
reflected there. A pale, sweet face, framed in masses of snow white
hair, which rather added to its youthful appearance than detracted from
it, although she did not think so. She had been so proud of her golden
hair, and the bitterest tears she had ever shed had been for the change
in it.

“It’s my hair,” she whispered sadly,—“hair which belongs to a woman of
sixty, rather than thirty-three, and there is a tired look about my eyes
and mouth. Yes, I am growing old, oh, Max——,” and the slender fingers
were pressed over the beautiful blue eyes where the tears came so fast.
“Yes, I’ll see the girl,” she said, “and if I like her face, I’ll take
her to please him.”

She knew there was to be an illumination on Christmas Eve in the church
on Laurel Hill, and that Maude Graham was to sing a Christmas anthem
alone.

“I’ll go, and hear, and see,” she decided, and when the evening came
Grace was there in the Raynor pew listening while Maude Graham sang, her
bright face glowing with excitement and her full, rich voice rising
higher and higher, clearer and clearer, until it filled the church as it
had never been filled before, and thrilled every nerve of the woman
watching her so intently.

“Yes, she is pretty and good, too; I cannot be deceived in that face,”
she said to herself, and when, after the services were over and Maude
came up the aisle past the pew where she was sitting, she put out her
hand and said, “Come here, my dear, and let me thank you for the
pleasure you have given me. You have a wonderful voice and some time you
must come and sing to me. I am Miss Raynor, and you are Maude Graham.”

This was their introduction to each other, and that night Maud dreamed
of the lovely face which had smiled upon her, and the voice, which had
spoken so kindly to her.

Two weeks afterwards Grace’s note was brought to her and she read it
with her feet upon the stove hearth and the low January sun shining in
upon her.

Miss Raynor wanted her for a companion and friend, to read and sing to
and soothe her in the hours of languor and depression, which were many.

  “I am lonely,” she wrote, “and, as you know, wholly incapacitated from
  mingling with the world, and I want some one with me different from my
  maid. Will you come to me, Miss Graham? I will try to make you happy.
  If money is any object I will give you twice as much as you are now
  receiving, whatever that may be. Think of it and let me know your
  decision soon.

                                                 “Yours very truly,
                                                         “GRACE RAYNOR.”

“Oh,” Maude cried. “Eight dollars a week and a home at the Cedars,
instead of four dollars a week and boarding around. Of course I will go,
though not till my present engagement expires. This will not be until
some time in March,” and she began to wonder if she could endure it so
long, and, now that the pressure was lifting, how she had ever borne it
at all.

But whatever may be the nature of our surroundings, time passes quickly,
and leaves behind a sense of nearly as much pleasure as pain, and when
at last the closing day of school came, it was with genuine feelings of
regret that Maude said good-bye to the pupils she had learned to love
and the patrons who had been so kind to her.




                              CHAPTER VII.
                             AT THE CEDARS.


It had cost Grace a struggle before she decided to take Maude as her
companion, and she had been driven past the little log house among the
hills and through the Bush district, that she might judge for herself of
the girl’s surroundings. The day was raw and blustering, and great banks
of snow were piled against the fences and lay heaped up in the road
unbroken save by a foot path made by the children’s feet.

“And it is through this she walks in the morning, and then sits all day
in that dingy room. I don’t believe I should like it,” Grace thought,
and that night she wrote to Maude, offering her a situation with
herself.

And now, on a lovely morning in April, when the crocuses and snowdrops
were just beginning to blossom, she sat waiting for her, wondering if
she had done well or ill for herself. She had seen Maude and talked with
her, for the latter had called at the Cedars and spent an hour or more,
and Grace had learned much from her of her former life and of Spring
Farm, which she was going to buy back. Max’s name, however, was not
mentioned, although he was constantly in the minds of both, and Grace
was wondering if he would come oftener to the Cedars if Maude were
there. She could not be jealous of the girl, and yet the idea had taken
possession of her that she was bringing her to the Cedars for Max rather
than for herself, and this detracted a little from her pleasure when she
began to fit up the room her companion was to occupy. Such a pretty room
it was, just over her own, with a bow window looking across the valley
where the lake lay sleeping, and on to the hills and the log
school-house which, had it been higher, might have been seen above the
woods which surrounded it. A room all pink and white, with roses and
lilies everywhere, and a bright fire in the grate before which a willow
chair was standing and a Maltese kitten sleeping when Maude was ushered
into it by Jane, Miss Raynor’s maid.

“Oh, it is so lovely,” Maude thought, as she looked about her, wondering
if it were not a dream from which she should presently awake.

But it was no dream, and as the days went on it came to be real to her,
and she was conscious of a deep and growing affection for the woman who
was always so kind to her and who treated her like an equal rather than
a hired companion. Together they read and talked of the books which
Maude liked best, and gradually Grace learned of the dream life Maude
had led before coming to Richland, and of the people who had deserted
her among the hills, but who in this more congenial atmosphere came
trooping back, legions of them, and crowding her brain until she had to
tell of them, and of the two lives she was living, the ideal and the
real. She was sitting on a stool at Grace’s feet, with her face flushed
with excitement as she talked of the Kimbricks, and Websters, and
Angeline Mason, who were all with her now as they had been at home, and
all as real to her as Miss Raynor was herself. Laying her hand upon the
girl’s brown curls, Grace said, half laughingly, “And so you are going
to write a book. Well, I believe all girls have some such aspiration. I
had it once, but it was swallowed up by a stronger, deeper feeling,
which absorbed my whole being.”

Here Grace’s voice trembled a little as she leaned back in her chair and
seemed to be thinking. Then, rousing herself, she asked suddenly, “How
old are you, Maude?”

“Nineteen this month,” was Maude’s reply, and Grace went on: “Just my
age when the great sorrow came. That was fourteen years ago next June. I
am thirty-three, and Max is thirty-seven.”

She said this last more to herself than to Maude, who started slightly,
for this was the first time his name had been mentioned since she came
to the Cedars.

After a moment Grace continued: “I have never spoken to you of Mr.
Gordon, although I know you have met him. You were with him on the train
from Albany to Canandaigua; he told me of you.”

“He did!” Maude exclaimed, with a ring in her voice which made Grace’s
heart beat a little faster, but she went calmly on:

“Yes; he was greatly interested in you, although he did not then know
who you were; but he knows now. He is coming here soon. We have been
engaged ever since I was seventeen and he was twenty-one; fourteen years
ago the 20th of June we were to have been married. Everything was ready;
my bridal dress and veil had been brought home, and I tried them on one
morning to see how I looked in them. I was beautiful, Max said, and I
think he told the truth; for a woman may certainly know whether the face
she sees in the mirror be pretty or not, and the picture I saw was very
fair, while he, who stood beside me, was splendid in his young manhood.
How I loved him; more, I fear, than I loved God, and for that I was
punished,—oh, so dreadfully punished. We rode together that afternoon,
Max and I, and I was wondering if there were ever a girl as happy as
myself, and pitying the women I met because they had no Max beside them,
when suddenly my horse reared, frightened by a dog, and I was thrown
upon a sharp curb-stone. Of the months of agony which followed I cannot
tell you, except that I prayed to die and so be rid of pain. The injury
was in my spine, and I have never walked in all the fourteen years
since. Max has been true to me, and would have married me had I allowed
it. But I cannot burden him with a cripple, and sometimes I wish, or
think I do, that he would find some one younger, fairer than I am, on
whom to lavish his love. He would make a wife so happy. And yet it would
be hard for me, I love him so much. Oh, Max; I don’t believe he knows
how dear he is to me.”

She was crying softly now, and Maude was crying, too; and as she
smoothed the snow-white hair and kissed the brow on which lines were
beginning to show, she said:

“He will never find a sweeter face than yours.”

To her Max Gordon now was only the betrothed husband of her mistress,
and still she found herself looking forward to his visit with a keen
interest, wondering what he would say to her, and if his eyes would
kindle at sight of her as they had done when she saw him in the church
at Laurel Hill. He was to come on the 20th, the anniversary of the day
which was to have been his bridal day, and when the morning came, Grace
said to Maude:

“I’d like to wear my wedding gown; do you think it would be too much
like Dickens’ Miss Havershaw?”

“Yes, yes,” Maude answered, quickly, feeling that faded satin and lace
of fourteen years’ standing would be sadly out of place. “You are lovely
in those light gowns you wear so much,” she said.

So Grace wore the dress which Maude selected for her; a soft, woolen
fabric of a creamy tint, with a blue shawl, the color of her eyes,
thrown around her, and a bunch of June pinks, Max’s favorite flowers, at
her belt, Then, when she was ready, Maude wheeled her out to the piazza,
where they waited for their visitor.




                             CHAPTER VIII.
                           MAX AT THE CEDARS.


The train was late that morning and lunch was nearly ready before they
saw the open carriage turn into the grounds, with Max standing up in it
and waving his hat to them.

“Oh, Maude,” Grace said, “I would give all I am worth to go and meet
him. Isn’t he handsome and grand, my Max!” she continued, as if she
would assert her right to him and hold it against the world.

But Maude did not hear her, for as Max alighted from the carriage and
came eagerly forward, she stole away, feeling that it was not for her to
witness the meeting of the lovers.

“Dear Max, you are not changed, are you?” Grace cried, extending her
arms to him, with the effort to rise which she involuntarily made so
often, and which was pitiful to see.

“Changed, darling? How could I change in less than a year?” Max
answered, as he drew her face down to his bosom and stroked her hair.

Grace was not thinking of a physical change. Indeed she did not know
what she did mean, for she was not herself conscious how strong an idea
had taken possession of her that she was losing Max. But with him there
beside her, her morbid fears vanished, and letting her head rest upon
his arm, she said:

“I don’t know, Max, only things come back to me to-day and I am thinking
of fourteen years ago and that I am fourteen years older than I was
then, and crippled and helpless and faded, while you are young as ever.
Oh, Max, stay by me till the last. It will not be for long. I am growing
so tired and sad.”

Grace hardly knew what she was saying, or why, as she said it, Maude
Graham’s face, young and fair and fresh, seemed to come between herself
and Max, any more than he could have told why he was so vaguely
wondering what had become of the girl in black, whom he had seen in the
distance quite as soon as he had seen the woman in the chair. During his
journey Grace and Maude had been pretty equally in his mind, and he was
conscious of the feeling that the Cedars held an added attraction for
him because the latter was there; and now, when he began to have a faint
perception of Grace’s meaning, though he did not associate it with
Maude, he felt half guilty because he had for a moment thought any place
where Grace was could be made pleasanter than she could make it. Taking
her face between his hands he looked at it more closely, noticing with a
pang that it had grown thinner and paler and that there were lines about
the eyes and the mouth, while the blue veins stood out full and distinct
upon the forehead. Was she slowly fading? he asked himself, resolving
that nothing should be lacking on his part to prove that she was just as
dear to him as in the days when they were young and the future bright
before them. He did not even speak of Maude until he saw her in the
distance, trying to train a refractory honeysuckle over a tall frame.
Then he said:

“Is that Miss Graham, and do you like her as well as ever?”

“Yes, better and better every day,” was Grace’s reply. “It was a little
awkward at first to have a stranger with me continually, but I am
accustomed to her now, and couldn’t part with her. She is very dear to
me,” she continued, while Max listened and watched the girl, moving
about so gracefully, and once showing her arms to the elbows as her wide
sleeves fell back in her efforts to reach the top of the frame.

“She oughtn’t to do that,” Grace said. “She is not tall enough. Go and
help her, Max,” and nothing loth, Max went along the terrace to where
Maude was standing, her face flushed with exercise as she gave him her
hand and said, “Good-morning, Mr. Gordon. I am Maude Graham. Perhaps you
remember me.”

“How could I forget you,” sprang to Max’s lips, but he said instead,
“Good-morning, Miss Graham. I have come to help you. Miss Raynor thinks
it is bad for your heart to reach so high.”

Maude could have told him that her heart had not beaten one half as fast
while reaching up as it was beating now, with him there beside her
holding the vine while she tied it to its place, his hand touching hers
and his arm once thrown out to keep her from falling as she stumbled
backward. It took a long time to fix that honeysuckle, and Max had
leisure to tell Maude of a call made upon her mother only a week before.

“Spring Farm is looking its loveliest, with the roses and lilies in
bloom,” he said, “and Angie, my sister, is enjoying it immensely. She
has filled the house with her city friends and has made some changes, of
which I think you would approve. Your mother does, but when she wanted
to cut down that apple-tree in the corner I would not let her do it. You
remember it, don’t you?”

“Oh, Mr. Gordon,” Maude exclaimed, “don’t let her touch that tree. My
play-house was under it, and there the people used to come to see me.”

He did not know who the people were, for he had never heard of Maude’s
brain children,—the Kimbricks and the Websters,—and could hardly have
understood if he had; but Maude’s voice was very pathetic and the eyes
which looked at him were full of tears, moving him strangely and making
him very earnest in his manner as he assured her that every tree and
shrub should be kept intact for her.

“You know you are going to buy it back,” he continued laughingly, as
they walked slowly toward the house where Grace was waiting to be taken
in to lunch.

“Yes, and I shall do it, too. You will see; it may be many years, but I
trust you to keep it for me,” Maude said, and he replied, “You may trust
me with anything, and I shall not disappoint you.”

The talk by the honeysuckle was one of many which took place while Max
was at the Cedars, for Grace was too unselfish to keep him chained to
her side, and insisted that he should enjoy what there was to enjoy in
the way of rides and drives in the neighborhood, and as she could not
often go with him she sent Maude in her stead, even though she knew the
danger there was in it, for she was not insensible to Max’s admiration
for the girl, or Maude’s interest in him.

“If Max is true to me to the last, and he will be, it is all I ask,” she
thought, and gave no sign of the ache in her heart, when she saw him
going from her with Maude and felt that it was in more senses than one.
“If he is happy, I am happy, too, she would say to herself, as she sat
alone hour after hour, while Max and Maude explored the country in every
direction.

Sometimes they drove together, but oftener rode, for Maude was a fine
horsewoman and never looked better than when on horseback, in the
becoming habit which Grace had given her and which fitted her admirably.
Together they went through the pleasant Richland woods, where the grass
was like a mossy carpet beneath their horses’ hoofs, and the singing of
the birds and the brook was the only sound which broke the summer
stillness, then again they galloped over the hills and round the lake,
and once through the Bush district, up to the little log house which Max
expressed a wish to see. It was past the hour for school. Teacher and
scholars had gone home, and tying their horses to the fence they went
into the dingy room and sat down side by side upon one of the wooden
benches, and just where a ray of sunlight fell upon Maude’s face and
hair, for she had removed her hat and was fanning herself with it. She
was very beautiful, with that halo around her head, Max thought, as he
sat watching and listening to her, as in answer to his question, “How
could you endure it here?” she told him of her terrible homesickness
during the first weeks of her life as a school-teacher.

“I longed so for mother and Johnnie,” she said, “and was always thinking
of them, and the dear old home, and—and sometimes—of you, too, before I
received your letter.”

“Of me!” Max said, moving a little nearer to her, while she went on:

“Yes, I’ve wanted to tell you how angry I was because you bought our
home. I wrote you something about it, you remember, but I did not tell
you half how bitter I felt. I know now you were not to blame, but I did
not think so then, and said some harsh things of you to Archie; perhaps
he told you. I said he might. Did he?”

“No,” Max answered, playing idly with the riding whip Maude held in her
hand. “No, Archie has only told me pleasant things of you. I think he is
very fond of you,” and he looked straight into Maude’s face, waiting for
her reply.

It was surely nothing to him whether Archie were fond of Maude, or she
were fond of Archie, and yet her answer was very reassuring and lifted
from his heart a little shadow resting there.

“Yes,” Maude said, without the slightest change in voice or expression.
“Archie and I are good friends. I have known him and played with him,
and quarreled with him ever since I was a child, so that he seems more
like a brother than anything else.”

“Oh, ye-es,” Max resumed, with a feeling of relief, as he let his arm
rest on the high desk behind her, so that if she moved ever so little it
would touch her.

There was in Max’s mind no thought of love-making. Indeed, he did not
know that he was thinking of anything except the lovely picture the
young girl made with the sunlight playing on her hair and the shy look
in her eyes as, in a pretty, apologetic way she told him how she had
disliked him and credited him with all the trouble which had come upon
them since her father’s death.

“Why, I thought I hated you,” she said with energy.

“Hated me! Oh, Maude, you don’t hate me now, I hope;—I could not bear
that,” Max said, letting the whip fall and taking Maude’s hand in his,
as he said again, “You don’t hate me now?”

“No, no; oh, no. I—oh, Mr. Gordon,” Maude began, but stopped abruptly,
startled by something in the eyes of the man, who had never called her
Maude before, and whose voice had never sounded as it did now, making
every nerve thrill with a sudden joy, all the sweeter, perhaps, because
she knew it must not be.

Wrenching her hand from his and springing to her feet she said, “It is
growing late, and Miss Raynor is waiting for us. Have you forgotten
_her_?”

He had forgotten her for one delirious moment, but she came back to him
with a throb of pain and self-reproach that he had allowed himself to
swerve in the slightest degree from his loyalty to her.

“I am not a man, but a traitor,” he said to himself, as he helped Maude
into her saddle and then vaulted into his own.

The ride home was a comparatively silent one, for both knew that they
had not been quite true to the woman who welcomed them back so sweetly
and asked so many questions about their ride and what they had seen.
Poor Grace; she did not in the least understand why Maude lavished so
much attention upon her that evening, or why Max lingered longer than
usual at her side, or why his voice was so tender and loving, when he at
last said good-night and went to his own room, and the self-castigation
which he knew awaited him there.

“I was a villain,” he said, as he recalled that little episode in the
school-house, when to have put his arm around Maude Graham and held her
for a moment, would have been like heaven to him. “I was false to Grace,
although I did not mean it, and, God helping me, I will never be so
again.” Then, as he remembered the expression of the eyes which had
looked up so shyly at him, he said aloud, “Could I win her, were I free?
But that is impossible. May God forgive me for the thought. Oh, why has
Grace thrown her so much in my way? She surely is to blame for that,
while I——well, I am a fool, and a knave, and a sneak.”

He called himself a great many hard names that night, and registered a
vow that so long as Grace lived, and he said he hoped she would live
forever, he would be true to her no matter how strong the temptation
placed in his way. It was a fierce battle Max fought, but he came off
conqueror, and the meeting between himself and Maude next morning was as
natural as if to neither of them had ever come a moment when they had a
glimpse of the happiness which, under other circumstances, might perhaps
have been theirs. Maude, too, had had her hours of remorse and
contrition and close questioning as to the cause of the strange joy
which had thrilled every nerve when Max Gordon called her Maude and
asked her if she hated him.

“Hate him! Never!” she thought; “but I have been false to the truest,
best woman that ever lived. She trusted her lover to me, and——”

She did not quite know what she had done, but whatever it was it should
not be repeated. There were to be no more rides, or drives, or talks
alone with Max. And when next day Grace suggested that she go with him
to an adjoining town where a fair was to be held, she took refuge in a
headache and insisted that Grace should go herself, while Max, too,
encouraged it, and tried to believe that he was just as happy with her
beside him as he would have been with the young girl who brought a
cushion for her mistress’ back and adjusted her shawl about her
shoulders and arranged her bonnet strings, and then, kissing her fondly,
said, “I am so glad that you are going instead of myself.”

This was for the benefit of Max, at whom she nodded a little defiantly,
and who understood her meaning as well as if she had put it into words.
Everything was over between them, and he accepted the situation, and
during the remainder of his stay at the Cedars, devoted himself to Grace
with an assiduity worthy of the most ardent lover. He even remained
longer than he had intended doing, for Grace was loth to let him go, and
the soft haze of early September was beginning to show on the Richland
hills when he at last said good-bye, promising to come again at
Christmas, if it were possible to do so.




                              CHAPTER IX.
                        GOOD-BYE, MAX; GOOD-BYE.


It was a cold, stormy afternoon in March. The thermometer marked six
below zero, and the snow which had fallen the day before was tossed by
the wind in great white clouds, which sifted through every crevice of
the house at the Cedars, and beat against the window from which Maude
Graham was looking anxiously out into the storm for the carriage which
had been sent to meet the train in which Max Gordon was expected. He had
not kept his promise to be with Grace at Christmas. An important lawsuit
had detained him, and as it would be necessary for him to go to London
immediately after its close, he could not tell just when he would be at
the Cedars again.

All through the autumn Grace had been failing, while a cold, taken in
November, had left her with a cough, which clung to her persistently.
Still she kept up, looking forward to the holidays, when Max would be
with her. But when she found he was not coming she lost all courage, and
Maude was alarmed to see how rapidly she failed. Nearly all the day she
lay upon the couch in her bedroom, while Maude read or sang to her or
talked with her of the book which had actually been commenced, and in
which Grace was almost as much interested as Maude herself. Grace was a
careful and discriminating critic, and if Maude were ever a success she
would owe much of it to the kind friend whose sympathy and advice were
so invaluable. A portion of every day she wrote, and every evening read
what she had written, to Grace, who smiled as she recognized Max Gordon
in the hero and knew that Maude was weaving the tale mostly from her own
experience. Even the Bush district and its people furnished material for
the plot, and more than one boy and girl who had called Maude
schoolma’am figured in its pages, while Grace was everywhere, permeating
the whole with her sweetness and purity.

“I shall dedicate it to you,” Maude said to her one day, and Grace
replied:

“That will be kind; but I shall not be here to see it, for before your
book is published I shall be lying under the flowers in Mt. Auburn. I
want you to take me there, if Max is not here to do it.”

“Oh, Miss Raynor,” Maude cried, dropping her MS. and sinking upon her
knees beside the couch where Grace was lying, “you must not talk that
way. You are not going to die. I can’t lose you, the dearest friend I
ever had. What should I do without you, and what would Max Gordon do?”

At the mention of Max’s name a faint smile played around Grace’s white
lips, and lifting her thin hand she laid it caressingly upon the girl’s
brown hair as she said:

“Max will be sorry for awhile, but after a time there will be a change,
and I shall be only a memory. Tell him I was willing, and that although
it was hard at first it was easy at the last.”

What did she mean? Maude asked herself, while her thoughts went back to
that summer afternoon in the log school-house on the hill, when Max
Gordon’s eyes and voice had in them a tone and look born of more than
mere friendship. Did Grace know? Had she guessed the truth? Maude
wondered, as, conscience-stricken, she laid her burning cheek against
the pale one upon the pillow. There was silence a moment, and when Grace
spoke again she said:

“It is nearly time for Max to be starting for Europe, or I should send
for him to come, I wish so much to see him once more before I die.”

“Do you think a hundred trips to Europe would keep him from you if he
knew you wanted him?” Maude asked, and Grace replied:

“Perhaps not. I don’t know. I only wish he were here.”

This was the last of February, and after that Grace failed so fast, that
with the hope that it might reach him before he sailed, Maude wrote to
Max, telling him to come at once, if he would see Grace before she died.
She knew about how long it would take her letter to reach him and how
long for him to come, allowing for no delays, and on the morning of the
first day when she could by any chance expect him, she sent the carriage
to the Canandaigua station, and then all through the hours of the long,
dreary day, she sat by Grace’s bedside, watching with a sinking heart
the pallor on her lips and brow, and the look she could not mistake
deepening on her face.

“What if she should die before he gets here, or what if he should not
come at all?” she thought, as the hours went by.

She was more afraid of the latter, and when she saw the carriage coming
up the avenue she strained her eyes through the blinding snow to see if
he were in it. When he came before he had stood up and waved his hat to
them, but there was no token now to tell if he were there, and she
waited breathlessly until the carriage stopped before the side entrance,
knowing then for sure that he had come.

“Thank God!” she cried, as she went out to meet him, bursting into tears
as she said to him, “I am so glad, and so will Miss Raynor be. She does
not know that I wrote you. I didn’t tell her, for fear you wouldn’t
come.”

She had given him her hand and he was holding it fast as she led him
into the hall. She did not ask him when or where he received her letter.
She only helped him off with his coat, and made him sit down by the fire
while she told him how rapidly Grace had failed and how little hope
there was that she would ever recover.

“You will help her, if anything can. I am going to prepare her now,” she
said, and, going out, she left him there alone.

He had been very sorry himself that he could not keep his promise at
Christmas, and had tried to find a few days in which to visit the Cedars
between the close of the suit and his departure for England. But he
could not, and his passage was taken and his luggage on the ship, which
was to sail early in the morning, when, about six o’clock in the
evening, Maude’s letter was brought to him, changing his plans at once.
Grace was dying,—the woman he had loved so long, and although thousands
of dollars depended upon his keeping his appointment in London, he must
lose it all, and go to her. Sending for his luggage, and writing a few
letters of explanation, the next morning found him on his way to the
Cedars, which he reached on the day when Maude expected him.

She had left Grace asleep when she went to meet Max, but on re-entering
her room found her awake and leaning on her elbow in the attitude of
intense listening.

“Oh, Maude,” she said, “was it a dream, or did I hear Max speaking to
you in the hall? Tell me is he here?”

“Yes, he is here. I sent for him and he came,” Maude replied, while
Grace fell back upon her pillow, whispering faintly:

“Bring him at once.”

“Come,” Maude said to Max, who followed her to the sick-room, where she
left him alone with Grace.

He stayed by her all that night and the day following, in order to give
Maude the rest she needed, but when the second night came they kept the
watch together, he on one side of the bed, and she upon the other, with
their eyes fixed upon the white, pinched face where the shadow of death
was settling. For several hours Grace slept quietly. Then, just as the
gray daylight was beginning to show itself in the corners of the room,
she awoke and asked:

“Where is Max?”

“Here, darling,” was his response, as he bent over her and kissed her
lips.

“I think it has grown cold and dark, for I can’t see you,” she said,
groping for his hand, which she held tightly between her own as she went
on: “I have been dreaming, Max,—such a pleasant dream, for I was young
again,—young as Maude, and wore my bridal dress, just as I did that day
when you said I was so pretty. Do you remember it? That was years
ago,—oh! so many,—and I am getting old; we both are growing old. You
said so in your letter. But Maude is young, and in my dream she wore the
bridal dress at the last, and I saw my own grave, with you beside it and
Maude, and both so sorry because I was dead. But it is better so, and I
am glad to die and be at rest. If I could be what I once was, oh! how I
should cling to life! For I love you so much! Oh, Max, do you know, can
you guess how I have loved you all these years, and what it has cost me
to give you up?”

Max’s only answer was the hot tears he dropped upon her face as she went
on: “You will not forget me, that I know; but some time,—yes, some
time,—and when it comes, remember I was willing. I told Maude so. Where
is she?”

“Here!” and Maude knelt, sobbing, by the dying woman, who went on: “She
has been everything to me, Max, and I love her next to you. God bless
you both! And if, in the Heaven I am going to, I can watch over you, I
will do it, and be often, often with you, when you think I’m far away.
Who was it said that? I read it long ago. But things are going from me,
and Heaven is very near, and the Saviour is with me,—closer, nearer than
you are, Max; and the other world is just in sight, where I soon shall
be, free from pain, with my poor, crippled feet all strong and well,
like Maude’s. Dear Maude! tell her how I loved her; tell her——”

Here her voice grew indistinct, and for a few moments she seemed to be
sleeping; then, suddenly, opening her eyes wide, she exclaimed, as an
expression of joy broke over her face: “It is here,—the glory which
shineth as the noonday. In another moment I shall be walking the golden
streets. Good-bye, Max; good-bye.”

Grace was dead, and Maude made her ready for the coffin, her tears
falling like rain upon the shrivelled feet and on the waxen hands which
she folded over the pulseless bosom, placing in them the flowers her
mistress had loved best in life. She was to be buried in Mt. Auburn, and
Maude went with the remains to Boston, as Grace had requested her to do,
caring nothing because Mrs. Marshall-More hinted broadly at the
impropriety of the act, wondering how she could have done it.

“She did it at Grace’s request, and to please me,” Max said; and that
silenced the lady, who was afraid of her brother, and a little afraid of
Maude, who did not seem quite the girl she had last seen in Merrivale.

“What will you do now? Go back to your teaching?” she asked, after the
funeral was over.

“I shall go home to mother,” Maude replied, and that afternoon she took
the train for Merrivale, accompanied by Max, who was going on to New
York, and thence to keep his appointment in London.

Few were the words spoken between them during the journey, and those
mostly of the dead woman lying under the snow at Mt. Auburn; but when
Merrivale was reached, Max took the girl’s hands and pressed them hard
as he called her a second time by her name.

“God bless you, Maude, for all you were to Grace. When I can I will
write to you. Good-bye.”

Only for a moment the train stopped at the station, and then it moved
swiftly on, leaving Maude standing upon the platform with her mother and
John, while Max resumed his seat, and pulling his hat over his eyes,
never spoke again until New York was reached. A week later and a ship of
the Cunard line was plowing the ocean to the eastward, and Max Gordon
was among the passengers, silent and abstracted, with a bitter sense of
loneliness and pain in his heart as he thought of the living and the
dead he was leaving behind,—Grace, who was to have been his bride, dead
in all her sweetness and beauty, and Maude, who was nothing to him but a
delicious memory, alive in all her freshness and youthful bloom. He
could hardly tell of which he thought the more, Grace or Maude. Both
seemed ever present with him, and it was many a day before he could rid
himself of the fancy that two faces were close against his own, one cold
and dead, as he had seen it last, with the snowy hair about the brow and
a smile of perfect peace upon the lips which had never said aught but
words of love to him,—the other glowing with life and girlish beauty, as
it had looked at him in the gathering darkness when he stood upon the
car step and waved it his good-bye.




                               CHAPTER X.
                                AT LAST.


Five years had passed since Grace was laid in her grave in Mt. Auburn,
and Max was still abroad, leading that kind of Bohemian life which many
Americans lead in Europe, when there is nothing to call them home. And
to himself Max often said there was nothing to call him home, but as
often as he said it a throb of pain belied his words, for he knew that
across the sea was a face and voice he was longing to see and hear
again, a face which now visited him in his dreams quite as often as that
of his dead love, and which he always saw as it had looked at him that
summer afternoon in the log house among the Richland hills, with the
sunlight falling upon the rings of hair, and lending a warmer tint to
the glowing cheeks. Delicious as was the memory of that afternoon, it
had been the means of keeping Max abroad during all these years, for, in
the morbid state of mind into which he had fallen after Grace’s death,
he felt that he must do penance for having allowed himself for a moment
to forget her, who had believed in him so fully.

“Grace trusted me, and I was false to her and will punish myself for it,
even if by the means I lose all that now makes life seem desirable,” he
thought.

And so he stayed on and on, year after year, knowing always just where
Maude was and what she was doing, for Archie kept him informed.
Occasionally he wrote to her himself,—pleasant, chatty letters, which
had in them a great deal of Grace,—his lost darling, he called her,—and
a little of the places he was visiting. Occasionally, too, Maude wrote
to him, her letters full of Grace, with a little of her life in
Merrivale, for she was with her mother now, and had been since Miss
Raynor’s death. A codicil to Grace’s will, bequeathing her a few
thousand dollars, made it unnecessary for her to earn her own
livelihood. Indeed, she might have bought Spring Farm, if she had liked;
but this she would not do. The money given for that must be earned by
herself, paid by the book she was writing, and which, after it was
finished and published, and after a few savage criticisms by some
dyspeptic critics, who saw no good in it, began to be read, then to be
talked about, then to sell,—until finally it became the rage and was
found in every book store, and railway car, and on almost every parlor
table in New England, while the young authoress was spoken of as “a star
which at one flight had soared to the zenith of literary fame,” and this
from the very pens which at first had denounced “Sunny Bank” as a
milk-and-watery effort, not worth the paper on which it was written.

All Mrs. Marshall-More’s guests at Spring Farm read it, and Mrs.
Marshall-More and Archie read it, too, and both went down to
congratulate the author upon her success, the latter saying to her, when
they were alone:

“I say, Maude, your prophecy came true. You told me you’d write a book
which every one would read, and which would make mother proud to say she
knew you, and, by Jove, you have done it. You ought to hear her talk to
some of the Boston people about Miss Graham, the authoress. You’d
suppose you’d been her dearest friend. I wonder what Uncle Max will say?
I told you you would make him your hero, and you have. I recognized him
at once; but the heroine is more like Grace than you. I am going to send
it to him.”

And the next steamer which sailed from New York for Europe carried with
it Maude’s book, directed to Max Gordon, who read it at one sitting in a
sunny nook of the Colosseum, where he spent a great part of his time.
Grace was in it, and he was in it, too, he was sure, and, reading
between the lines what a stranger could not read, he felt when he had
finished it that in the passionate love of the heroine for the hero he
heard Maude calling to him to come back to the happiness there was still
for him.

“And I will go,” he said. “Five years of penance have atoned for five
minutes of forgetfulness, and Grace would bid me go, if she could, for
she foresaw what would be, and told me she was willing.”

With Max to will was to do, and among the list of passengers who sailed
from Liverpool, March 20th, 18—, was the name of Maxwell Gordon, Boston,
Mass.

                  *       *       *       *       *

It was the 2d of April, and a lovely morning, with skies as blue and air
as soft and warm as in the later days of May. Spring Farm, for the
season, was looking its loveliest, for Mrs. Marshall-More had lavished
fabulous sums of money upon it, until she had very nearly transformed it
into what she meant it should be, an English Park. She knew that Maude
had once expressed her intention to buy it back some day, but this she
was sure she could never do, and if she could Max would never sell it,
and if he would she would never let him. So, with all these _nevers_ to
reassure her, she went on year after year improving and beautifying the
place until it was worth far more than when it came into her hands, and
she was contemplating still greater improvements during the coming
summer, when Max suddenly walked in upon her, and announced his
intention of going to Merrivale the next day.

“But where will you stay? Both houses are closed only the one at Spring
Farm has in it an old couple—Mr. and Mrs. Martin—who look after it in
the winter,” she said, and Max replied:

“I will stay at Spring Farm with the Martins. I want to see the place.”
And the next day found him there, occupying the room which, by a little
skillful questioning of Mrs. Martin, he learned had been Maude’s when
her father owned the farm.

Miss Graham was home, she said, and at once launched out into praises of
the young authoress of whom Merrivale was so proud.

“And to think,” she said, “that she was born here in this very house! It
seems so queer.”

“And is the house more honored now than when she was simple Maude
Graham?” Max asked, and the old lady replied:

“To be sure it is. Any house can have a baby born in it, but not every
one an authoress!” and with that she bustled off to see about supper for
her guest.

Max was up early the next morning, wondering how soon it would be proper
for him to call upon Maude. He had no thought that she would come to
him, and was somewhat surprised when just after breakfast her card was
brought up by Mrs. Martin, who said she was in the parlor. Maude had
heard of his arrival from Mr. Martin, who had stopped at the cottage the
previous night on his way to the village.

“Mr. Gordon in town! I supposed he was in Europe!” she exclaimed,
feeling herself grow hot and cold and faint as she thought of Max Gordon
being so near to her.

That very afternoon she had received the first check from her publisher,
and been delighted with the amount, so much more than she had expected.
There was enough to buy Spring Farm, if Max did not ask too much, and
she resolved to write to him at once and ask his price. But that was not
necessary now, for he was here and she should see him face to face, and
the next morning she started for Spring Farm immediately after their
breakfast, which was never served very early.

“Will he find me greatly changed, I wonder,” she thought, as she sat
waiting for him, her heart beating so rapidly that she could scarcely
speak when at last he came and stood before her, the same man she had
parted from five years before save that he seemed a little older, with a
look of weariness in his eyes.

But that lifted the moment they rested upon her.

“Oh, Maude,” was all he could say, as he looked into the face he had
seen so often in his dreams, though never as beautiful as it was now.
“Maude,” he began at last, “I cannot tell you how glad I am to see you
again, or how glad I am for your success. I read the book in Rome.
Archie sent it to me, and I have come to congratulate you.”

He was talking so fast and pressing her hands so hard that he almost
took her breath away. But she released herself from him, and,
determining to have the _business_ off her mind as soon as possible,
began abruptly:

“I was surprised to hear of your arrival, and glad, too, as it saves me
the trouble of writing you. I can buy Spring Farm now. You know you
promised to keep it for me. What is your price?”

“How much can you give?” Max asked; and without stopping to consider the
strangeness of the question, Maude told him frankly the size of the
check she had received, and asked if it were enough.

“No, Maude,” Max said, and over the face looking so anxiously at him
there fell a cloud of disappointment as Maude replied:

“Is it much more you ask?”

“Yes, a great deal more,” and Max seated himself beside her upon the
sofa, for she was now sitting down; “but I think you can arrange it.
Don’t look so sorry; It is _you_ I want, not your money. Will you give
me yourself in return for Spring Farm?”

He had her hands again, but she drew them from him, and covering her
face with them, began to cry, while he went on:

“Five years is a long time to wait for one we love, and I have waited
that length of time, with thoughts of you in my heart, almost as much as
thoughts of Grace, whom I loved dearly while she lived. But she is dead,
and could she speak she would bid you grant me the happiness I have been
denied so many years. I think she knew it would come some day. I am sure
she did, and she told me she was willing. I did not mean to ask you
quite so soon, but the sight of you, and the belief that you care for me
as I care for you, has made me forget all the proprieties, and I cannot
recall my words, so I ask you again to be my wife, to give me yourself
as the price of Spring Farm, which shall be your home as long as you
choose to make it so. Will you, Maude? I have come thousands of miles
for your answer, which must not be no.”

What else he said, or what she said, it is not necessary for the reader
to know; only this, that when the two walked back to the cottage Maude
said to her mother, “I am to marry Mr. Gordon in June, and you will
spend the summer in our old home, and John will go to college in the
fall.”

It was very bad taste in Max to select the 20th of June for his wedding
day, and she should suppose he would remember twenty years ago, when
Grace Raynor was to have been his bride, Mrs. Marshall-More said to
Archie, when commenting upon her brother’s approaching marriage, which
did not altogether please her. She would far rather that he should
remain single, for Archie’s sake and her own. And still it was some
comfort that she was to have for her sister one so famous as Maude was
getting to be. So she went up to Merrivale early in June and opened her
own house, and patronized Maude and Mrs. Graham, and made many
suggestions with regard to the wedding, which she would have had very
fine and elaborate had they allowed it. But Maude’s preference was for a
quiet affair, with only a few of her more intimate friends present. And
she had her way. Archie was there, of course, and made himself master of
ceremonies. He had received the news of Maude’s engagement with a keener
pang of regret than he had thought it possible for him to feel, and
suddenly woke up to a consciousness that he had always had a greater
liking for Maude than he supposed. But it was too late now, and casting
his regrets to the winds he made the best of it, and was apparently the
gayest of all the guests who, on the morning of the 20th of June,
assembled in Mrs. Graham’s parlor, where Max and Maude were made one.

Aunt Maude, Archie called her, as he kissed her and asked if she
remembered the time she cried on the neck of the brown ox, and declared
her hatred of Max and all his relations.

“But I did not know him then; did I, Max?” Maude said; and the bright
face she lifted to her husband told that she was far from hating him
now.

