BOOK I.

A VILLAGE MYSTERY.

I.

A WOMAN'S FACE.

It was verging towards seven o'clock. The train had just left Marston station, and two young men stood on the platform surveying with very different eyes the stretch of country landscape lying before them. Frank Etheridge wore an eager aspect, the aspect of the bright, hopeful, energetic lawyer which he was, and his quick searching gaze flashed rapidly from point to point as if in one of the scattered homes within his view he sought an answer to some problem at present agitating his mind. He was a stranger in Marston.

His companion, Edgar Sellick, wore a quieter air, or at least one more restrained. He was a native of the place, and was returning to it after a short and fruitless absence in the west, to resume his career of physician amid the scenes of his earliest associations. Both were tall, well-made, and handsome, and, to draw at once a distinction between them which will effectually separate their personalities, Frank Etheridge was a man to attract the attention of men, and Edgar Sellick that of women; the former betraying at first glance all his good qualities in the keenness of his eye and the frankness of his smile, and the latter hiding his best impulses under an air of cynicism so allied to melancholy that imagination was allowed free play in his behalf. They had attended the same college and had met on the train by chance.

"I am expecting old Jerry, with a buggy," announced Edgar, looking indifferently down the road. The train was on time but Jerry was not, both of which facts were to be expected. "Ah, here he comes. You will ride to the tavern with me?"

"With pleasure," was Frank's cheerful reply; "but what will you do with Jerry? He's a mile too large, as you see yourself, to be a third party in a buggy ride."

"No doubt about that, but Jerry can walk; it will help to rob him of a little of his avoirdupois. As his future physician I shall prescribe it. I cannot have you miss the supper I have telegraphed for at Henly's."

And being a determined man, he carried this scheme through, to Jerry's manifest but cheerfully accepted discomfort. As they were riding off, Edgar leaned from the buggy, and Frank heard him say to his panting follower:

"Is it known in town that I am coming to-night?" To which that panting follower shrilly replied: "Ay, sir, and Tim Jones has lit a bond-fire and Jack Skelton hoisted a flag, so glad they be to have you back. Old Dudgeon was too intimate with the undertaker, sir. We hopes as you will turn a cold shoulder to him--the undertaker, I mean."

At which Frank observed his friend give one of his peculiar smiles which might mean so little and might mean so much, but whatever it meant had that touch of bittersweet in it which at once hurts and attracts.

"You like your profession?" Frank abruptly asked.

Edgar turned, surveyed the other questioningly for a moment, then remarked:

"Not as you like yours. Law seems to be a passion with you."

Frank laughed. "Why not? I have no other love, why not give all my heart to that?"

Edgar did not answer; he was looking straight before him at the lights in the village they were now rapidly approaching.

"How strange it is we should have met in this way," exclaimed the young lawyer. "It is mighty fortunate for me, whatever it may be for you. You know all the people in town, and perhaps can tell me what will shorten my stay into hours."

"Do you call that fortunate?" interrogated the other with one of his quiet smiles.

"Well, no, only from a business view. But you see, Edgar, it is so short a time since I have thought of anything but business, that I have hardly got used to the situation. I should be sorry, now I come to think of it, to say good-by to you before I heard how you had enjoyed life since we parted on a certain Commencement day. You look older, while I----"

He laughed. How merry the sound, and how the growing twilight seemed to brighten at it! Edgar looked for a moment as if he envied him that laugh, then he said:

"You are not tripped up by petty obstacles. You have wings to your feet and soar above small disappointments. My soles cling to the ground and encounter there difficulty after difficulty. Hence the weariness with which I gain anything. But your business here,--what is it? You say I can aid you. How?"

"Oh, it is a long story which will help to enliven our evening meal. Let us wait till then. At present I am interested in what I see before me. Snug homes, Edgar, and an exquisite landscape."

The other, whose face for the last few minutes had been gradually settling into sterner and sterner lines, nodded automatically but did not look up from the horse he was driving.

"Who lives in these houses? Old friends of yours?" Frank continued.

Edgar nodded again, whipped his horse and for an instant allowed his eyes to wander up and down the road.

"I used to know them all," he acknowledged, "but I suppose there have been changes."

His tone had altered, his very frame had stiffened. Frank looked at him curiously.

"You seem to be in a hurry," he remarked. "I enjoy this twilight drive, and--haloo! this is an odd old place we are coming to. Suppose you pull up and let me look at it."

His companion, with a strange glance and an awkward air of dissatisfaction, did as he was bid, and Frank leaning from the buggy gazed long and earnestly at the quaint old house and grounds which had attracted his attention. Edgar did not follow his example but sat unmoved, looking fixedly at the last narrow strip of orange light that separated night from day on the distant horizon.

"I feel as if I had come upon something uncanny," murmured Frank. "Look at that double row of poplars stretching away almost as far as we can see? Is it not an ideal Ghost's Walk, especially in this hour of falling shadows. I never saw anything so suggestive in a country landscape before. Each tree looks like a spectre hob-nobbing with its neighbor. Tell me that this is a haunted house which guards this avenue. Nothing less weird should dominate a spot so peculiar."

"Frank, I did not know you were so fanciful," exclaimed the other, lashing his horse with a stinging whip.

"Wait, wait! I am not fanciful, it is the place that is curious. If you were not in a hurry for your supper you would see it too. Come, give it a look. You may have observed it a hundred times before, but by this light you must acknowledge that it looks like a place with a history. Come, now, don't it?"

Edgar drew in his horse for the second time and impatiently allowed his glance to follow in the direction indicated by his friend. What he saw has already been partially described. But details will not be amiss here, as the house and its surroundings were really unique, and bespoke an antiquity of which few dwellings can now boast even in the most historic parts of Connecticut.

The avenue of poplars which had first attracted Frank's attention had this notable peculiarity, that it led from nowhere to nowhere. That is, it was not, as is usual in such cases, made the means of approach to the house, but on the contrary ran along its side from road to rear, thick, compact, and gruesome. The house itself was of timber, and was both gray and weather-beaten. It was one of the remnants of that old time when a family homestead rambled in all directions under a huge roof which accommodated itself to each new projection, like the bark to its tree. In this case the roof sloped nearly to the ground on one side, while on the other it beetled over a vine-clad piazza. In front of the house and on both sides of it rose a brick wall that, including the two rows of trees within its jealous cordon, shut off the entire premises from those of the adjoining neighbors, and gave to the whole place an air of desolation and remoteness which the smoke rising from its one tall chimney did not seem to soften or relieve. Yet old as it all was, there was no air of decay about the spot, nor was the garden neglected or the vines left untrimmed.

"The home of a hermit," quoth Frank. "You know who lives there of course, but if you did not I would wager that it is some old scion of the past----"

Suddenly he stopped, suddenly his hand was laid on the horse's rein falling somewhat slack in the grasp of his companion. A lamp had at that instant been brought into one of the front rooms of the house he was contemplating, and the glimpse he thus caught of the interior attracted his eyes and even arrested the gaze of the impatient Edgar. For the woman who held the lamp was no common one, and the face which showed above it was one to stop any man who had an eye for the beautiful, the inscrutable, and the tragic. As Frank noted it and marked its exquisite lines, its faultless coloring, and that air of profound and mysterious melancholy which made it stand out distinctly in the well-lighted space about it, he tightened his grip on the reins he had snatched, till the horse stood still in the road, and Edgar impatiently watching him, perceived that the gay look had crept from his face, leaving there an expression of indefinable yearning which at once transfigured and ennobled it.

"What beauty! What unexpected beauty!" Frank whispered at last. "Did you ever see its like, Edgar?"

The answer came with Edgar's most cynical smile:

"Wait till she turns her head."

And at that moment she did turn it. On the instant Frank drew in his breath and Edgar expected to see him drop his hand from the reins and sink back disillusionized and indifferent. But he did not. On the contrary, his attitude betrayed a still deeper interest and longing, and murmuring, "How sad! poor girl!" he continued to gaze till Edgar, with one strange, almost shrinking look in the direction of the unconscious girl now moving abstractedly across the room, tore the reins from his hands and started the horse again towards their place of destination.

Frank, whom the sudden movement seemed to awaken as from a dream, glanced for a moment almost angrily at his companion, then he settled back in his seat, saying nothing till the lights of the tavern became visible, when he roused himself and inquired:

"Who is that girl, Edgar, and how did she become so disfigured?"

"I don't know," was the short reply; "she has always been so, I believe, at least since I remember seeing her. It looks like the scar of a wound, but I have never heard any explanation given of it."

"Her name, Edgar?"

"Hermione Cavanagh."

"You know her?"

"Somewhat."

"Are you"--the words came with a pant, shortly, intensely, and as if forced from him--"in love--with her?"

"No." Edgar's passion seemed for the moment to be as great as that of the other. "How came you to think of such a thing?"

"Because--because," Frank whispered almost humbly, "you seemed so short in your replies, and because, I might as well avow it, she seems to me one to command the love of all men."

"Well, sirs, here I be as quick as you," shouted a voice in their rear, and old Jerry came lumbering forward, just in time to hold their horse as they alighted at the tavern.

II

A LAWYER'S ADVENTURE.

Supper that night did not bring to these two friends all the enjoyment which they had evidently anticipated. In the first place it was continually interrupted by greetings to the young physician whose unexpected return to his native town had awakened in all classes a decided enthusiasm. Then Frank was moody, he who was usually gaiety itself. He wanted to talk about the beautiful and unfortunate Miss Cavanagh, and Edgar did not, and this created embarrassment between them, an embarrassment all the more marked that there seemed to be some undefined reason for Edgar's reticence not to be explained by any obvious cause. At length Frank broke out impetuously:

"If you won't tell me anything about this girl, I must look up some one who will. Those cruel marks on her face have completed the charm of her beauty, and not till I know something of their history and of her, will I go to sleep to-night. So much for the impression which a woman's face can make upon an unsusceptible man."

"Frank," observed the other, coldly, "I should say that your time might be much better employed in relating to me the cause for your being in Marston."

The young lawyer started, shook himself, and laughed.

"Oh, true, I had forgotten," said he, and supper being now over he got up and began pacing the floor. "Do you know any one here by the name of Harriet Smith?"

"No," returned the other, "but I have been away a year, and many persons may have come into town in that time."

"But I mean an old resident," Frank explained, "a lady of years, possibly a widow."

"I never heard of such a person," rejoined Edgar. "Are you sure there is such a woman in town? I should be apt to know it if there were."

"I am not sure she is here now, or for that matter that she is living, but if she is not and I learn the names and whereabouts of any heirs she may have left behind her, I shall be satisfied with the results of my journey. Harriet Smith! Surely you have heard of her."

"No," Edgar protested, "I have not."

"It is odd," remarked Frank, wrinkling his brows in some perplexity. "I thought I should have no trouble in tracing her. Not that I care," he avowed with brightening countenance. "On the contrary, I can scarcely quarrel with a fact that promises to detain me in your company for a few days."

"No? Then your mind has suddenly changed in that regard," Edgar dryly insinuated.

Frank blushed. "I think not," was his laughing reply. "But let me tell my story. It may interest you in a pursuit that I begin to see is likely to possess difficulties." And lighting a cigar, he sat down with his friend by the open window. "I do not suppose you know much about Brooklyn, or, if you do, that you are acquainted with that portion of it which is called Flatbush. I will therefore explain that this outlying village is a very old one, antedating the Revolution. Though within a short car-drive from the great city, it has not yet given up its life to it, but preserves in its one main street at least, a certain individuality which still connects it with the past. My office, as you know, is in New York, but I have several clients in Brooklyn and one or two in Flatbush, so I was not at all surprised, though considerably put out, when one evening, just as I was about to start for the theatre, a telegram was handed me by the janitor, enjoining me to come without delay to Flatbush prepared to draw up the will of one, Cynthia Wakeham, lying, as the sender of the telegram declared, at the point of death. Though I knew neither this name, nor that of the man who signed it, which was Hiram Huckins, and had no particular desire to change the place of my destination at that hour, I had really no good reason for declining the business thus offered me. So making a virtue of necessity, I gave up the theatre and started instead for Flatbush, which, from the house where I lodge in upper New York, is a good hour and a half's ride even by the way of the bridge and the elevated roads. It was therefore well on towards ten o'clock before I arrived in the shaded street which in the daylight and in the full brightness of a summer's sun I had usually found so attractive, but which at night and under the circumstances which had brought me there looked both sombre and forbidding. However I had not come upon an errand of pleasure, so I did not spend much time in contemplating my surroundings, but beckoning to the conductor of the street-car on which I was riding, I asked him if he knew Mrs. Wakeham's house, and when he nodded, asked him to set me down before it. I thought he gave me a queer look, but as his attention was at that moment diverted, I could not be sure of it, and before he came my way again the car had stopped and he was motioning to me to alight.

"'That is the house,' said he, pointing to two huge gate-posts glimmering whitely in the light of a street-lamp opposite, and I was on the sidewalk and in front of the two posts before I remembered that a man on the rear platform of the car had muttered as I stepped by him: 'A visitor for Widow Wakeham, eh; she _must_ be sick, then!'

"The house stood back a short distance from the street, and as I entered the gate, which by the way looked as if it would tumble down if I touched it, I could see nothing but a gray mass with one twinkling light in it. But as I drew nearer I became aware that it was not a well-kept and hospitable mansion towards which I was tending, however imposing might be its size and general structure. If only from the tangled growth of the shrubbery about me and the long dank stalks of the weeds that lay as if undisturbed by mortal feet upon the walk, I could gather that whatever fortune Mrs. Wakeham might have to leave she had not expended much in the keeping of her home. But it was upon reaching the house I experienced the greatest surprise. There were walls before me, no doubt, and a huge portico, but the latter was hanging as it were by faith to supports so dilapidated that even the darkness of that late hour could not hide their ruin or the impending fall of the whole structure. So old, so uncared-for, and so utterly out of keeping with the errand upon which I had come looked the whole place that I instinctively drew back, assured that the conductor had made some mistake in directing me thither. But no sooner had I turned my back upon the house, than a window was thrown up over my head and I heard the strangely eager voice of a man say:

"'This is the place, sir. Wait, and I will open the door for you.'

"I did as he bade me, though not without some reluctance. The voice, for all its tone of anxiety, sounded at once false and harsh, and I instinctively associated with it a harsh and false face. The house, too, did not improve in appearance upon approach. The steps shook under my tread, and I could not but notice by the faint light sifting through the bushes from the lamp on the other side of the way, that the balustrades had been pulled from their places, leaving only gaping holes to mark where they had once been. The door was intact, but in running my hand over it I discovered that the mouldings had been stripped from its face, and that the knocker, hanging as it did by one nail, was ready to fall at the first provocation. If Cynthia Wakeham lived here, it would be interesting to know the extent of her wealth. As there seemed to be some delay in the opening of the door, I had time to note that the grounds (all of these houses have grounds about them) were of some extent, but, as I have said, in a manifest condition of overgrowth and neglect. As I mused upon the contrast they must afford in the bright daylight to the wide and well-kept lawns of the more ambitious owners on either side, a footstep sounded on the loose boards which had evidently been flung down at one side of the house as a sort of protection to the foot from the darkness and mud of the neglected path, and a woman's form swung dimly into view, laden with a great pile of what looked to me like brushwood. As she passed she seemed to become conscious of my presence, and, looking up, she let the huge bundle slip slowly from her shoulders till it lay in the darkness at her feet.

"'Are you,' she whispered, coming close to the foot of the steps, 'going in there?'

"'Yes,' I returned, struck by the mingled surprise and incredulity in her tone.

"She stood still a minute, then came up a step.

"'Are you a minister?' she asked.

"'No,' I laughed; 'why?'

"She seemed to reason with herself before saying: 'No one ever goes into that house; I thought perhaps you did not know. They won't have any one. Would you mind telling me,' she went on, in a hungry whisper almost thrilling to hear, coming as it did through the silence and darkness of the night, 'what you find in the house? I will be at the gate, sir, and----'

"She paused, probably awed by the force of my exclamation, and picking up her bundle of wet boughs, slunk away, but not without turning more than once before she reached the gate. Scarcely had she disappeared into the street when a window went up in a neighboring house. At the same moment, some one, I could not tell whether it was a man or a woman, came up the path as far as the first trees and there paused, while a shrill voice called out:

"'They never unlocks that door; visitors ain't wanted.'

"Evidently, if I were not admitted soon I should have the whole neighborhood about me.

"I lifted the knocker, but it came off in my hand. Angry at the mischance, and perhaps a little moved by the excitement of my position, I raised the broken piece of iron and gave a thundering knock on the rotten panels before me. Instantly the door opened, creaking ominously as it did so, and a man stood in the gap with a wretched old kerosene lamp in his hand. The apologetic leer on his evil countenance did not for a moment deceive me.

"'I beg your pardon,' he hurriedly exclaimed, and his voice showed he was a man of education, notwithstanding his forlorn and wretched appearance, 'but the old woman had a turn just as you came, and I could not leave her.'

"I looked at him, and instinct told me to quit the spot and not enter a house so vilely guarded. For the man was not only uncouth to the last degree in dress and aspect, but sinister in expression and servilely eager in bearing.

"'Won't you come in?' he urged. 'The old woman is past talking, but she can make signs; perhaps an hour from now she will not be able to do even that.'

"'Do you allude to the woman who wishes to make her will?' I asked.

"'Yes,' he answered, greedily, 'Cynthia Wakeham, my sister.' And he gently pushed the door in a way that forced me to enter or show myself a coward.

"I took heart and went in. What poverty I beheld before me in the light of that solitary smoking lamp! If the exterior of the house bore the marks of devastation, what shall I say of the barren halls and denuded rooms which now opened before me? Not a chair greeted my eyes, though a toppling stool here and there showed that people sat in this place. Nor did I see a table, though somewhere in some remote region beyond the staircase I heard the clatter of plates, as if eating were also known in this home of almost ostentatious penury. Staircase I say, but I should have said steps, for the balustrades were missing here just as they had been missing without, and not even a rail remained to speak of old-time comfort and prosperity.

"'I am very poor,' humbly remarked the man, answering my look of perplexity. 'It is my sister who has the money.' And moving towards the stairs, he motioned me to ascend.

"Even then I recoiled, not knowing what to make of this adventure; but hearing a hollow groan from above, uttered in tones unmistakably feminine, I remembered my errand and went up, followed so closely by the man, that his breath, mingled with the smell of that vile lamp, seemed to pant on my shoulder. I shall never smell kerosene again without recalling the sensations of that moment.

"Arriving at the top of the stair, up which my distorted shadow had gone before me, I saw an open door and went in. A woman was lying in one corner on a hard and uncomfortable bed, a woman whose eyes drew me to her side before a word had been spoken.

"She was old and in the last gasp of some fatal disease. But it was not this which impressed me most. It was the searching look with which she greeted me,--a piteous, hunted look, like that of some wild animal driven to bay and turning upon her conqueror for some signs of relenting or pity. It made the haggard face eloquent; it assured me without a word that some great wrong had been done or was about to be done, and that I must show myself at once her friend if I would gain her confidence.

"Advancing to her side, I spoke to her kindly, asking if she were Cynthia Wakeham, and if she desired the services of a lawyer.

"She at once nodded painfully but unmistakably, and, lifting her hand, pointed to her lips and shook her head.

"'She means that she cannot speak', explained the man, in a pant, over my shoulder.

"Moving a step aside in my disgust, I said to her, not to him:

"'But you can hear?'

"Her intelligent eye responded before her head could add its painful acquiescence.

"'And you have property to leave?'

"'This house', answered the man.

"My eyes wandered mechanically to the empty cupboards about me from which the doors had been wrenched and, as I now saw from the looks of the fireplace, burned.

"'The ground--the ground is worth something,' quoth the man.

"'The avidity with which he spoke satisfied me at least upon one point--_he_ was the expectant heir.

"'Your name?' I asked, turning sharply upon him.

"'Hiram Huckins.'

"It was the name attached to the telegram.

"'And you are the brother of this woman?'

"'Yes, yes.'

"I had addressed him, but I looked at her. She answered my look with a steadfast gaze, but there was no dissent in it, and I considered that point settled.

"'She is a married woman, then?'

