BOOK II.

THE SECRET OF THE LABORATORY.

XV.

THE BEGINNING OF CHANGES.

As Frank went by the house early the next morning on his way to the train, he paused and glanced at one of the upper windows, where he had once before seen Hermione's face looking out. The blinds were closed, but the slats were slightly turned, and through them he thought, but he could not be quite sure, he caught the glimpse of a pair of flashing eyes. In the hope that this was so, he laid his hand upon the gate and then glanced up again, as if asking permission to open it. The blinds moved and in another instant fell back, and he saw the face he loved, looking very pale but sweet, bending towards him from the clustering honeysuckles.

"May I come in," he asked, "just for a few words more? You know we were interrupted last night."

She shook her head, and his heart sank; then she seemed to repent her decision and half opened her lips as if to speak, but no words came. He kept his hand on the gate, and his face grew eloquent.

"You cannot say no," he now pleaded, smiling at the blush that was slowly mantling on her cheek. "I may not be here again for weeks, and if you do not let me say good-by I shall always think I have displeased you, and that will not add to my happiness or peace."

"Wait," came in sudden eagerness from her lips, and he saw her disappear from the window and appear, almost before he could realize his own relief, in the open door-way before him. "Come in," said she, with the first full glad smile he had ever seen on her lips.

But though he bounded up the steps he did not enter the house. Instead of that he seized her hand and tried to induce her to come out in the open air to him. "No close rooms," said he, "on such a morning as this. Come into the poplar-walk, come; let me see you with the wind blowing your hair about your cheeks."

"No, no!" burst from her lips in something almost like fright. "Emma goes into the garden, but not I. Do not ask me to break the habit of months, do not."

But he was determined, tenderly, firmly determined.

"I must," said he; "I must. Your white cheeks and worn face demand the freshness of out-door air. I do not say you must go outside the gate, but I do say you must feel again what it is to have the poplars rustle above your head and the grass close lovingly over your feet. So come, Hermione, come, for I will not take no, I will not, even from the lips whose business it shall be to command me in everything else."

His eyes entreated her, his hand constrained her; she sought to do battle with his will, but her glances fell before the burning ardor of his. With a sudden wild heave of her breast, she yielded, and he drew her down into the garden and so around to the poplar-walk. As she went the roses came out on her cheeks, and she seemed to breathe like a creature restored to life.

"Oh, the blue, blue sky!" she cried, "and oh, the hills! I have not seen them for a year. As for the poplars, I should love to kiss their old boughs, I am so glad to be beneath them once more."

But as she proceeded farther her spirits seemed to droop again, and she cast him furtive looks as much as to say:

"Is it right? ought I to be enjoying all this bliss?"

But the smile on his face was so assured, she speedily took courage again, and allowed him to lead her to the end of the poplar-walk, far up in those regions where his eye had often strayed but his feet never been even in fancy. On a certain bench they sat down, and he turned towards her a beaming face.

"Now I feel as if you were mine," he cried. "Nothing shall part us after this, not even your own words."

But she put her hands out with a meek, deprecating gesture, very unlike the imperious one she had indulged in before.

"You must not say that," she cried. "My coming out may have been a weakness, but it shall not be followed by what you yourself might come to regard as a wrong. I am here, and it was for your pleasure I came, but that commits me to nothing and you to nothing, unless it be to the momentary delight. Do you hear that bird sing?"

"You are lovely with that flickering sunlight on your face," was all the reply he made.

And perhaps he could have made no better, for it gave her a sweet sense of helplessness in the presence of this great love, which to a woman who had been so long bearing herself up in solitary assertion had all the effect of rest and relief.

"You make me feel as if my youth was not quite gone," said she; "but," she added, as his hand stole towards hers, "you have not yet made me feel that I must listen to all the promptings of love. There is a gulf between me and you across which we cannot shake hands. But we can speak, friend, to one another, and that is a pleasure to one who has travelled so long in a wilderness alone. Shall we not let that content us, or do you wish to risk life and all by attempting more?"

"I wish to risk everything, anything, so as to make you mine."

"You do not know what you are saying. We are talking pure foolishness," was her sudden exclamation, as she leapt to her feet. "Here, in this pure air, and in sight of the fields and hills, the narrow, confining bands which have held me to the house seem to lose their power and partake of the unsubstantiality of a dream. But I know that with my recrossing of the threshold they will resume their power again, and I shall wonder I could ever talk of freedom or companionship with one who does not know the secrets of the house or the shadow which has been cast by them upon my life."

"You know them, and yet you would go back," he cried. "I should say the wiser course would be to turn away from a place so fatal to your happiness and hopes, and, yielding to my entreaties, go with me to the city, where we will be married, and----"

"Frank, what a love you have for me! a love which questions nothing, not even my past, notwithstanding I say it is that past which separates us and makes me the recluse I am."

"You have filled me with trust by the pure look in your eyes," said he. "Why should I ask you to harrow up your feelings by telling me what you would have told me long ago, if it had not been too painful?"

"You are a great, good man," she cried. "You subdue me who have never been subdued before, except by my own passionate temper. I reverence you and I--love--you. Do not ask me to say anything more." And the queenly, imperious form swayed from side to side, and the wild tears gushed forth, and she fled from his side down the poplar-walk, till she came within sight of the house, when she paused, gathering up her strength till he reached the place where she stood, when she said:

"You are coming again, some time?"

"I am coming again in a week."

"You will find a little packet awaiting you in the place where you stay. You will read it before you see me again?"

"I will read it."

"Good-by," said she; and her face in its most beautiful aspect shone on him for a moment; then she retreated, and was lost to his view in the shrubbery.

As he passed the house on his way to the gate, he saw Doris casting looks of delight down the poplar-walk, where her young mistress was still straying, and at the same instant caught a hurried glimpse of Mrs. Lovell and Emma, leaning from the window above, in joyful recognition of the fact that a settled habit had been broken, and that at his inducement Hermione had consented to taste again the out-door air.

He was yet in time for the train, for he had calculated on this visit, and so made allowances for it. He was therefore on the point of turning towards the station, when he saw the figure of a man coming down the street, and stopped, amazed. Was it--could it be--yes, it was Hiram Huckins. He was dressed in black, and looked decent, almost trim, but his air was that of one uncertain of himself, and his face was disfigured by an ingratiating leer which Etheridge found almost intolerable. He was the first to speak.

"How do you do, Mr. Etheridge?" said he, ambling up, and bowing with hypocritical meekness. "You didn't expect to see me here, did you? But business calls me. My poor, dear sister Harriet is said to have been in Marston, and I have come to see if it is true. I do not find her, do you?"

The sly, half-audacious, half-deprecating look with which he uttered these words irritated Frank beyond endurance.

"No," he rejoined. "Your valuable time will be wasted here. You will have to look elsewhere for your _dear_ sister."

"It has taken you a long time to find that out," insinuated the other, with his most disagreeable leer. "I suppose, now, you thought till this very last night that you would find her in the graveyard or in some of these old houses. Else why should you waste _your_ valuable time in a place of such mean attractions."

They were standing directly in front of the Cavanagh house and Frank was angry enough to lift his hand against him at these words, for the old man's eyes--he was not old but he always presented the appearance of being so--had wandered meaningly towards the windows above him, as if he knew that behind them, instead of in any graveyard, centred the real attractions of the place for Frank.

But though a lawyer may have passions, he, as a rule, has learned to keep a curb upon them, especially in the presence of one who is likely to oppose him.

So bowing with an effort at politeness, young Etheridge acknowledged that he had only lately given up his hope, and was about to withdraw in his haste to catch the train, when Huckins seized him by the arm with a low chuckle and slyly whispered:

"You've been visiting the two pretty hermitesses, eh? Are they nice girls? Do they know anything about my sister? You look as if you had heard good news somewhere. Was it in there?"