There was a short trip to the West and a flying visit to Richland and
the Cedars, so fraught with memories of the past and of Grace, whose
grave on the wedding day had been one mass of flowers which Max had
ordered put there. “Her wedding garment,” he said to Maude, to whom he
told what he had done. “She seems very near to me now, and I am sure she
is glad.”

                  *       *       *       *       *

It was a lovely July day, when Max and Maude returned from their bridal
journey and took possession of the old home at Spring Farm, where Mrs.
Graham met them with a very different expression upon her face from what
it wore when we first saw her there years ago. The place was hers again,
to enjoy as long as she lived; and if it had been beautiful when she
left it, she found it far more so now, for Mrs. Marshall-More’s
improvements, for which Max’s money had paid, were mostly in good taste,
and never had the grounds looked better than when Max and Maude drove
into them on this July afternoon. Although a little past their prime,
there were roses everywhere, and the grassy walks, which Mrs. More had
substituted in place of gravel, were freshly cut, and smooth and soft as
velvet, while the old-fashioned flowers Maude loved so well, were
filling the air with their perfume, and the birds in the maple tree
seemed carolling a welcome to the bride so full were they of song.

And here we shall leave her, happy in her old home and in her husband’s
love, which is more to her than all the world beside. Whether she will
ever write another book we do not know, probably she will, for where the
brain seeds have taken root it is hard to dislodge them, and Maude often
hears around her the voices of new ideal friends, to whom she may some
time be compelled to give shape and name, as she did to the friends of
her childhood.




                           THE HEPBURN LINE.




                       CHAPTER I.—DORIS’S STORY.
                               MY AUNTS.


I had come from my mother’s burial to the rector’s house, where I was to
stay until it should be known what disposition would be made of me by my
father’s aunts, the Misses Morton, who lived at Morton Park, near
Versailles, Kentucky. Of these aunts I knew little, except that there
were three of them now, but there had been four, and my
great-grandfather, an eccentric old man, had called them respectively,
Keziah, Desire, Maria and Beriah which odd names he had shortened into
Kizzy and Dizzy, Rier and Brier. My father, who had lived with them when
a boy, had often talked of Morton Park, and once when he was telling me
of the grand old house, with its wide piazza and Corinthian pillars, its
handsome grounds and the troop of blacks ready to come at his call, I
had asked him why he didn’t go back there, saying I should like it
better than our small cottage, where there were no grounds and no
Corinthian pillars and no blacks to wait upon us. For a moment he did
not answer, but glanced at my mother with a look of unutterable
tenderness, then, drawing us both closely to him, he said, “If I go
there I must leave you behind; and I would rather have mamma and you
than all the blacks and Corinthian pillars in the world.”

Although very young, I felt intuitively that Morton Park was not a
pleasant topic of conversation, and I rarely spoke of it to him after
that, but I often thought of it, with its Corinthian pillars for which I
had a great reverence, and of the blacks, and the maple-trees, and the
solid silver from which my aunts dined every day, and wondered when they
were so rich why we were so poor and why my father worked as hard as I
knew he did, for he often lay upon the couch, saying he was tired, and
looking very pale about his mouth, with a bright red spot on either
cheek. I heard some one call these spots “the hectic,” but did not know
what this meant until later on, when he stayed in bed all the time and
the doctor said he was dying with quick consumption. Then there came a
day when I was called from school and hurried home to find him dead,—my
handsome young father, who had always been so loving to me, and whose
last words were, “Tell little Doris to be a good girl and kind to her
mother. God bless her!”

The blow was so sudden that for a time my mother seemed stunned and
incapable of action, but she was roused at last by a letter from my Aunt
Keziah, to whom she had written after my father’s death. I say a letter,
but it was only an envelope containing a check for a hundred dollars and
a slip of paper with the words, “For Gerold’s child,” and when my mother
saw it there was a look on her face which I had never seen before, and I
think her first impulse was to tear up the check, but, reflecting that
it was not hers to destroy, she only burned the paper and put the money
in the bank for me, and then went bravely to work to earn her living and
mine, sometimes taking boarders, sometimes going out to nurse sick
people, and at last doing dressmaking at home and succeeding so well
that I never knew what real poverty was, and was as happy and free from
care as children usually are.

My father had been an artist, painting landscapes and portraits when he
could find sale for them, and, when he could not, painting houses, barns
and fences, for although he had been reared in the midst of luxury, and,
as I now know, belonged to one of the best families in Kentucky, he held
that all kinds of labor, if necessary, were honorable, and was not
ashamed to stand in his overalls side by side with men who in birth and
education were greatly his inferiors. At the time of his death he had in
his studio a few pictures which had not been sold. Among them was a
small one of the house in Morton Park, with its huge white pillars and
tall trees in front, and one or two negroes playing under the trees.
This I claimed for my own, and also another, which was a picture of his
four aunts taken in a group in what seemed to be a summer-house. “The
Quartette,” he called it, and I had watched him with a great deal of
interest as he brought into seeming real life the four faces so unlike
each other, Aunt Kizzy, stern and severe and prim, with a cap on her
head after the English style, which she affected because her grandfather
was English,—Aunt Dizzy, who was very pretty and very youthfully
dressed, with flowers in her hair,—Aunt Rier, a gentle, matronly woman,
with a fat baby in her lap which I did not think particularly
good-looking,—and Aunt Brier, with a sweet face like a Madonna and a
far-away look in her soft gray eyes which reminded one of Evangeline.
Behind the four was my father, leaning over Aunt Rier and holding a rose
before the baby, who was trying to reach it. The picture fascinated me
greatly, and when I heard it was to be sold, with whatever other effects
there were in the studio, I begged to keep it. But my mother said No,
with the same look on her face which I had seen when she burned Aunt
Kizzy’s letter. And so it was sold to a gentleman from Boston, who was
spending the summer in Meadowbrook, and I thought no more of it until
years after, when it was brought to my mind in a most unexpected manner.

I was ten when I lost my father, and fourteen when my mother, too, died
suddenly, and I was alone, with no home except the one the rector kindly
offered me until something should be heard from my aunts. My mother had
seemed so well and active, and, with her brilliant color and beautiful
blue eyes and chestnut hair which lay in soft waves all over her head,
had been so pretty and young and girlish-looking, that it was hard to
believe her dead, and the hearts of few girls of fourteen have ever been
wrung with such anguish as I felt when, after her funeral, I lay down
upon a bed in the rectory and sobbed myself into a disturbed sleep, from
which I was roused by the sound of voices in the adjoining room, where a
neighbor was talking with Mrs. Wilmot, the rector’s wife, of me and my
future.

“Her aunts will have to do something now. They will be ashamed not to.
Do you know why they have so persistently ignored Mr. and Mrs. Gerold
Morton?”

It was Mrs. Smith, the neighbor, who asked the question, and Mrs. Wilmot
replied, “I know but little, as Mrs. Morton was very reticent upon the
subject. I think, however, that the aunts were angry because Gerold, who
had always lived with them, made what they thought a misalliance by
marrying the daughter of the woman with whom he boarded when in college.
They had in mind another match for him, and when he disappointed them,
they refused to recognize his wife or to see him again.”

“But did he have nothing from his father? I thought the Mortons were
very rich,” Mrs. Smith said, and Mrs. Wilmot answered her, “Nothing at
all, for his father, too, had married against the wishes of _his_
father, a very hard and strange man, I imagine, who promptly
disinherited his son. But when the young wife died at the birth of her
child, the aunts took the little boy Gerold and brought him up as their
own. I do not at all understand it, but I believe the Morton estate is
held by a long lease and will eventually pass from the family unless
some one of them marries somebody in the family of the old man who gave
the lease.”

“They seem to be given to misalliances,” Mrs. Smith rejoined; “but if
they could have seen Gerold’s wife they must have loved her, she was so
sweet and pretty. Doris is like her. She will be a beautiful woman, and
her face alone should commend her to her aunts.”

No girl of fourteen can hear unmoved that she is lovely, and, although I
was hot with indignation at my aunts for their treatment of my father
and their contempt for my mother, I was conscious of a stir of
gratification, and as I went to the washstand to bathe my burning
forehead I glanced at myself in the mirror. My face was swollen with
weeping, and my eyes were very red, with dark circles around them, but
they were like my mother’s, and my hair was like hers, too, and there
was an expression about my mouth which brought her back to me. I was
like my mother, and I was glad she had left me her heritage of beauty,
although I cared but little whether it commended me to my aunts or not,
as I meant to keep aloof from them, if possible. I could take care of
myself, I thought, and any hardship would be preferable to living with
them, even should they wish to have me do so, which was doubtful.

To Mrs. Wilmot I said nothing of what I had overheard, but waited in
some anxiety for Aunt Kizzy’s letter, which came about two weeks after
my mother’s death. It was directed to Mr. Wilmot, and was as follows:

                                        “MORTON PARK, September 10, 18—.

  “REV. J. S. WILMOT:

  “DEAR SIR,—Your letter is received, and I have delayed my reply until
  we could give our careful consideration as to what to do, or rather
  how to do it. We have, of course, no option in the matter as to _what_
  to do, for naturally we must care for Gerold’s daughter, but we shall
  do it in the way most agreeable to ourselves. As you will have
  inferred, we are all elderly people, and I am old. I shall be sixty
  next January. Miss Desire, my sister, is forty-seven. (Between her and
  myself there were two boys who died in infancy.) Maria, my second
  sister, would, if living, be forty-five, and Beriah is nearly
  thirty-eight. Thus, you see, we are no longer young, but are just
  quiet people, with our habits too firmly fixed to have them broken in
  upon by a girl who probably talks slang and would fill the house with
  noise and chatter, singing at most inopportune moments, banging the
  doors, pulling the books from the shelves and the chairs into the
  middle of the rooms, and upsetting things generally. No, we couldn’t
  bear it, and just the thought of it has given me a chill.

  “We expect to educate the girl,—Doris, I think you called her,—but it
  must be at the North. If there is a good school in Meadowbrook,
  perhaps it will be well for her to remain there for a while, and if
  you choose to retain her in your family you will be suitably
  remunerated for all the expense and trouble. When she is older I shall
  place her in some institution where she will receive a thorough
  education, besides learning the customs of good society. After that we
  may bring her to Morton Park. For the present, however, I prefer that
  she should remain with you, for, as you are a clergyman, you will
  attend to her moral training and see that she is staunch and true in
  every respect. I hate deception of all kinds, and I wish her to learn
  the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments and the Creed, and to be
  confirmed at the proper age. She is about ten now, is she not?

  “Enclosed you will find a check sufficient, I think, for the present
  necessities. If more is needed, it will be sent. Please let me know if
  there is a good school in Meadowbrook, and if there is none, will you
  kindly recommend one which you think suitable?

                                           “Yours truly,
                                                   “MISS KEZIAH MORTON.”

This was the letter which I read, looking over Mr. Wilmot’s shoulder,
and growing more and more angry as I read, it was so heartless and cold,
with no word of real interest or sympathy for me, who was merely a
burden which must be carried, whether she were willing or not.

“I’ll never accept a penny from her,” I exclaimed, “and you may tell her
so. I’d rather scrub than be dependent upon these proud relatives, who
evidently think me a heathen. The Lords Prayer, indeed! and I fourteen
years old! I wonder if she thinks I know how to read!”

I was very defiant and determined, but after a little I grew calmer, and
as the graded school in Meadowbrook, which I had always attended, was
excellent of its kind, and the Wilmots were glad to have me with them, I
consented at last that a letter to that effect should be forwarded to
Kentucky. But when Mr. Wilmot suggested that I, too, should write and
thank my aunt for her kindness, I stoutly refused. I was not thankful, I
said, neither did I think her kind as I understood kindness, and I could
not tell a lie. Later, however, it occurred to me that as she had said
she wished me to be true and staunch, and that she hated deception, it
might be well to let her know just how I felt towards her, so as not to
occupy a false position in the future. Accordingly I wrote a letter, of
which the following is a copy:

                                   “MEADOWBROOK, MASS., September—, 18—.

  “MISS KEZIAH MORTON:

  “DEAR MADAM,—Mr. Wilmot has told you that there is a good school in
  Meadowbrook and that he is glad to keep me in his family. He wished me
  also to thank you for your kindness in furnishing the means for my
  education, and if I really felt thankful I would do so. But I don’t,
  and I cannot pretend to be grateful, for I do not think your offer was
  made in kindness, but because, as you said in your letter, you had no
  option except to care for me. You said, too, that you did not like
  deception of any kind, and I think I’d better tell you how I feel
  about accepting help from you. Since my mother died I have
  accidentally heard how you treated her and neglected my father because
  of her, and naturally I am indignant, for a sweeter, lovelier woman
  than my mother never lived. When she died and left me alone, there was
  a leaning in my heart towards you and the other aunts, because you
  were the only relatives I have in the world, and if you had shown the
  least sympathy for me I could have loved you so much. But in your
  letter you never said one word of pity or comfort. You offered to
  educate me, that was all. But I prefer to care for myself, and I can
  do it, too. I am fourteen, and can earn my own living. I can make
  dresses, as mother did after father died, or I can do second work
  until I have enough to pay for my schooling. And I would rather do it
  than be indebted to any one, and if, when you get this, you think best
  to change your mind, I shall be glad. But if you do not, I shall try
  to improve every moment and get a thorough education as soon as
  possible, and when I can I shall pay you every dollar you expend for
  me, and you need have no fears that I shall ever disgrace my father’s
  name, or you either.

  “I used to think that I should like to see Morton Park, as it was once
  my father’s home, but since reading your letter I have no desire to go
  there and bang doors, and pull the books from the shelves, and sing,
  whether invited to or not, and shock you with slang. I suppose I do
  use some,—all the girls do, and example is contagious,—and I am fond
  of singing, and would like nothing better than to take lessons in
  vocal and instrumental music, but I am not quite a heathen, and can
  hardly remember when I did not know the Lord’s Prayer, and Ten
  Commandments, and Creed. But I have not been confirmed, and do not
  intend to be until I am a great deal better than I am now, for I
  believe there is something necessary to confirmation besides mere
  intellectual knowledge. Father and mother taught me that, and they
  were true Christians.

  “Father used sometimes to tell me of his home and his aunts, who were
  kind to him, and so, perhaps, you would like to know how peacefully he
  died, and how handsome he was in his coffin, just as if he were
  asleep. But mother was lovelier still, with such a sweet smile on her
  face, and her dear little hands folded upon her bosom. There were
  needle-pricks and marks of the hard work she had done on her fingers,
  but I covered them with great bunches of the white pond-lilies she
  loved so much, and then kissed her good-bye forever, with a feeling
  that my heart was broken; and, oh, it aches so now when I remember
  that in all the world there is no one who cares for me, or on whom I
  have any claim.

  “I don’t know why I have written this to you, who, of course, have no
  interest in it, but guess I did it because I am sure you once loved
  father a little. I do not expect you to love me, but if I can ever be
  of any service to you I will, for father’s sake; and something tells
  me that in the future, I don’t know when or how, I shall bring you
  some good. Until then adieu.

                                                         “DORIS MORTON.”

I knew this was not the kind of letter which a girl of fourteen should
send to a woman of sixty, but I was indignant and hot-headed and young,
and felt that in some way I was avenging my mother’s wrongs, and so the
letter was sent, unknown to the Wilmots, and I waited anxiously for the
result. But there was none, so far as I knew. Aunt Kizzy did not answer
it, and in her letter to Mr. Wilmot she made no reference to it. She
merely said she was glad I was to live in a clergyman’s family under
religious influence, and added that if I had a good voice and he thought
it desirable I was to have instruction in both vocal and instrumental
music.

It did not occur to me to connect this with anything I had written, but
I was very glad, for I was passionately fond of music, as I was of books
generally. And so for two years I was a pupil in the High School in
Meadowbrook, passing from one grade to another, until at last I was
graduated with all the honors which such an institution could give.

During this time not a word had ever been written to me by my aunts. The
bills had been regularly paid through Mr. Wilmot, to whom Aunt Kizzy’s
letters were addressed, and at the end of every quarter a report of my
standing in scholarship and deportment had been forwarded to Kentucky.
And that was all I knew of my relatives, who might have been
Kamschatkans for anything they were to me.

About six months before I was graduated, Mr. Wilmot was told that I was
to be sent to Madame De Moisiere’s School in Boston, and then, three
months later, without any reason for the change, I learned that I was to
go to Wellesley, provided I could pass the necessary examination. Of
this I had no fears, but the change disappointed me greatly, as I had
heard glowing accounts of Madame De Moisiere’s School from a girl friend
who had been there, and at first I rebelled against Wellesley, which I
fancied meant nothing but hard study, with little recreation. But there
was no help for it. Aunt Keziah’s law was the law of the Medes and
Persians, and one morning in September I said good-bye to Meadowbrook
and started for Wellesley, which seemed to me then a kind of
intellectual prison.




                      CHAPTER II.—BERIAH’S STORY.
                                 DORIS.


                                               MORTON PARK, June —, 18—.

Ten o’clock at night, and I have brought out my old book for a little
chat. I am sure I don’t know why I continue to write in my journal, when
I am nearly forty years old, unless it is because I began it nineteen
years ago, on the day after I said good-bye to Tom forever and felt that
my heart was broken. It was just such a moonlight night as this when we
walked under the elms in the Park and he told me I was a coward, because
I would not brave Kizzy’s wrath and marry out of the “accursed Hepburn
line,” as he called it. Well, I _was_ afraid of Kizzy, and shrank from
all the bitterness and trouble which has come to us through that Hepburn
line. First, there was my brother Douglas, twenty-five years older than
I am, who, because he married the girl he loved, instead of the one he
didn’t, was sent adrift without a dollar. Why didn’t my father, I
wonder, marry into the line himself, and so save all this trouble?
Probably because he was so far removed from the crisis now so fast
approaching, that he ventured to take my mother, to whom he was always
tender and loving, showing that there was kindness in his nature,
although he could be so hard on Douglas and the dear little wife who
died when Gerold was born. Then came the terrible time when both my
father and mother were swept away on the same day by the cholera, and
six months after Douglas died, and his boy Gerold came to live with us,
He was two years my senior, and more like my brother than my nephew, and
I loved him dearly and spoke up for him when Kizzy turned him out, just
as Douglas had been turned out before him. Had I dared I would have
written to him and assured him of my love, but I could not, so great was
my dread of Keziah, who exercises a kind of hypnotic power over us all.
She tried to keep Desire from the man of her choice, and might have
succeeded, if death had not forestalled her. She sent Tom away from me,
and only yielded to Maria, who had a will as strong as her own and
married whom she pleased. But she, too, died just after her husband, who
was shot in the battle of Fredericksburgh, and we have no one left but
her boy Grant, who is almost as dear to me as Gerold was.

Grant is a young man now, and I trust he will marry Dorothea, and so
break the evil spell which that old man must have put upon us when to
the long lease of ninety years given to my grandfather he tacked that
strange condition that if before the expiration of the lease a direct
heir of Joseph Morton, of Woodford County, Kentucky, married a direct
heir of Amos Hepburn, of Keswick, England, only half the value of the
property leased should revert to the Hepburn heir, while the other half
should remain in the Morton family. If no such marriage has taken place,
uniting the houses of Morton and Hepburn, then the entire property goes
to the direct heir of the Hepburns. I believe I have stated it as it is
worded in that old yellow document which Keziah keeps in the family
Bible and reads every day with a growing dread of what will soon befall
us unless Grant marries Dorothea, who, so far as we know, stands first
in the Hepburn line, and to whom the Morton estate will go if it passes
from our hands.

I have sometimes doubted if that clause would stand the test of law, and
have said so to Keziah, suggesting to her to take advice on the subject.
But she treated my suggestion with scorn, charging me with wishing to be
dishonest, and saying that even if it were illegal it was the request of
Amos Hepburn, and father had instilled it into her mind that a dead
man’s wish was law, and she should abide by it. Neither would she allow
me to ask any legal advice, or talk about the matter to any one.

“It is our own business,” she said, “and if we choose to give up our
home it concerns no one but ourselves.”

But she does not expect to give it up, for our hopes are centred on
Grant’s marrying Dorothea; and as one means of accomplishing this end he
must be kept from Doris and all knowledge of her.

Poor little orphaned Doris! I wonder what she is like, and why Keziah is
so hard upon her! She is not to blame because her father married the
daughter of his landlady, whom Keziah calls a cook. How well I recall a
morning two or three years ago when, at the tick of the clock announcing
eight, Kizzy and Dizzy and I marched solemnly down to breakfast just as
we have done for the last twenty years and shall for twenty more if we
live so long, Keziah first in her black dress and lace cap, with her
keys jingling at her side, Desire next, in her white gown and blue
ribbons, which she will wear until she is seventy, and I, in my chintz
wrapper of lavender and white, colors which Tom said were becoming to me
and which I usually select. I can hear the swish of our skirts on the
stairs, and see the round table with its china and glass and flowers,
and old Abe, the butler, bringing in the coffee and toast, and a letter
for Keziah, who read it twice, and then, folding it very deliberately,
said, “Gerold’s widow is dead and has left a little girl, and a Rev. Mr.
Wilmot has written to know what is to be done with her.”

“Oh, bring her here, by all means!” both Dizzy and I exclaimed in a
breath, while Keziah’s face, which is always severe and stern, grew more
so as she replied, in the tone from which there is no appeal, “She will
stay where she is, if there is a decent school there. I shall educate
her, of course; there is no alternative; but she cannot come here until
she is sufficiently cultivated not to mortify us with her bad manners,
as blood will tell. I have never forgiven her mother for marrying
Gerold, and I cannot yet forgive this girl for being that woman’s
daughter.”

Both Desire and myself knew how useless it was to combat Keziah when her
mind was made up. So we said nothing more about the child, and kept as
much as possible out of Keziah’s way, for when she is disturbed she is
not a pleasant person to meet in a _tete-a-tete_. We knew she wrote to
Mr. Wilmot, and that he replied, and then, two days after, when we went
down to breakfast, we found another letter for Keziah. It was from
Doris, and Keziah read it aloud, while her voice and hands shook with
wrath, and Desire and I exchanged glances of satisfaction and touched
each other slyly with our feet in token of sympathy with the child, who
dared write thus to one who had ruled us so long that we submitted to
her now without a protest. It was a very saucy letter, but it showed the
mettle of the girl, and I respected her for it, and my heart went out to
her with a great pity when she said, “If you had shown the least
sympathy for me I could have loved you so much, but you did not. You
offered to care for me because you felt that you must, but you never
sent me one word of pity or comfort.”

“Oh, Keziah,” I exclaimed at this point, “is that true? Did you write to
Mr. Wilmot and say no word to the child?”

“I never say what I do not feel,” was Keziah’s answer, as she read on,
and when she had finished the letter she added, “She is an ungrateful
girl, fitter for a dressmaker or maid, no doubt, than for anything
higher. But she is a Morton, and must not be suffered to do a menial’s
work. I shall educate her in my own way, but shall not recognize her
socially until I know the kind of woman into which she develops. Neither
must you waste any sentimentality upon her, or make any advances in the
shape of letters, for I will not have it. Let her stand alone awhile.
She seems to be equal to it. And——” here she hesitated, while her pale
cheek flushed a little, as she continued, “she is older than I supposed.
She is fourteen,—very pretty, or beautiful, I think Mr. Wilmot said, and
that does not commend her to me. You know how susceptible Grant is to
beauty, and there must be no more mistakes. The time is too short for
that. Grant is going to Andover, which is not far from Meadowbrook, and
if he knew of this girl, who is his second cousin, nothing could keep
him from seeing her, and there is no telling what complications might
arise, for she is undoubtedly designing like her mother, who won Gerold
from the woman he should have married. Consequently you are to say
nothing to Grant of this girl; then, if he chances to meet her and
trouble comes of it, I shall know the hand of fate is in it.”

“But, Keziah,” I remonstrated, “you surely cannot expect that Grant will
never know anything of Doris? That is preposterous!”

“He need know nothing of her until matters are arranged between him and
Dorothea, who is only fifteen now, while he is eighteen,—both too young
as yet for an engagement. But it must be. It shall be!”

She spoke with great energy, and we, who knew her so well, felt sure
that it would be, and knew that so far as Grant or any of us were
concerned, Doris was to remain a myth until such time as Keziah chose to
bring her home. But if we could not speak of her to Grant, Desire and I
talked of her often between ourselves, and two or three times I began a
letter to her, but always burned it, so great was my fear of Keziah’s
displeasure should she find it out. We knew the girl was well cared for
and happy, and that she stood high in all her classes, for the very best
of reports came regularly from her teachers, both with regard to
deportment and to scholarship. Perhaps I am wrong, but I cannot help
thinking that Keziah would have been better pleased if some fault had
been found in order to confirm her theory that blood will tell. But
there has been none, and she was graduated with honor at the High School
in Meadowbrook, and every arrangement was made for her to go to Madame
De Moisiere’s school in Boston, where she particularly wished to go,
when suddenly Keziah changed her mind in favor of Wellesley, where Doris
did not wish to go. “She is bitterly disappointed, and I shall be glad
if you can think best to adhere to your first plan,” Mr. Wilmot wrote,
but did not move Keziah a whit. It was either Wellesley or some
out-of-the-way place in Maine, which I do not recall. Doris has chosen
Wellesley, of course, while Dizzy and I have put our wits to work to
find the cause of the change, and I think we have found it. Dorothea has
suddenly made up her mind to go to Madame De Moisiere.

“I don’t care for books, any way,” she wrote. “I am a dunce, and
everybody knows it and seems to like me just as well. But old Gardy
thinks I ought to go somewhere to be finished, and so I have chosen De
Moisiere, where I expect to have no end of fun provided I can hoodwink
the teachers, and I think I can. Besides, as you may suspect, the fact
that Grant has finished Andover and is now in Harvard has a good deal to
do with my choice, for he will call upon me, of course. I shall be so
proud of him, as I hear he is very popular, and all the girls will be
green with envy!”

“The dear rattle-brained child,” Keziah said, chuckling over the letter,
as she would not have chuckled if it had been from Doris,—“the dear
rattle-brained child! Of course Grant must call, and I shall write to
the professors, giving my permission, and to Madame asking her to allow
him to see her.”

Poor, innocent Kizzy! It is so many years since she was at
boarding-school, where she was kept behind bars and bolts, and she knows
so little how fast the world has moved since then, that she really
believes young people are kept as closely now as they were forty years
ago. What would she say if she knew how many times Grant was at Madame’s
while he was at Andover and during his first year at Harvard, and how
many flirtations he has had with the girls, whom he calls a jolly lot.
All this he confided to Dizzy and myself, when at the vacation he came
home, fresh and breezy and full of fun and frolic and noise, making our
quiet house resound with his college songs and Harvard yells, which I
think are hideous, and rather fast, if not low. But Kizzy never utters a
word of protest, and pays without questioning the enormous bills sent to
her, and seems gratified to know that his rooms are as handsome and his
turnout as fine as any in Cambridge.

Grant has the first place in Kizzy’s heart, and Dorothea the next, and
because she is going to Madame De Moisiere, Doris must not go, for
naturally she would fall in with Dorothea, and through her with Grant,
who would not be insensible to his pretty cousin’s charms, and who would
resent his having been kept from her so long. Mr. Wilmot has written
that she is exceedingly beautiful, with a manner which attracts every
one, while some of her teachers have written the same. Dorothea, on the
contrary, is rather plain. “Ugly as a hedge fence,” Grant once said of
her in a fit of pique, declaring that if he ever married, it would be to
a pretty face. And so he must not see Doris until he is engaged to
Dorothea, as it seems likely he soon will be, and Doris is going to
Wellesley, where Kizzy thinks Grant has never been and never can go
without her permission! Deluded Kizzy! Grant knows at least a dozen
Wellesley girls, each one of whom he designates a brick. Will he find
Doris, I wonder? I cannot help hoping so. Ah, well, the world is a queer
mixture, and _nous verrons_.

It is growing late, and everybody in and around the house is asleep,
except myself and Nero, the watch-dog, who is fiercely baying the moon
or barking at some thieving negro stealing our eggs or chickens. The
clock is striking twelve, and I must say good-night to my journal and to
Tom, if he is still alive, and to dear little Doris: so leaning from my
window into the cool night air, I will kiss my hand to the north and
south and east and west, and say God bless them both, wherever they are.




                      CHAPTER III.—DORIS’S STORY.
                    GRANTLEY MONTAGUE AND DOROTHEA.


It was a lovely morning in September when, with Lucy Pierce, a girl
friend, I took the train for Boston, where I was to spend the night with
Lucy’s aunt, who lived there, and the next day go to Wellesley. Soon
after we were seated, a young man who had formerly lived in Meadowbrook,
but was now a clerk in some house in Chicago and was going to Boston on
business, entered the car, and after the first greetings were over, said
to us, “I saw you get in at Meadowbrook, and have come to speak with you
and have a little rest. The through sleeper from Chicago and Cincinnati
is half full of school-girls and Harvard boys, who have kept up such a
row. Why, it was after twelve last night before they gave us a chance to
sleep. They are having a concert now, and a girl from Cincinnati, whom
they call Thea, and who seems to be the ringleader, is playing the
banjo, while another shakes a tambourine, and a tall fellow from
Kentucky, whom they call General Grant, is whistling an accompaniment. I
rather think Miss Thea is pretty far gone with the general, the way she
turns her great black eyes on him, and I wouldn’t wonder if he were a
little mashed on her, although she is not what I call pretty. And yet
she has a face which one would look at twice, and like it better the
second time than the first; and, by Jove, she handles that banjo well. I
wish you could see her.”

When we reached Worcester, where we were to stop a few minutes, Lucy and
I went into the sleeper, from which many of the passengers had alighted,
leaving it free to the girls and the Harvards, who were enjoying
themselves to their utmost. The concert was at its height, banjo and
tambourine-players and whistler all doing their best, and it must be
confessed that the best was very good. Thea was evidently the centre of
attraction, as, with her hat off and her curly bangs pushed back from
her forehead, her white fingers swept the strings of the banjo with a
certain inimitable grace, and her brilliant, laughing eyes looked up to
the young man, who was bending over her with his back to me so I could
not see his face. I only knew he was tall and broad-shouldered, with
light brown hair which curled at the ends, and that his appearance was
that of one bred in a city, who has never done anything in his life but
enjoy himself. And still he fascinated me almost as much as Thea, who,
as I passed her, said to him, with a soft Southern accent, “For shame,
Grant,—to make so horrid a discord! I believe you did it on purpose, and
I shall not play any more. The concert is ended; pass round the hat;”
and, dropping her banjo on her lap and running her fingers through her
short hair until it stood up all over her head, she leaned back as if
exhausted and fanned herself with her sailor hat. With the exception of
her eyes and hair, she was not pretty in the usual acceptation of the
term. But, as young Herring had said, one would turn to look at her
twice and like her better the second time than the first, for there was
an irresistible charm in her manner and smile and voice, which to me
seemed better than mere beauty of feature and complexion.

When he reached the depot in Boston I saw her again, and then thought
her very pretty as she stood upon the platform, taking her numerous
parcels from “General” Grant, with whom she was gayly chattering.

“Now mind you come soon. I shall be so homesick till I see you. I am
half homesick now,” she said, brushing a tear, either real or feigned,
from her eyes.

“But suppose they won’t let me call? They are awfully stiff when they
get their backs up, and they are not very fond of me,” the young man
said, and she replied, “Oh, they will, for your aunt and Gardy are going
to write and ask permission for me to see you, so that is fixed. _Au
revoir._” And, kissing her fingers to him, she followed her companions,
while Grant went to look for his baggage.

He had been standing with his back to me, but as he turned I saw his
face distinctly and started involuntarily with the thought that I had
seen him before, or somebody like him. Surely there was something
familiar about him, and the memory of my dead father came back to me and
was associated with this young man, thoughts of whom clung to me
persistently, until the strangeness and novelty of Wellesley drove him
and Thea from my mind for a time.

Of my student life at Wellesley, I shall say but little, except that as
a student I was contented and happy. I loved study for its own sake, and
no task was too long, no lesson too hard, for me to master. I stood high
in all my classes, and was popular with my teachers and the few girls
whom I chose as my friends. And still there was constantly with me a
feeling of unrest,—a longing for something I could not have. Mordecai
sat in the gate, and my Mordecai was the restrictions with which my Aunt
Keziah hedged me round, not only in a letter written to my teachers, but
in one which she sent to me when I had been in Wellesley three or four
weeks. I was not expecting it, and at the sight of her handwriting my
heart gave a great bound, for she was my blood relation, and although I
had no reason to love her, I had more than once found myself wishing for
some recognition from her. At last it had come, I thought, and with
moist eyes and trembling hands I opened the letter, which was as
follows:

  “DEAR DORIS,—It has come to my knowledge that a great deal more
  license is allowed to young people than in my day, and that young men
  sometimes call upon or manage to see school-girls without the
  permission of their parents or guardians. This is very reprehensible,
  and something I cannot sanction. I am at a great expense for your
  education, in order that you may do credit to your father’s name, and
  I wish you to devote your entire energies and thoughts to your books,
  and on no account to receive calls or attentions of any kind from any
  one, and especially a Harvard student. My orders are strict in this
  respect, and I have communicated them to your Principal. You can, if
  accompanied by a teacher, go occasionally to a concert or a lecture in
  Boston, but, as a rule you are better in the building, and must have
  nothing to do with the Harvarders. Your past record is good and I
  expect your future to be the same, and shall be pleased accordingly. I
  shall send your quarter’s spending money to Miss ——, who will give it
  to you as you need it, and I do this because I hear that girls at
  school are sometimes given to buying candy by the box,—French candy,
  too,—and sweets by the jar, and to having _spreads_, whatever these
  may be. But you can afford none of these extravagancies, and, lest you
  should be tempted to indulge in them, I have removed the possibility
  from your way by giving your allowance to Miss ——, and I wish you to
  keep an account of all your little incidental expenses, and send it to
  me with the quarterly reports of your standing.

  “I have arranged with the Wilmots for you to spend your vacations with
  them. But when your education is finished, if your record is as good
  as it has been, you will come to us, of course, if we have a home for
  you to come to. There is a dark cloud hanging over us, and whether it
  will burst or not I cannot tell. If it does, you may be obliged to
  earn your own living, and hence the necessity for you to get a
  thorough education. I am thankful to say that, for people of our
  years, your aunts and myself are in comfortable health. If you wish to
  write me occasionally and tell me of your life at Wellesley, you can
  do so, but you must not expect prompt replies, as people at my time of
  life are not given to voluminous correspondence.

                                                “Yours truly,
                                                        “KEZIAH MORTON.”

I had opened the letter with eager anticipations of what it might
contain, but when I finished it my heart was hardening with a sense of
the injustice done me by treating me as if I were a little child, who
could not be trusted with my own pocket money, and who was to give an
account for every penny spent, from a postage stamp to a car fare. And
this at first hurt me worse than the other restrictions. I did not know
much about the Harvard boys or spreads, and I did not care especially
for French candy and sweets, but now that they were so summarily
forbidden, I began to want them and to rebel against the chains which
bound me, and as the weeks and months went on, I became more and more
conscious of a feeling of desolation and loneliness, which at times made
me very unhappy. In Meadowbrook I had been so kindly cared for by the
Wilmots that, except for the sense of loss when I thought of my mother,
I had not fully realized how alone I was in the world; but at Wellesley,
when I heard my companions talk of their homes and saw their delight
when letters came to them from father or mother or brothers or sisters,
I used to go away and cry with an intense longing for the love of some
one of my own kindred and friends. I had no letters from home and no
home to go to during the vacations except that of the Wilmots, who
always made me welcome. I stood alone, a sort of _goody-goody_, as the
girls called me when I resisted their entreaties to join in violation of
the rules. I took no part in what Aunt Keziah called spreads. I seldom
saw a Harvard student, but heard a good deal about them and learned that
they were not the monsters Aunt Kizzy thought them to be.

My room-mate, Mabel Stearns, had a brother in Harvard, whose intimate
friend was called General Grant, but whose real name was Grantley
Montague, Mabel said, adding that he was a Kentuckian and belonged to a
very aristocratic family. He was reported to be rich, spending his money
freely, and while always managing to have his lessons and stand well
with the professors, still arranging to have a hand in every bit of fun
and frolic that came in his way. I heard, too, of Dorothea Haynes, who
was at Madame De Mosiere’s, She was a great heiress and an orphan, and
lived in Cincinnati with her guardian, whom she called old Gardy, who
gave her all the money she wanted, and whose instructions were that, as
she was delicate, she was not to have too many lessons or study too
hard. Like Grantley Montague, she was very popular, and no one had so
many callers from Harvard. Prominent among these was Grantley Montague,
who was very lover-like in his attentions. Happy Dorothea Haynes, I
thought, envying her for her money,—which was not doled out to her in
quarters and halves,—envying her for her freedom, and envying her most
for her acquaintance with Grantley Montague, who occupied much of my
thoughts, but who seemed as far removed from me as the planets from the
earth.

I never went anywhere, except occasionally to a concert, or a lecture,
and to church. I seldom saw anyone except the teachers and students
around me, and, although I was very fond of my books, time dragged
rather monotonously with me until I had been at Wellesley about two and
a half years, when Mabel who had spent Sunday in Boston came back on
Monday radiant and full of news which she hastened to communicate.
Grantley Montague and her brother Fred were soon to give a tea-party
under the auspices of her married sister, who lived in Cambridge, and
who was to be assisted by two or three other ladies. I had heard of
these receptions, where Thea Haynes usually figured so prominently in
wonderful costumes, but if any wish that I might have part in them ever
entered my mind, it was quickly smothered, for such things were not for
me, fettered as I was by my aunt Keziah’s orders, which were not relaxed
in the least, although I was now nineteen years of age. How then was I
surprised and delighted when with Mabel’s invitation there came one for
me! It was through her influence, I knew, but I was invited, and for a
few moments I was happier than I had ever been in my life. Then came the
thought expressed in words, “Can I go?”

“Certainly,” Mabel said; “you have only to write your aunt, who will say
yes at once, if you tell her how much you desire it, and Miss —— will
give her permission gladly, for you are the model scholar. You never get
into scrapes, and have scarcely had an outing except a few stupid
lectures or concerts with a teacher tacked on, and I don’t believe you
have spoken to a Harvarder since you have been here. Of course she will
let you go; if she don’t, she’s an old she-dragon. Write to her at once,
and blarney her a little, if necessary.”

