CHAPTER XIII.

IN AMERICA

“The ship _l’Europe_ came slowly up New York harbor one pleasant summer morning, and among the eager crowd gathered on its deck, none were more eager and expectant, ay, and nervous too, than our friends Madame Verwest and Anna. The latter had been sick all the voyage, and kept her state-room, tormented with a thousand groundless fears as to what her infuriated husband might do. He was capable of anything, she knew, and felt that he would follow her to America, and try to get her again in his power. It was Fred who thoughtlessly suggested that he might telegraph to New York for officers to be ready to arrest his runaway wife as a lunatic, and after that idea once lodged in her brain, Anna never rested a moment, night or day; and when at last New York was in sight, and she was forced to dress herself and go on deck, she looked more like a ghost than the blooming girl who had sailed down that very harbor not quite two years before. Madame Verwest had been very silent during the entire voyage, and had never given the slightest reason why she had left the chateau. Nor did Anna care to question her. She was satisfied to have her with her and clung to her as to a mother.

“‘Do you think he has telegraphed, and what shall we do if he has? You will never let them have me,’ she said, as the ship was nearing the wharf, and she gazed in terror at the promiscuous crowd waiting there, and mistaking the custom-house officers for the police come to arrest.

“Madame Verwest herself had thought it possible that Haverleigh might telegraph, but she did not admit it. She only said:

“‘They will take both of us, if either. I shall not leave you and your friends will soon know of it.’

“Thus reassured, Anna grew more calm, and waited till the ship was fast at the landing and the passengers free to leave. There was no officer there, no telegram, and our party took the first train which left next morning on the Harlem Road for Millfield. A telegram, however, had preceded them, and the whole town was in a state of wild excitement when it was known that Anna was coming back, and why. Up to this time but little had been said of Fred’s departure for Europe, and though there were surmises of something wrong, nothing definite was known until the telegram was received, when the story came out and set the town on fire. Everybody told everybody else, so that long before the train was due the history of Anna’s life in France had been told a thousand times, and had Ernest Haverleigh then appeared in the streets he would assuredly have been torn in pieces by the crowd which surged toward the depot long before the train was due. Everybody was there; those who had known Anna in her girlhood and those who had not, the new-comers who only knew her story and waited for a glimpse of her. Oh, how white, and frightened, and wild she looked when at last she came and stepped upon the platform. Fred’s arm was around her, and behind her came Madame Verwest, carrying the child, which slept soundly all through the exciting scene.

“‘Mother—where’s mother?’ the pallid lips asked as Anna’s feet touched the ground, and then her mother’s arms were round her, and the tired head dropped on the maternal bosom with a low pitiful cry, and it was whispered in the crowd that she had fainted.

They took her home to the low red house, and laid her in the little room she used to occupy, and which she once had so despised. It seemed like heaven to her now, as she sank down among the snowy pillows, and felt the sweet breath of the summer air, laden with the perfume of the new-mown hay, and the lilies of which she had talked so much to Madame Verwest.

“‘Oh, mother, Mary, I am so glad,’ she said, as she saw them bending over her, and felt that she was safe. ‘No one can get me here. You’ll never let me go, for he will come after me; he is coming now,’ and with a shudder she drew the sheet over her face as if to hide herself from the dreaded husband coming to take her away.

“After that Anna knew no more of what was passing about her for days, and even weeks. Nature had borne all it could, and she lay almost motionless, and utterly unconscious of everything. But never sure was queen tended with more care than she for whom everybody cared, and whose room was filled with tokens of remembrance, flowers and fruit, and such masses of white lilies, for these had been her favorites, and every school-boy in town considered it an honor to wade into the pond, knee-deep, and even imperil his life to secure the fragrant blossoms.

“From the first Madame Verwest was a puzzle to all, and a very little in the way. It is true she was the nurse who took the entire charge of the baby, and who, more than any one else, seemed to understand and know what to do for Anna. But still she was in the way—a stranger, who had not been expected, but whose only fault seemed to be that she stared too much at Mrs. Strong and at the people in Millfield, especially the older inhabitants, and asked too many questions about them. It was a little strange, too, how fond she was of roaming about the town, and exploring it in all its parts. Sometimes, with the baby in her arms, she would leave the house in the morning, and not return again until dinner time, and Mrs. Strong had heard of her more than once in the graveyard, studying the old head-stones; and again down near the boat-house by the river, sitting apparently in deep thought upon the grass, with Anna’s baby sleeping on her lap. At first Mrs. Strong felt some natural anxiety for the safety of the child, but when she saw how it clung to Madame Verwest, and how devoted she seemed to be to its every movement, she came to trust her fully, and to forget all else in her great concern for her own child, who grew weaker and weaker every day, until to those who watched her so closely there seemed little hope that she could ever rally from the death-like stupor into which she had fallen. Nothing roused her to the least degree of consciousness or motion, except, indeed the mention of her husband’s name. As an experiment Madame Verwest bent over her and said:

“‘_Ma petite_, do you remember Monsieur Haverleigh of Chateau d’Or?’

“Then there was a quivering of the lids, and a shiver ran through Anna’s form, and she whispered faintly:

“‘Yes, yes, and he is coming; he is almost here, but don’t let him get me.’

“And four days after he came, on the six o’clock train, from which he stepped like a prince of the royal blood, and confronting the first man he met upon the platform, haughtily demanded if he knew ‘whether Mrs. Ernest Haverleigh, formerly Miss Anna Strong, were in town.’

“All the town was watching for Haverleigh, and threatening him with dire vengeance should he attempt the removal of his wife by force. As it chanced, the person addressed was a burly truckman, and who, with his whip in his hand, looked a rather formidable personage, as, in answer to Haverleigh’s question, he replied:

“‘Yes, _sir_, the lady you mean is in town, sick to death, they say, and if you are that contemptible dog who shut her up and called her crazy, and told them infernal lies, the quicker you leave these parts the healthier for you, if you don’t want to be ducked in the mill-pond.’

“Haverleigh was too much astonished to speak at first. That he, the proud Englishman, should be thus addressed by a low, ignorant, working Yankee was more than flesh and blood like his could bear, and his face was purple with rage, and his eyes gleamed savagely as he replied:

“‘Who are you that dares speak to me in this manner, and do you know who I am?’

“‘Yes, _sir-ee_, I know darned well who you are,’ the man replied, nothing intimidated by Haverleigh’s threatening manner, but strengthened by the crowd gathering so fast around him.

“It had circulated rapidly that Haverleigh had come, and was ‘sassing’ Ben Rogers, and the idlers gathered near at once, eager to hear and ready to defend, if necessary, their comrade, who continued:

“You are the confoundedest, meanest, contemptiblist animal that the Lord ever suffered to live, and I am Benjamin Franklin Rogers, at your service, and if you open your dirty mouth again I’ll give you a taste of this horse-whip; so, if you want to save your British hide, skedaddle quick for the Widder Strong’s, as I s’pose you must go there, but, mark my words, me and these chaps, my friends’—sweeping his arm toward the crowd—‘will go with you to see you do no harm, and if the widder says _duck you_, we’ll do it, or tar you and ride you on a rail, or any other honor such as we can give you _grattis_ for nothin’.’

“Whether Haverleigh was intimidated, or too proud to speak, I do not know. He made no reply except to glare like a madman upon the speaker and the crowd, which made way for him to pass, and then followed at a little distance as he moved rapidly in the direction of Mrs. Strong’s. The news of his arrival had preceded him, and with a face white with terror Mrs. Strong was waiting for him, and so was Madame Verwest. _She_ was neither pale nor frightened. She had carried the baby to Anna’s room, and bidding Mary watch it, had left the apartment, and locking the door after her joined Mrs. Strong in the parlor below, where they sat together until the sound of the coming rabble drew them both to the door.

“Very proudly and erect Haverleigh moved on, never once glancing back at the crowd behind him. But he knew that it was there, and heard the muttered menaces as he opened the gate and walked to the door. It was Madame Verwest who met him and asked: ‘Ernest Haverleigh, why are you here?’

“‘Why?’ he repeated, and his voice was like a savage growl. ‘Why am I here? I am here for my wife and my son, and I intend to have them, too. I’d like to see the law that can keep them from me, so lead the way quickly, for I shall be off in the next train.’

“‘Never with Anna and the baby. Never, while I have the power to prevent it, as I have,’ Madame Verwest replied, and then all the pent-up fury of the terrible man burst out, and there were flecks of white foam about his lips as he cursed the woman who boldly kept him at bay, with the most horrible of curses, calling her at last by the vilest name a woman can be called, and asking for her wedding ring and the certificate of her marriage.

‘Ernest Haverleigh, hush; nor dare speak to me, _your mother_, like that again.’

“The voice which said these words was very steady and low, but Haverleigh heard it distinctly, and grasping the back of the chair near which he was standing, repeated: ‘My mother; you, who were only my nurse. You call yourself my mother!’

“‘Yes, and before Heaven I am your mother; listen while I tell you what you should have known before, but for a promise to the dead.’

“He was still staring at her, with that same corpse-like pallor on his face, and the look of a wild beast in his eyes, but he did not speak, for some thing in the woman before him kept him silent while she went on:

“‘I am your mother, and I thought I was your father’s wife, until after you were born, when there came a day of horrid awakening, and I found I was betrayed by the man I loved, and for whom I had left my home, for I was young and innocent once, and pretty, too, they said; but I was poor and hated poverty, and when this rich man came with honeyed words and fair promises, I believed and trusted him to my ruin, and went with him over the sea—for I am American born, and not English, as you suppose. We staid in lodgings in London till you were born, and by that time a face fairer than mine had come between me and your father, a woman he meant to marry, and so he told me the truth of his villainy, and when I found I was not a wife, I think I went mad for a time, and when I came to myself I was in poorer lodgings in an obscure part of London, where I passed for Mr. Haverleigh’s housekeeper, who had served him so faithfully that he would not cast me off in my trouble. That was the lie he told, and they believed him and were kind to me for the sake of the money he paid them, You were at Grasmere then with your father, whom in spite of everything I loved, and to whom I went, begging him to let me have the care of my child if nothing more. To this he consented, the more readily because he was about to marry my rival, and you might be in the way. He loved you, I do believe, and he trusted me, but made me swear not to divulge my real relation to you. I was your nurse, your foster-mother, nothing more. There might be no children of the marriage, he said, and if so, he should make you his heir, and did not wish you to know the stain upon your birth. There _were_ no children, and as if to punish him for his sin to me, his wife died within the year, and he was left alone and made you his heir, so that when he died all he had was left to you, except a thousand pounds given to me, whom he designated as the foster-mother of his child.

“‘You, as you grew up, believed the woman who died at Grasmere was your mother, and that I was only your nurse; but that was false; I was your mother, else I had never followed your fortunes as I have, and clung to you through all as only a mother can cling to the son whose wickedness she knows, and whom she cannot forsake. You thought me in your power, because you fancied I had been indiscreet in my youth, and that your threats to expose me kept me quiet to do your bidding. There you were mistaken. It was the mother loving you through everything which made me the same as a prisoner at Chateau d’Or, where I was really happier than when following you about. Because it suited you I consented to be Madame Verwest, a Frenchwoman, and for you I have lived a life of deceit, which, thank Heaven, is over now. I meant to release Anna myself sometime, on the plea of _your_ insanity, if by no other, for there is madness in your father’s family, and you are mad at times. But others planned the escape, and I gladly followed to America, my native land, and to Millfield, my old home, for I am Milly Gardner, step-sister to Anna’s father, and the one you told me went to the bad, and was the only blot on the family.’

“Up to this time there had been a listener to Madame Verwest’s story—Mrs. Strong, who, terrified at the appearance of Haverleigh, had fled to the adjoining room, where she sank into a chair faint and helpless, and thus heard all that was said by Madame Verwest. At the mention of Milly Gardner, however, she sprang to her feet and ran to the woman’s side, exclaiming:

“Oh, Milly, Milly! I have heard so much of you from my husband, and from him learned to love you even while believing the story I know now to be false. It is all so strange that you should be here when we thought you dead years ago. And _you_ are _his_ mother,” she continued, pointing to Haverleigh. ‘Send him away, if you have any power over him; he must not see my child.’

“The sound of Mrs. Strong’s voice speaking of Anna roused Haverleigh from his stupor, or rather state of bewilderment, and with a savage oath he started forward, exclaiming:

“‘I _shall_ see your child, and take her, too, for she is mine. Stand aside, woman—hag—beldame—who dares to call herself my mother,’ he continued, as Madame Verwest laid both her hands upon his arm. ‘It is a lie you have told me. My mother was she who lived and died at Grasmere, and you—you—are——’

“He did not finish the sentence, for his excitement and passion had been increasing every moment, while his face grew more and more swollen and purple, until the flecks of foam gathered more thickly about his lips, which gave forth a bubbling sound as he fell across the chair in a fit.

“Then the mother woke again in Madame Verwest, and kneeling by the side of her tossing, struggling son, she lifted up his head, and cared for him as tenderly as when he was a new-born baby and first lay upon her bosom. The terrible convulsions ceased at last, and the natural color came back to his face; but the eyes, which fastened themselves upon her with such a look of hate, were the eyes of a madman, who had in his heart intense hatred and even murderous designs toward the woman who still held his head upon her lap, and dropped her tears upon his face.

“‘Woman—fiend—liar—I’ll have your life!’ he screamed, as he sprang to his feet, and with clenched fists darted toward his mother, who stepped aside to avoid the blow, and thus made way for the men outside upon the walk, who, attracted by the loud, angry tones, had come nearer and nearer to the door, which they reached just as Haverleigh rose to his feet and sprang toward his mother.

“‘Hold, villain—stop that!’ the foremost of them cried; and Haverleigh was caught by both arms, and held as in a vise by two men, who yet had hard work to keep him from breaking loose from their grasp.

“A moment sufficed to convince them that it was no sane man they held, and then arose a call for ropes with which to bind him. I think the whole town knew by this time what was going on, and the street in front of Mrs. Strong’s was densely packed with an excited throng, but only a few entered the house, and these the more intimate acquaintance of the family. That Haverleigh was raving mad was a fact no one doubted, and to secure his person was a step which seemed imperative, but was hard of accomplishment, for he was naturally strong, and his excitement lent to him a double strength. But he was mastered at last, and carried bodily to the village hall, where he was to be kept securely until some decision was reached as to what should be done with him. That decision was reached before the close of the next day, for he grew more and more furious and uncontrollable, until the asylum seemed the only alternative, and thither they carried him at last, and placed him in the strong room, as it was called, where, struggle as he might, he could not get free or burst the bars and bolts which held him.

“Meanwhile, in Millfield, Madame Verwest, as we will still call her, had told her story more fully to Mrs. Strong, while Anna, too, when she was better and could bear it, heard that the woman who from the first had been so kind to her in Chateau d’Or, was in reality her mother-in-law, and the grandmother of the little boy Arthur. Like poor Agatha Wynde she had been lured from her place in Boston, where she was employed in a straw shop. The man, who gave his name to her as Stevens, was an Englishman, and rich, and she went with him trustingly and honorably, as she believed, until the dreadful day when she found how she had been deceived. Even then she loved him and clung to her child, whom she was allowed to care for on condition that she passed as his nurse or foster-mother, and to this promise she held for many years, during which time Haverleigh died and left by will all his fortune to his son, except a thousand pounds bequeathed to the wretched woman who stood by him when he died; and when, selfish to the last, he said: ‘Don’t let the boy know the story of his birth. Let him think that Mabel was his mother,’ she answered him, ‘I will,’ and bore her secret bravely, and cared for the boy, and was a very slave to do his wishes, because of the love she bore him.

“Whatever opinion he might have had of her, her influence over him was great, and he really seemed to have a genuine affection for her as the only mother he had ever known, and would never suffer her to leave his service, as he called it. He paid her well, told her most of his plans, counseled with her often, and at times evinced for her a liking and respect very dear to the woman who longed so much to fall upon his neck and claim him as her son. She had been with him in Scotland, and London, and Paris, and at last, six years before his marriage with Anna, had gone with him to Chateau d’Or, which he had just bought, and where for weeks he held a high carnival with his wild, dissipated friends. The quiet and seclusion of the place just suited his mother, who at his request had before leaving Paris, taken the name of Madame Verwest.

“Up to that time she had been Mrs. Stevens, for she clung to the name she once believed to be her own, but it pleased her son to have her Madame Verwest, and a Frenchwoman, so a Frenchwoman she was; and because she liked the chateau so much he permitted her to stay there in charge of his servants, who held her in great esteem. The isolated position of the chateau was just suited to some of Haverleigh’s nefarious schemes, and poor Agatha Wynde was not the first young girl who had been immured in its walls. A fair-haired German from Munich, and a dark-eyed Italian from Verona had been hidden there for months until the search for them by their grief-stricken friends was over. When poor Agatha came there she had been so fair, so sweet, and so confiding, that Madame Verwest had taken the erring, repentant girl into her heart, and loved her like a mother.

“‘We don’t think quite the same,’ Agatha had said to her during a lucid interval a day or two before she died. ‘We are not the same religion. You Protestant, I _Catholique_; but you love Jesus, you ask him to forgive, and so do I; Him and Mary, too; and He will, and you will come to Heaven after poor Agatha some day. I sure you will, for there be now and then some Protestant there.’

“This was quite a concession for one so devout as Agatha, and Madame Verwest had smiled faintly when it was made, but she kissed the pallid lips and brow where death had already set its seal, and when at last all was over she placed a golden crucifix in the white hands folded so meekly over the heart which would never know pain again. She telegraphed to Haverleigh, who was dining with Eugenie when he received the message, and who read the telegram without a word of comment, and then, lest the jealous eyes watching him so closely should see it, he lighted a match, and applying it to the paper saw it burn to ashes. But he could not seem quite natural, and as soon as dinner was over he excused himself, and started directly for the station, leaving Eugenie to speculate upon the nature of the telegram which had so plainly affected his spirits, and taken him from her earlier than his wont. Alas, she little guessed the truth, or dreamed of the beautiful girl lying so cold and still in her coffin, and on whose white face even Haverleigh’s tears fell when he looked upon her dead, and remembered what she was when he first saw her, a lovely peasant-girl in Normandy, singing by her father’s door. They buried her quietly, and then Haverleigh returned to Paris and Eugenie, while over the lonely grave Madame Verwest vowed that no other maiden should ever come there as Agatha had come; and so, when she first heard of Anna, she determined upon something desperate, until told that Anna was a wife in very deed, and that no stain was on her name. Then, when she learned who she was, and whence she came, her heart went out to the desolate creature with a great throb of love, which strengthened every day, and was such as a real mother feels for a suffering, ill-used child. Many times, when listening to Anna’s talk of her New England home, she had been tempted to tell her who she was, but had refrained from doing so, hoping always that the day was not far distant when she could disclose everything, and be her real self again. That day had come at last, and with no fear of the dreadful man who had ruled her for so many years, she told her story, and waited the verdict of her wondering listeners.

“Anna was the first to speak. Motioning Madame Verwest to her bedside, she wound her arms around her neck, and said:

“‘I loved you as a mother at Chateau d’Or, and am so glad to find you are my mother truly, and the grandmother of little Arthur.’

“Neither were Mrs. Strong and Mary backward in their demonstrations of friendship and esteem for the woman who had suffered so much since the day, years and years before, when she had left her home in Millfield and returned no more. Could the inmates of the red house have blotted from their minds the memory of the poor lunatic who, not many miles away, was chafing and raging like a newly-caged animal, they would have been very happy these last summer days; and, to a certain degree, they were happy, though, in her low, nervous state Anna could never quite put from her mind the fear lest her dreaded husband should by some means escape from his confinement and come to do her harm. But the bolts and bars were very strong which held him, else he might perhaps have escaped, for he seemed endowed with superhuman strength, and clutched savagely at the iron gratings of his cell, shaking them at times as if they were but dried twigs in his hands.

“He was terrible in his insanity, and only his keeper and physician ever ventured near him. At them he sprang and snapped viciously, like a dog chained to a post, while he filled the room with the most horrid oaths, cursing Madame Verwest, who had dared to call him her child.

“‘He who was highly born, the son of a gentleman, the child of a servant, a nurse, a Yankee, and illegitimate at that; curse her! curse her! she lies! she lies! she played me false, and I hate her!’ he would scream, when his mother was the subject of his thoughts.

“Again, when it was Eugenie, he grew, if possible, more desperate than before, and would utter such oaths that even his keeper, hardened as he was by similar scenes, fled from the hearing of the blasphemous words.

“Of Anna and Agatha he never spoke until toward the last, when, as if he had worn his fierce nature out, he grew more quiet, and would sit for hours perfectly still, with his head bowed upon his hands, intently brooding over something in the past. Was he thinking of Agatha, and the cottage far away in Normandy, where he first saw her singing in the sunshine, with the sweet, shy look of innocence in her soft eyes, or did she come up before him as he last looked upon her, cold, white, and dead in her coffin, ruined by him, who had used every act in his power to lure her into the snare. It would seem that she came to him in both phases, for at times he would smile faintly and whisper, very soft and low:

“‘_Ma petite, ma cherie. Venez avec moi a Paris. Je vous aime bien_.’

“To her he always spoke in French and with the utmost tenderness, saying to her, as he thought himself bending over her coffin:

“‘I am sorry, Aggie, I am so sorry, and I wish I had left you in your home as innocent as I found you, poor little Aggie, so white and cold; don’t look at me with those mournful eyes; don’t touch me with those death-like hands; don’t you know you are dead, _dead_, and dead folks lie still? Don’t touch me, I say;’ and cries of fear would echo through the hall as the terror-stricken man fancied himself embraced and held fast by the arms which for so long had been at rest beneath the sod in southern France.

“‘It’s the French girl after him now,’ the keeper would say, as he heard the cries and pleadings for some one ‘to lie still and take their cold hands off.’ ‘It’s the French girl after him now, _death hug_, you know. He’ll be quieter when it’s t’other one;’ the ‘t’other one’ referring to Anna, who was often present to the disordered mind of the man, but who never excited him like Agatha.

“He was not afraid of Anna, but would hold long conversations with her, trying sometimes to convince her of her insanity, and again telling her that he loved her and always had, notwithstanding what he had heard her say of him in New York. It was in the spring following the summer when Anna arrived at Millfield that this softer, quieter mood came upon him, and with it a debility, and loss of strength and appetite, and gradual wasting away, which told that his days were numbered. Years of dissipation had undermined his naturally strong constitution, and he had no surplus vitality on which to draw, so that the decay, once commenced, was very rapid, and just a year from the day Anna came back to Millfield, he was dead.

“Madame Verwest was with him when he died for though he never asked for her or for any one, the mother love was too strong to keep her from him, and she went to him unbidden when she heard how sick he was. Whether her presence was any gratification to him or not, she never knew, for he expressed nothing, either by word or look. Once, when she spoke to him of Anna and his boy, there came a faint flush upon his face, and he repeated the names:

“‘Anna—Arthur.’

“Again, when she said to him:

“‘Ernest, you have much money, and land in your possession. If you die, where do you wish it to go?’

“For a moment he regarded her intently, and then replied:

“‘Anna, Arthur—mother.’