He was eager; he was insinuating; he seemed to hang upon Frank's reply. But the lawyer, struck and troubled by this allusion to the women he so cherished, on lips he detested beyond any in the world, stood still for a moment, looking the indignation he dared not speak.

Huckins took advantage of this silence to speak again, this time with an off-hand assurance only less offensive than his significant remarks.

"I know they keep at home and do not go out in the world to hear the gossip. But women who keep themselves shut up often know a lot about what is going on around them, Mr. Etheridge, and as you have been there I thought--"

"Never mind what you thought," burst out Frank, unable to bear his insinuations any longer. "Enough that I do not go there to hear anything about Harriet Smith. There are other law cases in the world besides yours, and other clients besides your sister and her heirs. These young ladies, for instance, whom you speak of so freely."

"I am sure," stammered Huckins, with great volubility, and an air of joviality which became him as little as the suspicious attitude he had hitherto taken, "I never meant to speak with the least disrespect of ladies I have never met. Only I was interested you know, naturally interested, in anything which might seem to bear upon my own affairs. They drag so, don't they, Mr. Etheridge, and I am kept so long out of my rights."

"No longer than justice seems to demand, Mr. Huckins; your sister, and her heirs, if they exist, have rights also."

"So you say," quoth Huckins, "and I have learned not to quarrel with a lawyer. Good-day, Mr. Etheridge, good-day. Hope to hear that some decision has been arrived at soon."

"Good-day," growled Frank, and strode rapidly off, determined to return to Marston that very night if only to learn what Huckins was up to. But before he had gone a dozen steps he came quickly back and seized that person by the arm. "Where are you going?" he asked; for Huckins had laid his hand on Miss Cavanagh's gate and was about to enter.

"I am going to pay a visit," was the smiling reply. "Is there anything wrong in that?"

"I thought you did not know these young ladies--that they were strangers to you?"

"So they are, so they are, but I am a man who takes a great interest in eccentric persons. I am eccentric myself; so was my sister Cynthia; so I may say was Harriet, though how eccentric we have still to find out. If the young ladies do not want to see an old man from New York they can say so, but I mean to give them the chance. Have you anything to say against it?"

"No, except that I think it an unwarrantable intrusion about which you had better think twice."

"I have thought," retorted Huckins, with a mild obstinacy that had a sinister element in it, "and I can't deny myself the pleasure. Think of it! two healthy and beautiful girls under twenty-four who never leave the house they live in! That is being more unlike folks than Cynthia and myself, who were old and who had a fortune to guard. Besides we did leave the house, or rather I did, when there was business to look after or food to buy. But they don't go out for anything, I hear, _anything_. Mr. Ruthven--he is the minister you know--has given me his card by way of introduction; so you see they will have to treat me politely, and that means I shall at least see their faces."

His cunning, his satisfaction, and a certain triumph underlying all, affected Frank like the hiss of a serpent. But the business awaiting him in New York was imperative, and the time remaining to him before the train left was barely enough to enable him to reach the station. So curbing his disgust and the dread he had of seeing this knave enter Hermione's door, he tore himself away and made what haste he could to the station. He arrived just as the first whistle of the coming train was heard, and owing to a short delay occasioned by the arrival of a telegram at the station, he was enabled to write two notes, one to Miss Cavanagh and one to Dr. Sellick. These he delivered to Jerry, with strict injunctions to deliver them immediately, and as the train moved off carrying him back to his duties, he had the satisfaction of seeing the lumbering figure of that slow but reliable messenger disappear around the curve in the highway which led directly to Miss Cavanagh's house.

XVI.

A STRANGE VISITOR.

Frank's visit and interview with Hermione had this advantage for the latter, that it took away some of the embarrassment which her first meeting with Emma, after the revelations of the night before, had necessarily occasioned. She had breakfasted in her own room, feeling that it would be impossible for her to meet her sister's eye, but having been led into giving such proof of her preference for Mr. Etheridge, and the extent of his influence over her, there could of course be no further question of Dr. Sellick, or any need for explanations between herself and Emma regarding a past thus shown to be no longer of vital interest to her. When, therefore, she came in from the garden and saw Emma waiting for her at the side-door, she blushed, but that was all, in memory of the past night; and murmuring some petty commonplace, sought to pass her and enter again the house which she had not left before in a full year.

But Emma, who was bright with a hope she had not felt in months, stopped her with a word.

"There is an old man waiting in the parlor who says he wants to see us. He sent in this card--it has Dr. Ruthven's name on it--and Doris says he seemed very eager and anxious. Can you guess who he can be?"

"No," rejoined Hermione, wondering. "But we can soon see. Our visitors are not so numerous that we can afford to slight one." And tripping by Emma, she led the way into the parlor.

A slight, meagre, eager-eyed man, clad in black and wearing a propitiatory smile on very thin lips, rose as she entered, and bowed with an awkward politeness that yet had something of the breeding of a gentleman in it.

Hermione did not like his looks, but she advanced cordially enough, perhaps because her heart was lighter than usual, and her mind less under the strain of one horrible fixed idea than it had been in months.

"How do you do?" said she, and looked at him inquiringly.

Huckins, with another bow, this time in recognition of her unexpected beauty and grace, shambled uneasily forward, and said in a hard, strained voice which was even more disagreeable than his face:

"I am sure you are very good to receive me, Miss Cavanagh. I--I had a great desire to come. Your father----"

She drew back with a gasp.

"My father----" she repeated.

"Was an old friend of mine," he went on, in a wheedling tone, in seeming oblivion of the effect his words had had upon her. "Did you never hear him speak of Hope, Seth Hope?"

"Never," cried Hermione, panting, and looking appealingly at Emma, who had just entered the room.

"Yet we were friends for years," declared the dissimulator, folding his hands with a dreary shake of his head.

"For years?" repeated Emma, advancing and surveying him earnestly.

"Our father was a much older man than you, Mr.--Mr. Hope."

"Perhaps, perhaps, I never saw him. But we corresponded for years. Have you not come across letters signed by my name, in looking over his effects?"

"No," answered Emma, firmly, while Hermione, looking very pale, retreated towards the door, where she stopped in mingled distress and curiosity.

"Then he must have destroyed them all," declared their visitor. "Some people do not keep letters. Yet they were full of information, I assure you; full, for it was upon the ever delightful subject of chemistry we corresponded, and the letters I wrote him sometimes cost me a week's effort to indite."

Emma, who had never met a man like this before, looked at him with wide-open eyes. Had Hermione not been there, she would have liked to have played with his eccentricities, and asked him numberless questions. But with her sister shrinking in the doorway, she dared not encourage him to pursue a theme which she perceived to be fraught with the keenest suffering for Hermione. So she refrained from showing the distrust which she really felt, and motioning the old man to sit down, asked, quietly:

"And was it for these letters you came? If so, I am sorry that none such have been found."

"No, no," cried Huckins, with stammering eagerness, as he marked the elder sister's suspicious eyes and unencouraging manner. "It was not to get them back that I ventured to call upon you, but for the pleasure of seeing the house where he lived and did so much wonderful work, and the laboratory, if you will be so good. Why has your sister departed?" he suddenly inquired, in fretful surprise, pointing to the door where Hermione had stood a moment before.

"She probably has duties," observed Emma, in a troubled voice. "And she probably was surprised to hear a stranger ask to see a room no one but the members of his family have entered since our father's death."

"But I am not a stranger," artfully pursued the cringing Huckins, making himself look as benevolent as he could. "I am an admirer, a devoted admirer of your remarkable parent, and I could show you papers"--but he never did,--"of writing in that same parent's hand, in which he describes the long, narrow room, with its shelves full of retorts and crucibles, and the table where he used to work, with the mystic signs above it, which some said were characters taken from cabalistic books, but which he informed me were the new signs he wished to introduce into chemistry, as being more comprehensive and less liable to misinterpretation than those now in use."