I did not know how to blarney, and I was horribly afraid of the
she-dragon, as Mabel called her, but I wrote her that day, telling her
what I wanted, and how much pleasure it would give me to go. It was the
first favor I had asked, I said, and I had tried so hard to do what I
thought would please her, that I hoped she would grant it, and, as there
was not very much time for delay, would she please telegraph her answer?
I signed myself, “Your affectionate niece, Doris Morton,” and then
waited, anxiously, for a reply. I knew about how long it took for a
letter to reach Morton Park, and on the fourth day after mine was sent I
grew so nervous that I could scarcely eat or keep my mind upon my
lessons. Encouraged by Mabel, I had come to think it quite sure that my
aunt would consent, and had tried on my two evening dresses to see which
was the more becoming to me, crimson surah with creamy trimmings, or
cream-colored cashmere with crimson trimmings. Mabel decided for the
cashmere, which, she said, softened my brilliant color, and I sewed a
bit of lace into the neck and fastened a bow of ribbon a little more
securely, and was smoothing the folds of the dress and wondering what
Grantley Montague would think of it and me, when there was a knock at my
door and a telegram was handed me. I think the sight of one of those
yellow missives quickens the pulse of every one, and for a moment my
heart beat so fast that I could scarcely stand. I was alone, for Mabel
had gone out, and, dropping into a chair, I opened the envelope with
hands which shook as if I were in a chill. Then everything swam before
my eyes and grew misty, except the one word _No_, which stamped itself
upon my brain so indelibly that I see it now as distinctly as I saw it
then, and I feel again the pang of disappointment and the sensation as
if my heart were beating in my throat and choking me to death. I
remember trying to cry, with a thought that tears might remove the
pressure in my head, which was like a band of steel. But I could not,
and for a few moments I sat staring at the word _No_, which for a time
turned me into stone. Then I arose and hung up the dress I was not to
wear, and put away the long gloves I had bought to go with it, and was
standing by the window, looking drearily out upon the wintry sky, when
Mabel came in, full of excitement and loaded with parcels.

She had been shopping in Boston, and she displayed one after another the
slippers and fan and handkerchief she had bought for the great occasion
of which she had heard so much. Grantley Montague, she said, was sparing
no pains to make it the very finest affair of the season, and Thea
Haynes was having a wonderful costume made, although she already had a
dozen Paris gowns in her wardrobe. Then, as I did not enter very
heartily into her talk, she suddenly stopped, and, looking me in the
face, exclaimed, “What is it, Dorey? Has the answer come?”

I nodded, and spying the dispatch on the table, she snatched it up and
read _No_, and then began pirouetting wildly around the room, with
exclamations not very complimentary to my aunt.

“The vile old cat!” she said. “What does she mean by treating you so,
and you the model who never do anything out of the way, and have never
been known to join in the least bit of a lark? But I would spite the
hateful old woman. I’d be bad if I were you. Suppose you jump out of the
window to-night, or do something to assert your rights. Will you? A lot
of us will help.”

She had expressed aloud much that had passed through my mind during the
last hour. What was the use of being a _goody-goody_, as I was so often
called? Why not be a _bady-bady_ and taste forbidden fruit for once? I
had asked myself, half resolving to throw off all restraint and see how
bad I could be. But when I thought of my teachers, who trusted me and
whom I loved, and more than all when I remembered my dead mother’s
words, “If your aunts care for you, respect their wishes as you would
mine,” my mood changed. I would do right whatever came; and I said so to
Mabel, who called me a milksop and sundry other names equally
expressive, and declared she would not tell me a thing about the
reception. But I knew she would, and she did, and for days after it I
heard of little else than the _perfectly elegant_ affair.

“Such beautiful rooms,” she said, “with so many pictures, and among them
such a funny one of four old women sitting in a row, like owls on a
pole, with a moon-faced baby in the lap of one of them, and a young man
behind them. It has a magnificent frame, and I meant to have asked its
history, but forgot it, there was so much else to look at.”

I wonder now that I did not think of my father’s picture of his four
aunts, which was sold to a Boston dealer years before; but I did not,
and Mabel rattled on, telling me of the guests, and the dresses,
especially that of Thea Haynes, which she did not like; it was too low
in front and too low in the back, and fitted her form too closely, and
the sleeves were too short for her thin arms.

“But then it was all right because it was Thea Haynes, and she is very
nice and agreeable and striking, with winning manners and a sweet
voice,” she said. “Everybody was ready to bow down to her, except
Grantley Montague, who was just as polite to one as to another, and who
sometimes seemed annoyed at the way she monopolized him, as if he were
her special property. I am so sorry you were not there, as you would
have thrown her quite in the shade, for you are a thousand times
handsomer than she.”

This was of course flattering to my vanity, but it did not remove the
feeling of disappointment, which lasted for a long time and was not
greatly lessened when about a week after the reception I received from
Aunt Keziah a letter which I knew was meant to be conciliatory. She was
sorry, she said, to have to refuse the first favor I had ever asked, but
she had good reasons, which she might some time see fit to tell me, and
then she referred again to a shadow which was hanging over the family,
and which made her morbid, she supposed. I had no idea what the shadow
was, or what connection it had with my going to Grantley Montague’s
reception, but I was glad she was making even a slight apology for what
seemed to me so unjust. She was much pleased with the good reports of
me, she said, and if I liked I might attend a famous opera which she
heard was soon to be in Boston, and I could have one of those long wraps
trimmed with fur such as young girls wore to evening entertainments, and
a new silk dress, if I needed it. That was very kind, and Mabel, to whom
I showed the letter, declared that the dragon must have met with a
change of heart.

“I’d go to the opera,” she said, “and I’d have the wrap trimmed with
light fur, and the gown a grayish blue, just the color of your eyes when
you are excited. There are some lovely patterns at Jordan & Marsh’s, and
sister Clara will help you pick it out, and we’ll have a box and go with
Clara, and I’ll do your hair beautifully, and you’ll see how many
glasses will be leveled at you.”

Mabel was always comforting and enthusiastic, and I began to feel a good
deal of interest in the box and the dress and the wrap and the opera,
which I enjoyed immensely, and where so many glasses were turned towards
me that my cheeks burned as if I were a culprit caught in some wrong
act. But there was something lacking, and that was Grantley Montague,
whom I fully expected to see. Neither he nor Thea was there, and I heard
afterwards that she was ill with a cold and had written a pathetic note,
begging him not to go and enjoy himself when she was feeling so badly
and crying on her pillow, with her nose a sight to behold. Mabel’s
brother, who reported this to her, added that when Grantley read the
note he gave a mild little swear and said he reckoned he should go if he
liked. But he didn’t, and I neither saw him then, nor any time
afterwards, except in the distance, during my stay at Wellesley.

He was graduated the next summer, and left for Kentucky, with the
reputation of a fair scholar and a first-rate fellow who had spent quite
a fortune during his college course. Thea Haynes also left Madame’s,
where she said she had learned nothing, generously adding, however, that
it was not the fault of her teachers, but because she didn’t try. Some
time during the next autumn I heard that she had gone to Europe with her
guardian and maid and a middle-aged governess who acted as chaperon, and
that Grantley Montague was soon to join her in a trip to Egypt. After
that I knew no more of them except as Mabel occasionally told me what
she heard from her brother, who had also left Harvard and was in San
Francisco. To him Grantley wrote in February that he was with the Haynes
party, which had been increased by a second or third cousin of Thea’s, a
certain Aleck Grady, who was a crank, and perfectly daft on the subject
of a family tree and the missing link in the Hepburn line.

“If he finds the missing link,” Fred wrote to his sister, “Grant says it
will take quite a fortune from Thea, or himself, or both; and he seems
to be a little anxious about the link which Aleck Grady is trying to
find. I don’t know what it means. Think I’ll ask him to explain more
definitely when I write him again.”

Neither Mabel nor I could hazard a guess with regard to the missing link
or the Hepburn line, and I soon forgot them entirely in the excitement
of preparing for my graduation, which was not very far away. I had hoped
that one of my aunts at least would be present, and had written to that
effect to Aunt Keziah, telling her how lonely it would be for me with no
relative present, and how earnestly I wished that either she or Aunt
Desire or Aunt Beriah would come. I even went so far as to thank her for
all she had done for me and to tell her how sorry I was for the saucy
letter I wrote to her six years ago. I had often wanted to do this, but
had never quite made up my mind to it until now, when I hoped it might
bring me a favorable response. But I was mistaken.

It was not possible for herself or either of her sisters to come so far,
she wrote. She appreciated my wish to have her there, she said, and did
not esteem me less for it. But it could not be. She enclosed money for
my graduating dress, and also for my traveling expenses, for after a
brief rest in Meadowbrook I was going to Morton Park, in charge of a
merchant from Frankfort, who would be in New York in July and would meet
me in Albany. And so, with no relative present to encourage me or be
proud of me, I received my diploma and more flowers than I knew what to
do with, and compliments enough to turn my head, and then, amid tears
and kisses and good wishes, bade farewell to my girl friends and
teachers, one of whom said to me at parting: “If all our pupils were
like you, Wellesley would be a Paradise.”

A model in every respect they called me, and it was with quite a high
opinion of myself that I went to Meadowbrook, where I spent a week, and
then, bidding a tearful good-bye to the friends who had been so kind to
me, I joined Mr. Jones at Albany, and was soon on my way to Kentucky.




                 CHAPTER IV.—GRANTLEY MONTAGUE’S STORY.
                            ALECK AND THEA.


                                  HOTEL CHAPMAN, FLORENCE, April —, 18—.

Nearly everybody keeps a diary at some time in his life, I think. Aunt
Brier does, I know, and Thea, and Aleck,—confound him, with his Hepburn
lines and missing links!—and so I may as well be in fashion and commence
one, even if I tear it up, as I probably shall. Well, here we are in
Florence, and likely to be until Thea is able to travel. Why did she go
tearing around Rome night and day in all sorts of weather, spooning it
in the Coliseum by moonlight and declaring she was _oh, so hot_, when my
teeth were chattering with cold, and I could see nothing in the beauty
she raved about but some old broken walls and arches, with shadows here
and there, which did not look half as pretty as the shadows in the park
at home? Europe hasn’t panned out exactly as I thought it would, and I
am getting confoundedly bored. Thea is nice, of course,—too nice, in
fact,—but a fellow does not want to be compelled to marry a girl any
way. He’d rather have some choice in the matter, which I haven’t had;
but I like Thea immensely, and we are engaged.

There, I’ve blurted it out, and it looks first-rate on paper, too. Yes,
we are engaged, and this is how it happened. Ever since I was knee-high
Aunt Keziah has dinged it into me that I must marry Thea, or her heart
would be broken, and the Mortons beggared. I wish old Amos Hepburn’s
hand had been paralyzed before he added to that long lease a condition
which has brought grief to my Uncle Douglas and cousin Gerold, who
married an actress, or a cook, or something, because he loved her more
than he did money. By George, I respect him for his independence, and
wish I were more like him, and not a lazy, good-for-nothing fellow who
does not know how to do a single useful thing or to earn a dollar.

Well, the time is drawing near for that lease to expire, and unless a
direct heir of Joseph Morton, my great-grandfather, marries a direct
heir of Amos Hepburn, the entire Morton estate will revert to the
Hepburn heir. Now, I am a direct heir of Joseph Morton, and Thea is old
Hepburn’s direct heir, which means, according to the way it was
explained in the lease, that she is the eldest child, whether son or
daughter, of the eldest child, and so on back to the beginning, when
there were three daughters of old Amos. Thea comes from the second of
these daughters, for where the first one is the Lord only knows. Aleck
Grady descends from old Amos’s third daughter, and has no chance while
Thea lives. Nor does he pretend to want any, as he has money enough of
his own. He joined our party uninvited in Egypt, and has bored us to
death with his family tree, and the missing link, which link means the
eldest daughter of old Hepburn, of whom nothing is known after a certain
date. And it is she and her descendants, if there are any, he is trying
to hunt up. He is a shrewd fellow, and a kind of quack lawyer, too, and
once told me that he did not think the long lease would hold water a
minute in the United States, and asked if Aunt Keziah had consulted a
first-class lawyer, and when I told him that she had not,—that it had
been a rule in our family not to talk about the lease to any one until
compelled to do so, and that even if she knew the document was invalid
she would consider herself bound in honor to respect it as her father
had done before her and enjoined her to do,—he shrugged his shoulders
and said, “_Chacun à son goût_; but I should dispute that lease inch by
inch, and beat the Hepburns too.”

“Why, then,” I asked, “are you so anxious to find the _missing link_, as
you call it? I always supposed that for some reason you wanted to throw
Thea out of the property.”

With that insinuating smile of his which Thea thinks so winning and I
think so disgusting, he replied, “My dear fellow, how you mistake me! I
don’t care a picayune who gets the Morton money, if you are fools enough
to give it up. But I do care for my ancestors; in fact, I have a real
affection for my great-aunt Octavia, and am most anxious to know what
became of her and her progeny. I have her as far as New York, where all
trace of her is lost. Would you like to see the family tree?”

As I had seen it half a dozen times and knew exactly where Octavia
failed to connect, I declined, and then the conversation turned upon
Thea, who, Aleck said, was a very nice girl, but a little too fast, and
had about her too much gush and too much powder to suit him. It was
strange why girls would gush and giggle and plaster their faces with
cosmetics and blacken their eyebrows until they looked like women of the
town, he said, appealing to me for confirmation of his opinion. I had
more than half suspected him of designs on Thea, and I flamed up at once
in her defense, telling him she neither gushed, nor powdered, nor
blackened,—three lies, as I knew,—but I was angry, and when, with that
imperturbable good humor which never fails him, he continued: “Don’t get
so mad, I beg. I am older than you, and know human nature better than
you do, and I know you pretty well. Why, I’ve made you quite a study.
Thea, in spite of her powder and gush, is a splendid girl, and will make
a good wife to the man she loves and who loves her, but she is not your
ideal, and pardon me for suggesting that I don’t believe that you would
marry her if it were not for that clause about the eldest heir, which I
don’t think is worth the paper it is written on,”—I could have knocked
him down, he was so cool and patronizing, and was also telling me a good
deal of truth. But I would not admit it, and insisted that I would marry
Thea if there had never been any Hepburn line and she had not a dollar
in the world.

“Why don’t you propose, then, and done with it? She is dying to have
you,” he said, and I declared I would, and that night I asked her to be
my wife, and I have not regretted it either, although I know she is not
my ideal.

But who is my ideal, and where is she, if I have one? I am sure I don’t
know, unless it is the owner of a face which I have seen but twice, but
which comes back to me over and over again, and which I would not forget
if I could, and could not if I would. The first time I saw it was at a
concert in Boston, not long before I left college. I was in the
dress-circle, and diagonally to my right was an immense bonnet or hat
which hid half the audience from me. Late in the evening it moved, and I
saw beyond it a face which has haunted me ever since. It was that of a
young and beautiful girl, who I instinctively felt belonged to a type
entirely different from the class of girls whom I had known while at
Harvard, and who, without being exactly fast in the worst acceptation of
the term, had come so near the boundary-line between propriety and
impropriety that it was difficult to tell on which side they stood. But
this girl was different, with her deep-blue eyes and her wavy hair which
I was sure had never come in contact with the hot curling-tongs, as
Thea’s does, while her complexion, which reminded me of the roses and
lilies in Aunt Keziah’s garden, owed none of its brilliancy to
cosmetics, as Aleck says most complexions do. She was real, and
inexpressibly lovely, especially when she smiled, as she sometimes did
upon the lady who sat beside her, and who might have been her mother, or
her chaperone, or some elderly relative. When the concert was over I
hurried out, hoping to get near her, but she was lost in the crowd, and
I only saw her once again, three weeks later, in an open street-car
going in the opposite direction from the one in which I was seated. In
her hand she held a paper parcel, which made me think she might possibly
be a seamstress or a saleslady, and I spent a great deal of time
haunting the establishments in Boston which employed girls as clerks,
but I never found her, nor heard of her. She certainly was not at
Moisiere’s and I don’t think she was at Wellesley, as I am sure I should
have heard of her through Fred, who had a sister there. Once I thought I
would tell him about her, but was kept from doing so by a wish to
discover her myself, and when discovered to keep her to myself. But I
have never seen her since the day she went riding so serenely past me,
unconscious of the admiration and strange emotions she was exciting in
me. Who was she, I wonder; and shall I ever see her again? It is not
likely; and if I do, what can it matter to me, now that I am engaged to
Thea?

In her letter of congratulation Aunt Keziah, who was wild with delight,
wrote to me that nothing could make her so happy as my marriage with
Thea, and that she knew I would keep my promise, no matter whom I might
meet, for no one of Morton blood ever proved untrue to the woman he
loved. Of course I shall prove true; and who is there to meet, unless it
is my Lost Star, as I call her, for whom I believe I am as persistently
searching as Aleck is for the missing link, for I never see a group of
young American girls that I do not manage to get near enough to see if
she is among them, and I never see a head of chestnut-brown hair set on
shoulders just as hers was that I don’t follow it until I see the face,
which as yet has not been hers. And in this I am not disloyal to Thea,
whom I love better than any girl I have ever known, and whom I will make
happy, if possible. She has been ill now nearly four weeks, but in a few
days we hope to move on to Paris, where we shall stay until June, then
go to Switzerland, and some time in the autumn sail for home, and the
aunts who have vied with each other in spoiling me and are the dearest
aunts in the world, although so unlike each other,—Aunt Keziah, with her
iron will but really kind heart, Aunt Dizzy, with her invalid airs and
pretty youthful ways which suit her so well in spite of her years, and
Aunt Brier, whose name is a misnomer, she is so soft and gentle, with
nothing scratchy about her, and who has such a sad, sweet face, with a
look in her brown eyes as if she were always waiting or listening for
something. I believe she has a history, and that it is in some way
connected with that queer chap, Bey Atkins they called him, whose dress
was half Oriental and half European, and whom I met at Shepheard’s in
Cairo. I first saw him the night after our return from the trip up the
Nile. He registered just after I had written the names of our party, at
which he looked a long time, and then fairly shadowed me until he had a
chance to speak to me alone. It was after dinner, and we were sitting
near each other in front of the hotel, when he began to talk to me, and
in an inconceivably short space of time had learned who I was, and where
I lived, and about my aunts, in whom he seemed so greatly interested,
especially Aunt Brier, that I finally asked if he had ever been to
Morton Park.

“Yes,” he answered, knocking the ashes from his cigar and leaning back
in the bamboo chair in the graceful, lounging way he has,—“yes, years
ago I was in Versailles and visited at Morton Park. Your aunt Beriah and
I were great friends. Tell her when you go home that you saw Tom Atkins
in Cairo, and that he has become a kind of wandering Ishmael and wears a
red fez and white flannel suit. Tell her, too—” but here he stopped
suddenly, and, rising, went into the street, where his dragoman was
holding the white donkey he always rode, sometimes alone and sometimes
with a little girl beside him, who called him father.

Of course, then, he is married, and his wife must be an Arab, for the
child was certainly of that race, with her great dark eyes and her tawny
hair all in a tangle. I meant to ask him about her, but when next day I
inquired for him, I was told that he had gone to his home near
Alexandria, where, I dare say, there is a host of little Arabs, and a
woman with a veil stretched across her nose, whom he calls his wife.

Alas for Aunt Brier if my conjecture is right!




                       CHAPTER V.—BERIAH’S STORY.
                       DORIS AND THE GLORY HOLE.


It is a long time since I have opened my journal, for there is so little
to record. Life at Morton Park goes on in the same monotonous routine,
with no change except of servants, of which we have had a sufficiency
ever since the negroes became “ekels,” as our last importation from
Louisville, who rejoiced in the high-sounding name of Helena Maude,
informed us they were. Such things make Keziah furious, for she is a
regular fire-eater, but I shall admit their equality provided they spare
my best bonnet and do not insist upon putting their knives into our
butter. Helena Maude is a pretty good girl, and when some of her friends
come to the front door and ask if Miss Smithson lives here I tell them
yes, and send them round to the cabins and say nothing to Keziah, who
for the last few weeks has been wholly absorbed in other matters than
colored gentry.

Doris is coming home to-morrow, and just the thought of it makes me so
nervous with gladness that I can scarcely write legibly. I think it was
a struggle for Keziah to consent to her coming, and she only did so
after she heard Grant was engaged to Dorothea. I never saw Keziah as
happy as she was upon the receipt of Grant’s letter, for his marriage
with Dorothea means keeping our old home, and she allowed Helena Maude
to whistle “Marching Through Georgia” as she cleared the table, and did
not reprove her. It was soon after this that she announced her intention
to bring Doris to Morton Park after her graduation, and that night Dizzy
and I held a kind of jubilee in our sitting-room, we were so glad that
at last Gerold’s daughter was coming to her father’s old home.

We need young blood here to keep us from stagnating, and although
Grantley will be with us in the autumn, and possibly Dorothea, we know
what they are, and are anxious for something new and fresh and pretty
like Doris. I have a photograph of her, and it stands before me as I
write, a picture of a wondrously beautiful young girl, with great
earnest eyes confronting mine so steadfastly, and masses of soft,
natural curls all over her head after the fashion of the present day. I
know they are natural, although Keziah says they are the result of hot
tongs, and that she shall stop it at once, for she will not have the gas
turned on half the time while the irons are heating. That is Dorothea’s
style; but she is in the Hepburn line, and is to marry Grant, which
makes a difference.

Doris sent such a nice letter to Keziah, asking pardon for the saucy
things she wrote to her years ago, and begging that some one of us would
come to see her graduated. How I wanted to go! but Keziah said we could
not afford it, as she intended buying a new upright Steinway in place of
the old spindle-legged thing on which she used to thrum when a girl. We
have heard that Doris is a fine musician, but Keziah will not admit that
the piano was bought for her. Dorothea will visit us in the autumn, she
says, and she wishes to make it as pleasant as possible for her. Dizzy
and I both know what Dorothea’s playing is like, and that it does not
matter much whether it is on a Steinway or a tin pan, but we are glad
for something modern in our ancient drawing-room, where every article of
furniture is nearly as old as I am, and where the new Steinway is now
standing with one of Keziah’s shawls thrown over it to keep it from the
dust.

For once in our lives Dizzy and I have waged a fierce battle with
Keziah, who came off victor as usual. The battle was over Doris’s room,
which Keziah thinks is of little consequence. Looking at our house from
the outside, one would say it was large enough to accommodate a dozen
school-girls; but looks are deceptive, and it seems it can hardly
accommodate one. There is a broad piazza in front, and through the
centre a long and wide hall, after the fashion of most Southern houses.
On the south side of the hall are the drawing-room and sitting-room,
with fireplaces in each. On the north side are the dining-room and
Keziah’s sleeping-room, where she usually sits and receives her intimate
friends. On the floor above are also four rooms,—Dizzy’s and mine, which
open together on the north side of the hall, and on the other side
Grantley’s, and the guest-room, which has not been occupied in fifteen
years, for when Dorothea is here she has always had a cot in my room or
Dizzy’s. At the end of the hall is a small room, ten by twelve perhaps,
and communicating with the guest-chamber, for which it was originally
intended as a dressing-room, but which we use as a store-room for a most
heterogeneous mass of rubbish, such as broken chairs and stands and
trunks and chests, and old clothes and warming-pans and water-bags and
Grantley’s fishing-tackle. The Glory Hole, we call it, though what the
name has to do with the room I have no idea. There is a tradition that
Gerold, when he first looked into it, exclaimed, “Oh, glory, what a
hole!” and hence the name, which clung to it even after it was cleared
of its rubbish for him, for he once occupied it when a little boy, and
now it is to be his daughter’s.

Dizzy and I pleaded for the large guest-chamber, but Keziah said that
was reserved for Dorothea who, as an engaged young lady, was too old to
sleep in a cot. And nothing we could say was of any avail to turn her
from her purpose. The Glory Hole was good enough for the daughter of a
cook, she said, and so the room has been emptied of its contents, and,
except that it is so small, it is quite presentable, with its matting
and muslin hangings and willow chair and table by the window, under
which there is a box of flowers, as one often sees in London. Just where
she will put her trunk or hang her dresses I don’t know,—possibly in my
closet, which is large enough for us both. She will be here to-morrow
afternoon, and Keziah is nearly ill with dread of her coming, and
worrying as to what she will be like, and whether she will bring a
banjo, and worst of all, if she will want to ride a bicycle! This
bicycle-riding is in Kizzy’s mind the most disreputable thing a woman
can do, and the sight of a girl on a wheel, or a boy either, for that
matter, is like a red flag to a bull, especially since the riders have
taken to the sidewalks. She will never turn out, she declares, and I
have seen her stand like a rock and face the enemy bearing down upon
her, and once she raised her umbrella with a hiss and a shoo, as if she
were scaring chickens. I dare say Thea will have one as soon as she
lands in America, but for Doris there are no bicycles, or banjoes, or
hot irons,—nothing but the Glory Hole. Poor little Doris!

I hope she will be happy with us, and I know I am glad because she is
coming. So few have ever come home to make me glad, and the one who
could make me the gladdest will never come again, for somewhere in the
wide world the sun is shining on his grave, I am sure, or he would come
back to me, and I should bid him stay, or rather go with him, whether to
the sands of Arabia or to the shores of the Arctic Sea. My hair is
growing gray, the bloom has faded from my cheek, and I shall be
forty-four my next birthday, and it is twenty-four years since I saw
Tom; but a woman’s love at forty-four is just as strong, I think, as a
girl’s at twenty, and there is scarcely a night that I do not hear in my
dreams the peculiar whistle with which he used to summon me to our
trysting-place after Kizzy had forbidden him the house, and I see again
his great, dark eyes full of entreaty and love, and hear his voice
urging me to do what, if it were to do over again, I would do. That is
an oddly-worded sentence; but I am too tired to change it, and will
close my journal until after I have seen Doris.




                       CHAPTER VI.—DORIS’S STORY.
                              MORTON PARK.


I have been here four weeks, and begin to feel quite like the daughter
of the house, with some exceptions. I am in love with Aunt Beriah, very
intimate with Aunt Desire, and not as much in awe of Aunt Keziah as I
was at first. It was a lovely afternoon when the coach from Frankfort
set me down at the gate to the Morton grounds, where a little,
brown-eyed, brown-haired lady was waiting for me. She had one of the
sweetest faces I ever saw, and one of the sweetest voices, too, as she
came towards me, holding out both her soft white hands, and saying to
me, “I am sure you are Doris, and I am your aunt Beriah. Welcome to
Morton Park!”

It was not so much what she said as the way she said it, which stirred
me so strangely. It was the first word of affection I had heard from my
own kin since my mother died, and, taking her hands in mine, I kissed
them passionately, and cried like a child. I think she cried a little,
too, but am not sure. I only know that she put her arm around my neck
and said, soothingly, “There, there, dear. Don’t cry, when I am so
glad.”

Then taking my bag and umbrella, she gave them to a colored girl, whom
she called Vine, and who, after bobbing me a courtesy, disappeared
through the gateway.

“It is not far, and I thought you would like to walk,” Aunt Brier said,
leading the way, while I followed her into the park, at the rear of
which stood the house, with its white walls and Corinthian pillars,
looking so cool and pleasant in the midst of grass and flowers and
maples and elms, with an immense hawthorn-tree in full bloom.

“Oh, this is lovely, and just as papa told me it was,” I exclaimed, and
then, stopping short, Aunt Brier drew me close to her, and scrutinizing
me earnestly, said, with a tremor in her voice, “Yes, Gerold told you of
his old home. I was so fond of him. We were like brother and sister, and
I was so sorry when he died. You are not as much like him as I fancied
you were from your photograph.”

“No?” I said, interrogatively, wondering if she were disappointed in me;
but she soon set me right on that point by saying, “Gerold was
good-looking, but you are beautiful.”

I had been told that so often, and I knew it so well without being told,
that I did not feel at all elated. I was only glad that she liked my
looks, and replied, “And you are lovely, and so young, too. My great
aunt ought to look older.”

She smiled at that, and said, “I am nearly forty-four, and feel
sometimes as if I were a hundred. But there is Kizzy on the piazza. I
think we’d better hurry. She does not like to wait for anything.”

I had never really known what fear of any person was, but I felt it now,
and my heart beat violently as I hastened my steps towards the spot
where Aunt Keziah stood, stiff and tall and straight, and looking very
imposing in her black silk gown and lace cap set on a smooth band of
false hair, a bunch of keys dangling at her belt, and a dainty
hemstitched handkerchief clasped in her hands. In spite of her sixty odd
years, she was a handsome woman to look at, with her shoulders thrown
back and her chin in the air as if she were on the alert and the
defensive. Her features were clearly cut, her face smooth and pale,
while her bright black eyes seemed to look me through as they traveled
rapidly from my hat to my boots and back again, evidently taking in
every detail of my dress, and resting finally on my face with what
seemed to be disapproval.

“How do you do, Miss Doris?” she said, with a quick shutting together of
her thin lips, and without the shadow of a smile.

I had cried when Aunt Brier spoke to me, but I did not want to cry now,
for something of the woman’s nature must have communicated itself to
mine and frozen me into a figure as hard and stiff as she was. It was a
trick of mine to imitate any motion or gesture which struck me forcibly,
and I involuntarily threw my shoulders back and my chin in the air, and
gave her two fingers just as she had given me, and told her I was quite
well, and hoped she was the same. For a moment she looked at me
curiously, while it seemed to me that her features did relax a little as
she asked if I were not very tired with the journey and the dusty ride
in the coach from Frankfort.

“It always upsets me,” she said, suggesting that I go at once to my room
and rest until dinner, which would be served sharp at six, “and,” she
added, “we never wait for meals; breakfast at half-past seven in the
summer, lunch at half-past twelve, dinner at six.”

Then she made a stately bow, and I felt that I was dismissed from her
presence, and started to follow Aunt Beriah into the hall just as two
negroes came up the walk bringing one of my trunks, which had been
deposited at the entrance to the park.

“Mass’r Hinton’s man done fotchin’ t’other trunk on his barrer,” the
taller negro said, in response to a look of inquiry he must have seen on
my face, and instantly Aunt Kizzy’s lips came together just as they had
done when she said, “How do you do, Miss Doris?”

“Two trunks?” she asked, in a tone which told me that I had brought
altogether too much luggage.

“Yes,” I replied, stopping until the negroes came up the steps. “Perhaps
I ought to have brought but one, but I have so many books and things,
and, besides, one trunk was father’s and one mother’s, and I could not
give either up. This was father’s, which he said you gave him when he
went to college. See, here is his name.” And I pointed to “Gerald
Morton, Versailles, Ky.,” on the end of the stout leather trunk, which
had withstood the wear of years.

“Yes, I remember it,” she said, in a voice so changed and with so
different an expression on her face that I scarcely knew her as she bent
over the trunk, which she touched caressingly with her hand. “You have
kept it well,” she continued; then, to the negroes, “Take it up-stairs,
and mind you don’t mar the wall nor the banisters. Look sharp, now.”

“Mass’r Hinton’s man” had arrived with the wheelbarrow and the other
trunk, a huge Saratoga, with mother’s name upon it, “Doris Morton, New
Haven, Ct.,” but this Aunt Keziah did not touch. Indeed, it seemed to me
that she recoiled from it, and there was an added severity in her tone
as she told the man to be careful, and chided him for cutting up the
gravel with the wheelbarrow.

“I’s couldn’t tote it, missis; it’s too heavy,” he said, as he waited
for one of the other blacks to help him take it up the stairs.

I had reached the upper hall and was standing by the door of my room,
while Aunt Beriah said, apologetically, “I am sorry it is so small:
perhaps we can change it bye-and-bye.”

It was really a very pretty room, but quite too small for my trunks
unless I moved out either the bedstead, or the bureau, or the washstand,
and, as I could not well dispense with either of these, I looked rather
ruefully at my aunt, who said, “There is a big closet in my room where
you can hang your dresses and put both your trunks when they are
unpacked.” And that was where I did put them, but not until after two
days, for I awoke the next morning with the worst headache I ever had in
my life, and which, I suppose, was induced by the long and rapid journey
from Meadowbrook, added to homesickness and crying myself to sleep. I
could not even sit up, and was compelled to keep my room, where Aunt
Beriah nursed me so tenderly and lovingly, while Aunt Kizzy came three
times a day to ask how I was, and where I first saw my aunt Desire, who
had been suffering with neuralgia and was not present at dinner on the
night of my arrival. She sent me her love, however, and the next day
came into my room, languid and graceful, with a pretty air of invalidism
about her, and a good deal of powder on her face, reminding me of a
beautiful ball-dress which has done service through several seasons and
been turned and made over and freshened up until it looks almost as well
as new. Her dress, of some soft, cream-colored material was artistically
draped around her fine figure and fastened on the left side with a
ribbon bow of baby blue, and her fair hair, in which there was very
little gray, was worn low on her neck in a large, flat knot, from which
a few curls were escaping and adding to her youthful appearance. If I
had not known that she was over fifty, I might, in my darkened room,
easily have mistaken her for a young girl, and I told her so when after
kissing me and telling me who she was, she sank into the rocking-chair
and asked me if she looked at all as I thought she would.

With a merry laugh, which showed her white, even teeth, she said, “I
like that. I like to look young, if I am fifty, which I will confess to
you just because Kizzy will be sure to tell you; otherwise, torture
could not wring it from me. A woman is as old as she feels, and I feel
about twenty-five. Nor do I think it is necessary to blurt out my age
all the time, as Kizzy does. It’s no crime to be old, but public opinion
and women themselves have made it so. Let two of them get to saying
nasty things about a third, and they are sure to add several years to
her age, while even men call a girl right old before she is thirty, and
doesn’t that prove that although age may be honorable it is not
desirable, and should be fought against as long as possible? And I
intend to fight it, too, and thus far have succeeded pretty well, or
should, if it were not for Kizzy, who has the most aggravating way of
saying to me, ‘You ought not to do so at your time of life,’ and ‘at
your age,’ as if I were a hundred.”

I listened to her in amazement and admiration too. She was so pretty and
graceful and earnest that although I thought her rather silly, and
wished that in her fight against time she did not make up quite so much
as I knew she did, I was greatly drawn towards her, and for a while
forgot my headache as she told me of her ailments, which were legion,
and with which Aunt Kizzy had little sympathy. “Kizzy thinks all one has
to do is to exercise his will and make an effort, as Mrs. Chick insisted
poor Fanny should do in ‘Dombey and Son,’” she said, and then went on to
give me glimpses of their family life and bits of family history, all of
which were, of course, very interesting to me. Aunt Brier, I heard, had
been engaged, when young, to a very fine young man, but Aunt Kizzy broke
up the match because she wished Beriah to marry some one in the Hepburn
line, which was frightfully tangled up with the Morton line.

“It would take too long to explain the tangle,” she said, “and so I
shall not try. It estranged your father from us, and his father before
him, because each took the woman of his choice in spite of the line.”

Then she told me of her own dead love, to whose memory she had been
faithful thirty years, and who so often visited her in her dreams that
he was as much a reality now as the day he died.

“And that is why I try to keep young, for where he has gone they know no
lapse of time, and if he can see me, as I believe he can, I do not want
to look old to him,” she said, with a pathetic sob, while her white
hands worked nervously.

Then she told me that I was in the Glory Hole, which my father had so
named, and told me, too, that she and Beriah had fought for the larger
room, but had given in to Kizzy, as they always did.

“I believe she has an invisible cat-o’-nine-tails which makes us all
afraid of her,” she added; “but, really, when you get down to the kernel
it is good as gold, and you can get there if you try. Don’t seem afraid
of her, or fond of her, either. She hates gush, and she hates cowardice
and deceit; but she adores manner and etiquette as she knew it forty
years ago, and dislikes everything modern and new.”

She did not tell me all this at one sitting, for she came to see me
twice during the two days I kept my bed, and at each visit told me so
much that I felt pretty well informed with regard to the family history,
and began to lose my dread of Aunt Keziah and to feel less nervous when
I heard her quick step and sharp voice in the hall. I knew she meant to
be kind, and knew, too, that she was watching me curiously and trying to
make up her mind as to what manner of creature I was, and whether I was
feigning sickness or not. As she had never had a hard headache in her
life, she did not know how to sympathize with one who had, and at the
close of the second day she made me understand that mine had lasted long
enough and that all I required now was an effort and fresh air, and that
she should expect me down to breakfast the next morning. And as I was
better, I made the effort, and at precisely half-past seven followed my
three aunts down the stairs in a methodical, military kind of way, which
reminded me of the school in Meadowbrook, where we used to march to the
sound of a drum and a leader’s call of “Left, right; left, right,” Aunt
Kizzy in this case being the leader and putting her foot down with an
energy which marked all her movements.

The table was laid with great care, and Aunt Keziah said grace with her
eyes open and upon black Tom, who was slyly purloining a lump of sugar
from the bowl on the sideboard, and who nearly choked himself in his
efforts to swallow it in time for his Amen, which was very audible and
made me laugh in spite of my fear of Aunt Kizzy. When breakfast was over
I was invited into her room, where I underwent a rigid cross-examination
as to what I had learned at school, as well as done and left undone. I
was also told what I could do and not do at Morton Park. There was a new
Steinway in the drawing-room, on which I could practice each day from
nine to ten and from three to four, but at no other time unless
specially invited. Nor was I to sing unless asked to do so, while
humming to myself was out of the question, as something very
reprehensible. I was never to cross my feet when I sat down, nor lean
back in my chair, nor put my hands upon the table, and above all things
she hoped I did not whistle, and had not acquired a taste for banjoes
and bicycles, as she heard some young ladies had.

With her sharp eyes upon me I was forced to confess that I could whistle
a little and play the banjo, and had only been kept from buying one by
lack of means, and also that when in Meadowbrook I had tried to ride a
wheel.

“A Morton on a wheel and playing a banjo!” she exclaimed, in horror.
“Surely, surely, you did not inherit this low taste from your father’s
family. It is not the Morton blood which whistles and rides on wheels.
It is your——”

Something in my face must have checked her, for she stopped suddenly and
stared at me, while I said, “Aunt Kizzy, I know you mean my mother, and
I want to tell you now that in every respect she was my father’s equal,
and was the sweetest, loveliest woman I ever saw, and my father was so
fond of her. I know you were angry because he married her, and you were
very unjust to her, but she never said a word against you, and now she
is dead I will hear nothing against her. She was my mother, and I am
more like her than like the Mortons, and I am glad of it.”

This was not very respectful language, I knew, and I half expected her
to box my ears, but she did nothing of the kind, and it seemed to me as
if her expression softened towards me as she went on asking questions
about other and different matters, and finally dismissed me with the
advice that I should lie down awhile, as I looked pale and tired. That
was four weeks ago, and since that time I have learned to know her
better, and have found many good points which I admire. She has never
mentioned my mother to me since that day, but has asked me many
questions about my father and our home in Meadowbrook. In most things,
too, I have my own way and am very happy, for Aunt Keziah has withdrawn
some of her restrictions. I practice now when I like, and sing when I
please, and even hum a little to myself, and once, when she was gone, I
whistled “Annie Rooney” to my own accompaniment, with Aunts Dizzy and
Brier for audience. I have seen a good many of the Versailles people,
and have had compliments enough on my beauty to turn any girl’s head. I
have learned every nook and corner of the house and park, and become
quite attached to my Glory Hole, which I really prefer to the great room
adjoining it, with its high-post bedstead and canopy, and its stiff
mahogany furniture, which Aunt Kizzy says is nearly a hundred years old.

It looks a thousand, as does the furniture in the next room beyond,
which puzzles me a little, it smells so like a man, and a young man,
too. By this I mean that there is in it a decided odor of tobacco and
cigars, and the leather-covered easy-chair looks to me as if some man
had often lounged in it, while I know there are a smoking-jacket and a
pair of men’s slippers there.