“The last word was spoken softly, kindly, and brought a rain of tears from the poor woman, who had clung to him so many years, and never heard that name from him before. Two days after that he died, and went to the God who deals justly with all His creatures. They bought him an elegant coffin, and dressed him in the finest of broadcloth, and brought him up to Millfield and buried him in the quiet graveyard behind the church, where he sleeps till the resurrection morning. Anna did not see him. She could not, but she suffered Madame Verwest to take Arthur with her to the grave, and so the mother and the son stood together while the coffin was lowered to the earth, and the solemn words were uttered, ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’

“To the little boy the weeping woman said:

“‘That’s your father, Arthur; your father they are burying;’ but Arthur was thinking more of the sunshine, and birds, and flowers than of the ceremonial which had no meaning for him, and releasing himself from his grandmother, started in pursuit of a butterfly, and his loud baby laugh mingled with the sound of the dirt rattling down upon the coffin which contained what had been his father.”

Here Hal Morton paused, and pointed toward a half-closed shutter through which the early morning was breaking. We had sat up all night, he telling and I listening to this strange story, which I felt was not finished yet, for I must know more of Anna, and if anything had ever been heard from Eugenie, who, however bad she might seem, had shown herself in some respects a noble woman, with many noble instincts and kindly feelings; so I said to my companion:

“Never mind the daylight, Hal. We will order a tip-top breakfast by and by, and meantime you finish the story and tell me more of Anna and Eugenie. Did they ever hear from her, and did Anna and the child get Haverleigh’s money?”

“Yes, they got Haverleigh’s money,” Hal replied. “Anna and Arthur between them. It was theirs lawfully, you know, and there was a million in all. Think of Anna Strong a millionaire. But it did not hurt her one whit, or change her in the least from the sweet, modest, half-frightened woman who came back to Millfield in place of the gay Anna we had known. She did not wear mourning for her husband; she could not with that consciousness in her heart of relief because he was dead; but she always wore black or white, relieved perhaps with a knot of ribbon or a flower, and never was there a fairer sight than was she in this sober attire as she went about our village seeking the sick and suffering, and giving to the poor of the wealth that God had given her. She built her mother a handsome house on an elevation just out of the town, and a wing was added for Madame Verwest, who was so much one of the family that she could not leave them.

“And so the working in the shoe-shop was at an end, with the smell of wax and leather, and the horrors of Chateau d’Or were past, and there were people foolish enough to say that it paid after all to marry a madman when the end had brought such peace. To Eugenie, Anna had often written, and when all was over she wrote again telling of the death. Then the French inconsistency of character showed itself, and the woman to whom Haverleigh had always been kind and indulgent, wept and refused to be comforted, partly for her loss, and more, I think, because no provision had been made for her.

“‘_Mon dieu!_’ she wrote to Anna, ‘to think no little legacee _pour moi_, who have given everything for him. Not so much as one, what you say, one dollar, and I so poor, too. Not so much to buy one pair of gloves, and they so cheap at _Au Bon Marche, trois francs et demi_, and so good. Shall I send you a box of black—bah, _non, ma cherie_. You not wear that for he, but _me_, I must wear _crepe_, and bombasin, one leetle month, for my heart all French, all _crepe_, all ache, _douleur_, for the bad monsieur, who once love Eugenie. He have account at bank and I draw check at will, and have draw till only one thousand franc left, which you make two hundred dollars. Then what I must do? I grow old and want no more monsieur—bah! I hate him all. I look in my glass and see Eugenie most forty, with some gray hairs, some wrinkles, which paste will not cover. No monsieur want me for wife: I want no monsieur. So I must work; must hang out the sign, ‘_Robes et Costumes. Madame Eugenie_,’ and tie to it some bonnets and caps. Oh, but it will go hard after all the ease, to have so many girls round, and I must scold them all the time; perhaps I act again, but it I hate so much; it brings me _les messieurs_ again, and I won’t have it. For you, you so happy with _beaucoup de l’argent_, no more nasty shop, no more wax, no more leather, no more smell-bad; but for me leather, and wax, and smell-bad, _toujours, toujours_. _Mon Dieu_, ’tis quite hard, and I give all to him, all, and if he not die, what you call him, crazy, he remember Eugenie in his—his little last testament, you call it, or some book like that. Oh, me, I starve, I die. I have the many girls around me with the bad to sew, and you have the silk, the satin, the opera, and the lunch at _Trois Freres—bien_—’tis right, but hard, and it takes so few money to set me up, quite. _Me comprenez vous?_’

“Anna did understand the hint, and sent to the Frenchwoman, who had done her great service, ten thousand dollars, which Eugenie acknowledged with rapture.

“‘Enough, with _prudency_ and _save_, to keep me lady all my life. No need for the girls now to sew _les robes_; no leather, no wax, no smell-bad, forevermore, but highly respectable woman, who let rooms to _les Americains_ and bring them _cafe_ in the morning.’

“This was Eugenie’s reply, and after that Anna heard no more from her, but supposed her happy as a highly respectable woman and keeper of lodgers.”

The mention of Eugenie’s _cafe_ was too much for Hal and myself in our exhausted condition, and, ringing the bell, we ordered _cafe_ for two in our apartments, and while we were sipping the delicious beverage, I said to my companion:

“Hal, you have told a splendid story, but I must hear a little more. You were in love with Anna Strong before she married Haverleigh. Did the love come back after he was dead?”

Hal made no answer for a moment, then he said:

“I will not tell you another word to-day; nor have I time. We must see a little of Marseilles, and to-night be off for Nice.”

“And not stop at Cannes?” I asked, and he replied:

“No, not stop at Cannes—a stupid place, full of English. Nice is the spot in all the world for me.”

So we went straight to Nice, and were quartered at the Grand Hotel, and our rooms opened upon the spacious garden, where, looking from my window in the morning, I saw several groups of people, one of which attracted my attention at once. A beautiful boy of three years old was running up and down a graveled walk, followed by a smart-looking French maid, who always brought him back to two ladies sitting on a bench under the trees.

One lady was old and draped in black, but the other was young, and oh, so fair in her morning-dress of white, with a blue ribbon in her wavy hair. There were diamonds and costly gems sparkling on her hands, and everything about her betokened the lady of wealth and culture.

“Who is she, I wonder?” I was saying to myself, when I saw Hal enter the garden and walk straight up to her, while a shout from the little boy showed that he was no stranger.

Stranger! I should say not, by the _kiss_ he gave that girl or woman, with me looking on, and saying aloud:

“That’s Anna, sure!”

Yes, it was Anna come abroad with Madame Verwest and her child, and her former maid, Celine, whom she had found at Chateau d’Or, where they had stopped for a few days. And an hour after I was introduced to Mrs. Haverleigh, and sat opposite her at the breakfast we had in her parlor, and studied her closely, and decided that Hal had not overrated her charms.

She was beautiful, with that soft, refined, unconscious beauty that one rarely sees in a really handsome face. There was nothing of the doll about her. She was a thorough woman, graceful, pure, and lovely, with a look in her blue eyes which told of Chateau d’Or and the dreamy day and night watches there. But those were over now. Chateau d’Or was rented for a series of years, at a price merely nominal, and so that was off her hands, and the greatest care she had was the care of her immense fortune. Of course Hal had offered to relieve her of this care, and she had accepted his offer, and given him herself as a retaining fee.

We kept with her after that, or Hal did, and I kept at a distance, and talked with Madame Verwest, and romped with Arthur until we reached Venice, and there, one moonlight night, Hal and Anna were married, and we made the tour of the Grand Canal for a wedding trip, and the canopy over the bride was of pure white satin, and in the soft, silvery moonlight we sang the “Star-Spangled Banner,” our two boatmen joining in the chorus with their sweet Italian voices.

That was long ago, and Hal Morton has a boy of his own now, and a blue-eyed baby daughter, too, and he lives in one of the finest places on the Connecticut river, and goes to Europe every year, and Madame Verwest lives with him; and Fred has been through college, and is on the Continent now; and Mary is married to a Methodist minister, and Mrs. Strong is dead; and Eugenie—well, when the Commune swept over Paris, Eugenie herself went into the street and cared for the wounded and dying, and hurled a stone at a Frenchman who was attacking an American, and kept him at bay, and got the young man into her own house, and bandaged up his head, and called him “Sharles,” and asked him if he remembered her.

Fred did remember her then, and staid with her till the fierce storm was over and he was free to leave beleaguered and desecrated Paris and go on his way to Scotland, where he found Hal Morton and Anna in their beautiful home among the Highlands, not very far from Loch Katrine, and so I finish this story of Chateau d’Or.

THE END.

NORAH.

I had crossed in the bright October sunshine from Calais to Dover without once taking refuge in the close, pent-up saloon, which is like a little purgatory when the waters of the Channel are stirred to their depths, and the boat is tossed like a feather from one angry wave to another. It was very quiet that day, and the sea was literally like glass, with the sunshine falling so softly upon it. Nobody had been sick except a fair young girl, with _bride_ unmistakably stamped upon her, from her dainty traveling-dress to the trustful glance of the blue eyes lifted so often and lovingly to the face of the young man beside her. Once, when the boat rocked more than usual, she had turned white to her lips, and, dropping her golden head upon the shoulder of her husband, had kept it there in a weary, languid kind of way, while I speculated about her, wondering who she was, and where she was going, and hoping that the party of American girls, who seemed to monopolize and fill the entire deck, would take note of her, and see that at least one of my countrywomen had taste, and style and beauty combined.

“Such frights as the English women are, with their horrid shoes, their dresses made before the flood, and that everlasting white thing tied high about their throats,” I had heard one of them say and, while flushing with indignation, had felt, to a certain degree, that their criticism was just, and that, taken as a whole, the English ladies did not compare favorably with their American sisters, so far as grace and style were concerned.

But this little bride, with the blue eyes and golden hair, might have come from the show-rooms of the most fashionable modiste on Broadway, and not have shamed her mantua-maker. She had evidently been gotten up in Paris, and I watched her with a good deal of interest until the cliffs of Dover were in sight, and we were nearing the shores of England and home. Then, in seeing to my boxes, which were the very last to be brought from the boat, I forgot everything, and came near being left by the train waiting to take us to London.

“Hurry up, miss, you’ve only quarter of a second,” a porter cried, as, in my bewilderment, I was looking for a carriage. “Here, here! this way! Second class?” he screamed again, interrogatively, and seizing the door of a second-class carriage, he held it open for me, guessing, by what intuition I know not, that I must necessarily be a second-class passenger.

For once, he was mistaken; for, thanks to the kindness of dear Kitty Bute, with whom my vacation had been passed, I was first-class all the way from Paris to London, and, rejecting contemptuously the porter’s offer of assistance, I sprang into the nearest first-class compartment, just as the train began to move, and found myself alone with the little bride and groom. There was a look of annoyance in the eyes of the bride, while the young man gave a significant pull to his brown mustache, and I knew I was not wanted. But I had a right as valid as their own, and taking my seat on the opposite side, near the open window, I pretended to be occupied with the country through which we were passing so swiftly, while my thoughts went back to the past, gathering up the broken threads of my life, and dwelling upon what I had been once and what I was now.

And this is the picture I saw far back through a vista of twelve long, weary years. A pleasant old house in Middlesex—an English house, of stone, with ivy creeping over it even to the chimney-tops, and the boxes of flowers in the windows, the tall trees in front, the patches of geraniums and petunias in the grass, the honeysuckle over the door of the wide, old-fashioned hall, through which the summer air blew softly, laden with the perfume of roses, and the sweet-scented mignonette. And I was standing in the door, with a half-opened rose in my hair, and the tall, angular boy who had placed it there was looking down upon me with great tears swimming in his eyes, as he said:

“Keep the rose, Norah, till I come back, and I shall know you have not forgotten me, even if you _are_ Mrs. Archibald Browning.”

There was an emphasis on the last name, and a tone in his voice as he spoke it, which did not please me, and I said:

“Oh, Tom, why can’t you like Archie better, and he so noble and good, and so kind to get you that position with his uncle in India?”

“Yes, I know; Archie is lovely, and I am a brute because I don’t feel like kissing his feet just because he interested himself to get me the place. But I hope you will be happy, and if those two lubbers of cousins happen to die, you will be my Lady Cleaver, and mistress of Briarton Lodge; but don’t forget old Tom, who by that time will be married to some black East Indian princess, and have a lot of little darkies running round. There, I must go now; it’s time. I say, Norah, come with me through the field to the highway. I want to keep hold of you to the very last, and Archie won’t care. I’m your brother, you know.”

He was my brother to all intents and purposes, though really my second cousin. But I had no brother, or sister, or mother, only a father and aunt, and Tom had lived with us since I was a little girl of ten, and now he was going out to India to make his fortune. His ship would sail on the morrow, and I could not refuse to go with him as far as the highway, where he was to take the stage for London. It was a forlorn, dreary walk through the pleasant grassy lane; for I loved Tom very dearly, and there was a great wrench in my heart at the thought of parting with him. He was silent, and never spoke a word until the stile was reached, where we were to part. Then, suddenly lifting me high in his arms, as if I were a child, for I was very short and he was very tall, he kissed my forehead and lips, and cried like a baby, as he said:

“Good-by, little Norah, Mrs. Archibald Browning, good-by, and God bless you; and if that husband ever does abuse you, tell him he will answer for it to me, Tom Gordon, the gawky cousin with more legs than brains.”

“Oh, Tom,” I said, struggling to my feet, “you know Archie did not mean that, and maybe he never said it. I wish you did not hate him so.”

“I don’t hate him, Norah. I simply do not like him, or any of his race. They are a proud set, who think you highly honored to be admitted into the blooded family of Brownings. And then, too, Norah,” he continued, with that peculiar smile which was his one beauty and made him irresistible, “then, too, Norah, you see—you know—I’m not your brother; I’m only your second cousin, and though I never thought you very handsome, you are the nicest girl I ever knew, and—well, I think I meant to marry you myself!”

He burst into a merry laugh and looked straight in my face as I drew back from him with a gasp, exclaiming:

“_You_, Tom; _you_ marry me! Why, I’m old enough to be your grandmother!”

“You are twenty, I am nineteen; that’s all the difference, though I confess that you have badgered, and scolded, and lectured me enough for forty grandmothers,” he said; “but there’s the stage, and now it’s really good-by.”

Two minutes more and I was walking back alone through the quiet shady lane, where Tom and I had played together so often, and where now were the remains of a playhouse he had built under a spreading oak. There was his room, divided from mine by a line of stones, and there in the wall the little niche where I kept my dishes and hid the gooseberry tarts away from greedy Tom. How happy we had been together, making believe sometimes that I was his mother and he my sick baby, which I tried to rock to sleep in my lap, finding his long legs a great inconvenience and a serious obstacle to much petting on my part. Again he was a fierce knight and I a lorn maiden shut up in some grim fortress—usually old Dunluce Castle—for we had once visited the north of Ireland and explored the ruins of what some writer terms “the grandest, romantickest, awfullest sea-king’s home in all the broad kingdom.” We had had our quarrels, too, and even fights, in which I always came off victor, owing to my peculiar mode of warfare, as I had a habit of springing upon him like a little cat and tearing his face with my nails, while he was usually content with jerky pulls at my hair. But all that was over now, and buried with the doll whose head he had broken because I would not stay home and nurse him when he had the quinsy, and could only talk in a wheezy kind of way. He had threatened revenge, and taken it upon my prettiest Paris doll, and I had flown at him like a tiger and scratched his nose till it bled, and cried myself sick, and then we had made it up and buried dolly near the old playhouse in the lane, and reared a slab to her memory, and planted some daisies on her grave. And just here, near what seemed to be the grave of my childhood, I sat down that summer afternoon and thought of all those years—of Tom on his way to India, and of the future opening so brightly before me, for I was the betrothed wife of Archibald Browning, who belonged to one of the best families in the county, and in less than a month we were to be married and spend our honeymoon in Switzerland, among the glorious Alps, of which I had dreamed so much. I knew that Archie’s mother was very proud, and thought her son might have looked higher than Norah Burton, especially as there was a possible peerage in prospect, but she was civil to me, and had said that a season in London would improve me greatly, if such a little creature could be improved; and Archie, I was sure, loved me dearly, notwithstanding that he sometimes criticised my style and manner, and wished I was more like his cousin, Lady Darinda Cleaver, who, I heard, powdered her face and penciled her eyebrows, and was the finest rider on Rotten Row. Tom, who had been often in London, had seen the Lady Darinda, and reported her as a perfect giantess, who wore a man’s hat, with a flapper behind on the waist of her riding-suit, and sat her horse as stiffly and straight as if held in her place by a ramrod, and never rode faster than a black ant could trot.

This was Tom’s criticism, which I had repeated to Archie, who laughed a little, and pulled his light brown mustache, and said: “Tom was not a proper judge of stylish women, and that Darinda’s manners were faultless.”

I had no doubt they were, though I had never seen her, but I should ere long, as she had consented to be one of my bride-maids, and had written me a note which was very prettily worded, and very patronizing in its tone, and made me dislike her thoroughly. She was in London now, Archie had written in the letter in which he told me he should be with me on the day after Tom’s departure. I was never so glad for his coming, I think, for my heart was very heavy at parting with Tom, whose words, “I meant to marry you myself,” kept ringing in my ears as I sat alone in the grassy lane by the ruins of the playhouse he had built. Not that I attached the slightest importance to them, or believed for a moment that he was serious in what he said, for he was my brother, my dear, good brother, who had been so much to me, and whom I missed so much, that at last I laid my head upon dollie’s miniature grave and cried bitterly for the boy traveling so fast to London, and the ship which would take him away. There was, however, comfort in the thought that Archie was coming on the morrow, and the next morning found me with spirits restored, eager and expectant for my love. But Archie did not come, and the hours wore on and there was no news of him until the following day, when there came a note from his mother telling me he was sick.

“Nothing very serious,” she wrote, “only a heavy cold, the result of a drenching he received while riding with Darinda several miles out in the country. He sends his love, and says you are not to be alarmed, for he will soon be with you.”

That was the note, and I was not to be alarmed, nor was I. I was only conscious that a strange kind of feeling took possession of me, which I could not define, but which sent me to my room, where the bridal finery lay, and made me fold it up, piece by piece, and put it carefully away, with a feeling that it would never be worn. There was much sickness in our neighborhood that summer, and the morning after hearing of Archie’s illness I took my breakfast in bed, and after that day knew little of what was passing around me until the roses which were blossoming so brightly when Tom went away were fading on their stalks, and other and later flowers were blossoming in their place.

I had been very sick, Aunt Esther said, with the distemper, as they called the disease, which had desolated so many homes in our vicinity.

“What day is it? What day of the month, I mean?” I asked, feeling dazed and bewildered, and uncertain whether it was yesterday that I sat in the lane and cried for dear Tom, or whether it was long ago.

“It’s the tenth,” she said; and her voice shook a little, and she did not turn her face toward me but pretended to be busy with the curtains of the bed.

“The tenth?” I cried. “Tenth of July, my wedding-day! Do you mean that?”

“Yes,” she answered, softly; “it was to have been your wedding-day.”

“And Archie,” I continued; “is he better—is he here?”

Still her face was turned from mine, and her hands were busy with the curtain, as she replied:

“He is not here now, but he is better, much better.”

This time her voice and manner awoke in me a suspicion of some impending evil, and exerting all my strength, I raised myself in bed and said, vehemently:

“Aunt Esther, you are keeping something from me. Tell me the worst at once. Is Archie dead, or Tom, or both?”

“No, no. Oh, no, not Tom. Heaven forbid that Tom should die. There’s a letter for you from him. I’ll get it, shall I? You were not to read it till to-day.”

She started to leave the room, but I kept her back with my persistent questionings.

“You have not told me all. You are trying to deceive me. Is Archie dead?”

Archie _was_ dead and buried ten days ago. The heavy cold taken while riding with Lady Darinda had become congestion of the lungs, and while I lay unconscious of my loss, he had died, and Lady Darinda had written me a note of condolence and sympathy. Mrs. Browning was too much broken down to write, she said, and so on her devolved the painful duty of telling me how quietly and peacefully Archie had died, after an illness of a few days.

“I nursed him myself to the very last, and was the more anxious to do it,” she wrote, “because I fancied he had never quite forgiven me for having refused him, as you probably knew I did two or three years ago, just before he met you at the Trossachs Hotel. I was very fond of Archie, poor fellow, even if I could not marry him, and it nearly broke my heart to see him die. He spoke your name once or twice, but I could not make out exactly what he said, except ‘Be kind to her,’ and Mrs. Browning wishes me to assure you of her friendship, and good feeling, and desire to serve you if ever in her power to do so. We did not tell Archie you were sick; we thought it better not, and as he expressed no wish to have you come to him, it was not necessary. I send a lock of his hair, which I cut for you myself, and Mrs. Browning says she thinks the picture you have of him better than any she has ever seen, and she will be very glad if you will loan it to her until she can have some copies of it taken. Please send it at once, as we shall leave London soon for Bath, my aunt’s health rendering a change of air and scene imperative.

Yours, in sorrow and sympathy, “DARINDA CLEAVER.”

As I read this strange epistle, I felt as if turning into stone, and had my life depended upon it I could not have shed a tear for the lover dead and the ruin of all my hopes. Indeed, in looking back upon the past, I do not think I ever _really_ cried for _Archie_, though for weeks and months there was a heavy pain in my heart, a sense of loss and loneliness, and disappointment, but often, as I felt the hot tears start, there came the recollection that I had not been his first choice, if indeed I were ever his choice at all; that it was probably in a fit of pique he had asked me to be his wife, and this forced the tears down and made me harder, stonier than before. I sent his picture back that very day, and with it my engagement ring, a splendid solitaire, which I reflected with bitterness would some day sparkle on Lady Darinda’s finger, and it did. I did not write a word. I could not. I merely sent the ring and the picture, and felt when I gave them to Aunt Esther that my old life was ended and a new one just begun.

“Tom’s letter you have not read yet. That may comfort you. I’ll bring it directly,” Aunt Esther said: and in a moment I had it in my hand and was studying the superscription:

“MISS NORAH BURTON, “The Oaks, “Middlesex.

“Not to be opened till the wedding-day.”

Then for a moment there was a feeling in my throat as if my heart were rising into my mouth, but I forced it down, and breaking the seal, read the letter, which was so much like Tom. He had been out to sea three days, and there was a ship in sight by which they hoped to send messages home, so he was trying to write in spite of the fearful condition of his stomach, which he described as a kind of raging whirlpool.

“DEAR NORAH,” he began, “I am sitting on deck on a coil of rope, and am sicker than a horse. I’ve thrown up everything I ate for a month before I left England, and everything I expect to eat for a month to come; but I must write a few lines of congratulation to Mrs. Archibald Browning, as you will be when you read this letter. Norah, I hope you will be happy; I do, upon my word, even if I did talk against him and say I meant to marry you myself. That was all bosh, for of course a venerable kind of a girl like you never could think of such a spindle-shanked, sandy-haired gawky as I am. Archie is far better for you, and I am glad you are his wife, real glad, Norah, and no sham, though last night when I sat on the deck and looked out over the dark sea toward old England and you, there was a lump in my throat as big as a tub, and, six-footer as I am, I laid my head on the railing and cried like a baby, and whispered to myself, ‘Good-by, Norah, good-by, once for all.’ I was bending up double the next minute, and that cramp finished the business, and knocked all sentiment out of me, so that to-day you are my sister, or mother, or grandmother, just which you choose to call yourself, and I am very glad you are to marry Archie. I mean to be a rich man, and by and by pick up some English girl in India, and bring her home to you. There it comes again! that horrid creep from the toes up. I wonder if the whale felt that way when he cast up Jonah. Oh, my gracious. I can’t stand it. Good-by. Yours in the last agony,

“TOM GORDON.”