"'A widow; husband died long years ago.'

"'Any children?'

"'No.' And I saw in her face that he spoke the truth.

"'But you and she have brothers or sisters? You are not her only relative?'

"'I am the only one who has stuck by her,' he sullenly answered. 'We did have a sister, but she is gone; fled from home years ago; lost in the great world; dead, perhaps. _She_ don't care for her; ask her.'

"I did ask her, but the haggard face said nothing. The eyes burned, but they had a waiting look.

"'To whom do you want to leave your property?' I inquired of her pointedly.

"Had she glanced at the man, had her face even changed, or so much as a tremor shook her rigid form, I might have hesitated. But the quiet way in which she lifted her hand and pointed with one finger in his direction while she looked straight at me, convinced me that whatever was wrong, her mind was made up as to the disposal of her property. So taking out my papers, I sat down on the rude bench drawn up beside the bed and began to write.

"The man stood behind me with the lamp. He was so eager and bent over me so closely that the smell of the lamp and his nearness were more than I could bear.

"'Set down the lamp,' I cried. 'Get a table--something--don't lean over me like that.'

"But there was nothing, actually nothing for him to put the lamp on, and I was forced to subdue my disgust and get used as best I could to his presence and to his great shadow looming on the wall behind us. But I could not get used to her eyes hurrying me, and my hand trembled as I wrote.

"'Have you any name but Cynthia?' I inquired, looking up.

"She painfully shook her head.

"'You had better tell me what her husband's name was,' I suggested to the brother.

"'John Lapham Wakeham,' was the quick reply.

"I wrote down both names. Then I said, looking intently at the dying widow:

"'As you cannot speak, you must make signs. Shake your hand when you wish to say no, and move it up and down when you wish to say yes. Do you understand?'

"She signalled somewhat impatiently that she did, and then, lifting her hand with a tremulous movement, pointed anxiously towards a large Dutch clock, which was the sole object of adornment in the room.

"'She urges you to hurry,' whispered the man. 'Make it short, make it short. The doctor I called in this morning said she might die any minute.'

"As from her appearance I judged this to be only too possible, I hastily wrote a few words more, and then asked:

"'Is this property all that you have to leave?'

"I had looked at her, though I knew it would be the man who would answer.

"'Yes, yes, this house,' he cried. 'Put it strong; this house and all there is in it.'

"I thought of its barren rooms and empty cupboards, and a strange fancy seized me. Going straight to the woman, I leaned over her and said:

"'Is it your desire to leave all that you possess to this brother? Real property and personal, this house, and also everything it contains?'

"She did not answer, even by a sign, but pointed again to the clock.

"'She means that you are to go right on,' he cried. 'And indeed you must,' he pursued, eagerly. 'She won't be able to sign her name if you wait much longer.'

"I felt the truth of this, and yet I hesitated.

"'Where are the witnesses?' I asked. 'She must have two witnesses to her signature.'

"'Won't I do for one?' he inquired.

"'No,' I returned; 'the one benefited by a will is disqualified from witnessing it.'

"He looked confounded for a moment. Then he stepped to the door and shouted, 'Briggs! Briggs!'

"As if in answer there came a clatter as of falling dishes, and as proof of the slavery which this woman had evidently been under to his avarice, she gave a start, dying as she was, and turned upon him with a frightened gaze, as if she expected from him an ebullition of wrath.

"'Briggs, is there a light in Mr. Thompson's house?'

"'Yes,' answered a gruff voice from the foot of the stairs.

"'Go then, and ask him or the first person you see there, if he will come in here for a minute. Be very polite and don't swear, or I won't pay you the money I promised you. Say that Mrs. Wakeham is dying, and that the lawyer is drawing up her will. Get James Sotherby to come too, and if he won't do it, somebody else who is respectable. Everything must be very legal, sir,' he explained, turning to me, 'very legal.'

"Not knowing what to think of this man, but seeing only one thing to do, I nodded, and asked the woman whom I should name as executor. She at once indicated her brother, and as I wrote in his name and concluded the will, she watched me with an intentness that made my nerves creep, though I am usually anything but susceptible to such influences. When the document was ready I rose and stood at her side in some doubt of the whole transaction. Was it her will I had expressed in the paper I held before me, or his? Had she been constrained by his influence to do what she was doing, or was her mind free to act and but obeying its natural instincts? I determined to make one effort at finding out. Turning towards the man, I said firmly:

"'Before Mrs. Wakeham signs this will she must know exactly what it contains. I can read it to her, but I prefer her to read the paper for herself. Get her glasses, then, if she needs them, and bring them here at once, or I throw up this business and take the document away with me out of the house.'

"'But she has no glasses,' he protested; 'they were broken long ago.'

"'Get them,' I cried; 'or get yours,--she shall not sign that document till you do.'

"But he stood hesitating, loth, as I now believe, to leave us together, though that was exactly what I desired, which she, seeing, feverishly clutched my sleeve, and, with a force of which I should not have thought her capable, made wild gestures to the effect that I should not delay any longer, but read it to her myself.

"Seeing by this, as I thought, that her own feelings were, notwithstanding my doubts, really engaged in the same direction as his, I desisted from my efforts to separate the two, if it were only for a moment, and read the will aloud. It ran thus:

"The last will and testament of Cynthia Wakeham, widow of John Lapham Wakeham, of Flatbush, Kings County, New York.

"First: I direct all my just debts and funeral expenses to be paid.

"Second: I give, devise, and bequeath to my brother, Hiram Huckins, all the property, real and personal, which I own, or to which I may be entitled, at the time of my death, and I appoint him the sole executor of this my last will and testament.

"Witness my hand this fifth day of June, in the year eighteen hundred and eighty-eight.

"Signed, published, and declared by the } Testatrix to be her last will and testament, } in our presence who, at her request and } in her presence and in the presence of } each other, have subscribed our names } hereto as witnesses, on this 5th day of } June, 1888. }

"'Is that the expression of your wishes?' I asked, when I had finished.

"She nodded, and reached out her hand for the pen.

"'You must wait,' said I, 'for the witnesses.'

"But even as I spoke their approach was heard, and Huckins was forced to go to the door with the lamp, for the hall was pitch dark and the stairs dangerous. As he turned his back upon us, I thought Mrs. Wakeham moved and opened her lips, but I may have been mistaken, for his black and ominous shadow lay over her face, and I could discern but little of its expression.

"'Is there anything you want?' I asked her, rising and going to the bedside.

"But Huckins was alert to all my movements, if he had stepped for a moment away.

"'Give her water,' he cried, wheeling sharply about. And pointing to a broken glass standing on the floor at her side, he watched me while I handed it to her.

"'She mus'n't give out now,' he pursued, with one eye on us and the other on the persons coming upstairs.

"'She will not,' I returned, seeing her face brighten at the sound of approaching steps.

"'It's Miss Thompson and Mr. Dickey,' now spoke up the gruff voice of Briggs from the foot of the steps. 'No other folks was up, so I brought them along.'

"The young woman, who at this instant appeared in the doorway, blushed and cast a shy look over her shoulder at the fresh-faced man who followed her.

"'It's all right, Minnie,' immediately interposed that genial personage, with a cheerful smile; 'every one knows we are keeping company and mean to be married as soon as the times improve.'

"'Yes, every one knows,' she sighed, and stepped briskly into the room, her intelligent face and kindly expression diffusing a cheer about her such as the dismal spot had doubtless lacked for years.

"I heard afterward that this interesting couple had been waiting for the times to improve, for the last fifteen years."

III.

CONTINUATION OF A LAWYER'S ADVENTURE.

"The two witnesses had scarcely entered the room before the dying woman stretched out her hand again for the pen. As I handed it to her and placed the document before her on my portfolio, I asked:

"'Do you declare this paper to be your last will and testament and do you request these persons to witness it?'

"She bowed a quick acquiescence, and put the pen at the place I pointed out to her.

"'Shall I support your hand?' I pursued, fearful she would not have the strength to complete the task.

"But she shook her head and wrote her name in hastily, with a feverish energy that astonished me. Expecting to see her drop back exhausted if not lifeless as the pen left the paper, I drew the document away and bent to support her. But she did not need my assistance. Indeed she looked stronger than before, and what was still more astonishing, seemed even more anxious and burningly eager.

"'Is she holding up till the witnesses have affixed their signatures?' I inwardly queried. And intent upon relieving her, I hastily explained to them the requirements of the case, and did not myself breathe easily till I saw their two names below hers. Then I felt that she could rest; but to my surprise but one sigh of relief rose in that room, and that was from the cringing, cruel-eyed inheritor, who, at the first intimation that the document was duly signed and attested, sprang from his corner with such a smile that the place seemed to grow hideous, and I drew involuntarily back.

"'Let me have it,' were his first words. 'I have lived in this hole, and for fifteen years made myself a slave to her whims, till I have almost rotted away like the place itself. And now I want my reward. Let me have the will.'

"His hand was on the paper and in my surprise I had almost yielded it up to him, when another hand seized it, and the dying, gasping woman, mumbling and mouthing, pointed for the third time to the clock and then to one corner of the paper, trying to make me understand something I entirely failed to comprehend.

"'What is it?' I asked. 'What do you want? Is not the will to your liking?'

"'Yes, yes,' her frenzied nods seemed to say, and yet she continued pointing to the clock and then to the paper while the angry man before her stared and muttered in a mixture of perplexity and alarm which added no little to the excitement of the harrowing scene.

"'Let me see if I can tell what she wants,' suddenly observed the young woman who had signed the paper as a witness. And bringing her sweet womanly face around where the rolling eye of the woman could see her, she asked with friendly interest in her tone, 'Do you wish the time of day written on the will?'

"Oh, the relief that swept over that poor woman's tortured countenance! She nodded and looked up at me so confidingly that in despite of the oddity of the request I rapidly penned after the date, the words 'at half-past ten o'clock P.M.,' and caused the witnesses to note the addition.

"This seemed to satisfy her, and she sank back with a sign that I was to yield to her brother's demand and give him the paper he coveted, and when I hesitated, started up again with such a frenzied appeal in her face that in the terror of seeing her die before our eyes, I yielded it to his outstretched hand, expecting at the most to see him put it in his pocket.

"But no, the moment he felt it in his grasp, he set down the lamp, and, without a look in her direction or a word of thanks to me or the two neighbors who had come to his assistance, started rapidly from the room. Disturbed and doubting my own wisdom in thus yielding to an impulse of humanity which may be called weakness by such strong-minded men as yourself, I turned to follow him, but the woman's trembling hand again stopped me; and convinced at last that I was alarming myself unnecessarily and that she had had as much pleasure in making him her heir as he in being made so, I turned to pay her my adieux, when the expression of her face, changed now from what it had been to one of hope and trembling delight, made me pause again in wonder, and almost prepared me for the low and thrilling whisper which now broke from her lips in distinct tones.

"'Is he gone?'

"'Then you can speak,' burst from the young woman.

"The widow gave her an eloquent look.

"'I have not spoken,' said she, 'for two days; I have been saving my strength. Hark!' she suddenly whispered. 'He has no light, he will pitch over the landing. No, no, he has gone by it in safety, he has reached----' she paused and listened intently, trembling as she did so--'Will he go into _that_ room?--Run! follow! see if he has dared--but no, he has gone down to the kitchen,' came in quick glad relief from her lips as a distant door shut softly at the back end of the house. 'He is leaving the house and will never come back. I am released forever from his watchfulness; I am free! Now, sir, draw up another will, quick; let these two kind friends wait and see me sign it, and God will bless you for your kindness and my eyes will close in peace upon this cruel world.'

"Aghast but realizing in a moment that she had but lent herself to her brother's wishes in order to rid herself of a surveillance which had possibly had an almost mesmeric influence upon her, I opened my portfolio again, saying:

"'You declare yourself then to have been unduly influenced by your brother in making the will you have just signed in the presence of these two witnesses?'

"To which she replied with every evidence of a clear mind----

"'I do; I do. I could not move, I could not breathe, I could not think except as he willed it. When he was near, and he was always near, I had to do just as he wished--perhaps because I was afraid of him, perhaps because he had the stronger will of the two, I do not know; I cannot explain it, but he ruled me and has done so all my life till this hour. Now he has left me, left me to die, as he thinks, unfriended and alone, but I am strong yet, stronger than he knows, and before I turn my face to the wall, I will tear my property from his unholy grasp and give it where I have always wanted it to go--to my poor, lost, unfortunate sister.'

"'Ah,' thought I, 'I see, I see'; and satisfied at last that I was no longer being made the minister of an unscrupulous avarice, I hastily drew up a second will, only pausing to ask the name of her sister and the place of her residence.

"'Her name is Harriet Smith,' was the quick reply, 'and she lived when last I heard of her in Marston, a little village in Connecticut. She may be dead now, it is so long since I received any news of her,--Hiram would never let me write to her,--but she may have had children, and if so, they are just as welcome as she is to the little I have to give.'

"'Her children's names?' I asked.

"'I don't know, I don't know anything about her. But you will find out everything necessary when I am gone; and if she is living, or has children, you will see that they are reinstated in the home of their ancestors. For,' she now added eagerly, 'they must come here to live, and build up this old house again and make it respectable once more or they cannot have my money. I want you to put that in my will; for when I have seen these old walls toppling, the doors wrenched off, and its lintels demolished for firewood, for _firewood_, sir, I have kept my patience alive and my hope up by saying, Never mind; some day Harriet's children will make this all right again. The old house which their kind grandfather was good enough to give me for my own, shall not fall to the ground without one effort on my part to save it. And this is how I will accomplish it. This house is for Harriet or Harriet's children if they will come here and live in it one year, but if they will not do this, let it go to my brother, for I shall have no more interest in it. You heed me, lawyer?'

"I nodded and wrote on busily, thinking, perhaps, that if Harriet or Harriet's children did not have some money of their own to fix up this old place, they would scarcely care to accept their forlorn inheritance. Meantime the two witnesses who had lingered at the woman's whispered entreaty exchanged glances, and now and then a word expressive of the interest they were taking in this unusual affair.

"'Who is to be the executor of _this_ will?' I inquired.

"'You,' she cried. Then, as I started in surprise, she added: 'I know nobody but you. Put yourself in as executor, and oh, sir, when it is all in your hands, find my lost relatives, I beseech you, and bring them here, and take them into my mother's room at the end of the hall, and tell them it is all theirs, and that they must make it their room and fix it up and lay a new floor--you remember, a new floor--and----' Her words rambled off incoherently, but her eyes remained fixed and eager.

"I wrote in my name as executor.

"When the document was finished, I placed it before her and asked the young lady who had been acting as my lamp-bearer to read it aloud. This she did; the second will reading thus:

"The last will and testament of Cynthia Wakeham, widow of John Lapham Wakeham, of Flatbush, Kings County, New York.

"First: I direct all my just debts and funeral expenses to be paid.

"Second: I give, devise, and bequeath all my property to my sister, Harriet Smith, if living at my death, and, if not living, then to her children living at my death, in equal shares, upon condition, nevertheless, that the legatee or legatees who take under this will shall forthwith take up their residence in the house I now occupy in Flatbush, and continue to reside therein for at least one year thence next ensuing. If neither my said sister nor any of her descendants be living at my death, or if so living, the legatee who takes hereunder shall fail to comply with the above conditions, then all of said property shall go to my brother, Hiram Huckins.

"Third: I appoint Frank Etheridge, of New York City, sole executor of this my last will and testament, thereby revoking all other wills by me made, especially that which was executed on this date at half-past ten o'clock.

"Witness my hand this fifth day of June, in the year eighteen hundred and eighty-eight.

"Signed, published, and declared } by the testatrix to be her last will } and testament, in our presence, who, } at her request and in her presence } and in the presence of each other, } have subscribed our names hereto as } witnesses, on this 5th day of June, } 1888, at five minutes to eleven P.M. }

"This was satisfactory to the dying widow, and her strength kept up till she signed it and saw it duly attested; but when that was done, and the document safely stowed away in my pocket, she suddenly collapsed and sank back in a dying state upon her pillow.

"'What are we going to do?' now cried Miss Thompson, with looks of great compassion at the poor woman thus bereft, at the hour of death, of the natural care of relatives and friends. 'We cannot leave her here alone. Has she no doctor--no nurse?'

"'Doctors cost money,' murmured the almost speechless sufferer. And whether the smile which tortured her poor lips as she said these words was one of bitterness at the neglect she had suffered, or of satisfaction at the thought she had succeeded in saving this expense, I have never been able to decide.

"As I stooped to raise her now fallen head a quick, loud sound came to our ears from the back of the house, as of boards being ripped up from the floor by a reckless and determined hand. Instantly the woman's face assumed a ghastly look, and, tossing up her arms, she cried:

"'He has found the box!--the box! Stop him! Do not let him carry it away! It is----' She fell back, and I thought all was over; but in another instant she had raised herself almost to a sitting position, and was pointing straight at the clock. 'There! there! look! the clock!' And without a sigh or another movement she sank back on the pillow, dead."

IV.

FLINT AND STEEL.

"Greatly startled, I drew back from the bed which but a moment before had been the scene of such mingled emotions.

"'All is over here,' said I, and turned to follow the man whom with her latest breath she had bidden me to stop from leaving the house.

"As I could not take the lamp and leave my companions in darkness, I stepped out into a dark hall; but before I had taken a half dozen steps I heard a cautious foot descending the back stairs, and realizing that it would be both foolish and unsafe for me to endeavor to follow him through the unlighted rooms and possibly intricate passages of this upper hall, I bounded down the front stairs, and feeling my way from door to door, at last emerged into a room where there was a lamp burning.

"I had found the kitchen, and in it were Huckins and the man Briggs. Huckins had his hand on the latch of the outside door, and from his look and the bundle he carried, I judged that if I had been a minute later he would have been in full flight from the house.

"'Put out the light!' he shouted to Briggs.

"But I stepped forward, and the man did not dare obey him, and Huckins himself looked cowed and dropped his hand from the door-knob.

"'Where are you going?' I asked, moving rapidly to his side.

"'Isn't she dead?' was his only answer, given with a mixture of mockery and triumph difficult to describe.

"'Yes,' I assented, 'she is dead; but that does not justify you in flying the house.'

"'And who says I am flying?' he protested. 'Cannot I go out on an errand without being told I am running away?'

"'An errand,' I repeated, 'two minutes after your sister has breathed her last! Don't talk to me of errands. Your appearance is that of flight, and that bundle in your arms looks like the cause of it.'

"His eye, burning with a passion very natural under the circumstances, flashed over me with a look of disdain.

"'And what do you know of my appearance, and what is it to you if I carry or do not carry a bundle out of this house? Am I not master of everything here?'

"'No,' I cried boldly; then, thinking it might perhaps be wiser not to undeceive him as to his position till I had fully sounded his purposes, I added somewhat nonchalantly: 'that is, you are not master enough to take anything away that belonged to your sister. If you can prove to me that there is nothing in that bundle save what is yours and was yours before your sister died, well and good, you may go away with it and leave your poor dead sister to be cared for in her own house by strangers. But while I have the least suspicion that property of any nature belonging to this estate is hidden away under that roll of old clothes, you stop here if I have to appeal first to the strength of my arms and then to that of the law.'

"'But,' he quavered, 'it is mine--_mine_. I am but carrying away my own. Did you not draw up the will yourself? Don't you know she gave everything to me?'

"'What I know has nothing to do with it,' I retorted. 'Did you think because you saw a will drawn up in your favor that therefore you had immediate right to what she left, and could run away with her effects before her body was cold? A will has to be proven, my good man, before an heir has any right to touch what it leaves. If you do not know this, why did you try to slink away like a thief, instead of walking out of the front door like a proprietor? Your manner convicts you, man; so down with the bundle, or I shall have to give you in charge of the constable as a thief.'

"'You----!' he began, but stopped. Either his fears were touched or his cunning awakened, for after surveying me for a moment with mingled doubt and hatred, he suddenly altered his manner, till it became almost cringing, and muttering consolingly to himself, 'After all it is only a delay; everything will soon be mine,' he laid the bundle on the one board of the broken table beside us, adding with hypocritical meekness: 'It was only some little keepsakes of my sister, not enough to make such a fuss about.'