Funny that such things should be in this house of the Vestal Virgins, as
I call them, and bye-and-bye I shall get to be one, I suppose, and tend
the sacred fires, and go on errands of mercy, unless, indeed, I fall in
love and am buried alive, as were the erring Vestals of old, which God
forbid.

I wish that room did not bother me as it does. I think it is kept locked
most of the time, but two days ago I saw Rache cleaning it, and walked
in, as a matter of course, and smelled the cigars, and saw the jacket
and the slippers in the closet, and asked Rache whose room it was. She
stammers a little, and I could not quite make out what she said; and
just as I was going to repeat my question Aunt Kizzy appeared and with a
gesture of her hand waived me from the room, which remains to me as much
a mystery as ever. I could, of course, ask one or all of my aunts about
it, but by some intuition I seem to know that they do not care to talk
about it. Indeed, I have felt ever since I have been here that there is
something they are keeping from me, and I believe it is connected with
this room, which may have been my father’s, or grandfather’s, or
great-grandfather’s, although the smell is very much like the cigars of
the Harvard boys, and that smoking-jacket had a modern look. But,
whatever the mystery is, I mean in time to find it out.




                      CHAPTER VII.—KEZIAH’S STORY.
                              A SOLILOQUY.


Doris is here, and has been for four weeks, and in spite of myself I am
drawn to her more and more every day. I did not want her to come, and I
meant to be cold and distant to her, but when she looked at me with
something in her blue eyes like Gerold, I began to soften, while the
sight of Gerold’s trunk unnerved me wholly. I gave it to him when he
first went away to college, and I remember so well how pleased he was,
and how he put his arms around me and kissed me, as he thanked me for
it, and said, “Auntie, the trunk is so big that I shall not bring it
home at my vacations, but leave it in New Haven. So when you see it
again it will be full of honors, and I shall be an A. B., of whom you
will be so proud.”

God forgive me if I have done wrong; that was twenty-five years ago, and
Gerold is dead, and his trunk was brought back to me by his daughter,
whose face is not his face, although very, very beautiful. I acknowledge
that to myself, and rebel against it a little, as I mentally contrast it
with Dorothea’s and wonder what Grant will think of it. I have surely
done well to keep him from all knowledge of her until he was engaged to
Dorothea, and even now I tremble a little for the result when he is
thrown in contact with her every day, for aside from her wonderful
beauty there is a grace and charm about her that Dorothea lacks, and had
I seen her before she came here I should have kept her at the North
until after Grant’s marriage, which I mean shall take place as early as
Christmas.

He is coming home sooner than I expected; indeed he sails in two or
three days, and I must tell her at once that she has a cousin, and in
some way put her on her honor not to try to attract him. It is a
difficult thing to do, for the girl has a spirit of her own, and there
is sometimes a flash in her eyes which I do not like to meet. I saw it
first when I said something derogatory of her mother. How her eyes
blazed, and how grand she was in her defense, and how I respected her
for it!

Ah me, that Hepburn lease! What mischief it has wrought, and how the
ghosts of the past haunt me at times, when I remember the stand I have
taken to save our house from ruin! Beriah says I am a monomaniac on the
subject, and also that she doubts the validity of the lease. But that
does not matter. My father bade me respect Amos Hepburn’s wishes, and I
shall, to the letter, if Grant does not marry Dorothea.

I must stop now and superintend the opening of a box which by some
mistake Grant left at Cambridge and did not think necessary to have
forwarded to us until recently, when he gave orders to have it sent us
by express, It has in it a little of everything, he wrote, and among the
rest a picture which he thinks will interest and puzzle us as it has
him. I hear Tom hammering at the box, and must go and see to it.




                      CHAPTER VIII.—DORIS’S STORY.
                          MY COUSIN GRANTLEY.


I have solved the mystery of that room with the smell of cigars and the
smoking-jacket. It does belong to a man, and that man is Grantley
Montague, and Grantley Montague is my second cousin. Aunt Kizzy told me
all about him this morning, and I am still so dazed and bewildered and
glad and indignant that I can scarcely write connectedly about it. Why
was the knowledge that Grant was my cousin kept from me so long, and
from him, too, as he is still as ignorant as I was a few hours ago? Aunt
Kizzy’s explanation was very lame. She said if he had known that he had
a cousin at Wellesley when he was in Harvard, nothing could have kept
him from seeing me so often that we should both have been interrupted in
our studies,—that she did not approve of students visiting the girls
while they were in school,—and that she hardly knew why she did not tell
me as soon as I came here. This was not very satisfactory, and I believe
there is something behind; but when I appealed to Aunts Dizzy and
Beriah, and said I was hurt and angry, Aunt Brier did not answer at all,
but Aunt Dizzy said, “I don’t blame you, and I’d have told you long ago
if I had not been so afraid of Kizzy;” and that is all I could get from
her.

But I know now that Grant is my cousin; and this is how it happened.
This morning, as I was crossing the back piazza, I saw Tom opening a box
which had come by express and which Aunt Kizzy was superintending.
Taking a seat on the side piazza, I thought no more about it until I
heard Aunt Kizzy say, very hurriedly and excitedly, “Go, boy, and call
Miss Desire and Miss Beriah,—quick,” and a moment after I heard them
both exclaim, and caught the sound of my father’s name, Gerold. Then I
arose, and, going around the corner, saw them bending over a picture
which I recognized at once, and in a moment I was kneeling by it and
kissing it as I would have kissed my father’s hand had it suddenly been
reached to me.

“Oh, the picture!” I cried. “It is my father’s; he painted it. I saw him
do it. He said it was a picture of his aunties, and this is himself.
Dear father!” And I touched the face of the young man who was standing
behind the woman with the baby in her lap.

Aunt Kizzy was very white, and her voice shook as she asked me to
explain, which I did rapidly and clearly, telling all I knew of the
picture, which had been sold to some gentleman from Boston for fifty
dollars.

“And,” I added, “that fifty dollars went to pay his funeral expenses,
poor dear father. He was ill so long, and we were so poor.”

I was crying, and in fact we were all crying together, Aunt Kizzy the
hardest of all, so that the hemstitched handkerchief she always carried
so gingerly was quite moist and limp. I was the first to recover myself,
and asked:

“How did it get here? Whose box is this?”

“Our nephew’s, Grantley Montague, who was graduated at Harvard last year
and is now in Europe. He left this box in Cambridge by mistake, and it
was not sent to us until yesterday. We are expecting him home in a short
time. He must have bought the picture for its resemblance to us,
although he could not have known that it was painted for us.”

It was Aunt Kizzy who told me this very rapidly, as if anxious to get it
off her mind, and I noticed that she did not look at me as she spoke,
and that she seemed embarrassed and anxious to avoid my gaze.

“Grantley Montague,—your nephew! Then he is my cousin!” I exclaimed,
while every particular connected with the young man came back to me, and
none more distinctly than the telegram, No, sent in response to my
request that I might attend his tea-party.

I know that my eyes were flashing as they confronted Aunt Kizzy, who
stammered out:

“Your second cousin,—yes. Did you happen to see him while at Wellesley?”

She was trying to be very cool, but I was terribly excited, and, losing
all fear of her, replied:

“No; you took good care that I should meet no Harvard boys; but I saw
Grantley Montague once on the train, and I heard so much about him, but
I never dreamed he was my cousin. If I had, nothing would have kept me
from him. Did he know I was there?”

“He knows nothing of you whatever,” Aunt Kizzy said. “I did not think it
best he should as it might have interfered with the studies of you both.
He is coming soon, and you will of course make his acquaintance.”

I was sitting upon the box and crying bitterly, not only for the
humiliation and injustice done to me, but from a sense of all I had lost
by not knowing that Grantley was my cousin.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said, when she asked why I cried. “It would
have made me so happy, and I have been so lonely at times, with no one
of my own blood to care for me, and I should have been so proud of him;
and when he invited me to his party, why didn’t you let me go? I did
everything to please you. You did nothing to please me!”

I must have been hysterical, for my voice sounded very loud and
unnatural as I reproached her, while she tried to soothe me and explain.
But I would not be soothed, and kept on crying until I could cry no
longer, and still, in the midst of my pain, I was conscious of a great
joy welling up in my heart, as I reflected that Grantley was my cousin,
and that I should soon see him in spite of Aunt Kizzy, who, I think, was
really sorry for me and did not resent what I said to her. She had me in
her room for an hour after lunch, and tried to smooth the matter over.

“You are very pretty,” she said, “and Grant is very susceptible to a
pretty face, and if he had seen yours he might have paid you attentions
which would have turned your head, and perhaps have done you harm as
they would have meant nothing. They couldn’t mean anything; they must
mean nothing.”

She was getting more and more excited, and began to walk the floor as
she went on:

“I may as well tell you that I dread his coming. He is very
magnetic,—with something about him which attracts every one. Your father
had it, and your grandfather before him, and Grant has it, and you will
be influenced by it, but it must not be. Oh, why did I let you come
here, with your fatal beauty, which is sure to work us evil? or, having
come, why are you not in the Hepburn line?”

I thought she had gone crazy, and stared at her wonderingly as she
continued:

“I can’t explain now what I mean, except that Grant _must_ marry money,
and you have none. You have only your beauty, which is sure to impress
him, but it must not be. Promise me, Doris, to be discreet, and not try
to attract him,—not try to win his love.”

“Aunt Keziah! What do you take me for!” I exclaimed, indignantly, and
she replied:

“Forgive me; I hardly know what I am saying; only it must not be. You
must not mar my scheme, though if you were in the line, I’d accept you
so gladly as Grantley’s wife.” And then, to my utter amazement, she
stooped and kissed me, for the first time since I had known her.

A great deal more she said to me, and when the interview was over, there
was on my mind a confused impression that I was not to interfere with
her plan of marrying Grantley to a rich wife,—Dorothea Haynes, probably,
although no mention was made of her,—and also that I was to treat him
very coldly and not in any way try to attract him. The idea was so
ludicrous that after a little it rather amused than displeased me, but
did not in the least lessen my desire to see the young man who had been
the lion at Harvard, and whom I had seen in the car whistling an
accompaniment to Dorothea’s banjo.

I have told Aunts Desire and Beriah of that incident, and of nearly all
I had heard with regard to Grantley and Dorothea, but the only comment
they made was that they had known Miss Haynes since she was a child,
that she had visited at Morton Park, and would probably come there again
in the autumn. Once I thought to ask if she were engaged to Grantley,
but the wall of reserve which they manage to throw about them when the
occasion requires it, kept me silent, and I can only speculate upon it
and anticipate the time when I shall stand face to face with Grantley
Montague.




                    CHAPTER IX.—THE AUTHOR’S STORY.
                          GRANTLEY AND DORIS.


It was one of those lovely summer days, neither too hot nor too cold,
which sometimes occur in Kentucky even in August. The grounds at Morton
Park were looking their best, for there had been a heavy shower the
previous night, and since sunrise three negroes had been busy mowing and
rolling and pruning and weeding until there was scarcely a twig or dead
leaf to be seen upon the velvet lawn, while the air was sweet with the
odor of the flowers in the beds and on the broad borders. Mas’r Grantley
was expected home on the morrow, and that was incentive enough for the
blacks to do their best, for the negroes worshiped their young master,
who, while maintaining a proper dignity of manner, was always kind and
considerate and even familiar with them to a certain extent. Within
doors everything was also ready for the young man. Keziah had indulged
in a new cap, Dizzy in a pretty tea-gown, while Beriah had spent her
surplus money for a new fur rug for Grant’s room, which had been made
very bright and attractive with the decorations which had come with the
picture in the box from Cambridge. As for Doris, she had nothing new,
nor did she need anything, and she made a very pretty picture in her
simple muslin dress and big garden-hat, when about four o’clock she took
a book and sauntered down to a summer-house in the rear of the grounds,
near the little gate which opened upon the turnpike and was seldom used
except when some one of the family wished to go out that way to call
upon a neighbor or meet the stage.

Taking a seat in the arbor, Doris was soon so absorbed in her book as
not to hear the stage from Frankfort when it stopped at the gate, or to
see the tall young man with satchel in one hand and light walking-cane
in the other who came up the walk at a rapid rate and quickened his
steps when he caught a glimpse of a light dress among the green of the
summer-house. Grantley, who had been spending a little time with
Dorothea at Wilmot Terrace, which was a mile or more out of Cincinnati,
had not intended to come home until the next day, but there had suddenly
come over him an intense longing to see his aunts and the old place,
which he could not resist, while, to say the truth, he was getting a
little tired of constant companionship with Dorothea and wished to get
away from her and rest. It was all very well, he said to himself, to be
kissed and caressed and made much of by a nice girl for a while, but
there was such a thing as too much of it, and a fellow would rather do
some of the love-making himself. Dorothea was all right, of course, and
he liked her better than any girl he had ever seen, although she was not
his ideal, which he should never find. He had given that up, and the
Lost Star did not now flit across his memory as often as formerly,
although he had not forgotten her, and still saw at times the face which
had shone upon him for a brief moment and then been lost, as he
believed, forever. He was not, however, thinking of it now, when,
wishing to surprise his aunts, he dismounted from the stage at the gate
and came hurrying up the walk,—the short cut to the house. Catching
sight of Doris’s dress, and thinking it was his aunt Desire, he called
out in his loud, cheery voice, “Hello, Aunt Dizzy! You look just like a
young girl in that blue gown and big hat with poppies on it. Are you
glad to see me?”

In an instant Doris was on her feet and confronting him with the bright
color staining her cheeks and a kindling light in her blue eyes as she
went forward to meet him. She knew who it was, and, with a bright smile
which made his heart beat rapidly, she offered him her hand and said, “I
am not your aunt Dizzy, but if you are Grantley Montague I am your
cousin, Doris Morton,—Gerald Morton’s daughter,—and I am very glad to
see you.”

For the first time in his life Grantley’s speech forsook him. Here was
his Lost Star, declaring herself to be his cousin! What did it mean?
Dropping his satchel and taking off his soft hat, with which he fanned
himself furiously, he exclaimed, “Great Scott! My cousin Doris! Gerold
Morton’s daughter! I don’t understand you. I never knew he had a
daughter, or much about him any way. Where have you kept yourself, that
I have never seen or heard of you, and why haven’t my aunts told me of
you?”

He had her hand in his, as he led her back to the summer-house, while
she said to him. “A part of the time I have been at Wellesley. I was
there when you were at Harvard, and used to hear a great deal of you,
although I never dreamed you were my cousin till I came here.”

This took his breath away, and, sitting down beside her, he plied her
with questions until he knew all that she knew of her past and why they
had been kept apart so long.

“By Jove, I don’t like it,” he said. “Why, if I had known you were at
Wellesley I should have spent half my time on the road between there and
Harvard——”

“And the other half between Harvard and Madame De Moisiere’s?” Doris
said, archly, as she moved a little from him, for he had a hand on her
shoulder now.

“What do you mean?” he asked, quickly, while something of the light
faded from his eyes, and the eagerness from his voice.

“I heard a great deal about you from different sources, and about Miss
Haynes, too; and I once saw you with her in the train whistling an
accompaniment to her banjo,” Doris replied.

“The dickens you did!” Grant said, dropping Doris’s hand, which he had
held so closely.

It is a strange thing to say of an engaged young man that the mention of
his betrothed was like a breath of cold wind chilling him suddenly, but
it was so in Grant’s case. With the Lost Star sitting by him, he had for
a moment forgotten Dorothea, whose farewell kiss was only a few hours
old.

“The dickens you did! Well, I suppose you thought me an idiot; but what
did you think of Dorothea?” he asked, and Doris replied:

“I thought her very nice, and wished I might know her, for I felt sure I
should like her. And she is coming to Morton Park in the autumn. Aunt
Brier told me.

“Yes, I believe she is to visit us then,” Grant said, without a great
deal of enthusiasm, and then, changing the conversation, he began to ask
about his aunts, and what Doris thought of them, and if she were happy
with them, and when she first heard he was her cousin, and how.

She told him of the box and the picture which had led to the disclosure,
and which she had recognized at once.

“And your father was the artist!” he exclaimed. “By Jove, that’s funny!
How things come round! I found it in a dealer’s shop and bought it
because it looked so much like my aunts, although I did not really
suppose they were the originals, as I never remembered them as they are
on the canvas. And that moon-faced baby was meant for me, was it? What
did you think of him?”

“I didn’t think him very interesting,” Doris replied; and then they both
laughed, and said the pleasant nothings which two young people who are
pleased with each other are apt to say, and on the strength of their
cousinship became so confidential and familiar that at the end of half
an hour Doris felt that she had known Grant all her life, while he could
scarcely have told how he did feel.

Doris’s beauty, freshness, and vivacity, so different from what he had
been accustomed to in the class of girls he had known, charmed and
intoxicated him, while the fact that she was his cousin and the Lost
Star bewildered and confused him; and added to this was a feeling of
indignation that he had so long been kept in ignorance of her existence.

“I don’t like it in Aunt Kizzy, and I mean to tell her so,” he said, at
last, as he rose to his feet, and, picking up his satchel, went striding
up the walk towards the house, with Doris at his side.

It was now nearly six o’clock, and Aunt Kizzy was adjusting her cap and
giving sundry other touches to her toilet preparatory to dinner, when,
glancing from her window, she saw the young couple as they emerged from
a side path, Doris with her sun-hat in her hand and her hair blowing
about her glowing face, which was lifted towards Grant, who was looking
down at her and talking rapidly. Miss Kizzy knew Doris was pretty, but
never had the girl’s beauty struck her as it did now, when she saw her
with Grant and felt an indefinable foreboding that the Hepburn line was
in danger.

“Doris is a flirt, and Grant is no better, and I’ll send for Dorothea at
once. There is no need to wait until autumn,” she said to herself, as
she went down stairs and out upon the piazza, where Beriah and Desire
were already, for both had seen him from the parlor and had hurried out
to meet him.

“Hello, hello, hello,” he said to each of the three aunts, as he kissed
them affectionately. “I know you didn’t expect me,” he continued, as,
with the trio clinging to him and making much of him, he went into the
house,—“I know you didn’t expect me so soon, but the fact is I was
homesick and wished to see you all and so I came. I hope you are glad.
And, I say, why in the name of all that is good didn’t you ever tell me
I had a cousin,—and at Wellesley, too? And why did you never tell me
more of Cousin Gerold, who, it seems, painted that picture of you all?
It’s awfully queer. Hello, Tom, how d’ye?” he added, as a woolly head
appeared in the doorway and a grinning negro answered:

“Jes’ tol’able, thanky, Mas’r Grant. How d’ye youself?”

Keziah was evidently very glad of this diversion, which turned the
conversation away from Doris, who had remained outside, with a feeling
that for the present the aunts must have Grant to themselves. How
handsome and bright and magnetic he was, and how gay he made the dinner
with his jokes and merry laugh! Once, however, it seemed to Doris that a
shadow flitted across his face, and that was when Miss Keziah asked
after Dorothea.

“Oh, she’s right well,” he answered, indifferently, and when his aunt
continued:

“Didn’t she hate to have you leave so abruptly?” he replied, laughingly:

“She paid me the compliment of saying so, but I reckon Aleck Grady will
console her for awhile.”

“Who is Aleck Grady?” Miss Morton asked, and Grant replied:

“Have I never written you about Aleck Grady? A good fellow enough, but
an awful bore, and a second cousin of Thea’s, who joined us in Egypt and
has been with us ever since.”

Beriah had heard of him, but Miss Morton could not recall him, and
continued to ask questions about him as if she scented danger from him
as well as from Doris. Was he in the Hepburn line and really Thea’s
cousin, and did she like him?

At the mention of the Hepburn line Grant’s face clouded, and he answered
rather stiffly:

“He _is_ in the Hepburn line, one degree removed from Thea, and he is
hunting for a missing link, which, if found, will knock Thea into a
cocked hat.”

Miss Morton knew about the missing link herself; indeed, she had once
tried to trace it, but had given it up with the conviction that it was
extinct, and if she thought so, why, then, it was so, and Aleck Grady
would never find it. But he might be dangerous elsewhere, and she
repeated her question as to whether Thea liked him or not.

“I dare say,—as her cousin,” Grant replied, adding, with a view to tease
his aunt, “and she may get up a warmer feeling, for there is no guessing
what will happen when a young man is teaching a girl to ride a bicycle,
as he is teaching Thea.”

“Ride a bicycle! Thea on a bicycle! Thea astride of a wheel!” Miss
Morton exclaimed, horrified and aghast at the idea.

Was the world all topsy-turvy, or had she lived so long out of it that
she had lost her balance and fallen off? She did not know, and she
looked very white and worried, while Grant laughed at her distress and
told her how picturesque Thea looked in her blue gown and red shoes and
jockey cap, adding:

“And she rides well, too, which is more than can be said of all the
girls. But it is of no use to kick at the bicycles; they have come to
stay, and I mean to get Doris one as soon as I can. She must not be left
out in the cold when Thea and I go racing down the turnpike. She will be
splendid on a wheel.”

“God forbid!” came with a gasp from the highly scandalized lady, while
Doris’s eyes shone with a wonderful brilliancy as they looked their
thanks at Grant.

With a view to change the conversation, Beriah began to question Grant
of his trip to Egypt, without a suspicion of the deep waters into which
she was sailing. After describing some of the excursions on the donkeys,
Grant suddenly exclaimed:

“By the way, Aunt Brier, I met an old acquaintance of yours in Cairo,
Tom Atkins, who said he used to visit Morton Park. Do you remember him?”

Beriah was white to the roots of her hair, and her hand shook so that
her coffee was spilled upon the damask cloth as she answered, faintly:

“Tom Atkins? yes, I remember him.”

It was Keziah who came to the rescue now by giving the signal to leave
the table, and so put an end for the time being to the conversation
concerning Tom Atkins; but that evening, after most of the family had
retired, as Grant sat smoking in the moonlight at the end of the piazza,
a slender figure clad in a gray wrapper with a white scarf on her head
stole up to him and said, very softly and sadly:

“Now, Grant, tell me about Tom.”

Grant told her all he knew, and that night Beriah wrote in her diary as
follows:

“Tom is alive, and wears a fez and a white flannel suit, and has a
little, dark-eyed, tawny-haired girl whom he calls Zaidee. Of course
there is or has been an Oriental wife, and Tom is as much lost to me as
if he were sleeping in his grave. I am glad he is alive, and think I am
glad because of the little girl Zaidee. It is a pretty name, and if she
were motherless I know I could love her dearly for Tom’s sake, but such
happiness is not for me. Ah, well, God knows best.”




                       CHAPTER X.—DORIS’S STORY.
                          THEA AT MORTON PARK.


Thea is here, and has brought her wheel and her banjo and her pet dog,
besides three trunks of clothes. The dog, whom she calls Cheek, has
conceived an unaccountable dislike to Aunt Kizzy, at whom he barks so
furiously whenever she is in sight that Thea keeps him tied in her room
except when she takes him into the grounds for exercise. Even then he is
on the lookout for the enemy, and once made a fierce charge at her
shawl, which she had left in the summer-house and which was not rescued
from him until one or two rents had been made in it. Thea laughs, and
calls him a bad boy, and puts her arms around Aunt Kizzy’s neck and
kisses her and tells her she will send Cheek home as soon as she gets a
chance, and then she sings “Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay,” which she says is all
the rage, and she dances the skirt dance with Grant, to whom she is
teaching a new step, which shows her pretty feet and ankles and consists
mostly of “one-two-three-kick.” And they do kick, or Grant does, so high
that Aunt Kizzy asks in alarm if that is quite proper, and then Thea
kisses her again and calls her “an unsophisticated old darling who
doesn’t know the ways of the world and must be taught.” Her banjo lies
round anywhere and everywhere, just as do her hat and her gloves and
parasol, and Aunt Kizzy, who is so particular with me, never says a
word, but herself picks up after the disorderly girl, who, with Grant,
has turned the house upside down and filled it with laughter and frolic.
Her wheel stays at night in a little room at the end of the piazza, with
Grant’s, for he has one, and with Thea he goes scurrying through the
town, sometimes in the street and sometimes on the sidewalk, to the
terror of the pedestrians. Thea has already knocked down two negroes and
run into the stall of an old apple-woman, who would have brought a suit
if Aunt Kizzy had not paid the damages claimed.

What do I think of Thea? I love her, and have loved her from the moment
she came up to me so cordially and called me Cousin Doris, and told me
Grant had written her all about me, and that because I was at Morton
Park she had come earlier than she had intended doing, and had left her
old Gardy and Aleck Grady disconsolate. “But,” she added, quickly:
“Aleck is coming soon, and then it will be jolly with four of us, Grant
and you, Aleck and me, and if we can’t paint the town red my name is not
Thea.”

I don’t suppose she is really pretty, except her eyes, which are lovely,
but her voice is so sweet and her manners so soft and kittenish and
pleasing that you never stop to think if she is handsome, but take her
as she is and find her charming. She occupies the guest-room of course,
and I share it with her, for she insisted at once that my cot be moved
in there, so we could “talk nights as late as we pleased.” Aunt Kizzy,
who does not believe in talking late, and always knocks on the wall if
she hears me move in the Glory Hole after half-past nine, objected at
first, saying it was more proper for young girls to room alone, but Thea
told her that propriety had gone out of fashion with a lot of other
stuff, and insisted, until the Glory Hole was abandoned and used only
for toilet-purposes.

“Just what it was intended for,” Thea said, “and the idea of penning you
up there is ridiculous. I know Aunt Kizzy, as I always call her, and
know exactly how to manage her.”

And she does manage her beautifully, while I look on amazed. The first
night after her arrival she invited me into her room, where I found her
habited in a crimson dressing-gown, with her hair, which had grown very
long, rippling down her back, and a silver-mounted brush in one hand and
a hand-glass in the other. There was a light-wood fire on the hearth,
for it was raining heavily, and the house was damp and chilly. Drawing a
settee rocker before the fire, she made me sit down close by her, and,
putting her arm around me and laying my head on her shoulder, she said,
“Now, Chickie,—or rather Softie, which suits you better, as you seem
just like the kind of girls who are softies,—now let’s talk.”

“But,” I objected, “Aunt Kizzy’s room is just below, and it’s nearly ten
o’clock, and she will hear us and rap.”

“Let her rap! I am not afraid of Aunt Kizzy. She never raps me; and if
you are so awfully particular, we’ll whisper, while I tell you all my
secrets, and you tell me yours,—about the boys, I mean. Girls don’t
count. Tell me of the fellows, and the scrapes you got into at school.”

It was in vain that I protested that I had no secrets and knew nothing
about fellows or scrapes. She knew better, she said, for no girl could
go through any school and not know something about them unless she were
a greater softie than I looked to be.

“I was always getting into a scrape, or out of one,” she said, “and it
was such fun. Why, I never learned a blessed thing,—I didn’t go to
learn, and I kept the teachers so stirred up that their lives were a
burden to them, and I know they must have made a special thank-offering
to some missionary fund when I left. And yet I know they liked me in
spite of my pranks. And to think you were stuffing your head with
knowledge at Wellesley all the time, and I never knew it, nor Grant
either! I tell you he don’t like it any better than I do. And Aunt
Kizzy’s excuse, that you would have neglected your studies if you had
known he was at Harvard, is all rubbish. That was not the reason. Do you
know what the real one was?”

I said I did not, and with a little laugh she continued, “You _are_ a
softie, sure enough;” then, pushing me a little from her, she regarded
me attentively a moment, and continued, “Do you know how very, very
beautiful you are?”

I might have disclaimed such knowledge, if something in her bright,
searching eyes had not wrung the truth in part from me, and made me
answer, “I have been told so a few times.”

“Of course you have,” she replied. “Who told you?”

“Oh, the girls at Wellesley,” I answered, beginning to feel uneasy under
the fire of her eyes.

“Humbug!” she exclaimed. “I tell you, girls don’t count. I mean boys.
What boy has told you you were handsome? Has Grant? Honor bright, has
Grant?”

The question was so sudden that I was taken quite aback, while conscious
guilt, if I can call it that, added to my embarrassment. It was three
weeks since Grant came home, and in that time we had made rapid strides
towards something warmer than friendship. We had ridden and driven
together for miles around the country, had played and sung together, and
walked together through the spacious grounds, and once when we sat in
the summer-house and I had told him of my father’s and mother’s death
and my life in Meadowbrook and Wellesley, and how lonely I had sometimes
been because no one cared for me, he had put his arm around me, and,
kissing my forehead, had said, “Poor little Dorey! I wish I had known
you were at Wellesley. You should never have been lonely;” and then he
told me that he had seen me twice in Boston, once at a concert and once
in a street-car, and had never forgotten my face, which he thought
beautiful, and that he had called me his Lost Star, whom he had looked
for so long and found at last. And as he talked I had listened with a
heart so full of happiness that I could not speak, although with the
happiness there was a pang of remorse when I remembered what Aunt Keziah
had said about my not trying to win Grant’s love. And I was not trying;
the fault, if there were any, was on his side, and probably he meant
nothing. At all events, the scene in the summer-house was not repeated,
and I fancied that Grant’s manner after it was somewhat constrained, as
if he were a little sorry. But he had kissed me and told me I was
beautiful, and when Thea put the question to me direct, I stammered out
at last, “Ye-es, Grant thinks I am handsome.”

“Of course he does. How can he help it? And I don’t mind, even if we are
engaged.”

“Engaged!” I repeated, and drew back from her a little, for, although I
had suspected the engagement, I had never been able to draw from my
aunts any allusion to it or admission of it, and I had almost made
myself believe that there was none.

But I knew it now, and for a moment I felt as if I were smothering,
while Thea regarded me curiously, but with no jealousy or anger in her
gaze.

“You are surprised,” she said at last. “Has neither of the aunts told
you?”

“No,” I replied, “they have not, but I have sometimes suspected it. And
I have reason to think that such a marriage would please Aunt Kizzy very
much. Let me congratulate you.”

“You needn’t,” she said, a little stiffly. “It is all a made-up affair.
Shall I tell you about myself?” And, drawing me close to her again, she
told me that at a very early age she became an orphan, with a large
fortune as a certainty when she was twenty-one, as she would be at
Christmas, and another fortune coming to her in the spring, if she did
not marry Grant, and half in case she did. “It’s an awful muddle,” she
continued, “and you can’t understand it. I don’t either, except that one
of my ancestors, old Amos Hepburn, of Keswick, England, made a queer
will, or condition, or something, by which the Mortons will lose their
home unless I marry Grant, which is not a bad thing to do. I have known
him all my life, and like him so much; and it is not a bad thing for him
to marry me, either. Better do that than lose his home.”

“Would he marry you just for money?” I asked, while the spot on my
forehead, which he had kissed, burned so that I thought she must see it.

But she was brushing her long hair and twisting it into braids, and did
not look at me as she went on rapidly: “No, I don’t think he would marry
me for my money unless he liked me some. Aleck wouldn’t, and Grant
thinks himself vastly superior to Aleck, whom he calls a bore and a
crank; and perhaps he is, but he is very nice,—not handsome like Grant,
and not like him in anything. He has reddish hair, and freckles on his
nose, and big hands, and wears awful baggy clothes, and scolds me a good
deal, which Grant never does, and tells me I am fast and slangy, and
that I powder too much. He is my second cousin, you know, and stands
next to me in the Hepburn line, and if I should die he would come in for
the Morton estate, unless he finds the missing link, as he calls it,
which is ahead of us both. I am sure you will like him, and I shall be
so glad when he comes. I am not half as silly with him as I am without
him, because I am a little afraid of him, and I miss him so much.”

As I knew nothing of Aleck, I did not reply, and after a moment, during
which she finished braiding her hair and began to do up her bangs in
curl-papers, she said, abruptly, “Why don’t you speak? Don’t you
tumble?”

“What _do_ you mean?” I asked, and with very expressive gestures of her
hands, which she had learned abroad, she exclaimed, “Now, you are not so
big a softie as not to know what _tumble_ means, and you have been
graduated at Wellesley, too! You are greener than I thought, and I give
it up. But you just wait till I have coached you awhile, and you’ll know
what tumble means, and a good many more things of which you never
dreamed.”

I said I did not like slang,—in short, that I detested it,—and we were
having rather a spirited discussion on the subject, and Thea was talking
in anything but a whisper, when suddenly there came a tremendous knock
on the door, which in response to Thea’s prompt “_Entrez_” opened wide
and disclosed to view the awful presence of Aunt Kizzy in her night-cap,
without her false piece, felt slippers on her feet, a candle in her
hand, and a look of stern disapproval on her face as she addressed
herself to me, asking if I knew how late it was, and why I was keeping
Thea up.

“She is not keeping me up. I am keeping her. I asked her to come in
here, and when she said we should disturb you I told her we would
whisper, and we have until I was stupid enough to forget myself. I’m
awfully sorry, but Doris is not to blame,” Thea explained, generously
defending me against Aunt Kizzy, towards whom she moved with a graceful,
gliding step, adding, as she put her arm around her neck, “Now go back
to bed, that’s a dear, and Doris shall go too, and we’ll never disturb
you again. I wonder if you know how funny you look without your hair!”

I had never suspected Aunt Kizzy of caring much for her personal
appearance, but at the mention of her hair she quickly put her hand to
her head with a deprecatory look on her face, and without another word
walked away, while Thea threw herself into a chair, shaking with
laughter and declaring that it was a lark worthy of De Moisiere.

                  *       *       *       *       *

Four weeks have passed since I made my last entry in my journal, and so
much has happened in that time that I feel as if I were years older than
I was when Thea came, and, as she expressed it, “took me in hand.” I am
certainly a great deal wiser than I was, but am neither the better nor
the happier for it, and although I know now what _tumble_ means, and all
the flirtation signs, and a great deal more besides, I detest it all,
and cannot help feeling that the girl who practices such things has lost
something from her womanhood which good men prize. Old-maidish Thea
calls me, and says I shall never be anything but a _softie_. And still
we are great friends, for no one can help loving her, she is so bright
and gay and kind. As for Grant, he puzzles me. I have tried to be
distant towards him since Thea told me of her engagement, and once I
spoke of it to him and asked why he did not tell me himself. I never
knew before that Grant could scowl, as he did when he replied, “Oh,
bother! there are some things a fellow does not care to talk about, and
this is one of them. You and Thea gossip together quite too much.”

After that I didn’t speak to Grant for two whole days. But he made it up
the third day in the summer-house where he had kissed me once, and would
have kissed me again, but for an accident.

“Doris,” he said, as he took my face between his hands and bent his own
so close to it that I felt his breath on my cheek,—“Doris, don’t quarrel
with me. I can’t bear it. I——”

What more he would have said I do not know, as just then we heard Thea’s
voice near by calling to Aleck Grady, who has been in town three weeks,
stopping at the hotel, but spending most of his time at Morton Park, and
I like him very much. He seems very plain-looking at first, but after
you know him you forget his hair and his freckles and his hands and
general awkwardness, and think only how thoroughly good-natured and kind
and considerate he is, with a heap of common sense. Thea is not quite
the same when he is with us. She is more quiet and lady-like, and does
not use so much slang, and acts rather queer, it seems to me. Indeed,
the three of them act queer, and I feel queer and unhappy, although I
seem to be so gay, and the house and grounds resound with laughter and
merriment all day long. Aleck comes early, and always stays to lunch, if
invited, as he often is by Thea, but never by Aunt Kizzy, who has grown
haggard and thin and finds a great deal of fault with me because, as she
says, I am flirting with Grant and trying to win him from Thea.

It is false. I am not flirting with Grant. I am not trying to win him
from Thea, but rather to keep out of his way, which I cannot do, for he
is always at my side, and when we go for a walk, or a ride, or a drive,
it is Aleck and Thea first, and necessarily Grant is left for me, and,
what is very strange, he seems to like it, while I——Oh, whither am I
drifting, and what shall I do? I know now all about the Morton lease and
the Hepburn line, for Aunt Kizzy has told me, and with tears streaming
down her cheeks has begged me not to be her ruin. And I will not, even
if I should love Grant far more than I do now, and should feel surer
than I do that he loves me and would gladly be free from Thea, who
laughs and sings and dances as gayly as if there were no troubled hearts
around her, while Aleck watches her and Grant and me with a quizzical
look on his face which makes me furious at times. He has talked to me
about the missing link and the family tree, which he offered to show me,
but I declined, and said impatiently that I had heard enough about old
Amos Hepburn and that wretched condition, and wished both had been in
the bottom of the sea before they had done so much mischief. With a
good-humored laugh he put up his family tree and told me not to be so
hard on his poor old ancestor, saying he did not think either he or his
condition would harm the Mortons much.

I don’t know what he meant, and I don’t know anything except that I am
miserable, and Grant is equally so, and I do not dare stay alone with
him a moment, or look in his eyes for fear of what I may see there, or
he may see in mine.

Alas for us both, and alas for the Hepburn line!




                    CHAPTER XI.—THE AUTHOR’S STORY.
                              THE CRISIS.


It came sooner than the two who were watching the progress of affairs
expected it, and the two were Kizzy and Dizzy. The first was looking at
what she could not help, with a feeling like death in her heart, while
the latter felt her youth come back to her as she saw one by one the
signs she had once known so well. She knew what Grant’s failure to marry
Thea meant to them. But she did not worry about it. With all her fear of
Keziah, she had a great respect for and confidence in her, and was sure
she would manage somehow, no matter whom Grant married. And so in her
white gown and blue ribbons she sat upon the wide piazza day after day,
and smiled upon the young people, who, recognizing an ally in her, made
her a sort of queen around whose throne they gathered, all longing to
tell her their secret, except Doris, who, hearing so often from her Aunt
Keziah that she was the cause of all the trouble, was very unhappy, and
kept away from Grant as much as possible. But he found her one afternoon
in the summer-house looking so inexpressibly sweet, and pathetic, too,
with the traces of tears on her face, that, without a thought of the
consequences, he sat down beside her, and, putting his arms around her,
said:

“My poor little darling, what is the matter, and why do you try to avoid
me as you do?”

There was nothing of the coquette about Doris, and at the sound of
Grant’s voice speaking to her as he did, and the touch of his hand which
had taken hers and was carrying it to his lips, she laid her head on his
shoulder and sobbed:

“Oh, Grant, I can’t bear it. Aunt Kizzy scolds me so, and I—I can’t help
it, and I’m going to Meadowbrook to teach or do something, where I shall
not trouble any one again.”

“No, Doris,” Grant said, in a voice more earnest and decided than any
she had ever heard from him. “You are not going away from _me_. You are
mine and I intend to keep you. I will play a hypocrite’s part no longer.
I love _you_, and I do not love Thea as a man ought to love the girl he
makes his wife, nor as she deserves to be loved; and even if you refuse
me I shall not marry her. It would be a great sin to take her when my
whole soul was longing for another.”

“Grant, are you crazy? Don’t you know you must marry Thea? Have you
forgotten the Hepburn line?” Doris said, lifting her head from his
shoulder and turning towards him a face which, although bathed in tears,
was radiant with the light of a great joy.