I had been out in a yacht on the Irish coast, and been sea-sick, and I knew just how Tom felt, and could imagine how he acted, and I laughed aloud in spite of Archie dead and the great pain at my heart. In fact, the laugh did me good, and with Tom’s letter under my pillow I felt better than before I read it.

It was four months before we heard from him again, and then he was so sorry for me, so kindly sympathetic, that I cried as I had not cried since Archie died. Tom was well and happy, and liked the country and his employment, and to use his words was having a “gay old time,” with some “larks of chaps” whose acquaintance he had made. Regularly each month we heard from him for a year or more, and then his letters became very irregular, and were marked with a daring and flippancy I did not like at all. Then followed an interval of silence, and we heard from other sources that Tom Gordon, though still keeping his place and performing his duties to his employer faithfully, was growing fast into a reckless, daring, dissipated man, such as no sister would like her brother to be. I was his sister; he was my brother, I said, and I wrote him a letter of remonstrance and reproof, telling him how disappointed I was in him and begging him to reform for my sake, and the sake of the old time when we were children together, and he had some respect for goodness and purity. He did not answer that letter. I think it made him angry, and so I could only weep over the wayward boy, and pray earnestly that Heaven would save him yet, and restore him to us as he used to be before he strayed so far from the paths of virtue.

And so the years went by till I was twenty-five, when, suddenly, without a note of warning, my father died, and by some turn in the wheel of fortune, never clear to my woman’s vision, Aunt Esther and I were left with a mere pittance not sufficient to supply the necessities even of one of us. Then Tom wrote and offered to come home if I wished it, but I did not. I was a little afraid of him, and something in my reply must have shown him my distrust, for he was evidently hurt and piqued, and did not write again until after Aunt Esther and myself were settled in lodgings in London, and taking care of ourselves. For we came to that at last; came to the back room, upper floor, of a lodging house in pleasant old Kensington, with the little hall bedroom, scarcely larger than a recess, for our sleeping apartment, and only my piano left me as a reminder of the dear old home in Middlesex, where strangers now are living. And I was a teacher of French and music, and went out every day to give lessons to my pupils, who lived, some of them, near to Abingdon Road, and some of them farther away.

With the next seven years this story has little to do. Aunt Esther died within the first two years, and I was left alone, but stayed always with the Misses Keith, the three dear old ladies who kept the house and petted me like a child. They were poor themselves, and depended for their living upon what their lodgers paid them, and I was the least profitable to them of all, for my little back room on the upper floor was the cheapest room they had. Still I think they would have parted with me more unwillingly than with the rich widow and her son who occupied the drawing-room floor, and made them handsome presents every Christmas. I kept their old hearts young, they said, with my music and my songs, and they pitied me so much, knowing what I used to be, and what I am now.

From Tom I heard quite often after Aunt Esther died. He was a better man, rescued from depths of dissipation he knew not how, he wrote, unless it was the memory of the olden time in Middlesex, and the prayers he was always sure I made for him. It was strange that through all his wildness he had been retained and trusted by his employer, who depended greatly upon him, and made him at last his confidential clerk. That was the turning point, and from that time he went up and up until few young men, it was said, stood higher or were more popular in Calcutta than my cousin Tom. And I was so proud of him; and when I read his letters telling me of his success and the many people whom he knew, and the families where he visited—families whose friends lived in London—I was glad he did not know just how poor I was, and that if even one scholar failed me I must deny myself something in order to meet the necessities of my life. I had never written him the truth with regard to my circumstances. I told him of the Misses Keith, who were so kind to me, and of my cozy room which looked into a pleasant garden, and upon the rear of the church which the Duke of Argyle occasionally honored with his presence. I had also mentioned incidentally, that, as I had plenty of leisure, I gave a few lessons in music to the daughters of gentlemen who lived in the vicinity of Abingdon Road. For this deception my conscience had smitten me cruelly, and if asked for a motive, I could not have given one. I merely wished to keep my poverty a secret from Tom, and up to the time when I was a passenger in a first-class carriage from Dover to London I had succeeded in doing so, and though Tom frequently sent me some token of remembrance from India, and, among other things, a real Cashmere shawl, which I could not wear because of the contrast between that and my ordinary dress, he had never sent me money, and so my pride was spared at the expense of a deception on my part.

I had been on a little trip to Paris and Switzerland with one of my pupils, who defrayed all my expenses, and to whom I was indebted for the freest, happiest weeks I had known since my father’s death. But these had come to an end. I had said good-by to the glorious Alps, good-by to delightful Paris, good-by to my pupil, who was to remain abroad with her mother, and here I was at the last stage of my journey, nearing London, whose smoke and spires were visible in the distance. As we flew along like lightning toward the city, there came over me a great dread of taking to the old, monotonous life again—a shrinking from the little back room, third floor, which was dingy and dreary, with the dark paper on the walls, the threadbare carpet, and the paint which had seen so many years. There was a loathing, too, of my daily fare, always the cheapest I could find—the mutton chop, with rolls and eggs, and the Englishwoman’s invariable tea. No more French dishes, and soups, and _cafe au lait_ for me. I was not the guest of a party, now; I was again the poor music-teacher, going back to my bondage, and for a few moments I rebelled against it with all my strength, and hot, bitter tears forced themselves to my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. Hastily dashing them away, I glanced at the couple opposite, the bride and groom, to see if they were noticing me; but they were not; they were wholly absorbed in themselves, and were talking of Paris and the fine people they had met there, while the bride was wondering if Miss Lucy Elliston, who lived on Grosvenor Square, would really call upon her as she had promised to do. The name, Elliston, was not new to me, for Tom had more than once mentioned a friend of his, Charlie Elliston, whose father lived on Grosvenor Square, but I did not know there was a Lucy, and I became interested when I heard the bride say:

“George, do you remember how long it is since Miss Elliston returned from India?”

George did not, and the bride, whom George called Addie, continued:

“How very stylish she is, and how much she talked of Mr. Gordon. Is it one of _the Gordons_, do you suppose?”

George did not know, and the conversation soon changed to another subject, while I began to wonder if it could be Tom of whom Miss Lucy Elliston talked so much. Tom was in India, and Tom was descended directly from _the Gordons_, whose coat of arms could be seen any day in Hyde Park during the season. Did Tom know Miss Lucy Elliston, and was she so very stylish and proud, and had he not in one of his letters mentioned the number of the house on Grosvenor Square? If so, I would walk round, some day, and look at it, I said, just as we shot under cover at Victoria Station, and my journey was at an end.

It seemed as if my one insignificant little box was always destined to be the last found, and it was a long time before I took my seat in the cab and was driven in the direction of No. — Abingdon Road. The October sun, which all the day had poured such a flood of golden light upon the English landscape, had gone down in a bank of clouds, and I remember that there were signs of rain in the chill evening air, and the fog began to creep up around the lamp-posts and the corners of the streets as I rode through the darkness with a feeling of homesickness at my heart, as I remembered the Alps and Paris, the long vacation free from care, with every want supplied, and then thought of the little back room, third floor, with its dingy furniture. Even the warm welcome I was sure to receive from the Misses Keith, was forgotten in the gloom which weighed upon my spirits, when at last the cab stopped before No.—, which was all ablaze with light, candles in the basement, candles in the dining-room, and gas, it would seem, in the drawing-room floor, which the wealthy widow had left before I went away, but which evidently had another occupant now. My ring was answered by the youngest Miss Keith, who I fancied looked a very little disappointed at sight of me and my box.

“You here!” she said; “we didn’t expect you till to-morrow night. Not but you are very welcome but you see—come this way, please, down stairs. Don’t go to your room now. It’s cold there, and dark. We have let the drawing-room floor very advantageously to a newly-married couple, who have just arrived. She is so pretty.”

By this time we had reached the little room in the basement, where the Misses Keith took their meals and sat when the business of the day was over, and where now a cheerful fire was blazing, making me feel more comfortable than I had since I left the Victoria Station in the cab. The elder Miss Keith and her sister were glad to see me, but I thought they looked askance at each other as if I were not after all quite welcome, and in a forlorn, wretched state of mind I sat down to warm my cold feet by the fire, wondering if letting the drawing-room floor so advantageously had quite put me in the background. Evidently it had, for after a few questions as to my journey, I was left alone, while the three ladies flitted back and forth, up stairs and down, busy with the grand dinner to be served in the drawing-room for the new arrivals, Mr. and Mrs. Trevyllan, who were reported as making elaborate toilets for the occasion.

“Married just six weeks, and her dress is beautiful,” Miss Keith said to me, as she conducted me at last to my room, which she reported as ready for me.

The drawing-room door was open, and as I passed it I could not forbear glancing in at the table, set with the best damask and silver and glass which No.— afforded, and, right before the fire, under the chandelier, stood the bride in full evening dress of light silk, her golden curls falling behind from a pearl comb, and her blue eyes upturned to the husband who stood beside her, to _George_, as I knew in a moment, recognizing them at once as my fellow-travelers from Dover, and remembering again what the bride had said of Miss Lucy Elliston and a Mr. Gordon. Strangely enough, too, my thoughts went far back to Archie, and what I might have been had he lived, and there was a swelling of my heart, and the tears were in my eyes as I followed Miss Keith to my room, the door of which she threw wide open, and then stood back for me to see and admire.

“Oh-h! what have you done? I exclaimed, and then in an instant I comprehended the whole, and knew just how the good souls had planned, and contrived, and undoubtedly denied themselves to give me this surprise and delightful welcome home.

It was not the old dingy apartment at all, but the coziest of rooms, with fresh paint and paper, a new, light ingrain carpet of drab and blue, with chintz coverings for the furniture, of the same shade, and pretty muslin curtains looped back from the windows in place of the coarse Nottingham lace which had always been an offense to me. Add to this a bright fire in the grate, and my little round tea-table drawn up before it, with the rolls and chop, and pot of damson plums, and the teakettle boiling merrily, and you have the picture of the room which I stood contemplating, while Miss Keith blew her nose softly, and wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron as she said:

“You see, the girls and me (they always spoke of each other as _girls_, these women of fifty, fifty-five and sixty) the girls and me thought you had been forlorn long enough, and when Mrs. Winters left and was pleased to give us ten pounds extra, and we let the drawing-rooms so quick and well, pay beginning the day it was let, we said we would do something for Miss Norah, and we meant to have the fire made and a nice hot supper ready when you came, but you took us by surprise, and we had to keep you below till we could straighten up. I am glad you like it. There’s Mrs. Trevyllan’s bell, and I must go.”

She left me then and went to the little bride, who I knew did not enjoy her elaborately served dinner in her handsome parlor one-half as much as I enjoyed my simple tea in my rocking-chair before the fire, which whispered and spit so cheerily and cast such pleasant shadows on the wall. All my poverty and loneliness were for the time forgotten in the glamour of these creature comforts, but they returned to a certain extent when, my supper over and the tea-things removed, I sat down to read the few letters which had come for me within the last two weeks and not been forwarded. Was there one from Tom? I asked myself, and I was conscious of a feeling of disappointment when I found there was not.

“Tom does not care for me anymore,” I said, sadly, to myself, as I opened the first letter and read, with a pang, that Mrs. Lambert, on Warwick Crescent, had concluded to employ a governess in the house, and consequently would not need my services as French and music-teacher to her three daughters.

This was a great loss to me, and I remember a feeling of cold and almost hunger as I mechanically folded the letter and laid it aside, and as mechanically opened the second, and read that Mrs. Lennox, High street, Kensington, was going abroad for the winter with her daughters, and would not need me until spring, when she should be glad to employ me again if my time was not fully occupied.

“Fully occupied,” I said, bitterly. “Small danger of that. I shall starve at this rate,” and in a hopeless, despairing kind of way I opened the third and last letter and read that Lady Fairfax, No.—Grosvenor Square, would like me to call _at once_ if I cared for another scholar, as she might wish to put her little daughter Maude under my instruction.

The note was dated more than two weeks back, and the _call at once_ was underscored as if the summons admitted no delay.

“Lost that chance too,” I said, as I studied the small, delicate handwriting, and wondered where I had seen it before, or a handwriting like it.

I could not tell, but somehow my thoughts went back to that summer afternoon twelve years ago, and the breezy hall, with the doors opened wide, the sweet-scented air, and the tall, lank boy placing the white rose in my hair and bidding me keep it till he came back.

I had put the rose between the leaves of a heavy book that night, and when, weeks afterward, I found it there, I laid it away in a little Japanese box with a lock of Archie’s bright brown hair, cut for me from his dead brow by Lady Darinda’s hand, and one of Tom’s sandy curls cut by himself with a jack-knife, and given me on one of my birth-days. That was twelve years in the past, and everything was so changed, and I was so tired, so poor and lonely as I recalled it all, and thought first of Archie dead, then of the father dead also, and the money gone, and then of Tom, who had been so much to me once, and who seemed of late to have forgotten me entirely, for I had not heard from him since July, when he wrote, asking for my photograph, and bidding me be sure and send it, as he wished to know how “the little old mother looked after a dozen years.”

That was what he called me; “little old mother,” the name he gave me long ago when I used to lecture him so soundly and call him a “naughty boy.” He had asked me in the letter if I did not want some money, saying, if I did he wished I would tell him so frankly, and it should be forthcoming to any amount. I did not want money from him; he was too much a stranger to me now to admit of that, but I had sent him a photograph, which the Misses Keith had pronounced excellent, but which I thought younger, fairer, and better-looking than the face I knew as mine. Still, such as it was, I sent it to Tom, and thanked him for offering me money, and said I did not need it, and told him of my projected trip to Switzerland with some friends, and asked him to write to me again, as I was always glad to hear from him. But he had not written me a line, and it was almost four months now since I sent him the photograph.

“He was probably disappointed and disgusted with the picture, and so has ceased to think of or care for me,” I said; and notwithstanding my newly-renovated room, which an hour before I thought so bright and cheerful, I do not remember that I had ever felt so lonely, and wretched, and forsaken, as I did that night, when I sat thinking of Tom and listening to the rain which had commenced to fall heavily, and was beating against the shutters of the room.

How long I sat there I do not know, but the house was perfectly quiet, and the fire was burned out, when at last I undressed myself and crept shivering to bed.

Next morning I awoke with a dull pain in my head and bones, a soreness in my throat, and a disposition to sneeze, all of which, Miss Keith informed me, were symptoms of influenza, which would nevertheless succumb to a bowl of hot boneset tea, a dose of pills, and a blister on the back of my neck. I took the tea, but declined the blister and pills, and was sick in bed for two whole weeks, during which time the Misses Keith were unremitting in their attentions, and the bride, little Mrs. Trevyllan, came to see me several times. She was a kind-hearted, chatty body, disposed to be very familiar and communicative, and during her first visit to my room told me all about herself, and how she happened to meet _George_, as she always called her husband. Her father was a clergyman in the Church of England, and had a small parish in the north of Ireland, not far from the Giant’s Causeway, where she was born. Her mother had belonged to one of the county families in Essex, and so she was by birth a lady, and entitled to attention from the best of the people. George was junior partner in the firm of Trevyllan & Co., near Regent Circus, and would some day be very rich. He was the best fellow in the world, and had been staying at Portrush for a few weeks the previous summer, and seen and fallen in love with her, and carried her off in the very face of an old, _passe_ baronet, who wanted her for his wife. Then she spoke of her home looking out on the wild Irish Sea, and of her mother, who, to eke out their slender salary, sometimes received one or two young ladies into the family, and gave them lessons in French and German. Miss Lucy Elliston had been one of these; and on her second visit to me, the little lady entertained me with gossip concerning this lady, whom she evidently admired greatly—“so stylish, and dignified, and pretty,” she said, “and so fond of me, even if I am the daughter of a poor clergyman, and she the daughter of Colonel Elliston, who served so long in India, and whose son is there now. We always corresponded at intervals after she left Ireland, and I was so delighted to meet her again in Paris. She has been to India herself for a year, it seems, and only came home last spring. I believe she has a lover out there; at all events, she talked a great deal of a certain Mr. Gordon, who is very rich and magnificent-looking, she said. She did not tell me she had his photograph, but I heard her say to a friend that she would show it to her sometime, though she did not think it did him justice. I would not wonder if I have it in my possession this very minute.”

“You!” I exclaimed—“you have Mr. Gordon’s photograph! How can that be?”

“I’ll tell you,” she replied. “I met Miss Elliston shopping at Marshall & Snellgrove’s, the other day, and she apologized for not having called upon me as she promised to do when I saw her in Paris. ‘She was so busy,’ she said, and then she was expecting her brother from India, and she wished I would waive all ceremony and come and see her some day. She gave me her address, and as her card-case was one of those Florentine mosaic things which open in the center like a book, she dropped several cards upon the floor. I helped her pick them up, and supposed we had them all, but after she was gone, I found, directly under my feet, the picture of a man, who could not have been her brother, for he is sick, and as it was taken in Calcutta, it must have been Mr. Gordon. I shall take it back to her, and am glad of an excuse to call, for, you see, George laughs at my admiration for Miss Elliston, and says it is all on one side, that she does not care two straws for me, or she could find time to come and see me, and all that nonsense, which I don’t believe; men are so suspicious.”

“I’d like to see the photograph,” I said, thinking of Tom, and the utter impossibility that he could be Miss Elliston’s friend, or that she could think him splendid-looking.

Tall, raw-boned, thin-faced, with sandy hair, brownish-gray eyes, and a few frecks on his nose—that was Tom, as I remembered him; while the picture Mrs. Trevyllan brought me was of a broad-shouldered, broad-chested, dark-haired man, with heavy, curling beard, and piercing, gray eyes, which yet had a most kindly, honest expression as they looked into mine. _No_, Miss Elliston’s Mr. Gordon was _not_ Tom, and I experienced a feeling of relief as I returned the photograph to Mrs. Trevyllan.

Looking back upon that time, I know that in my inmost heart there was no thought or wish that Tom could ever be more to me than a friend and brother, but I did want him in that capacity, I was so alone in the world; and though I did not know Miss Elliston personally, I was sure she would separate me entirely from Tom, for there could be no sympathy between a proud, fashionable woman like Miss Lucy Elliston, and a poor music-teacher like myself.

The next day Mrs. Trevyllan made her call, and returned quite disappointed, and, as I fancied, a little disgusted. Miss Elliston was very sorry, but too much occupied with a dressmaker to see any one, so Mrs. Trevyllan had left her card and the photograph, and retraced her steps with a feeling that she had taken the trouble for nothing, unless she took into consideration the fact that she had at least seen the parlors of Miss Elliston’s home. Beautiful beyond anything I had ever seen they must have been, if her description of them was to be trusted, and I sighed a little as I listened to her glowing account of the carpets, and curtains, and pictures, and rare works of art, and then glanced at my own humble surroundings, and thought how poor I was. Only one pound ten was left in my purse, and there was the doctor’s bill and the two weeks’ rent, to say nothing of a new pair of boots which I must have, for the old pair leaked, and was past being made respectable by any amount of French dressing. Yes, I was very poor; too poor, in fact, to remain idle much longer, and as soon as I was able, I started out in quest of pupils in the place of those I had lost.

Remembering the note of Lady Fairfax, I resolved to seek her first, hoping that she had not engaged another teacher for her little girl, notwithstanding the imperative “Come at once, if you care for another scholar.”

How well I remember that November day, when, with a leaden sky overhead, muddy sidewalks under foot, and a feeling of snow or rain in the air, I started, in my suit of last year’s gray, which nothing could make new or stylish, but which I did try to freshen a little with clean linen collar and cuffs, and a bright blue necktie in place of the inevitable white one so common then in England. I hunted up, also, an old blue feather which I twisted among the loops of ribbon on my hat, and felt a little flutter of satisfaction when one of the Misses Keith told me how pretty I looked, and how becoming blue was to me. It used to be, when I lived in the roomy old house in Middlesex, and Tom said my eyes were like great robin’s eggs; but that was years and years ago, and I felt so old and changed as I turned into High street, and went down the stairs to the station, and took my seat in a third-class carriage of the under-ground railway. I always traveled third-class in London, but so did hundreds of others far richer than myself, and I did not mind that, or think myself inferior to the people around me, but when at last I found myself ringing the bell at Lady Fairfax’s handsome house, and met the cool stare of the powdered footman, who opened the door to me, and looked as if he wondered at my presumption in ringing there, I felt all my misgivings return, and was painfully conscious of the faded gray dress, the old feather, and the leaky boots, which were wet even with the short distance it had been necessary for me to walk, and which began to smoke as I involuntarily drew near and held them to the warm coal fire in the grate in the reception-room where I was to wait for Lady Fairfax.

She was at home, the tall footman said, and engaged with a lady, but wished me to wait, and I fancied there was a shade of deference in his demeanor toward me after he had taken my card to his mistress and received her message for me. How pleasant it was in that pretty room, with the flowers in the bow window, the soft, rich carpet, the comfortable chairs, the bright fire, which felt so grateful to me after the raw November wind outside. And for a time I enjoyed it all, and listened to the murmur of voices in the parlor across the hall, where Lady Fairfax was entertaining her visitor. Both were well-bred voices, I thought, and one seemed stronger than the other, as if its owner were a stronger, more self-reliant woman than her companion, and I felt intuitively that I would trust her before the other. Which was Lady Fairfax, and who was her visitor, I wondered, just as a rustling silk trailed down the stairs, and an elderly lady entered the parlor opposite. I heard her address some one as Miss Elliston, and the lower, softer voice responded. Then the stronger voice said: “Oh, Lucy, by the way, when have you heard from your brother, and will he soon be home?”

Instantly then I knew that Lucy Elliston was Lady Fairfax’s guest, and I was hoping I might have a glimpse of her as she passed the door on her way out, when a smart waiting-maid entered the room hurriedly, and apparently spoke a few words to Lady Fairfax, who exclaimed:

“Why, Lucy dear, Christine tells me that your mamma has sent word for you to come home immediately. Your brother has just arrived.”

“Good gracious!” I heard Miss Elliston say, and wondered a little at the slang from which I supposed her class was free. “Charlie come! Was he alone, Christine? Was no one with him?”

There was a moving of chairs, a shuffling of feet and in the confusion I lost Christine’s reply, but heard distinctly Mr. Gordon’s name uttered by some one. Then the three ladies moved into the hall, and through the half-open door I saw a tall young lady in a maroon velvet street suit, with a long white plume on her hat, and very large black eyes, which shone like diamonds through the lace vail drawn tightly over her face. That was Miss Elliston; and the _very_ tall and rather stout woman in heavy black silk, with lavender trimmings, was Lady Fairfax, who pushed the door of the reception-room wide open, and with a firm, decided step crossed to the mantel in front of me, and eying me closely said:

“You are Miss Burton, I believe?”

“Yes,” I replied, and she continued: “Miss Norah Burton, who once lived at the Oaks in Middlesex?”

“Yes,” I said again, wondering a little at the question, and how she had ever heard of the Oaks.