"'I will see to these _keepsakes_,' said I, and was about to raise the bundle, when he sprang upon me.

"'You----you----!' he cried. 'What right have you to touch them or to look at them? Because you drew up the will, does that make you an authority here? I don't believe it, and I won't see you put on the airs of it. I will go for the constable myself. I am not afraid of the law. I will see who is master in this house where I have lived in wretched slavery for years, and of which I shall be soon the owner.'

"'Very well,' said I, 'let us go find the constable.'

"The calmness with which I uttered this seemed at once to abash and infuriate him.

"He alternately cringed and ruffled himself, shuffling from one foot to the other till I could scarcely conceal the disgust with which he inspired me. At last he blurted forth with forced bravado:

"'Have I any rights, or haven't I any rights! You think because I don't know the law, that you can make a fool of me, but you can't. I may have lived like a dog, and I may not have a good coat to my back, but I am the man to whom this property has been given, as no one knows better than yourself; and if I chose to lift my foot and kick you out of that door for calling me a thief, who would blame me?--answer me that.'

"'No one,' said I, with a serenity equal to his fury, 'if this property is indeed to be yours, and if I know it as you say.'

"Struck by the suggestion implied in these words, as by a blow in the face for which he was wholly unprepared, he recoiled for a moment, looking at me with mingled doubt and amazement.

"'And do you mean to deny to my face, within an hour of the fact, and with the very witnesses to it still in the house, what you yourself wrote in this paper I now flaunt in your face? If so, _you_ are the fool, and I the cunning one, as you will yet see, Mr. Lawyer.'

"I met his look with great calmness.

"'The hour you speak of contained many minutes, Mr. Huckins; and it takes only a few for a woman to change her mind, and to record that change.'

"'Her mind?' The stare of terror and dismay in his eyes was contradicted by the laugh on his lips. 'What mind had she after I left her? She couldn't even speak. You cannot frighten me.'

"'Mr. Huckins,' I now said, beckoning to the two witnesses whom our loud talking had guided to the spot where we were, 'I have thought best to tell you what some men might have thought it more expedient perhaps to conceal. Mrs. Wakeham, who evidently felt herself unduly influenced by you in the making of that will you hold in your hand, immediately upon your withdrawal testified her desire to make another, and as I had no interest in the case save the desire to fulfil her real wishes, I at once complied with her request, and formally drew up a second will more in consonance with her evident desires.'

"'It is a lie, a lie; you are deceiving me!' shrieked the unhappy man, taken wholly by surprise. 'She couldn't utter a word; her tongue was paralyzed; how could you know her wishes?'

"'Mrs. Wakeham had some of the cunning of her brother,' I observed. 'She knew when to play dumb and when to speak. She talked very well when released from the influence of your presence.'

"Overwhelmed, he cast one glance at the two witnesses, who by this time had stepped to my side, and reading confirmation in the severity of their looks, he fell slowly back against the table where he stood leaning heavily, with his head fallen on his breast.

"'Who has she given the house to?' he asked at last faintly, almost humbly.

"'That I have no right to tell you,' I answered. 'When the will is offered for probate you will know; that is all the comfort I can give you.'

"'She has left nothing to me, that much I see,' he bitterly exclaimed; and his head, lifted with momentary passion, fell again. 'Ten years gone to the dogs,' he murmured; 'ten years, and not a cent in reward! It is enough to make a man mad.' Suddenly he started forward in irrepressible passion. 'You talk about influence,' he cried, 'my influence; what influence did _you_ have upon her? Some, or she would never have dared to contradict her dying words in that way. But I'll have it out with you in the courts. I'll never submit to being robbed in this way.'

"'You do not know that you are robbed,' said I, 'wait till you hear the will.'

"'The will? This is her will!' he shrieked, waving before him the paper that he held; 'I will not believe in any other; I will not acknowledge any other.'

"'You may have to,' now spoke up Mr. Dickey in strong and hearty tones; 'and if I might advise you as a neighbor, I would say that the stiller you keep now the better it probably will be for you in the future. You have not earned a good enough reputation among us for disinterestedness to bluster in this way about your rights.'

"'I don't want any talk from you,' was Huckins' quick reply, but these words from one who had the ears of the community in which he lived had nevertheless produced their effect; for his manner changed and it was with quite a softened air that he finally put up the paper in his pocket and said: 'I beg pardon if I have talked too loud and passionately. But the property was given to me and it shall not be taken away if any fight on my part can keep it. So let me see you all go, for I presume you do not intend to take up your abode in this house just yet.'

"'No,' I retorted with some significance, 'though it might be worth our while. It may contain more keepsakes; I presume there are one or two boards yet that have not been ripped up from the floors.' Then ashamed of what was perhaps an unnecessary taunt, I hastened to add: 'My reason for telling you of the existence of a second will is that you might no longer make the one you hold an excuse for rifling these premises and abstracting their contents. Nothing here is yours--yet; and till you inherit, if ever you do inherit, any attempt to hide or carry away one article which is not manifestly your own, will be regarded by the law as a theft and will be punished as such. But,' I went on, seeking to still further mitigate language calculated to arouse any man's rage, whether he was a villain or not, 'you have too much sense, and doubtless too much honesty to carry out such intentions now you know that you have lost whatever rights you considered yourself to possess, so I will say no more about it but at once make my proposition, which is that we give this box into the charge of Mr. Dickey, who will stand surety for it till your sister can be found. If you agree to this----'

"'But I won't agree,' broke in Huckins, furiously. 'Do you think I am a fool? The box is mine, I say, and----'

"'Or perhaps,' I calmly interrupted, 'you would prefer the constable to come and take both it and the house in charge. This would better please me. Shall I send for the constable?'

"'No, no,----you! Do you want to make a prison-bird of me at once?'

"'I do not want to,' said I, 'but the circumstances force me to it. A house which has given up one treasure may give up another, and for this other I am accountable. Now as I cannot stay here myself to watch over the place, it necessarily follows that I must provide some one who can. And as an honest man you ought to desire this also. If you felt as I would under the circumstances, you would ask for the company of some disinterested person till our rival claims as executors had been duly settled and the right heir determined upon.'

"'But the constable? I don't want any constable.'

"'And you don't want Mr. Dickey?'

"'He's better than the constable.'

"'Very well; Mr. Dickey, will you stay?'

"'Yes, I'll stay; that's right, isn't it, Susan?'

"Miss Thompson who had been looking somewhat uneasy, brightened up as he spoke and answered cheerfully:

"'Yes, that's right. But who will see me home?'

"'Can you ask?' I inquired.

"She smiled and the matter was settled.

"In the hall I had the chance to whisper to Mr. Dickey:

"'Keep a sharp lookout on the fellow. I do not trust him, and he may be up to tricks. I will notify the constable of the situation and if you want help throw up a window and whistle. The man may make another attempt to rob the premises.'

"'That is so,' was the whispered reply. 'But he will have to play sharp to get ahead of me.'"

V.

DIFFICULTIES.

"During the short walk that ensued we talked much of the dead widow and her sinister brother.

"'They belong to an old family,' observed Miss Thompson, 'and I have heard my mother tell how she has danced in their house at many a ball in the olden times. But ever since my day the place has borne evidences of decay, though it is only in the last five years it has looked as if it would fall to pieces. Which of them do you think was the real miser, he or she? Neither of them have had anything to do with their neighbors for ten years at least.'

"'Do not you know?' I asked.

"'No,' said she, 'and yet I have always lived in full view of their house. You see there were years in which no one lived there. Mr. Wakeham, who married this woman about the time father married mother, was a great invalid, and it was not till his death that the widow came back here to live. The father, who was a stern old man, I have heard mother tell, gave his property to her because she was the only one of his children who had not displeased him, but when she was a widow this brother came back to live with her, or on her, we have never been able to determine which. I think from what I have seen to-night it must have been on her, but she was very close too, or why did she live like a hermit when she could have had the friendship of the best?'

"'Perhaps because her brother overruled her; he has evidently had an eye on this property for a long time.'

"'Yes, but they have not even had the comforts. For three years at least no one has seen a butcher's cart stop at their door. How they have lived none of us know; yet there was no lack of money or their neighbors would have felt it their duty to look after them. Mrs. Wakeham has owned very valuable stocks, and as for her dividends, we know by what the postmaster says that they came regularly.'

"'This is very interesting,' said I. 'I thought that fellow's eyes showed a great deal of greed for the little he was likely to inherit. Is there no one who is fully acquainted with their affairs, or have they lived so long out of the pale of society that they possess no friends?'

"'I do not know of any one who has ever been honored with their confidence,' quoth the young lady. 'They have shown so plainly that they did not desire attention that gradually we have all ceased to go to their doors.'

"'And did not sickness make any difference? Did no one go near them when it was learned how ill this poor woman was?'

"'We did not know she was ill till this morning. We had missed her face at the window, but no doctor had been called, and no medicine bought, so we never thought her to be in any danger. When we did find it out we were afraid to invade premises which had been so long shut against us; at least I was; others did go, but they were received so coldly they did not remain; it is hard to stand up against the sullen displeasure of a man like Mr. Huckins.'

"'And do you mean to say that this man and his sister have lived there alone and unvisited for years?'

"'They wished it, Mr. Etheridge. They courted loneliness and rejected friendship. Only one person, Mr. H----, the minister, has persisted in keeping up his old habit of calling once a year, but I have heard him say that he always dreaded the visit, first, because they made him see so plainly that they resented the intrusion, and, secondly, because each year showed him barer floors and greater evidences of poverty or determined avarice. What he will say now, when he hears about the two wills and the brother trying to run away with his sister's savings, before her body was cold, I do not know. There will be some indignation felt in town you may be sure, and considerable excitement. I hope you will come back to-morrow to help me answer questions.'

"'I shall come back as soon as I have been to Marston.'

"'So you are going to hunt up the heirs? I pray you may be successful.'

"'Do you know them? Have you ever heard anything about them?' I asked.

"'Oh, no. It must be forty years since Harriet Huckins ran away from home. To many it will be a revelation that such a person lives.'

"'And we do not even know that she does,' said I.

"'True, true, she may be dead, and then that hateful brother will have the whole. I hope he won't. I hope she is alive and will come here and make amends for the disgrace which that unsightly building has put upon the street.'

"'I hope so too,' said I, feeling my old disgust of Huckins renewed at this mention of him.

"We were now at her gate, so bidding her good-by, I turned away through the midnight streets, determined to find the constable. As I went hurrying along in the direction of his home, Miss Thompson's question repeated itself in my own mind. Had Mrs. Wakeham been the sufferer and victim which her appearance, yes and her words to me, had betokened? Or was her brother sincere in his passion and true in his complaints that he had been subject to her whims and had led the life of a dog in order to please her. With the remembrance of their two faces before me, I felt inclined to believe her words rather than his, and yet her last cry had contained something in its tone beside anxiety for the rights of an almost unknown heir; there had been anger in it,--the anger of one whose secret has been surprised and who feels himself personally robbed of something dearer than life.

"However, at this time I could not stop to weigh these possibilities or decide this question. Whatever was true as regarded the balance of right between these two, there was no doubt as to the fact that this man was not to be trusted under temptation. I therefore made what haste I could, and being fortunate enough to find the constable still up, succeeded in interesting him in the matter and obtaining his promise to have the house put under proper surveillance. This done, I took the car for Fulton Ferry, and was so fortunate as to reach home at or near two o'clock in the morning. This was last night, and to-day you see me here. You disappoint me by saying that you know no one by the name of Harriet Smith."

"Yet," exclaimed Edgar, rousing himself from his attitude of listening, "I know all the old inhabitants. Harriet Smith," he continued in a musing tone, "Harriet--What is there in the name that stirs up some faint recollection? Did I once know a person by that name after all?"

"Nothing more likely."

"But there the thing stops. I cannot get any farther," mused Edgar. "The name is not entirely new to me. I have some vague memory in connection with it, but what memory I cannot tell. Let me see if Jerry can help us." And going to the door, he called "Jerry! Jerry!"

The response came slowly; heavy bodies do not soon overcome their inertia. But after the lapse of a few minutes a shuffling footstep was heard. Then the sound of heavy breathing, something between a snore and a snort, and the huge form of the good-natured driver came slowly into view, till it paused and stood in the door opening, which it very nearly filled.

"Did you call, sirs?" asked he, with a rude attempt at a bow.

"Yes," responded Edgar, "I wanted to know if you remembered a woman by the name of Harriet Smith once living about here."

"Har-ri-et Smith," was the long-drawn-out reply; "Har-ri-et Smith! I knows lots of Harriets, and as for Smiths, they be as plenty as squirrels in nut time; but Har-ri-et Smith--I wouldn't like to say I didn't, and I wouldn't like to say I did."

"She is an old woman now, if she is still living," suggested Frank. "Or she may have moved away."

"Yes, sir, yes, of course"; and they perceived another slow Harriet begin to form itself upon his lips.

Seeing that he knew nothing of the person mentioned, Edgar motioned him away, but Frank, with a lawyer's belief in using all means at his command, stopped him as he was heavily turning his back and said:

"I have good news for a woman by that name. If you can find her, and she turns out to be a sister of Cynthia Wakeham, of Flatbush, New York, there will be something good for you too. Do you want to try for it?"

"Do I?" and the grin which appeared on Jerry's face seemed to light up the room. "I'm not quick," he hastily acknowledged, as if in fear that Frank would observe this fault and make use of it against him; "that is, I'm not spry on my feet, but that leaves me all the more time for gossip, and gossip is what'll do _this_ business, isn't it, Dr. Sellick?" Edgar nodding, Jerry laughed, and Frank, seeing he had got an interested assistant at last, gave him such instructions as he thought he needed, and dismissed him to his work.

When he was gone, the friends looked for an instant at each other, and then Frank rose.

"I am going out," said he. "If you have friends to see or business to look after, don't think you must come with me. I always take a walk before retiring."

"Very well," replied Edgar, with unusual cheeriness. "Then if you will excuse me I'll not accompany you. Going to walk for pleasure? You'd better take the road north; the walk in that direction is the best in town."

"All right," returned Frank; "I'll not be gone more than an hour. See you again in the morning if not to-night." And with a careless nod he disappeared, leaving Edgar sitting alone in the room.

On the walk in front of the house he paused.

"To the north," he repeated, looking up and down the street, with a curious shake of the head; "good advice, no doubt, and one that I will follow some time, but not to-night. The attractions in an opposite direction are too great." And with an odd smile, which was at once full of manly confidence and dreamy anticipation, he turned his face southward and strode away through the warm and perfumed darkness of the summer night.

He took the road by which he had come from the depot, and passing rapidly by the few shops that clustered about the hotel, entered at once upon the street whose picturesque appearance had attracted his attention earlier in the evening.

What is he seeking? Exercise--the exhilaration of motion--the refreshment of change? If so, why does he look behind and before him with an almost guilty air as he advances towards a dimly lighted house, guarded by the dense branches of a double row of poplars? Is it here the attraction lies which has drawn him from the hotel and the companionship of his friend? Yes, for he stops as he reaches it and gazes first along the dim shadowy vista made by those clustered trunks and upright boughs, and then up the side and across the front of the silent house itself, while an expression of strange wistfulness softens the eager brightness of his face, and his smile becomes one of mingled pride and tenderness, for which the peaceful scene, with all its picturesque features, can scarcely account.

Can it be that his imagination has been roused and his affections stirred by the instantaneous vision of an almost unknown woman? that this swelling of the heart and this sudden turning of his whole nature towards what is sweetest, holiest, and most endearing in life means that his hitherto free spirit has met its mate, and that here in the lonely darkness, before a strange portal and in the midst of new and untried scenes, he has found the fate that comes once to every man, making him a changed being for ever after?

The month is June and the air is full of the scent of roses. He can see their fairy forms shining from amid the vines clambering over the walls and porches before him. They suggest all that is richest and spiciest and most exquisite in nature, as does her face as he remembered it. What if a thorn has rent a petal here and there, in the luxurious flowers before him, are they not roses still? So to him her face is all the lovelier for the blemish which might speak to others of imperfection, but which to him is only a call for profounder tenderness and more ardent devotion. And if in her nature there lies a fault also, is not a man's first love potent enough to overlook even that? He begins to think so, and allows his glances to roam from window to window of the nearly darkened house, as if half expecting her sweet and melancholy head to look forth in quest of the stars--or him.

The living rooms are mainly on the side that overlooks the garden, and scarcely understanding by what impulse he is swayed, he passes around the wall to a second gate, which he perceives opening at right angles to the poplar walk. Here he pauses a moment, looking up at the window which for some reason he has determined to be hers, and while he stands there, the moonlight shows the figure of another man coming from the highway and making towards the self-same spot. But before this second person reaches Frank he pauses, falters, and finally withdraws. Who is it? The shadow is on his face and we cannot see, but one thing is apparent, Frank Etheridge is not the only man who worships at this especial shrine to-night.

VI.

YOUNG MEN'S FANCIES.

The next morning at about nine o'clock Frank burst impetuously into Edgar's presence. They had not met for a good-night the evening before and they had taken breakfast separately.

"Edgar, what is this I hear about Hermione Cavanagh? Is it true she lives alone in that house with her sister, and that they neither of them ever go out, not even for a half-hour's stroll in the streets?"

Edgar, flushed at the other's excitement, turned and busied himself a moment with his books and papers before replying.

"Frank, you have been among the gossips."

"And what if I have! You would tell me nothing, and I knew there was a tragedy in her face; I saw it at the first glance."

"Is it a tragedy, this not going out?"

"It is the result of a tragedy; must be. They say nothing and nobody could draw from her beyond the boundary of that brick wall we rode by so carelessly. And she so young, so beautiful!"

"Frank, you exaggerate," was all the answer he received.

Frank bit his lip; the phrase he had used had been a trifle strong for the occasion. But in another moment he was ready to continue the conversation.

"Perhaps I do speak of an experiment that has never been tried; but you know what I mean. She has received some shock which has terrified her and made her afraid of the streets, and no one can subdue this fear or induce her to step through her own gate. Is not that sad and interesting enough to move a man who recognizes her beauty?"

"It is certainly very sad," quoth the other, "if it is quite true, which I doubt."

"Go talk to your neighbors then; they have not been absent like yourself for a good long year."

"I am not interested enough," the other began.

"But you ought to be," interpolated Frank. "As a physician you ought to recognize the peculiarities of such a prejudice. Why, if I had such a case----"

"But the case is not mine. I am not and never have been Miss Cavanagh's physician."

"Well, well, her friend then."

"Who told you I was her friend?"

"I don't remember; I understood from some one that you used to visit her."

"My neighbors, as you call them, have good memories."

"_Did_ you use to visit her?"

"Frank, Frank, subdue your curiosity. If I did, I do not now. The old gentleman is dead, and it was he upon whom I was accustomed to call when I went to their house."

"The old gentleman?"

"Miss Cavanagh's father."

"And you called upon him?"

"Sometimes."

"Edgar, how short you are."

"Frank, how impatient you are."

"But I have reason."

"How's that?"

"I want to hear about her, and you mock me with the most evasive replies."

Edgar turned towards his friend; the flush had departed from his features, but his manner certainly was not natural. Yet he did not look unkindly at the ardent young lawyer. On the contrary, there was a gleam of compassion in his eye, as he remarked, with more emphasis than he had before used:

"I am sorry if I seem to be evading any question you choose to put. But the truth is you seem to know more about the young lady than I do myself. I did not know that she was the victim of any such caprice."

"Yet it has lasted a year."

"A year?"

"Just the time you have been away."

"Just----" Edgar paused in the repetition. Evidently his attention had been caught at last. But he soon recovered himself. "A strange coincidence," he laughed. "Happily it is nothing more."

Frank surveyed his friend very seriously.

"I shall believe you," said he.

"You may," was the candid rejoinder. And the young physician did not flinch, though Etheridge continued to look at him steadily and with undoubted intention. "And now what luck with Jerry?" he suddenly inquired, with a cheerful change of tone.

"None; I shall leave town at ten."

"Is there no Harriet Smith here?"

"Not if I can believe him."

"And has been none in the last twenty years?"

"Not that he can find out."