Had Grant been in the habit of swearing, he would probably have
consigned the Hepburn line to perdition. As it was, he said:

“Confound the Hepburn line! Enough have been made miserable on account
of it, and I don’t propose to be added to the number, nor do I believe
much in it, either. Aleck does not believe in it at all, and we are
going to look up the law without Aunt Kizzy’s knowledge. She is so
cursed proud and reticent, too, or she would have found out for herself
before this time whether we are likely to be beggared or not. And even
if the lease holds good, don’t you suppose that a great strapping fellow
like me can take care of himself and four women?”

As he had never yet done anything but spend money, it seemed doubtful to
Doris whether he could do anything or not. But she did not care. The
fact that he loved her, that he held her in his arms and was covering
her face with kisses, was enough for the present, and for a few moments
Aunt Kizzy’s wrath and the Hepburn line were forgotten, while she
abandoned herself to her great happiness. Then she remembered, and,
releasing herself from Grant, stood up before him and told him that it
could not be.

“I am not ashamed to confess that I love you,” she said, “and the
knowing that you love me will always make me happier. But you are bound
to Thea, and I will never separate you from her or bring ruin upon your
family. I will go away, as I said, and never come again until you and
Thea are married.”

She was backing from the summer-house as she talked, and so absorbed
were she and Grant both that neither saw nor heard anything until,
having reached the door, Doris backed into Thea’s arms.

“Hello!” was her characteristic exclamation, as she looked curiously at
Doris and then at Grant, who, greatly confused, had risen to his feet,
“And so I have caught you,” she continued, “and I suppose you think I am
angry; but I am not. I am glad, as it makes easier what I am going to
tell you. Sit down, Grant, and hear me,” she continued authoritatively,
as she saw him moving towards the doorway, opposite to where she stood,
still holding Doris tightly. “Sit down, and let’s have it out, like
sensible people who have been mistaken and discovered their mistake in
time. I know you love Doris, and I know she loves you, and she just
suits you, for she is beautiful and sweet and fresh, while I am neither;
I am homely, and fast, and slangy, and sometimes loud and forward.”

“Oh, Thea, Thea, you are not all this,” Doris cried.

But Thea went on: “Yes, I am; Aleck says so, and he knows, and that is
why I like him so much. He tells me my faults straight out, which Grant
never did. He simply endured me because he felt that he must, until he
saw you, and then it was not in the nature of things that I could keep
him any longer. I have seen it, and so has Aleck; and this morning,
under the great elm in the far part of the grounds, we came to an
understanding, and I told the great, awkward, ugly Aleck that I loved
him better than I ever loved Grant; and I do,—I do!”

She was half crying, and breathing hard, and with each breath was
severing some link which had bound her to Grant, who for once felt as
awkward as Aleck himself, and stood abashed before the young girl who
was so boldly declaring her preference for another. What could he say?
he asked himself. He surely could not remonstrate with her, or protest
against what would make him so happy, and so he kept silent, while
brushing the tears from her eyes, she continued, “I don’t know when it
began, or how, only it did begin, and now I don’t care how ugly he is,
nor how big his feet and hands are. He is just as good as he can be, and
I am going to marry him. There!”

She stopped, quite out of breath, and looked at Doris, whose face was
very white, and whose voice trembled as she said:

“But, Thea, have you forgotten the _lease_?”

“The lease!” Thea repeated, bitterly. “I hate the very name. It has
worked so much mischief, and all for nothing, Aleck says, and he knows,
and don’t believe it would stand a moment, and if it does we have
arranged for it, and should the Morton estate ever come to me through
Aunt Kizzy’s foolish insistence, I shall deed it straight back to her,
or to you and Grant, which will be better. It is time old Amos Hepburn
was euchred, and I am glad to do it. Such trouble as he has brought to
your grandfather, your father, and to me, thrusting me upon one who did
not care a dime for me!”

“Thea, Thea, you are mistaken. I did care for you until I saw Doris, and
I care for you yet,” Grant said, and Thea replied:

“In a way, yes. But you were driven to it by Aunt Kizzy, and so was I.
Why, I do not remember a time when I did not think I was to marry you,
and once I liked the idea, too, and threw myself at your head, and
appropriated you in a way which makes me ashamed when I remember it.
Aleck has told me, and he knows, and will keep me straight, while you
would have let me run wild, and from a bold, pert, slangy girl I should
have degenerated into a coarse, second-class woman, with only money and
the Morton name to keep me up. You and Doris exactly suit each other,
and your lives will glide along without a ripple, while Aleck’s and mine
will be stormy at times, for he has a will and I have a temper, but the
making up will be grand, and that I should never have known with you. I
am going to tell Aunt Kizzy now, and have it over. So, Grant, let’s say
good-bye to all there has been between us, and if you want to kiss me
once in memory of the past you can do so. Doris will not mind.”

There was something very pathetic in Thea’s manner as she lifted her
face for the kiss which was to part her and Grant forever, and for an
instant her arms clung tightly around his neck as if the olden love were
dying hard in spite of what she had said of Aleck; then without a word
she went swiftly up the walk, leaving Grant and Doris alone.




                      CHAPTER XII.—DORIS’S STORY.
                           THE MISSING LINK.


How can I write when my heart is so full that it seems as if it would
burst with its load of surprise and happiness? Grant and I are engaged,
and so are Thea and Aleck, and of the two I believe Thea is happier than
I, who am still so stunned that I can scarcely realize what a few hours
have brought to me,—Grant, and—and—a fortune! And this is how it
happened.

Grant was saying things to me which I thought he ought not to say, when
Thea came suddenly upon us and told us she loved Aleck better than she
did Grant, whom she transferred to me in a rather bewildering fashion,
while I accepted him on condition that Aunt Kizzy gave her consent. She
did not appear at dinner that night, and the next morning she was
suffering from a severe headache and kept her room, but sent word that
she would see Thea and Grant after breakfast. This left me to Aleck, who
came early and asked me to go with him to the summer-house, where we
could “talk over the row,” as he expressed it. Love had certainly
wrought a great change in him, softening and refining his rugged
features until he seemed almost handsome as he talked to me of Thea,
whom he had fancied from the time he first saw her.

“She is full of faults, I know,” he said, “but I believe I love her the
better for them, as they will add variety to our lives. She and Grant
would have stagnated, as he did not care enough for her to oppose her in
any way. Theirs would have been a marriage of convenience; ours will be
one of love.”

And then he drifted off to the Morton lease and Hepburn line and family
tree.

“You have never seen it, I believe,” he said, taking from his pocket a
sheet of foolscap and spreading it out upon his lap. He had offered to
show it to me before, but I had declined examining it. Now, however, I
affected to be interested, and glanced indifferently at the sheet, with
its queer looking diagrams and rows of names, which he called branches
of the Hepburn tree. “I have not made it out quite ship-shape, like one
I saw in London lately,” he said, taking out his pencil and pointing to
the name which headed the list, “but I think you will understand it. You
have no idea what a fascination there has been to me in hunting up my
ancestors and wondering what manner of people they were. First, here is
Amos Hepburn, the old curmudgeon who leased that property to your
grandfather ninety years ago. He married Dorothea Foster, and had three
daughters, Octavia, Agrippina, and Poppæa.”

“Octavia, Agrippina, and Poppæa,” I exclaimed. “What could have induced
him to give these names to his daughters?”

“Classical taste, I suppose,” Aleck said. “No doubt the old gentleman
was fond of Roman history, and the names took his fancy. If he had had a
son he would probably have called him Nero. Poppæa, the youngest, is my
maternal ancestress. I inherit my beauty from her.”

Here he laughed heartily, and then went on:

“Agrippina, the second daughter, was Thea’s great-grandmother, and
called no doubt after the good Agrippina, and not the bad one, who had
that ducking in the sea at the hands of her precious son. As to the
eldest daughter, she ought to have felt honored to be named for the poor
little abused Empress Octavia; and then it is a pretty name.”

“Yes, indeed,” I said, “and it is _my_ middle name, which my grandmother
and my great-grandmother bore before me.”

“That’s odd,” he rejoined, looking curiously at me. “Yes, very odd.
Suppose we go over Thea’s branch of the tree first, as that is the
oldest line to which a direct heir can be found, and consequently gives
her the Morton estate. First, Agrippina Hepburn married John Austin, and
had one child, Charlotte Poppæa, who married Tom Haynes, and bore him
one daughter, Sophia, and two sons, James and John. This John, by the
way, I have heard, was the young man whom Miss Keziah wished your Aunt
Beriah to marry, and failing in that she wished your father to marry
Sophia. But neither plan worked, for both died, and James married
Victoria Snead, of Louisville, and had one daughter, Dorothea Victoria,
otherwise Thea, my promised wife, and the great-great-grandaughter of
old Amos Hepburn. As I, although several years older than Thea, am in
the third and youngest branch of the tree, I have no claim on the Morton
estate; neither would Thea have, if I could find the missing link in the
first and oldest branch, that of Octavia, who was married in Port Rush,
Ireland, to Mr. McMahon, and had twins, Augustus Octavius, and Octavia
Augusta. You see she, too, was classically inclined, like her father.
Well, Augustus Octavius died, and Octavia Augusta married Henry Gale, a
hatter, in Leamington, England, and emigrated to America in 18—, and
settled in New York, where all trace of her is lost. Nor can I by any
possible means find anything about her, except that Henry Gale died, but
whether he left children I do not know. Presumably he did, and their
descendants would be the real heirs to the Morton property, if that
clause holds good. Do you see the point? or, as Thea would say, do you
tumble?”

He repeated his question in a louder tone, as I did not answer him, but
sat staring at the unfinished branch of the Hepburn tree. I did tumble
nearly off the seat, and only kept myself from doing so entirely by
clutching Aleck’s arm and holding it so tightly that he winced a little
as he moved away from me, and said: “What’s the matter? Has something
stung you?”

“No,” I replied, with a gasp, and a feeling that I was choking, or
fainting, or both.

I had followed him closely through Agrippina’s line, and had felt a
little bored when he began on Octavia’s, but only for an instant, and
then I was all attention, and felt my blood prickling in my veins and
saw rings of fire dancing before my eyes, as I glanced at the names, as
familiar to me as old friends.

“Aleck,” I whispered, for I could not speak aloud, “these are all my
ancestors, I am sure, for do you think it possible for two Octavias and
two McMahons to have been married in Port Rush and had twins whom they
called Octavia Augusta and Augustus Octavius, and for Augustus to die
and Octavia to marry a Mr. Gale, a hatter, in Leamington, and emigrate
to New York?”

It was Aleck’s turn now to stare and turn pale, as he exclaimed:

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” I said, “that my great-grandmother’s name was Octavia, but I
never heard that it was also Hepburn, or if I did I have forgotten it. I
know, though, that she married a McMahon and lived at Port Rush. I know,
too, that Mrs. McMahon had twins, whose names were Augustus Octavius and
Octavia Augusta. Augustus died, but Octavia, who was my grandmother,
first married a Mr. Gale, a hatter, in Leamington, and then came to New
York, where he died. She then went to Boston, married Charles Wilson,
and moved to New Haven, where my mother, Dorothea Augusta, was born, and
where she married my father. I have a record of it in an old English
book, which, after my grandmother’s death, was sent to my mother with
some other things.”

“Eureka! I have found the missing link, _and you are it_! Hurrah!” Aleck
exclaimed, springing to his feet and catching me up as if I had been a
feather’s weight. “I was never more surprised in my life, or glad
either. To think here is the link right in Miss Kizzy’s hands! Wouldn’t
she have torn her hair if Grant had married Thea? By Jove, it would have
been a joke, and a sort of retributive justice, too. I must tell her
myself. But first let’s be perfectly sure. You spoke of a record. Do you
happen to have it with you?”

“Yes, in my trunk,” I said, and, excusing myself for a few moments, I
flew to the house, and soon returned with what had originally been a
blank-book and which my grandmother had used for many purposes, such as
recording family expenses, names of people who had boarded with her, and
when they came, what they paid her, and when they left; dates, too, of
various events in her life, together with receipts for cooking; and
pinned to the last page was an old yellow sheet of foolscap, with the
name of a Leamington bookseller just discernible upon it. On this sheet
were records in two or three different handwritings. The first was the
birth in Leamington of Augustus Octavius and Octavia Augusta, children
of Patrick and Octavia McMahon, who were married in Port Rush, April
10th, 18—. Then followed the death of Augustus and the marriage of
Octavia to William Gale, of Leamington. Then, in my grandmother’s
handwriting, the death of Mr. Gale in New York, followed by a masculine
hand, presumably that of my grandfather, Charles Wilson, who married
Mrs. Octavia Gale in Boston, and to whom my mother, Dorothea Augusta,
was born in New Haven. I remember perfectly well seeing my mother record
the date of her marriage with my father and of my birth on the sheet of
foolscap after it came to her with the other papers from my grandmother,
but when or why it was pinned into the blank-book I could not tell. I
only knew it was there, and that I had kept the book, which I now handed
to Aleck, whose face wore a puzzled look as, opening it at random, he
began to read a receipt for ginger snaps.

“What the dickens has this to do with Cæsar Augustus and Augustus
Cæsar?” he asked, while I showed him the sheet of paper, which he read
very attentively twice, and compared with his family tree. “You _are_
the Link, and no mistake!” he said. “Everything fits to a T, as far as
my tree goes. Of course it will have to be proven, but that is easily
done by beginning at this end and working back to where the branch
failed to connect. And now I am going to tell Miss Morton and Grant.
Will you come with me?”

“No,” I replied, feeling that I had not strength to walk to the house.

I was so confused and stunned and weak that I could only sit still and
think of nothing until Grant’s arms were around me and he was covering
my face with kisses and calling me his darling.

“Aleck has told us the strangest story,” he said, “and I am so glad for
you, and glad that I asked you to be my wife before I heard it, as you
know it is yourself I want, and not what you may or may not bring me.
Aunt Kizzy is in an awful collapse,—fainted dead away when she heard
it.”

“Oh, Grant, how could you leave her and come to me?” I asked,
reproachfully, and he replied, “Because I could do no good. There were
Aunts Dizzy and Brier, and Thea, and Aleck, and Vine, all throwing water
and camphor and vinegar in her face, until she looked like a drowned
rat. So I came out and left them.”

“But I must go to her,” I said, and with Grant’s arm around me I went
slowly to the house and into the room where Aunt Kizzy lay among her
pillows, with an expression on her face such as I had never seen before.
It was not anger, but rather one of intense relief, as if the tension of
years had given way and left every nerve quivering from the long strain,
but painless and restful. Thea was fanning her; Aunt Brier was bathing
her forehead with cologne; Aunt Dizzy was arranging her false piece,
which was somewhat awry; while Aleck was still energetically explaining
his family tree and comparing it with the paper I had given him. At
sight of me Aunt Kizzy’s eyes grew blacker than their wont, while
something like a smile flitted across her face as she said, “This is a
strange story I have heard, and it will of course have to be proved.”

“A task I take upon myself,” Aleck interrupted, and she went on to
catechise me rather sharply with regard to my ancestors.

“It is strange that your father did not find it out, if he saw this
paper.”

“He did not see it, for it was not sent to us until after his death,” I
said, while Aunt Dizzy rejoined, “And if he had it would have conveyed
no meaning to him, as I do not suppose he ever troubled himself to trace
the Hepburn line to its beginning or knew that Mrs. McMahon was a
Hepburn. I have no idea what my great-grandmother’s name was before she
was married. For me, I need no confirmation whatever, but accept Doris
as I have always accepted her, a dear little girl whose coming to us has
brought a blessing with it, and although I am very fond of Thea, and
should have loved her as Grant’s wife, I am still very glad it is to be
Doris.”

She was standing by me now, with her hand on my shoulder, while Aunt
Brier and Thea both came to my side, the latter throwing her arms around
my neck and saying, “And I am glad it is Doris, and that the Hepburn
line is torn into shreds. I believe I hate that old Amos, who, by the
way, is as much your ancestor as mine, for we are cousins, you know.”

She kissed me lovingly, and, putting my hand in Aunt Kizzy’s, said to
her, “Aren’t you glad it is Doris?”

Then Aunt Kizzy did a most extraordinary thing for her. She drew me
close to her and cried like a child.

“Yes,” she said, “I am glad it is Doris, and sorry that I have been so
hard with everybody, first with Beriah, and then with Gerold, whom I
loved as if he had been my own son, and who it seems married into the
Hepburn line and I did not know it. And I have loved you, too, Doris,
more than you guess, notwithstanding I have seemed so cross and cold and
crabbed. I have been a monomaniac on the subject of the Hepburn lease.
Can you forgive me?”

I could easily answer that question, for with her first kind word all
the ill feeling I had ever cherished against her was swept away, and,
putting my face to hers, I kissed her more than once, in token of peace
between us.

That afternoon Aleck started North with his family tree and my family
record, and, beginning at the date of my mother’s marriage, worked
backward until the branch which had been broken with the Gales in New
York was united with the Wilsons of New Haven, “making a beautiful
whole,” as he wrote in a letter to Thea, who was to me like a dear
sister, and who, with her perfect tact, treated Grant as if they had
never been more to each other than friends. Those were very happy days
which followed, and now, instead of being the least, I think I am the
most considered of all in the household, and in her grave way Aunt Kizzy
pets me more than any one else, except, of course, Grant, whose love
grows stronger every day, until I sometimes tremble with fear lest my
happiness may not last. We are to be married at Christmas time, and are
going abroad, and whether I shall ever write again in this journal I
cannot tell. Years hence I may perhaps look at it and think how foolish
I was ever to have kept it at all. There is Grant calling me to try a
new wheel he has bought for me, and I must go. I can ride a wheel now,
or do anything I like, and Aunt Kizzy does not object. But I don’t think
I care to do many things, and, except to please Grant, I do not care
much for a wheel, being still, as Thea says, something of a _softie_.




                   CHAPTER XIII.—AUNT DESIRE’S STORY.
                           THE THREE BRIDES.


I am too old now to commence a diary; but the house is so lonely with
only Keziah and myself in it that I must do something, and so I will
record briefly the events of the last few weeks, or rather months, since
the astounding disclosure that Doris and not Thea was the direct heir in
the Hepburn line. Nothing ever broke Keziah up like that, transforming
her whole nature and making her quite like other people and so fond of
Doris that she could scarcely bear to have her out of sight a moment,
and when Grant and Doris were married and gone she cried like a baby,
although some of her tears, let us hope, were for Beriah, who will not
come back to live with us again, while Doris will.

And right here let me speak of Beriah’s little romance, which has ended
so happily. Years ago she loved Tom Atkins, but Kizzy separated them, in
the hope that Brier would marry John Haynes, of the Hepburn line, as
possibly she might have done, for she was mortally afraid of Kizzy. But
John had the good taste to die, and Brier remained in single blessedness
until she was past forty, when Tom, who she supposed was dead, turned up
unexpectedly in Cairo. Grant, who was there at the time, made his
acquaintance and brought a message from him to Brier, who, after
receiving it, never seemed herself, but sat for hours with her hands
folded and a look on her face as if listening or waiting for some one,
who came at last.

It was in November, and the maple-leaves were drifting down in great
piles of scarlet in the park, and in the woods there was the sound of
dropping nuts, and on the hills a smoky light, telling of “the
melancholy days, the saddest of the year.” But with us there was
anything but sadness, for two brides-elect were in the house, Doris and
Thea, who were to be married at Christmas, and whose trousseaus were
making in Frankfort and Versailles. Thea had expressed a wish to be
married at Morton Park on the same day with Doris, and, as her guardian
did not object, she was staying with us altogether, while Aleck came
every day. So we had a good deal of love-making, and the doors which
used to be shut promptly at half-past nine were left open for the young
people, who, in different parts of the grounds, or piazza, told over and
over again the old story which, no matter how many times it is told, is
ever new to her who hears and him who tells it.

One morning when Aleck came as usual, he said to Grant, “By the way, do
you remember that chap, half Arab and half American, whom we met in
Cairo? Atkins was the name. Well, he arrived at the hotel last night,
with that wild-eyed little girl and two Arabian servants, one for him,
one for the child. He used to know some of your people, and is coming
this morning to call, with his little girl, who is not bad-looking in
her English dress.”

We had just come from breakfast, and were sitting on the piazza, Grant
with Doris, and Brier with that preoccupied look on her face which it
had worn so long. But her expression changed suddenly as Aleck talked,
and it seemed to me I could see the years roll off from her, leaving her
young again; and she was certainly very pretty when two hours later, in
her gray serge gown with its trimmings of navy blue, and her brown hair,
just tinged with white, waving softly around her forehead, she went down
to meet Tom Atkins, from whom she parted more than twenty years ago. We
had him to lunch and we had him to dinner, and we had him finally almost
as much as we did Aleck, and I could scarcely walk in any direction that
I did not see a pair of lovers, half hidden by shrub or tree.

“‘Pears like dey’s a love-makin’ from mornin’ till night, an’ de ole
ones is wuss dan de young,” I heard Adam say to Vine, and I fully
concurred with him, for, as if he would make up for lost time, Tom could
not go near Brier without taking her hand or putting his arm around her.

Just what he said to her of the past I know not, except that he told her
of dreary wanderings in foreign lands, of utter indifference as to
whether he lived or died, until in Athens he met a pretty Greek, whom,
under a sudden impulse, he made his wife, and who died when their little
Zaidee was born, twelve years ago. After that he spent most of his time
in Egypt, where he has a palatial home near Alexandria, with at least a
dozen servants. Last winter he chanced to meet Grant at Shepheard’s
Hotel in Cairo, and, learning from him that Beriah was still unmarried,
he decided to come home, and, if he found her as unchanged in her
feelings as he was, he would ask her a second time to be his wife. So he
came, and the vows of old were renewed, and little Zaidee stayed with us
altogether, so as to get acquainted with her new mamma that was to be.
She is a shy, timid child, who has been thrown mostly with Arabs and
Egyptians, but she is very affectionate, and her love for Beriah was
touching in its intensity.

When Thea heard of the engagement she begged for a triple wedding, and
carried her point, as she usually does. “A blow-out, too,” she said she
wanted, as she should never marry but once, and a _blow-out_ we had,
with four hundred invitations, and people from Cincinnati, Lexington,
Louisville, Frankfort, and Versailles. There were lanterns on all the
trees in the park, and fireworks on the lawn, and two bands in different
parts of the grounds, and the place looked the next morning as if a
cyclone or the battle of Gettysburg had swept over it. The brides were
lovely, although Doris, of course, bore off the palm for beauty, but
Thea was exceedingly pretty, while Beriah reminded me of a Madonna, she
looked so sweet and saintly, as she stood by Tom, who, the moment the
ceremony was over, just took her in his arms and hugged her before us
all. Zaidee was her bridesmaid, while Kizzy was Doris’s and I was
Thea’s, and in my cream-colored silk looked, they said, nearly as young
as the girls.

The next morning the newly married people left _en route_ for Europe,
and the last we heard from them they were at Brindisi, waiting for the
Hydaspes, which was to take them to Alexandria. Doris will come back to
live with us again in the autumn, but Brier never, and when I think of
that, and remember all she was to me, and her patience and gentleness
and unselfishness, there is a bitter pain in my heart, and my tears fall
so fast that I have blurred this sheet so that no one but myself can
read it. I am glad she has Tom at last, although her going from us makes
me so lonely and sad and brings back the dreary past and all I lost when
Henry died. But some time, and that not very far in the future, I shall
meet my love, dead now so many years that, counting by them I am old,
but, reckoned by my feelings, I am still young as he was when he died,
and as he will be when he welcomes me inside the gate of the celestial
city, and says to me in the voice I remember so well, “I am waiting for
you, darling, and now come rest awhile before I show you some of the
glories of the heavenly world, and the people who are here, Douglas, and
Maria, and Gerold, and all the rest who loved you on earth, and who love
you still with a more perfect love, because born of the Master whose
name is love eternal.”




                      CHAPTER XIV.—DORIS’S STORY.
                            TWO YEARS LATER.


It is just two years since that triple wedding, when six people were
made as happy as it is possible to be in this world, Aunt Brier and Mr.
Atkins, Aleck and Thea, and Grant and myself, on whom no shadow has
fallen since I became Grant’s wife and basked in the fullness of his
love, which grows stronger and more tender as the days go on. He is now
studying hard in a law office in town, determined to fit himself for
something useful, and if possible atone for the selfish, useless life he
led before we were married. We spent a year abroad, going everywhere
with Aleck and Thea, and staying a few weeks in Mr. Atkins’s elegant
villa near Alexandria, where everything is done in the most luxurious
and Oriental manner, and Aunt Brier was a very queen among her subjects.
When the year of travel was ended we came back to Morton Park, where a
royal welcome awaited us, and where Aunt Kizzy took me in her arms and
cried over me a little and then led me to my room, or rather rooms, one
of which was the Glory Hole, which had been fitted up as a boudoir, or
dressing-room, while the large, airy chamber adjacent, where Thea used
to sleep, had also been thoroughly repaired and refurnished, and was
given to us in place of Grant’s old room.

And here this Christmas morning I am finishing my journal, in which I
have recorded so much of my life,—more, in fact, than I care to read. I
wish I had left out a good deal about Aunt Kizzy. She is greatly changed
from the grim woman who held me at arm’s length when I first came from
school, and of whom I stood in fear. We have talked that all over, and
made it up, and every day she gives me some new proof of her affection.
But the greatest transformation in her came some weeks ago, with the
advent of a little boy, who is sleeping in his crib, with a
yellow-turbaned negress keeping watch over him. Aunt Kizzy calls herself
his grandmother, and tends him more, if possible, than the nurse. Grant
laments that it is not a girl, so as to bear some one or two of the
queer names of its ancestors. But I am glad it is a boy, and next Sunday
it will be christened Gerold Douglas, for my father and grandfather, and
Aleck and Thea will stand for it. They have bought a beautiful place a
little out of town and have settled down into a regular Darby and Joan,
wholly satisfied with each Other and lacking nothing to make them
perfectly happy. Aunt Brier and Mr. Atkins are also here, staying in the
house until spring, when they will build on a part of the Morton estate
which Mr. Atkins has bought of Grant. Oriental life did not suit Aunt
Brier, and, as her slightest wish is sacred to her husband, he has
brought her to her old home, where, when Aleck and Thea are with us, we
make a very merry party, talking of all we have seen in Europe, and
sometimes of the Hepburn line, which Aleck says I straightened,—always
insisting, however, that it did not need straightening, and that the
obnoxious clause in the lease would never have stood the test of the
law. Whether it would or not, I do not know, as we have never inquired.




                          MILDRED’S AMBITION.




                               CHAPTER I.
                                MILDRED.


The time was a hot morning in July, the place one of those little
mountain towns between Albany and Pittsfield, and the scene opens in a
farm house kitchen, where Mildred Leach was seated upon the doorstep
shelling peas, with her feet braced against the doorjamb to keep her
baby brother, who was creeping on the floor, from tumbling out, and her
little sister Bessie, who was standing outside, from coming in. On the
bed in a room off the kitchen Mildred’s mother was lying with a
headache, and both the kitchen and the bedroom smelled of camphor and
vinegar, and the vegetables which were cooking on the stove and filling
the house with the odor which made the girl faint and sick, as she
leaned against the door-post and longed, as she always was longing, for
some change in her monotonous life. Of the world outside the mountain
town where she was born she knew very little, and that little she had
learned from Hugh McGregor, the village doctor’s son, who had been away
to school, and seen the President and New York and a Cunarder as it came
sailing up the harbor. On his return home Hugh had narrated his
adventures to Mildred, who listened with kindling eyes and flushed
cheeks, exclaiming, when he finished, “Oh! if I could see all that; and
I will some day. I shall not stay forever in old Rocky Point. I hate
it.”

Mildred was only thirteen, and not pretty, as girls usually are at that
age. She was thin and sallow, and her great brown eyes were too large
for her face, and her thick curly hair too heavy for her head. A mop her
brother Tom called it, when trying to tease her; and Mildred hated her
hair and hated herself whenever she looked in the ten by twelve glass in
her room, and never dreamed of the wonderful beauty which later on she
would develop, when her face and form were rounded out, her sallow
complexion cleared, and her hair subdued and softened into a mass of
waves and curls. Her father, John Leach, was a poor farmer, who,
although he owned the house in which he lived, together with a few acres
of stony land around it, was in one sense a tenant of Mr. Giles
Thornton, the proprietor of Thornton Park, for he rented land enough of
him to eke out his slender income. To Mildred, Thornton Park was a
Paradise, and nothing she had ever read or heard of equaled it in her
estimation, and many a night when she should have been asleep she stood
at her window, looking off in the distance at the turrets and towers of
the beautiful place which elicited admiration from people much older
than herself. To live there would be perfect bliss, she thought, even
though she were as great an invalid as its mistress, and as sickly and
helpless as little Alice, the only daughter of the house. Against her
own humble surroundings Mildred was in hot rebellion, and was always
planning for improvement and change, not only for herself, but for her
family, whom she loved devotedly, and to whom she was giving all the
strength of her young life. Mrs. Leach was a martyr to headaches, which
frequently kept her in bed for days, during which time the care and the
work fell upon Mildred, whose shoulders were too slender for the burden
they bore.

“But it will be different some time,” she was thinking on that hot July
morning when she sat shelling peas, sometimes kissing Charlie, whose fat
hands were either making havoc with the pods or pulling her hair, and
sometimes scolding Bessie for chewing her bonnet strings and soiling her
clean apron.

“You must look nice when Mrs. Thornton goes by,” she said, for Mrs.
Thornton was expected from New York that day, and Mildred was watching
for the return of the carriage, which half an hour before had passed on
its way to the station.

And very soon it came in sight,—a handsome barouche, drawn by two
shining black horses, with a long-coated driver on the box, and Mr. and
Mrs. Thornton and the two children inside,—Gerard, a dark, handsome boy
of eleven, and Alice, a sickly little girl, with some spinal trouble
which kept her from walking or playing as other children did. Leaning
back upon cushions was Mrs. Thornton,—her face very pale, and her eyes
closed, while opposite her, with his gold-headed cane in his hand, was
Mr. Thornton,—a tall, handsome man who carried himself as grandly as if
the blood of a hundred kings was flowing in his veins. He did not see
the children on the doorsteps, until Gerard, in response to a nod from
Mildred, lifted his cap, while Alice leaned eagerly forward and said,
“Look, mamma, there’s Milly and Bessie and the baby. Hello, Milly. I’ve
comed back;” then he said quickly, “Allie, be quiet; and you Gerard, why
do you lift your cap to such people? It’s not necessary;” and in these
few words was embodied the character of the man.

Courteous to his equals, but proud and haughty to his inferiors, with an
implicit belief in the Thorntons and no belief at all in such people as
the Leaches, or indeed in many of the citizens of Rocky Point, where he
owned, or held mortgages on, half the smaller premises. The world was
made for him, and he was Giles Thornton, of English extraction on his
father’s side and Southern blood on his mother’s, and in his pride and
pomposity he went on past the old red farm house, while Mildred sat for
a moment looking after the carriage and envying its occupants.

“Oh, if I were rich, like Mrs. Thornton, and could wear silks and
jewels; and I will, some day,” she said, with a far-off look in her
eyes, as if she were seeing the future and what it held for her. “Yes, I
will be rich, no matter what it costs,” she continued, “and people shall
envy me, and I’ll make father and mother so happy? and you, Charlie”——

Here she stopped, and parting the curls from her baby brother’s brow,
looked earnestly into his blue eyes; then went on, “you shall have a
golden crown, and you, Bessie darling, shall have,—shall have,—Gerard
Thornton himself, if you want him.”

“And I lame Alice?” asked a cheery voice, as there bounded into the
kitchen a ten year old lad, who, with his naked feet, sunny face and
torn straw hat, might have stood for Whittier’s barefoot boy.

“Oh, Tom,” Mildred cried, “I’m glad you’ve come. Won’t you pick up the
pods while I get the peas into the pot? It’s almost noon, and I’ve got
the table to set.”

Before Tom could reply, another voice called out, “You have given Gerard
to Bessie and Alice to Tom; now what am I to have, Miss Prophetess?”

The speaker was a fair-haired youth of seventeen, with a slight Scotch
accent and a frank, open, genial face, such as strangers always trust.
He had stopped a moment at the corner of the house to pick a rose for
Mildred, and hearing her prophecies, sauntered leisurely to the
doorstep, where he sat down, and fanning himself with his big hat, asked
what she had for him.

“Nothing, Hugh McGregor,” Mildred replied, with a little flush on her
cheek. “Nothing but that;” and she tossed him a pea-pod she had picked
from the floor.

“Thanks,” Hugh said, catching the pod in his hand. “There are two peas
in it yet, a big and a little one. I am the big, you are the little, and
I’m going to keep them and see which hardens first, you or I.”

“What a fool you are,” Mildred said, with increased color on her cheek,
while Hugh pocketed the pod and went on: “A crown for Charlie, Gerard
for Bessie, Allie for Tom, a pea-pod for me, and what for you, my
darling?”

“I am not your darling,” Mildred answered quickly; “and I’m going to
be,—mistress of Thornton Park,” she added, after a little hesitancy,
while Hugh rejoined: “As you have given Gerard to Bessie, I don’t see
how you’ll bring it about, unless Mrs. Thornton dies, a thing not
unlikely, and you marry that big-feeling man, whom you say you hate
because he turned you from his premises. Have you forgotten that?”

Mildred had not forgotten it, and her face was scarlet as she recalled
the time the past summer when, wishing to buy a dress for Charlie, then
six months old, she had gone into one of Mr. Thornton’s pastures after
huckleberries, which grew there so abundantly, and which found a ready
market at the groceries in town. In Rocky Point, berries were considered
public property, and she had no thought that she was trespassing until a
voice close to her said, “What are you doing here? Begone, before I have
you arrested.”

In great alarm Mildred had seized her ten quart pail, which was nearly
full, and hurried away, never venturing again upon the forbidden ground.

“Yes, I remember it,” she said, “but that wouldn’t keep me from being
mistress of the Park, if I had a chance and he wasn’t there. Wouldn’t I
make a good one?”

“Ye-es,” Hugh answered slowly, as he looked her over from her head to
her feet. “But you’ll have to grow taller and fill out some, and do
something with that snarly pate of yours, which looks this morning like
an oven broom,” and with this thrust at her bushy hair Hugh disappeared
from the door just in time to escape the dipper of water which went
splashing after him.

“Oven broom, indeed!” Mildred said indignantly, with a pull at the
broom; “I wonder if I am to blame for my hair. I hate it!”

This was Mildred’s favorite expression, and there were but few things to
which she had not applied it. But most of all she hated her humble home
and the boiled dinner she put upon the table just as the clock struck
twelve, wondering as she did so if they knew what such a dish was at
Thornton Park, and what they were having there that day.




                              CHAPTER II.
                           AT THORNTON PARK.


Meanwhile the barouche had stopped under the grand archway at the side
entrance of the Park house, where a host of servants was in waiting; the
butler, the housekeeper, the cook, the laundress, the maids, the
gardener and groom and several more, for, aping his English ancestry and
the custom of his mother’s Southern home before the war, Mr. Thornton
kept about him a retinue of servants with whom he was very popular. He
paid them well and fed them well, and while requiring from them the
utmost deference, was kind in every way, and they came crowding around
him with words of welcome and offers of assistance. Mrs. Thornton went
at once to her room, while Alice was taken possession of by her nurse,
who had come from the city the night before, and who soon had her charge
in a little willow carriage, drawing her around the grounds. Gerard, who
was a quiet, studious boy, went to the library, while Mr. Thornton,
after seeing that his wife was comfortable, joined his little daughter,
whose love for her country home he knew, and to whom he said, “I suppose
you are quite happy now?”

“Yes, papa,” she replied, “only I want somebody to play with me. Ann is
too big. I want Milly Leach. She was so nice to me last summer. Can’t I
have her, papa?”

For Alice to want a thing was for her to have it, if possession were
possible, and her father answered her:

“Yes, daughter, you shall have her,” without knowing at all who Milly
Leach was. But Alice explained that she was the girl who lived in the
little red house where Ann had often taken her the summer before to play
with Tom and Bessie. And so it came about that Ann was sent that
afternoon to the farm house with a request from Mr. Thornton that
Mildred should come for the summer and amuse his daughter. Three dollars
a week was the remuneration offered, for he always held out a golden
bait when the fish was doubtful, as he thought it might be in this case.
Mrs. Leach was better, and sitting up while Mildred combed and brushed
the hair much like her own, except that it was softer and smoother,
because it had more care and there was less of it.

“Oh, mother,” she cried, when Ann made her errand known, “can’t I go?
Three dollars a week! Only think, what a lot; and I’ll give it all to
you, and you can get that pretty French calico at Mr. Overton’s store.
May I go?”

“Who will do the work when I’m sick?” Mrs. Leach asked, herself a good
deal moved by the three dollars a week, which seemed a fortune to her.

“I guess they’ll let me come home when you have a headache,” Milly
pleaded, and on this condition it was finally arranged that she should
go to the Park for a time at least, and two days after we saw her
shelling peas and longing for a change, the change came and she started
out on her career in her best gingham dress and white apron, with her
small satchel of clothes in her hand and a great lump in her throat as
she kissed her mother and Bessie and Charlie, and would have kissed Tom
if he had not disappeared with a don’t-care air and a watery look in his
eyes, which he wiped with his checked shirt sleeve, and then, boy-like,
threw a green apple after his sister, hiding behind the tree when she
looked around to see whence it came.

It was a lovely morning, and Thornton Park lay fair and beautiful in the
distance as she walked rapidly on until a familiar whistle stopped her
and she saw Hugh hurrying across the fields and waving his hat to her.

“Hello!” he said, as he came to her side, “I nearly broke my neck to
catch you. And so you are going to be a hired girl. Let me carry that
satchel,” and he took it from her while she answered hotly, “I ain’t a
hired girl. I’m Allie’s little friend; that’s what she said when she
came with Ann last night and we made the bargain, and I’m to have three
dollars a week.”

“Three dollars a week! That is big,” Hugh said, staggered a little at
the price. “But, I say, don’t go so fast. Let’s sit down awhile and
talk;” and seating himself upon a log, with Mildred beside him and the
satchel at his feet, he went on: “Milly, I don’t want you to go to
Thornton Park. Won’t you give it up? Seems as if I was losing you.”

“You never had me to lose,” was the girl’s reply, and Hugh continued:

“That’s so; but I mean that I like you better than any girl I ever knew;
like you just as I should my sister if I had one.”

Here Milly elevated her eyebrows a little, while Hugh went on: “And I
don’t want you to go to that fine place and learn to despise us all, and
the old home by the brook.”

“I shall never do that, for I love father and mother and Tom and Bessie
and Charlie better than I do myself. I’d die for them, but I do hate the
old house and the poverty and work, and I mean to be a grand lady and
rich, and then I’ll help them all, and you, too, if you’ll let me.”

“I don’t need your help, and I don’t want to see you a grand lady, and I
don’t want you to be snubbed by that proud Thornton,” Hugh replied, and
Milly answered quickly, with short, emphatic nods of her head:

“I sha’n’t be snubbed by him, for if he sasses me I shall sass him. I’ve
made up my mind to that.”