She was regarding me very intently, I knew, taking me in from the crumpled blue feather on my hat to the shockingly shabby boots still smoking on the fender. These I involuntarily withdrew, thinking to hide them under my gray dress. She saw the movement, guessed the intention, and said kindly:

“Dry your boots, child. I see they are very wet Did you walk all the distance from Kensington here?”

“Oh, no,” I answered; “only to and from the station, but the streets are very nasty to-day;” and then I looked at her more closely than I had done before.

She was very tall, rather stout, and might have been anywhere from thirty-five to forty; certainly not younger. She had fine eyes, a good complexion, and very large hands, which, nevertheless, were shapely, soft and white, and loaded with diamonds. One splendid solitaire attracted my attention particularly from its peculiar brilliancy, and the nervous manner with which she kept touching it as she talked to me. She saw I was inspecting her, and allowed me time in which to do it; then she began abruptly, and in a tone slightly fault-finding:

“You received my note, of course, or you would not be here, It was written a month ago, and as I heard nothing from you I naturally supposed you did not care for, or need, another pupil, so I have obtained a governess for Maude.”

There was a choking sob in my throat which I forced down as I replied:

“Oh, I am so sorry, for I do need scholars so much, oh, so much.”

“Why didn’t you come, then?” she asked; and I told her how her letter had been two weeks at my lodgings before my return from the continent, and of the sickness which had followed my return.

“And you live there all alone. Have you no friends, no relations anywhere?” she asked.

“None since father and Aunt Esther died.” I said. “I have nobody but Cousin Tom, who is in India, and who never writes to me now. I think he has forgotten me. Yes, I am quite alone.”

“I wonder you have never married in all these years,” was the next remark, and looking up at her I saw something in her face which went over me like a flash of revelation, and my voice shook a little as I repeated her last words, “Never married!” while my thoughts went back to Archie and the summer days when I waited for him, and he did not come, and that later time when Lady Darinda wrote me he was dead.

Was this Lady Darinda? My eyes asked the question, and she answered me: “Perhaps my manner seems strange to you, Miss Burton; let me explain. I was wishing for a new teacher for my little Maude, one who was gentle and patient to children. A friend of mine, Mrs. Barrett, whose daughter you have taught, told me of you. The name attracted me, for I once knew of a Miss Norah Burton. I made inquiries, and learned that Jennie Barrett’s teacher and Miss Norah Burton of the Oaks, Middlesex, were one and the same. I wanted to see you, and so I wrote the note.”

She spoke rapidly, and kept working at the solitaire, without once looking at me, till I said: “You are Lady Darinda Cleaver?”

Then her large blue eyes looked straight at me and she replied:

“I was Lady Darinda Cleaver, cousin to Archibald Browning, whom you were engaged to marry. If you had married him you would have been Lady Cleaver now of Briarton Lodge, for both my brothers are dead, and Archie was next in succession.”

“Lady Cleaver of Briarton Lodge;” I whispered the words with a gasp, and for a moment tried to realize what was involved in being Lady Cleaver of Briarton Lodge.

Not a third floor back room, sure, with shabby boots and mended gloves, and faded dress of gray, but luxury and elegance, and troops of servants and friends, and equality with such people as Lady Fairfax, who, I knew, was trying to imagine how the crumpled, forlorn little woman, with the shabby boots and feather, would have looked as Lady Cleaver of Briarton Lodge. Tom had once taunted me with the possibility of my being Lady Cleaver, and with a thought of him the great bitter throb of regret for what might have been passed away, and I was glad in my heart that I was not the mistress of Briarton Lodge; so, when at last Lady Fairfax said to me, “Are you not sorry?” I looked at her steadily and answered, “Yes, very sorry that Archie is dead, but not sorry that I am not his wife. Years have shown me that we were not suited to each other. We should not have been happy together, and then——” I hesitated a moment, while a feeling of pique, or malice, or jealousy, or whatever one chooses to call a desire to give another a little sting, kept growing within me, until at last I added, “and then—Archie’s first choice was for you; he loved you best; offered himself to you first, you know. You wrote me so in the letter.”

She turned the solitaire on her finger entirely round, and her cheek flushed as she smiled faintly, and replied:

“Offered himself to me first? Yes, and was very fond of me, I think, but whether he loved me best is doubtful. Poor Archie, he did not want to die, and at the last, after he had ceased to answer our questions, he whispered to himself: ‘Poor little girl; she will be so sorry. Be kind to her.’ That was you, I think.”

There was a great lump now in my throat, and a faintness came over me which must have shown itself in my face, for Lady Darinda exclaimed:

“How pale you look, Miss Burton, and how tired. I am sure you will be better to take something,” and touching the bell she bade the servant who appeared bring some biscuits and a glass of wine. I was not hungry, but I reflected that the lunch would save the expense of supper at home, and I took thankfully the biscuits, and sandwiches and wine, which were served from solid silver and the most delicate of Sevres. To such straits of calculation had I come: I, who had just missed of being Lady Cleaver, of Briarton Lodge. I pitied myself even while I ate the sandwiches, with Lady Fairfax looking on and fathoming all my poverty, as I believed. Perhaps I did her injustice, for I think she really meant to be kind, and when I had finished my lunch, she said:

“Archie’s mother, Aunt Eleanor, is here with me now—lives with me entirely. Would you like to see her?” and before I could reply, she stepped across the hall into the drawing-room, where I heard a few low-spoken words; then another step beside that of Lady Darinda, and Archie’s mother, Mrs. Browning, was at my side, and holding my hand in hers.

Time and sorrow had changed her greatly, or else the silvery puffs of hair which shaded her face softened the cold, haughty expression I remembered so well, and made it very pleasing and kind.

“Child,” she said, “it is many years since we met, and I am sorry to hear so sad a story of you. You are all alone in the world, Darinda tells me.”

She had seated herself beside me, still holding my hand, and at the sound of her voice I broke down entirely. All the loneliness, and dreariness and poverty of my life swept over me like a billow of the sea, and forgetting the difference in our stations, I laid my head in her lap and cried bitterly. I think she must have cried, too, a very little, and that for a few moments she lost sight of the poor music teacher in crumpled feather and shabby boots, and saw in me only the girl who had loved her boy, and whom the boy was to have married, if death had not interfered. She was very kind to me, and made me tell her all the sad story of my life since father died, and questioned me of Tom, and then, turning to her niece, who had retired to the window, said:

“Darinda, you did not positively engage Mademoiselle Couchet to read to me?”

Her tone implied that she wished her niece to say no, which she accordingly did, while Mrs. Browning continued:

“Then, I think I shall ask Miss Burton if she can come to me for two hours five days in the week, and read to me either in English or French, as I may choose at the time. I will give her a pound a week for the winter. Will you come for that?” and she turned now to me. “Come between eleven and one, so as to lunch with me in my room.”

I had hidden nothing of my needs from her, and I felt sure that she included the lunch for a purpose, and my heart swelled with a gratitude so great that it was positive pain, and kept me from accepting the generous offer for a few moments. I had indeed found friends where I least expected them, and when a little later I arose to go, my heart was lighter than it had been since I bade good-by to one favorite pupil in Paris. I was to have a pound a week, with lunch, and what was better yet, Archie’s friends were mine at last. I was sure of that, and was not foolish enough to question their motives or to suspect—what was perhaps the truth—that inasmuch as I was in no way connected with them, and they were not at all responsible for my appearance, they could afford to be kind and lend me a helping hand; and then, I might have been the lady of Briarton Lodge, and lived in as grand a house as that of Lady Fairfax or Miss Lucy Elliston. I passed the latter on my way to the station, knowing it by the number which Mrs. Trevyllan had told me, and which I found was the same which Tom had sent me long ago.

The short November day was drawing to a close, and already the gas was lighted in the parlors of No. —, and in the dining-room, where the butler was arranging the dinner-table. He had not yet closed the shutters, and I could see the silver, and damask, and flowers, and wondered if they were expecting company besides the son just returned, or were their table surroundings always as elegant and grand. Then I remembered Mr. Gordon, and said: “He is to be there too,” just as the figure of a young lady passed before the window of the parlor. It was Miss Elliston, in blue silk evening dress, with white roses in her hair and a soft fall of lace at her throat. She was dressed for dinner, and I stood watching her a moment as she walked up and down for two or three times, restlessly as it seemed, and then came to the window and looked out upon the street. Did she see me, I wonder?—the forlorn little woman who hurried away in the fast-gathering darkness. If she did she thought it some maid or shop-girl, no doubt, and continued her watch, while I sped on my way to the station and was soon mounting the stairs which led up and out to High street, Kensington.

It was not far to No. — Abingdon road, but a heavy mist was falling, and I was wet, and bedraggled, and cold when at last I reached the house, and finding the door unfastened, walked in without ringing, and hurried directly to my room. From the basement below one of the Misses Keith called to me softly, and thinking it was some inquiry about my supper which she wished to make, I answered back:

“I have had something to eat, and do not wish anything more.”

Then I ran on up the next flight of stairs, at the head of which was the door of my room. It was partly open, and a flood of light and warmth streamed out into the hall, causing me to stand perfectly still for a moment, while my eyes took in the view presented to them. Such a fire as was roaring in the grate had never been seen there since I had been mistress of the apartment, while in the middle of the floor the table was spread as for a gala dinner, with celery and jelly, and even the coffee-urn which I never had used. What did it mean? Why had the Misses Keith taken this liberty with me, and plunged me into such extravagance, when they knew the low state of my finances? I think I felt a very little indignant at the good, kind old souls, as I pushed the door wide open and advanced into the room, starting back and stopping suddenly, at sight of a man—a big, broad-shouldered, tall man—muffled in a heavy coat, and sitting with his back to me, his feet resting on a chair, and his hands clasped behind his head, as if he were intently thinking. Who was he that dared thus intrude? I thought, and my voice had a sharp ring in it, as I said:

“Sir, what are you doing here? You have made a mistake. This is my room.”

He started then, and sprang up so quickly as to upset the chair on which his feet had rested, and which he did not stop to pick up, as he came rapidly toward me. What a giant of a fellow he was, in that shaggy coat, with all that brown, curling beard! and how my heart beat as he caught me in his strong arms, and, kissing me on both cheeks, said:

“I have made no mistake, Norah, and I am here to see you. Don’t you remember spindle-shanks?”

Then I knew who it was, and, with a glad cry, exclaimed:

“Oh, Tom! Tom! I am so glad. Why didn’t you come before, when I wanted you so much?”

I had struggled to my feet, but did not try to release myself from the arm which held me so fast. In my excitement and surprise I forgot the years since we had met, forgot that he was a full-grown man, and no longer the “spindle-shanks,” as I used sometimes to call him—forgot everything but the fact that he had come back to me again, and that I was no longer alone and friendless in the world. Tom was there with me, a tower of strength, and I did not hesitate to lean upon my tower at once, and when he said, as only Tom could say, in a half-pitiful, half-laughing tone, “Have it out, Norah. Put your head down here, and cry,” I laid my head on the big overcoat, and “cried it out.”

I think he must have cried, too, for, as soon as his hands were at liberty, he made vigorous use of his pocket-handkerchief, and I noticed a redness about his eyes, when at last I ventured to look him fully in the face. How changed he was from the long, lank, thin-faced, sandy-haired Tom of old! Broad-shouldered, broad-chested, brown-faced brown-haired, and brown-bearded, there was scarcely a vestige left of the boy I used to know, except the bright smile, the white, even teeth, and the eyes, which were so kind and honest in their expression, and which, in their turn, looked so searchingly at me. I had divested myself of my hat and sacque by this time, and came back to the fire, when, turning the gas-jets to their full height, Tom made me stand directly under the chandelier, while he scanned me so closely that I felt the hot blood mounting to my hair, and knew my cheeks were scarlet.

“How changed and old he must think me,” I said to myself, just as he asked:

“I say, Mousey, how have you managed to do it?”

“Do what?” I asked, and he continued:

“Managed to keep so young, and fair, and pretty, or rather, to grow so pretty, for you are ten times handsomer than you were that day you walked down the lane with me, twelve years ago, and I said good-by with such a lump in my throat.”

“Oh, Tom, how can you——” I began, when he stopped me short and continued:

“Hear me first, and then put in as many disclaimers as you choose. I want to tell you at once all it concerns you now to know of my life in India. Those first years I was there I fell in with bad associates, and came near going to the dogs, as you know, and nothing saved me from it, I am sure, but the knowing that a certain little English girl was praying for me every day, and still keeping faith in me, as she wrote me in her letters. I could not forget the little girl, Norah, and the memory of her and her pathetic, ‘You will reform, Tom, for the sake of the dear old times, if for nothing else,’ brought me back when my feet were slipping over the brink of ruin, and made a man of me once more. I do not know why Mr. Rand trusted me and kept me through everything, as he did, unless it was for certain business qualities which I possessed, and because I did my work well and faithfully. When your father died you know I offered to come home, but you bade me not, and said you did not need me; and so I staid, for money was beginning to pour in upon me, and I grew richer and richer, while you—oh, Norah, I never dreamed to what you were reduced, or nothing would have kept me away so long. I always thought of you as comfortable and happy, in pleasant lodgings, with a competence from your father. I did not know of music scholars and daily toil to earn your bread. Why didn’t you tell me, Norah? Surely I had a right to know—I, your brother Tom!”

He did not wait for me to answer, but went on:

“Six months ago Mr. Rand, my old employer and then partner, died, and for some good or favor he fancied I had done him, he left me £50,000, which, with what I already had, made me a rich man, and then I began to think of home and the little cousin who, I said, must be a dried-up old maid by this time.”

At this I winced and tried to draw back from Tom, but he held me fast, while his rare smile broke all over his face as he went on:

“I thought I’d like to know just how you did look, and so wrote for your photograph, which, when it came, astonished me, it was so young and pretty and girlish; not in the least old maidish, as I feared it might be——”

“Tom, Tom—are you crazy?” I cried, wrenching my hands from his. “I’m not pretty; I’m not girlish; I’m not young; and I am an old maid of thirty-two.”

“Yes, yes, very true. I know your age to a minute, for didn’t we use to compare notes on that point when you brought up your seniority of ten months as a reason why you should domineer over and give me fits. I knew you were thirty-two, but you’d pass for twenty-five. Why, I’m ten years older than you now, with my bushy head, and tawny face, and brawny chest. Look at the difference, will you?” And leading me to the mirror he showed me the picture it reflected—picture of a tall, broad-shouldered, brown-faced, brown-haired man, who might have been thirty-five, and by his side, not quite reaching his shoulder, the petite figure of a woman whose forehead and lips were very pale, whose cheeks were very red, whose eyes were bright with excitement, and whose wavy hair was not unbecoming even if it was all tumbled and tossed, and falling about her face and neck.

That was Tom and I, and when, with his mischievous smile shining on me from the glass he asked: “Well Mousey, what do you think of us?” I answered with a dash of my old sauciness: “I think you look like a great shaggy bear, and I like a little cub.”

He laughed aloud at that and said: “You are very complimentary, but I’ll forgive you for once, and go on with my story, which was interrupted at the point where I received the photograph, which astonished me so much that I determined to come home and see if it was correct. And, as you know, I came, and wishing to surprise you gave no warning of my coming, but hunted up your lodgings, and felt utterly confounded when I was ushered into this little back third floor room, and was told you had occupied it for years, and not only that, but that you gave music lessons for a living, and had gone out to hunt up scholars. I don’t think I quite swore, but I did tear round a little, and bade the woman make up a roaring fire against your return, and told her I was going to dine with you. You ought to have seen her twist her apron, and heard her stammer and hesitate as she told me ‘Miss Burton didn’t mostly have dinners nowadays;’ meaning, of course, that you couldn’t afford it. I believe I did say d——, with a dash, under my breath, but I gave her a sovereign, and told her to get up the best dinner possible for the time, for I was hungry as forty bears. She courtesied almost to the floor and departed, but upon my soul I believe they think me a burglar or something dreadful, for one or the other of them has been on this floor watching me slyly to see that I was not rummaging your things.”

While he talked I was trying to dry my wet boots which, like Lady Darinda, he spied at last and exclaimed, “Why, child, how wet your boots are. Why do you not change them? You will surely take cold. Go now and do it.”

I did not tell him they were all I had, but he must have guessed it from my manner, and looking sharply at me as if he would wring the truth from me, he said: “Norah, are these your only boots?”

“Yes, Tom, they are,” and my lip quivered a little, while he stalked up and down the room, knocking over a chair with his big overcoat, and nearly upsetting a stand of plants. I think I felt my poverty more at that moment than I had ever done before, but there was nothing I could say, and fortunately for us both Miss Keith just then appeared, saying dinner was ready, and asking if she should send up the soup. What a dinner it was, and Tom did ample justice to it, until suddenly, remembering himself, he said:

“By the way, I must be moderate here, for I have another dinner to eat to-night: one, too, where the fatted calf has been killed.”

Up to this point I had not once thought of Miss Elliston since I found Tom sitting in my room, but now I remembered the handsome dinner table seen through the windows of No. — Grosvenor Square, and felt sure it was to that table Tom had been bidden as a guest; but I would not ask him, and he continued:

“My fellow-traveler from India was an invalid—that Lieut. Elliston of whom I wrote you once. I nursed him through a contagious disease when every one else had deserted him, and he seems to think he owes his life to me, and sticks to me like a burr; while his family, on the strength of that and the little Gordon blood there is in my veins, make much of me, and insist that I shall dine with them to-night; so I must leave you soon, but shall return to-morrow.”

I made no answer, but busied myself with preparing his coffee, and after a moment he went on:

“By the way, Norah, what do you think of Miss Elliston? She wrote you were at the same hotel in Paris.”

“At the same hotel with me? Miss Elliston at the Grand? When?” I asked, in much surprise; and he replied:

“Last September, when you were there with friends. Did you not see her?”

“No,” I answered, “I did not see her, or if I did, I did not know it; and she is much too proud to make herself known to me, a poor music teacher.”

This last I said bitterly, but Tom made no reply, and hardly knowing what I was saying, I added:

“Then you are the Mr. Gordon she talks so much about?”

“Miss Elliston talk about me! How do you know that?” Tom asked, with an increase of color in his face.

Very foolishly I told him how I knew, and of the photograph which must be his, though it was not quite like him now.

“Yes, it was taken three years ago, and we exchanged. I remember it now—and she has it yet,” he said, abruptly; then looking steadily at me across the table, he continued: “Norah, I have not told you all the reasons which brought me home. I am thinking of getting married and settling down in England among the daisies and violets.”

“Yes, Tom,” I said, with a great throb of pain in my heart, for I knew his marriage with Miss Elliston would separate him from me further than his absence in India had done.

“Are you not glad?” he added, and there was a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, and a lurking smile at the corners of his mouth.

Then I told a fib, and said I was glad, for I could some time hope to see him. My life would not be so lonely.

He had risen by this time, and was putting on his overcoat, which made him so big and bearish.

“Good-by, Mousey, till to-morrow. Take off those boots and dry your feet the instant I am gone. I cannot have you sick now. _Au revoir._”

He passed his warm hands caressingly over my hair and across my cheek, and then he was gone, and I sat down alone to think it all over, and wonder if it really was Tom who had been there, or if it was a dream from which I should awaken. Naturally too, I followed him in imagination to the dinner, and saw Miss Lucy in her blue silk with white roses in her hair, and to my very finger tips I felt how Tom must be impressed with the difference between her high-bred grace and ease of manner, and the little shrinking woman in faded gray, with worn out, leaky boots. I did not take them off, but held them to the fire and watched the steam as it came from the soles, and rather enjoyed my poverty and loneliness, and thought hard things against Miss Elliston, who had known I was at the hotel and had never spoken to me.

I must have fallen asleep while I thought, and the fire was out, and the clock striking twelve when I awoke, chilled in every limb, with a dull, heavy pain in the back of my head, and a soreness in my throat. I remember going to the window and looking out into the foggy night, and wondering if the grand dinner was over, and how soon Tom would come again. Then I crept shivering to bed, and when I woke the Misses Keith were all in my room, together with Mrs. Trevyllan, and I heard them say:

“Twelve pairs of boots for her to try, with orders to keep them all if they fit. He is very generous.”

Then I knew that somebody had sent me a box of beautiful French gaiters, and it made me so tired to think of wearing them all at once, as I thought I must, that I gave a weary sigh, which brought the ladies instantly to my side with anxious inquiries as to how I felt, and where I was the sickest.

“Not sick at all,” I said, “only tired, and cold, and sleepy. Please go away with the dinners, and boots, and Toms, and leave me alone. I want to sleep it out.”

“Poor girl, she’s out of her head,” I heard one of them say, and then I slept again, how long I do not know, but when I woke a curious thing seemed to have happened, which yet did not surprise me in the least.

I, Norah Burton, was hidden away in the deep window seat, where, myself unseen, I could command a view of the bed, which had been brought from the little recess, and now occupied the center of my room. On that bed, with a face as white as the pillows, save where the fever spot burned on either cheek, somebody was lying—somebody who looked like me, and yet was not I, though they called her Norah, and talked in whispers about the long strain upon her nerves, being so much alone; the long walk in the November mist and fog before she was able, and the repeated wetting of her feet from the want of strong, new shoes. How queerly it all sounded; how curiously I watched the girl, who looked so young, lying there so still, with her hands folded always the same way, just over her breast, and her face turned a little toward me.

If she had ever been restless, and from what they said I judged she must have been, it was over now, and she lay like one dead, never moving so much as an eyelid, or paying the slightest heed to what was passing around her. The Misses Keith and Mrs. Trevyllan were never all together in the chamber now, though each came frequently, and Mrs. Trevyllan always cried out and asked, “Do you think she is any better? Will she live?” of the tall man who sat and watched the sick girl just as closely as I did, and who would sometimes answer, “God knows,” and again shake his head mournfully, as if there was no hope.

How kind, and tender, and gentle he was—gentle, and tender, and kind as any woman—and I found myself wishing the girl could know he was there, and know how, when he was all alone, he kissed the pale little fingers, and smoothed the ruffled hair, and called so soft and low, “Norah, Norah! don’t you hear me? Don’t you know old Tom?”

She did not hear; she did not know; and the pale fingers never stirred to the kiss he gave them, and only the breath from the parted lips told there still was life. How sorry I felt for them both, but sorriest I think, for the man, who seldom left the room, and sat always where he could see the white face on the pillow.

“Dear little face! dear little girl! I cannot let her die. Please, God, spare her to me!” I heard him say once. Then there certainly was a fluttering of the eyelids—an effort like struggling back to life; and I think the girl in the bed wanted to tell the man in the chair that she heard him, and appreciated all his watchful care.

But nature was too weak to rally, and after that one sign the sick girl lay quiet and motionless as ever, and only the ticking of the clock broke the deep silence of the room. I wondered did that ticking disturb her. It would have worried me, and I should have been forever repeating the monotonous one-two, one-two, which the pendulum seemed to be saying. Did my thought communicate itself to her the girl on my pillow, with a face like my face, and which yet was not mine? Perhaps, for she did at last move uneasily, and the pale lips whispered: “One-two, one-two! it keeps going on forever and ever, and makes me so tired. Stop it, Tom.”

He knew what she meant, and the clock which had not run down in years was silenced at once, while Tom’s face grew bright and hopeful, for she had spoken, and called him by his name.