"You do seem to know something about the room," she murmured softly, too innocent to realize that the knowledge he showed was such as he could have gleaned from any of Mr. Cavanagh's intimate friends.

"But I want to see it with my own eyes. I want to stand in the spot where he stood, and drink in the inspiration of his surroundings, before I go back to my own great labor."

"Have you a laboratory? Are you a chemist?" asked Emma, interested in despite of the dislike his wheedling ways and hypocritical air naturally induced.

"Yes, yes, I have a laboratory," said he; "but there is no romance about mine; it is just the plain working-room of a hard-working man, while his----"

Emma, who had paled at these words almost as much as her sister had done at his first speech about her father, recoiled with a look in which the wonderment was strangely like fear.

"I cannot show you the room," said she. "You exaggerate your desire to see it, as you exaggerate the attainments and the discoveries of my father. I must ask you to excuse me," she continued, with a slight acknowledgment in which dismissal could be plainly read. "I am very busy, and the morning is rapidly flying. If you could come again----"

But here Hermione's full deep tones broke from the open doorway.

"If he wishes to see the place where father worked, let him come; there is no reason why we should hide it from one who professes such sympathy with our father's pursuits."

Huckins, chuckling, looked at Emma, and then at her sister, and moved rapidly towards the door. Emma, who had been taken greatly by surprise by her sister's words, followed slowly, showing more and more astonishment as Hermione spoke of this place, or that, on their way up-stairs, as being the spot where her father's books were kept, or his chemicals stored, till they came to the little twisted staircase at the top, when she became suddenly silent.

It was now Emma's turn to say:

"This is the entrance to the laboratory. You see it is just as you have described it."

Huckins, with a sly leer, stepped into the room, and threw around one quick, furtive look which seemed to take in the whole place in an instant. It was similar to his description, and yet it probably struck him as being very different from the picture he had formed of it in his imagination. Long, narrow, illy lighted, and dreary, it offered anything but a cheerful appearance, even in the bright July sunshine that sifted through the three small windows ranged along its side. At one end was a row of shelves extending from the floor to the ceiling, filled with jars, chemicals, and apparatus of various kinds. At the other end was a table for collecting gases, and beneath each window were more shelves, and more chemicals, and more apparatus. A large electric machine perched by itself in one corner, gave a grotesque air to that part of the room, but the chief impression made upon an observer was one of bareness and desolation, as of the husk of something which had departed, leaving a smell of death behind. The girls used the room for their dreary midnight walks; otherwise it was never entered, except by Doris, who kept it in perfect order, as a penance, she was once heard to declare, she having a profound dislike to the place, and associating it always, as we have before intimated, with some tragic occurrence which she believed to have taken place there.

Huckins, after his first quick look, chuckled and rubbed his hands together, in well-simulated glee.

"Do I see it?" he cried; "_the room_ where the great Cavanagh thought and worked! It is a privilege not easily over-estimated." And he flitted from shelf to drawer, from drawer to table, with gusts of enthusiasm which made the cold, stern face of Hermione, who had taken up her stand in the doorway, harden into an expression of strange defiance.

Emma, less filled with some dark memory, or more swayed by her anxiety to fathom his purposes, and read the secret of an intrusion which as yet was nothing but a troublous mystery to her, had entered the room with him, and stood quietly watching his erratic movements, as if she half expected him to abstract something from the hoard of old chemicals or collection of formulas above which he hung with such a pretence of rapture.

"How good! how fine! how interesting!" broke in shrill ejaculation from his lips as he ambled hither and thither. But Emma noticed that his eye ever failed to dwell upon what was really choice or unique in the collection of her father's apparatus, and that when by chance he touched an alembic or lifted a jar, it was with an awkwardness that betrayed an unaccustomed hand.

"You do not hold a retort in that way," she finally remarked, going up to him and taking the article in question out of his hand. "This is how my father was accustomed to handle them," she proceeded, and he, taken aback for the instant, blushed and murmured something about her father being his superior and she the very apt pupil of a great scholar and a very wise man.

"You wanted to see the laboratory, and now you have seen it," quoth Hermione from her place by the door. "Is there anything else we can do for you?"

The chill, stern tones seemed to rouse him and he turned towards the speaker.

"No, no, my dear, no, no. You have been very good." But Emma noticed that his eyes still kept roaming here, there, and everywhere while he spoke, picking up information as a bird picks up worms.

"What does he want?" thought she, looking anxiously towards her sister.

"You have a very pleasant home," he now remarked, pausing at the head of those narrow stairs and peering into the nest of Hermione's own room, the door of which stood invitingly open. "Is that why you never leave it?" he unexpectedly asked, looking with his foxy eyes from one sister to the other.

"I do not think it is necessary for us to answer you," said Emma, while Hermione, with a flash in her eye, motioned him imperiously down, saying as she slowly followed him:

"Our friends do not consider it wise to touch upon that topic, how much more should a stranger hesitate before doing so?"

And he, cowering beneath her commanding look and angry presence, seemed to think she was right in this and ventured no more, though his restless eyes were never still, and he appeared to count the very banisters as his hand slid down the railing, and to take in every worn thread that showed itself in the carpet over which his feet shuffled in almost undignified haste.

When they were all below, he made one final remark:

"Your father owed me money, but I do not think of pressing my claim. You do not look as if you were in a position to satisfy it."

"Ah," exclaimed Emma, thinking she had discovered the motive of his visit at last; "that is why you wanted to see the laboratory."

"Partly," he acknowledged with a sly wink, "but not altogether. All there is there would not buy up the I. O. U. I hold. I shall have to let the matter go with other bad debts I suppose. But three hundred dollars is a goodly sum, young ladies, a goodly sum."

Emma, who knew that her father had not been above borrowing money for his experiments, looked greatly distressed for a moment, but Hermione, who had now taken her usual place as leader, said without attempting to disguise the tone of suspicion in her voice:

"Substantiate your claim and present your bill and we will try to pay it. We have still a few articles of furniture left."

Huckins, who had never looked more hypocritically insinuating or more diabolically alert, exclaimed,

"I can wait, I can wait."

But Hermione, with a grand air and a candid look, answered bitterly and at once:

"What we cannot do now we can never do. Our fortunes are not likely to increase in the future, so you had better put in your claim at once, if you really want your pay."

"You think so?" he began; and his eye, which had been bright before, now gleamed with the excitement of a fear allayed. "I----"

But just then the bell rang with a loud twang, and he desisted from finishing his sentence.

Emma went to the door and soon came back with a letter which she handed to Hermione.

"The man Jerry brought it," she explained, casting a meaning look at her sister.

Hermione, with a quick flush, stepped to the window and in the shadow of the curtains read her note. It was a simple word of warning.

DEAR MISS CAVANAGH:

I met a man at your gate who threatened to go in. Do not receive him, or if you have already done so, distrust every word he has uttered and cut the interview short. He is Hiram Huckins, the man concerning whom I spoke so frankly when we were discussing the will of the Widow Wakeham.

Yours most truly, FRANK ETHERIDGE.

The flush with which Hermione read these lines was quite gone when she turned to survey the intruder, who had forced himself upon her confidence and that of her sister by means of a false name. Indeed she looked strangely pale and strangely indignant as she met his twinkling and restless eye, and, to any one who knew the contents of the note which she held, it would seem that her first words must be those of angry dismissal.

But instead of these, she first looked at him with some curiosity, and then said in even, low, and slightly contemptuous tones:

"Will you not remain and lunch with us, Mr. Huckins?"

At this unexpected utterance of his name he gave a quick start, but soon was his cringing self again. Glancing at the letter she held, he remarked:

"My dear young lady, I see that Mr. Etheridge has been writing to you. Well, there is no harm in that. Now we can shake hands in earnest"; and as he held out his wicked, trembling palm, his face was a study for a painter.