“And when you do may I be there to hear; but you are a brick, any way,”
was Hugh’s laughing rejoinder, and as Milly had risen to her feet, he,
too, arose, and taking up the satchel walked with her to the Park gate,
where he said good-bye, but called to her after a minute, “I say, Milly,
I have that pea-pod yet, and _you_ are beginning to wilt, but I am as
plump as ever.”

“Pshaw!” was Mildred’s scornful reply, as she hurried on through the
Park, while Hugh walked slowly down the road, wishing he had money and
could give it all to Milly.

“But I shall never be rich,” he said to himself, “even if I’m a lawyer
as I mean to be, for only dishonest lawyers make money, they say, and I
sha’n’t be a cheat if I never make a cent.”

Meanwhile Milly had reached the house, which had always impressed her
with a good deal of awe, it was so stately and grand. Going up to the
front door she was about to ring, when the same voice which had ordered
her from the berry pasture, said to her rather sharply:

“What are you doing here, little girl?”

“I’m Mildred Leach, and I’ve come to be Allie’s little friend,” Mildred
answered, facing the speaker squarely, with her satchel in both hands.

“Oh, yes; I know, but go to the side door, and say Miss Alice instead of
Allie,” Mr. Thornton replied as he began to puff at his cigar.

Here was _sass_ at the outset, and remembering her promise to Hugh,
Milly gave a vigorous pull at the bell, saying as she did so:

“I sha’n’t call her Miss, and I shall go into the front door, or I
sha’n’t stay. I ain’t dirt!”

This speech was so astounding and unexpected, that instead of resenting
it, Mr. Thornton laughed aloud, and as a servant just then came to the
door, he sauntered away, saying to himself:

“Plucky, by Jove; but if she suits Allie, I don’t care.”

If Mr. Thornton had a redeeming trait it was his love for his wife and
children, especially little Alice, for whom he would sacrifice
everything, even his pride, which is saying a great deal, and when, an
hour later, he found her in the Park with Mildred at her side making
dandelion curls for her, he was very gracious and friendly, asking her
how old she was, and giving her numerous charges with regard to his
daughter. Then he went away, while Mildred looked admiringly after him,
thinking how handsome he was in his city clothes, and how different he
was from her father.

“It’s because he’s rich and has money. I mean to have some, too,” she
thought, and with the seeds of ambition taking deeper and deeper root,
she began her life at Thornton Park, where she soon became a great
favorite, not only with Alice, but with Mrs. Thornton, to whom she was
almost as necessary as to Alice herself.

Regularly every Saturday night her three dollars were paid to her, and
as regularly every Sunday morning she took them home, where they were
very acceptable, for Mr. Leach had not the least idea of thrift, and his
daughter’s wages tided over many an ugly gap in the household economy.
Mrs. Leach had the French calico gown, and Charlie a pair of red shoes,
and Bessie a new white frock, and Tom a new straw hat, but for all that
they missed Mildred everywhere, she was so helpful and willing, even
when rebelling most against her condition, and when in September Mrs.
Thornton proposed that she should go with them to New York, Mrs. Leach
refused so decidedly that the wages were at once doubled, and six
dollars a week offered in place of three. Money was nothing to Mrs.
Thornton, and as what she set her mind upon she usually managed to get,
she succeeded in this, and when in October the family returned to the
city, Mildred went with them, very smart in the new suit Mrs. Thornton
had given her, and very red about the eyes from the tears she had shed
when saying good-bye to her home.

“If I’d known I should feel this way, I believe I wouldn’t have gone,”
she had thought, as she went from room to room with Charlie in her arms,
Bessie holding her hand, and Tom following in the rear, whistling “The
girl I left behind me,” and trying to seem very brave.

On a bench by the brook which ran back of the house Mildred at last sat
down with Charlie in her lap, and looking at the water running so fast
at her feet, wondered if she should ever see it again, and where Hugh
was that he did not come to say good-bye. She had a little package for
him, and when at last he appeared, and leaping across the brook, sat
down beside her, she gave it to him, and said with a forced laugh:

“A splint from the oven broom. You used to ask for one, and here ’tis.”

He knew what she meant, and opening the paper saw one of her dark curls.

“Thanks, Milly,” he said, with a lump in his throat. “I’ll keep it, and
the peas, too, till you come back. When will that be?”

“I don’t know; next summer, most likely; though perhaps I shall stay
away until I’m such a fine lady that you won’t know me. I’m to study
with Allie’s governess and learn everything, so as to teach some time,”
she said.

“Here’s the carriage,” Tom called round the corner, and kissing Charlie
and Bessie and Tom, who did not resist her now, and crying on her
mother’s neck, and wringing her father’s hard hand and saying good-bye
to Hugh, she went out from the home where for many a long year she was
not seen again.




                              CHAPTER III.
                      INCIDENTS OF FIFTEEN YEARS.


At first the inmates of the farm house missed the young girl sadly; but
they gradually learned to get on very well without her, and when in the
spring word came that Mrs. Thornton was going to Europe and wished to
take Mildred with her, offering as an inducement a sum far beyond what
they knew the girl’s services were worth, and when Mildred, too, joined
her entreaties with Mrs. Thornton’s, telling of the advantage the
foreign life would be to her, as she was to share in Alice’s
instruction, the father and mother consented, with no thought, however,
that she would not return within the year. When Hugh heard of it he went
alone into the woods, and sitting down near the chestnut tree, where he
and Milly had often gathered the brown nuts together, thought the matter
out in his plain, practical way.

“That ends it with Milly,” he said. “Europe will turn her head, and if
she ever comes home she will despise us more than ever and me most of
all, with my gawky manners and big hands and feet.”

Then, taking from his pocket a little box, he opened it carefully, and
removing a fold of paper looked wistfully at the contents. A curl of
dark-brown hair and a gray pod with two peas inside,—one shriveled and
harder than the other, and as it seemed to him harder and more shriveled
than when he last looked at it.

“It’s just as I thought it would be,” he said, “She will grow away from
me with her French and German and foreign ways, unless I grow with her,”
and for the first time in his life Hugh felt the stirring of a genuine
and laudable ambition. “_I_ will make something of myself,” he said. “I
have it in me, I know.”

The curl and the peas were put away, and from that time forward Hugh’s
career was onward and upward, first to school in Pittsfield, then to
college at Amherst, then to a law office in Albany, and then ten years
later back to Rocky Point, where he devoted himself to his profession
and won golden laurels as the most honorable and prominent lawyer in all
the mountain district. Rocky Point had had a boom in the meantime, and
now spread itself over the hillside and across the pasture land, almost
to the red farm house which stood by the running brook, its exterior a
little changed, as blinds had been added and an extra room with a bow
window, which looked toward the village and the brook. And here on
summer mornings fifteen years after Mildred went away a pale-faced woman
sat, with her hair now white as snow, combed smoothly back from her
brow, her hands folded on her lap, and her eyes turned towards the
window through which she knew the sun was shining brightly, although she
could not see it, for Mrs. Leach was blind. Headache and hereditary
disease had done their work, and when her husband died she could not see
his face, on which her tears fell so fast. For more than two years he
had been lying in the cemetery up the mountain road, and beside his
grave was another and a shorter one, nearly level with the ground, for
it was twelve years since Charlie died and won the golden crown which
Milly had promised him that day when the spirit of prophecy was upon
her.

During all these years Mildred had never come back to the old home which
bore so many proofs of her loving remembrance, for every dollar she
could spare from her liberal allowance was sent to her people. Mrs.
Thornton had died in Paris, where Alice was so far cured of her spinal
trouble that only a slight limp told that she had ever been lame. At the
time of Mrs. Thornton’s death there was staying in the same hotel an
English lady, a widow, who had recently lost her only daughter, a girl
about Mildred’s age, with something of Mildred’s look in her eyes. To
this lady, whose name was Mrs. Gardner, Mildred had in her helpful way
rendered many little services and made herself so agreeable that when
Mrs. Thornton died the lady offered to take her as her companion and
possibly adopted daughter, if the girl proved all she hoped she might.
When this proposal was made to Mr. Thornton he neither assented nor
objected. The girl could do as she pleased, he said, and as she pleased
to go she went, sorry to leave Alice, but glad to escape from the
father, whose utter indifference and apparent forgetfulness of her
presence in his family, had chafed and offended her. Rude he had never
been to her, but she might have been a mere machine, so far as he had
any interest in or care for her. She was simply a servant, whose name he
scarcely remembered, and of whose family he knew very little when Mrs.
Gardner questioned him of them.

“Very poor and very common; such as would be called peasantry on the
continent,” he said, and Mildred, who accidentally overheard the remark,
felt the hot blood stain her face and throb through her veins as she
registered a vow that this proud, cold man, who likened her to a
peasant, should some day hold a different opinion of her.

She was nearly fifteen now, and older than her years with her besetting
sin, ambition, intensified by her life abroad, and as she saw, in the
position which Mrs. Gardner offered her an added round to the ladder she
was climbing, she took it unhesitatingly, and went with her to
Switzerland, from which place she wrote to her mother, asking pardon if
she had done wrong, and enclosing fifty pounds which she had been saving
for her.

“Taken the bits in her teeth,” was Hugh’s comment, when he heard of it,
while Mr. and Mrs. Leach mourned over their wayward daughter, whose
loving letters, however, and substantial gifts made some amends for her
protracted absence.

She had gone with Mrs. Gardner as a companion, but grew so rapidly into
favor that the lady began at last to call her daughter, and when she
found that her middle name was Frances, to address her as Fanny, the
name of the little girl she had lost, and to register her as Miss
Gardner. To this Mildred at first objected as something not quite
honorable, but when she saw how much more attention Fanny Gardner
received than Mildred Leach had done, she gave up the point, and became
so accustomed to her new name that the sound of the old would have
seemed strange to her had she heard it spoken. Of the change, however,
she never told her mother, and seldom said much of Mrs. Gardner, except
that she was kind and rich and handsome, with many suitors for her hand,
and when at last she wrote that the lady had married a Mr. Harwood, and
spoke of her ever after as Mrs. Harwood, the name Gardner passed in time
entirely from the minds of both Mr. and Mrs. Leach, who, being very
human, began to feel a pride in the fact that they had a daughter
abroad, who was growing into a fine lady and could speak both German and
French.

From point to point Mildred traveled with the Harwoods, passing always
as Mrs. Harwood’s adopted daughter, which she was to all intents and
purposes. And in a way she was very happy, although at times there came
over her such a longing for home that she was half resolved to give up
all her grandeur and go back to the life she had so detested. They were
at a villa on the Rhine, not very far from Constance, when she heard of
Charlie’s death, and burying her face in the soft grass of the terrace
she sobbed as if her heart were broken.

“Oh, Charlie,” she moaned, “dead, and I not there to see you. I never
dreamed that you would die; and I meant to do so much for you when you
were older. I wish I had never left you, Charlie, my darling.”

Could Mildred have had her way she would have gone home then, but Mrs.
Harwood would not permit it, and so the years went on until in Egypt she
heard of her father’s death, and that her mother was blind. It was Tom
who wrote her the news, which he did not break very gently, for in a way
he resented his sister’s long absence, and let her know that he did.

“Not that we really need you,” he wrote, “for Bessie sees to the house,
which is fixed up a good deal, thanks to you and mother’s Uncle Silas.
Did you ever hear of him? I scarcely had until he died last year and
left us five thousand dollars, which makes us quite rich. We have some
blinds and a new room with a bay window and a girl to do the work; so,
you see, we are very fine, but mother is always fretting for you, and
more since she was blind, lamenting that she can never see your face
again. Should we know you, I wonder? I guess not, it is so long since
you went away, thirteen years. Why, you are twenty-six! Almost an old
maid, and I suppose an awful swell, with your French and German and
Italian. Bessie can speak French a little. She is eighteen, and the
handsomest girl you ever saw, unless it is Alice Thornton, whose back is
straight as a string. She comes to Thornton Park every summer with
Gerard, and when she isn’t here with Bessie, Bessie is there with her.
Mr. Thornton is in town sometimes, high and mighty as ever, with a face
as black as thunder when he sees Gerard talking French to Bessie, for it
was of him she learned it. I have been away to the Academy several
quarters, and would like to go to college, but shall have to give that
up, now father is dead. Did I tell you I was reading law with Hugh? He
is a big man every way, stands six feet in his slippers, and head and
shoulders above every lawyer in these parts. Why, they sometimes send
for him to go to Albany to try a suit. I used to think he was sweet on
you, but he has not mentioned you for a long time, except when mother
got blind, and then he said, ‘Milly ought to be here.’ But don’t fret;
we get along well enough, and you wouldn’t be happy with us.

                                                      “Yours,
                                                                  “Tom.”

When Mildred read this letter she made up her mind to go home at any
cost, and would have done so, if on her return from Naples she had not
been stricken down with a malarial fever, which kept her an invalid for
months, and when she recovered from it there had come into her life a
new excitement which absorbed every other thought, and led finally to a
result without which this story would never have been written.




                              CHAPTER IV.
                           AT THE FARM HOUSE.


It was fifteen years since Milly Leach sat shelling peas on the doorstep
where now two young girls were sitting, one listening to and the other
reading a letter which evidently excited and agitated her greatly. It
was as follows:

                                         “LANGHAM’S, LONDON, MAY —, 18—.

  “DEAR ALICE,—You will probably be surprised to hear that I am going to
  be married to a Miss Fanny Gardner, whom I first met in Florence. She
  is twenty-seven or twenty-eight, and the most beautiful woman I ever
  saw, and good as she is beautiful. You are sure to like her. The
  ceremony takes place at —— church in London, and after the wedding
  breakfast at her mother’s town house we shall go for a short time to
  Wales and Ireland and then sail for home.

  “I suppose you and Gerard are at the Park, or will be soon, and I want
  you to see that everything is in order. We shall occupy the suite of
  rooms on the south side of the house instead of the east, and I’d like
  to have them refurnished throughout, and will leave everything to your
  good taste, only suggesting that although Miss Gardner’s hair is
  rather a peculiar color,—golden brown, some might call it,—she is not
  a blonde; neither is she a brunette; and such tints as soft French
  grays and pinks will suit her better than blue. The wedding day is
  fixed for June —. Shall telegraph as soon as we reach New York, and
  possibly write you before.

                                           “Your loving father,
                                                       “GILES THORNTON.”

“Oh—h,” and the girl who was listening drew a long breath. “Oh—h! Going
to be married,—to Fanny Gardner. That’s a pretty name. She’s English, I
suppose. I guess you’ll like her;” and Bessie put her hand, half
pityingly, half caressingly upon the arm of her friend, down whose
cheeks two great tears were rolling.

“Yes,” Alice replied; “but it is so sudden, and I’m thinking of mother.
I wonder what Gerard will say. There he is now. Oh, Gerard,” she called,
as a young man came through the gate and seating himself upon a lower
step took Bessie’s hand in his and held it while the bright blush on her
lovely face told what he was to her.

“What’s the matter, Allie?” he said to his sister. “You look solemn as a
graveyard.”

“Papa is going to be married,” Alice replied, with a sob.

“Wha—at!” and Gerard started to his feet. “Father married! Why, he is
nearly fifty years old. Let me see,”—and taking the letter from Alice he
read it aloud, commenting as he read. “Twenty-seven or twenty-eight; not
much older than I am, for I am twenty-five; quite too young for me to
call her mother. ‘The most beautiful woman I ever saw.’ He must be hard
hit. ‘Ceremony takes place——’ Why, girls, it’s to-day! It’s past. I
congratulate you, Allie, on a stepmother, and here’s to her health from
her son;” and stooping over Bessie he kissed her before she could
remonstrate.

Just then Hugh McGregor came up the walk, and taking off his straw hat
wiped the perspiration from his face, while he stood for a moment
surveying the group before him with a quizzical smile upon his lips.
Fifteen years had changed Hugh from the tall, awkward boy of seventeen
into the taller, less awkward man of thirty-two, who, having mingled a
good deal with the world, had acquired much of the ease and polish which
such mingling brings. Handsome he could not be called; there was too
much of the rugged Scotch in him for that, but he had something better
than beauty in his frank, honest face and kindly blue eyes, which
bespoke the man who could be trusted to the death and never betray the
trust. He, too, had received a letter from Mr. Thornton, whose business
in Rocky Point he had in charge, and after reading it had gone to
Thornton Park with the news. Finding both Alice and Gerard absent, he
had followed on to the farm house where he was sure they were.

“I see you know it,” he said, pointing to the letter in Gerard’s hand.
“I have heard from your father and came to tell you. Did you suspect
this at all?”

“No,” Alice replied; “he has never written a word of any Miss Gardner. I
wonder who she is.”

“I don’t know,” Hugh answered slowly, while there swept over him the
same sensation he had experienced when he first saw the name in Mr.
Thornton’s letter.

It did not seem quite new, and he repeated it over and over again but
did not associate it with Mildred although she was often in his mind,
more as a pleasant memory now, perhaps, for the feelings of the man were
not quite what the boy’s had been, and in one sense Milly had dropped
out of his life. When she first went away, and he was in school,
everything was done with a direct reference to making of himself
something of which Milly would be proud when she came back. But Milly
had not come back, and the years had crept on and he was a man honored
among men, and in his busy life had but little leisure for thought
beyond his business. It was seldom now that he looked at the dark brown
curl, or the little pea in the pod, hard as a bullet, and shriveled
almost to nothing. But when he did he always thought of the summer day
years ago and the young girl on the steps and the sound of the brook
gurgling over the stones as it ran under the little bridge. And it all
came back to him now, with news of Mr. Thornton’s bride, though why it
should he could not tell. He only knew that Milly was haunting him that
morning with strange persistency, and his first question to Bessie was,
“When did you hear from your sister?”

“Last night. She is in London, or was,—but wrote she was going on a
journey and then was coming home. I shall believe that when I see her.
Mother has the letter, and will be glad to see you,” was Bessie’s reply,
and Hugh went into the pleasant, sunny room where the blind woman was
sitting, with her hands folded on her lap and a listening expression on
her face.

“Oh, Hugh,” she exclaimed, “I am glad you have come. I want to talk to
you.”

Straightening her widow’s cap, which was a little awry, as deftly as a
woman could have done, he sat down beside her, while she continued, as
she drew a letter from her bosom, where she always kept Milly’s last. “I
heard from Milly last night. I am afraid she is not happy, but she is
coming home by and by. She says so. Read it, please.”

Taking the letter he began to read:

                                                    “LONDON, May —, 18—.

“DARLING MOTHER:—I am in London, but shall not stay long, for I am going
on a journey, and it may be weeks, if not months, before I can write you
again. But don’t worry. If anything happens to me you will know it. I am
quite well and—oh, mother, I never loved you as I do now or needed your
prayers so much. Pray for me. I can’t pray for myself, but I’d give half
my life to put my arms around your neck and look into your dear, blind
eyes, which, if they could see, would not know me, I am so changed. My
hair fell out when I was so sick in Naples, and is not the same color it
used to be. Everything is different. Oh, if I could see you, and I shall
in the fall, if I live.

“Give my love to Tom and Bessie, and tell Hugh,——No, don’t tell him
anything. God bless you, darling mother. Good-bye,

                                                 “From
                                                     “MILDRED F. LEACH.”

Hugh’s face was a study as he read this letter, which sounded like a cry
for help from an aching heart. Was Milly unhappy, and if so, why? he
asked himself as he still held the letter with his eyes fixed upon the
words “Tell Hugh——No, don’t tell him anything.” Did they mean that in
her trouble she had for a moment turned to him, he wondered, but quickly
put that thought aside. She had been too long silent to think of him
now; and he was content that it should be so. His liking for her had
been but a boy’s fancy for a little girl, he reasoned, and yet, as he
held the letter in his hand, it seemed to bring Milly very near to him,
and he saw her plainly as she looked when entering Thornton Park that
morning so long ago. “I felt I was losing her then. I am sure of it
now,” he was thinking, when Mrs. Leach asked what he thought of Milly’s
letter, and where he supposed she was going, and what ailed her.

Hugh was Mrs. Leach’s confidant and oracle, whom she consulted on all
occasions, and Tom himself was no kinder or tenderer in his manner to
her than this big-hearted Scotchman, who soothed and comforted her now
just as he always did, and then, without returning to the young people
by the door he went out through the long window of Mrs. Leach’s room and
off across the fields to the woods on the mountain side, where he sat
down upon a rocky ledge to rest, wondering why the day was so
oppressive, and why the words “Tell Hugh” should affect him so
strangely, and why Mildred seemed so near to him that once he put up his
hand with a feeling that he should touch her little hard, brown hand,
browned and hardened with the work she hated so much. It was not often
that he indulged in sentiment of this kind, but the spell was on him,
and he sat bound by it until the whistle from the large shop had called
the workmen from their dinners. Then he arose and went down the mountain
road to his office, saying to himself: “I wonder where she is to-day,
when I am so impressed with a sense of her nearness that I believe she
is thinking of me,” and with this comforting assurance, Hugh was very
patient and kind to the old woman whose will he had changed a dozen
times, and who came to have it changed again, without a thought of
offering him any remuneration for his trouble.

Meantime the group by the door had been joined by Tom, who had grown
into just the kind of man Whittier’s barefoot boy would have grown into
if he had grown at all,—a frank, sunny-faced young man, whom every old
woman and young girl liked, and whom one young girl loved with all the
intensity of her nature, caring nothing that he was poor and one whom
her proud father would scorn as a son-in-law. They were not exactly
engaged,—for Alice said her father must be consulted first, and they
were waiting for him, while Gerard, who could wait for nothing where
Bessie was concerned, was drinking his fill of love in her blue eyes,
with no thought or care as to whether his father would oppose him or
not.

“Hello, you are all here,” Tom said, as he came round the corner and
laid his hand on Allie’s shoulder; then, glancing at her face, he
continued: “Why, you’ve been crying. What’s the matter, Allie?”

“Oh, Tom, papa is married to-day,—to Fanny Gardner, an English girl with
golden-brown hair and only twenty-eight years old and very handsome, he
says. I know I shall hate her,” Alice sobbed, while Tom burst into a
merry laugh.

“Your father married to a girl with golden-brown hair, which should be
gray to match his,—that is a shame, by Jove. But, I say, Allie, I’m glad
of it, for with a young wife at Thornton Park, you will be _de trop_,
don’t you see?” And just as Gerard had done to Bessie so Tom did to
Alice—kissed her pale face, with his best wishes to the bride, who was
discussed pretty freely, from her name to the furniture of her room,
which was to harmonize with the complexion of one who was neither a
blond nor a brunette, but very beautiful.

For the next few weeks there was a great deal of bustle and excitement
at Thornton Park, where Bessie went every day to talk over and assist in
the arrangement of the bridal rooms, which were just completed when
there came a telegram from New York saying that the newly married pair
had arrived and would be home the following day.




                               CHAPTER V.
                               THE BRIDE.


A Cunard steamer had landed its living freight at the wharf, where there
was the usual scramble and confusion, as trunks and boxes were opened
and angry, excited women confronted with their spoils by relentless
custom house officers, bent upon doing their duty, unless stopped by the
means so frequently employed upon such occasions. Outside the long
building stood an open carriage in which a lady sat, very simply but
elegantly attired, with money, and Paris, and Worth showing in every
article of her dress, from her round hat to her dainty boots, which
could not be called small, for the feet they covered harmonized with the
lady herself, who was tall and well proportioned, with a splendidly
developed figure, on which anything looked well. There was a brilliant
color in her cheeks, and her brown eyes were large and bright and
beautiful, but very sad as they looked upon the scenes around her
without seeming to see anything. Nor did their expression change when
she was joined by an elderly man, who, taking his seat beside her, said
first to the driver:

“To the Windsor,” and then to her, “I was longer than I thought I should
be; those rascally officers gave me a world of trouble, but we shall
soon be at the hotel now. Are you very tired?”

The question was asked very tenderly, for Giles Thornton was greatly in
love with his bride of a few weeks. He had first met her in Florence,
where she was recovering from the long illness which had lasted for
months and made her weak as a child and almost as helpless. During her
sickness her hair had fallen out, and owing to some unusual freak of
nature it had come in much lighter than it was before and not so curly,
although it still lay in wavy masses upon her head, and here and there
coiled itself into rings around her forehead. The Harwoods were staying
at the same hotel with Mr. Thornton, and it was in the Boboli Gardens
that he first met her as she was being wheeled in an invalid chair by
her attendant.

“Will he know me?” was her first thought when he was presented to her.

But there was no fear of that, for Mildred Leach had passed as wholly
out of his mind as if he had never seen her, and if she had not there
was no danger of his recognizing the girl who had been his daughter’s
companion in this lovely woman whose voice and manner and appearance
were indicative of the refinement and cultivation to which for years she
had been accustomed. To him she was Miss Gardner, an English girl, and
during the half hour he walked by her chair in the gardens, he felt his
heart throb as it had never throbbed since he buried his wife. He had
loved her devotedly and had never thought to fill her place until now
when love did its work at first sight, and when two weeks later the
Harwoods left Florence for Venice and Switzerland, he was with them, to
all intents and purposes Mildred’s lover, although he had not openly
announced himself as such.

To Mrs. Harwood Mildred had said, “Don’t tell him who I am. I prefer to
do that when the time comes. I am going to punish him for calling my
father a peasant when you inquired about him. I heard him. I have not
forgotten.”

And so Mr. Thornton went blindly to his fate, which came one day in
Ouchy in the grounds of the Beau-Rivage, where Mildred was sitting
alone, with her eyes fixed upon the lake and the mountains beyond, and
her thoughts back in the old farm house, with her mother and Bessie and
Tom and Hugh, of whom she had not heard a word for months.

“He has forgotten me,” she said to herself, “and why shouldn’t he? I was
never much to him, and yet”——

She did not get any farther, for there was a footstep near; some one was
coming, and in a moment Mr. Thornton said to her, “Alone, Miss Gardner,
and dreaming? May I dispel the dream and sit beside you a moment?”

Mildred knew then what was before her, as well as she did half an hour
later, during which time Giles Thornton had laid himself and his fortune
at her feet, and what was harder than all to meet, had made her believe
that he loved her. She knew that he admired her, but she had not counted
upon his love, which moved her a little, for Mr. Thornton was not a man
to whom one could listen quietly when he was in earnest and resolved to
carry his point, and for an instant Mildred wavered. It was something to
be Mrs. Giles Thornton, of Thornton Park, and ought to satisfy her
ambition. With all her beauty and social advantages, she as yet had
received no eligible offer. It was known that she had no money, and only
an Italian count and the youngest son of an English earl had asked her
hand in marriage. But both were poor, and one almost an imbecile, from
whom she shrank in disgust. Mr. Thornton was different; he was a
gentleman of wealth and position, and as his wife she would for a part
of the year live near her family. But with the thought of them there
came the memory of an overgrown, awkward boy, whose feet and hands were
so big that he never knew what to do with them, but whose heart was so
much bigger than his feet and hands, that it bore down the scale and Mr.
Thornton’s chance was lost for the time being.

“Hugh may never be anything to me,” she thought, “but I must see him
before I give myself to any one.”

Then turning to Mr. Thornton, she said, “I thank you for your offer,
which I believe is sincere, and that makes it harder for me to tell you
what I must. Do you remember a girl, Mildred Leach, who was your
daughter’s little friend, as she called herself, for she was as proud as
you, and would not be a maid?”

“Ye-es,” Mr. Thornton stammered, as he looked wistfully into the
beautiful face confronting him so steadily. “I had forgotten her
entirely, but I remember now. She left us to go with an English lady, a
Mrs. Gardner. Why, that is Mrs. Harwood,—and,—and,—oh, you are not she!”

“Yes, I am,” was Mildred’s reply, and then very rapidly she told her
story, not omitting her having overheard him liken her parents to
peasants when speaking of them to Mrs. Gardner. “I determined then,” she
said, “that if possible I would one day humble your pride, but if I have
done so, it has not given me the satisfaction I thought it would, and I
am sorry to cause you pain, for I believe you were in earnest when you
asked me to be your wife, which I can never be.”

“No,” he answered slowly, like one who had received a blow from which he
could not at once recover. “No, you can never be my wife; Mildred Leach;
it does not seem possible.”

Then he arose and walked rapidly away, and when the evening boat left
Ouchy for Geneva he was on it, going he cared but little where, if by
going he could forget the past as connected with Mildred Leach.

“I cannot marry her family,” he said many times during the next few
months, when he was wandering everywhere and vainly trying to forget
her, for always before him was the face he had never admired so much as
when he last saw it, flushed and pale by turns, with a wondrous light in
the brown eyes where tears were gathering. “If it were not for her
family, or if I could separate her from them, I would _not_ give her
up,” he had often thought when in the following May he met her again at
the Grand Hotel in Paris, where the Harwoods were stopping.

He could not tell what it was which impressed him with the idea that she
had changed her mind, as she came forward to meet him, saying she was
glad to see him, and adding that Mr. and Mrs. Harwood had gone to the
opera. She seemed very quiet and absent minded at first, and then
rousing herself, said to him abruptly, “You did not stop long enough in
Ouchy for me to inquire after my family. You must have seen them often
since I left home.”

“Yes,—no,” he answered in some embarrassment; “I have of course been to
Thornton Park, but I do not remember much about them. I believe your
father rents, or did rent, some land of me, but am not sure, as my agent
attends to all that.”

“My father is dead,” Mildred answered so sharply as to make him jump and
color painfully, as if guilty of a misdemeanor in not knowing that her
father was dead.

“I beg your pardon. I am very sorry. I,—yes,—am very sorry,” he began;
but she cut him short by saying, “Do you know Hugh McGregor?”

“Oh, yes. I know him well,” and Mr. Thornton brightened perceptibly. “He
is my lawyer, and attends to all my business in Rocky Point; a fine
fellow,—a very fine fellow. Do you know him?”

“Yes,” Mildred replied, while her breath came heavily, “I know him, and
I hear he is to marry my sister Bessie.”

“Oh, indeed,” and as if memory had suddenly come back to him, Mr.
Thornton seemed immensely relieved. “I remember now,—Bessie Leach;
that’s the girl I have sometimes seen with Alice. Gerard taught her
French,—a very pretty girl. And Mr. McGregor is engaged to her? I am
very glad. Any girl might be proud to marry him.”

Mildred made no reply to this, and Mr. Thornton never guessed the dreary
emptiness of her soul as she sat with her hands clasped tightly
together, thinking of the man whom any girl would be proud to marry. A
few months before she would have said that he was nothing more to her
than the friend of her childhood, but she had recently learned her
mistake, and that the thought of seeing him again was one of the
pleasantest anticipations of her home going. There had come to the hotel
a Mr. and Mrs. Hayford from America, who sometimes spent their summers
at Rocky Point, where Mrs. Hayford was once a teacher. As Mildred had
been her pupil, she remembered her at once, after hearing the name, and
would have introduced herself but for a conversation accidentally
overheard between Mrs. Hayford and a friend who had also been at Rocky
Point, and to whom she was retailing the news, first of New York and
then of Rocky Point, where she had spent a few days in April prior to
sailing.

“Do you remember that Hercules of a lawyer, Hugh McGregor, whom you
admired so much?” was asked. “They say he is engaged to Bessie Leach, a
girl much younger than himself, but very pretty,—beautiful, in fact,
and——

Mildred heard no more, but hurried away, with an ache in her heart that
she could not quite define. Tom had intimated that Gerard was interested
in Bessie, and now Hugh was engaged to her. Well, it was all right, she
said, and would not admit to herself how hard the blow had struck her
and how she smarted under it. And it was just when the smart was at its
keenest that Mr. Thornton came again across her path, more in love, if
possible, than ever, and more intent upon making her his wife. He had
fought a desperate battle with his pride and had conquered it, and
within twenty-four hours after meeting her in Paris, she had promised to
marry him, and when her pledge was given she was conscious of a feeling
of quiet and content which she had scarcely hoped for. In his character
as lover Mr. Thornton did not seem at all like the man she had feared in
her childhood, nor if he felt it did he gave the slightest sign that he
was stooping from his high position. She had been very frank with him
and had made no pretension of love. “I will be true to you,” she said,
“and try to please you in everything. I am tired of the aimless life I
have led so many years, and I think Mrs. Harwood is a little tired of me
too. She says I ought to have married long ago, but I could not marry a
fool even if he had a title. I shall be so glad to go home to my
friends, although I am so changed they will never know me.”

Then she added laughingly: “Wouldn’t it be great fun not to write them
who I am and see if they will recognize me?”

She did not really mean what she said, or guess that it harmonized
perfectly with a plan which Mr. Thornton had in mind, and was resolved
to carry out, if possible. If he could have had his wish he would not
have gone to Rocky Point at all, but his children were there and
Mildred’s heart was set upon it, and he must meet the difficulty in some
way. He could marry Mildred, but not her family, and he shrank from the
intimacy which must necessarily exist between the Park and the farm
house when it was known who his wife was. In his estimation the Leaches
were nobodies, and he could not have them running in and out of his
house and treating him with the familiarity of a son and brother, as he
was sure they would do if he did not stop it. If Mildred would consent
to remain incognito while at the Park the annoyance would be prevented,
and this consent he tried to gain by many specious arguments. His real
reason, he knew, must be kept from sight, and so he asked it as a
personal favor, saying it would please him very much and be a kind of
excitement for her.

“Possibly you will be recognized,” he said; “and if so, all right; if
not, we will tell them just before we go to New York in the autumn and
enjoy their surprise.”

He did not add that, once away from Rocky Point, it would probably be
long before he took her there again. He only talked of the plan as a
joke, which Mildred did not quite see. She was willing to keep the
secret until she met them, but to keep it longer was absurd and foolish,
she said, and involved a deception, which she abhorred.

“I accepted you partly that I might be near them and see them every
day,” she said, “and am longing to throw my arms around mother’s neck
and tell her I have come back.”

“And so you shall in time, but humor my whim for once. You will not be
sorry,” Mr. Thornton pleaded, and Mildred consented at last, and felt in
a measure repaid when she saw how happy it made Mr. Thornton, whose real
motive she did not guess.

This was the last of April, and six weeks later Mildred was Mrs. Giles
Thornton, traveling through Scotland and Wales and trying to believe
herself happy in her husband’s love and the costly gifts he lavished
upon her. She had been courted and admired as Fanny Gardner, but the
deference paid her now and her independence were very sweet to her, and
if she could have forgotten Hugh and been permitted to make herself
known to her family, she would have been content at least on the morning
when she left New York and started for Thornton Park.




                              CHAPTER VI.
                          MRS. GILES THORNTON.


She was very lovely in all the fullness of her matured beauty as she
stepped from the train at Rocky Point, and with her large bright eyes
swept the crowd of curious people gathered to see her, not one of whom
she recognized. A handsome open carriage from Brewster’s, sent up a few
days before for this occasion, was waiting for them, and with a half bow
to those who ventured to salute her husband, Mildred seated herself in
it and was driven through the well-remembered street, her heart beating
so loudly that she could hear it distinctly as she drew near the top of
the hill from which she knew she would see her old home and possibly her
mother. And when the hill top was reached and she saw the house with its
doors opened wide, and from the upper window of what had been hers and
Bessie’s room a muslin curtain blowing in and out, she grew so white
that her husband laid his hand on hers, and said, “Don’t take it so
hard, darling. You are doing it to please me.”

“Yes, but it seems as if I must stop here,” she answered faintly as she
leaned forward to look at the house around which there was no sign of
life, or stir, except the moving of the curtain and the gambols of two
kittens playing in the doorway where Mildred half expected to meet the
glance of Bessie’s blue eyes and see the gleam of Charlie’s golden hair.

But Charlie was lying on the mountain side, and Bessie, although out of
sight, was watching the carriage and the beautiful stranger in whom she
saw no trace of her sister.

“I’ve seen her,” Bessie said, as she went into her mother’s room, “and
she is very lovely, with such a bright color on her cheeks. And so young
to be Mr. Thornton’s wife! I wonder if she loves him. I couldn’t.”

“No. I suppose you prefer Gerard,” Mrs. Leach replied, while Bessie
answered blushingly, “Of course I do. Poor Gerard! How angry his father
will be when he knows about Tom and me, too. Gerard was going to tell
him at once, but I persuaded him to wait until the honeymoon was over.
Just two months I’ll give him, and during that time I mean to cultivate
Mrs. Thornton and get her on my side. I hope she is not proud like him.
She did not look so.”

Bessie had been at the Park that morning helping Alice give the last
touches to the rooms intended for the bride. These had been finished in
the tints which Mr. Thornton had prescribed. Everything was new, from
the carpets on the floors to the lace-canopied bedstead of brass. There
were flowers everywhere in great profusion, roses mostly of every
variety, and in a glass on a bracket in a corner, Bessie had put a bunch
of June pinks from her own garden, explaining to Alice that her mother
had sent them to the bride, as they were her favorite flowers and would
make the rooms so sweet. Everything was finished at last, and after
Bessie was gone Alice had nothing to do but to wait for the coming of
the carriage which she soon saw entering the Park. Mildred’s face was
very white and her voice trembled as she saw Alice in the distance and
said, “I can’t bear it. I came near shrieking to the old home that I was
Mildred. I must tell Alice. I cannot be so hypocritical. There is no
reason for it.”

“No, no,” and Mr. Thornton spoke a little sternly. “It is too late now,
and you have promised. I wish it and have my reason. Ah, here we are,
and there are Alice and Gerard.”

They had stopped under the great archway at the side entrance where
Gerard and Alice were waiting for them and scanning the bride curiously
as she alighted and their father presented her to them,—not as their
mother, but as “Mrs. Thornton, my wife.”

All Mildred’s color had come back and her face was glowing with
excitement as she took Alice’s hand; then unable to control herself, she
threw her arms around the neck of the astonished girl and burst into a
flood of tears, while Mr. Thornton looked on in dismay, dreading what
might follow. He was himself beginning to think it a very foolish and
unnatural thing to try to keep his wife’s identity from her people, but
he was not a man to give up easily, and once in a dilemma of his own
making he would stay in it at any cost.

“She is very tired and must go to her room,” he said to his daughter,
who was crying herself, and holding Mildred’s hands in her own.

Had Mildred tried she could have done nothing better for her cause than
she had done. Alice had been very doubtful as to whether she should like
her new mother or not, but something in the eyes which looked so
appealingly into hers, and in the tears she felt upon her cheek, and the
clasp of the arms around the neck, disarmed all prejudice and made of
her a friend at once. As for Gerard, he had never meant to be anything
but friendly, and when the scene between the two ladies was over he came
forward with the slow, quiet manner natural to him and said, “Now it is
my turn to welcome Mrs. Thornton, who does not look as if she could have
for a son a great six-footer like me. But I’ll call you mother, if you
say so.”

“No, don’t,” Mildred answered, flashing on him a smile which made his
heart beat rapidly and brought a thought of Bessie, who sometimes smiled
like that.

Leading the way to Mildred’s rooms, Alice said, as she threw open the
door, “I hope you will like them.”

“Like them! They are perfect,” was Mildred’s answer, as she walked
through the apartments, feeling that it must be a dream from which she
would bye-and-bye awaken. “And so many roses,” she said, stopping here
and there over a bowl or cluster of them until, guided by the perfume,
she came upon the pinks her mother had sent to her.