"Then your quest here is at an end?"

"No, it has taken another turn, that is all."

"You mean----"

"That I shall come back here to-morrow. I must be sure that what Jerry says is true. Besides---- But why mince the matter? I--I have become interested in that girl, Edgar, and want to know her--hear her speak. Cannot you help me to make her acquaintance? If you used to go to the house---- Why do you frown? Do you not like Miss Cavanagh? "

Edgar hastily smoothed his forehead.

"Frank, I have never thought very much about her. She was young when I visited her father, and then that scar----"

"Never mind," cried Frank. He felt as if a wound in his own breast had been touched.

Edgar was astonished. He was not accustomed to display his own feelings, and did not know what to make of a man who did. But he did not finish his sentence.

"If she does not go out," he observed instead, "she may be equally unwilling to receive visitors."

"Oh, no," the other eagerly broke in; "people visit there just the same. Only they say she never likes to hear anything about her peculiarity. She wishes it accepted without words."

It was now Edgar's turn to ask a question.

"You say she lives there alone? You mean with servants, doubtless?"

"Oh, yes, she has a servant. But I did not say she lived there alone; I said she and her sister."

Edgar was silent.

"Her sister does not go out, either, they say."

"No? What does it all mean?"

"That is what _I_ want to know."

"Not go out? Emma!"

"Do you remember _Emma_?"

"Yes, she is younger than Hermione."

"And what kind of a girl is _she_?"

"Don't ask me, Frank. I have no talent for describing beautiful women."

"She is beautiful, then?"

"If her sister is, yes."

"You mean _she_ has no scar." It was softly said, almost reverently.

"No, she has no scar."

Frank shook his head.

"The scar appeals to me, Edgar."

Edgar smiled, but it was not naturally. The constraint in his manner had increased rather than diminished, and he seemed anxious to start upon the round of calls he had purposed to make.

"You must excuse me," said he, "I shall have to be off. You are coming back to-morrow?"

"If business does not detain me."

"You will find me in my new office by that time. I have rented the small brown house you must have noticed on the main street. Come there, and if you do not mind bachelor housekeeping, stay with me while you remain in town. I shall have a good cook, you may be sure, and as for a room, the north chamber has already been set apart for you."

Frank's face softened and he grasped the doctor's hand.

"That's good of you; it looks as if you expected me to need it."

"Have you not a Harriet Smith to find?"

Frank shrugged his shoulders. "I see that you understand lawyers."

Frank rode down to the depot with Jerry. As he passed Miss Cavanagh's house he was startled to perceive a youthful figure bending over the flower-beds on the inner side of the wall. "She is not so pretty by daylight," was his first thought. But at that moment she raised her head, and with a warm thrill he recognized the fact that it was not Hermione, but the sister he was looking at.

It gave him something to think of, for this sister was not without her attractions, though they were less brilliant and also less marred than those of the sad and stately Hermione.

When he arrived at his office his first inquiry was if anything had been heard from Flatbush, and upon being told to the contrary he immediately started for that place. He found the house a scene of some tumult. Notwithstanding the fact that the poor woman still lay unburied, the parlors and lower hall were filled with people, who stared at the walls and rapped with wary but eager knuckles on the various lintels and casements. Whispers of a treasure having been found beneath the boards of the flooring had reached the ear of the public, and the greatest curiosity had been raised in the breasts of those who up to this day had looked upon the house as a worm-eaten structure fit only for the shelter of dogs.

Mr. Dickey was in a room above, and to him Frank immediately hastened.

"Well," said he, "what news?"

"Ah," cried the jovial witness, coming forward, "glad to see you. Have you found the heirs?"

"Not yet," rejoined Frank. "Have you had any trouble? I thought I saw a police-officer below."

"Yes, we had to have some one with authority here. Even Huckins agreed to that; he is afraid the house will be run away with, I think. Did you see what a crowd has assembled in the parlors? We let them in so that Huckins won't seem to be the sole object of suspicion; but he really is, you know. He gave me plenty to do that night."

"He did, did he?"

"Yes; you had scarcely gone before he began his tactics. First he led me very politely to a room where there was a bed; then he brought me a bottle of the vilest rum you ever drank; and then he sat down to be affable. While he talked I was at ease, but when he finally got up and said he would try to get a snatch of sleep I grew suspicious, and stopped drinking the rum and set myself to listening. He went directly to a room not far from me and shut himself in. He had no light, but in a few minutes I heard him strike a match, and then another and another. 'He is searching under the boards for more treasure,' thought I, and creeping into the next room I was fortunate enough to come upon a closet so old and with such big cracks in its partition that I was enabled to look through them into the place where he was. The sight that met my eye was startling. He was, as I conjectured, peering under the boards, which he had ripped up early in the evening; and as he had only the light of a match to aid him, I would catch quick glimpses of his eager, peering face and then lose the sight of it in sudden darkness till the gleam of another match came to show it up again. He crouched upon the floor and crept along the whole length of the board, thrusting in his arm to right and left, while the sweat oozed on his forehead and fell in large drops into the long, narrow hollow beneath him. At last he seemed to grow wild with repeated disappointments, and, starting up, stood looking about him at the four surrounding walls, as if demanding them to give up their secrets. Then the match went out, and I heard him stamp his foot with rage before proceeding to put back the boards and shift them into place. Then there came silence, during which I crept on tiptoe to the place I had left, judging that he would soon leave his room and return to see if I had been watching him.

"The box was on the bed, and throwing myself beside it, I grasped it with one arm and hid my face with the other, and as I lay there I soon became conscious of his presence, and I knew he was looking from me to the box, and weighing the question as to whether I was sleeping sound enough for him to risk a blow. But I did not stir, though I almost expected a sudden crash on my head, and in another moment he crept away, awed possibly by my superior strength, for I am a much bigger man than he, as you must see. When I thought him gone I dropped my arm and looked up. The room was in total darkness. Bounding to my feet I followed him through the halls and came upon him in the room of death. He had the lamp in his hand, and he was standing over his sister with an awful look on his face.

"'Where have you hidden it?' he hissed to the senseless form before him. 'That box is not all you had. Where are the bonds and the stocks, and the money I helped you to save?'

"He was so absorbed he did not see me. He stooped by the bed and ran his hand along under the mattresses; then he lifted the pillows and looked under the bed. Then he rose and trod gingerly over the floor, as if to see if any of the boards were loose, and peered into the empty closet, and felt with wary hand up and down the mantel sides. At last his eyes fell on the clock, and he was about to lift his hand to it when I said:

"'The clock is all right; you needn't set it; see, it just agrees with my watch!'

"What a face he turned to me! I tell you it is no fun to meet such eyes in an empty house at one o'clock at night; and if you hadn't told me the police would be within call I should have been sick enough of my job, I can tell you. As it was, I drew back a foot or two and hugged the box a little more tightly, while he, with a coward's bravado, stepped after me and whispered below his breath:

"'You are making yourself too much at home here. If I want to stop the clock, now that my sister is dead, what is that to you? You have no respect for a house in mourning, and I am free to tell you so.'

"To this tirade I naturally made no answer, and he turned again to the clock. But just as I was asking myself whether I should stop him or let him go on with his peerings and pokings, the bell rang loudly below. It was a welcome interruption to me, but it made him very angry. However, he went down and welcomed, as decently as he knew how, a woman who had been sent to his assistance by Miss Thompson, evidently thinking that it was time he made some effort to regain my good opinion by avoiding all further cause for suspicion.

"At all events, he gave me no more trouble that night, nor since, though the way he haunts the door of that room and the looks he casts inside at the clock are enough to make one's blood run cold. Do you think there are any papers hidden there?"

"I have no doubt of it," returned Frank. "Do you remember that the old woman's last words were, 'The clock! the clock!' As soon as I can appeal to the Surrogate I shall have that piece of furniture examined."

"I shall be mortally interested in knowing what you find there," commented Mr. Dickey. "If the property comes to much, won't Miss Thompson and I get something out of it for our trouble?"

"No doubt," said Frank.

"Then we will get married," said he, and looked so beaming, that Frank shook him cordially by the hand.

"But where is Huckins?" the lawyer now inquired. "I didn't see him down below."

"He is chewing his nails in the kitchen. He is like a dog with a bone; you cannot get him to leave the house for a moment."

"I must see him," said Frank, and went down the back stairs to the place where he had held his previous interview with this angry and disappointed man.

At first sight of the young lawyer Huckins flushed deeply, but he soon grew pale and obsequious, as if he had held bitter communing with himself through the last thirty-six hours, and had resolved to restrain his temper for the future in the presence of the man who understood him. But he could not help a covert sneer from creeping into his voice.

"Have you found the heirs?" he asked, bowing with ill-mannered grace, and pushing forward the only chair there was in the room.

"I shall find them when I need them," rejoined Frank. "Fortunes, however small, do not usually go begging."

"Then you have not found them?" the other declared, a hard glitter of triumph shining in his sinister eye.

"I have not brought them with me," acknowledged the lawyer, warily.

"Perhaps, then, you won't," suggested Huckins, while he seemed to grow instantly at least two inches in stature. "If they are not in Marston where are they? Dead! And that leaves me the undisputed heir to all my sister's savings."

"I do not believe them dead," protested Frank.

"Why?" Huckins half smiled, half snarled.

"Some token of the fact would have come to you. You are not in a strange land or in unknown parts; you are living in the old homestead where this lost sister of yours was reared. You would have heard if she had died, at least so it strikes an unprejudiced mind."

"Then let it strike yours to the contrary," snapped out his angry companion. "When she went away it was in anger and with the curse of her father ringing in her ears. Do you see that porch?" And Huckins pointed through the cracked windows to a decayed pair of steps leading from the side of the house. "It was there she ran down on her way out. I see her now, though forty years have passed, and I, a little fellow of six, neither understood nor appreciated what was happening. My father stood in the window above, and he cried out: 'Don't come back! You have chosen your way, now go in it. Let me never see you nor hear from you again.' And we never did, never! And now you tell me we would have heard if she had died. You don't know the heart of folks if you say that. Harriet cut herself adrift that day, and she knew it."

"Yet you were acquainted with the fact that she went to Marston."

The indignant light in the brother's eye settled into a look of cunning.

"Oh," he acknowledged carelessly, "we heard so at the time, when everything was fresh. But we heard nothing more, nothing."

"Nothing?" Frank repeated. "Not that she had married and had had children?"

"No," was the dogged reply. "My sister up there," and Huckins jerked his hand towards the room where poor Mrs. Wakeham lay, "surmised things, but she didn't know anything for certain. If she had she might have sent for these folks long ago. She had time enough in the last ten years we have been living in this hole together."

"But," Etheridge now ventured, determined not to be outmatched in cunning, "you say she was penurious, too penurious to live comfortably or to let you do so."

Huckins shrugged his shoulders and for a moment looked balked; then he cried: "The closest women have their whims. If she had known any such folks to have been living as you have named, she would have sent for them."

"If you had let her," suggested Frank.

Huckins turned upon him and his eye flashed. But he very soon cringed again and attempted a sickly smile, which completed the disgust the young lawyer felt for him.

"If I had let her," he repeated; "I, who pined for companionship or anything which would have put a good meal into my mouth! You do not know me, sir; you are prejudiced against me because I want my earnings, and a little comfort in my old age."

"If I am prejudiced against you, it is yourself who has made me so," returned the other. "Your conduct has not been of a nature to win my regard, since I have had the honor of your acquaintance."

"And what has yours been, worming, as you have, into my sister's confidence----"

But here Frank hushed him. "We will drop this," said he. "You know me, and I think I know you. I came to give you one last chance to play the man by helping me to find your relatives. I see you have no intention of doing so, so I will now proceed to find them without you."

"If they exist," he put in.

"Certainly, if they exist. If they do not----"

"What then?"

"I must have proofs to that effect. I must know that your sister left no heirs but yourself."

"That will take time," he grumbled. "I shall be kept weeks out of my rights."

"The Surrogate will see that you do not suffer."

He shuddered and looked like a fox driven into his hole.

"It is shameful, shameful!" he cried. "It is nothing but a conspiracy to rob me of my own. I suppose I shall not be allowed to live in my own house." And his eyes wandered greedily over the rafters above him.

"Are you sure that it is yours?"

"Yes, yes, damn you!" But the word had been hasty, and he immediately caught Frank's sleeve and cringed in contrition. "I beg your pardon," he cried, "perhaps we had better not talk any longer, for I have been too tried for patience. They will not even leave me alone in my grief," he whined, pointing towards the rooms full, as I have said, of jostling neighbors and gossips.

"It will be quiet enough after the funeral," Frank assured him.

"Oh! oh! the funeral!" he groaned.

"Is it going to be too extravagant?" Frank insinuated artfully.

Huckins gave the lawyer a look, dropped his eyes and mournfully shook his head.

"The poor woman would not have liked it," he muttered; "but one must be decent towards one's own blood."

VII.

THE WAY OPENS.

Frank succeeded in having Mr. Dickey appointed as Custodian of the property, then he went back to Marston.

"Good-evening, Doctor; what a nest of roses you have here for a bachelor," was his jovial cry, as he entered the quaint little house, in which Sellick had now established himself. "I declare, when you told me I should always find a room here, I did not realize what a temptation you were offering me. And in sight----" He paused, changing color as he drew back from the window to which he had stepped,----"of the hills," he somewhat awkwardly added.

Edgar, who had watched the movements of his friend from under half lowered lids, smiled dryly.

"_Of the hills_," he repeated. Then with a short laugh, added, "I knew that you liked that especial view."

Frank's eye, which was still on a certain distant chimney, lighted up wonderfully as he turned genially towards his friend.

"I did not know you were such a good fellow," he laughed. "I hope you have found yourself made welcome here."

"Oh, yes, welcome enough."

"Any patients yet?"

"All of Dudgeon's, I fear. I have been doing little else but warning one man after another: 'Now, no words against any former practitioner. If you want help from me, tell me your symptoms, but don't talk about any other doctor's mistakes, for I have not time to hear it.'"

"Poor old Dudgeon!" cried Frank. Then, shortly: "I'm a poor one to hide my impatience. Have you seen either of _them_ yet?"

"Either--of--them?"

"The girls, the two sweet whimsical girls. You know whom I mean, Edgar."

"You only spoke of one when you were here before, Frank."

"And I only think of one. But I saw the other on my way to the depot, and that made me speak of the two. Have you seen them?"

"No," answered the other, with unnecessary dryness; "I think you told me they did not go out."

"But you have feet, man, and you can go to them, and I trusted that you would, if only to prepare the way for me; for I mean to visit them, as you have every reason to believe, and I should have liked an introducer."

"Frank," asked the other, quietly, but with a certain marked earnestness, "has it gone as deep as that? Are you really serious in your intention of making the acquaintance of Miss Cavanagh?"

"Serious? Have you for a minute thought me otherwise?"

"You are not serious in most things."

"In business I am, and in----"

"Love?" the other smiled.

"Yes, if you can call it love, yet."

"We will not call it anything," said the other. "You want to see her, that is all. I wonder at your decision, but can say nothing against it. Happily, you have seen her defect."

"It is not a defect to me."

"Not if it is in her nature as well?"

"Her nature?"

"A woman who for any reason cuts herself off from her species, as she is said to do, cannot be without her faults. Such idiosyncrasies do not grow out of the charity we are bid to have for our fellow-creatures."

"But she may have suffered. I can readily believe she has suffered from that same want of charity in others. There is nothing like a personal defect to make one sensitive. Think of the averted looks she must have met from many thoughtless persons; and she almost a beauty!"

"Yes, that _almost_ is tragic."

"It can excuse much."

Edgar shook his head. "Think what you are doing, Frank, that's all. _I_ should hesitate in making the acquaintance of one who for _any_ reason has shut herself away from the world."

"Is not her whim shared by her sister?"

"They say so."

"Then there are two whose acquaintance you would hesitate to make?"

"Certainly, if I had any ulterior purpose beyond that of mere acquaintanceship."

"Her sister has no scar?"

Edgar, weary, perhaps, of the conversation, did not answer.

"Why should she shut herself up?" mused Frank, too interested in the subject to note the other's silence.

"Women are mysteries," quoth Edgar, shortly.

"But this is more than a mystery," cried Frank. "Whim will not account for it. There must be something in the history of these two girls which the world does not know."

"That is not the fault of the world," retorted Edgar, in his usual vein of sarcasm.

But Frank was reckless. "The world is right to be interested," he avowed. "It would take a very cold heart not to be moved with curiosity by such a fact as two girls secluding themselves in their own house, without any manifest reason. Are _you_ not moved by it, Edgar? Are you, indeed, as indifferent as you seem?"

"I should like to know why they do this, of course, but I shall not busy myself to find out. I have much else to do."

"Well, I have not. It is the one thing in life for me; so look out for some great piece of audacity on my part, for speak to her I will, and that, too, before I leave the town."

"I do not see how you will manage that, Frank."

"You forget I am a lawyer."

Yet for all the assurance manifested by this speech, it was some time before Frank could see his way clearly to what he desired. A dozen plans were made and dismissed as futile before he finally determined to seek the assistance of a fellow-lawyer whose name he had seen in the window of the one brick building in the principal street. "Through him," thought he, "I may light upon some business which will enable me to request with propriety an interview with Miss Cavanagh." Yet his heart failed him as he went up the steps of Mr. Hamilton's office, and if that gentleman, upon presenting himself, had been a young man, Frank would certainly have made some excuse for his intrusion, and retired. But he was old and white-haired and benignant, and so Frank was lured into introducing himself as a young lawyer from New York, engaged in finding the whereabouts of one Harriet Smith, a former resident of Marston.

Mr. Hamilton, who could not fail to be impressed by Etheridge's sterling appearance, met him with cordiality.

"I have heard of you," said he, "but I fear your errand here is bound to be fruitless. No Harriet Smith, so far as I know, ever came to reside in this town. And I was born and bred in this street. Have you actual knowledge that one by that name ever lived here, and can you give me the date?"

The answers Frank made were profuse but hurried; he had not expected to gain news of Harriet Smith; he had only used the topic as a means of introducing conversation. But when he came to the point in which he was more nearly interested, he found his courage fail him. He could not speak the name of Miss Cavanagh, even in the most casual fashion, and so the interview ended without any further result than the making on his part of a pleasant acquaintance. Subdued by his failure, Frank quitted the office, and walked slowly down the street. If he had not boasted of his intentions to Edgar, he would have left the town without further effort; but now his pride was involved, and he made that an excuse to his love. Should he proceed boldly to her house, use the knocker, and ask to see Miss Cavanagh? Yes, he might do that, but afterwards? With what words should he greet her, or win that confidence which the situation so peculiarly demanded? He was not an acknowledged friend, or the friend of an acknowledged friend, unless Edgar---- But no, Edgar was not their friend; it would be folly to speak his name to them. What then? Must he give up his hopes till time had paved the way to their realization? He feared it must be so, yet he recoiled from the delay. In this mood he re-entered Edgar's office.

A woman in hat and cloak met him.

"Are you the stranger lawyer that has come to town?" she asked.

He bowed, wondering if he was about to hear news of Harriet Smith.

"Then this note is for you," she declared, handing him a little three-cornered billet.

His heart gave a great leap, and he turned towards the window as he opened the note. Who could be writing letters to him of such dainty appearance as this? Not she, of course, and yet---- He tore open the sheet, and read these words:

"If not asking too great a favor, may I request that you will call at my house, in your capacity of lawyer.

"As I do not leave my own home, you will pardon this informal method of requesting your services. The lawyer here cannot do my work.

"Yours respectfully, "HERMIONE CAVANAGH."

He was too much struck with amazement and delight to answer the messenger at once. When he did so, his voice was very business-like.

"Will Miss Cavanagh be at liberty this morning?" he asked. "I shall be obliged to return to the city after dinner."

"She told me to say that any time would be convenient to her," was the answer.

"Then say to her that I will be at her door in half an hour."

The woman nodded, and turned.

"She lives on the road to the depot, where the two rows of poplars are," she suddenly declared, as she paused at the door.

"I know," he began, and blushed, for the woman had given him a quick glance of surprise. "I noticed the poplars," he explained.

She smiled as she passed out, and that made him crimson still more.