Outside there was the sound of carriage wheels stopping before the door—a pull at the bell, a hurried conversation in the hall below, Miss Keith’s voice sounding flurried and confused, the other voice self-assured, surprised, and commanding; and then footsteps came up the stairs, and Archie’s mother, Mrs. Browning, was standing on the threshold, red, tired, panting, and taking in rapidly every portion of the room, from the cheap hearthrug and carpet to the tall man by the bedside, and the pallid face on the pillows. At sight of that her countenance changed sensibly, and she exclaimed:

“I did not suppose it so bad as this.”

Then Tom, who had arisen from his seat, spoke a little sternly, for he was angry at the intrusion:

“Madam, don’t you know Miss Burton is very sick and cannot see strangers?”

“Yes, I know;” and Archie’s mother pressed close to the girl on the pillow, trailing her India shawl on the floor directly across Tom’s feet. “She was engaged to read to me every day for two hours, and I waited for her to come or send some message, till at last I concluded to drive round and see what had become of her. You are her cousin, I believe? I am Mrs. Browning.”

She said the last name as if between Mrs. Browning and the cousin there was a vast difference, but if Tom recognized it, he did not seem to notice it; he merely said:

“Yes, I am her cousin, and you were to have been her mother-in-law?”

“Yes, Archie was my son. If he had lived he would have been heir of Briarton Lodge; both the young lords are dead.”

“Oh, yes, and my cousin would have been Lady Cleaver of Briarton Lodge,” Tom answered, and it seemed to me that he thought just as I did, namely, that the sick girl was of more importance to Mrs. Browning because of what she _might have been_.

The shadow of the honor she had missed reached even to this humble room, and made Mrs. Browning more gracious, more pitiful, more anxious than she might otherwise have been. And yet it was wholly the fault of her birth and education that she cared so much for these things. At heart she was a thoroughly good woman, and there was genuine kindness in her inquiries of Tom as to what was needed most, and in her deportment toward the sick girl, whom she tried to rouse, calling her by name, and saying to her:

“I am Archie’s mother; you remember Archie, who died?”

There was a little sob in the mother’s voice, but the girl gave no sign; only Tom looked gloomy, and black, and intensely relieved when the India shawl was trailed down the stairs, and the Browning carriage drove away. Next day it stopped again before the house, and this time it held an added weight of dignity in the person of Lady Darinda Fairfax, whose heavy silk rustled up the stairs, and whose large white hands were constantly rubbing each other as she talked to Tom, in whom she had recognized the Mr. Gordon seen once at Miss Elliston’s, where she was calling at the same time with himself.

“Really, Mr. Gordon, this _is_ a surprise. I had no idea, I am sure, that Miss Burton was your cousin; really, I am surprised. And she came near being _my_ cousin, too. You must know about Archie?”

“Yes,” and Tom bowed stiffly. “I had the honor of seeing him years ago when he visited my cousin. I went out to India just before he died.”

“Yes, I see; and did not return until a few days since. It must have shocked you very much—the change in her circumstances. Poor girl, we never knew it until she came to us for employment. I am glad for her, that you have come to care for her. She will live with you, of course, if you marry and settle here.”

Lady Darinda, though esteeming herself highly bred, was much given to direct questioning which sometimes seemed impertinent. But Tom did not resent it in this case; he merely replied:

“My cousin will live with me when I am married, and I am happy to say she has no further need to look for employment of any kind. I shall take care of her.”

Lady Darinda was so glad. Nor was it a sham gladness. The intimate friend of Miss Lucy Elliston, she had heard much of “the Mr. Gordon who had saved Charlie’s life, and who was of the Gordon stock, and a thorough gentleman.” She had also felt a kindly interest in the girl who had _almost_ been Lady Cleaver, and that interest was increased when she knew her to be a near connection of Miss Elliston’s Mr. Gordon. The time might come when it would do to speak of her and possibly present her to her friends, and she made many anxious inquiries concerning her, and talked so rapidly and so loud that the head on the pillow moved as if disturbed, and Tom was glad when the lady at last gathered herself up to leave. She was still nervously rubbing her jeweled hands, and Tom’s attention was attracted to a solitaire of great brilliancy, the same I had observed the day I sat in her reception-room, and she stood talking to me and rubbing her hands just as she was rubbing them now. Suddenly, and as if her mind was made up, she drew off the ring, and bending over the sick girl pushed it upon the fourth finger of the left hand, saying to Tom as she did so:

“The ring is hers, and she ought never to have parted with it. I don’t know why she sent it back to us, but she did, just after Archie died, and as his cousin I kept it, but wish her to have it again, and I fancy she is too proud to take it if she knew. I must go, now, but will come again soon, or send to inquire. Shall I see you at Miss Elliston’s to-night at the musicale? Lucy will be greatly disappointed, if you do not come.”

“I shall not leave my cousin while she is so sick,” was Tom’s reply, and with a loud spoken good-by, Lady Darinda left the little room which she had seemed to fill so full with her large, tall person and voluminous skirts.

Scarcely was she gone, when Tom took in his own the pale little hand where the solitaire was sparkling, looked at it a moment, then gently withdrew it; put it in his pocket-book, with a muttered something I could not quite understand. Then the girl on the pillow began to grow restless, and her fever came on, and Tom said there had been too much talking in the room, and no one must be admitted except the Misses Keith and Mrs. Trevyllan, and across the window they hung a heavy curtain to exclude the light, and so to me everything became a blank, and I knew no more of what was passing until one bright December morning, when I awoke suddenly to find myself in the bed where the sick girl had lain.

I was very weak and languid, and very much bewildered as I tried to recall the past, and remember what had happened. It was something like the awakening after Archie died, only, in place of dear old Aunt Esther, here was a tall, brown man looking down upon me, with so much kindness and anxiety in his eyes, that without knowing at all who he was, I tried to put out my hand as I said: “You are very, very good. I’ll tell Tom about it.”

“Norah, Norah. I am Tom. Don’t you know me?” and his great warm hands were laid on mine as he bent over me with his eager questioning. “Don’t you know me, Norah? I am Tom.” I did know him then, and I said:

“Yes, I know you, and I’ve been very sick; it must have been the leaky boots which kept my feet so cold and wet. Where are they, Tom?”

“Burned up, Norah. I did it myself in the kitchen range, and you have in their place twelve pairs of the neatest little gaiters you ever saw, waiting for your feet to be able to wear them. Shall I show them to you now?”

He did not wait for me to answer, but darted into the recess adjoining, and bringing out the boots, tumbled them all upon the bed where I could see them. Twelve pairs of boots, of every style and make! Walking boots, morning boots, calling boots, prunella boots, bronze boots, French calfskin boots, and what was very strange, a dainty pair of white satin boots, which laced so very high, and were so pretty to look at. I think these pleased me more than all the others, though I had no idea as to when or where I could wear them.

A handsome boot was one of my weaknesses, and lo! here were a dozen pairs of them, and I laughed as a child would have done over a box of toys. He let me enjoy them a few moments, and then took them away, telling me I was not to get too tired, and how glad he was that I was better, and able to recognize him. I had been sick three weeks, he said, and he had been with me all the time, except when he went out for a short time each day.

“You have been out of your head,” he said, “and insisted that you were sitting over in the window, and that somebody else was here in bed, and that I was a big bear. What do you think of me, now?”

I looked at him closely, and saw that the heavy overcoat and coarse sea clothes had given place to garments of the most fashionable kind, which fitted him admirably, and gave him quite a _distingue_ air, while his hair and beard were cut and trimmed after the most approved style of Hyde Park and Rotten Row at the height of the season. He was a man to be noticed anywhere, and after inspecting him a moment, I said:

“I think you are very nice, and very handsome, and I am so glad you have come home.”

This was a great deal to say at once in my feeble state, and he saw how tired I was, and bade me not talk any more, and drew the covering about me and tucked it in, and brought me a clean handkerchief, and laid it on my pillow, and did it all as deftly and handily as any woman could have done.

Oh, those first days of getting better, how happy they were, and how delightful it seemed to be made much of, and petted, and waited on as if I were a princess.

Archie’s mother called two or three times, and was very kind to me, and said once, as she was leaving:

“You will hardly come to me now as we had agreed upon.”

“Oh, yes I shall,” I replied. “I must get to work again as soon as I am able.”

Then Tom came forward and said in a quiet, decided way, as if he had a right:

“My cousin will not go out any more. She is under my care now.”

That was so like Tom; and I let him have his way with Mrs. Browning, but was nevertheless just as firm in my determination to care for myself. I had not forgotten what he had said about being married, nor had I any doubt that he meant to marry Miss Elliston, and if so, our lives must necessarily drift very far apart. But it was so nice to have him all to myself just now, and I enjoyed it to the full, and let him wait on me as much as he liked, and took gladly what he brought me, rare flowers and hot-house plants, and books of engravings for me to look at, and books which he read aloud to me while I lay on my pillows, or sat in my great arm-chair and watched him as he read, and wondered at, and rejoiced over, and felt glad and proud of the change in his appearance. I think he was, without exception, the finest-looking man I ever saw, and Mrs. Trevyllan quite agreed with me, always excepting, of course, her George. She was with me a great deal during my convalescence, and one morning, when Tom was out, she came with a radiant face, which I knew portended some good news. Miss Elliston had actually called—that is, she had come to the door in her carriage, sent in her card, and with it an invitation to a large party to be given the next week.

“And are you going?” I asked; and she replied:

“Certainly I am. I think it was real snipping in her not to call herself, but then I can excuse something on the score of old acquaintance, and I must wear that lovely silk before it gets quite out of fashion. She wrote me a little note, saying it was to be a grand affair—quite a crash. I can hardly wait to see it.”

Just then Tom came in, and the conversation ceased, though I was tempted to tell him I knew of the party. He was going, of course, and I felt a little hurt that he did not speak to me about it; He might have done as much as that, I thought, but he did not until the very day, when he said to me, late in the afternoon:

“I have an engagement for to-night, Mousey. Miss Elliston gives a large party, and as she has deferred it until I could be present, I think I ought to go.”

“Yes, certainly, by all means,” I said; and then, when he was gone, I was silly enough to cry, and to think hard things of Miss Elliston, who was so rich and happy in everything.

When Mrs. Trevyllan was dressed she came to let me look at her, and I thought I had never seen anything as lovely as she was, in pink silk, and lace, and pearls, with her sunny blue eyes and golden hair.

“You will be the belle of the party,” I said; but she shook her head, laughingly, and replied:

“I’ll tell you to-morrow.”

Alas! when the morrow came, the little lady’s plumes were drooping, and her spirits a good deal ruffled. Tom was late in his visit that morning, and so she had ample time to tell me all about it.

“Such a jam!” she said; “and it had taken half an hour for their carriage to get up to the house, then another half hour to push her way to the dressing-room and down again to the drawing-room, where Miss Elliston just touched her hand and said good-evening; and then she was shoved on to a corner, where she and George stood, entirely surrounded by strangers, and feeling more alone than if they had been in the desert. When the dancing commenced, it was better, for the parlors thinned out, and she was able to walk and look about a little; but nobody spoke to her or noticed her in any way, and she was not introduced to a single individual, until the lion of the evening, the man who received so much attention from every body, accidentally stumbled upon her, and was so kind and good. And who do you suppose it was? I was never more astonished in my life. And they say he is to marry Miss Elliston. It is quite a settled thing, I heard. Your cousin, Mr. Gordon; and that was his photograph, though not very natural; at least, I did not recognize him from it. Perhaps, because I never thought of such a thing.”

“The picture was taken three or four years ago,” I said; “and Tom says it was never a good one.”

“Then you did know all the time that he was Miss Elliston’s Mr. Gordon, and you never told me?” Mrs. Trevyllan cried, in a slightly aggrieved tone of voice.

“I knew he was her brother’s friend,” I said, “but not till after he came home. Is she so very handsome?”

“Why, yes, I think she is, or at least she has a style and high-bred air better than mere beauty. Last night she was all in white, with blush roses on her dress, and in her hair, and when she walked or danced with Mr. Gordon, everybody remarked what a splendid couple they were, she so tall and graceful, and he so big and prince-like. Did you know they were engaged?”

She put the question direct, and I knew my cheeks were scarlet, as I replied:

“I supposed—yes. I—Tom told me he came home to be married; that’s all I know.”

I was taking my breakfast, and my hand shook so that I spilled my chocolate over the clean napkin and dropped my egg-spoon into my lap.

There was an interval of silence, and then the impulsive little lady burst out:

“I say, Miss Burton, it’s too bad. Here I’d been building a castle for you, and behold, Lucy Elliston is to be its mistress. I don’t like her as well as I did, I’m free to say, for I do not think she treated me as she should at the party; never introducing me to a person, or even speaking to me till just as I was leaving, when she was so glad I came, and hoped I had not found it very dull among so many strangers; and then, Miss Burton—I despise a talebearer—but I will tell you what I heard. I was standing by myself in a little window alcove, and Lucy came along with a tall, large woman, whom I think she called Lady Fairfax. They did not see me, and after the conversation commenced I dared not show myself, so I kept still and heard them talk of you.”

“Of me?” I exclaimed; and she continued:

“Of you; yes.” Lady Fairfax said:

“‘What a splendid fellow he is, and how he wins the people. I almost envy you, Lucy, if you do marry him. By the way, do you know his cousin, Miss Burton? Was she invited to-night?’

“‘No,’ Lucy said. ‘I’ve never called upon her. She teaches music, you know. I saw her in Paris, with one of her pupils; rather pretty, but no style. You never saw her, of course!’

“‘Yes, I have;’ and I fancied Lady Fairfax spoke a little hotly. ‘I know all about her, and she is as nice as she can be, and a lady too. She was to have married Cousin Archie, who died, and if she had she would have been Lady Cleaver, of Briarton Lodge, now. She has been very sick; did you know that?’

“‘Yes, I should think so, for that has kept Mr. Gordon from us so much, and Charlie was so vexed, for he needed amusing himself. I trust she will soon be well. Is she really nice and a lady?’

“‘Yes, every whit a lady; and I advise you to cultivate her at once.’

“From where I sat I could see Miss Elliston distinctly, and saw her give a little shrug which she picked up abroad, and which always irritates me. Lady Fairfax must have understood its meaning, for she went on:

“‘Mr. Gordon is evidently very fond of his cousin, and looks upon her as a sister, and——’

“‘How do you know that? How do you know he is very fond of her?’ Miss Elliston asked, quickly; and I saw in a moment she was jealous of you. And when Lady Fairfax told of her call when you were sick, and of his devotion to you, and added, ‘He will undoubtedly expect her to live with you when you are married,’ she gave another shoulder shrug and said:

“‘_Cela depend._ I have not married him yet, and, if I should, I do not propose marrying his entire family. This girl is not of the Gordon blood.’

“What more they would have said I do not know, for just then some dancers came out to cool themselves, and behind them Mr. Gordon, looking for Lucy, who took his arm with such a sweet smile and air of possession, and I heard her say to him:

“‘Lady Fairfax has been telling me such nice things about your cousin. I wish you would bring her to see me; I am so busy and have so many engagements, I think she might waive ceremony with me.’”

“What did Tom reply?” I asked, and Mrs. Trevyllan said:

“I did not hear his answer; but, mark my words, she’ll make a fool of him, and he will be asking you to call on her. But don’t you do it, and don’t you live with them either.”

“I never shall,” was my answer; and as Tom’s step was heard in the hall just then, Mrs. Trevyllan left me to receive his visit alone.

He looked tired and ennuied, and was absentminded and moody for him, while I, too, was very reticent, and never once mentioned the party until he said:

“I met Mrs. Trevyllan as I came up. She told you about the party last night, I suppose.”

“Yes,” I answered, and he continued:

“What did she say of Miss Elliston? They are old friends, I believe.”

“Yes: they knew each other in Ireland. She said she was very pretty and stylish, and so lovely last night in white, with blush roses——”

“Yes,” Tom replied, evidently wishing to hear something more.

“And she said everybody was talking of you, and what a fine-looking couple you were.”

“Yes,” and this time the yes rang out rather sharply, but brought no response from me.

I had told him all I had to tell him of Miss Elliston, and, after waiting a few moments, he began himself:

“Miss Elliston it a very handsome girl, with fine manners and style. She is considered a great catch, I believe. Would you like to see her—that is, enough to call on her with me when you are able? She asked me to bring you, as her time is so fully occupied. Will you go?”

“No, Tom, I’d rather not. I’d do much to please you, but not that. It is her place to call on me, if she cares to know me.”

I said this faintly, and with tears gathering in my eyes, and a horrid feeling of loneliness gathering in my heart.

I was losing Tom sure, and it made me very sad, and made the old life to which I must return seem harder than before. Perhaps it was this, and perhaps it was that I had no vital force with which to rally, no bank to draw from, as the physician said, which kept me an invalid all that winter, with barely strength to walk about my room, and drive occasionally with Tom, who came to see me nearly every day, and who surrounded me with every possible comfort and luxury, even to the providing me with a maid to wait upon me. I protested against this, knowing how hard it would be to go back to my work after so much petting, and said so once to Tom when he was spending the evening with me.

“Go back to your work again! What do you mean?” he asked, and I said:

“Mean just what I say. Take care of myself as soon as I am able, and—and—you are married, as they say you are going to be.”

Since the morning after the party he had never mentioned Miss Elliston or referred to her in any way, and his silence was beginning to annoy me, and so I added:

“You are, are you not?”

“Are what?” he asked, with a comical gleam in his eye.

“Are going to be married?” I replied, and he continued:

“Yes, I believe I am, provided the lady will have me. Do you think she will?”

“Have you! Of course she will,” I said, quite vehemently, and felt my whole face burn with excitement.

“And if I do marry,” Tom added, “why should that compel you to return to your teaching, I’d like to know? Wouldn’t you still be my care?”

“No,” I answered, emphatically. “I shall just take care of myself as I did before you came from India. It will not be any harder.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” Tom answered, with a laugh, nor was I so sure of it either, and after he was gone I remember that I cried bitterly over the certainty of his marriage and the change it would bring to me.

During the next three or four weeks I did not see Tom quite as often as usual; he was very busy, he told me; occupied, I supposed, with Miss Elliston, whom I saw with him in the gardens where I was taking an airing in a Bath chair one pleasant morning in April. Mrs. Trevyllan was walking by my side, and first called my attention to them coming straight toward us, and so near that to escape by turning into a by-path was impossible. Tom saw me at the same moment, and I fancied there was a look of annoyance on his face as if the meeting were one he would have avoided. But it was too late now. We were very near each other, and wishing to spare him the necessity of recognition, if possible, I pulled my blue hood closely about my face and pretended to be very much interested in a bed of crocuses; but Tom was not inclined to pass me by, and before I quite knew what I was doing, I had been presented to Miss Elliston, and she was looking at me, and I was looking at her, and each was undoubtedly forming an opinion of the other not altogether complimentary. Mine of her was: Fine-looking, stylish, very stylish, but cold as an iceberg, selfish, smooth and deep, and if it be true that in the case of every married couple there is one who loves and one who permits it, Tom will be the one who loves, and she the passive recipient. I should as soon think of receiving a caress from an iceberg as from that calm, quiet, self-possessed woman. Poor Tom, with his warm, loving heart, and demonstrative nature! This was my opinion of Miss Elliston, while hers of me, I fancy, was something as follows: “That little dowdy, faded old maid, Mr. Gordon’s cousin! and does Lady Fairfax think I’ll ever consent to her living with me as a poor relation?”

I thought I read all this in her eyes, which scanned me so curiously, while she tried to be agreeable and said she was glad to see me; that she had been coming to call upon me for a long time, but really her time was not her own, and she wished I would come to see her with Mrs. Trevyllan, “who, naughty girl, owes me a party call,” she added, playfully, and shaking her finger at the “naughty girl,” she made a movement to pass on.

Tom said very little, and I felt he was glad when the interview was over, and I was being trundled along the road further and further from him and his _fiancee_. She was that, I almost knew, and when three weeks later, he told me of a place on Finchley Road, Hampstead, which was for sale, and which he meant to buy, I was sure of it, and asked him when it was to be.

“The wedding, you mean?” and he looked so quizzically at me. “I’d like it as soon as the middle of June. How do you suppose that would suit her?”

I thought he could ascertain that better by asking her rather than me, and I told him so a little pettishly, I am afraid, though he did not seem the least bit ruffled, but held me high in his arms just as he did the night he came from India, and said: “Mousey must manage to get back some color in her cheeks, for I want her to look her best at the wedding.”

Secretly I hoped I’d be sick and unable to go, but I did not say so, and when, a few days later, he came and told me he had bought Rose Park, and wished me to drive out with him and see it, I did not object, but put on my hat and shawl with a feeling as if I were about to visit a grave, instead of the charming spot which Rose Park proved to be. The house stood in an inclosure of two acres, and we went through the grounds first, admiring the beautiful flowers and shrubs, the velvety grass, the statuary gleaming so white through the distant trees, the rustic seats and gravel walks, and pretty little fountain which sent up such tiny jets of water near the front door. How delightful it all was; just a bit of country in the busy city, from which it was shut out by a high stone wall, over which the English ivy was rioting so luxuriantly. And yet in my heart there was an ache as I thought how very, very seldom I should ever go there, and in imagination saw Miss Elliston’s tall, graceful figure, wandering about the shaded walks with Tom, or sitting down to rest in the rose-covered arbor, just as he and I were doing, he asking me innumerable questions about the place, how I liked it, and if I thought his wife would be suited with it.

“Suited!” I cried. “She ought, for I think it a little Paradise. I did not know there was such a pretty place in London, city and country all in one.”

“Well, then, Mousey,” he said, “if you like the grounds so much, let us go inside and see what you think of the house, and what, if any, changes you would suggest.”

The inside of the house took my breath away, it was so handsome, and yet so cozy and home-like, as if made to live and be happy in. There was nothing stiff about it, nothing too grand to be used every day, and yet it was elegant and rich, and I felt like one in a dream as Tom led me through room after room, some with low windows and balconies, others opening into little conservatories, and all so charming that I could not tell which I liked the best.

“Has Miss Elliston been here? Has she seen it?” I asked, and Tom replied: “Not yet. I wished to bring you here first and see if there was any alteration you could suggest.”

“I!” and I looked quickly up at him. “She would not think much of my taste, I fancy. Neither do I think she will care to have a thing changed, it is all so charming, especially her room.”

That was indeed the glory of the house, so large and airy, and commanding a fine view of the town outside the garden walls. To the south was a large bay window, fitted up just like a fairy playhouse, with pictures and flowers, and lace curtains across the arch, and a canary bird caroling a merry song in his handsome cage. To the west a long balcony, with two or three easy-chairs, and at each corner an urn full of bright flowers and drooping vines. Such a nice place to sit and read, or work in the morning, especially as a door from it communicated with the sleeping room, which had the tallest bedstead and bureau I had ever seen, and was pretty enough for the queen herself. Indeed, I doubted whether there was in Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle any rooms as pretty and suggestive of genuine comfort as these, and I said so to Tom as we stood in what he called “my wife’s room,” with the south bay window and the long west balcony.

“Then you really like it, and think you could be happy here?” Tom said, sitting down upon the blue satin couch, and drawing me beside him.

“Happy!” I repeated; “yes, perfectly happy with people whom I loved, and I am sure you’ll be happy, Tom, and I’m so glad for you that you have so beautiful a home.” He was silent a moment, and then he said:

“Norah, you have not selected your room yet. I know which I have designed for you, but I want you to be suited. Can you tell me which you would like?”