Taking up the glass she held it for an instant while Alice said, “June
pinks, perhaps you do not have them in England. They are old-fashioned
flowers, but very sweet. A friend of mine, Bessie Leach, brought them
for you from her mother, who is blind.”

There was a low cry and a crash as the finger-glass fell to the floor
and Mildred sank into the nearest chair, white as ashes, with a look in
her eyes which startled and frightened Alice.

“It is the heat and fatigue of the voyage. I was very sea-sick,” Mildred
said, trying to smile and recover herself, while Alice went for a towel
to wipe up the water trickling over the carpet, and wondering if Mrs.
Thornton was given to faintings and hysterics like this.

“She don’t look like it,” she thought, as she picked up and carried out
the bits of glass and the pinks which had done the mischief.

When lunch was served Mildred was too ill to go down. A severe headache
had come on, and for a time Alice sat by her couch bathing her forehead
and brushing her hair, which was more a mottled than golden brown, for
it was darker in some places than others, especially when seen in
certain lights and shadows. But this only added to its beauty, and Alice
ran her fingers through the shining mass, admiring the color and the
texture and admiring the woman generally and answering the many
questions which were asked her. Hungry at heart to hear something of her
family, Mildred said to her, “Tell me of your friends. Have you any
here? Girl friends, I mean.”

“Only one with whom I am intimate,” Alice replied, and then as girls
will she went off into rhapsodies over Bessie Leach, and in a burst of
confidence concluded by saying, “You must not tell papa, for he is not
to know it yet, but Bessie is to be my sister. She is to marry Gerard.”

“Marry Gerard!” and Mildred raised herself upon her elbow and shedding
her heavy hair back from her face stared at Alice with an expression in
her eyes which the girl could not understand, and which made her wonder
if her stepmother, too, were as proud as her father and would resent
Gerard’s choice.

This called forth another eulogy upon Bessie’s beauty and sweetness,
with many injunctions that Mildred should not repeat to her husband what
had been told her.

“Nobody knows it for certain but Mr. McGregor and ourselves,” she added,
and then, turning her face away so that it could not be seen, Mildred
said, “Mr. McGregor? That is your father’s attorney. Is he a married
man?”

The question was a singular one, but Alice was not quick to suspect, and
answered laughingly, “Hugh McGregor married! Why, I don’t suppose he has
ever looked twice at any girl. He is a confirmed old bachelor, but very
nice. Father thinks the world of him.”

“Yes, oh, yes,” Mildred moaned, as she clasped her hands over her
forehead where the pain was so intense.

“You are worse. You are white as a sheet; let me call papa,” Alice
cried, alarmed at the look of anguish in the dark eyes and the gray
pallor of the face which seemed to have grown pinched and thin in a
moment.

But her husband was the last person whom Mildred wished to see then, and
detaining Alice she said, “Don’t call him, please. It will soon pass
off, and don’t think me ungrateful, either, but I’d rather be alone for
a while. I may sleep and that will do me good.”

And so, after darkening the room, Alice went out and left the wretched
woman alone in her grief and pain.

“Mrs. Hayford was mistaken. Hugh is not engaged to Bessie, and I am Mrs.
Giles Thornton,” she said, a little bitterly. “My ambition ought to be
satisfied. I have made my own bed and must lie in it, and go on lying,
too!”

She smiled faintly at her own joke and then continued: “If I had only
resisted and come back Mildred Leach! But it is now too late, and Hugh
will always despise me for the deception. Oh, Hugh!”

There was a spasmodic wringing of the hands, and then, as if ashamed of
herself Mildred said, “I must not, will not be faithless to my husband,
who loves me, I know, and I will be worthy of his love and make him
happy, so help me Heaven!”

The vow was made and Mildred would keep it to the death. The might have
been, which has broken so many hearts when the knowledge came too late,
was put away and buried deep down in the inmost recesses of her soul,
and when two hours later she awoke from a refreshing sleep and found her
husband sitting by her, she put her hand in his just as she had never
put it before, and did not shrink from him when he stooped down to
caress her.




                              CHAPTER VII.
                           CALLS AT THE PARK.


It was early the next morning when Mildred arose and stepping out upon
the balcony looked toward the town which had changed so much since she
was there last. Across the noisy little river which went dashing along
in its rocky bed at the foot of the mountain, one or two tall stacks of
manufactories were belching forth their smoke, while new churches and
hotels and villas dotted what had been pasture lands when she went away.
Standing upon tiptoe she could see the chimney top of her old home, and
just over it, up the mountain road, the evergreens in the cemetery where
her father and Charlie were lying.

“I’ll go there some day alone and find their graves,” she was thinking
when her husband joined her.

“I am sure you are better, you look so fresh and bright; but it is time
you were getting ready for breakfast,” he said, as he gave her a little
caress.

And Mildred was very bright when she at last went with her husband to
the breakfast-room, a half-opened rose which he had gathered for her at
her throat, and another at her belt. It was her first appearance at her
own table, and Mr. Thornton led her proudly to her seat behind the
coffee urn and looked at her admiringly while she assumed the rôle of
mistress as naturally as if she had all her life been accustomed to her
present surroundings. Alice had kissed her effusively as she came in,
hoping she was quite well and thinking her more beautiful than on the
previous day. Gerard, who was less demonstrative but more observant than
his sister, greeted her cordially and then sat watching her, curious and
puzzled by something in her face or manner or voice which seemed
familiar to him.

“She is dazzlingly lovely. I wonder how Bessie will look beside her,” he
thought, as after breakfast he started for the farm house as was his
daily custom.

It was very warm that morning and Mildred had seated herself with a book
upon the shaded balcony opening from her room, when word was brought her
that her husband wished to see her on the front piazza.

“There’s a gentleman with him,—Mr. McGregor,” the servant said, and
Mildred felt as if her heart had suddenly risen in her throat, making
her choke and gasp for breath.

She knew he would come some time, but had not expected him so soon, and
she shook like a leaf as she stood a moment before her mirror.

“He will never know me,” she said, as side by side with the reflection
of herself she saw the girl of fifteen years ago; sallow and thin and
slight, with eyes too big for her face, and hair too heavy for her head;
the girl with the faded calico dress and high-necked apron, who seemed
to walk beside her as she descended the broad staircase and went through
the hall and out upon the piazza, where she heard her husband’s voice,
and Hugh’s.

“I came on business, and intended calling later, but I shall be glad to
see Mrs. Thornton,” she heard him say, and then the smothered, choking
sensation left her, and, with a little unconscious nod to the other
Mildred at her side, she whispered:

“I shall pull through.”

Hugh was standing half-way down the piazza, leaning against a column,
with his straw hat in his hand, fanning himself, just as she had seen
him do a hundred times when they were boy and girl together, and he was
looking at the shadowy Mildred at her side just as he now looked at her,
the tall, elegant, perfectly self-possessed woman, coming slowly towards
him, every movement graceful, and every action that of one sure pf
herself, and accustomed to the admiration she saw in his eyes,—the same
kind, honest blue eyes which she remembered so well, but which had in
them no sign of recognition as he came forward to meet her, and offering
her his hand, welcomed her to Rocky Point, “and America,” he added,
while a blood-red stain crept up from her neck to her ear as she felt
the deception she was allowing. Hugh was not as polished as Mr.
Thornton, nor were his clothes as faultless and fashionable, but he was
every whit a gentleman, and looked it, too, as he stood for a moment
talking to Mildred in the voice she knew so well and which had grown
richer and deeper with the lapse of time, and moved her strangely as she
listened to it again.

“I think I should have known him anywhere,” she thought, as she answered
his remarks, her own voice, in which the English accent was predominant,
steady and firm, but having in it occasionally a tone which made Hugh
start a little, it was so like something he had heard before, but could
not define.

There was nothing in this English woman, as he believed her to be, which
could remind him of Mildred Leach, who was never once in his mind during
the few minutes he was talking with her. And still she puzzled him, and
all that morning, after his return to his office, her lovely face and
especially her eyes haunted him and looked at him from every paper and
book he touched, and he heard the tone, which had struck him as
familiar, calling to him everywhere, and bringing at last a thought of
Mildred Leach and the July morning when she had shelled her peas by the
door, and given him a pod as a souvenir. Where was she now, he wondered,
and would she come back in the autumn? Probably not. She had held out
similar promises before only to break them. She was weaned entirely from
all her old associations, and it did not matter, he said to himself,
wondering, as he often did, why he had so long kept in his mind the
little wayward girl, who had never done anything but tease and worry
him, and tell him of the great things she meant to do.

“She has been a long time doing it, unless she calls a life of
dependence a great thing,” he said, and then his thoughts drifted to
Thornton Park and the bride, who was troubled with no more calls that
day, and so had time to rest and go about her handsome house and
grounds, much handsomer than when she first rang the front door bell and
was told to go to the side entrance by the man who was her husband now,
and prouder of her than of all his other surroundings.

The next day there were many visitors at the Park, mostly strangers to
Mildred, although a few of them had been known to her in childhood, but
like Hugh, they saw no resemblance in her to the “oldest Leach girl,” as
she was called by the neighbors who remembered her. Of the bride there
was but one verdict, “The most elegant and agreeable woman that has ever
been in Rocky Point,” was said of her by all, for Mildred, while bearing
herself like a princess, was so gracious and friendly that she took
every heart by storm.

It was late in the day when Bessie started to make her call with Tom.
Dinner was over and Mildred, who, with her husband and Gerard and Alice,
was sitting upon the piazza, saw them as they turned an angle in the
shrubbery and came up the avenue.

“Oh, there’s Bessie,” Allie cried, springing to her feet, while
Mildred’s heart began to beat wildly as she glanced at Mr. Thornton, on
whose brow there was a dark frown, the first she had seen since she was
his wife, and this quieted her at once, for she readily guessed its
cause. She knew he had not married her family, and had begun to suspect
that he meant to keep her from them as much as possible.

“But he cannot do it,” she thought, and turning to him she said in a low
tone, “They are mine; my own flesh and blood, and for my sake treat them
politely. It is the first favor I have asked of you.”

There was something in her eyes which made him think she might be
dangerous if roused, and for aught he knew she might bring the whole
family there to live, or leave him for them, and swallowing his pride,
he went forward to meet his visitors with so much cordiality that Tom,
who had never received the slightest civility from the great man,
thought, to himself, “By Jove, she’s made him over.”

“My wife, Mrs. Thornton; Miss Leach and Mr. Leach,” Mr. Thornton said,
and Mildred’s hand, cold and nerveless, was taken by a hand as white and
soft as her own, while Bessie’s blue eyes looked curiously at her, and
Bessie was saying the commonplace things which strangers say to each
other.

“How lovely she is,” Mildred thought, hardly able to restrain herself
from folding the sunny, bright-faced girl in her arms and sobbing and
crying over her.

But Tom was speaking to her now, and she was conscious of a feeling of
pride as she looked at the tall, handsome, manly fellow, and knew he was
her brother. Tom was like his mother, and Bessie like her father, while
Mildred was like neither, and one could scarcely have seen any
resemblance between them as they sat talking together until the moon
came up over the hill and it was time to go. Bessie had devoted herself
to Mildred, who fascinated her greatly, and who had adroitly led her to
talk of herself and her home and her mother. Mildred spoke of the pinks,
her voice trembling as she sent her thanks and love to the blind woman
whom she was soon coming to see.

“Oh, I’m so glad,” Bessie exclaimed, in her impulsive way, “and mother
will be glad too. She sent the pinks because they are her favorite
flowers and she says they remind her of Milly, who used to love them so
much; that’s my sister, who has been abroad many years. I scarcely
remember her at all.”

“Oh,” came like a moan from Mildred, who felt as if a blow had struck
her heart, it throbbed so painfully at the mention of her old name by
the sister who did not know her, and for an instant she was tempted to
scream out the truth and bring the foolish farce to an end.

Then she felt her husband’s hand on her arm and the power of his will
overmastering her, and keeping her quiet. But she was glad when the
interview was over and she was free to go by herself and sob out her
anguish and shame and regret, that she had ever lent herself to this
deception. Of the two, Bessie and Tom, she had felt more drawn toward
the latter, of whom any sister might be proud, and when bidding him
good-night she had held his hand with a pressure which surprised him,
while her lips quivered and her eyes had in them a wistful look, as if
she were longing to say, “Oh, Tom; my brother.” And Tom had felt the
magnetism of her eyes and manner, and he said to Alice, who, with
Gerard, walked with them to the Park gate, “I say, Allie, your
stepmother is a stunner, and no mistake, and I do believe she took a
fancy to me. Why, I actually thought she squeezed my hand a little, and
she looked as if she’d like to kiss me. It wouldn’t hurt me much to kiss
her.”

“Oh, Tom; and right before Allie,” Bessie said laughingly, and Tom
replied, “Can’t a fellow fall in love with his stepmother-in-law, if he
wants to?” and the arm he had thrown around Alice tightened its hold
upon her.

Here they all laughed together and went on freely discussing the woman,
who, on her knees in her room was praying to be forgiven for the lie she
was living, and for strength to meet her mother, as that would be the
hardest ordeal of all. Once she resolved to defy her husband and
proclaim her identity, but gave that up with the thought that it was not
very long until September, and she would wait at least until she had
seen her mother.




                             CHAPTER VIII.
                        MILDRED AND HER MOTHER.


It was several days before Mildred went to the farm house, from which
her husband would have kept her altogether if he could have done so. His
determination to separate her as much as possible from her family had
been constantly increasing since his return, and he had fully made up
his mind to leave Rocky Point by the first of September and advertise
the Park for sale, thus cutting off all chance for intimacy in the
future when it was known who she was. She could do for her family all
she pleased, he thought, but she must not be intimate with them, and on
his way to the house, for he drove her there himself, he reminded her
again of her promise, saying to her very kindly, as he helped her to
alight:

“I can trust you, Milly, and am sorry for you, for I know it will be
hard to meet your mother and keep silence.”

It was harder than Mildred herself had anticipated, for the sight of the
familiar place, the walk, the garden, and the brook, where she had waded
barefoot many a time in summer and drawn her sled in winter with Hugh at
her side, nearly unmanned her, and every nerve was quivering as she rang
the bell in the door of the little, square entry, with the steep, narrow
stairs winding up to the chambers above. It was Bessie who answered the
ring, blushing when she saw her visitor and apologizing for her
appearance. The hired girl was gone for a day or two, leaving her maid
of all work, and as this was baking day she was deep in the mysteries of
pastry and bread, with her long, bib apron on and her hands covered with
flour.

“Never mind me,” Mildred said, as she took in the situation. “It was
thoughtless in me to come in the morning. Please keep to your work while
I talk with your mother. I will call upon you some other time. Oh,
Gerard, you here?” she continued, as through the door opening into the
kitchen she saw the young man seated by the table pitting cherries which
Bessie was to make into pies. “That’s right; help all you can,” she
added with a smile, glad he was there, as it would leave her alone and
freer with her mother, whom she found in the bright, sunny room, built
partly with the money she had sent.

Mrs. Leach was always very neat and clean, but this morning she was
particularly so, in her black cambric dress and spotless white apron,
with the widow’s cap resting on her snowy hair. Her hands were folded
together, and she was leaning back in her chair as if asleep, when
Mildred’s voice roused her, and a moment after Bessie said:

“Here, mother, is Mrs. Thornton, and as I am so busy I will leave her
with you for a little while.”

Suddenly, as if she had been shot, Mrs. Leach started forward, and
rubbing her eyes, in which there was an eager, expectant look, said:

“I must have been dozing, for I dreamed that Milly had come and I heard
her voice in the kitchen. Mis’ Thornton here, did you say? I am very
proud to meet her;” and the hands were outstretched, groping in the
helpless way habitual with the blind. And Mildred took the hands in hers
and drawing a chair to her mother’s side sat down so close to her that
Mrs. Leach felt her hot breath stir her hair and knew she was being
looked at very closely. But how closely she did not dream, for Mildred’s
soul was in her eyes, which scanned the worn face where suffering and
sorrow had left their impress. And what a sad, sweet face it was, so
sweet and sad that Mildred involuntarily took it between her hands and
kissed it passionately; then, unable to control herself, she laid her
head on her mother’s bosom and sobbed like a little child.

“What is it? Oh, Mrs. Thornton, you scare me. What makes you cry so? Who
are you?” Mrs. Leach said, excitedly, for she was frightened by the
strange conduct of her visitor.

“You must excuse me,” Mildred said, lifting up her head. “The sight of
you unnerved me, for my,—my mother is blind?”

She did not at all mean to say what she knew would involve more
deception of a certain kind, but she had said it and could not take it
back, and it was a sufficient explanation of her emotion to Mrs. Leach,
who said:

“Your mother blind! Dear,—dear,—how did it happen, and has she been so
long? Where does she live, and how could she bear to have you leave her?
Dear, dear!”

“Don’t talk of her now, please. I can’t bear it,” Mildred replied, and
thinking to herself, “Homesick, poor thing,” Mrs. Leach, whose ideas of
the world were narrowed to her own immediate surroundings, began to talk
of herself and her family in a desultory kind of way, while Mildred
listened with a feeling of half wonder, half pain.

All her associations while with Mrs. Harwood had been with
highly-cultivated people, and in one sense her mother was new to her and
she realized as she had never done before how different she was from Mr.
Thornton and herself. “But she is my mother, and nothing can change my
love for her,” she thought, as she studied her and the room, which was
cozy and bright, though very plainly furnished as compared with the
elegant boudoir where she had made her own toilet. There was the tall
clock in the corner which had ticked away the hours and days she once
thought so dreary and lonely; the desk between the windows, where her
father used to keep his papers, and his old, worn pocketbook, in which
there was never much money, and on the bed in another corner was a
patchwork quilt, a few blocks of which Mildred had pieced herself,
recognizing them now with a start and a throb of pain as she saw in two
of them bits of the frock she had bought for Charlie with the berries
picked in her husband’s pasture. She had been turned out then as a
trespasser where she was mistress now, and there were diamonds on her
white hands, which had once washed potatoes for dinner, her special
abomination, and her gown had cost more than all her mother’s wardrobe.
And there she sat in a kind of dream, while the other Mildred of years
ago sat close beside her, confusing and bewildering her, so that she
hardly heard half her mother was saying about Tom and Bessie, the
dearest children in the world. But when at last her own name was
mentioned she started and was herself again, and listened as her mother
went on:

“I’ve another girl, Mildred by name, but I call her Milly. She’s been in
Europe for years, and has been everywhere and speaks French and German,
and writes such beautiful letters.”

She was evidently very proud of her absent daughter, and the lady beside
her, whose pallid face she could not see, clasped her hands and held her
breath as she continued:

“I never s’posed she’d stay so long when she went away, or I couldn’t
let her go; but somehow or other she’s staid on and on till she’s been
gone many a year; many a year has Milly been gone, fifteen years come
fall, and now ‘tain’t likely I should know her, if I could see. You
won’t be offended, Mis’ Thornton, if I say that something about you
makes me think of Milly; something in your voice at first, and you laid
your head on my neck and cried just as she used to when things went
wrong and fretted her, which they mostly did, for she wasn’t meant to be
poor, and was always wantin’ to be rich and grand. I guess she is grand
now she’s been in foreign places so much, but she’s comin’ home in the
fall; she wrote me so in her last letter. You’ll call on her, won’t
you?”

“Yes,” Mildred stammered, scarcely able to keep herself from crying out:
“Oh, mother, I _have_ come. I am Milly,” but a thought of her husband
restrained her, and thinking how she would make amends in the future,
when freed from her promise of secrecy, she listened again, while her
mother talked of her father and Charlie, and lastly of Hugh McGregor,
who was a great favorite with the old lady.

“Jest like my own boy,” Mrs. Leach said, “and so kind to Tom. He lent
him money to go to school, and helps him a sight in his law books, and
helps on the farm, too, when he gets time, which is not often, for Hugh
is a first-rate lawyer and pleads at the bar like a judge. I believe
he’s comin’. Yes, I hear his step,” and her face lighted up as Hugh
appeared in the open door.

“Good-morning, Mrs. Leach,” he called cheerily. “I beg your pardon, good
morning, Mrs. Thornton,” and he bowed deferentially to the lady as he
came in with a cluster of lovely roses, which he laid in Mrs. Leach’s
lap, saying, “Here are some of Milly’s roses. They opened this morning
and I brought them to you. Shall I give one to Mrs. Thornton?”

“Yes, do; the fairest and best. I think she must be like them, though I
can’t see her,” Mrs. Leach replied, and selecting one of the finest,
Hugh offered it to Mildred, whose cheeks rivaled it in color, as she
held it near them to inhale its perfume.

It was of the variety known as “Souvenir d’un Ami,” and the original
stock had been bought by Mrs. Leach two or three years before with some
money sent her by Mildred, whose name she had given to the rose. This
she explained to Mildred, adding that Mr. McGregor was so fond of the
rose that he had taken a slip from her garden and planted it under his
office window.

“He calls it Milly’s rose,” she added, “for he and Milly were great
friends, as children. Hugh, ain’t there something about Mis’ Thornton
that makes you think of Milly?”

Mildred’s face was scarlet, but she tried to hide it by bending her head
very low as she fastened the rose to the bosom of her dress, while Hugh
answered laughingly, “Why, no. Milly was small and thin, and a child
when we saw her, while Mrs. Thornton is——” here he stopped, confused and
uncertain as to what he ought to say next. But when Mildred’s eyes
flashed upon him expectantly, he added very gallantly, “Mrs. Thornton is
more like Milly’s roses.”

“Thank you for the compliment, Mr. McGregor. I will remember it and keep
Milly’s rose, too,” Mildred said, with a little dash of coquetry, and a
ring in her voice which made Hugh think of the Milly who, he supposed,
was thousands of miles away.

Just then there was the sound of wheels stopping before the house, and
Gerard, with his apron still tied around his neck, for he was not yet
through with his culinary duties, came to the door, saying, “Mrs.
Thornton, father is waiting for you.”

“Yes, I’ll be there directly,” Mildred replied, rising hurriedly to say
good-bye, and giving her hand to her mother, who fondled it a moment and
then said to her, “Your hands are soft as a baby’s, and there are many
rings on your fingers. I think I know how they look, and I have felt
your hair, but not your face. Tom and Bessie say it is handsome. Would
you mind my feeling it? That’s my way of seeing.”

Mildred was glad that Hugh had stepped in to the next room and could not
see her agitation, as she knelt beside the blind woman, whose hands
moved slowly over her face and then up to her hair, where they rested a
moment as if in benediction, while she said, “You are lovely, I am sure,
and good, too, and your poor blind mother must miss you so much. Didn’t
she hate to part with you?”

“Yes, oh, yes, and my heart is aching for her. Please bless me as if you
were my mother and I your daughter Milly,” was Mildred’s sobbing reply,
her tears falling like rain as the shaking hands pressed heavily upon
her bowed head, while the plaintive voice said slowly, “God bless you,
child, and make you happy with your husband, and comfort your poor
mother while you are away from her. Amen.”

“Will you tell Mrs. Thornton I am in a hurry?” Mr. Thornton said to
Bessie, loudly enough for Mildred to hear, and wiping her tears away,
she went out through the side door where her husband was standing, with
a frown upon his face, caused not so much by her delay as by the glimpse
he was sure he had caught of his son, in the kitchen, with a checked
apron tied round his neck and a big cherry stain on his forehead.

Nor did the sight of his wife’s flushed cheeks and red eyes help to
restore his equanimity, and although he said nothing then, Mildred felt
that he was displeased, as he helped her into the phaeton and took his
seat beside her.




                              CHAPTER IX.
                         GERARD AND HIS FATHER.


Gathering up the reins and driving very slowly, he began:

“Was that Gerard whom I saw tricked out as a kitchen cook?”

“Gerard was there. Yes,” Mildred answered, and he continued in that
cool, determined tone which means more than words themselves, “Is he
often there? Is he interested in your sister? If he is, it must stop. I
tell you it must stop,” he added more emphatically as his wife made no
reply. “I married you because——” he paused a moment and looked at the
woman sitting at his side in all her glowing beauty, and then went on in
a softer tone,—“because I loved you more than I loved my pride, which,
however, is so great, that it will not quietly submit to my son’s
marrying your sister.”

“Does he intend to?” Mildred asked so coolly that it exasperated him,
and he replied, “He will not with my consent, and he will hardly dare do
so without it. Why, he has scarcely a dollar of his own, and no business
either. More’s the pity, or he wouldn’t be capering round a kitchen in
an old woman’s apron.”

“I think it was Bessie’s,” Mildred said quietly, and angrier than ever,
her husband continued. “You told me in Paris that your sister was
engaged to Mr. McGregor.”

“It was a mistake,” Mildred said, her heart beating heavily as she
thought of all the mistake had done for her.

“Yes,” Mr. Thornton repeated, “I ventured to rally Hugh a little this
morning, and he denied the story while something in his manner aroused a
suspicion which the sight of Gerard confirmed. What was he doing there?”

“Pitting cherries for Bessie,” Mildred said with provoking calmness, and
he continued, “I tell you it shall not be. Gerard Thornton must look——”
here he stopped, not quite willing to finish the sentence, which Milly,
however, finished for him—“must look higher than Bessie Leach?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean, although I might not have said it, for I do
not wish to wound you unnecessarily; but I tell you again it must not
be, and you are not to encourage it, or encourage so much visiting
between my children and the Leach’s. Why, that girl,—Bessie, I think is
her name,—is at the Park half the time. Heavens! What would it be if
they knew who you were! I was wise to do as I did, but I am sorry I came
here at all, and I mean to return to New York earlier than I intended,
and if necessary, sell the place. That will break up the whole
business.”

To this Mildred made no reply, but sat thinking, with a growing
conviction that she now knew her husband’s real reason for wishing to
keep her identity a secret during their stay at the Park. It was to
prevent the intimacy which he knew would ensue between her and her
family, if they knew who she was, and with all the strength of her will
she rebelled against it. “I will not encourage the young people, but he
shall not keep me from my mother,” she thought, and the face at which
her husband looked a little curiously as he helped her from the phaeton,
had in it an expression he did not understand.

“I believe she’s got a good deal of the old Harry in her after all, but
I shall be firm,” he thought, as he drove to the stable and gave his
horse to the groom.

Lunch was nearly over when Gerard appeared, the cherry stains washed
from his face, but showing conspicuously on his nails and the tips of
his fingers, from which he had tried in vain to remove them.

“Why, Gerard, what have you been doing to your hands?” Alice asked, and
with an amused look at Mildred, he replied, “Stoning cherries with
them,” while his father hastily left the table.

“Gerard,” he said, pausing a moment in the doorway, “Come to the library
after lunch. I want to see you.”

“Yes, sir,” Gerard answered, feeling as certain then of what was coming
as he did twenty minutes later when his father asked abruptly, “How old
are you?”

“Twenty-five last May.”

“Twenty-five,—yes; and been graduated three years, and no business yet.
Nothing to do but wear a kitchen apron and stone cherries for Bessie
Leach. I saw you. I don’t like it, and as soon as we are in New York I
shall find something for you to do.”

At the mention of Bessie, Gerard had stiffened, for his father’s tone
was offensive. But his answer was respectful: “I shall be glad of
something to do, sir, although I do not think myself altogether to blame
for having been an idler so long. When I left college you know I was in
so bad health that you and the doctor both, fearing I had inherited my
mother’s malady, prescribed perfect rest and quiet for a long time. But
I am strong now and will do anything you think best. I prefer law, and
would like to go into Mr. McGregor’s office. I can get on faster there
than in New York.”

“Yes, and see Bessie Leach oftener,” Mr. Thornton began angrily. “I tell
you I will not have it. The girl is well enough and pretty enough, but I
won’t have it, and if you are getting too much interested in her, quit
her at once.”

“Quit Bessie!” Gerard said. “Quit Bessie! Never! She has promised to be
my wife!”

“Your wife!” Mr. Thornton repeated, aghast with anger and surprise, for
he never dreamed matters had gone so far.

“Yes, my wife. I was only waiting for you to know her better to tell you
of our engagement,” Gerard replied, and then for half an hour, Mildred,
who was in her room over the library, heard the sound of excited
voices,—Gerard’s low and determined, and his father’s louder and quite
as decided.

And when the interview was over, and her husband came up to her, he
said:

“I am very sorry, my darling, because, in a way, the trouble touches you
through your sister; but you must see that it is not a suitable match
for my son. She is not you, and has not had your advantages. She is a
plain country girl, and if Gerard persists in marrying her he will have
no help from me, either before or after my death.”

“You mean you will disinherit him?” Mildred asked, and he replied:

“Yes, just that; and I have told him so, and given him the summer in
which to make up his mind. He has some Quixotic idea of studying law
with McGregor, which will of course keep him here after we have gone. I
don’t intend to live in a quarrel, and shall say no more to him on the
subject, or try to control his actions in any way. If he goes with us to
New York, all right; and if he chooses to stay here, I shall know what
to do.”

A slight inclination of Mildred’s head was her only reply, until her
husband said:

“Do you think Bessie would marry him if she knew he was penniless?”

And then she answered proudly: “I do,” and left the room, saying to
herself as she went out into the beautiful grounds, whose beauty she did
not see: “What will he do when he hears of Alice and Tom? Three Leaches
instead of one. Poor Tom! Poor Bessie! And I am powerless to help them.”




                               CHAPTER X.
                            IN THE CEMETERY.


As Mr. Thornton had said, he did not like to live in a quarrel, and
after his interview with his son, he tried to appear just as he had done
before, and when Bessie came to the Park, as she often did, he treated
her civilly, and insensibly found himself admiring her beauty and grace,
and thinking to himself, “If she had money she might do.”

Upon Mildred he laid no restrictions with regard to her intercourse with
her family, feeling intuitively that they would not be heeded. And thus
she was free to see her mother as often as she liked, and it was
remarked by the villagers that the proud mistress of Thornton Park went
more frequently to the farm house than anywhere else. Many a morning she
spent in the pleasant room, listening while her mother talked, mostly of
Mildred, whose long silence was beginning to trouble her.

“It is weeks since I heard from her. She said in her last letter it
might be some time before she wrote again, but I am getting anxious,”
she would say, while Mildred comforted her with the assurance that no
news was good news, and that perhaps her daughter was intending to
surprise her by coming upon her unexpectedly some day.

“I am certain of it; I am something of a prophet, and I know Milly will
come,” she would say, as she smoothed her mother’s snowy hair, or
caressed her worn face, which always lighted up with gladness when she
came, and grew sadder when she went away.

By some strange coincidence, it frequently happened that Hugh called
upon Mrs. Leach when Mildred was there, and always stopped to talk with
her. But Mildred was never quite at ease with him. Her eyes never met
his squarely, while her brilliant color came and went as rapidly as if
she were a shy school-girl confronted with her master instead of the
elegant Mrs. Thornton, whose beauty was the theme of every tongue,
stirring even him a little, but bringing no thought of Mildred, of whom
he sometimes spoke to her mother. As yet Milly had found no chance to
visit her father’s and Charlie’s graves, which she knew she could find
without difficulty, as her mother had told her of the headstones which
Tom had put there in the spring. But she was only biding her time, and
one afternoon in August, when she had been in Rocky Point six weeks or
more, she drove up the mountain road to call upon some New Yorkers who
were stopping at the new hotel. It was late when she left the hotel, and
the full moon was just rising as she reached the entrance to the
cemetery on her return home. Calling to the driver to let her alight,
she bade him go on and leave her, saying she preferred to walk, as the
evening was so fine. Mildred had already won the reputation among her
servants of being rather eccentric, and thinking this one of her cranks,
the man drove on, while she went into the grounds, where the dead were
lying, the headstones gleaming white through the clump of firs and
evergreens which grew so thickly as to conceal many of them from view,
and to hide completely the figure of a man seated in the shadow of one
of them not very far from the graves to which she was making her way.
Hugh had also been up the mountain road on foot, and coming back had
struck into the cemetery as a shorter route home. As he was tired and
the night very warm, he sat down in an armchair under a thick pine,
whose shadow screened him from observation, but did not prevent his
outlook upon the scene around him. He had heard the sound of wheels
stopping near the gate, but he thought no more of it until he saw
Mildred coming slowly across the yard diagonally from the gate, holding
up her skirts, for the dew was beginning to fall, and making, as it
seemed to him, for the very spot where he was sitting. At first he did
not recognize her, but when removing her hat as if its weight oppressed
her she suddenly raised her head so that the moonlight fell upon her
face, he started in surprise, and wondered why she was there. Whose
grave had she come to find? Some one’s, evidently, for she was looking
carefully about her, and afraid to startle her, Hugh sat still and
watched, a feeling like nightmare stealing over him as she entered the
little enclosure where the Leaches were buried. He could see the two
stones distinctly, and he could see and hear her, too, as leaning upon
the taller and bending low so that her eyes were on a level with the
lettering, she said, as if reading. “John Leach, and Charlie; these are
the graves. Oh, father! Oh, Charlie! do you know I have come back after
so many years only to find you dead? And I loved you so much. Oh,
Charlie, my baby brother!”

Here her voice was choked with sobs, and Hugh could hear no more, but he
felt as if the weight of many tons was holding him down and making him
powerless to speak or move, had he wished to do so. And so he sat
riveted to the spot, looking at the woman with a feeling half akin to
terror and doubt, as to whether it were her ghost, or Mildred herself
weeping over her dead. As her smothered sobs met his ear and he thought
he heard his own name, he softly whispered, “Milly,” and stretched his
arms towards her, but let them drop again at his side and watched the
strange scene to its close. Once Mildred seemed to be praying, for she
knelt upon the grass, with her face on her father’s grave, and he heard
the word “Forgive.”

Then she arose and walked slowly back to the road, where she was lost to
view. As long as he could see the flutter of her white dress Hugh looked
after her, and when it disappeared from sight he felt for a few moments
as if losing his consciousness, so great was the shock upon his nervous
system. Mrs. Thornton was Mildred Leach,—the girl he knew now he had
never given up, and whose coming in the autumn he had been looking
forward to with so much pleasure. She had come, and she was another
man’s wife, and what was worse than all she was keeping her identity
from her friends and daily living a lie. Did her husband know it, or was
he, too, deceived?

“Probably,” Hugh said, with a feeling for an instant as if he hated her
for the deception. But that soon passed away, and he tried to make
himself believe that it was a hallucination of his brain and he had not
seen her by those two graves. He would examine them and see, for if a
form of flesh and blood had been there the long, damp grass would be
trampled down in places. It was trampled down, and in the hollow between
the graves a small, white object was lying.

“Her handkerchief. She has been here,” he whispered, as he stooped to
pick it up. “If her name is on it I shall know for sure.”

There was a name upon it, but so faintly traced that he could not read
it in the moonlight, which was now obscured by clouds. A storm was
rising, and hastening his steps towards home he was soon in his own room
and alone to think it out. Taking the handkerchief from his pocket, he
held it to the light and read “M. F. Thornton.” There could be no
mistake. It was Mrs. Thornton he had seen in the cemetery, but was it
Mildred? “M. F.,” he repeated aloud, remembering suddenly that Mildred’s
name was Mildred Frances, which would correspond with the initials.

“It is Milly,” he continued, “but why this deception? Is she ashamed to
have her family claim her? Ashamed to have her husband know who she was;
and did she pass for Fanny Gardner in Europe?”

Again a feeling of resentment and hatred came over him, but passed
quickly, for although he might despise and condemn, he could not hate
her. She had been too much to him in his boyhood, and thoughts of her
had influenced every action of his life thus far. Just what he had
expected, if he had expected anything, he did not know, but whatever it
was, it was cruelly swept away. He had lost her absolutely, for when his
respect for her was gone, she was gone forever, and laying his head upon
the table he wrestled for a few moments with his grief and loss, as
strong men sometimes wrestle with a great and bitter pain.

“If she were dead,” he said, “it would not be so hard to bear. But to
see her the beautiful woman she is,—to know she is Mildred and makes no
sign even to her poor, blind mother, is terrible.”

He was walking the floor now, with Milly’s handkerchief held tightly in
his hands, wondering what he should do with it.

“I’ll keep it,” he said. “It is all I have left of her except the lock
of hair and the peas she gave to me. What a fool I was in those days,”
and he laughed as he recalled the morning when Milly threw him the pod
which he had not seen in a year.

But he brought it out now, and laughed again when he saw how hard and
shriveled were both the peas.

“Stony and hard like her. I believe I’ll throw them away and end the
tomfoolery,” he said.

But he put them back in the box, which he called a little grave, and
took up next the curl of tangled hair, comparing its color in his mind
with Mrs. Thornton’s hair, which, from its peculiar, mottled appearance,
had attracted his notice. How had she changed it, he wondered, and then
remembering to have heard of dyes, to which silly, fashionable women
sometimes resorted, he was sure that he hated her, and putting the box
away went to bed with that thought uppermost in his mind, but with
Milly’s handkerchief folded under his pillow.




                              CHAPTER XI.
                             WHAT FOLLOWED.


When Hugh awoke the next morning it was with a confused idea that
something had gone out of his life and left it a blank, and he asked
himself what it was and why he was feeling so badly. But memory soon
brought back a recollection of the secret he held and would hold to the
end, for he had no intention of betraying Mildred or charging her with
deception, if, indeed, he ever spoke to her again. He had no desire to
do so, he thought, and then it came to him suddenly that there was to be
a grand party at Thornton Park that night, and that he had ordered a
dress suit for the occasion.

“But I shall not go,” he said to himself, as he made his hurried toilet.
“I could not bear to see Milly tricked out in the gewgaws and jewels for
which she sold herself.”

And firm in this resolution, he went about his usual duties in his
office, clinching his fist and setting his teeth when several times
during the day he heard Tom Leach talking eagerly of the party, which he
expected to enjoy so much. Tom did not ask if Hugh was going, expecting
it as a matter of course, and Hugh kept his own counsel, and was silent
and moody and even cross for him, and at about four o’clock sat down to
write his regret. Then, greatly to his surprise, he found how much he
really wanted to see Mildred once more and study her in the new
character she had assumed.

“I shall not talk with her and I don’t know that I shall touch her hand,
but I am half inclined to go,” he thought, and tearing up his regret, he
decided to wait awhile and see; and as a result of waiting and seeing,
nine o’clock found him walking up the broad avenue to the house, which
was ablaze with light from attic to basement, and filled with guests,
who crowded the parlors and halls and stairways, so that it was some
little time before he could fight his way to the dressing-room, which
was full of young men and old men in high collars, low vests and
swallow-tails, many of them very red in the face and out of breath with
their frantic efforts to fit gloves a size too small to hands unused to
them, for fashionable parties like this were very rare in Rocky Point.