"Do I wear my heart on my sleeve?" he murmured to himself, in secret vexation. "If so, I must wrap it about with a decent cloak of reserve before I go into the presence of one who has such power to move it." And he was glad Edgar was not at home to mark his excitement.

The half hour wore away, and he stood on the rose-embowered porch. Would she come to the door herself, or would it be the sad-eyed sister he should see first? It mattered little. It was Hermione who had sent for him, and it was with Hermione he should talk. Was it his heart that was beating so loudly? He had scarcely answered the question, when the door opened, and the woman who had served as a messenger from Miss Cavanagh stood before him.

"Ah!" said she, "come in." And in another moment he was in the enchanted house.

A door stood open at his left, and into the room thus disclosed he was ceremoniously ushered.

"Miss Cavanagh will be down in a moment," said the woman, as she slowly walked away, with more than one lingering backward look.

He did not note this look, for his eyes were on the quaint old furniture and shadowy recesses of the staid best room, in which he stood an uneasy guest. For somehow he had imagined he would see the woman of his dreams in a place of cheer and sunshine; at a window, perhaps, where the roses looked in, or at least in a spot enlivened by some evidences of womanly handiwork and taste. But here all was stiff as at a funeral. The high black mantel-shelf was without clock or vase, and the only attempt at ornament to be seen within the four grim walls was an uncouth wreath, made of shells, on a background of dismal black, which hung between the windows. It was enough to rob any moment of its romance. And yet, if she should look fair here, what might he not expect of her beauty in more harmonious surroundings.

As he was adjusting his ideas to this thought, there came the sound of a step on the stair, and the next moment Hermione Cavanagh entered his presence.

VIII.

A SEARCH AND ITS RESULTS.

Hermione Cavanagh, without the scar, would have been one of the handsomest of women. She was of the grand type, with height and a nobility of presence to which the extreme loveliness of her perfect features lent a harmonizing grace. Of a dazzling complexion, the hair which lay above her straight fine brows shone ebon-like in its lustre, while her eyes, strangely and softly blue, filled the gazer at first with surprise and then with delight as the varying emotions of her quick mind deepened them into a more perfect consonance with her hair, or softened them into something like the dewy freshness of heaven-born flowers. Her mouth was mobile, but the passions it expressed were not of the gentlest, whatever might be the language of her eyes, and so it was that her face was in a way a contradiction of itself, which made it a fascinating study to one who cared to watch it, or possessed sufficient understanding to read its subtle language. She was oddly dressed in a black, straight garment, eminently in keeping with the room; but there was taste displayed in the arrangement of her hair, and nothing could make her face anything but a revelation of beauty, unless it was the scar, and that Frank Etheridge did not see.

"Are you--" she began and paused, looking at him with such surprise that he felt his cheeks flush--"the lawyer who was in town a few days ago on some pressing inquiry?"

"I am," returned Frank, making her the low bow her embarrassment seemed to demand.

"Then you must excuse me," said she; "I thought you were an elderly man, like our own Mr. Hamilton. I should not have sent for you if----"

"If you had known I had no more experience," he suggested, with a smile, seeing her pause in some embarrassment.

She bowed; yet he knew that was not the way she would have ended the sentence if she had spoken her thought.

"Then I am to understand," said he, with a gentleness born of his great wish to be of service to her, "that you would prefer that I should send you an older adviser. I can do it, Miss Cavanagh."

"Thank you," she said, and stood hesitating, the slight flush on her cheek showing that she was engaged in some secret struggle. "I will tell you my difficulty," she pursued at last, raising her eyes with a frank look to his face. "Will you be seated?"

Charmed with the graciousness of her manner when once relieved from embarrassment, he waited for her to sit and then took a chair himself.

"It is a wearisome affair," she declared, "but one which a New York lawyer can solve without much trouble." And with the clearness of a highly cultivated mind, she gave him the facts of a case in which she and her sister had become involved through the negligence of her man of business.

"Can you help me?" she asked.

"Very easily," he replied. "You have but to go to New York and swear to these facts before a magistrate, and the matter will be settled without difficulty."

"But I cannot go to New York."

"No? Not on a matter of this importance?"

"On no matter. I do not travel, Mr. Etheridge."

The pride and finality with which this was uttered, gave him his first glimpse of the hard streak which there was undoubtedly in her character. Though he longed to press the question he judged that he had better not, so suggested carelessly:

"Your sister, then?"

But she met this suggestion, as he had expected her to, with equal calmness and pride.

"My sister does not travel either."

He looked the astonishment he did not feel and remarked gravely:

"I fear, then, that the matter cannot be so easily adjusted." And he began to point out the difficulties in the way, to all of which she listened with a slightly absent air, as if the affair was in reality of no great importance to her.

Suddenly she waved her hand with a quick gesture.

"You can do as you please," said she. "If you can save us from loss, do so; if not, let the matter go; I shall not allow it to worry me further." Then she looked up at him with a total change of expression, and for the first time the hint of a smile softened the almost severe outline of her mouth. "You are searching, I hear, for a woman named Harriet Smith; have you found her, sir?"

Delighted at this evidence on her part of a wish to indulge in general conversation, he answered with alacrity:

"Not yet. She was not, as it seems, a well-known inhabitant of this town as I had been led to believe. I even begin to fear she never has lived here at all. The name is a new one to you, I presume."

"Smith. Can the name of Smith ever be said to be new?" she laughed with something like an appearance of gayety.

"But Harriet," he explained, "Harriet Smith, once Harriet Huckins."

"I never knew any Harriet Smith," she averred. "Would it have obliged you very much if I had?"

He smiled, somewhat baffled by her manner, but charmed by her voice, which was very rich and sweet in its tones.

"It certainly would have saved me much labor and suspense," he replied.

"Then the matter is serious?"

"Is not all law-business serious?"

"You have just proved it so," she remarked.

He could not understand her; she seemed to wish to talk and yet hesitated with the words on her lips. After waiting for her to speak further and waiting in vain, he changed the subject back to the one which had at first occupied them.

"I shall be in Marston again," said he; "if you will allow me I will then call again and tell you exactly what I can do for your interest."

"If you will be so kind," she replied, and seemed to breathe easier.

"I have one intimate friend in town," pursued Frank, as he rose to take his departure, "Dr. Sellick. If you know him----"

Why did he pause? She had not moved and yet something, he could not say what, had made an entire change in her attitude and expression. It was as if a chill had passed over her, stiffening her limbs and paling her face, yet her eyes did not fall from his face, and she tried to speak as usual.

"Dr. Sellick?"

"Yes, he has returned to Marston after a year of absence. Have not the gossips told you that?"

"No; that is, I have seen no one--I used to know Dr. Sellick," she added with a vain attempt to be natural. "Is that my sister I hear?" And she turned sharply about.

Up to this moment she had uniformly kept the uninjured side of her face towards him, and he had noticed the fact and been profoundly touched by her seeming sensitiveness. But he was more touched now by the emotion which made her forget herself, for it argued badly for his hopes, and assured him that for all Sellick's assumed indifference, there had been some link of feeling between these two which he found himself illy prepared to accept.

"May I not have the honor," he requested, "of an introduction to your sister?"

"She is not coming; I was mistaken," was her sole reply, and her beautiful face turned once more towards him, with a deepening of its usual tragic expression which lent to it a severity which would have appalled most men. But he loved every change in that enigmatical countenance, there was so much character in its grave lines. So with the consideration that was a part of his nature he made a great effort to subdue his jealous curiosity, and saying, "Then we will reserve that pleasure till another time," bowed like a man at his ease, and passed quickly out of the door.

Yet his heart was heavy and his thoughts in wildest turmoil; for he loved this woman and she had paled and showed the intensest emotion at the mention of a man whom he had heard decry her. He might have felt worse could he have seen the look of misery which settled upon her face as the door closed upon him, or noted how long she sat with fixed eyes and paling lips in that dreary old parlor where he had left her. As it was, he felt sufficiently disturbed and for a long time hesitated whether or not he should confront Edgar with an accusation of knowing Miss Cavanagh better than he acknowledged. But Sellick's reserve was one that imposed silence, and Frank dared not break through it lest he should lose the one opportunity he now had of visiting Marston freely. So he composed himself with the thought that he had at least gained a footing in the house, and if the rest did not follow he had only himself to blame. And in this spirit he again left Marston.

He found plenty of work awaiting him in his office. Foremost in interest was an invitation to be present at the search which was to be instituted that afternoon in the premises of the Widow Wakeham. The will of which he had been made Executor, having been admitted to probate, it had been considered advisable to have an inventory made of the personal effects of the deceased, and this day had been set apart for the purpose. To meet this appointment he hurried all the rest, and at the hour set, he found himself before the broken gate and gardens of the ruinous old house in Flatbush. There was a crowd already gathered there, and as he made his appearance he was greeted by a loud murmur which amply proved that his errand was known. At the door he was met by the two Appraisers appointed by the Surrogate, and within he found one or two workmen hob-nobbing with a detective from police headquarters.

The house looked barer and more desolate than ever. It was a sunshiny day, and the windows having been opened, the pitiless rays streamed in showing all the defects which time and misuse had created in the once stately mansion. Not a crack in plastering or woodwork but stood forth in bold relief that day, nor were the gaping holes in the flooring of hall and parlor able to hide themselves any longer under the strips of carpet with which Huckins had endeavored to conceal them.

"Shall we begin with the lower floor?" asked one of the workmen, poising the axe he had brought with him.

The Appraisers bowed, and the work of demolition began. As the first sound of splitting boards rang through the empty house, a quick cry as of a creature in pain burst from the staircase without, and they saw, crouching there with trembling hands held out in protest, the meagre form of Huckins.

"Oh, don't! don't!" he began; but before they could answer, he had bounded down the stairs to where they stood and was looking with eager, staring eyes into the hole which the workmen had made.

"Have you found anything?" he asked. "It is to be all mine, you know, and the more you find the richer I'll be. Let's see--let's see, she may have hidden something here, there is no knowing." And falling on his knees he thrust his long arm into the aperture before him, just as Mr. Dickey had seen him do in a similar case on the night of the old woman's death.

But as his interference was not desired, he was drawn quietly back, and was simply allowed to stand there and watch while the others proceeded in their work. This he did with an excitement which showed itself in alternate starts and sudden breathless gasps, which, taken with the sickly smiles with which he endeavored to hide the frowns caused by his natural indignation, made a great impression upon Frank, who had come to regard him as a unique specimen in nature, something between a hyena and a fox.

As the men held up a little packet which had at last come to light very near the fireplace, he gave a shriek and stretched out two clutching hands.

"Let me have it!" he cried. "I know what that is; it disappeared from my sister's desk five years ago, and I could never get her to tell where she had put it. Let me have it, and I will open it here before you all. Indeed I will, sirs--though it is all mine, as I have said before."

But Etheridge, quietly taking it, placed it in his pocket, and Huckins sank back with a groan.

The next place to be examined was the room upstairs. Here the poor woman had spent most of her time till she was seized with her last sickness, and here the box had been found by Huckins, and here they expected to find the rest of her treasures. But beyond a small casket of almost worthless jewelry, nothing new was discovered, and they proceeded at Frank's suggestion to inspect the room where she had died, and where the clock still stood towards which she had lifted her dying hand, while saying, "There! there!"

As they approached this place, Huckins was seen to tremble. Catching Frank by the arm, he whispered:

"Can they be trusted? Are they honest men? She had greenbacks, piles of greenbacks; I have caught her counting them. If they find them, will they save them all for me?"

"They will save them all for the heir," retorted Frank, severely. "Why do you say they are for you, when you know you will only get them in default of other heirs being found."

"Why? why? Because I feel that they are mine. Heirs or no heirs, they will come into my grasp yet, and you of the law cannot help it. Do I look like a man who will die poor? No, no; but I don't want to be cheated. I don't want these men to rob me of anything which will rightfully be mine some day."

"You need not fret about that," said Frank. "No one will rob _you_," and he drew disdainfully aside.

The Appraisers had now surveyed the room awful with hideous memories to the young lawyer. Pointing to the bed, they said:

"Search that," and the search was made.

A bundle of letters came to light and were handed over to Frank.

"Why did she hide those away?" screamed Huckins. "They ain't money."

Nobody answered him.

The lintels of the windows and doors were now looked into, and the fireplace dismantled and searched. But nothing was found in these places, nor in the staring cupboards or beneath the loosened boards. Finally they came to the clock.

"Oh, let me," cried Huckins, "let me be the first to stop that clock. It has been running ever since I was a little boy. My mother used to wind it with her own hands. I cannot bear a stranger's hand to touch it. My--my sister would not have liked it."

But they disregarded even this appeal; and he was forced to stand in the background and see the old piece taken down and laid at length upon the floor with its face to the boards. There was nothing in its interior but the works which belonged there, but the frame at its back seemed unusually heavy, and Etheridge consequently had this taken off, when, to the astonishment of all and to the frantic delight of Huckins, there appeared at the very first view, snugly laid between the true and false backing, layers of bills and piles of sealed and unsealed papers.

"A fortune! A fortune!" cried this would-be possessor of his sister's hoarded savings. "I knew we should find it at last. I knew it wasn't all in that box. She tried to make me think it was, and made a great secret of where she had put it, and how it was all to be for me if I only let it alone. But the fortune was here in this old clock I have stared at a thousand times. Here, here, and I never knew it, never suspected it till----"

He felt the lawyer's eyes fall on him, and became suddenly silent.

"Let's count it!" he greedily cried, at last.

But the Appraisers, maintaining their composure, motioned the almost frenzied man aside, and summoning Frank to assist them, made out a list of the papers, which were most of them valuable, and then proceeded to count the loose bills. The result was to make Huckins' eyes gleam with joy and satisfaction. As the last number left their lips, he threw up his arms in unrestrained glee, and cried:

"I will make you all rich some day. Yes, sirs; I have not the greed of my poor dead sister; I intend to spend what is mine, and have a good time while I live. I don't intend any one to dance over my grave when I am dead."

His attitude was one so suggestive of this very same expression of delight, that more than one who saw him and heard these words shuddered as they turned from him; but he did not care for cold shoulders now, or for any expression of disdain or disapproval. He had seen the fortune of his sister with his own eyes, and for that moment it was enough.

IX.

THE TWO SISTERS.

When Frank returned again to Marston he did not hesitate to tell Edgar that "he had business relations with Miss Cavanagh." This astonished the doctor, who was of a more conservative nature, but he did not mingle his astonishment with any appearance of chagrin, so Frank took heart, and began to dream that he had been mistaken in the tokens which Miss Cavanagh had given of being moved by the news of Dr. Sellick's return.

He went to see her as soon as he had supped with his friend, and this time he was introduced into a less formal apartment. Both sisters were present, and in the moment which followed the younger's introduction, he had leisure to note the similarity and dissimilarity between them, which made them such a delightful study to an interested observer.

Emma was the name of the younger, and as she had the more ordinary and less poetic name, so at first view she had the more ordinary and less poetic nature. Yet as the eye lingered on her touching face, with its unmistakable lines of sadness, the slow assurance gained upon the mind that beneath her quiet smile and gentle self-contained air lay the same force of will which spoke at once in the firm lip and steady gaze of the older woman. But her will was beneficent, and her character noble, while Hermione bore the evidences of being under a cloud, whose shadow was darkened by something less easily understood than sorrow.

Yet Hermione, and not Emma, moved his heart, and if he acknowledged to himself that a two-edged sword lay beneath the forced composure of her manner, it was with the same feelings with which he acknowledged the scar which offended all eyes but his own. They were both dressed in white, and Emma wore a cluster of snowy pinks in her belt, but Hermione was without ornament. The beauty of the latter was but faintly shadowed in her younger sister's face, yet had Emma been alone she would have stood in his mind as a sweet picture of melancholy young womanhood.

Hermione was evidently glad to see him. Fresh and dainty as this, their living room, looked, with its delicate white curtains blowing in the twilight breeze, there were hours, no doubt, when it seemed no more than a prison-house to these two passionate young hearts. To-night cheer and an emanation from the large outside world had come into it with their young visitor, and both girls seemed sensible of it, and brightened visibly. The talk was, of course, upon business, and while he noticed that Hermione led the conversation, he also noticed that when Emma did speak it was with the same clear grasp of the subject which he had admired in the other. "Two keen minds," thought he, and became more deeply interested than ever in the mystery of their retirement, and evident renouncement of the world.

He had to tell them he could do nothing for them unless one or both of them would consent to go to New York.

"The magistrate whom I saw," said he, "asked if you were well, and when I was forced to say yes, answered that for no other reason than illness could he excuse you from appearing before him. So if you will not comply with his rules, I fear your cause must go, and with it whatever it involves."

Emma, whose face showed the greater anxiety of the two, started as he said this, and glanced eagerly at her sister. But Hermione did not answer that glance. She was, perhaps, too much engaged in maintaining her own self-control, for the lines deepened in her face, and she all at once assumed that air of wild yet subdued suffering which had made him feel at the time of his first stolen glimpse of her face that it was the most tragic countenance he had ever beheld.

"We cannot go," came forth sharply from her lips, after a short but painful pause. "The case must be dropped." And she rose, as if she could not bear the weight of her thoughts, and moved slowly to the window, where she leaned for a moment, her face turned blankly on the street without.

Emma sighed, and her eyes fell with a strange pathos upon Frank's almost equally troubled face.

"There is no use," her gentle looks seemed to say. "Do not urge her; it will be only one grief the more."

But Frank was not one to heed such an appeal in sight of the noble drooping figure and set white face of the woman upon whose happiness he had fixed his own, though neither of these two knew it as yet. So, with a deprecating look at Emma, he crossed to Hermione's side, and with a slow, respectful voice exclaimed:

"Do not make me feel as if I had been the cause of loss to you. An older man might have done better. Let me send an older man to you, then, or pray that you reconsider a decision which will always fill me with regret."

But Hermione, turning slowly, fixed him with her eyes, whose meaning he was farther than ever from understanding, and saying gently, "The matter is at end, Mr. Etheridge," came back to the seat she had vacated, and motioned to him to return to the one he had just left. "Let as talk of other things," said she, and forced her lips to smile.

He obeyed, and at once opened a general conversation. Both sisters joined in it, and such was his influence and the impulse of their own youth that gradually the depth of shadow departed from their faces and a certain grave sort of pleasure appeared there, giving him many a thrill of joy, and making the otherwise dismal hour one to be happily remembered by him through many a weary day and night.

When he came to leave he asked Emma, who strangely enough had now become the most talkative of the two, whether there was not something he could do for her in New York or elsewhere before he came again.

She shook her head, but in another moment, Hermione having stepped aside, she whispered:

"Make my sister smile again as she did a minute ago, and you will give me all the happiness I seek."

The words made him joyous, and the look he bestowed upon her in return had a promise in it which made the young girl's dreams lighter that night, for all the new cause of anxiety which had come into her secluded life.

X.

DORIS.

Frank Etheridge walked musingly towards town. When half-way there he heard his name pronounced behind him in tremulous accents, and turning, saw hastening in his wake the woman who had brought him the message which first took him to Miss Cavanagh's house. She was panting with the haste she had made, and evidently wished to speak to him. He of course stopped, being only too anxious to know what the good woman had to say. She flushed as she came near to him.

"Oh, sir," she cried with an odd mixture of eagerness and restraint, "I have been wanting to talk to you, and if you would be so good as to let me say what is on my mind, it would be a great satisfaction to me, please, and make me feel a deal easier."

"I should be very glad to hear whatever you may have to tell me," was his natural response. "Are you in trouble? Can I help you?"

"Oh, it is not that," she answered, looking about to see if any curious persons were peering at them through the neighboring window-blinds, "though I have my troubles, of course, as who hasn't in this hard, rough world; it is not of myself I want to speak, but of the young ladies. You take an interest in them, sir?"

It was naturally put, yet it made his cheek glow.

"I am their lawyer," he murmured.

"I thought so," she went on as if she had not seen the evidences of emotion on his part, or if she had seen them had failed to interpret them. "Mr. Hamilton is a very good man but he is not of much use, sir; but you look different, as if you could influence them, and make them do as other people do, and enjoy the world, and go out to church, and see the neighbors, and be natural in short."