Now was the time to make an end of all the talk about my living with him at Rose Park, and I began:

“Tom, why can’t you understand how impossible it is that I should stay here after you are married?”

“Why impossible?” he asked, and I replied:

“Because there is nothing in common between me and Miss Elliston. She is elegant, and grand, and high-born, and I am a little plain old maid of whom she would be ashamed even as a poor relation. She loves you, and you will be happy with her alone. I should only be an element of discord in your household. No, Tom, don’t speak till I’m through. My mind is fully made up. I cannot live with you, and shall resume my old work again and so be independent. But I thank you all the same for your kind offer, and shall be happier in the old life, knowing you are in London, where I can reach you if anything should happen.”

I had made my speech, and when it was ended Tom began in a tone of voice I had never heard from him before, except as I remember dimly the time I was so sick and heard him say:

“Dear little girl, please, God, spare her to me now.”

Sitting in the window, as I fancied I sat then, and watching the man who ministered so tenderly to the sick girl, I had thought there was love in his voice and manner, but when the cobwebs of delirium cleared away the past seemed very vague and misty, and sometimes I doubted if I had seen or heard anything, or if Tom’s lips had touched mine more than once as a brother’s lips never touch those of his sister. Now, however, there could be no mistaking his voice, or the fact that he had wound his arm around my waist and drawn me nearer to him.

“Norah,” he began, “do you remember that summer afternoon years ago when you walked with me down the lane, and said good-by at the stile when the stage stopped to take me up? Yes, you remember it, and how the boy cried, and the wild words he spoke about having meant you for his wife—you, who were ten months his senior, and felt yourself to be his grandmother. Norah, I was in earnest then, and there was such a pain in my heart as I watched you standing on the stile and waving your hand to me, and to myself I said: ‘Please God if I can’t have her, I’ll never have anybody.’ Then the years went by and changes came, and the boy-love seemed to have died out, though I never saw a fair English face in India that I did not contrast it with yours, and say to myself: ‘Norah’s is the best, though possibly not so pretty.’ I was a man among men. I had money and social position, and more than one mother wanted me for her daughter, and I knew it, and, being human, was flattered by it somewhat, but always remembered you and the summer afternoon when we said good-by at the stile in Middlesex. Then Miss Elliston came to India. It was an honor to be noticed by her, and I was thus honored, and as the friend of her favorite brother was often at their rooms and came to know her well. She is very handsome, and though she may be cold and haughty to those whom she considers her inferiors, she is sweet and gracious to her equals, and was the most popular girl in Calcutta. I was much in her society, and liked her better than any girl I knew, and, as was natural, our names came at last to be mentioned together, and I was looked upon as a suitor for her hand; but I never was, Norah—never.”

I started then, but the arm around my waist tightened its hold, and he continued:

“I was not a marrying man, I thought, and whenever I did dream of a home and wife, your face came always before me as it looked that day when you watched me going from you. ‘It is not like that now,’ I said to myself. ‘Norah must have grown old in these dozen years;’ and then I sent for the photograph, which, when it came, astonished me so much by its sweet, pensive beauty and girlish fairness that I changed my mind, and thought I was a marrying man, and that no other face than that of the original could ever satisfy me. So I came home and found you more than I had hoped. I saw at once that you, too, associated me with Miss Elliston, and as a means of winning you I suffered you to be deceived. Miss Elliston is nothing to me—never can be anything to me, even if you now refuse to select your room at Rose Park. Which shall it be, Norah? Will you take the pretty suit, you supposed was intended for another, and will you let me be somewhere in the vicinity, say within call, in case you need me?”

It was a novel way of asking me to be his wife, but it was like Tom, and I understood what it meant, and for a moment sat perfectly still, too much overcome to speak. Then, as Tom pressed me for an answer, and said:

“Come, Norah, I am bound to marry somebody so which shall it be, Miss Elliston or you?” I answered:

“I think it better be I; but oh, Tom, I never dreamed of such a thing,” and then, of course, I cried, and Tom soothed and quieted me in the usual way, and we sat and talked it over, and I found that I must have loved him all my life, and he was certain he had loved me since the first day of his arrival at the old home in Middlesex, when he chased me with an apple-tree worm, which he succeeded in dropping into my neck, and for which I rewarded him with a long scratch on his face.

It was settled that we should be married sometime in June, and that Archie’s mother and Lady Darinda should be invited to the wedding, which otherwise was to be void of guests, with the exception of the Misses Keith and Mrs. Trevyllan. How surprised these last were, and how glad, and how much they made of me as the future Mrs. Gordon, I went and told Lady Fairfax myself, and she insisted upon giving me a wedding, and saying that I should be married from her house in Grosvenor Square. But to that Tom would not listen. A quiet wedding suited him better, with no fuss and worry, and no one to criticise.

Lady Darinda was bitterly disappointed, and was not to be appeased until Tom consented to allow her to give us a party after our return from Switzerland, for we were going there on the bridal trip—going to see the glorious Alps once more, with their ever-changing hues, and the silvery lakes which sparkle in the sunshine like silver jewels on a bed of green. Oh! that lovely June morning, when the air was filled with the perfume of roses and violets, and not a cloud hung over Kensington. My wedding morning, and it comes back to me so freshly now, with the song of the robin in the tree by my window, the dewy sweetness of the air, the deep blue of the sky, the smiles, and tears, and kisses of Mrs. Trevyllan and the Misses Keith, the loud, decided talk of Lady Darinda, the quiet “God bless you, child, and make you happy,” of Archie’s mother when she was ushered into my room, for both ladies came to the house and went with me to the church, on the street just around the corner, where Tom met me, radiant and happy, and so handsome in his new suit “right from Paris,” and the old saucy, teasing smile in his eyes and about his mouth, as he looked down upon me and heard me promise to love, honor, and obey. There were no tears at my wedding, and I trust no sorry hearts, though Miss Lucy Elliston was there with her brother Charlie, mere lookers-on, and when the ceremony was over and we were going down the aisle, she confronted Tom laughingly, and said:

“I meant to see you married whether you invited me or not.”

To me she was very polite and affable, and I remembered what Tom had said of her sweet graciousness to those whom she thought her equals. I was that now, and she said something about seeing much of me when I returned to England; but she has not, and we shall never be more than mere calling acquaintances, with occasionally a dinner or a lunch.

Lady Darinda gave the promised party, and I wore white satin and pearls, and the white boots Tom bought with the dozen, and Archie’s solitaire, too, for Tom told me about it one night at Giessbach, where we spent two delightful weeks, wandering through the woods and up and down the falls to the shores of the lake.

“I did not wish to see it on your finger then,” he said, “when you were so sick and I feared you might die; but now that you have the wedding ring and are absolutely mine, I do not care, and you can wear it if you choose.”

I did choose, for I had a weakness for diamonds, and this was a superb one, handsomer even than the one Tom gave me, which chagrined him, I think, a little.

The party was a great success, so far as numbers, and dress, and music, and titled people were concerned; and I was, I believe, considered a success, too, especially after it was generally known that I came near being Lady Cleaver of Briarton Lodge, and that Tom was one of _the_ Gordons, with heaps of money and the prettiest place in St. John’s Wood. For myself, I did not like the party at all, and felt tired, and bored, and glad when it was over and I could come back to the beautiful home where I have been so happy since the day Tom brought me here as his bride.

It is _wife_ now. The bridal festivities are all in the past; the bridal dress worn at Lady Darinda’s party is yellowed by time, and on the terrace in front of the bow window where I am writing two children are playing—my sweet, blue-eyed Nellie of six, and my brave, sturdy boy of four, with light brown hair and a freck on his nose, just where Tom’s used to be when he, too, was a boy. We called him Archie, to please the dear old lady, whom I have learned to love so much, and who divides her time about equally between Lady Darinda and myself. The children call her grandma, and I heard Archie explaining to the gardener’s son, the other day, that she was really his grandmother, because she was the mother of his first father!

To me the past seems all a dream, and when I look about me upon my home, and hear the voices of my children shouting on the lawn, and see their father coming up the walk, and know that he will soon be at my side, bending over me in the old, teasing, loving way, I cannot realize that I am she who once plodded so drearily through the London fog and rain, hunting for work with which to get my daily bread. God has been very good to me, and, though I have known much of poverty and sorrow, it is over now, and in all the United Kingdom there is not a happier home than mine, or a happier pair, I am sure, than Tom and I—and so this quiet story of real English life is done.

THE END.

KITTY CRAIG

Kitty Craig was just married; and the white satin and fleecy lace, in which she had looked so much like an angel that her great, handsome giant of a husband hardly dared to touch her, was folded and packed away in one of the trunks which stood in the hall waiting the arrival of the express wagon which was to take them to the train. And Kitty in her traveling-dress looked infinitely prettier and more approachable than she had in all that sheen of lace, and satin and flowers, which had cost so much money and discussion, the mother and aunties saying that it was a useless expense, as were nearly all such bridal dresses, when the bride was neither wife nor daughter of a millionaire—that in nine cases out of ten the costly fabric was worn only at the altar and then laid aside to fade and grow yellow with time, or at best to be made over after a lapse of years, when there arose some occasion which demanded it. Kitty, on the contrary, knew she should need it, for was she not going to New York, the very “hub” of parties, and receptions and society, and though she did not know an individual there, and might, as her quaint old aunt expressed it, be at first “a rat among cats,” instead of “a cat among rats,” as she had hitherto been, she should soon have troops of friends, for was not John the confidential clerk in a first-class wholesale house on Broadway, and already acquainted with the wives of his employers, Messrs. Orr, Guile and Steele, and as each of these ladies was in her way a star, would they not be the _sesame_ through which Kitty would enter society, and eventually become a _cat_. There was Mrs. Orr, the wife of the senior partner, a handsome matron, who rolled in gold—name, house and person, all golden—and telling of the dollars her husband counted by the millions. John knew her, and had once been invited to dine with her on Sunday, and in his next letter to Kitty had delighted her with a description of the dinner, at which Mrs. Orr presided in satin dress of golden-brown, with diamonds in her ears, and where her daughter, Miss Elinor Orr, wore natural camellias in her hair and talked French to her mother all the time. Then there was Mrs. Guile, a second wife, and a dashing brunette, whose servants did not speak a word of English, and at whose house John had once taken tea on a Sunday night, when his fine baritone voice was wanted in a quartette of music which followed in the evening.

Kitty’s fancy was caught with the French servants, the camellias, and the silver service and satin of golden-brown, but the Sunday dining, and tea-drinking, and practicing of music shocked her keen sense of right and wrong, and lowered the Orrs and Guiles a little in her estimation. To her the words, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” meant just that, and nothing less; and not all John’s assurances that many good, pious people in New York visited on Sunday, especially in the evening, availed to convince her. Brought up in a New England town, she had imbibed some of the puritanical notions of right and wrong, which, sneer at them as we may, are the bone and sinew of that honesty of purpose and integrity of soul which characterize so many of the New Englanders and stamp them as different from their Western brothers. Kitty could not fellowship Sabbath-breaking, and Madames Orr and Guile were looked upon with a shadow of distrust. But she was sure to like the young and beautiful Lottie, the only daughter of Mr. Guile, whose second marriage had been distasteful to the young girl, and hurried her into matrimony with the quiet, staid Amasa Steele, the junior partner of the firm, who was several years her senior. John knew her well, for she often drove to the store for her husband, and while waiting for him amused herself with the confidential clerk, whose young face and fresh ideas were more to her taste than the sober manners and gray hair of her spouse. Kitty had once seen a note from Lottie to John, a delicate, perfumed thing, inviting him to take part in a little musicale she was getting up, and saying so much about his splendid baritone, which she must have, that Kitty had felt a twinge of something like jealousy of the city girl, and was glad when John wrote to her that Lottie Guile was married that morning and gone on her bridal tour.

That was two years ago, and before John was as able to take a wife as he was now. An increase of salary and a few thousand dollars left him by a considerate old uncle, whose name he bore, made marriage possible, and he and Kitty were married on a lovely June morning, when the air was full of sunshine and sweet odors from the roses and the heliotropes blossoming in the garden beds. And Kitty was very happy, and her heart beat high with joyful anticipations of the future and her life in New York, where she was sure to know people through the Orrs, and Guiles, and Steeles. The firm had sent her a bridal present of a beautiful silver tea-set, and wholly ignorant of the fact that neither of the three ladies representing the firm knew anything of the gift, Kitty felt as if acquainted with them already, and had insisted upon the white satin and scores of things which her mother predicted she would never need. But Kitty knew she should. The white satin was for the possible party which might be given for her by some one of “the firm,” and the pretty light silk for calls at home and abroad; and Kitty had it all marked out in her mind just what she should wear on different occasions, and knowing but little of the paraphernalia of a city woman’s toilet, was happy accordingly.

They were not to board; John had had enough of that, and felt sick every time he remembered the boarding-house dinners, now done with forever. A pretty little cozy house far up town, in the vicinity of the park, was to be their home, and John had furnished it with the money left him by his uncle, and in the absence of other feminine advice had ventured to ask Mrs. Lottie to “drive round some day and see if it would do.”

There was a slight elevating of Lottie’s eyebrows and a look of surprise at the boldness of the young man, and then, thinking within herself, “I have talked with him so much about music that I daresay he thinks he can take liberties,” the lady graciously signified her readiness to oblige. But she found it very inconvenient to go the day John fixed upon, very inconvenient, in fact, to go any day, and at last sent her maid, who had “exquisite taste,” and who reported “everything perfectly lovely,” to John, and “rather plain, but quite good enough” to her mistress.

There was a trip to Niagara Falls, a sail down the St. Lawrence, a rambling about in Montreal and Quebec, a few days at the White Mountains, a week of rest in the dear old home among the Berkshire hills, and then, right in the heat of summer, when everybody was out of town, they came one night to the cozy home in Fifty-seventh street, where Susan, the maid of all work, hired in Chicopee, met them with her kindly smile, and the tea-table nicely spread stood waiting to greet them. John’s holiday was over, and he went back to his business the next morning the happiest man who rode down town either in stage, or car, or private carriage. He was married and Kitty was his wife, and he felt her kiss upon his lips and saw her as she stood looking after him with those great, sunny, blue eyes of hers, and there was a song of joy in his heart which showed itself upon his face as he entered the counting-room and took his accustomed seat at the desk.

Messrs. Orr and Guile were away doing duty at Saratoga, but Mr. Steele was at home and welcomed the young man warmly, and tried to say some smart thing with regard to the business which had kept him away so long. Then John asked for Lottie, and was told that she was at Newport with a party of friends.

“Confounded bores those watering-places. I can’t endure them; and Lottie told me I’d better come home, she could do very well without me,” Mr. Steele said, in a weary kind of way; and John thought of Kitty and how unwilling he should be to be separated from her now she was all his own.

In the exuberance of his new happiness and because he pitied the junior partner, who must be so lonely without his wife, he invited him to dine with himself and Kitty, and Mr. Steele accepted the invitation, and was made so welcome by the pretty bride that he went again and again, and by the time autumn hung out her gay attire and Lottie came back to her home it had become a matter of course for him to dine with the Craigs as often as twice a week; and those visits, where he saw for the first time in his life, perhaps, how pleasant a home could be with love upon the hearthstone and in the atmosphere of every room, were influencing him for good and making him a softer, more demonstrative man than he had been hitherto. And when at last Lottie came early in October, he met her at the train; a very unusual thing for him to do, and kissed her so warmly that she looked at him with surprise, wondering if he had “failed” and was trying to smooth it over to her.

“What is it? Has anything happened?” she asked.

“No, nothing,” he answered; and, chilled with his reception and a little ashamed of having kissed his wife before everybody, when she did not care two straws for it, he sank back into his old self again, and was as silent and quiet as ever during the drive from the station to his house.

Lottie was very pretty next morning in her becoming dress of drab and scarlet, and Amasa Steele admired her secretly, and thought how handsome she was as over his paper he watched her pouring his coffee, her white hands moving gracefully among the silver, and every motion indicative of fine ladyism and high breeding. It was pleasant to have her home again, and he felt better because she was there, and thought of Kitty and John and their pretty little dining-room, and cleared his throat twice to speak to Lottie about them.

The fact was that Kitty, whose thoughts and feelings were as transparent as noon-day, had made many inquiries of Mr. Steele concerning his wife, and in so doing had shown plainly that she was anticipating a great deal of pleasure from Mrs. Lottie’s acquaintance.

“It seems so strange not to know an individual in all this great city, when at home I know everybody, and I shall be glad when Mrs. Steele returns,” she had remarked to him once in reply to something he said, which implied at least that he hoped she and his wife would see a great deal of each other.

And he did hope so, though secretly he felt doubtful with regard to the matter. Still, he meant to do his best for the little lady whom he liked so much, and after his coffee was drank and his paper finished, and he had coughed ominously a few times, he began:

“By the way, Lottie, John Craig has brought his wife to the city, and they are keeping house up in Fifty-seventh street. I’ve dined with them several times.”

“Ah-h!” and Lottie’s great black eyes looked across the table wonderingly.

“Yes, and it’s a jolly place, too; so home-like and nice, and Kit—Mrs. Craig, I mean, is very pretty.”

“Indeed!” And Lottie was interested now. “I did not suppose Mr. Craig able to support very much style, but, perhaps, it was the pretty wife which took you there.”

“It certainly was _not_ style, but rather the absence of it which pleased me so much,” the husband replied. “It is a little nutshell of a house. You could almost put the whole of it in one of our parlors, and they keep but one servant, a perfect gem, who makes the nicest kind of apple pie and ginger-snaps. I say, Lottie, why don’t we ever have such things? They are a thousand times better then those French dishes you get up for dessert.”

Lottie smiled derisively, but her voice was very sweet and pleasant as she said:

“I hardly think Celine is accomplished to the extent of apple pie and ginger-snaps.”

Amasa felt the rebuke and wondered at his temerity in expecting anything so common from a cook, whose name was Celine, and who sometimes took the title of Madame.

As yet he had made no headway with regard to the call, and so at last he blurted it out, and told Mrs. Lottie plainly that he wished her to call on Mrs. Craig and show her some attention.

“She is a lady, every whit,” he said, “and pretty, too, and intelligent, and well—yes—she rather expects you to call, and she would like to see a little of New York society, and she don’t know a single soul, and it’s lonesome for her, and you can show her some attention without hurting you one bit, and I hope you will do it.”

He had said a great deal more than he intended saying, for something in Lottie’s proud eyes exasperated him, and without waiting for her to answer he left the breakfast-room suddenly, and his wife heard the bang of the street door as it shut behind him.

“Expects me to call and show her some attention! How absurd,” she said to herself, as she went back to her room. “She cannot be much accustomed to the usages of society if she supposes I am to call on every clerk who happens to get married. Why, my list is so large now that I am nearly crazy and I certainly shall not add Mrs. John Craig’s name to it. Apple pie and ginger-snaps, and one servant! Poor John! He was a nice kind of a fellow, and ought to have been rich.”

And then Lottie fell into a fit of musing as to what might have been had John been rich instead of poor. The truth was, Lottie Guile had fancied John Craig better than any man she ever knew, and once, after a long chat with him in the office, where she was waiting for her father, she had tried to make up her mind to encourage the liking he evidently had for her, but fear of what Mrs. Grundy would say if the daughter of Richard Guile should marry her father’s clerk prevailed, and when Amasa Steele offered himself and his half-million, she accepted him, and wished he was not quite so gray, and that he looked more like the confidential clerk, who was present at the wedding, and who, she thought, seemed a little sorry.

And John was sorry that one as young and sprightly as Lottie should marry a man so wholly unlike herself as the sober, middle-aged Amasa Steele. He was sorry to have her marry at all, for he had found it very pleasant to chat and laugh and sing with her on the occasions when chance threw her in his way, but further than that he did not care. He had known and loved Kitty Clew ever since she was a child, and he drew her to school on his sled, and he expected one day to make her his wife, so foolish Lottie was mistaken when she thought there was a pang in his heart as he saw her made Mrs. Amasa Steele, and called her by that name. She knew nothing of Kitty Clew, and went on dreaming her little romance and fancying there was one joy less in John Craig’s life until she heard he was to be married. There was a shadow on her brow, and she felt somehow as if John had misused and deceived her, while to crown all she was expected to call on his wife and make a friend of her. It was a hard case and Lottie felt aggrieved, and the first time she met John Craig she was very cool toward him, and never asked for his wife or hinted that she knew there was such a creature in the world. John felt her manner keenly, but did not tell Kitty, who, knowing that Mrs. Steele had returned, began to look daily for the call she so certainly expected. One after another the dresses her aunties had pronounced useless were brought out and worn, and in the prettiest of toilets Kitty waited morning, noon and night for one who never came. Lottie did not call, neither did any one else except the clergyman to whom Kitty had brought a letter of introduction from her own rector, and who dropped in for a few moments to see his new parishioner.

Accustomed at home to be first in every good work, Kitty asked what she could do, and was told of the mission school, where teachers were always needed, and of the regular sewing society of the church, which met one day in each week. Kitty was pleased with the mission school, and entered heart and soul into the work, and found fast friends among the ragged girls and boys, who looked upon her as a kind of divinity. From the sewing society, however, she shrank at first, dreading to encounter so many strangers; but when she heard what need there was for help, she laid aside her own personal feelings and went week after week, mostly from a sense of duty, and a little, it may be, with a hope, that by some chance she might come to know those with whom she worshiped Sunday after Sunday, and with whom she had more than once knelt around the chancel on communion days.

And there, in the little sewing-room of St. ——’s she sat, one Thursday morning, as much alone as if around her there were not twenty ladies or more talking socially together, and all unmindful of the stranger in the midst, poor little Kitty, who actually started in surprise when she heard herself addressed by a pleasant-faced, elderly woman, who sat near her, and who seemed herself to be a stranger.

“Can you tell me who that is?” she asked, nodding toward a young and dashing-looking lady, who sat near them talking and laughing merrily, and showing in all she did that she felt herself a privileged character, and could do and say what she pleased.

Kitty, too, had been watching her, and taking notes of the cut of her dress and style of her hair, but she did not know who she was, and she said so to her interlocutor; then, as if the sound of a voice speaking kindly to her upon some other topic than her work had unlocked her pent-up feelings, she continued:

“I do not know any one. I have been here week after week, too, and not a person has spoken to me except about my work.”

“Is it possible?—and they call themselves Christians, too,” was the reply of the woman, who, having once passed a similar ordeal, knew just how desolate and neglected Kitty felt.

Meantime there was a lull in the conversation of the ladies at the right, and, as Kitty’s voice was very clear, her words were distinctly heard by one of the group, at least. Swiftly the proud black eyes scanned Kitty’s face and person, and then, as if continuing an interrupted conversation, the lady said, loudly enough for Kitty to hear:

“There is one thing this society needs, and that a committee, whose business it shall be to look after the new-comers—the sensitive ones, who feel slighted if they are not noticed—and introduce them, you know.”

“An admirable idea,” said her companion. “Suppose we make you that committee.”

“No, thank you; that is not in my line. I’ve no patience with people who think to make the sewing society a stepping-stone to other society. I come from a sense of duty, and think every right-minded person should do the same;” and again the black eyes flashed sidewise at poor Kitty, who could hardly restrain her tears, and who would have cried outright had she been alone, with no curious ones around her.