XVII.

TWO CONVERSATIONS.

That afternoon, as Emma was sitting in her own room, she was startled by the unexpected presence of Hermione. As they were not in the habit of intruding upon each other above stairs, Emma rose in some surprise. But Hermione motioning her back into her chair, fell at her feet in sudden abandon, and, laying her head in her sister's lay, gave way to one deep sob. Emma, too much astonished to move at this unexpected humiliation of one who had never before bent her imperious head in that household, looked at the rich black locks scattered over her knees with wonder if not with awe.

"Hermione!" she whispered, "Hermione! do not kneel to me, unless it be with joy."

But the elder sister, clasping her convulsively around the waist, murmured:

"Let me be humble for a moment; let me show that I have something in me besides pride, reckless endurance, and determined will. I have not shown it enough in the past. I have kept my sufferings to myself, and my remorse to myself, and alas! also all my stern recognition of your love and unparalleled devotion. I have felt your goodness, oh, I have felt it, so much so, at times, that I thought I could not live, ought not to live, just because of what I have done to _you_; but I never said anything, could not say anything! Yet all the remorse I experienced was nothing to what I experience now that I know I was not even loved----"

"Hush," broke in Emma, "let those days be forgotten. I only felt that you ought to know the truth, because sweeter prospects are before you, and----"

"I understand," murmured Hermione, "you are always the great-hearted, unselfishly minded sister. I believe you would actually rejoice to see me happy now, even if it did not release you from the position you have assumed. But it shall release you; you shall not suffer any longer on my account. Even if it is only to give you the opportunity of--of meeting with Dr. Sellick, you shall go out of this house to-day. Do you hear me, Emma, _to-day_?"

But the ever-gentle, ever-docile Emma rose up at this, quite pale in her resolution. "Till you put foot out of the gate I remain this side of it," said she. "Nothing can ever alter my determination in this regard."

And Hermione, surveying her with slowly filling eyes, became convinced that it would be useless to argue this point, though she made an effort to do so by saying with a noble disregard of her own womanly shame which in its turn caused Emma's eyes to fill:

"Dr. Sellick has suffered a great wrong, I judge; don't you think you owe something to him?"

But Emma shook her head, though she could not prevent a certain wistful look from creeping into her face. "Not what I owe to you," said she, and then flushed with distress lest her sister should misjudge the meaning of her words.

But Hermione was in a rarely generous mood. "But I release you from any promise you have made or any obligations you may consider yourself to be under. Great heaven! do you think I would hold you to them _now_?"

"I hold myself," cried Emma. "You cannot release me,--except," she added, with gentle intimation, "by releasing yourself."

"I cannot release myself," moaned Hermione. "If we all perish I cannot release myself. _I_ am a prisoner to this house, but you----"

"We are sister prisoners," interpolated Emma, softly. Then with a sudden smile, "I was in hopes that he who led you to break one resolution might induce you to break another."

But Hermione, flushing with something of her old fire, cried out warmly: "In going out of the house I broke a promise made to myself, but in leaving the grounds I should--oh, I cannot tell you what I should do; not even you know the full bitterness of my life! It is a secret, locked in this shrinking, tortured heart, which it almost breaks, but does not quite, or I should not linger in this dreadful world to be a cause of woe to those I cherish most."

"But Hermione, Hermione----"

"You think you know what has set a seal on my lips, the gloom on my brow, the death in my heart; but you do not, Emma. You know much, but not the fatal grief, the irrepressible misery. But you shall know, and know soon. I have promised to write out the whole history of my life for Mr. Etheridge, and when he has read it you shall read it too. Perhaps when you learn what the real horror of this house has been, you may appreciate the force of will-power which it has taken for me to remain in it."

Emma, who had never suspected anything in the past beyond what she herself knew, grew white with fresh dismay. But Hermione, seeing it, kissed her, and, speaking more lightly, said: "You kept back one vital secret from me in consideration of what you thought the limit of my endurance. I have done the same for you under the same consideration. Now we will equalize matters, and perhaps--who knows?--happier days may come, if Mr. Etheridge is not too much startled by the revelations I have to make him, and if Dr. Sellick--do not shrink, Emma--learns some magnanimity from his friend and will accept the explanations I shall think it my duty to offer him."

But at this suggestion, so unlike any that had ever come from Hermione's lips before, the younger sister first stared, and then flung her arms around the speaker, with cries of soft deprecation and shame.

"You shall not," she murmured. "Not if I lose him shall he ever know why that cruel letter was written. It is enough--it shall be enough--that he was dismissed _then_. If he loves me he will try his fate again. But I do not think he does love me, and it would be better for him that he did not. Would _he_ ever marry a woman who, not even at his entreaty, could be induced to cross the limits of her home?"

"Mr. Etheridge should not do it either; but he is so generous--perhaps so hopeful! He may not be as much so when he has read what I have to write."

"I think he will," said Emma, and then paused, remembering that she did not know all that her sister had to relate.

"He would be a man in a thousand then," whispered the once haughty Hermione. "A man to worship, to sacrifice all and everything to, that it was in one's power to sacrifice."

"He will do what is right," quoth Emma.

Hermione sighed. Was she afraid of the right?

Meantime, in the poplar-walk below, another talk was being held, which, if these young girls could have heard it, might have made them feel even more bitterly than before, what heavy clouds lay upon any prospect of joy which they might secretly cherish. Doris, who was a woman of many thoughts, and who just now found full scope for all her ideas in the unhappy position of her two dear young ladies, had gone into the open air to pick currants and commune with herself as to what more could be done to bring them into a proper recognition of their folly in clinging to a habit or determination which seemed likely to plunge them into such difficulties.

The currant bushes were at the farther end of the garden near the termination of the poplar-walk, and when, in one of the pauses of her picking, she chanced to look up, she saw advancing towards her down that walk the thin, wiry figure of the old man who had taken luncheon with the young ladies, and whom they called, in very peculiar tones, she thought, Mr. Huckins. He was looking from right to left as he came, and his air was one of contemplation or that of a person who was taking in the beauties of a scene new to him and not wholly unpleasant.

When he reached the spot where Doris stood eying him with some curiosity and not a little distrust, he paused, looked about him, and perceiving her, affected some surprise, and stepped briskly to where she was.

"Picking currants?" he observed. "Let me help you. I used to do such things when a boy."

Astonished, and not a little gratified at what she chose to consider his condescension, Doris smiled. It was a rare thing now for a man to be seen in this lonesome old place, and such companionship was not altogether disagreeable to Mistress Doris.

Huckins rubbed his hands together in satisfaction at this smile, and sidled up to the simpering spinster with a very propitiatory air.

"How nice this all is," he remarked. "So rural, so peaceful, and so pleasant. I come from a place where there is no fruit, nor flowers, nor young ladies. You must be happy here." And he gave her a look which she thought very insinuating.

"Oh, I am happy enough," she conceded, "because I am bound to be happy wherever the young ladies are. But I could wish that things were different too." And she thought herself very discreet that she had not spoken more clearly.

"Things?" he repeated softly.

"Yes, my young ladies have odd ideas; I thought you knew."

He drew nearer to her side, very much nearer, and dropped the currants he had plucked gently into her pail.

"I know they have a fixed antipathy to going out, but they will get over that."

"Do you think so?" she asked eagerly.

"Don't _you_?" he queried, with an innocent look of surprise. He was improving in his dissimulation, or else he succeeded better with those of whom he had no fear.

"I don't know what to think. Are you an old friend of theirs?" she inquired. "You must be, to lunch with them."

"I never saw them before to-day," he returned, "yet I am an old friend. Reason that out," he leered.

"You like to puzzle folks," she observed, picking very busily but smiling all the while. "Do you give answers with your puzzles?"

