A Modern Madonna

A hush fell on the waiting throng at old St. John's. The soft babble of modulated voices died suddenly away as from the greenery and the daisies of the chancel a singer's voice...

"For one thing he is too young," said Richard De Jarnette. "At twenty-one a man is still a boy, unless he has had more to develop him than Victor has ever had. And besides--"

Two or three weeks after the wedding Mrs. Pennybacker sat with her niece in the elegantly appointed library of the mansion that old Cornelius Van Dorn had left to his bereaved w...

Certainly there was nothing on Margaret De Jarnette's horizon at present that was a forecast of falling weather. The skies were blue, the air clear, and over all the life-giving...

Months came and went--months in which they each tried intermittently to regain their old footing of love and faith. They could not do it. The wife at least knew that they were d...

clearing up his desk with one eye on the clock as if in preparation for departure or a new incumbent. His blood was still at fever heat, and his thoughts did not tend to cool it...

When Margaret woke next morning it was with a bewildered sense of something wrong,--the dull ache we have in the gray dawn before returning consciousness brings it all back to u...

It was long months before Margaret De Jarnette looked into her husband's face. Before that time Washington's squares and circles and triangles--those blessed breathing spots--ha...

In all these months Margaret had not once heard from her husband. Rumors had come to her that he had not gone alone, but even this she could not verify, for she had ended the su...

"Oh, Mammy Cely, look! _look!_ he is standing alone!" Margaret was sitting on the floor, her lips parted in rapturous delight at the temerity of her infant son, who was rather s...

When Victor De Jarnette breathed his last, Dr. Semple had taken her by the hand and led her, apparently almost stupefied, into Richard's room, there to await the summons to appe...

It was two weeks or more after the burial of Victor De Jarnette before his will was read. Mr. Jarvis, the attorney in whose charge it had been left, had been absent from the cit...

It was as if a thunderbolt had fallen from a clear sky. Margaret dropped back like one shot. Judge Kirtley and the attorney looked after the disappearing figure and then at each...

knew less. There is a cruel streak in the De Jarnettes. You have seen it in Victor and I have seen it in his father. And it was in his grandfather before him. They never forgive...

"The stubbornness of the man is incredible," the Judge reported when he got home. "He's going to make us trouble--I can see that. He makes no accusation against Margaret. He doe...

"Sec. 1. ... That when any person hath or shall have any child or children under the age of one and twenty years, and not married at the time of his death, that it shall and may...

"I haven't always lived in Maryland, Miss Margaret," Aunt Cely began. "I was born in Figinny--in Goochland County, near Goochland Co't-'ouse. I belonged to the Davidsons. They w...

"'The man in the house,' she says. 'He seen me when I was goin' along and he tuk holt of my curls and said I was a pretty little gal. Am I pretty, Mammy?' Miss Margaret, hit jes...

Mammy Cely's story made a deep impression on Margaret in her excited state of mind. She could not sleep for thinking of it. If the whole gamut of human experiences had been run,...

Richard de Jarnette was sitting down to a late breakfast the next morning when his telephone bell rang. He answered it impatiently, as was natural. But what he heard there cause...

In the somewhat frayed and ragged end of the mitten to which the State of Michigan has been likened is a modest bay indenting the left-hand edge, called Little Traverse, to dist...

He was not there now, and Margaret went quickly down the steps and looked up and down the avenue in front of the hotel and down to the pier. He was nowhere in sight. She turned...

The morning after they got back to Mackinac Margaret invited Mr. Harcourt to take a walk with her, and for almost the first time since he had known her she left Philip behind. B...

"Well, I'll be--jiggered!" he said, most inelegantly. "We are two babes in the woods, aren't we? I hope Smeltzer will be as dead easy. And, by Jove! I think he was for I saw him...

September was almost over. Golden-rod and wild asters fringed the low banks of Black River now, and the cardinal flower bent its stately head to peer suspiciously into the still...

Unfortunately, matters were not so easily arranged in Washington as Judge Kirtley had intimated in his telegram they might be. After learning of the situation, Mrs. Pennybacker...

the father of infant children may be deed or will transfer their exclusive custody and control to a guardian, regardless of the fact that the mother, his wife, may be competent,...

From the court-room she was carried straight to the hospital. The doctor, summoned hastily to attend her, told them gravely that it was probably the beginning of an attack of br...

Richard De Jarnette sat alone in the library at Elmhurst--the home of his fathers for generations back. It was a gloomy room. The furniture and the hangings were dark and massiv...

The master of Elmhurst returned to it the next night loaded down. He might have passed for a gentleman delivering his own groceries. In the toy store, with a shuddering recollec...

It was weeks before Margaret emerged from the shadow of death that fell upon her that day in the court-room. When she did she looked like one of the shades. The fever had wrough...

If there had been any latent doubts in the minds of Margaret's friends as to her force of character they were dispelled in the weeks that followed. She had come back from the ho...

He felt convinced that it was a mistake and it might not be too late yet to remedy it. He determined to incorporate into his nightly prayer for her a petition for a change of co...

Weeks lengthened into months and the days grew short. Philip was still praying for Mammy Cely and his uncle Richard, but the black woman's skin was not yet white and Uncle Richa...

The child of shame! Margaret drew back. She was not prepared for this. Neither was she prepared, when the test came, to take into her home and her life a little waif upon whom t...

Margaret's action in taking a dying woman into her home that she might give her the blessedness of being with her child while life lasted excited little comment. Indeed it was k...

The next day was the time for Margaret's visit to Philip. Not once in all these months had she failed him. Not once had the dawn of that day come without bringing first of all t...

That session saw a quiet, persistent, effective campaign waged in the city of Washington. Many women living there now will remember it, for many were in its forefront, and what...

The lead thus unexpectedly opened by Bess was promptly followed up by Margaret, who was growing quick to see openings and to take advantage of them. At her suggestion a note was...

In Senator Southard's committee-room Mrs. Pennybacker found herself surrounded with earnest women pleading for the weak and helpless of their own sex, and life seemed suddenly t...

While Mrs. Pennybacker was thus effectively wielding the battle-ax that common sense and observation had laid ready at her hand, Margaret, bleeding on the field, was well-nigh r...

Spring was come. Once more had been wrought the old, old miracle which is ever new, and every tree-crowned hill and nestling valley around Washington was singing the resurrectio...

It was ten days or more after this that Mrs. De Jarnette's carriage stood at the door ready to convey her to the Capitol. It was confidently expected that the bill would come up...

In the days that followed there was fierce battle made for the child's life, and the rival claimants fought side by side. For once all animosities were laid aside, all bitternes...

Philip's convalescence was a period of enforced companionship between the two. Mr. De Jarnette had to wait the lifting of the quarantine before he could go back to the city. Eve...

It was three whole days before Margaret saw Richard De Jarnette again. She was wounded and outraged beyond the power of words to express at his apparent neglect. Under the circu...

"I am glad to have the opportunity to tell you something of the girl's history before Margaret comes," she said. "The poor child has something on her mind that she feels she mus...

Opening the door of the library he drew her in and closed it behind them. She dropped into a chair and waited for him to speak. But it was the first time they had been there tog...

John Harcourt had asked Bess for a drive--a farewell view, he told her, of Capitol Vista, Rock Creek Park, the Zoo, and all the rest. He said it so cheerfully and with such unch...