Just then there was a fresh arrival, and the newcomer greeted her of the black eyes with the exclamation:

“Why, Lottie Steele—it’s an age since you were here. I thought you had forsaken us.”

Kitty did not hear the reply, so great was her astonishment at learning that this woman, who had wounded her so cruelly, was Lottie Steele, the one for whom she had watched so long, and on whose acquaintance and friendship she had counted so much in her utter ignorance of the city and its customs. Alas, how had her idol fallen, and how were all her hopes destroyed! She had nothing whatever to expect in that quarter—nothing to expect anywhere; and, with a swelling heart as she remembered the church society at home, where she was what Lottie Steele was here, or, as her dear old auntie expressed it, “a cat among rats,” she gathered up her work, and bidding good-morning to the pleasant-faced woman at her side, who alone of all the ladies there had spoken familiarly to her, started for home, feeling more desolate and alone than she had thought it possible for any one in the great city of New York, which had once seemed to her like an earthly paradise.

As she left the sewing-room she met the rector of the parish, who said a few friendly words to her and then passed on into the room, where he was immediately accosted by Lottie Steele, who asked him who the lady was he met with at the door.

“That was Mrs. John Craig, from Rosefield,” he replied. “She is a stranger in the city, and I wish some of my ladies would take a little pains to be polite to her. Her former clergyman speaks highly of her as a Christian and a lady of culture and education. She is very regular at church, I see, and her husband is a splendid-looking fellow.”

“Why, that must be the John Craig in our store,” chimed in Agatha Orr, a pert miss of seventeen. “Isn’t it, Mrs. Steele? You ought to know, for you and he used to be so intimate.”

A withering glance from Lottie’s eyes silenced Miss Agatha, while Lottie’s cheeks were scarlet, and her pulse throbbed faster than its wont. She was not naturally hard and cruel, and given to wounding people unnecessarily. She professed to be a Christian; perhaps she was one. She certainly was very rigid with regard to all the fasts and holy days, and no religious devotee kept Lent, so far as churchgoing was concerned, more strictly than she did; but she had been reared and trained in the school of fashion and caste until many of her better impulses were warped and deformed, and she sometimes did things thoughtlessly, of which she repented afterward. Bearing the reputation of being exceedingly exclusive, she had no idea of inviting into her charmed circle any who wished to enter, and deemed it her duty to shut and bar the door against all intruders, especially if she felt that the intruder had some claim upon her. So, when she overheard Kitty’s complaint, and felt in her heart that not only herself but many of her sisters in the church were sadly remiss in their reception of strangers, she said what she did, in a sudden fit of impatience that any one should expect to make her acquaintance at a sewing society. But she had no idea it was Kitty Craig whom she was lashing so unmercifully, and she would have given considerable for the privilege of recalling her thoughtless words. But it was too late; the mischief was done, and Kitty was gone, and, as is frequently the case when we are conscious of having injured a person in any way, Lottie, after the first pangs of self-reproach were over, found herself with a greater aversion than ever to that “nutshell of a house” which might be “put into her parlor,” and Kitty’s chances for an acquaintance with Mrs. Amasa Steele were far less than before. “A rat among cats” she certainly was, and she felt it keenly as she walked home, with Lottie’s scornful words ringing in her ears and making her heart throb so painfully.

“The sensitive ones, who feel slighted if they are not noticed.”

Had it really come to this, that she was thus designated—she, who at home had been first in everything, and had herself, perhaps, been a little hard on the sensitive ones, not knowing then just how they felt. She knew now, and, once alone in her room, wept bitter tears at the first real slight she had ever received. Then, as she remembered what Lottie had said of duty, she questioned herself closely to see how far her motives in going so regularly to the sewing-rooms had been pure and such as God would approve, and she found, alas! that they would not altogether bear the test applied. Something beside a genuine desire to do good had drawn her thither; a hope that she might by chance make some pleasant acquaintance, had been strong in her heart, and she confessed it, amid a gush of tears, to the Friend who never failed her, and to whom she always took her sorrows, whether great or small.

Kitty’s religion was not on the surface, a mere routine of form and ceremony. She knew in whom she had believed, and she told Him all about her trouble, with the simplicity of a little child, and asked to be forgiven so far as she was wrong, and that toward Lottie Steele she might feel as kindly as before. Kitty’s face was very bright after that talk with God, and when John came home at night it was a very pretty and gay little wife which sat at his table and told him she had at last seen Mrs. Steele, and thought her very handsome and very bright. Of the insult, however, she said nothing, and John never dreamed how little cause his wife had for speaking as kindly as she did of the thoughtless lady who had wounded her so sadly.

Kitty did not go to the sewing meeting after that, but worked at home for the poor and needy, and felt far happier alone in her quiet sitting-room, with only her singing-bird for company, than she had when surrounded by ladies whom she did not even know by name. She did not expect Lottie Steele now, and never dreamed how near that unlucky affair at the sewing-room came to bringing about the very thing she had once so greatly desired. For Lottie was disturbed and annoyed at her own rudeness and wished she could in some way atone, and half made up her mind to call upon Mrs. Craig and make friends with her. But when at the dinner-table her husband himself broached the subject and suggested that she go with him that very evening, her pride took alarm at once. It was too soon; Kitty would of course think she came to conciliate her, and she would not humble herself like that before the wife of a clerk. So she declined rather crossly, and said she was too tired, and she didn’t believe Mrs. Craig wanted her to call, and she was certain “John” did not care to have her see in what a small way he was living.

Amasa Steele never talked much, and now he only muttered something about being “so thundering proud,” and without a word as to where he was going, left the house soon after dinner; and Lottie saw no more of him until the clock was striking eleven. Then he found her at her prayers, for Lottie never omitted any duty of that kind, and when her husband came home she was kneeling by the bedside with her fanciful dressing-gown sweeping the floor, and trying to ask forgiveness for having wounded Kitty Craig. Amasa had not much faith in Lottie’s religion, and without waiting for her devotions to end, he asked “where the deuce his slippers were, that he could never find them?”

This untimely interruption brought Lottie from her knees, feeling indignant and aggrieved, and as if she was persecuted for righteousness’ sake, and she would neither tell her husband where his slippers were nor ask him where he had been so long, although she was dying to know, and felt almost sure he had visited the Craigs. She knew he had the next day, for he told her so, and said so much in praise of Kitty that she felt a pang of something like jealousy, and avenged herself by driving to the store that afternoon and talking with the confidential clerk so long that her father at last suggested that she go home, as “women were out of place in a business office.”

When she and Kitty met again it was at the altar rail, where they knelt side by side, Lottie’s rich velvet cloak brushing against Kitty’s plainer cloth, and the glitter of her rings flashing before Kitty’s eyes. As they rose and turned away Lottie half bowed a recognition, and felt for the remainder of the day as if she were a very good and forgiving woman, inasmuch as Kitty, in her surprise, had not returned the bow.

New York was very gay that winter, and Lottie had no leisure to spare to such as Kitty Craig, who would in time have been wholly forgotten but for an event which occurred just one year from the day when John first brought Kitty home as his bride. Then a new little life came into that house; and Lottie, who chanced to be in the city for a few days, was surprised to hear from her husband that he was to stand sponsor for little Frederic Steele, who was to be baptized that afternoon. Would she go and see it?

There was a shrug of Lottie’s shoulders and a lifting of her eyebrows, but she made no reply, except:

“You and the Craigs must be very intimate to warrant their taking such a liberty. Pray, where have you seen so much of them?”

Amasa did not tell her how many of his evenings when she was away were spent in that nutshell of a house, where they had apple pie and ginger-snaps for dessert, or how the sight of the little round-faced boy which John had shown him with so much pride on the occasion of his last visit had raised in his heart a vague dissatisfaction with the stillness of his grand house, where baby voices were never heard. He himself had suggested Frederic Steele, saying:

“I won’t ask you to inflict upon him such a name as Amasa, but my only brother was Fred, and I’d like the little chap called for him.”

So the baby was christened “Frederic Steele,” and Lottie was there and saw it. She had no fancy for christenings, where the children usually screamed so vigorously, she said, but she did want to see how John looked as a father and how Amasa behaved as sponsor. So she went to the church and mentally criticised Kitty’s dress and the baby’s dress, and thought her husband very awkward and John very handsome, and drove next day to Tiffany’s and selected a silver cup, which was marked, “For little Fred,” and sent it to the address of the Craigs, who wondered greatly whence it came, and wondered, too, what they should do with it, inasmuch as Amasa’s gift was also a silver cup, gold-lined, and looking as if it were the twin of the one which had come no one knew whence, and which Kitty put away as something to be looked at but never used.

And now we pass over a period of more than eighteen months, and come to a time when, wearied out with gayety and dissipation, Lottie Steele was almost glad when the first days of Lent came and put an end to the parties and receptions which had so engrossed her time, and made her grow pale and thin, with dark rings around her eyes. But she would rest now, or at least lead a different kind of life, for though she wore her second-best dresses and kept all the fasts and holy days, and never missed a service, whether on Sunday or week day, she still had a good deal of leisure time for quiet, and kept earlier hours, and hoped to come out at Easter as bright and fresh as the new bonnet which she had in her mind for that occasion. Lent was really beneficial, both to her health and her complexion, she thought, and she kept it religiously, and affected to be greatly shocked when she heard that Kitty Craig had committed the enormity of going to the opera, where a wonderful bird of song was entrancing the people with its melody. Lottie went to elaborate lunches served in darkened rooms, and went to the Philharmonics, and to concerts, and lectures but avoided the opera as if the plague had been rioting there, and felt that the example of consistency she thus set before her husband was infinitely better than that of sinful, opera-going Kitty Craig.

But Lottie grew tired at last of the same daily routine, and wanted something new, and devised a little _musicale_, which was to be held in her parlors and to be highly exclusive and _recherché_. Only the _creme-de-la-creme_ were to be there, and these by invitation—said invitation to be in the form of cards, for which five dollars were to be paid, and the proceeds appropriated to a new mission school, in which Lottie was greatly interested, and of which John Craig was superintendent. This had latterly thrown John and Lottie together again, and they were the best of friends; and Lottie’s little dainty hand had more than once rested on John’s coat sleeve, and Lottie’s eyes looked straight into his while she talked of some ragged boy, or devised some new scheme for the advancement of the school.

The musicale was her hobby now, and she must have Mr. Craig in at least three of the quartettes. And she asked if he would come to rehearsal at her house, and go with her to see the Misses Barrows, whose voices were wonderful for depth and richness, and one of whom played accompaniments remarkably well? It did not matter now that they sold bonnets and ribbons on Broadway during the week, and that Lottie would never dream of inviting them to her house except on an occasion like this, when she needed their services. She wanted them, and John must go with her and see them.

This was down in the office, and her fine face was all aglow with excitement, and her carriage was at the door, and John felt his blood stir a little as he looked at her and thought of a drive up Broadway with that fashionable turnout. Yes, he would go to see the Misses Barrows; and he went and met them that night at Mrs. Steele’s, and before Kitty came back from a visit she had made at home everything was arranged, and he had promised to sing in four pieces at least, and possibly five, and meet at Mrs. Steele’s for practice three evenings in a week.

What Kitty said to him when she heard of it made him doubt a little the propriety of going to a house where his wife’s existence had never yet been recognized by so much as an inquiry, and to which she would not in all human probability be invited; and when next day Lottie drove down to the office to consult with him about some new idea, he mustered courage to tell her that he wished she would find some one to take his place as now that his wife had returned he did not like being away from her evenings, as he necessarily must be if he perfected himself in the difficult passages assigned to him. Womanlike, Lottie understood him at once, and knew that some bold move on her part was requisite if she would not lose him. And she could not do that now. He was too necessary to the success of her musicale, and with a mental anathema against the offending Kitty, she exclaimed:

“Oh, Mr. Craig, you know I cannot do without you and will not. Tell your wife so, please. When did she return, and how is little Freddie Steele? By the way, I do not believe I have sent her invitation yet, have I? She was gone, you know. Suppose I write her a little note now; that will be more friendly than a card,” and snatching up a pen Lottie dashed off a half-formal, half-familiar note to Kitty, inviting her to the musicale and apologizing for not having sent the invitation earlier.

“That will settle it,” she thought, while John, who saw only the flashing eyes and beaming face, began to descend from his stilts, and in his delight at having an autograph letter for Kitty from this high-born lady, forgot that in all the two years and a half of his married life this was the first time his wife had ever been alluded to.

But Kitty did not forget, nor seem as much elated with Lottie’s autograph note as John thought she ought to be.

“She was much obliged to Mrs. Steele,” she said, “for the invitation, but she could not for a moment think of accepting it. She should feel out of place among so many strangers.”

And to this decision she firmly adhered, insisting, however, that her husband should go on with his practice, and not disappoint Mrs. Lottie. But to this John objected. There was something amiss somewhere, and his better way was to remain at home with Kitty, and so the next morning he wrote Mrs. Lottie a note, saying positively that he could not take the parts assigned to him, and mentioning as a substitute Will Archer, whose voice was quite as good as his own, and who read music even better than himself.

“Will Archer! That clown in my parlors! Never!” was Lottie’s indignant exclamation, as she threw the note aside. “Cannot spend the time! Why wasn’t he frank enough to say that obstinate wife of his would not let him? It all comes of those thoughtless words she heard me say at the sewing society. She has never been there since, and I really was sorry for it.”

“But she don’t know that,” Conscience whispered; and then Lottie began to wonder what she could do to secure John’s services.

She could not do without him, and to get him she was willing even to ask his wife’s pardon, if necessary, and at all events she would call the next day and apologize, for John’s voice she must and would have at any cost.

* * * * *

Kitty’s morning work was done. The little parlor, which did duty as sitting-room and nursery too, was nicely swept and dusted, and everything was in its place. A bright fire was blazing in the grate. Freddie was asleep in his crib, the gift of Amasa Steele, who had mostly supplied the wants of his god-child since the day he stood with him at the font, and Kitty, in her neat delaine wrapper, with faultlessly clean collar and cuffs, was just sitting down to the pile of work which lay beside her “Wilcox & Gibbs,” John’s Christmas gift to her. She was never troubled with morning calls; for, though she had some few acquaintances in the city by this time, they were not of the fashionable kind to whom one hour is as free as another, and she had no thought of the honor in store for her, and which was even then at her very door, in the shape of a handsome little coupé, satin lined, and bearing the stamp of the very latest style in all its appurtenances, from the silver-tipped harness to the driver in his livery, and the footman, whose coat came nearly to the ground as he obsequiously held the door for his mistress to alight.

“It _is_ a nutshell of a house,” was Lottie’s mental comment, as she went up the steps and rang the bell. “Poor John, with his refined instincts, he ought to have done better;” and, so low down in Lottie’s heart that it was hardly a wrong to Amasa Steele, there was the shadow of a regret that she had not thought twice before deciding not to encourage her father’s confidential clerk.

But it was too late now. She was Mrs. Amasa Steele, and had come to call on John’s wife, who, greatly to her amazement, opened the door herself! Kitty had heard the ring, and not seeing the stylish turnout in front, and knowing that in all human probability Susan’s hands were in the bread, she went to the door, expecting to meet either a book agent or somebody inquiring if Dr. Jones lived there, he being her next neighbor, as she and John both had learned from sundry calls at all hours of the day and night. She was prepared for the agent and the patient of Dr. Jones, but not for the “grand dame” clad in velvet and Russian sable, whose big black eyes looked their surprise, but who nevertheless smiled sweetly, and asked in the blandest of tones if this were Mrs. Craig.

Lottie’s first impulse had been to suppose the lady a servant, and ask for her mistress, but she had come for an object, and it suited her to be very amiable and even familiar.

“So kind in you to let me in yourself,” she said, as she followed Kitty into the little parlor, and then apologized for not having called before.

She did not say out and out that she had intended calling, for she would not tell an absolute lie, but her manner implied as much, and she talked so fast and made herself so agreeable, that Kitty began to be drawn toward her in spite of herself, and when she praised the new Wilcox & Gibbs sewing machine, and pronounced it “the dearest plaything in the world,” and then, pouncing upon little Freddie, called him a darling, and complimented his eyes and his hair, the conquest was more than half completed. But when Lottie ventured at last to introduce the musicale, and to say how sorry she was that Mrs. Craig had declined coming, and how very badly she felt to lose Mr. Craig’s services, there was a peculiar look in Kitty’s eyes which did not bode success to Mrs. Lottie’s project. Still she was not disheartened. Her heaviest forces were still in reserve. The day was so fine and the air so bracing, would not Mrs. Craig like a drive in the Park? It would do her good, and the baby, too. Dear little fellow, he looked pale, though possibly that was his natural complexion.

Freddie had not been well for a day or two, and Kitty had wished that very morning that she was rich and could afford a drive, and now that it was so gracefully offered to her, she hesitated at first, and then finally accepted, and almost before she had time to think she was seated on the satin cushions by Mrs. Lottie’s side, and was rolling over the level roads of the beautiful Central Park. Lottie insisted upon holding Freddie herself, and was so generally charming that Kitty was sorry when the carriage stopped at last at her own door.

Up to that moment not a word had been said of the musicale, but Lottie bided her time, and just as Kitty was getting out she laughingly said:

“You do not invite me, but I mean to go in and see if I cannot coax you to reconsider your decision with regard to the musicale after all, and persuade your husband to sing. You don’t know how much I am in earnest.”

She followed Kitty into the house, and while her own fingers helped to disrobe little Freddie, she went on:

“If you do not come I shall think you have never forgiven those thoughtless words I said in your hearing the first time I ever saw you. You remember them, I am sure, but you do not know how sorry I was, especially when I learned who you were. It was wrong under any circumstances, but we had been so annoyed with commonplace people coming just to be noticed, and besides that I’d had a little ‘tiff’ that morning with Amasa about calling on the dowdiest woman you ever saw, and I was not in the best of moods. You will forgive me, won’t you, and be friends? Ah, that must be your lunch bell. I’d no idea it was so late.”

“Stay to lunch, won’t you?” Kitty faltered, devoutly hoping her visitor would decline; but she did not.

She was nearly famished, she said, and accepted the invitation graciously, and followed on to the dining-room, where the lunch-table was very neatly spread, for Kitty was particular about everything pertaining to her table, which was arranged with as much care for herself and Freddie as it was when she had company to dinner. And Susan waited nicely and suggested that she bring the fresh apple pie she had made that morning, and which looked so tempting, with its white, flaky crust, that Mrs. Lottie took a large piece, and ate a ginger-snap which Susan also brought.

Apple pie and ginger-snaps were evidently favorites in that house, and Lottie praised them both, and asked how they were made, and said her husband had told her about them. She was outdoing herself, and when at last she said good-by and went out to her cross coachman, who had driven up and down, up and down, and actually sworn about her to the footman, she had Kitty’s promise that John should sing, and that possibly she herself would attend the musicale, while to crown all there was in her pocket a receipt for ginger-snaps, which Susan had given her at the last moment, when she stood in the hall telling Kitty, “It would not be a dress affair—that anything she had would answer.”

Lottie was in a very pleasant frame of mind when she reached home that day. She had accomplished her object, as she felt that she deserved to do, for had she not called on Kitty Craig and apologized for her rudeness, and taken her to drive, and lunched with her in that “under-ground” dining-room, not much longer than her butler’s pantry, and lunched, too, on apple pie and ginger-snaps, food which heretofore she had thought only fit for those made of coarser clay than herself, and was there not in her pocket a receipt for those same snaps, which poor, deluded Susan, who had taken a great fancy to the grand lady, thought maybe her cook might like, as Mr. Steele was so fond of them! Celine and ginger-snaps! and Lottie laughed merrily as she took out the receipt and began to read, “One cup of molasses; half-a-cup of butter; and half-a-cup of lard——”

“Lard! Horrors, I can never insult her dignity with that. Amasa must go elsewhere for his snaps,” and turning to the grate the little bit of paper was soon blackening upon the coals, and Amasa’s chance for snaps at home was lost.

* * * * *

Kitty had said that John should sing, and she did not find it at all hard to keep her word. He was fond of music, and only too glad of an opportunity to serve Mrs. Lottie, who had been and who continued to be so very kind to Kitty. Lottie never did anything by halves, and now she had taken up the Craigs she meant to keep them up till after the musicale at least, and she frequently sent to Kitty flowers and fruit, and even her carriage for the dear little boy to take the air, and Kitty, though she in a measure understood it all, wisely concluded to accept the good the gods provided, and submitted patiently to John’s absence three nights in a week, and when he was home, played the music for him, accompanying him with her voice until she was almost as familiar with it as he was himself, and, as he declared, played better than the Misses Barrows, who did not always keep perfect time or give the best expression.

Kitty was going to the musicale, too, and she began to look forward to it with a great deal of pleasure, although she dreaded it somewhat, inasmuch as “she had nothing to wear.” All those pretty silks made at the time of her marriage were out of style. The sleeves were too large, the waists too small, and “they had not a bit of a stuck-up behind,” Susan said, when she tried them on one after another to see if they would do. Only one was at all “_au fait_” in that respect, and that a plain black silk, which, having been made over the summer previous, was nearly enough “_bouffant_” in appearance to suit the fastidious Susan.

“Some do take a newspaper,” she said, as she tried to make the overskirt stand out as far as Mrs. Steele’s had done. “Some do take a newspaper and tie on, and if you was to do that you’d bunch out beautiful.”

But Kitty declined the newspaper, and when the night of the musicale came she looked very pretty and modest in her black silk, with her coral and real lace, and John kissed her proudly and told her she was sure “to pass muster.” They were among the first arrivals, and they found the house ablaze with light and full of flowers, while Lottie herself was splendid in silk, and lace, and jewels, and in a high state of excitement. The last rehearsal had been very satisfactory and she had reason to expect a great success. But where were the Misses Barrows, her pianist and soprano? They had promised to be early, and it lacked but half an hour of the time appointed for the first piece, and they had not yet appeared.

“Dressing, probably, as if anybody will care what they wear,” she said to Kitty, thus showing the estimate in which she held them outside the services she desired.

There was a sharp ring at the door and a servant brought a note to Lottie, who, feeling intuitively that it in some way concerned her greatly, tore it open at once, her face flushing and then turning pale as she read that the Misses Barrows had just received news that their mother was dying, and they must start for home that night if they would see her alive. It was a bitter disappointment, and Lottie felt as if that poor woman dying in that little village in Ohio had somehow injured her. But there was no help for it now. The Barrowses were out of the question, and in her utter helplessness and distress, she turned to John to know what they should do.

“It is a failure, of course,” she said, and the great tears stood in her fine eyes.

John hesitated a moment and glanced toward his wife, and then to her utter dismay replied:

“Not necessarily an entire failure, perhaps. I think it just possible that Mrs. Craig can play the accompaniments and, possibly, sing as well.”

“Oh, John,” Kitty gasped, while Lottie’s black eyes flashed a curiously doubtful glance at her and Lottie’s voice said:

“_She—your wife_,” as if even to her the idea was preposterous.

“Yes, my wife,” John answered, proudly. “She has a fine voice and was accounted a good musician at home.”

“And will she—will you try?” Lottie asked, willing, now that her first feeling of surprise was over, to grasp at a straw. “Dear Mrs. Craig, will you try? It is a positive failure if you do not. I might ask that horrid Mrs. Banks, but her voice is like a peacock’s. Do. Mrs. Craig, and I will love you forever.”