"Not to such sharp wits as yours. But how beautiful Miss Cavanagh is. Has she always had that scar?"

"Ever since I knew her."

"Pity she should have such a blemish. You like her, don't you, very much?"

"I love her."

"And her sister--such a sweet girl!"

"I love them both."

"That is right. I should be sorry to have any one about them who did not love them. _I_ love them, or soon shall, very much."

"Are you," Doris inquired, with great inquisitiveness, "going to remain in Marston any time?"

"I cannot say," sighed the old man; "I should like to. I should be very happy here, but I am afraid the young ladies do not like me well enough."

Doris had cherished some such idea herself an hour ago, and had not wondered at it then, but now her feelings seemed changed.

"Was it to see them you came to Marston?" said she.

"Merely to see them," he replied.

She was puzzled, but more eager than puzzled, so anxious was she to find some one who could control their eccentricities.

"They will treat you politely," she assured him. "They are peculiar girls, but they are always polite."

"I am afraid I shall not be satisfied with politeness," he insinuated. "I want them to love me, to confide in me. I want to be their friend in fact as I have so long been in fancy."

"You are some relative of theirs," she now asserted, "or you knew their father well or their mother."

"I wouldn't say no," he replied,--but to which of these three intimations, he evidently did not think it worth while to say.

"Then," she declared, "you are the man I want. Mr. Etheridge--that is the lawyer from New York who has lately been coming here--does not seem to have much confidence in himself or me. But you look as if you might do something or suggest something. I mean about getting the young ladies to give up their whims."

"Has this Mr.--Mr. Etheridge, did you call him?--been doing their business long?"

"I never saw him here till a month ago."

"Ah! a month ago! And do they like him? Do they seem inclined to take his advice? Does he press it upon them?"

"I wish I knew. I am only a poor servant, remember, though my bringing up was as good almost as theirs. They are kind to me, but I do not sit down in the parlor; if I did, I might know something of what is going on. I can only judge, you see, by looks."

"And the looks? Come, I have a _great_ interest in the young ladies--almost as great as yours. What do their looks say?--I mean since this young man came to visit them? He is a young man, didn't you say?"

"Yes, he is young, and so good-looking. I have thought--now don't spill the currants, just as we have filled the pail--that he was a little sweet on Miss Hermione, and that that was why he came here so often, and not because he had business."

"You have?" twitted the old man, almost dancing about her in his sudden excitement. "Well, well, that must be seen to. A wedding, eh, a wedding? That's what you think is coming?" And Doris could not tell whether it was pleasure or alarm that gave so queer a look to his eyes.

"I cannot say--I wish I could," she fervently cried; "then I might hope to see a change here; then we might expect to see these two sweet young ladies doing like other folks and making life pleasant for themselves and every one about them. But Miss Hermione is a girl who would be very capable of saying no to a young man if he stood in the way of any resolve she had taken. I don't calculate much on her being influenced by love, or I would never have bothered you with my troubles. It is fear that must control her, or----" Doris paused and looked at him knowingly--"or she must be lured out of the house by some cunning device."

Huckins, who had been feeling his way up to this point, brightened as he noticed the slyness of the smile with which she emphasized this insinuation, and from this moment felt more assured. But he said nothing as yet to show how he was affected by her words. There was another little matter he wanted settled first.

"Do you know," he asked, "why she, and her sister, too, I believe, have taken this peculiar freak? Have they ever told you, or have you ever--" how close his head got to hers, and how he nodded and peered--"surprised their secret?"

Doris shook her head. "All a mystery," she whispered, and began picking currants again, that operation having stopped as they got more earnest.

"But it isn't a mystery," he laughed, "why you want to get them out of the house just _now_. I know your reason for that, and think you will succeed without any device of love or cunning."

"I don't understand you," she protested, puckering her black brows and growing very energetic. "I don't want to do it _now_ any more than I have for the last twelve months. Only I am getting desperate. I am not one who can want a thing and be patient. I _want_ Miss Hermione Cavanagh and her sister to laugh and be gay like other girls, and till they give up all this nonsense of self-seclusion they never will; and so I say to myself that any measures are justifiable that lead to that end. Don't you think I am right?"

He smiled warily and took her pail of currants from her hand.

"I think you are the brightest woman and have one of the clearest heads I ever knew. I don't remember when I have seen a woman who pleased me so well. Shall we be friends? I am only a solitary bachelor, travelling hither and thither because I do not know how else to spend my money; but I am willing to work for your ends if you are willing to work for mine."

"And what are they?" she simpered, looking very much delighted. Doris was not without ambition, and from this moment not without her hopes.

"To make these young ladies trust me so that I may visit them off and on while I remain in this place. I thought it was pleasant here before, but _now_----" The old fellow finished with a look and a sigh, and Doris' subjugation was complete.

Yet she did not let him at this time any further into her plans, possibly because she had not formed any. She only talked on more and more about her love for the young ladies, and her wonder over their conduct, and he, listening for any chance word which might help him in his own perplexity, walked back at her side, till they arrived in sight of the house, when he gave her the pail and slunk back to come on later alone. But a seed was sown at that interview which was destined to bear strange fruit; and it is hard telling which felt the most satisfaction at the understood compact between them--the hard, selfish, and scheming miser, or the weak and obstinate serving-woman, who excused to herself the duplicity of her conduct by the plea, true enough as far as it went, that she was prompted by love for those she served, and a desire to see the two women she admired as bright and happy as their youth and beauty demanded.

XVIII.

SUSPENSE.

The letter which Frank sent to Edgar described his encounter with Huckins, and expressed a wish that the Doctor would employ some proper person to watch his movements and see that he did not make himself disagreeable to the Misses Cavanagh, whom he had evidently set himself to annoy.

What, then, was Etheridge's surprise to receive on the following day a reply from his friend, to the effect that Mr. Huckins had not only called upon the young ladies mentioned by him, but had made himself very much at home with them, having lunched, dined, and report even said breakfasted at their table.

This was startling news to Frank, especially after the letter he had written to Hermione, but he restrained himself from returning at once to Marston, as he was half tempted to do, and wrote her again, this time beseeching her in plain words to have nothing to do with so suspicious a person as he knew this Huckins to be, and advised her where to appeal for assistance in case this intolerable intruder was not willing to be shaken off. This letter brought the following answer:

DEAR MR. ETHERIDGE:

Do not be concerned about us. Mr. Huckins will not trouble us unduly. Knowing his character, we are not likely to be misled by him, and it amuses us in our loneliness to have so queer and surprising a person as our guest.

Aunt Lovell is very sharp and keeps a keen eye upon him. He does not offend us except by his curiosity, but as that is excusable in an old man introduced into a household like ours, we try to make the best of it. When you come yourself we will dismiss the intruder.

Ever sincerely yours, HERMIONE CAVANAGH.

This letter was put very near Frank's heart, but it did not relieve him from his anxiety. On the contrary, it added to his fears, because it added to his mystification. What did Huckins want of the Misses Cavanagh, and what was the real reason for the indulgence they showed him? Was there a secret in their connection which he ought to know? He began to hasten his business and plan to leave the city again, this time for more than a single night.

Meantime, Dr. Sellick was not without his own secret doubts. Hide it as he would, he still cherished the strongest affection for the once dimpling, dainty, laughing-eyed Emma. Not a day passed but he had to combat a fervent desire to pass her gate, though when he yielded to this temptation he went by like an automaton, and never looked to right or left unless it was dark night. His was a proud soul and an exacting one. His self-esteem had been hurt, and he could not bring himself to make even the shadow of an advance towards one who had been the instrument of his humiliation. And yet he trembled when he thought of misfortune approaching her, and was almost as anxious as Frank about the presence in her house of the hypocritical and unprincipled Huckins. Had he listened only for a moment to the pleading of his better instincts, he would have gone to their door and lent his entreaties to those of Frank for a speedy dismissal of their unreliable guest; but the hour had not yet come for such a self-betrayal, and so he refrained, even while cursing himself for a pride which would not yield even at the impending danger of one so passionately beloved.