Mildred had not wished it, as she shrank from society rather than
courted it, but Gerard and Alice were anxious for it, and Mr. Thornton
willing, and under the supervision of his children cards were sent to so
many that the proud man grew hot and cold by turns as he thought of
having his sacred precincts invaded by Tom, Dick and Harry, and the rest
of them, as he designated the class of people whom he neither knew, nor
cared to know. But Alice and Gerard knew them, and they were all there,
Tom and Bessie with the rest, Tom by far the handsomest young man of all
the young men, and the one most at his ease, while Bessie, in her pretty
muslin dress, with only flowers for ornament, would have been the belle
of the evening, but for the hostess, whose brilliant beauty, heightened
by the appliances of dress, which so well became her fine figure,
dazzled every one as she stood by her husband’s side in her gown of
creamy satin and lace, with diamonds flashing on her white neck and arms
and gleaming in her hair. How queenly she was, with no trace of the
storm which had swept over her the previous night, and Hugh, when he
descended the stairs and first caught sight of her, stopped a few
moments, and leaning against the railing, watched her receiving her
guests with a smile on her lips and a look in her eyes which he
remembered now so well, and wondered he had not recognized before. And
as he looked there came up before him another Milly than this one with
the jewels and satin and lace, a Milly with tangled hair and calico
frock and gingham apron, shelling her peas in the doorway and predicting
that she would some day be the mistress of Thornton Park. She was there
now, and no grand duchess born to the purple could have filled the
position better.

“Thornton chose well, if he only knew it,” Hugh thought, and, mustering
all his courage he at last went forward to greet the lady. And when she
offered her hand to him he took it in spite of his determination not to
do so, and looked into her eyes, which kindled at first with a strange
light, while in his there was an answering gleam, so that neither would
have been surprised to have heard the names Milly and Hugh
simultaneously spoken. But no such catastrophe occurred, and after a few
commonplaces Hugh passed on and did not go near her again until, at a
comparatively early hour, when he came to say good-night.

Mildred had removed her glove to change the position of a ring which cut
her finger, and was about putting it on again when Hugh came up,
thinking that at the risk of seeming rude he would not again take the
hand which had sent such a thrill through him when earlier in the
evening he held it for an instant. But the sight of it, bare and white
and soft as a piece of satin, unnerved him and he grasped it tightly,
while he made his adieus, noting as he did so the troubled expression of
her face as she looked curiously at him.

“Does she suspect I know her?” he thought as he went from the house, but
not to his home.

It was a beautiful August night, and finding a seat in the shrubbery
where he could not be seen, he sat there in the moonlight while one
after another carriages and people on foot went past him, and finally,
as the lights were being put out, Tom Leach came airily down the walk,
singing softly. “Oh, don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt? Sweet
Alice, with hair so brown.”

“Tom’s done for,” Hugh thought, little dreaming how thoroughly he was
done for in more respects than one.




                              CHAPTER XII.
                           LOVE VERSUS MONEY.


Tom had been the last to leave the house, for he had lingered awhile to
talk to Alice, with whom he was standing in the conservatory, partially
concealed by some tall vases and shrubs, when Mr. Thornton chanced that
way. Thinking his guests all gone and hearing the murmur of voices, he
stopped just in time to see Tom’s arm around his daughter’s waist and to
hear a sound the meaning of which he could not mistake, as the young
man’s face came in close proximity to that of his daughter. To say that
he was astonished is saying very little. He was horrified and disgusted,
and so indignant that his first impulse was to collar the audacious Tom
and hurl him through the window. But not wishing a scene before the
servants, he restrained himself, and went quietly away, with much the
same feeling which prompted Cæsar to say, “_Et tu, Brute!_” Since his
interview with his son he had never mentioned Bessie’s name to him, or
raised any objection to her coming to his house as often as she liked.
But he had watched her closely, and had been insensibly softened by her
girlish beauty and quiet grace of manner. There was nothing of the
plebeian in her appearance, and he was beginning to think that if
Gerard’s heart were set upon her, rather than have a bitter quarrel he
might possibly consent to the marriage, although it was not at all what
he desired. The young couple could live at the Park house, and in the
spring he would go abroad for an indefinite length of time, and thus
separate himself and wife entirely from her family. In Europe, with her
refinement and money, Alice would make a grand match and possibly marry
an earl, for titles, he knew, could be bought, and he had the means to
buy them. With a daughter who was My Lady, and a son-in-law who was My
Lord, he could afford to have a Leach for his daughter-in-law, and
Gerard’s star was rising when he came so unexpectedly upon a scene which
at once changed him from a relenting father into a hard, determined man,
whom nothing could move.

Mildred was asleep when he went to his room, but had she been awake he
would have said nothing to her. His wrath was reserved for his daughter,
who poured his coffee for him next morning, as Mildred had a headache,
and was not out of her bed. Gerard, too, was absent, and the meal was a
very silent, cheerless one, for Alice felt that something was the matter
and trembled when, after it was over, her father asked her to step into
the library, as he wished to speak with her alone.

“Alice,” he began, “I want to know the meaning of what I saw last
night?”

“What did you see?” she asked, her heart beating rapidly but bravely as
she resolved to stand by Tom.

“I am no spy on other people’s actions, but I was passing the
conservatory and saw Tom Leach kiss you, and I think, yes, I’m very sure
you kissed him back; at all events you laid your head on his shoulder in
a very disreputable way, and I want to know what it means.”

Alice, who had some of her father’s nature, was calm and defiant in a
moment. The word disreputable had roused her, and her answer rang out
clear and distinct, “It means that Tom and I are engaged.”

“Engaged! You engaged to Tom Leach!” Mr. Thornton exclaimed, putting as
much contempt into his voice as it was possible to do. “Engaged to Tom
Leach! Then you are no daughter of mine.”

Mr. Thornton had never liked Tom, whose frank, assured manner towards
him was more like that of an equal than an inferior, and for a moment he
felt that he would rather see Alice dead than married to him. Just then
Gerard came to the door, but was about to withdraw when his father
called him in and said inquiringly, “Your sister tells me she is engaged
to Tom Leach. Did you know it?”

“Yes, I imagined something of the kind,” was Gerard’s reply, as he
crossed over to his sister and stood protectingly by her side, while his
father, forgetting his softened feelings towards Bessie, went on: “And
you? I gave you time to consider your choice. Have you done so?”

“I have.”

“And it is——?”

“To marry Bessie,” was Gerard’s answer, while Alice’s came with it: “And
I shall marry Tom.”

Such opposition from both his children roused Mr. Thornton to fury, and
his look was the look of a madman, as he said, “That is your decision.
Then hear mine. I shall disinherit you both! I can’t take away from you
the few thousands your mother left you, but I can do as I like with my
own. Now, what will you do?”

“Marry Bessie.”

“Marry Tom,” came simultaneously from the young rebels, and with the
words, “So be it,” their father left the room, and a few minutes later
they saw him galloping rapidly down the avenue in the direction of the
town.

He did not return to lunch, and when he came in to dinner he seemed very
absent-minded and only volunteered the remark that he was going to New
York the next day to see that their house was made ready for them within
a week. As Mildred’s headache was unusually severe she had kept her bed
the entire day and knew nothing of the trouble until just at twilight,
when Alice, who felt that she must talk to some one, crept up to her,
and laying her head on the pillow beside her, told of her father’s anger
and threat and asked if she thought he would carry it out.

“No,” Mildred answered. “He will think better of it, I am sure,” and
Alice continued, “Not that I care for myself, but I wanted to help Tom.”

“Do you love him so much that you cannot give him up?” Mildred asked.

“Love him! Why, I would rather be poor and work for my living with Tom,
than have all the world without him,” Alice replied, while the hand on
her head pressed a little heavily as she went on: “Papa is so proud. You
don’t know how contemptuously he says _those Leaches_, as if they were
too low for anything, and all because they happen to be poor, and
because——Did I ever tell you that Bessie’s sister Mildred, who has been
so long in Europe, was once,—not exactly a servant in our family, for
she took care of me,—my little friend, I called her, and was very fond
of her. But I suppose father does not wish Gerard and me to marry into
her family. Are you crying?” Alice asked suddenly, as she heard what
sounded like a sob.

“Yes,—no,—I don’t know. I wish I could help you, but I can’t,” Mildred
answered, while the tears rolled down her cheeks like rain.

Every word concerning her family and herself had been like a stab to
her, and she felt how bitterly she was being punished for her deception.
Once she decided to tell Alice the truth, and might have done so if she
had not heard her husband’s step outside the door. That broke up the
conference between herself and Alice, who immediately left the room.

The next morning Mr. Thornton started for New York, where he was absent
for three or four days, and when he returned he complained of a headache
and pain in all parts of his body. He had taken a severe cold, he said,
and went at once to his bed, which he never left again, for the cold
proved to be a fever, which assumed the typhoid form, with its attendant
delirium, and for two weeks Mildred watched over and cared for him with
all the devotion of a true and loving wife. True she had always been,
and but for one memory might have been loving, too, for Mr. Thornton had
been kind and indulgent to her, and she repaid him with every possible
care and attention. He always knew her in his wildest fits of delirium,
and would smile when she laid her cool hand on his hot head, and
sometimes whisper her name. Gerard and Alice he never knew, although he
often talked of them, asking where they were, and once, during a
partially lucid interval, when alone with Mildred, he said to her, “Tell
the children I was very angry, but I am sorry, and I mean to make it
right.”

“I am sure you do,” Mildred replied, little guessing what he meant, as
his mind began to wander again, and he only said, “Yes,—all right, and
you will see to it. All right,—all right.”

And these were the last words he ever spoke, for on the fourteenth day
after his return from New York, he died, with Mildred bending over him
and Mildred’s hand in his.




                             CHAPTER XIII.
                               THE WILL.


When Mr. Thornton left Gerard and Alice after his threat of
disinheritance, he went straight to the office of Hugh McGregor, and
asking to see him alone, announced his intention of making his will.

“It’s time I did it,” he said with a little laugh, and then as Hugh
seated himself at his table, he dictated as follows:

To a few charitable institutions in New York he gave a certain sum; to
his children, Gerard and Alice, a thousand dollars each, and the rest of
his property he gave unconditionally to his beloved wife, Mildred F.
Thornton.

“Excuse me, Mr. Thornton,” Hugh said, looking up curiously from the
paper on which he was writing, “isn’t this a strange thing you are
doing, giving everything to your wife, and nothing to your children.
Does she know,—does she desire it?”

“She knows nothing, but I do. I know my own business. Please go on.
Write what I tell you,” Mr. Thornton answered impatiently, and without
further protest Hugh wrote the will, which was to make Mildred the
richest woman in the county, his hand trembling a little as he wrote
Mildred F., and thought to himself, “That is Milly’s name. She did not
deceive him there. Does he know the rest?”

“You must have three witnesses,” he said, when the legal instrument was
drawn up.

“Tom Leach is in the next room. I saw him. He will do for one,” Mr.
Thornton said, with a grim smile, as he thought what a ghastly joke it
would be for Tom to witness a will which cut Alice off with a mere
pittance. “Have him in.”

So Tom was called, together with another man who had just entered the
office. A stiff bow was Mr. Thornton’s only greeting to Tom, who
listened while the usual formula was gone through with, and then signing
his name, Thomas J. Leach, went back to his books, with no suspicion as
to what the will contained or how it would affect him.

“I will keep the paper myself,” Mr. Thornton said, taking it from Hugh,
with some shadowy idea in his brain that it might be well to have it
handy in case he changed his mind and wished to destroy it.

But death came too soon for that, and when he died his will was lying
among his papers in his private drawer, where it was found by Gerard,
who without opening it, carried it to Mildred. There had been a funeral
befitting Mr. Thornton’s position and wealth, and he had been taken to
Greenwood and laid beside his first wife, and after a few days spent in
New York the family came back to their country home, which they
preferred to the city. Bessie, Tom and Hugh met them at the station, the
heart of the latter beating rapidly when he saw Mildred in her widow’s
weeds, and helping her alight from the train, he went with her to her
carriage, and telling her he should call in a few days on business,
bowed a little stiffly and walked away.

Since drawing the will he had been growing very hard towards Mildred,
whose identity he did not believe her husband knew, else he had not
married her, and as he went back to his office after meeting her at the
station he wondered what Gerard would think of the will, half hoping he
would contest it, and wondering how long before something would be said
of it to him. It was not long, for the second day after his return from
New York, Gerard found it and took it to Mildred.

“Father’s will,” he said, with a sinking sensation, as if he already saw
the shadow on his life.

Mildred took the paper rather indifferently, but her face blanched as
she read it, and her words came slowly and thick as she said, “Oh,
Gerard, I am so sorry, but he did not mean it to stand, and it shall
not. Read it.”

Taking it from her, Gerard read with a face almost as white as hers, but
with a different expression upon it. She was sorry and astonished, while
he was resentful and angry at the man whose dead hand was striking him
so hard. But he was too proud to show what he really felt, and said
composedly, “I am not surprised. He threatened to disinherit us unless
we gave up Bessie and Tom, and he has done so. It’s all right. I have
something from mother and I shall be as glad to work for Bessie as Tom
will be to work for Alice. It’s not the money I care for so much as the
feeling which prompted the act, and, by George,” he continued, as he
glanced for the first time at the signatures, Henry Boyd, Thomas J.
Leach, Hugh McGregor, “if he didn’t get Tom to sign Alice’s death
warrant. That is the meanest of all.”

What more he would have said was cut short by the violent fit of
hysterics into which Mildred went for the first time in her life. And
she did not come out of it easily either, but sobbed and cried
convulsively all the morning, and in the afternoon kept her room, seeing
no one but Alice, who clung to her as fondly as if she had been her own
mother. Alice had heard of the will with a good deal of composure, for
she was just the age and temperament to think that a life of poverty, if
shared with the man she loved, was not so very hard, and besides she had
in her own right seven hundred dollars a year, which was something, she
reasoned, and she took her loss quite philosophically, and tried to
comfort Mildred, whose distress she could not understand. Mildred knew
by the handwriting that Hugh had drawn the will, and after passing a
sleepless night she arose early the next morning, weak in body but
strong in her resolve to right the wrong which had been done to Gerard
and Alice.

“I am going to see Mr. McGregor,” she said to them when breakfast was
over, and an hour or two later her carriage was brought out, and the
coachman ordered to drive her to Hugh’s office and leave her there.




                              CHAPTER XIV.
                           MILDRED AND HUGH.


Tom was at work that morning on the farm, and as the other clerk was
taking a holiday, Hugh was alone when he received his visitor, whose
appearance there surprised him, and at whom he looked curiously, her
face was so white and her eyes, swollen with weeping, so unnaturally
large and bright. But she was very calm, and taking the seat he offered,
and throwing back the heavy veil whose length swept the floor as she
sat, she began at once by saying:

“You drew my husband’s will?”

“Yes, I drew it,” he answered curtly, and not at all prepared for her
next question, which seemed to arraign him as a culprit.

“Why did you do it?” and there was a ring in her voice he could not
understand.

“Why did I do it?” he repeated. “Don’t you know that lawyers usually
follow their client’s wishes in making their wills?”

“Yes, but you might have dissuaded him from it. You knew it was wrong.”

“You don’t like it then?” he asked, but repented the question when he
saw the effect upon her.

Rising to her feet and tugging at her bonnet strings as if they choked
her, she looked steadily at him and said:

“Don’t like it? What do you take me for? No, I don’t like it, and if I
had found it first, I think,—I am sure I should have torn it to pieces.”

She had her bonnet off, and was tossing it toward the table as if its
weight oppressed her. But it fell upon the floor, where it might have
lain if Hugh had not picked it up, carefully and gingerly, as if half
afraid of this mass of crape. But it was Milly’s bonnet, and he brushed
a bit of dust from the veil, and held it in his hand, while she pushed
back her hair from her forehead, and wiping away the drops of
perspiration standing there went on:

“Do you know why he made such a will?”

“I confess I do not. I expressed my surprise at the time, but he was not
a man to be turned from his purpose when once his mind was made up. May
_I_ ask why he did it?” Hugh said, and Mildred replied:

“Yes;—he was angry with Gerard and Alice, because of—of—Tom and Bessie
Leach. The young people are engaged and he accidentally found it out.”

“Yes, I see;—he thought a Thornton too good to marry a Leach. Do you
share his opinion?” Hugh asked, while the blood came surging back to
Mildred’s white face in a great red wave, but left it again, except in
two round spots which burned on either cheek.

Hugh was torturing her cruelly, and she wrung her hands, but did not
answer his question directly. She only said, as she took the will from
her pocket and held it towards him, “It is all right? It is legally
executed?”

“Yes, it is all right.”

“And it gives everything to me to do with as I please?”

“Yes, it gives everything to you to do with as you please. You are a
very rich woman, Mrs. Thornton, and I congratulate you.”

His tone was sarcastic in the extreme, and stung Mildred so deeply that
she forgot herself, and going a step nearer to him cried out, “Oh, Hugh,
why are you so hard upon me? Why do you hate me so? Don’t you know who I
am?”

Hugh had not expected this, for he had no idea that Mildred would ever
tell who she was, and the sound of his name, spoken as she used to speak
it when excited, moved him strangely. He was still holding her black
bonnet, the long veil of which had become twisted around his boot, and
without answering her at once he stooped to unwind it and then put the
bonnet from him upon the table as if it had been a barrier between him
and the woman, whose eyes were upon him.

“Yes,” he said at last, very slowly, for he was afraid his voice might
tremble, “You are Mrs. Thornton now; but you were Mildred Leach.”

“Oh, Hugh, I am so glad!” Mildred cried, as she sank into her chair, and
covering her face with her hands, sobbed like a child, while Hugh stood
looking at her, wondering what he ought to do, or say, and wishing she
would speak first. But she did not, and at last he said:

“Mrs. Thornton, you have often puzzled me with a likeness to somebody
seen before I met you. But I had no suspicion of the truth until I saw
you in the cemetery at your father’s grave. I am no eavesdropper, but
was so placed that I had to see and hear, and I knew then that you were
Mildred, come back to us, not as we hoped you would come, but——”

His voice was getting shaky, and he stopped a moment to recover himself.
Then, taking from his side pocket the handkerchief he had carried with
him since the night he found it, he passed it to her, saying:

“I picked it up after you left the yard. Have you missed it?”

“Yes,—no. I don’t remember,” she replied, taking the handkerchief, and
drying her eyes with it. Then, looking up at Hugh, while the first smile
she had known since her husband died broke over her face, she continued:
“I am glad you know me; I have wanted to tell you and mother and
everybody. The deception was terrible to me, but I had promised and must
keep my word.”

“Then Mr. Thornton knew? You did not deceive him?” Hugh asked, conscious
of a great revulsion of feeling towards the woman he had believed so
steeped in hypocrisy.

“Deceive him?” Mildred said, in some surprise. “Never,—in any single
thing. I am innocent there. Let me explain how it happened, and you will
tell the others, for I can never do it but once. I am so tired. You
don’t know how tired,” and she put her hands to her face, which was
white as marble, as she commenced the story which the reader already
knows, telling it rapidly, blaming herself more than she deserved and
softening as much as possible her husband’s share in the matter.

“He was very proud, you know,” she said, “and the Leaches were like the
ground beneath his feet. But he loved me. I am sure of that, and he was
always kind and good, and tried to make up for the burden he had imposed
upon me. Yes, my husband loved me, knowing I was a Leach.”

“And you loved him?” Hugh asked, regretting the words the moment they
had passed his lips, and regretting them more when he saw their effect
upon Mildred.

Drawing herself up, she replied:

“Whether I loved him or not does not matter to you, or any one else. He
was my husband, and I did my duty by him, and he was satisfied. If I
could have forgotten I should have been happy, and I tell you truly I am
sorry he is dead, and if I could I’d bring him back to-day.”

She was now putting on the bonnet which made her a widow again, and made
her face so deathly white that Hugh was frightened and said to her:

“Forgive me, Mrs. Thornton. It was rude in me to ask that question.
Forget it, I beg of you. You are very pale. Can I do anything for you?”

“No,” she answered, faintly. “I am only tired, that’s all, and I must
get this business settled before I can rest. I have come to give the
money back to Gerard and Alice, and you must help me do it.”

“I don’t quite understand you,” Hugh said. “Do you mean to give away the
fortune your husband left you?”

“Yes, every farthing of it. I can never use it. It would not be right
for me to keep it. He was angry when he made that will. He did not mean
it, and had he lived he would have changed it. That was what troubled
him when he was ill and he tried to tell me about it,” and very briefly
she repeated what her husband had said to her of his children.

“I did not understand him then, but I do now. He knew I would do right;
he trusted me,” she continued, her tears falling so fast as almost to
choke her utterance.

“But,” said Hugh, “why give it all? If Mr. Thornton had made his will
under different conditions, he would have remembered you. Why not divide
equally? Why leave yourself penniless?”

“I shall not be penniless,” Mildred replied. “When I was married Mr.
Thornton gave me fifteen thousand dollars for my own. This I shall keep.
It will support mother and me, for I am going back to her as soon as all
is known. And you will help me? You will tell mother and Bessie and Tom,
and everybody, and you will be my friend, just for a little while, for
the sake of the days when we played together?”

Her lips were quivering and her eyes were full of tears as she made this
appeal, which no man could have withstood, much less Hugh, who would
have faced the cannon’s mouth for her then, so great was his sympathy
for her.

“Yes, I will do all you wish, but not to-day. The will must be proved
first, and you are too tired. I will see to it at once, and then if you
still are of the same mind as now I am at your service. Perhaps it will
be better to say nothing for a few days.”

“Yes, better so,—you—know—best—stand—by—me,—Hugh,” Mildred said, very
slowly, as she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes in the weary
way of a child going to sleep.

Hugh thought she was going to faint, her face was so pinched and gray,
and he said, excitedly:

“Mildred, Mildred, rouse yourself. You must not faint here. I don’t know
what to do with people who faint. You must go home at once. Your
carriage is gone but I see a cab coming. I will call it for you.”

Darting to the door, he signaled the cab, to which he half led, half
carried Mildred, who seemed very weak and was shaking with cold.
Rallying a little, she said to him:

“Thank you, Hugh. I’d better go home. I am getting worse very fast and
everything is black. Is it growing dark?”

This was alarming. He could not let her go alone, and springing in
beside her, Hugh bade the cabman drive with all possible speed to the
Park and then go for a physician.




                              CHAPTER XV.
                            THE DENOUEMENT.


Nothing could have happened better for Mildred and her cause than the
long and dangerous illness which followed that visit to Hugh’s office.
It was early September then, but the cold November rain was beating
against the windows of her room when at last she was able to sit up and
carry out her purpose. She had been very ill, first with the fever taken
from her husband, and then with nervous prostration, harder to bear than
the fever, for then she had known nothing of what was passing around
her, or whose were the voices speaking so lovingly to her, or whose the
hands ministering to her so tenderly, Bessie, who called her sister, and
Alice, who was scarcely less anxious and attentive than Bessie herself.
She did not even know the white-haired woman who sat by her day after
day, with her blind eyes turned toward the tossing, moaning, babbling
figure on the bed, whose talk was always of the past, when she was a
girl and lived at home, and bathed her mother’s head and cooked the
dinner and scolded Tom and Bessie and kissed and petted Charlie. Of Hugh
she seldom spoke, and when she did it was in the old, teasing way,
calling him a red-haired Scotchman and laughing at his big hands and
feet. To all intents and purposes she was the Mildred whom we first saw
shelling peas in the doorway, and the names of her husband and Gerard
and Alice never passed her lips. Every morning and evening Hugh walked
up the avenue, and ringing the bell asked, “How is Mrs. Thornton?” Then
he would walk back again with an abstracted look upon his face, which to
a close observer would have told of the fear tugging at his heart. The
possibility that Mildred could ever be anything to him, if she lived,
did not once enter his mind, but he did not want her to die, and the man
who had seldom prayed before, now learned to pray earnestly for
Mildred’s life, as many others were doing.

Hugh had done his work well, and told Mildred’s story, first to her
mother, Bessie and Tom, then to Gerard and Alice, and then to everybody,
giving it, however, a different coloring from what Mildred had done. She
had softened her husband’s part in the matter and magnified her own,
while he passed very lightly over hers, and dwelt at length upon the
pride and arrogance of the man who, to keep her family aloof, wrung from
her a promise, given unguardedly and repented of so bitterly. Thus the
sympathy of the people was all with Mildred, who, as the lady of
Thornton Park, had won their good opinion by her kindness and
gentleness, and gracious, familiar manner. That she was Mrs. Giles
Thornton did not harm her at all, for money and position are a mighty
power, and the interest in, and sympathy for her were quite as great, if
not greater, than would have been the case if it were plain Mildred
Leach for whom each Sunday prayers were said in the churches and for
whom inquiries were made each day until the glad news went through the
town that the crisis was past and she would live. Hugh was alone in his
office when the little boy who brought him the morning paper said, as he
threw it in, “Mis’ Thornton’s better. She knows her marm, and the doctor
says she’ll git well.” Then he passed on, leaving Hugh alone with the
good news.

“Thank God,—thank God,” he said. “I couldn’t let Milly die,” and when a
few minutes later one of his clerks came into the front office, he heard
his chief in the next room whistling Annie Laurie, and said to himself,
with a little nod, “I guess she’s better.”

It had been a very difficult task to tell Mildred’s story to Mrs. Leach
and Tom and Bessie, but Hugh had done it so well that the shock was not
as great as he had feared it might be. As was natural, Mrs. Leach was
the most affected of the three, and within an hour was at Mildred’s
bedside, calling her Milly and daughter and kissing the hot lips which
gave back no answering sign, for Mildred never knew her, nor any one,
until a morning in October, when, waking suddenly from a long,
refreshing sleep, she looked curiously about her, and saw the blind
woman sitting just where she had sat for days and days and would have
sat for nights had she been permitted to do so. Now she was partially
asleep, but the words “Mother, are you here?” roused her, and in an
instant Mildred was in her mother’s arms, begging for the pardon which
was not long withheld.

“Oh, Milly, my child, how could you see me blind and not tell me who you
were?” were the only words of reproof the mother ever uttered; then all
was joy and peace, and Mildred’s face shone with the light of a great
gladness, when Tom and Bessie came in to see her, both very kind and
both a little constrained in their manner towards her, for neither could
make it quite seem as if she were their sister.

Gerard and Alice took it more naturally, and after a few days matters
adjusted themselves, and as no word was said of the past Mildred began
to recover her strength, which, however, came back slowly, so that it
was November before she was able to see Hugh in her boudoir, where Tom
carried her in his arms, saying, as he put her down in her easy-chair,
“Are you sure you are strong enough for it?”

“Yes,” she answered, eagerly. “I can’t put it off any longer. I shall
never rest until it is done. Tell Hugh I am ready.”

Tom had only a vague idea of what she wished to do, but knew that it had
some connection with her husband’s will, the nature of which he had been
told by Gerard.

“She’ll never let that stand a minute after she gets well,” Tom had
said, but he never guessed that she meant to give up the whole.

Hugh, who had been sent for that morning, came at once, and found
himself trembling in every nerve as he followed Tom to the room where
Mildred was waiting for him. He had not seen her during her sickness,
and he was not prepared to find her so white and thin and still so
exquisitely lovely as she looked with her eyes so large and bright, and
the smile of welcome on her face as she gave him her hand and said, “We
must finish that business now, and then I can get well. Suppose I had
died, and the money had gone from Gerard and Alice.”

“I think it would have come back to them all the same,” Hugh replied,
sitting down beside her, and wondering why the sight of her affected him
so strangely.

But she did not give him much time to think, and plunging at once into
business, told him that she wished to give everything to Gerard and
Alice, dividing it equally between them.

“You know exactly what my husband had and where it was invested,” she
said, “and you must divide it to the best of your ability, giving to
each an equal share in the Park, for I think they will both live here. I
wish them to do it, for then we shall all be near each other. I shall
live with mother and try to atone for the wrong I have done. I have
enough to keep us in comfort, and shall not take a cent of what was left
me in the will.”

This was her decision, from which nothing could move her, and when at
last Hugh left her she had signed away over a million of dollars and
felt the richer for it, nor could Gerard and Alice induce her to take
back any part of it after they were told what she had done.

“Don’t worry me,” she said to them. “It seemed to me a kind of atonement
to do it, and I am so happy, and I am sure your father would approve of
it if he could know about it.”

After that Mildred’s recovery was rapid, and on the first day of the new
year she went back to the farm house to live, notwithstanding the
earnest entreaties of Gerard and Alice that she should stay with them
until Tom and Bessie came, for it was decided that the four should, for
a time at least, live together at the Park. But Mildred was firm.

“Mother needs me,” she said, “and is happier when I am with her. I can
see that she is failing. I shall not have her long, and while she lives
I shall try to make up to her for all the selfish years when I was away,
seeking my own pleasure and forgetting hers.”

And Mildred kept her word and was everything to her mother, who lived to
see, or rather hear, the double wedding, which took place at St. Jude’s
one morning in September, little more than a year after Mr. Thornton’s
death. The church was full and there was scarcely a dry eye in it as
Mildred led her blind mother up the aisle, and laid her hand upon
Bessie’s arm in response to the question, “Who giveth this woman to be
married to this man?” It was Mildred who gave Alice away, and who three
weeks later received the young people when they came home from their
wedding journey, seeming and looking much like her old self as she did
the honors of the house where she had once been mistress, and joining
heartily in their happiness, laughingly returned Tom’s badinage when he
called her his stepmother-in-law. Then, when the festivities were over,
she went back to her mother, whom she cared for so tenderly that her
life was prolonged for more than a year, and the chimes in the old
church belfry were ringing for a Saviour born, when she at last died in
Mildred’s arms, with Mildred’s name upon her lips and a blessing for the
beloved daughter who had been so much to her. The night before she died
Mildred was alone with her for several hours, and bending over her she
said, “I want to hear you say again that you forgive me for the
waywardness which kept me from you so long, and my deception when I came
back. I am so sorry, mother.”

“Forgive you?” her mother said, her blind eyes trying to pierce the
darkness and look into the face so close to hers. “I have nothing to
forgive. I understand it all, and since you came back to me you have
been the dearest child a mother ever had. Don’t cry so, Milly,” and the
shaky hand wiped away the tears which fell so fast, as Mildred went on:

“I don’t know whether the saints at rest ever think of those they have
left behind; but if they do, and father asks for me, tell him how sorry
I am, and tell Charlie how I loved him, and how much I meant to do for
him when I went away.”

“I’ll tell them. Don’t cry,” came faintly from the dying woman, who said
but little more until the dawn was breaking, and she heard in the
distance the sound of the chimes ringing in the Christmas morn. Then,
lifting her head from Mildred’s arm, she cried joyfully:

“The bells,—the bells,—the Christmas bells. I am glad to go on his
birthday. Good-bye, Milly. God bless you; don’t cry.”

They buried her by her husband and Charlie, and then Mildred was all
alone, except for the one servant she kept. Bessie and Alice would
gladly have had her at the Park, but she resisted all their entreaties
and gave no sign of the terrible loneliness which oppressed her as day
after day she lived her solitary life, which, for the first week or two,
was seldom enlivened by the presence of any one except Gerard and Tom,
who each day plowed their way through the heavy drifts of snow which
were piled high above the fence tops. A terrible storm was raging on the
mountains, and Rocky Point felt it in all its fury. The trains were
stopped,—the roads were blocked,—communication between neighbor and
neighbor was cut off, and though many would gladly have done so, few
could visit the lonely woman, who sat all day where she could look out
toward the graves on which she knew the snow was drifting, and who at
night sat motionless by the fire, living over the past and shrinking
from the future which lay so drearily before her.




                              CHAPTER XVI.
                       SUNSHINE AFTER THE STORM.


It was the last day, or rather the last night of the storm. The wind had
subsided, and when the sun went down there was in the west a tinge of
red as a promise of a fair to-morrow. But to Mildred there seemed no
to-morrow better than to-day had been, and when after her early tea she
sat down in her little sitting-room, there came over her such a sense of
dreariness and pain as she had never before experienced. Once she
thought of her husband, who had been so kind to her, and whispered
sadly:

“I might have learned to love him, but he is dead and gone; everybody is
gone who cared for me. Even Hugh has disappointed me,” and although she
did not realize it this thought was perhaps the saddest of all. Hugh had
disappointed her. During the two years since her return to the farm
house, she had seen but little of him, for it was seldom that he called,
and when he did it was upon her mother, not herself.

But he had not forgotten her, and there was scarcely a waking hour of
his life that she was not in his mind, and often when he was busiest
with his clients, who were increasing rapidly, he saw in the papers he
was drawing up for them, her face as it had looked at him when she said:

“Oh, Hugh, don’t you know me?” He was angry with her then, and his heart
was full of bitterness towards her for her deception. But that was gone
long ago, and he was only biding his time to speak.

“While her mother lives she will not leave her,” he said; but her mother
was dead, and he could wait no longer. “I must be decent, and not go the
very first day after the funeral,” he thought, a little glad of the
storm which kept every one indoors.

But it was over now, and wrapping his overcoat around him, and pulling
his fur cap over his ears he went striding through the snow to the farm
house, which he reached just as Mildred was so absorbed in her thoughts
that she did not hear the door opened by her maid, or know that he was
there until he came into the room and was standing upon the hearth rug
before her. Then, with the cry, “Oh, Hugh, is it you? I am glad you have
come. It is so lonesome,” she sprang up and offered him her hand, while
he looked at her with a feeling of regret that he had not come before.
He did not sit down beside her, but opposite, where he could see her as
they talked on indifferent subjects,—the storm,—the trains delayed,—the
wires down,—the damage done in town,—and the prospect of a fair day
to-morrow. Then there was silence between them and Mildred got up and
raked the fire in the grate and brushed the hearth with a little broom
in the corner, while Hugh watched her, and when she was through took the
poker himself and attacked the fire, which was doing very well.

“I like to poke the fire,” he said, while Mildred replied, “So do I;”
and then there was silence again, until Hugh burst out:

“I say, Milly, how much longer am I to wait?”

“Wha—at?” Mildred replied, a faint flush tinging her face.

“How much longer am I to wait?” he repeated; and she answered, “Wait for
what?”

“For you,” and Hugh arose and went and stood over her as he continued:
“Do you know how old I am?”

Her face was scarlet now, but she answered laughingly, “I am thirty. You
used to be four years older than myself, which makes you thirty-four.”

“Yes,” he said. “As time goes I am thirty-four, but measured by my
feelings it is a hundred years since that morning when I saw you going
through the Park gate and felt that I had lost you, as I knew I had
afterwards, and never more so than when I saw you in the cemetery and
knew who you were.”

“Why are you reminding me of all this? Don’t you know how it hurts? I
know you despised me then, and must despise me now,” Mildred said, with
anguish in her tones as she, too, rose from her chair and stood apart
from him.

“I did despise you then, it’s true,” Hugh replied, “and tried to think I
hated you, not so much for deceiving us as for deceiving your husband,
as I believed you must have done; but I know better now. Your record has
not been stainless, Milly, and I would rather have you as you were
seventeen years ago on the summer morning when you were a little girl of
thirteen shelling peas and prophesying that you would one day be the
mistress of Thornton Park. You have been its mistress, and I am sorry
for that, but nothing can kill my love, which commenced in my boyhood,
when you made fun of my hands and feet and brogue and called me freckled
and awkward, and then atoned for it all by some look in your bright eyes
which said you did not mean it. I am awkward still, but the frecks and
the brogue are gone, and I have come to ask you to be my wife,—not
to-morrow, but some time next spring, when everything is beginning new.
Will you, Milly? I will try and make you happy, even if I have but
little money.

“Oh, Hugh! What do I care for money. I hate it!”

It was the old Mildred who spoke in the old familiar words, which Hugh
remembered so well, but it was the new Mildred who, when he held his
arms towards her, saying “Come,” went gladly into them, as a tired child
goes to its mother.

It was late that night when Hugh left his promised bride, for there was
much to talk about, and all the incidents of their childhood to be lived
over again, Hugh telling of the lock of hair and the pea-pod he had kept
with the peas, hard as bullets now, especially the smaller one, which he
called Mildred.

“But, do you know, I really think it has recently begun to change,” Hugh
said, “and I shall not be surprised to find it soft again——”

“Just as I am to let you see how much I love you,” Mildred said, as she
laid her beautiful head upon his arm, and told him of the rumor of his
engagement to Bessie, which had been the means of making her Mrs.
Thornton.

“That was the only secret I had from my husband,” she said. “I told him
everything else, and he took me knowing it all, and I believe he loved
me, too. He was very kind to me,—and——”

She meant to be loyal to her husband, and would have said more, if Hugh
had not stopped her mouth in a most effective way. No man cares to hear
the woman who has just promised to marry him talk about her dead
husband, and Hugh was not an exception.

“Yes, darling, I know,” he said. “But let’s bury the past. You are mine
now; all mine.”

Hugh might be awkward and shy in many things, but he was not at all shy
or awkward in love-making when once the ice was broken. He had waited
for Mildred seventeen years, and he meant to make the most of her now,
and he stayed so long that she at last bade him go, and pointed to the
clock just striking the hour of midnight.

No one seemed surprised when told of the engagement. It was what
everybody expected, and what should have been long ago, and what would
have been, if Mildred had staid at home, instead of going off to Europe.
Congratulations came from every quarter and none were more sincere than
those from the young people at the Park, who wanted to make a grand
wedding. To this Hugh did not object, for in his heart was the shadow of
a wish to see Mildred again as he saw her that night at the party in
jewels and satins and lace. But she vetoed it at once. A widow had no
business with orange blossoms, she said, and besides that she was too
old, and Hugh was old, too, and she should be married quietly in church,
in a plain gray traveling dress and bonnet. And she was married thus on
a lovely morning in June, when the roses were in full bloom, and the
church was full of flowers, and people, too,—for everybody was there to
see the bride, who went in Mildred Thornton and came out Mildred
McGregor.

And now there is little more to tell. It is three years since that
wedding day, and Hugh and Mildred live in the red farm house, which is
scarcely a farm house now, it has been so enlarged and changed, with its
pointed roofs and bow windows and balconies. Brook Cottage they call it,
and across the brook in the rear there is a rustic bridge leading to the
meadow, where Mr. Leach’s cows used to feed, but which now is a garden,
or pleasure ground, not so large, but quite as pretty as the Park, and
every fine afternoon at the hour when Hugh is expected from his office,
Mildred walks through the grounds, leading by the hand a little
golden-haired boy, whom she calls Charlie for the baby brother who died
and whom he greatly resembles. And when at last Hugh comes, the three go
back together, Hugh’s arm around Milly’s waist and his boy upon his
shoulder. They are not rich and never will be, but they are very happy
in each other’s love, and no shadow, however small, ever rests on
Milly’s still lovely face, save when she recalls the mad ambition and
discontent which came so near wrecking her life.

In the Park three children play, Giles and Fanny, who belong to the
Thorntons, and a second Mildred Leach, who belongs to Tom and Alice.

One picture more, and then we leave them forever near the spot where we
first saw them. Gerard and Bessie,—Alice and Tom,—have come to the
cottage at the close of a warm July afternoon, and are grouped around
the door, where Mildred sits, with the sunlight falling on her hair, a
bunch of sweet peas pinned upon her bosom, and the light of a great joy
in her eyes as she watches Hugh swinging the four children in a hammock,
and says to Bessie “I never thought I could be as happy as I am now. God
has been very good to me.”


                                THE END.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




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[Illustration]

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              ╚══════════════════════════════════════════╝

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
      spelling.
 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69780 ***