"And they do not?"

"Never, sir; haven't you heard? They never either of them set foot beyond the garden gate. Miss Emma enjoys the flower-beds and spends most of her time working at them or walking up and down between the poplars, but Miss Hermione keeps to the house and grows white and thin, studying and reading, and making herself wise--for what? No one comes to see them--that is, not often, sir, and when they do, they are stiff and formal, as if the air of the house was chilly with something nobody understood. It isn't right, and it's going against God's laws, for they are both well and able to go about the world as others do. Why, then, don't they do it? That is what I want to know."

"And that is what everybody wants to know," returned Frank, smiling; "but as long as the young ladies do not care to explain themselves I do not see how you or any one else can criticise their conduct. They must have good reasons for their seclusion or they would never deny themselves all the pleasures natural to youth."

"Reasons? What reasons can they have for actions so extraordinary? I don't know of any reason on God's earth which would keep me tied to the house, if my feet were able to travel and my eyes to see."

"Do you live with them?"

"Yes; or how could they get the necessaries of life? I do their marketing, go for the doctor when they are sick, pay their bills, and buy their dresses. That's why their frocks are no prettier," she explained.

Frank felt his wonder increase.

"It is certainly a great mystery," he acknowledged. "I have heard of elderly women showing their eccentricity in this way, but young girls!"

"And such beautiful girls! Do you not think them beautiful?" she asked.

He started and looked at the woman more closely. There was a tone in her voice when she put this question that for the first time made him think that she was less simple than her manner would seem to indicate.

"What is your name?" he asked her abruptly.

"Doris, sir."

"And what is it you want of me?"

"Oh, sir, I thought I told you; to talk to the young ladies and show them how wicked it is to slight the good gifts which the Lord has bestowed upon them. They may listen to you, sir; seeing that you are from out of town and have the ways of the big city about you."

She was very humble now and had dropped her eyes in some confusion at his altered manner, so that she did not see how keenly his glance rested upon her nervous nostril, weak mouth, and obstinate chin. But she evidently felt his sudden distrust, for her hands clutched each other in embarrassment and she no longer spoke with the assurance with which she had commenced the conversation.

"I like the young ladies," she now explained, "and it is for their own good I want them to do differently."

"Have they never been talked to on the subject? Have not their friends or relatives tried to make them break their seclusion?"

"Oh, sir, the times the minister has been to that house! And the doctor telling them they would lose their health if they kept on in the way they were going! But it was all waste breath; they only said they had their reasons, and left people to draw what conclusions they would."

Frank Etheridge, who had a gentleman's instincts, and yet who was too much of a lawyer not to avail himself of the garrulity of another on a question he had so much at heart, stopped, and weighed the matter a moment with himself before he put the one or two questions which her revelations suggested. Should he dismiss the woman with a rebuke for her forwardness, or should he humor her love for talk and learn the few things further which he was in reality burning to hear. His love and interest naturally gained the victory over his pride, and he allowed himself to ask:

"How long have they kept themselves shut up? Is it a year, do you think?"

"Oh, a full year, sir; six months at least before their father died. We did not notice it at first, because they never said anything about it, but at last it became very evident, and then we calculated and found they had not stepped out of the house since the day of the great ball at Hartford."

"The great ball!"

"Yes, sir, a grand party that every one went to. But they did not go, though they had talked about it, and Miss Hermione had her dress ready. And they never went out again, not even to their father's funeral. Think of that, sir, not even to their father's funeral."

"It is very strange," said he, determined at whatever cost to ask Edgar about that ball, and if he went to it.

"And that is not all," continued his now thoroughly reassured companion. "They were never the same girls again after that time. Before then Miss Hermione was the admiration and pride of the whole town, notwithstanding that dreadful scar, while Miss Emma was the life of the house and of every gathering she went into. But afterwards--well, you can see for yourself what they are now; and it was just so before their father died."

Frank longed to ask some questions about this father, but reason bade him desist. He was already humiliating himself enough in thus discussing the daughters with the servant who waited upon them; others must tell him about the old gentleman.

"The house is just like a haunted house," Doris now remarked. Then as she saw him cast her a quick look of renewed interest, she glanced nervously down the street and asked eagerly: "Would you mind turning off into this lane, sir, where there are not so many persons to pry and peer at us? It is still early enough for people to see, and as everybody knows me and everybody by this time must know you, they may wonder to see us talking together, and I do so long to ease my whole conscience now I am about it."

For reply, he took the road she had pointed out. When they were comfortably out of sight from the main street, he stopped again and said:

"What do you mean by haunted?"

"Oh, sir," she began, "not by ghosts; I don't believe in any such nonsense as ghosts; but by memories sir, memories of something which has happened within those four walls and which are now locked up in the hearts of those two girls, making them live like spectres. I am not a fanciful person myself, nor given to imaginings, but that house, especially on nights when the wind blows, seems to be full of something not in nature; and though I do not hear anything or see anything, I feel strange terrors and almost expect the walls to speak or the floors to give up their secrets, but they never do; and that is why I quake in my bed and lie awake so many nights."

"Yet you are not fanciful, nor given to imaginings," smiled Frank.

"No, for there is ground for my secret fears. I see it in the girls' pale looks, I hear it in the girls' restless tread as they pace hour after hour through those lonesome rooms."

"They walk for exercise; they do not use the streets, so they make a promenade of their own floors."

"Do people walk for exercise at night?"

"At _night_?"

"Late at night; at one, two, sometimes three, in the morning? Oh, sir, it is uncanny, I tell you."

"They are not well; lack of change affects their nerves and they cannot sleep, so they walk."

"Very likely, _but they do not walk together_. Sometimes it's one, and sometimes it's the other. I know their different steps, and I never hear them both at the same time."

Frank felt a cold shiver thrill his blood.

"I have been in the house," she resumed, after a minute's pause, "for five years; ever since Mrs. Cavanagh died, and I cannot tell you what its secret is. But it has one, I am certain, and I often go about the halls and into the different rooms and ask low to myself, 'Was it here that it happened, or was it there?' There is a little staircase on the second floor which takes a quick turn towards a big empty room where nobody ever sleeps, and though I have no reason for shuddering at that place, I always do, perhaps because it is in that big room the young ladies walk so much. Can you understand my feeling this way, and I no more than a servant to them?"

A month ago he would have uttered a loud disclaimer, but he had changed much in some regards, so he answered: "Yes, if you really care for them."

The look she gave him proved that she did, beyond all doubt.

"If I did not care for them do you think I would stay in such a gloomy house? I love them both better than anything else in the whole world, and I would not leave them, not for all the money any one could offer me."

She was evidently sincere, and Frank felt a vague relief.

"I am glad," said he, "that they have so good a friend in their own house; as for your fears you will have to bear them, for I doubt if the young ladies will ever take any one into their confidence."

"Not--not their lawyer?"

"No," said he, "not even their lawyer."

She looked disappointed and suddenly very ill at ease.

"I thought you might be masterful," she murmured, "and find out. Perhaps you will some day, and then everything will be different. Miss Emma is the most amiable," said she, "and would not long remain a prisoner if Miss Hermione would consent to leave the house."

"Miss Emma is the younger?"

"Yes, yes, in everything."

"And the sadder!"

"I am not so sure about that, but she shows her feelings plainer, perhaps because her spirits used to be so high."

Frank now felt they had talked long enough, interesting as was the topic on which they were engaged. So turning his face towards the town, he remarked:

"I am going back to New York to-night, but I shall probably be in Marston again soon. Watch well over the young ladies, but do not think of repeating this interview unless something of great importance should occur. It would not please them if they knew you were in the habit of talking them over to me, and it is your duty to act just as they would wish you to."

"I know it, sir, but when it is for their good----"

"I understand; but let us not repeat it, Doris." And he bade her a kind but significant good-by.

It was now quite dusk, and as he walked towards Dr. Sellick's office, he remembered with some satisfaction that Edgar was usually at home during the early evening. He wanted to talk to him about Hermione's father, and his mood was too impatient for a long delay. He found him as he expected, seated before his desk, and with his wonted precipitancy dashed at once into his subject.

"Edgar, you told me once that you were acquainted with Miss Cavanagh's father; that you were accustomed to visit him. What kind of a man was he? A hard one?"

Edgar, taken somewhat by surprise, faltered for a moment, but only for a moment.

"I never have attempted to criticise him," said he; "but let me see; he was a straightforward man and a persistent one, never let go when he once entered upon a thing. He could be severe, but I should never have called him hard. He was like--well he was like Raynor, that professor of ours, who understood everything about beetles and butterflies and such small fry, and knew very little about men or their ways and tastes when they did not coincide with his own. Mr. Cavanagh's hobby was not in the line of natural history, but of chemistry, and that is why I visited him so much; we used to experiment together."

"Was it his pastime or his profession? The house does not look as if it had been the abode of a rich man."

"He was not rich, but he was well enough off to indulge his whims. I think he inherited the few thousands, upon the income of which he supported himself and family."

"And he could be severe?"

"Very, if he were interrupted in his work; at other times he was simply amiable and absent-minded. He only seemed to live when he had a retort before him."

"Of what did he die?"

"Apoplexy, I think; I was not here, so do not know the particulars."

"Was he--" Frank turned and looked squarely at his friend, as he always did when he had a venturesome question to put--"was he fond of his daughters?"

Edgar had probably been expecting some such turn in the conversation as this, yet he frowned and answered quite hastily, though with evident conscientiousness:

"I could not make out; I do not know as I ever tried to; the matter did not interest me."

But Frank was bound to have a definite reply.

"I think you will be able to tell me if you will only give your mind to it for a few moments. A father cannot help but show some gleam of affection for two motherless girls."

"Oh, he was proud of them," Edgar hurriedly asserted, "and liked to have them ready to hand him his coffee when his experiments were over; but fond of them in the way you mean, I think not. I imagine they often missed their mother."

"Did you know _her_?"

"No, only as a child. She died when I was a youngster."

"You do not help me much," sighed Frank.

"Help you?"

"To solve the mystery of those girls' lives."

"Oh!" was Edgar's short exclamation.

"I thought I might get at it by learning about the father, but nothing seems to give me any clue."

Edgar rose with a restless air.

"Why not do as I do--let the matter alone?"

"Because," cried Frank, hotly, "my affections are engaged. I love Hermione Cavanagh, and I cannot leave a matter alone that concerns her so nearly."

"I see," quoth Edgar, and became very silent.

When Frank returned to New York it was with the resolution to win the heart of Hermione and then ask her to tell him her secret. He was so sure that whatever it was, it was not one which would stand in the way of his happiness.

XI.

LOVE.

Frank's next business was to read the packet of letters which had been found in old Mrs. Wakeham's bed. The box abstracted by Huckins had been examined during his absence and found to contain securities, which, together with the ready money and papers taken from the clock, amounted to so many thousands that it had become quite a serious matter to find the heir. Huckins still clung to the house, but he gave no trouble. He was satisfied, he said, to abide by the second will, being convinced that if he were patient he would yet inherit through it. His sister Harriet was without doubt dead, and he professed great willingness to give any aid possible in verifying the fact. But as he could adduce no proofs nor suggest any clue to the discovery of this sister's whereabouts if living, or of her grave if dead, his offers were disregarded, and he was allowed to hermitize in the old house undisturbed.

Meantime, false clues came in and false claims were raised by various needy adventurers. To follow up these clues and sift these claims took much of Frank Etheridge's time, and when he was not engaged upon this active work he employed himself in reading those letters to which I have already alluded.

They were of old date and were from various sources. But they conveyed little that was likely to be of assistance to him. Of the twenty he finally read, only one was signed Harriet, and while that was very interesting to him, as giving some glimpses into the early history of this woman, it did not give him any facts upon which either he or the police could work. I will transcribe the letter here:

"MY DEAR CYNTHIA:

"You are the only one of the family to whom I dare write. I have displeased father too much to ever hope for his forgiveness, while mother will never go against his wishes, even if the grief of it should make me die. I am very unhappy, I can tell you that, more unhappy than even they could wish, but they must never know it, never. I have still enough pride to wish to keep my misery to myself, and it would be just the one thing that would make my burden unbearable, to have them know I regretted the marriage on account of which I have been turned away from their hearts and home forever. But I do regret it, Cynthia, from the bottom of my heart. He is not kind, and he is not a gentleman, and I made a terrible mistake, as you can see. But I do not think I was to blame. He seemed so devoted, and used to make me such beautiful speeches that I never thought to ask if he were a good man; and when father and mother opposed him so bitterly that we had to meet by stealth, he was always so considerate, and yet so determined, that he seemed to me like an angel till we were married, and then it was too late to do anything but accept my fate. I think he expected father to forgive us and take us home, and when he found these expectations false he became both ugly and sullen, and so my life is nothing but a burden to me, and I almost wish I was dead. But I am very strong, and so is he, and so we are likely to live on, pulling away at the chain that binds us, till both are old and gray.

"Pretty talk for a young girl's reading, is it not? But it relieves me to pour out my heart to some one that loves me, and I know that you do. But I shall never talk like this to you again or ever write you another letter. You are my father's darling, and I want you to remain so, and if you think too much of me, or spend your time in writing to me, he will find it out, and that will help neither of us. So good-by, little Cynthia, and do not be angry that I put a false address at the top of the page, or refuse to tell you where I live, or where I am going. From this hour Harriet is dead to you, and nothing shall ever induce me to break the silence which should remain between us but my meeting you in another world, where all the follies of this will be forgotten in the love that has survived both life and death.

"Your sorrowing but true sister, "HARRIET."

The date was forty years back, and the address was New York City--an address which she acknowledged to be false. The letter was without envelope.

The only other allusion to this sister found in the letters was in a short note written by a person called Mary, and it ran thus:

"Do you know whom I have seen? Your sister Harriet. It was in the depot at New Haven. She was getting off the train and I was getting on, but I knew her at once for all the change which ten years make in the most of us, and catching her by the arm, I cried, 'Harriet, Harriet, where are you living?' How she blushed and what a start she gave! but as soon as she saw who it was she answered readily enough, 'In Marston,' and disappeared in the crowd before I could say another word. Wasn't it a happy chance, and isn't it a relief to know she is alive and well. As for her looks, they were quite lively, and she wore nice clothing like one in very good circumstances. So you see her marriage did not turn out as badly as some thought."

This was of old date also, and gave no clue to the sender, save such as was conveyed by the signature Mary. Mary what? Mr. Huckins was the only person who was likely to know.

Frank, who had but little confidence in this man and none in his desire to be of use in finding the legal heir, still thought it best to ask him if there was any old friend of the family whose first name was Mary. So he went to Flatbush one afternoon, and finding the old miser in his house, put to him this question and waited for his reply.

It came just as he expected, with a great show of willingness that yet was without any positive result.

"Mary? Mary?" he repeated, "we have known a dozen Marys. Do you mean any one belonging to this town?"

"I mean some one with whom your sister was intimate thirty years ago. Some one who knew your other sister, the one who married Smith; some one who would simply sign her first name in writing to Mrs. Wakeham, and who in speaking of Mrs. Smith would call her Harriet."

"Ah!" ejaculated the cautious Huckins, dropping his eyes for fear they would convey more than his tongue might deem fit. "I'm afraid I was too young in those days to know much about my sister's friends. Can you tell me where she lived, or give me any information beyond her first name by which I could identify her?"

"No," was the lawyer's quick retort; "if I could I should not need to consult you; I could find the woman myself."

"Ah, I see, I see, and I wish I could help you, but I really don't know whom you mean, I don't indeed, sir. May I ask where you got the name, and why you want to find the woman?"

"Yes, for it involves your prospects. This Mary, whoever she may have been, was the one to tell Mrs. Wakeham that Harriet Smith lived in Marston. Doesn't that jog your memory, Huckins? You know you cannot inherit the property till it is proved that Harriet is dead and left no heirs."

"I know," he whined, and looked quite disconsolate, but he gave the lawyer no information, and Frank left at last with the feeling that he had reached the end of his rope.

As a natural result, his thoughts turned to Marston--were they ever far away from there? "I will go and ease my heart of some of its burden," thought he; "perhaps my head may be clearer then, and my mind freer for work." Accordingly he took the train that day, and just as the dew of evening began to fall, he rode into Marston and stopped at Miss Cavanagh's door.

He found Hermione sitting at an old harp. She did not seem to have been playing but musing, and her hands hung somewhat listlessly upon the strings. As she rose the instrument gave out a thrilling wail that woke an echo in his sensibilities for which he was not prepared. He had considered himself in a hopeful frame of mind, and behold, he was laboring instead under a morbid fear that his errand would be in vain. Emma was not present, but another lady was, whose aspect of gentle old age was so sweet and winning that he involuntarily bent his head in reverence to her, before Hermione could utter the introduction which was trembling on her tongue.

"My father's sister," said she, "and our very dear aunt. She is quite deaf, so she would not hear you speak if you attempted it, but she reads faces wonderfully, and you see she is smiling at you as she does not smile at every one. You may consider yourself introduced."

Frank, who had a tender heart for all misfortune, surveyed the old lady wistfully. How placid she looked, how at home with her thoughts! It was peacefulness to the spirit to meet her eye. Bowing again, he turned towards Hermione and remarked:

"What a very lovely face! She looks as if she had never known anything but the pleasures of life."

"On the contrary," returned Hermione, "she has never known much but its disappointments. But they have left no trace on her face, or in her nature, I think. She is an embodiment of trust, and in the great silence there is about her, she hears sounds and sees visions which are denied to others. But when did you come to Marston?"

He told her he had just arrived, and, satisfied with the slight look of confusion which mantled her face at this acknowledgment, launched into talk all tending to one end, his love for her. But he did not reach that end immediately; for if the old lady could not hear, she could see, and Frank, for all his impetuosity, possessed sufficient restraint upon himself not to subject himself or Hermione to the criticism of even this most benignant relative. Not till Mrs. Lovell left the room, as she did after a while,--being a very wise old lady as well as mild,--did he allow himself to say:

"There can be but one reason now for my coming to Marston--to see you, Miss Cavanagh; I have no other business here."

"I thought," she began, with some confusion,--evidently she had been taken by surprise,--"that you were looking for some one, a Harriet Smith, I think, whom you had reason to believe once lived here."

"I did come to Marston originally on that errand, but I have so far failed in finding any trace of her in this place that I begin to think we were mistaken in our inferences that she had ever lived here."

"Yet you had reason for thinking that she did," Hermione went on, with the anxiety of one desirous to put off the declaration she probably saw coming.

"Yes; we had reasons, but they prove to have been unfounded."

"Was--was your motive for finding her an important one?" she asked, with some hesitation, and a look of curiosity in her fine eyes.

"Quite; a fortune of some thousands is involved in her discovery. She is heiress to at least a hundred thousand dollars from a sister she has not seen since they were girls together."

"Indeed!" and Hermione's eyes opened in some surprise, then fell before the burning light in his.

"But do not let us talk of a matter that for me is now of secondary interest," cried he, letting the full stream of his ardor find its way. "You are all I can think of now; you, you, whom I have loved since I caught the first glimpse of your face one night through the window yonder. Though I have known you but a little while, and though I cannot hope to have awakened a kindred feeling in you, you have so filled my mind and heart during the few short weeks since I learned your name, that I find it impossible to keep back the words which the sight of your face calls forth. I love you, and I want to guard you from loneliness forever. Will you give me that sweet right?"

"But," she cried, starting to her feet in an excitement that made her face radiantly beautiful, "you do not seem to think of my misfortune, my----"

"Do you mean this scar?" he whispered softly, gliding swiftly to her side. "It is no misfortune in my eyes; on the contrary, I think it endears you to me all the more. I love it, Hermione, because it is a part of you. See how I feel towards it!" and he bent his head with a quick movement, and imprinted a kiss upon the mark she had probably never touched herself but with shrinking.

"Oh!" went up from her lips in a low cry, and she covered her face with her hands in a rush of feeling that was not entirely connected with that moment.

"Did you think I would let that stand in my way?" he asked, with a proud tenderness with which no sensitive woman could fail to be impressed. "It is one reason more for a man to love your beautiful face, your noble manners, your soft white hand. I think half the pleasure would be gone from the prospect of loving you if I did not hope to make you forget what you have perhaps too often remembered."