He however kept a man at watch upon the suspected stranger, a precaution which certainly did not amount to much, as the danger, if there was any, was not one which a detective stationed outside of the Misses Cavanagh's house would be able to avert.

Meanwhile Huckins, who was in his element, grew more insinuating and fatherly in his manner, day by day. To him this run of a house in which there lurked a mystery worth his penetrating, was a bliss that almost vied with that of feeling himself on the road to wealth. He pottered and poked about in the laboratory, till there was not a spot in the room or an article on the shelves which had not felt the touch of his hand; and Hermione and Emma, with what some might have thought a curious disregard of their father's belongings, let him do this, merely restricting him from approaching their own rooms. Possibly they felt as if some of the gloom of the place was lifted by the presence of even this evil-eyed old man; and possibly the shadows which were growing around them both, as Hermione labored day after day upon the history she was writing for her lover, made this and every other circumstance disconnected with the important theme they were considering, of little moment to them. However that may be, he came and went as he would, and had many sly hours in the long, dim laboratory and in the narrow twisted corridors at the back of the house, and what was worse and perhaps more disastrous still, on the stairs and in the open doorways with Doris, who had learned to toss her head and smile very curiously while busying herself in the kitchen, or taking those brief minutes of respite abroad, which the duties of the place demanded. And so the week passed, and Saturday night came.

It was seven o'clock, and train-time, and the blinds in the Cavanagh house guarding the front windows were tipped just a little. Behind one of these sat Emma, listening to the restless tread of Hermione pacing the floor in the room above. She knew that the all-important letter was done, but she could not know its contents, or what their effect would be upon the free, light-hearted man whose approach they were expecting. She thought she ought to know all that Hermione had been through in the year which had passed, yet the wild words uttered by her sister in their late memorable interview, had left a doubt in her mind which a week's meditations had only served to intensify. Yet the fears to which it had given rise were vague, and she kept saying to herself: "There cannot be anything worse than I know. Hermione exaggerated when she intimated that she had a secret bitterer than that we keep together. She has suffered so much she cannot judge. I will hope that all will go right, and that Mr. Etheridge will receive her explanations and so make her his everlasting debtor. If once she is made to feel that she owes him something, she will gradually yield up her resolve and make both him and me happy. She will see that some vows are better broken than kept, and----"

Here her thoughts were interrupted by the appearance of Hermione. The latter had not been able to walk off her excitement, and so had come down-stairs to bear the moments of suspense with her sister.

"I hope he will not stop," she cried. "I do not feel as if I could see him till----"

"You will have to," murmured Emma, "for here he comes." And the next moment the ardent, anxious face of the young lawyer appeared at the gate, making the whole outside world seem brighter to one pair of eyes which watched him.

"He wants to talk about our visitor," declared Hermione. "I cannot talk about anything so trivial to-day; so do you see him, and when he rises to go, say that Doris will bring a certain packet to his door to-night. I will not meet his eyes till that ordeal is passed." And with a gasp that showed what this moment was to her, she flew from the room, just as Doris' step was heard in the hall on her way to the front door.

"Where is your sister?" were the first words uttered by Frank, as he came into the room.

"Upstairs," answered Emma. "She does not feel as if she can see you again till everything is clear between you. The letter she promised is written, and you shall have it to-night. Then if you wish to come again----" her smile completed the sentence.

He took heart at this smile.

"I do not doubt," said he, "that I shall be here very early in the morning." And then he glanced all around him.

"Does Huckins still bother you?" he asked.

"Oh," she cried, with some constraint, "we allow him to come here. 'Tis the least we can do for one----"

She paused, and seemed to bite off her words.

"Do not let us talk of trivialities," she completed, "till the great question of all is settled. To-morrow, if you come, we will speak of this visitor of whom you so little approve."

"Very well," he rejoined, with some wistfulness, and turned with his usual impetuosity towards the door. "I will go to Dr. Sellick's, then, at once, that I may receive your sister's communication the sooner. Tell her every moment will be an hour till it is in my hands."

"Doris will carry it to you as soon as it is dark. Had we known you were going to stop here, she might have had it ready now. As it is, look for it as I have said, and may it bring you no deeper pain than the mystery of our seclusion has already done. Hermione has noble qualities, and if her temper had never been injured by the accident which befell her in her infancy, there might have been no call for Doris' errand to-night."

"I will remember that," said he, and left the house with the confident smile of a man who feels it impossible to doubt the woman towards whom his heart has gone out in the fullest love.

When the door was shut behind him, Hermione came stealing again down-stairs.

"Does he--is he--prepared to receive the letter?" she asked.

Emma nodded. "I promised that it should go as soon as it is dusk."

"Then send Doris to me in half an hour; and do not try to see me again to-night. I must bear its long and tedious hours alone." And for a second time Hermione disappeared from the room.

In half an hour Doris was sent upstairs. She found Hermione standing in the centre of her room with a thick packet in her hand. She was very pale and her eyes blazed strangely. As Doris advanced she held out the packet with a hand that shook notwithstanding all her efforts to render it firm.

"Take this," she said; "carry it to where Mr. Etheridge stays when here, and place it in his hands yourself, just as you did a former note I entrusted to you."

Doris, with a flush, seized the letter, her face one question, but her lips awed from speaking by the expression of her mistress' face.

"You will do what I say?" asked Hermione.

The woman nodded.

"Go then, and do not wait for an answer; there will be none to-night."

Her gesture of dismissal was imperative and Doris turned to go.

But Hermione had one word more to say. "When you come back," she added, "come to my door and tap on it three times. By that I shall know you have delivered the letter; but you need not come in."

"Very well, Miss," answered the woman, speaking for the first time. And as Hermione turned her back, she gave her young mistress one burning, inquisitive look and then slid out of the room with her eyes on the packet which she almost seemed to devour with her eyes.

As she passed the laboratory door she detected the thin weasel-like face of Huckins looking out.

"What is that?" he whispered, pointing eagerly at the packet.

"Be in the highway at Dobbins' corner, and I'll tell you," she slyly returned, going softly on her way.

And he, with a chuckle which ought to have sounded through that house like a premonition of evil, closed the laboratory door with a careful hand, and descending the twisted staircase which led to the hall below, prepared to follow out her injunction in his own smooth and sneaking way.

"I think I'll spend the evening at the prayer-meeting," he declared, looking in at Emma, as he passed the sitting-room door. "I feel the need of such comfort now and then. Is there anything I can do for either of you up street?"

Emma shook her head; she was glad to be rid of his company for this one evening; and he went out of the front door with a quiet, benevolent air which may not have imposed on her, but which certainly did on Doris, who was watching from the garden to see him go.

They met, as she had suggested, at Dobbins' corner. As it was not quite dark, they walked into a shaded and narrow lane where they supposed themselves to be free from all observation.

"Now tell me," said he, "what your errand is. That it is important I know from the way you look. What is it, good, kind Doris; anything that will help us in our plans?"

"Perhaps," said she. "It is a letter for Mr. Etheridge; see how big and thick it is. It ought to tell a deal, this letter; it ought to explain why she never leaves the house."

The woman's curious excitement, which was made up of curiosity and a real desire to know the secret of what affected her two young mistresses so closely, was quickly communicated to the scheming, eager old man. Taking the packet from her hand, he felt of it with trembling and inquisitive fingers, during which operation it would have been hard to determine upon which face the desire to break the seal was most marked.

"It may contain papers--law papers," he suggested, his thumb and forefinger twitching as they passed over the fastening.

But Doris shook her head.