She had her arm around Kitty’s waist and was drawing her toward the piano where in a moment poor, bewildered Kitty found herself seated with piles of music before her and a crowd of strange people staring at her and asking each other who that little nun-like woman was, and where the Misses Barrows were. Very softly Kitty played over a few of the more difficult places, and Lottie, who was a judge of fine playing, began to feel confidence in her new performer, and whispered encouragingly:

“You are doing splendidly,” while to herself she groaned: “Oh, if I only knew what her voice was.”

She did know ere long, and as Kitty’s clear, birdlike tones began to fill the room, growing sweeter, and clearer and stronger as Kitty became more confident of herself, she could have hugged the little woman in her joy, and did kiss her when the musicale was over and pronounced a perfect success.

“You are a darling, a second Nilsson. I shall never forget this, never,” she said, while many of her friends crowded around Kitty, asking for an introduction and thanking her for the treat she had given them. “And to think she never tried the music before! It is wonderful,” Lottie kept saying while others, too, expressed their surprise that she could play such difficult music at sight.

For a few moments Kitty sat irresolute; then her love of truth prevailed over every other feeling, and crossing to where John stood, she put her hand on his arm and said: “Please let me speak a word to you all.”

In an instant there was a hush throughout the room, and every eye was fixed upon the brave little woman who would not even act a lie, and whose voice was very clear and distinct, as she said: “It would be wrong for me to leave an impression on your minds that I never tried that music before. I have played it many times at home for my husband, and sang it with him when he was practicing. I cannot play at sight like that. I am not a very fine musician.”

“But you are a good, conscientious, little darling!” was Lottie’s impulsive exclamation, while a murmur of admiration for this unexpected frankness ran through the room. “I could never have done that, I know I could not. I should just let them think it was my first effort, but somehow I love you better for it,” Lottie whispered to Kitty, when for a moment they stood together alone, and as she said it, the fashionable woman of the world felt that she had learned a lesson of good from plain, simple-hearted Kitty, who found herself the belle of the evening, and received so much attention that when at last she was put into Lottie’s carriage and sent home, with Lottie’s kiss warm on her lips, and Lottie’s assurance that she should see a great deal of her now that she knew her, she felt herself to be in a bewildered, dazed kind of state, sure of nothing except that the door of society, so long locked and barred against her, was open now, and that if she chose, she could enter the charmed circle she had once thought so desirable.

“Guess what I’ve brought you, little woman? An invitation to dine with Mrs. Steele! What think you of that?” John said to Kitty one night, about a week after the drawing-room musicale. “The Guiles and Orrs are to be there, too. Quite an affair! You don’t suppose there would be time for you to get a new dress made, do you?”

John was a good deal excited, and, if the truth was told, a little proud of being invited to a company dinner with the old and haughty members of the firm.

“Just our own people, you know—papa’s family and the Orrs,” Lottie had said to him, and John felt that he was recognized as one of “our own people,” and was flattered accordingly, and said he knew no reason why he should not accept; and thought to himself that Kitty should have a new dress, made with puffs, and ruffles, and bows, and which should stand out like Lottie Steele’s, and have a New York look.

Of the cost of such a dress, and the time and trouble to get it up, he knew nothing. He only thought Kitty should have one, and put a fifty dollar bill in his pocket for the emergency, and went home half an hour earlier than usual to tell Kitty of the honor in store for her. And Kitty was pleased, too, and her face flushed a little as she said she guessed the old black silk would have to do duty again, as a new one, such as he had in his mind, was far beyond their means.

“When is it?” she asked, and then John felt again a little twinge he had experienced when Mrs. Lottie named Sunday as the most convenient time for getting “all the family,” as she termed them, together.

“Sunday, at six o’clock,” she had said, adding when she saw the questioning look on John’s face: “You know it is dark now at six, and the Sabbath ends at sundown; besides that, I mean to have some sacred music in the evening, so be prepared, please.”

John would rather the dinner had been on some other day, but what people like the Guiles and Steeles did must be right, and he had not a thought that Kitty would object. But she did—firmly and decidedly.

“God never meant that His day should be remembered by giving dinner parties,” she said. “That was not keeping it holy, and she could not go to Mrs. Steele’s, much as she would like to.” And to this decision she stood firm; and when John met Mr. Steele next day in the office, he told him to say to Mrs. Steele that he regretted it exceedingly, but he must decline her kind invitation to dinner.

“The fact is,” he said, “my wife was brought up in New England, where I guess they are more strict about some things than the people in New York, and she thinks she——”

John hesitated as if fearful that to give Kitty’s reason would sound too much like a reproof, but Mr. Steele understood him and said, “She does not believe in Sunday dinner parties; that is what you mean. Well, well, I’ve seen the day when I did not, but that time seems to me ages and ages ago. Somehow here in New York first we know we get to doing things which once we would not have done for the world, and Sunday visiting is one of them I’ll tell Lottie. She will be terribly disappointed, for she wanted you badly, but I guess your wife is right. I’m sure she is. Remember the Sabbath—I’ve most forgotten how it goes, though I used to say it the best of any of them, when I was a boy at home;” and folding his hands behind him, Amasa Steele walked up and down his office, thinking of the summers years ago, when he sat in the old-fashioned pew in that little church at the foot of the mountain, and saw the sunshine lighting up the cross behind the chancel, and felt upon his cheek the air sweet with the fragrance of the hay cut yesterday in the meadow by the woods, and said his catechism to the white-haired rector, whose home was now in Heaven.

That time seemed long, long ago—ay, was long ago, before he was the city millionaire and husband of the dashing, self-willed Lottie, who, while professing to believe just what Kitty did, practiced a far different creed. All the tithes of anise, and mint and cumin she brought, but she neglected the weightier matters, and her dark eyes flashed angrily for a moment when she heard Kitty’s reason for declining her Sunday dinner.

“As if she were so much better than anybody else,” she said, and she was going on to say more when her husband cut her short with, “I suppose she does not feel like going straight from the altar to a dinner party. Isn’t it communion next Sunday in your church?”

Yes, it was, but Lottie had forgotten that, and her face flushed as her husband thus reminded her of it. The two did not seem to be wholly congruous, and so she staid home the next Sunday, and felt a strange feeling of disquiet, and thought more of Kitty Craig, and how she would look with that expression of peace on her face when she turned away from the altar than she did of the grand dinner which was being prepared in her kitchen, and which, though pronounced a success by those of her guests who cared nothing for the fourth commandment, seemed to her a failure. Nothing suited her; everything was wrong, from the color of the gravy to the flower in her step-mother’s hair, and the fit of Mrs. Orr’s dress; and when all was over, and the company gone, and she was alone with her thoughts and the Bible she tried to read, and, which by some chance she opened at the words. “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” she said to herself, “I don’t believe I’ll ever try to have another dinner party on Sunday.”

She went to see Kitty the next day and chided her for her absence, and called her a little Methodist and a Puritan, and asked how she came to be so strait-laced, and ended with: “But I believe you are right after all, only here in the city people do differently, and you will be like us in time.”

“I trust I never may forget that God is in the city as well as in the country,” was Kitty’s reply, which Lottie pondered long in her heart, and which at last bore the fruit which ripens on the everlasting hills of glory.

* * * * *

It is two years since the night of the musicale, and more than one carriage with servants in livery and ladies gayly dressed has stopped at Kitty’s door, and Kitty has the _entree_ to many a fashionable house. But having tasted the once coveted apple and found how unsatisfying it was, she has put it from her and sees but little of the _beau monde_ save such as she sometimes meets at the house of Lottie Steele, who is now her best friend, and whose carriage stands at her door on the night of which we write. There was a message from Mr. Steele to John and Kitty Craig, telling them to come immediately, for Lottie, he feared, was dying.

There were tears in Kitty’s eyes, and a throb of pain in her heart, as she read the note and then prepared for the drive. There was a hushed air about the house as if death had already entered there, and the servant who opened the door spoke in a low whisper, as in reply to Kitty’s questions she said, “Very low, and asking for you. Will you go up now?”

Without waiting to throw aside her wrappings Kitty followed up the stairs, past the room where Lottie’s week-old baby girl was sleeping, and on to the chamber where the young mother lay. There was the pallor of death on her face, and her eyes seemed larger and blacker than ever. But they lighted up suddenly and her white cheek flushed when she saw Kitty come in.

“Oh, Mrs. Craig, I am so glad. I wanted to tell you how much I owe you, and that but for you I could not be as happy lying here right in the face of death—for I am going to die, I know it and feel it—but first I want to see baby baptized, and you and your husband must be her sponsors. Please, Am, tell them to bring her in.”

The child was brought, and the clergyman, who had been waiting for the Craigs, was summoned from the parlor below.

“I would call her Kitty,” Lottie said, as she laid her hand on the silken curls of the little one, “but Am wants her named for me. Poor Am! I didn’t think he’d care so much. I’m sorry I have not done better,” she continued, looking up into the face of her husband, who gave one great choking sob as he whispered “Don’t, Lottie, don’t. You _have_ done well;” then taking the little girl in his arms he held it so low that Lottie’s hand rested as in blessing on its head all through the first of the service, until the clergyman took the little one himself and baptized it “Charlotte Maude.”

Then, when all was over and the clergyman gone, Lottie said, “Hold me, Am; raise me up and let me lay my head on your arm while I talk to Mrs. Craig and tell her how much good she has done me, and how her speaking the truth so frankly that night of the musicale, and her refusing to come to my dinner on Sunday, set me to thinking that she possessed something which I did not; and the more I thought about it, and the more I saw of her consistent life, the more I was convinced that my religion was one of mere form, and that my heart had never been touched. I had been confirmed, it is true, but I did not know what for, except that it was the proper thing to do, and was expected of me. There is too much of that kind of thing done, and young people need more instruction, more personal talks than they get oftentimes, and so the church is harmed. I meant to do right, and I kept all the fasts and holy days, and denied myself many things in Lent, and thought I was a saint to do it, and all the while was just as selfish and proud as I could be, and felt above every body, and was bad to Am——”

“No, Lottie, never bad,” and Mr. Steele pressed the hand he held in his, while Kitty wondered to see this grave, quiet man so tender and loving when she had heretofore thought him cold and indifferent.

“Yes, I was bad,” Lottie said. “I’ve never been the wife I ought to have been, and I’m so sorry now, and when I’m gone I want you to think as kindly of me as you can and bring baby up to be just such a woman as Kitty Craig. Not fashionable, Am, though she might be even that and a good woman, too. There are many such, I know, but do not let her put fashion before God. Don’t let her be what I have been. Mrs. Craig will see to her and tell her of her mother, who was a better woman before she died; for I do believe I am, and that the Saviour is with me, and has forgiven even me. I’d like to live for baby’s sake, and show Am that I could be good, but I am willing to die, and ready, I trust; and maybe if I get well I should be bad again; so it is right, and Heaven knows best. Lay me down now, husband, and let Kitty Craig kiss me good-by, and tell me she forgives the cruel words I said when I first saw her, and my neglect after that.”

She seemed like a little child in her weakness and contrition, and Kitty’s tears fell like rain as she gave the farewell kiss, and said that she had long ago forgotten the insult offered her.

“Now go: I breathe better when there is no one here but Am,” Lottie said. “And when you come again, maybe I shall be gone, but I hope I shall be at peace where there is no more pain or temptation to be bad.”

So John and Kitty went out together, and left her alone with her husband, who drew the covering about her, and, smoothing her tumbled pillow, bade her sleep if she could. And Lottie slept at last, while her husband watched beside her with his eyes fixed upon her white face, and a heavy crushing pain in his heart as he thought of losing her now, just as he had a glimpse of what she might be to him, and as he hoped, just as she was beginning to love him.

He had always loved her in his quiet, awkward way—always been proud of her; and though her frivolities and inconsistencies had roused his temper at times, and made him say harsh things to her and of the religion she professed, he had through all been fond of her and believed in God—that in, believed in the God he had learned about in the New England Sunday-school at the foot of the mountain, and he thought of Him now, and for the first time in years his lips moved with the precious words:

“Our Father.”

That prayer had once been so familiar to him, and as he said it now the past came back again, and he was a boy once more, with all the glow and fervor of youth, and Lottie was to him all she had been when he first called her his wife, only he seemed to love her more; and with a choking sob he cried:

“I can’t let Lottie die. Oh, Father, save her for me, and I’ll be a better man.”

Softly he kissed the white hand he held, and his tears dropped upon it, and then a feeble voice said, in some surprise:

“Am, are you crying, or was it a dream? and did you pray for me, and do you love me sure, and want me to get well?”

“Yes, darling, I do,” and the sobs were loud now, and the strong man’s tears fell fast upon the face turned so wonderingly and joyfully toward him.

“Then I will get well,” Lottie said; “or at least I’ll try. I really thought you would be happier without me. I’ve been such a bother, and it was not worth while to make an effort, but, if you do love me and want me, it’s different, and I feel better already. Kiss me, Am, and if I live we’ll both start new and be good—won’t we?”

Lottie did not die, and when Kitty went to inquire for her next morning she found her better and brighter, with an expression of happiness on her face which she had never seen there before.

“I almost went over the river,” she said; “and felt sure I was dying when Am’s voice called me back. Dear old Am, do you think he actually prayed for me, that I might get well, and I thought once he did not believe in praying. Any way he used sometimes to say that my prayers were all humbug, and I guess they were; some of those long ones I used to make when I came from a dancing party at two in the morning, and he was tired and sleepy, and wanted me to turn off the gas. But he is different now, and says he loves me after all I’ve been. Why, I never gave him a speck of love, or kissed him of my own accord. But I’m going to do better; and I guess God let me live to prove to Am that there is a reality in our church as well as in others. He says he believes in the Methodist—his grandmother was one—and when we were first married he used to want me to play those funny hymns about ‘Traveling Home,’ and ‘Bound for the Land of Canaan,’—and he believes a little in the Presbyterians, and some in the Baptists, but not a bit in the Episcopalians—that is, he didn’t till he knew you, who, he thinks, are most as good as a Methodist; and I am going to try and convince him that I am sincere, and mean to do right and care for something besides fashion and dress. I have baby now to occupy my time, and I am glad, for when the spring bonnets and styles come out, my head might be turned again, for I do dote on lace and French flowers. Do you think I ought to wear a mob cap and a serge dress to mortify myself?”

Kitty did not think so; and when two months later she met, down in one of the miserable alleys in the city where want, and misery, and vice reigned supreme, “a love of a” French chip hat, trimmed with a bunch of exquisite pansies and blonde lace, she did not believe that the kindness paid to the poor old paralytic woman who died with her shriveled hand clasped in Lottie Steele’s, and her lips whispering the prayer Lottie had taught her, was less acceptable to God than it would have been had Lottie’s face and form been disfigured by the garb with which some well-meaning women make perfect frights of themselves.

Lottie’s heart was right at last, and Amasa never muttered now nor swore if he could not find his slippers while she was saying her prayers. On the contrary he said them with her, and tried to be a better man, just as he said he would, and at last one morning in June, when even the heated city seemed to laugh in the glorious summer sunshine, he knelt before the altar and himself received the rite of which he had once thought so lightly.

“We are so happy now,” Lottie said to Kitty one day. “And I am so glad of Maudie, though I did not believe in babies once; and Am is just like a young lover and I’d rather have him than all the men in the world if he was fifty his last birth-day, and I am only twenty-five; and do you know I charge it all to you, who have influenced me for good ever since I first saw you, and made that atrocious speech.”

“Let us rather both ascribe to Heaven every aspiration after a holier, better life which we may have,” was Kitty’s reply, but her heart was very happy that day, as she felt that she might perhaps have been an instrument of good to one household at least, and that to have been so was infinitely of more value and productive of more real happiness than getting into society, which she had once thought so desirable, and which, now that she was or could be in it if she chose, seemed so utterly worthless and unsatisfactory.

THE END.

MATTHEW DOYLE. By WILL GARLAND. This is a powerful story, and one with an object. The vital question of lynching is its theme, and arguments on both sides of the subject are ably set forth. The author has written with spirit and drawn his characters with firm and clear strokes. It is original, exciting, and shows clearly the true position of the negro in the south, in an unprejudicial manner. It is a great book. Cloth bound. 1.25

CONGRESSMAN HARDIE. By COURTNEY WELLINGTON. A self-made man, and a thorough democrat like Congressman Hardie, will always be an interesting character, and one that appeals to all genuine Americans. The romance pervading the pages of the book is a delicate one, and skilfully interwoven with the various political events. The heroine is an original conception on the part of the writer, and we see her in some phases of city life not before portrayed in romance. Cloth bound. 1.25

AMY WARREN. By A. SYDNEY LOGAN. Author of “Not on the Chart.” The appeal of this story lies in its naturalness. The hero, Harold Littleton, is not an impossible conception, but a real man of flesh and blood, faults and virtues. A new phase of American country life is also set forth with great fidelity. The worth of this book to the average reader is in the immediate refreshment and absolute change of ideas he can get by opening its pages anywhere. It contains some fine imaginative work and has heroic love for its theme. Cloth bound, gilt top. 1.50

KATHARINE BARRY. By HARRY HUGHES. The sacrifice of sentiment to religion is always a fascinating topic. In the case of this novel, it is particularly so, because of the earnestness and evident sincerity of the devoted young girl. She was only a farmer’s daughter, but she passed through most extraordinary experiences, even to being the medium of psychic-phenomena. It is a most interesting book. Cloth bound, gilt top. 1.25

MISS HOGG; The American Heiress. By MRS. V. C. JONES. The adventures of an American girl in London are used as the foundation of this story. Miss Hogg was an uncultured heiress, bent on capturing a coronet. In furtherance of her plans, she uses almost desperate means, and places herself in very perilous situations. Her American wit, however, helps her safely through them all, and, at the close of the book she is respected and happy. Cloth bound, gilt top. 1.50

INVISIBLE LIGHT; or, The Electric Theory of Creation. By GEORGE W. WARDER. “He holds there are only three elemental substances in nature: spirit, electricity and matter. Matter is controlled by electricity, and electricity is controlled by spirit intelligence. That in discovering electricity man has found the working force of Deity, and uses it in all fields of human effort. The arguments are convincing, and the book attractive and entertaining.”—_The Kansas City Star._ Beautifully bound in cloth. 1.25

GETTYSBURG, THEN AND NOW. THE FIELD OF AMERICAN VALOR. By J. M. VANDERSLICE. The new illustrated History of Gettysburg, where and how the Regiments fought and the troops they encountered. A magnificent Quarto Volume with 125 full page illustrations, views of the battle ground and the monuments now on the field. This magnificent volume is the best and most concise history of the great battle. Octavo 492 pages, Cloth bound. 3.50

THE VEIL WITHDRAWN. By BERTON J. MADDUX. A tragic beginning makes a happy ending all the more agreeable. The opening pages of this entertaining book relate a murder, and not until the end of the story is the identity of the criminal established. The interest is chained by this sustained mystery, and its denouement is a total surprise. It is a spirited and most interesting work. Cloth bound. 1.25

THE MEMOIRS OF VICTOR HUGO. Translated by JOHN W. HARDING. “Great scenes described by the most vivid word-artist of the century.”—_New York World._ “Full of the most characteristic bits, sentences or whole paragraphs that no one but Hugo could have written.”—_New York Times Saturday Review._ Cloth bound, gilt top. 2.50

RISING FORTUNES. By JOHN OXENHAM. Author of “The Princess of Vascovy,” “God’s Prisoner,” etc. The London advent of two poor, but talented young Scotchmen from the country, is the foundation of this splendid story. Their various adventures are carefully depicted in a manner that rivets the attention, and nothing is overdrawn. In this lies the charm of the book, rendering it beyond compare with stories of its class. The writer is gifted, and the work sure to meet a cordial reception. Cloth bound. 1.50

THE DEGENERATION OF DOROTHY. By FRANK KINSELLA. This story is extraordinarily clever, and will please the honest reader in search of something unusual. The theme is the transfusion of blood and its wonderful effect upon character. Poor helpless Dorothy had to degenerate, but happily, science explained the phenomenon. The writer has produced a fascinating and original book, and one lays it down with the earnest desire to read more from the same pen. Cloth bound. 1.50

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DON COSME. By T. H. TYNDALE. The author here introduces us to a wealthy Southern family. The favorite daughter loves an alleged Mexican, Don Cosme, who is proven to have colored blood in his veins. The scene of the girl spurning him at the altar is very impressive and dramatic. It is an unsavory incident, but one fraught with significance. There is unlimited food for thought throughout the book, which should especially appeal to Southerners. The essential idea of the work is treated with great force and fulness. Cloth bound. 1.25

JACK CREWS. By MARTHA FRYE BOGGS. A brilliant new novel, dedicated to the railroad engineers of America, one of whom is the hero of the story. The plot is well sustained, the hero an impressive character. The book is full of action, it is dramatic and will hold the reader’s attention to the end. Cloth bound. 1.50

THE FUNNY SIDE OF POLITICS. By GEORGE S. HILTON. Nothing has ever been written like this book. It gives many amusing stories told in the House and Senate in Washington. The book is replete with anecdotes of many living politicians. Their names are given, as well as the occasion which called forth the stories. Third edition. Cloth bound. 1.25

THE SLAVE OF THE LAMP. By HENRY SETON MERRIMAN. Author of “The Sowers,” “Young Mistley,” “Dross,” etc. There is a ring and thrill to this story due in part to its unusual theme. It is written with all the characteristic power of the author, and will meet a tremendous sale. Illustrated and Cloth bound, gilt top. 1.50

THE SACRIFICE OF SILENCE. By EDOUARD ROD. Translated by JOHN W. HARDING. M. Rod shows, with consummate art and in two widely contrasting examples, that silence under certain conditions constitutes a heroic sacrifice, so generous in its abnegation, and in one case, in which the unblemished reputation of a wife and mother is involved, so unflinchingly steadfast, as to impart a character of nobleness and grandeur to the sin of prohibited love and its inevitable accompaniments, lying, deceit and hypocrisy. Cloth bound, gilt top. 1.50

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THE MAN WHO DARED. By JOHN P. RITTER. Mr. Ritter has achieved a work of rare interest. It is a great historical picture of the time of Robespierre, in which fact and fancy are welded together in a fine realization of the spirit of the times. It has all the elements of a genuine romance, and is an unusually fascinating historical romance. Illustrated. Cloth bound, gilt top. 1.25

THE DAY OF TEMPTATION. By WM. LE QUEUX. This is one of this author’s best stories. It is thrilling and realistic, and bears out a mystery which carries the reader through a labyrinth of strange experiences. Cloth bound. 1.50

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WATERS THAT PASS AWAY. By N. B. WINSTON. “There is a deep lesson of life to be learned from a book like this, and in it one may study character, and the infallible trend of social consequences, sorrow ever following sin, and sin in its turn yielding to joy when true repentance follows after.”—_Philadelphia Item._ Cloth bound. 1.25

THE RETURN OF THE O’MAHONY. By HAROLD FREDERIC. To those who have read “The Damnation of Theron Ware,” and “Seth’s Brother’s Wife,” there will be found in this extremely delightful novel, “The Return of the O’Mahony,” a book that will gratify the reader much more than any other book of the times. Illustrated, and with portrait of the author. Cloth bound, deckle edge, gilt top. 1.50

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_.