She dropped her hands, and he saw her eyes fixed upon him with a strange look.

"O how wicked I have been!" she murmured. "And what good men there are in the world!"

He shook his head.

"It is not goodness," he began, but she stopped him with a wave of her hand.

A strange elation seemed to have taken hold of her, and she walked the floor with lifted head and sparkling eye.

"It restores my belief in love," she exclaimed, "and in mankind." And she seemed content just to brood upon that thought.

But he was not; naturally he wished for some assurance from her; so he stepped in her path as she was crossing the room, and, taking her by the hands, said, smilingly:

"Do you know how you can testify your appreciation in a way to make me perfectly happy?"

She shook her head, and tried to draw her hands away.

"By taking a walk, the least walk in the world, beyond that wooden gate."

She shuddered and her hands fell from his.

"You do not know what you ask," said she; then after a moment, "it was that I meant and not the scar, when I spoke of my misfortune. I cannot go outside the garden wall, and I was wrong to listen to your words for a moment, knowing what a barrier this fact raises up between us."

"Hermione,--" he was very serious now, and she gathered up all her strength to meet the questions she knew were coming,--"why cannot you go beyond the garden gate? Cannot you tell me? Or do you hesitate because you are afraid I shall smile at your reasons for this determined seclusion?"

"I am not afraid of your smiling, but I cannot give my reasons. That I consider them good must answer for us both."

"Very well, then, we will let them answer. You need not take the walk I ask, but give me instead another pleasure--your promise to be my wife."

"Your wife?"

"Yes, Hermione."

"With such a secret between us?"

"It will not be a secret long."

"Mr. Etheridge," she cried with emotion, "you do not know the woman you thus honor. If it had been Emma----"

"It is you I love."

"It would have been safe," she went on as if she had not heard him. "She is lovely, and amiable, and constant, and in her memory there is no dark scar as there is in mine, a scar deeper than this," she said, laying her finger on her cheek, "and fully as ineffaceable."

"Some day you will take me into your confidence," he averred, "and then that scar will gradually disappear."

"What confidence you have in me?" she cried. "What have you seen, what can you see in me to make you trust me so in face of my own words?"

"I think it is the look in your eyes. There is purity there, Hermione, and a deep sadness which is too near like sorrow to be the result of an evil action."

"What do you call evil?" she cried. Then suddenly, "I once did a great wrong--in a fit of temper--and I can never undo it, never, yet its consequences are lasting. Would you give your heart to a woman who could so forget herself, and who is capable of forgetting herself again if her passions are roused as they were then?"

"Perhaps not," he acknowledged, "but my heart is already given and I do not know how to take it back."

"Yet you must," said she. "No man with a career before him should marry a recluse, and I am that, whatever else I may or may not be. I would be doing a second ineffaceable wrong if I took advantage of your generous impulse and bound you to a fate that in less than two months would be intolerably irksome to one of your temperament."

"Now you do not know me," he protested.

But she heeded neither his words nor his pleading look.

"I know human nature," she avowed, "and if I do not mingle much with the world I know the passions that sway it. I can never be the wife of any man, Mr. Etheridge, much less of one so generous and so self-forgetting as yourself."

"Do you--are you certain?" he asked.

"Certain."

"Then I have not succeeded in raising one throb of interest in your breast?"

She opened her lips and his heart stood still for her answer, but she closed them again and remained standing so long with her hands locked together and her face downcast, that his hopes revived again, and he was about to put in another plea for her hand when she looked up and said firmly:

"I think you ought to know that my heart does not respond to your suit. It may make any disappointment which you feel less lasting."

He uttered a low exclamation and stepped back.

"I beg your pardon," said he, "I ought not to have annoyed you. You will forget my folly, I hope."

"Do you forget it!" cried she; but her lips trembled and he saw it.

"Hermione! Hermione!" he murmured, and was down at her feet before she could prevent it. "Oh, how I love you!" he breathed, and kissed her hand wildly, passionately.

XII.

HOW MUCH DID IT MEAN?

Frank Etheridge left the presence of Hermione Cavanagh, carrying with him an indelible impression of her slender, white-robed figure and pallid, passion-drawn face. There was such tragedy in the latter, that he shuddered at its memory, and stopped before he reached the gate to ask himself if the feeling she displayed was for him or another. If for another, then was that other Dr. Sellick, and as the name formed itself in his thoughts, he felt the dark cloud of jealousy creep over his mind, obscuring the past and making dangerous the future.

"How can I know," thought he, "how can I know?" and just as the second repetition passed his lips, he heard a soft step near him, and, looking up, saw the gentle Emma watering her flowers.

To gain her side was his first impulse. To obtain her confidence the second. Taking the heavy watering-pot from her hand, he poured its contents on the rose-bush she was tending, and then setting it down, said quietly:

"I have just made your sister very unhappy, Miss Cavanagh."

She started and her soft eyes showed the shadow of an alarm.

"I thought you were her friend," she said.

He drew her around the corner of the house towards the poplar trees. "Had I been only that," he avowed, "I might have spared her pain, but I am more than that, Miss Cavanagh, I am her lover."

The hesitating step at his side paused, and though no great change came into her face, she seemed to have received a shock.

"I can understand," said she, "that you hurt her."

"Is she so wedded to the past, then?" he cried. "Was there some one, is there some one whom she--she----"

He could not finish, but the candid-eyed girl beside him did not profess to misunderstand him. A pitiful smile crossed her lips, and she looked for a minute whiter than her sister had done, but she answered firmly:

"You could easily overcome any mere memory, but the decision she has made never to leave the house, I fear you cannot overcome."

"Does it spring--forgive me if I go beyond the bounds of discretion, but this mystery is driving me mad--does it spring from that past attachment you have almost acknowledged?"

She drooped her head and his heart misgave him. Why should he hurt both these women when his whole feeling towards them was one of kindness and love?

"Pardon me," he pleaded. "I withdraw the question; I had no right to put it."

"Thank you," said she, and looked away from him towards the distant prospect of hill and valley lying before them.

He stood revolving the matter in his disturbed mind.

"I should have been glad to have been the means of happiness to your sister and yourself. Such seclusion as you have imposed upon yourselves seems unnecessary, but if it must be, and this garden wall is destined to be the boundary of your world, it would have been a great pleasure to me to have brought into it some freshness from the life which lies beyond it. But it is destined not to be."

The sad expression in her face changed into one of wistfulness.

"Then you are not coming any more?" said she.

He caught his breath. There was disappointment in her tones and this could mean nothing but regret, and regret meant the loss of something which might have been hope. She felt, then, that he might have won her sister if he had been more patient.

"Do you think it will do for me to come here after your sister has told me that it was useless for me to aspire to her hand?"

She gave him for the first time a glance that had the element of mirthfulness in it.

"Come as my friend," she suggested; then in a more serious mood added: "It is her only chance of happiness, but I do not know that I would be doing right in influencing you to pursue a suit which may not be for yours. _You_ know, or will know after reflection (and I advise you to reflect well), whether an alliance with women situated as we are would be conducive to your welfare. If you decide yes, think that a woman taken by surprise, as my sister undoubtedly was, may not in the first hurried moment of decision know her own mind, but also remember that no woman who has taken such a decision as she has, is cast in the common mould, and that you may but add to your regrets by a persistency she may never fully reward."

Astonished at her manner and still more astonished at the intimation conveyed in her last words, he looked at her as one who would say:

"But you also share her fate and the resolve that made it."

She seemed to understand him.

"Free Hermione," she whispered, "from the shackles she has wound about herself and you will free me."

"Miss Emma," he began, but she put her finger on her lips.

"Hush!" she entreated; "let us not talk any more about it. I have already said what I never meant should pass my lips; but the affection I bear my sister made me forget myself; she does so need to love and be loved."

"And you think I----"

"Ah, sir, you must be the judge of your own chances. You have heard her refusal and must best know just how much it means."

"How much it means!" Long did Frank muse over that phrase, after he had left the sweet girl who had uttered it. As he sat with Edgar at supper, his abstracted countenance showed that he was still revolving the question, though he endeavored to seem at home with his friend and interested in the last serious case which had occupied the attention of the newly settled doctor. How much it means! Not much, he was beginning to say to himself, and insensibly his face began to brighten and his manner to grow less restrained, when Edgar, who had been watching him furtively, broke out:

"Now you are more like yourself. Business responsibilities are as hard to shake off as a critical case in medicine."

"Yes," was the muttered reply, as Frank rose from the table, and took the cigar his friend offered him. "And business with me just now is particularly perplexing. I cannot get any clue to Harriet Smith or her heirs, nor can the police or the presumably sharp detective I have put upon the search."

"That must please Huckins."

"Yes, confound him! such a villain as he is! I sometimes wonder if he killed his sister."

"That you can certainly find out."

"No, for she had a mortal complaint, and that satisfies the physicians. But there are ways of hastening a death, and those I dare avow he would not be above using. The greed in his eyes would do anything; it even suffices to make him my very good friend, now that he sees that he might lose everything by opposing me."

"I am glad you see through his friendship."

"See through a sieve?"

"He plays his part badly, then?"

"He cannot help it, with that face of his; and then he gave himself away in the beginning. No attitude he could take now would make me forget the sneak I saw in him then."

This topic was interesting, but Edgar knew it was no matter of business which had caused the fitful changes he had been observing in Frank's tell-tale countenance. Yet he did not broach any other theme, and it was Frank who finally remarked:

"I suppose you think me a fool to fix my heart on a woman with a secret."

"Fool is a strong word," answered Edgar, somewhat bitterly, "but that you were unfortunate to have been attracted by Hermione Cavanagh, I think any man would acknowledge. You would acknowledge it yourself, if you stopped to weigh the consequences of indulging a passion for a woman so eccentric."

"Perhaps I should, if my interest would allow me to stop. But it won't, Edgar; it has got too strong a hold upon me; everything else sinks in importance before it. I love her, and am willing to sacrifice something for her sake."

"Something, perhaps; but in this case it would be everything."

"I do not think so."

"You do not think so now; but you would soon."

"Perhaps I should, but it is hard to realize it. Besides, she would drop her eccentricities if her affections once became engaged."

"Oh, if you have assurance of that."

"Do I need assurance? Doesn't it stand to reason? A woman loved is so different from a woman----" scorned, he was going to say, but, remembering himself, added softly, "from a woman who has no one to think of but herself."

"This woman has a sister," observed Edgar.

Frank faltered. "Yes, and that sister is involved in her fate," thought he, but he said, quietly: "Emma Cavanagh does not complain of Hermione; on the contrary, she expresses the greatest affection for her."

"They are both mysteries," exclaimed Edgar, and dropped the subject, though it was not half talked out.

Frank was quite willing to accept his silence, for he was out of sorts with his friend and with himself. He knew his passion was a mad one, and yet he felt that it had made giant strides that day, and had really been augmented instead of diminished by the refusal he had received from Hermione, and the encouragement to persistence which he had received from her usually shy sister. As the evening wore on and the night approached, his thoughts not only grew in intensity, but deepened into tenderness. It was undoubtedly a passion that had smitten him, but that passion was hallowed by the unselfish feelings of a profound affection. He did not want her to engage herself to him if it would not be for her happiness. That it would be, every throb of his heart assured him, but he might be mistaken, and if so, better her dreams of the past than a future he could not make bright. He was so moved at the turmoil which his thoughts made in his usually quiet breast, that he could not think of sleep, but sat in his room for hours indulging in dreams which his practical nature would have greatly scorned a few short weeks before. He saw her again in fancy in every attitude in which his eyes had ever beheld her, and sanctified thus by distance, her beauty seemed both wonderful and touching. And that was not all. Some chord between them seemed to have been struck, and he felt himself drawn towards her as if (it was a strange fancy) she stood by that garden gate, and was looking in his direction with rapt, appealing eyes. So strong became that fancy at last, that he actually rose to his feet and went to the window which opened towards the south.

"Hermione! Hermione!" broke in longing from his lips, and then annoyed at what he could not but consider a display of weakness on his part, he withdrew himself from the window, determined to forget for the moment that there lived for him such a cause for love and sorrow. But what man can forget by a mere effort of will, or what lover shut his eyes to the haunting vision which projects itself upon the inner consciousness. In fancy he saw her still, and this time she seemed to be pacing up and down the poplar walk, wringing her hands and wildly calling his name. It was more than he could bear. He must know if this was only an hallucination, and in a feverish impulse he rushed from his room with the intention of going to her at once.

But he no sooner stood in the hall than he realized he was not alone in the house, and that he should have to pass Edgar's door. He naturally felt some hesitation at this and was inclined to give up his purpose. But the fever urging him on said no; so stealing warily down the hall he stepped softly by the threshold of his friend's room, when to his surprise he perceived that the door was ajar.

Pushing it gently open he found the room brilliant with moonlight but empty. Greatly relieved and considering that the doctor had been sent for by some suffering patient, he passed at once out of the house.

He went directly to that of Hermione, walking where the shadows were thickest as if he were afraid of being recognized. But no one was in the streets, and when he reached the point where the tall poplar-trees made a wall against the moonbeams, he slid into the deep obscurity he found there with a feeling of relief such as the heart experiences when it is suddenly released from some great strain.

Was she in the poplar walk? He did not mean to accost her if she were, nor to show himself or pass beyond the boundary of the wall, but he must know if her restless spirit drove her to pace these moonlit walks, and if it were true or not that she was murmuring his name.

The gate which opened in the wall at the side of the house was in a direct line with the window he had long ago fixed upon as hers. He accordingly took up his station at that spot and as he did so he was sure that he saw the flitting of some dark form amid the alternate bands of moonlight and shadow that lay across the weird pathway before him. Holding his breath he listened. Oh, the stillness of the night! How awesome and yet how sweet it was! But is there no break in the universal silence? Above his head the ever restless leaves make a low murmuring, and far away in the dim distances rises a faint sound that he cannot mistake; it is the light footfall of a dainty woman.

He can see her now. She is coming towards him, her shadow gliding before her. Seeing it he quails. From the rush of emotion seizing him, he knows that he should not be upon this spot, and panting with the effort, he turns and flees just as the sudden sound of a lifted window comes from the house.

That arrests him. Pausing, he looks up. It is her window that is open, and in the dark square thus made he sees her face bright with the moonlight streaming over it. Instantly he recovers himself. It is Emma's step, not Hermione's, he hears upon the walk. Hermione is above and in an anxious mood, for she is looking eagerly out and calling her sister by name.

"I am coming," answers back the clear, low voice of Emma from below.

"It is late," cries Hermione, "and very cold. Come in, Emma."

"I am coming," repeated the young girl. And in another moment he heard her step draw nearer, saw her flitting figure halt for a moment on the door-step before him and then disappear just as the window closed above. He had not been observed.

Relieved, he drew a long breath and leaned his head against the garden wall. Ah, how fair had been the vision of his beloved one's face in the moonlight. It filled him with indescribable thoughts; it made his spirit reel and his heart burn; it made him ten times her lover. Yet because he was her lover he felt that he ought not to linger there any longer; that the place was hallowed even from his presence, and that he should return at once to the doctor's house. But when he lifted his head he heard steps, this time not within the wall but on the roadside behind him, and alert at once to the mischievous surmises which might be aroused by the discovery of his presence there, he remained perfectly still in the hope that his form would be so lost in the deep shadows where he had withdrawn himself, that he would not be seen.

But the person, whoever it was, had evidently already detected him, for the footsteps turned the corner and advanced rapidly to where he stood. Should he step forward and meet the intruder, or remain still and await the words of surprise he had every reason to expect? He decided to remain where he was, and in another moment realized his wisdom in doing so, for the footsteps passed on and did not halt till they had reached the gate. But they paused there and at once he felt himself seized by a sudden jealousy and took a step forward, eager to see what this man would do.

He did not do much; he cast a look up at the house, and a heavy sigh broke from his lips; then he leaned forward and plucked a rose that grew inside the wall and kissed it there in the moonlight, and put it inside his breast-pocket; then he turned again towards the highway, and started back in surprise to see Frank Etheridge standing before him.

"Edgar!" cried the one.

"Frank!" exclaimed the other.

"You have misled me," accused Frank; "you do love her, or you would not be here."

"Love whom?" asked Edgar, bitterly.

"Hermione."

"Does Hermione tend the flowers?"

"Ah!" ejaculated Frank, understanding his friend for the first time; "it is Emma you are attached to. I see! I see! Forgive me, Edgar; passion is so blind to everything but its own object. Of course it is Emma; why shouldn't it be!"

Yet for all its assurance his voice had strange tones in it, and Edgar, already annoyed at his own self-betrayal, looked at him suspiciously as they drew away together towards the main street.

"I am glad to find this out," said Frank, with a hilarity slightly forced, or so thought his friend, who could not know what thoughts and hopes this discovery had awakened in the other's breast. "You have kept your secret well, but now that I know it you cannot refuse to make me your confidant, when there is so much to tell involving my happiness as well as your own."

"I have no happiness, Frank."

"Nor I; but I mean to have."

"Mean to marry Miss Cavanagh?"

"Of course, if I can induce her to marry me."

"I do not mean to marry Emma."

"You do not? Because she has a secret? because she is involved in a mystery?"

"Partly; that would be enough, Frank; but I have another good reason. Miss Emma Cavanagh does not care for me."

"You know that? You have asked her?"

"A year ago; this is no sudden passion with me; I have loved her all my life."

"Edgar! And you mean to give her up?"

"Give her up?"

"If I were you, nothing would induce me to resign my hopes, not even her own coldness. I _would_ win her. Have you tried again since your return?"

"Frank, she is a recluse now; I could not marry a recluse; my wife must play her part in the world, and be my helpmate abroad as well as at home."

"Yes, yes; but as I said in my own case, win her love and that will all right itself. No woman's resolve will hold out against a true passion."

"But you forget, she has no true passion for me."

Frank did not answer; he was musing over the subject. He had had an opportunity for seeing into the hearts of these girls which had been denied to Edgar. Had he seen love there? Yes, but in Hermione's breast, not Emma's. And yet Emma was deeply sad, and it was Emma whom he had just seen walking her restlessness off under the trees at midnight.

"Edgar," he suddenly exclaimed, "you may not understand this girl. Their whole existence is a mystery, and so may their hearts be. Won't you tell me how it was she refused you? It may serve to throw some light upon the facts."

"What light? She refused me as all coquettish women refuse the men whom they have led to believe in their affection."

"Ah! you once believed, then, in her affection."

"Should I have offered myself if I had not?"

"I don't know; I only know I didn't wait for any such belief on the part of Hermione."

"You are impulsive, Frank, I am not; I weigh well what I do, fortunately for myself."

"Yet you did not prosper in this affair."

"No, because I did not take a woman's waywardness into consideration. I thought I had a right to count upon her regard, and I found myself mistaken."

"Explain yourself," entreated Frank.

"Will not to-morrow do? Here we are at home, and it must be one o'clock at least."

"I should sleep better if I knew it all now," Frank intimated.

"Well, then, come to my room; but there is nothing in the story to specially interest you. I loved her----"

"Edgar, you must be explicit. I am half lawyer in listening to this tale; I want to understand these girls."

"Girls? It is of Emma only that I have to speak."

"I know, but tell the story with some details; tell me where you first met her."

"Oh, if I must," sighed Edgar, who hated all talk about himself, "let's be comfortable." And throwing himself into a chair, he pointed out another to Frank.

"This is more like it," acknowledged the latter.

Edgar lit a cigar; perhaps he felt that he could hide all emotion behind its fumes. Frank did not take one.

"I have known Emma Cavanagh ever since we were children," began Edgar. "As a school-boy I thought her the merriest-eyed witch in town.---- Is she merry now?"

Frank shook his head.

"Well, I suppose she has grown older, but then she was as full of laughter and fun as any blue-eyed Mischief could well be, and I, who have a cynical turn of mind, liked the brightness of hers as I shall never like her sadness--if she is sad. But that was in my adolescence, and being as shy as I was inclined to be cynical, I never showed her my preference, or even joined the mirthful company of which she was the head. I preferred to stand back and hear her laughter, or talk to Hermione while watching her sister."