"No," she declared vivaciously, "there are no law-papers in that envelope. She has been writing and writing for a week. It is her secret, I tell you--the secret of all their queer doings, and why they stay in the house so persistently."

"Then let us surprise that secret," said he. "If we want to help them and make them do like other reasonable folks, we must know with what we have to contend."

"I am sure we would be justified," she rejoined. "But I am afraid Miss Hermione will find us out. Mr. Etheridge will tell her somebody meddled with the fastening."

"Let me take the letter to the hotel, and I will make that all right. It is not the first----" But here he discreetly paused, remembering that Doris was not yet quite ready to receive the full details of his history.

"But the time? It will take an hour to open and read all there is written here, and Miss Hermione is waiting for me to tell her that I have delivered it to Mr. Etheridge."

"Tell her you had other errands. Go to the stores--the neighbors. She need never know you delivered this last."

"But if you take it I won't know what is in it, and I want to read it myself."

"I will tell you everything she writes. My memory is good, and you shall not miss a word."

"But--but----"

"It is your only chance," he insinuated; "the young ladies will never tell you themselves."

"I know it; yet it seems a mean thing to do. Can you close the letter so that neither he nor they will ever know it has been opened?"

"Trust me," he leered.

"Hurry then; I will be in front of Dr. Sellick's in an hour. Give me the letter as you go by, and when I have delivered it, meet me on my way back and tell me what she says."

He promised, and hastened with his treasure to the room he still kept at the hotel. She watched him as long as he was in sight and then went about her own improvised errands. Did she realize that she had just put in jeopardy not only her young mistresses' fortunes, but even their lives?

XIX.

A DISCOVERY.

Frank Etheridge waited a long time that night for the promised communication. Darkness came, but no letter; eight o'clock struck, and still there was no sign of the dilatory Doris. Naturally impatient, he soon found this lengthy waiting intolerable. Edgar was busy in his office, or he would have talked to him. The evening paper which he had brought from New York had been read long ago, and as for his cigar, it lacked flavor and all power to soothe him. In his exasperation he went to the book-shelves, and began looking over the numberless volumes ranged in neat rows before him. He took out one, glanced at it, and put it back; he took out another, without even seeing what its title was, looked at it a moment, sighed, and put that back; he took out a third, which opened in his hand at the title-page, saw that it was one of those old-fashioned volumes, designated _The Keepsake_, and was about to close and replace it as he had done the others, when his attention was suddenly and forcibly attracted by a name written in fine and delicate characters on the margin at the top. It was no other than this:

HARRIET SMITH Gift of her husband October 3rd 1848

_Harriet Smith!_ Astounded, almost aghast, he ran to Edgar's office with the volume.

"Edgar! Edgar!" he cried; "look here! See that name! And the book was in your library too. What does it mean? Who was, who is Harriet Smith, that you should have her book?"

Dr. Sellick, taken by surprise, stared at the book a minute, then jumped to his feet in almost as much excitement as Frank himself.

"I got that book from Hermione Cavanagh years ago; there was a poem in it she wanted me to read. I did not know I had the book now. I have never even thought of it from that day to this. Harriet Smith! Yes, that is the name you want, and they must be able to tell you to whom it belongs."

"I believe it; I know it; I remember now that they have always shown an interest in the matter. Hermione wanted to read the will, and--Edgar, Edgar, can they be the heirs for whom we are searching, and is that why Huckins haunts the house and is received by them in plain defiance of my entreaties?"

"If they are the heirs they would have been likely to have told you. Penniless young girls are not usually backward in claiming property which is their due."

"That is certainly true, but this property has been left under a condition. I recollect now how disappointed Hermione looked when she read the will. Give me the book; I must see her sister or herself at once about it." And without heeding the demurs of his more cautious friend, Frank plunged from the house and made his way immediately to the Cavanagh mansion.

His hasty knock brought Emma to the door. As he encountered her look and beheld the sudden and strong agitation under which she labored, he realized for the first time that he was returning to the house before reading the letter upon which so much depended.

But he was so filled with his new discovery that he gave that idea but a thought.

"Miss Cavanagh--Emma," he entreated, "grant me a moment's conversation. I have just found this book in Dr. Sellick's library--a book which he declares was once given him by your sister--and in it----"

They had entered the parlor by this time and were standing by a table upon which burned a lamp----"is a name."

She started, and was bending to look at the words upon which his finger rested, when the door opened. Hermione, alarmed and not knowing what to think of this unexpected return of her lover so soon, as she supposed, after the receipt of her letter, had come down from her room in that mood of extreme tension which is induced by an almost unendurable suspense.

Frank, who in all his experience of her had never seen her look as she did at this moment, fell back from the place where he stood and hastily shook his head.

"Don't look like that," he cried, "or you will make me feel I can never read your letter."

"And have you not read it?" she demanded, shrinking in her turn till she stood on the threshold by which she had entered. "Why then are you here? What could have brought you back so soon when you knew----"

"This," he interpolated hastily, holding up the book which he had let fall on the table at her entrance. "See! the name of Harriett Smith is written in it. Tell me, I pray, why you kept from me so persistently the fact that you knew the person to whom the property I hold in trust rightfully belongs."

The two girls with a quick glance at each other drooped their heads.

"What was the use?" murmured Emma, "since Harriet Smith is dead and her heirs can never claim the property. _We_ are her heirs, Mr. Etheridge; Harriet Smith was our mother, married to father thirty-nine years ago after a widowhood of only three months. It was never known in this place that she had had a former husband or had borne the name of Smith. There was so much scandal and unhappiness connected with her first most miserable marriage, that she suppressed the facts concerning it as much as possible. She was father's wife and that was all that the people about here knew."

"I see," said Frank, wondering greatly at this romance in real life.

"But you might have told me," he exclaimed. "When you saw what worriment this case was causing me, you might have informed me that I was expending my efforts in vain."

"I wished to do so," answered Emma, "but Hermione dreaded the arguments and entreaties which would follow."

"I could not bear the thought of them," exclaimed the girl from the doorway where she stood, "any more than I can bear the thought now when a matter of much more importance to me demands your attention."

"I will go," cried Frank. But it was to the empty doorway he spoke; Hermione had vanished with these passionate words.

"She is nearly ill," explained Emma, following him as he made for the door. "You must excuse one who has borne so much."

"I do not excuse her," he cried, "I love her." And the look he cast up the stairs fully verified this declaration. "That is why I go with half on my lips unsaid. To-morrow we will broach the topic again, meanwhile beware of Huckins. He means you no good by being here. Had I known his connection with you, he should never have entered these doors."

"He is our uncle; our mother's brother."

"He is a scamp who means to have the property which is rightfully your due."

"And he will have it, I suppose," she returned. "Hermione has never given me a hope that she means to contend with him in this matter."

"Hermione has had no counsellor but her own will. To-morrow she will have to do with me. But shut the door on Huckins; promise me you will not see him again till after you have seen me."

"I cannot--I know too little what is in that letter."

"Oh, that letter!" he cried, and was gone from the house.

When he arrived at Dr. Sellick's again, he found Doris awaiting him, looking very flushed and anxious. She had a shawl drawn around her, and she held some bundles under that shawl.

"I hope," she said, "that you did not get impatient, waiting for me. I had some errands to do, and while doing them I lost the letter you expected and had to go back and look for it. I found it lying under the counter in Mr. Davis' store and that is why it is so soiled, but the inside is all right, and I can only beg your pardon for the delay."

Drawing the packet from under her shawl, she handed it to the frowning lawyer, her heart standing still as she saw him turn it over and over in his hand. But his looks if angry were not suspicious, and with a relieved nod she was turning to go when he observed:

"I have one word to say to you, Doris. You have told me that you have the welfare of the young ladies you serve at heart. Prove this to be so. If Mr. Huckins comes to the door to-night, or in the early morning, say that Miss Cavanagh is not well and that he had better go to the hotel. Do not admit him; _do not even open the door_, unless Miss Cavanagh or her sister especially command you to do so. He is not a safe friend for them, and I will take the responsibility of whatever you do."