"Ah!" thought Frank.

"When I went to college she went to school, and when I graduated as a doctor she was about graduating also. But she did not come home at that time for more than a fleeting visit. Friends wished her company on a trip abroad, and she went away from Marston just as I settled here for my first year of practice. I was disappointed at this, but I made what amends to myself I could by cultivating the acquaintance of her father, and making myself necessary to him by my interest in his studies. I spent much of my spare time at the house, and though I never asked after Emma, I used to get continual news of her from her sister."

"Ah!" again ejaculated Frank to himself.

"At last she returned, and--I do not know how she looks now, but she was pretty then, wonderfully pretty, and more animated in her manner than any other woman I have ever seen. I saw her first at a picnic, and though I lacked courage to betray the full force of my feeling, I imagined she understood me, for her smiles became dazzling, and she joked with everybody but me. At last I had her for a few minutes to myself, and then the pent up passion of months had its way, and I asked her to be my wife. Frank, you may find it easy to talk about these things, but I do not. I can only say she seemed to listen to me with modest delight, and when I asked her for her answer she gave me a look I shall never forget, and would have spoken but that her father called her just then, and we were obliged to separate. I saw her for just another moment that day, but there were others about, and I could only whisper, 'If you love me, come to the ball next week'; to which she gave me no other reply than an arch look and a smile which, as I have said before, appeared to promise me all I could desire. Appeared, but did not; for when I called at the house the next day I was told that Mr. Cavanagh was engaged in an experiment that could not be interrupted, and when I asked to see the ladies received word that they were very busy preparing for the ball and could see no one. Relieved at this, for the ball was near at hand, I went home, and being anxious to do the honorable thing, I wrote to Mr. Cavanagh, and, telling him that I loved his daughter, formally asked for the honor of her hand. This note I sent by a messenger.

"I did not receive an immediate reply (why do you want all these particulars, Frank?); but I did not worry, for her look was still warm in my memory. But when two days passed and no message arrived I became uneasy, and had it not been for the well-known indifference of Mr. Cavanagh to all affairs of life outside of his laboratory, I should have given up in despair. But as it was, I kept my courage up till the night of the ball, when it suddenly fell, never to rise again. For will you believe it, Frank, she was not there, nor any of her family, though all had engaged to go, and had made many preparations for the affair, as I knew."

"And did no letter come? Did you never see Miss Cavanagh again, or any of her family?"

"I received a note, but it was very short, though it was in Emma's handwriting. She had not been well, was her excuse, and so could not be present at the ball. As for the offer I had been kind enough to make her, it was far above her deserts, and so must be gratefully declined. Then came a burst of something like contrition, and the prayer that I would not seek to make her alter her mind, as her decision was irrevocable. Added to this was one line from her father, to the effect that interesting as our studies were, he felt compelled to tell me he should have no further time to give to them at present, and so bade me a kindly adieu. Was there ever a more complete dismissal? I felt as if I had been thrust out of the house."

Frank, who was nothing if not sympathetic, nodded quickly, but did not break into those open expressions of indignation which his friend had evidently anticipated. The truth was, he was too busy considering the affair, and asking himself what part Hermione had taken in it, and whether all its incongruities were not in some way due to her. He was so anxious to assure himself that this was not so, that he finally asked:

"And was that the end? Did you never see any of them again?"

"I did not wish to," was the answer. "I had already thought of trying my fortunes in the West, and when this letter came, it determined me. In three weeks I had left Marston as I thought forever, but I was not successful in the West."

"And you will be here," observed Frank.

"I think so," said Edgar, and became suddenly silent.

Frank looked at him a long time and then said quietly:

"I am glad you love her still."

Edgar, flushing, opened his lips, but the other would not listen to any denial.

"If you had not loved her, you would not have come back to Marston, and if you did not love her still, you would not pluck roses from her wall at midnight."

"I was returning from a patient," objected Edgar, shortly.

"I know, but you _stopped_. You need not blush to own it, for, as I say, I think it a good thing that you have not forgotten Miss Cavanagh." And not being willing to explain himself further, Frank rose and sauntered towards the door. "We have talked well into the night," he remarked; "supposing we let up now, and continue our conversation to-morrow."

"I am willing to let up," acquiesced Edgar, "but why continue to-morrow? Nothing can be gained by fruitless conjectures on this subject, while much peace of mind may be lost by them."

"Well, perhaps you are right," quoth Frank.

XIII.

FRESH DOUBTS.

Frank was recalled to business the next day by the following letter from Flatbush:

DEAR MR. ETHERIDGE:

It has been discovered this afternoon that Mr. Huckins has left town. When he went or where he has gone, no one seems to know. Indeed, it was supposed that he was still in the house, where he has been hiding ever since the investigations were over, but a neighbor, having occasion to go in there to-day, found the building empty, and all of Mr. Huckins' belongings missing. I thought you would like to know of this disappearance.

Yours truly, A. W. SENEY.

As this was an affair for the police, Frank immediately returned to New York; but it was not many days before he was back again in Marston, determined to see Miss Cavanagh once more, and learn if his suit was as really hopeless as it appeared. He brought a box of some beautiful orchids with him, and these he presented to Miss Emma as being the one most devoted to flowers.

Hermione looked a little startled at his presence, but Mrs. Lovell, the dear old lady who was paying them a visit, smiled gently upon him, and he argued well from that smile, knowing that it was not without its meaning from one whose eyes were so bright with intelligence as her's.

The evening was cool for summer, and a fire had been lighted in the grate. By this fire they all sat and Frank, who was strangely happy, entertained the three recluses with merry talk which was not without a hidden meaning for one of the quiet listeners. When the old aunt rose and slipped away, the three drew nearer, and the conversation became more personal. At last--how was it done--Emma vanished also, and Frank, turning to utter some witty speech, found only Hermione's eyes confronting him in the fire-glow. At once the words faltered on his tongue, and leaning forward he reached out his hand, for she was about to rise also.

"Do not rob me of this one moment," he prayed. "I have come back, you see, because I could not stay away. Say that it does not anger you; say that I may come now and then and see your face, even if I may not hope for all that my heart craves."

"Do I look angry?" she asked, with a sad smile.

"No," he whispered; "nor do you look glad."

"Glad," she murmured, "glad"; and the bitterness in her tone revealed to him how strong were the passions that animated her. "I have no business with gladness, not even if my own fate changed. I have forfeited all joy, Mr. Etheridge; and that I thought you understood."

"You speak like one who has committed a crime," he smiled; "nothing else should make you feel as you do."

She started and her eyes fell. Then they rose suddenly and looked squarely into his. "There are other crimes than those which are marked by blood," said she. "Perhaps I am not altogether guiltless."

Frank shuddered; he had expected her to repel the charge which he had only made in the hopes of showing her into what a morbid condition she had fallen.

"My hands are clean," she went on, "but my soul is in shadow. Why did you make me speak of it? You are my friend and I want to keep your friendship, but you see why it must not grow into love; _must not_ I say, for both our sakes. It would be fatal."

"I do not see that," he cried impetuously. "You do not make me see it. You hint and assert, but you tell me nothing. You should give me facts, Hermione, and then I could judge whether I should go or stay."

She flushed, and her face, which had been lifted to his, slowly sank.

"You do not know what you ask of me," she murmured.

"I know that I have asked you to be my wife."

"And it was generous of you, very generous. Such generosity merits confidence, but--Let us talk of something else," she cried. "I am not fit--not well enough, I mean, to speak of serious matters to-night. Tell me about your affairs. Tell me if you have found Harriet Smith."

"No," he returned, greatly disappointed, for there had been something like yielding in her manner a moment before. "There is no Harriet Smith, and I do not even know that there is a Hiram Huckins, for he too has disappeared and cannot be found."

"Hiram Huckins?"

"Yes, her brother and the brother of Mrs. Wakeham, whose will has made all this trouble. He is the heir who will inherit her property if Harriet Smith or her children cannot be found, and as the latter contingency is not likely to happen, it is odd that he should have run away without letting us know where he can be found."

"Is he a good man?"

"Hardly. Indeed I consider him a rascal; but he has a good claim on the property, as I have already said, and that is what angers me. A hundred thousand dollars should not fall into the hands of one so mean and selfish as he is."

"Poetic justice is not always shown in this world. Perhaps if you found the true heirs, you would find them also lacking in much that was admirable."

"Possibly; but they would not be apt to be as bad as he is."

"Is he dishonest?"

"I do not like to accuse him, but neither would I like to trust him with another man's money."

"That is unfortunate," said she. "And he will really have this money if you do not find any nearer heirs?"

"Certainly; his name follows theirs in the will."

"It is a pity," she observed, rising and moving towards the harp. "Do you want to hear a song that Emma composed when we were happier than we are now?"

"Indeed I do," was his eager reply. "Sing, I entreat you, sing; it will make me feel as if the gloom was lifting from between us."

But at this word, she came quickly back and sat down in her former place by the fire.

"I do not know what came over me," said she; "I never sing." And she looked with a severe and sombre gaze into the flames before her.

"Hermione, have you no right to joy, or even to give joy to others?"

"Tell me more about the case that is interesting you. Supposing you found Harriet Smith or her children?"

"I would show them the will and put them in the way of securing their fortune."

"_I_ should like to see that will."

"Would you?"

"Yes, it would interest me."

"You do not look very interested."

"Do I not? Yet I am, I assure you."

"Then you shall see it, or rather this newspaper copy of it which I happen to have in my pocket-book."

"What, that little slip?"

"It is not very large."

"I thought a will was something ponderous."

"Sometimes it is, but this is short and very much to the point; it was drawn up in haste."

"Let me take it," said she.

She took it and carried it over to the lamp. Suddenly she turned about and her face was very white.

"What odd provision is this," she cried, "about the heir being required to live a year in the house where this woman died?"

"Oh," said he, "that is nothing; any one who inherits this money would not mind such a condition as that. Mrs. Wakeham wanted the house fitted up, you see. It had been her birthplace."

Hermione silently handed him back the slip. She looked so agitated that he was instantly struck by it.

"Why are you affected by this?" he cried. "Hermione, Hermione, this is something to _you_!"

She roused herself and looked calmly at him, shaking her head.

"You are mistaken," she declared. "It is nothing to me."

"To some one you know, then,--to your sister?"

"How could it be anything to her, if not to me?"

"True; I beg your pardon; but you seem to feel a personal disappointment."

"You do not understand me very well," said she, and turned towards the door in welcome of her sister, who just then came in. She was followed by Doris with a tray on which were heaped masses of black and white cherries in bountiful profusion.

"From our own trees," said Emma, as she handed him a plate.

He made his acknowledgments, and leaned forward to take the cherries which Doris offered him.

"Sir," whispered that woman, as she pushed into view a little note which she held in her hand under the tray, "just read this, and I won't disobey you again. It's something you ought to know. For the young ladies' sakes do read it, sir."

He was very angry, and cast her a displeased look, but he took the note. Hermione was at the other end of the room, and Emma was leaning over her aunt, so the action was not seen; but he felt guilty of a discourtesy for all that, and ate his cherries with a disturbed mind. Doris, on the contrary, looked triumphant, and passed from one to the other with a very cheerful smile.

When Frank arrived home he read that note. It was from Doris herself, and ran thus:

"Something has happened to the young ladies. They were to have had new dresses this month, and now they say they must make the old ones do. There is less too for dinner than there was, and if it were not for the fruit on our trees we would not have always enough to eat. But that is not the worst; Miss Emma says I shall have to leave them, as they cannot pay me any longer for my work. As if I would leave them, if I starved! Do, do find out what this means, for it is too much to believe that they are going to be poor with all the rest they have to endure."

Find out what it meant! He knew what it meant; they had sacrificed their case, and now they must go hungry, wear old clothes, and possibly do their own work. It made him heart-sick; it made him desperate; it made him wellnigh forget her look when she said: "Our friendship must not grow into love, _must not_, I say, for both our sakes. It would be fatal."

He resolved to see Hermione the next morning, and, if possible, persuade her to listen to reason, and give up a resolve that endangered both her own and her sister's future comfort.

XIV.

IN THE NIGHT WATCHES.

Meantime in the old house Hermione sat watching Emma as she combed out her long hair before the tiny mirror in their bedroom. Her face, relieved now from all effort at self-control, betrayed a deep discouragement, which deepened its tragic lines and seemed to fill the room with gloom. Yet she said nothing till Emma had finished her task and looked around, then she exclaimed:

"Another curse has fallen upon us; we might have been rich, but must remain poor. Do you think we can bear many more disappointments, Emma?"

"I do not think that I can," murmured Emma, with a pitiful smile. "But what do you mean by riches? Gaining our case would not have made us rich."

"No."

"Has--has Mr. Etheridge offered himself? Have you had a chance of _that_ happiness, and refused it?"

Hermione, who had been gazing almost sadly at her sister as she spoke the foregoing words, flushed, half angrily, half disdainfully, and answered with sufficient bitterness in her voice:

"Could I accept any man's devotion _now_! Could I accept even _his_ if it were offered to me? Emma, your memory seems very short, or you have never realized the position in which I stand."

Emma, who had crimsoned as painfully as her sister at that one emphasized word, which suggested so much to both sisters, did not answer for a moment, but when she did her words came with startling distinctness.

"You do me wrong; I not only have realized, to the core of my heart, your position and what it demands, but I have shared it, as you know, and never more than when the question came up as to whether we girls could marry with such a shadow hanging over us."

"Emma, what do you mean?" asked Hermione, rising and confronting her sister, with wide open, astonished eyes. For Emma's appearance was startling, and might well thrill an observer who had never before seen her gentleness disturbed by a passion as great as she herself might feel.

But Emma, at the first sight of this reflection of her own emotions in Hermione's face, calmed her manner, and put a check upon her expression.

"If you do not know," said she, "I had rather not be the one to tell you. But never say again that I do not realize your position."

"Emma, Emma," pursued Hermione, without a change of tone or any diminution in the agitation of her manner to show that she had heard these words, "have _you_ had a lover and I not know it? Did you give up that _when_----" The elder sister choked; the younger smiled, but with an infinite sadness.

"I should not have spoken of it," said she; "I would not have done so, but that I hoped to influence you to look on this affair with different eyes. I--I believe you ought to embrace this new hope, Hermione. Do but tell him----"

"_Tell him_! that would be a way to gain him surely."

"I do not think it would cause you to lose him; that is, if you could assure him that your heart is free to love him as such a man ought to be loved."

The question in these words made Hermione blush and turn away; but her emotion was nothing to that of the quieter sister, who, after she had made this suggestion, stood watching its effect with eyes in which the pain and despair of a year seemed at once to flash forth to light.

"I honor him," began Hermione, in a low, broken voice, "but you know it was not honor simply that I felt for----"

"Do not speak his name," flashed out Emma. "He--you--do not care for each other, or--or--you and I would never be talking as we are doing here to-night. I am sure you have forgotten him, Hermione, for all your hesitations and efforts to be faithful. I have seen it in your eyes for weeks, I have heard it in your voice when you have spoken to this new friend. Why then deceive yourself; why let a worn-out memory stand in the way of a new joy, a real joy, an unsullied and wholly promising happiness?"

"Emma! Emma, what has come to you? You never talked to me like this before. Is it the memory of this folly only that stands in the way of what you so astonishingly advocate? Can a woman situated as I am, give herself up to any hope, any joy?"

"Yes, for the situation will change when you yield yourself once again to the natural pleasures of life. I do not believe in the attitude you have taken, Hermione; I have never believed in it, yet I have cheerfully shared it because, because--you know why; do not let us talk of those days."

"You do not know all my provocation," quoth Hermione.

"Perhaps not, but nothing can excuse the sacrifice you are making of your life. Consider, Hermione. Why should you? Have you not duties to the present, as well as to the past? Should you not think of the long years that may lie between this hour and a possible old age, years which might be filled with beneficence and love, but which now----"

"Emma, Emma, what are you saying? Are you so tired of sharing my fate that you would try to make me traitor to my word, traitor to my love----"

"Hush," whispered again Emma, "you do not love _him_. Answer me, if you do. Plunge deep into your heart, and say if you feel as you did once; I want to hear the words from your lips, but be honest."

"Would it be any credit to me if I did not? Would you think more of me if I acknowledged the past was a mistake, and that I wrecked my life for a passion which a year's absence could annul."

But the tender Emma was inexorable, and held her sister by the hands while she repeated.

"Answer, answer! or I shall take your very refusal for a reply."

But Hermione only drooped her head, and finally drew away her hands.

"You seem to prefer the cause of this new man," she murmured ironically. "Perhaps you think he will make the better brother-in-law."

The flush on Emma's cheek spread till it dyed her whole neck.

"I think," she observed gravely, "that Mr. Etheridge is the more devoted to you, Hermione. Dr. Sellick--" what did not that name cost her?--"has not even looked up at our windows when riding by the house."

Hermione's eye flashed, and she bounded imperiously to her feet.

"And that is why I think that he still remembers. And shall I forget?" she murmured more softly, "while he cherishes one thought of grief or chagrin over the past?"

Emma, whose head had fallen on her breast, played idly with her long hair, and softly drew it across her face.

"If you knew," she murmured, "that he did not cherish one thought such as you imagine, would you then open your heart to this new love and the brightness in the world and all the hopes which belong to our time of life."

"If, if," repeated Hermione, staring at the half-hidden face of her sister as at some stranger whom she had found persistent and incomprehensible. "I don't know what you mean by your _ifs_. Do you think it would add to my content and self-satisfaction to hear that I had reared this ghastly prison which I inhabit on a foundation of sand, and that the walls in toppling would crash about my ears and destroy me? You must have a strange idea of a woman's heart, if you thought it would make me any readier to face life if I knew I had sacrificed my all to a chimera."

Emma sighed. "Not if it gave you a new hope," she whispered.

"Ah," murmured Hermione, and her face softened for the first time. "I dare not think of that," she murmured. "I dare not, Emma; I DARE NOT."

The younger sister, as if answered, threw back her hair and looked at Hermione quite brightly.

"You will come to dare in time," said she, and fled from the room like a spirit.

When she was gone, Hermione stood still for many minutes; then she began quietly to let down her own hair. As the long locks fell curling and dark about her shoulders, a dreamier and dreamier spirit came upon her, mellowing the light in her half-closed eyes, and bringing such a sweet, half-timid, half-longing smile to her lips that she looked the embodiment of virginal joy. But the mood did not last long, and ere the thick curls were duly parted and arranged for the night, the tears had begun to fall, and the sobs to come till she was fain to put out her light and hide behind the curtains of her bed the grief and remorse which were pressing upon her.

Meanwhile Emma had stolen to her aunt's room, and was kneeling down beside her peaceful figure.

"Aunt, dear Aunt," she cried, "tell me what my duty is. Help me to decide if Hermione should be told the truth which we have so long kept from her."

She knew the old lady could not hear, but she was in the habit of speaking to her just as if she could, and often through some subtle sympathy between them the sense of her words was understood and answered in a way to surprise her.

And in this case Mrs. Lovell seemed to understand, for she kissed Emma with great fondness, and then, taking the sweet, troubled, passionate face between her two palms, looked at her with such love and sympathy that the tears filled Emma's eyes, for all her efforts at self-control.

"Tell her," came forth at last, in the strange, loud tones of the perfectly deaf, "and leave the rest to God. You have kept silence, and the wound has not healed; now try the truth, and may heaven bless you and the two others whom you desire to make happy."

And Emma, rising up, thanked God that he had left them this one blessing in their desolation--this true-hearted and tender-souled adviser.

* * * * *

That night, as Hermione was tossing in a restless sleep, she suddenly became aware of a touch on her shoulder, and, looking up, she saw her sister standing before her, with a lighted candle in her hand, and her hair streaming about her.

"What is the matter?" she cried, bounding up in terror, for Emma's face was livid with its fixed resolve, and wore a look such as Hermione had never seen there before.

"Nothing," cried the other, "nothing; only I have something to tell you--something which you should have known a long time ago--something about which you should never have been deceived. It is this, Hermione. It was not you Dr. Sellick wished to marry, but myself." And with the words the light was blown out, and Hermione found herself alone.