Doris, with wide-stretched eyes and panting breath, paused to collect her faculties. A week ago she would have received this intimation regarding anybody Mr. Etheridge might choose to mention, with gratitude and a certain sense of increased importance. But ambition and the sense of being on intimate and secret terms with a man and bachelor who boasted of his thousands, had made a change in her weak and cunning heart, and she was disposed to doubt the lawyer's judgment of what was good for the young ladies and wise for her.

But she did not show her doubt to one whom she had secretly wronged so lately; on the contrary she bowed with seeming acquiescence, and saying, "Leave me alone to take good care of my young ladies," drew her shawl more closely about her and quietly slid from the house.

A man was standing in the shadow of a great elm on the corner.

As she passed, he whispered: "Don't stop, and don't expect to see me to-night. There is some one watching me, I am sure. To-morrow, if I can I will come."

She had done a wicked and dangerous thing, and she had not learned the secret.

XX.

THE DEVIL'S CAULDRON.

Frank, being left alone, sat down with the letter Doris had given him. These are the words he read:

"DEAR MR. ETHERIDGE:

"I must ask you to walk by my house as early as nine o'clock to-morrow morning. If, having read this letter, you still feel ready to meet fate at my side, you will enter and tell me so. But if the horror that has rested upon my life falls with this reading upon yours, then pass by on the other side, and I will understand your verdict and accept it.

"It was at a very early age that I first felt the blight which had fallen upon my life with the scar which disfigures one side of my face. Such expressions as 'Poor dear! what a pity!'--'She would be very beautiful if it were not for that,' make a deep impression upon a child's mind, especially if that child has a proud and sensitive nature, eager for admiration and shrinking from pity. Emma, who is only a year younger than myself, seemed to me quite an enviable being before I knew what the word envy meant, or why I felt so hot and angry when the neighbors took her up and caressed her, while they only cast looks of compassion at me. I hated her and did not know it; I hated the neighbors, and I hated the places where they met, and the home where I was born. I only loved my mother; perhaps, because she alone never spoke of my misfortune, and when she kissed me did not take pains to choose that side of my face which was without blemish. O my mother! if she had lived! But when I was just fifteen, and was feeling even more keenly than ever what it was to have just missed being the beauty of the town, she died, and I found myself left with only a stern and cruelly abstracted father for guardian, and for companion a sister, who in those days was a girl so merry by nature, and so full of play and sport, that she was a constant source of vexation to me, who hated mirth, and felt aggrieved by a cheerfulness I could not share. These passions of jealousy and pride did not lessen with me as I slowly ripened into womanhood. All our family have been victims of their own indomitable will, and even Emma, gentle as you see her to be now, used to have violent gusts of temper when she was crossed in her plans or pleasures. I never flashed out into bitter speech as she did, or made a noise when I was angry, but I had that slow fire within me which made me perfectly inexorable when I had once made up my mind to any course--no one, not even my father or my sister, having the least influence over me. And so it was that those who knew me began to dread me, even while they were forced to acknowledge that I possessed certain merits of heart and understanding. For the disappointment which had soured my disposition had turned me towards study for relief, and the determination to be brilliant, if I could not be beautiful, came with my maturity, and saved me, perhaps, from being nothing but a burden to my family and friends.

"It was Mr. Lothrop, the Episcopalian minister, who first gave me this turn toward serious pursuits. He was a good man, who had known my mother, and after her death he used to come to the house, and finding me moping in a corner, while Emma made the room gay with her talk, he would draw me out with wonderful stories of women who had become the centre of a great society by the brilliance of their attainments and the sparkle of their wit. Once he called me beautiful, and when he saw the deep flush, which I could not subdue, mantle my cheeks and agitate my whole body, he took me very kindly by the hand, and said:

"'Hermione, you have splendid powers. Perhaps God allowed a little defect to fall upon your beauty, in order to teach you the value of the superior faculties with which you are endowed. You can be a fine, grand woman, if you will.'

"Alas! he did not know that one unconscious tribute to my personal attractions would just then have gone much farther with me than any amount of appreciation for my mental abilities. Yet his words had their effect, and from that moment I began to study--not as my father did, with an absorbed, passionate devotion to one line of thought; that seemed to me narrow and demoralizing, perhaps because almost every disappointment or grief incident to those days could be traced to my father's abstraction to everything disconnected with his laboratory. If I wished to go to the city, or extend my knowledge of the world by travel, it was: 'I have an experiment on hand; I cannot leave the laboratory.' If I wished a new gown, or a set of books, it was: 'I am not rich, and I must use all my spare means in buying the apparatus I need, or the chemicals which are necessary to the discoveries I am in the way of making.' Yet none of those discoveries or experiments ever resulted in anything further than the acquiring on his part of a purely local fame for learning. Therefore no special branch for me, but a general culture which would fit me to shine in any society it might henceforth be my good fortune to enter.

"My father might brood over his books, and bend his back over the retort and crucible; my sister might laugh and attract the liking of a crowd of foolish heads, but I would be the Sevigny, the Rambouillet of my time, and by the eloquence of my conversation and the grace of my manner win for myself that superiority among women which nature had designed for me, but of which cruel fate had robbed me, even before I knew its worth.

"You will say these are great hopes for a village girl who had never travelled beyond her native town, and who knew the great world only through the medium of books. But is it not in villages and quiet sequestered places that lofty ambitions are born? Is it the city boy who becomes the President of our United States, or the city girl who startles the world with her talent as poet, artist, or novelist?

"I read, and learned the world, and felt that I knew my place in it. When my training should be complete, when I had acquired all that my books and the companionship of the best minds in Marston could teach, then I would go abroad, and in the civilization of other lands complete the education which had now become with me a passion, because in it I saw the stepping-stone to the eminence I sought.

"I speak plainly; it is necessary. You must know what was passing in my mind during my girlhood's years, or you will not understand me or the temptations which befell me. Besides, in writing thus I am preparing myself for the revelation of a weakness I have shrunk till now from acknowledging. It must be made. I cannot put it off any longer. I must speak of Dr. Sellick, and explain if possible what he gradually became to me in those lonely and studious years.

"I had known him from a child, but I did not begin to think of him till he began to visit our house. He was a student then, and he naturally took a great interest in chemistry. My father's laboratory was convenient, well-stocked with apparatus, and freely opened to him. To my father's laboratory he accordingly came every day when he was in town, till it began to be quite a matter of course to see him there.

"I was very busy that summer, and for some time looked upon this only as a habit on his part, and so took little heed of his presence. But one day, being weary with the philosophy I had been studying, I took from the shelves a book of poems, and sitting down in the dimmest corner of our stiff old parlor, I began to read some impassioned verses, which, before I knew it, roused my imagination and inflamed my heart to a point which made it easy for any new romantic impression to be made upon me.

"At this instant fate and my ever-cruel destiny brought into my presence Edgar Sellick. He had been like myself hard at work, and had become weary, and anxious perhaps for a change, or, as I am now compelled to think, eager to talk of one whose very existence I was tempted to forget when she was, as then, away from home. He had come into the room where I was, and was standing, flushed and handsome, in the one bright streak of sunlight that flashed at that moment over the floor. I had always liked him, and thought him the only real gentleman in town, but something quite new in my experience made my heart swell as I met his eyes that day, and though I will not call it love (not now), it was something which greatly moved me and made me feel that in the gaze and seeming interest of this man I saw the true road to happiness and to the only life which would ever really satisfy me. For, let it be my excuse, under all my vanity, a vanity greater for the seeming check it had received, dwelt an ardent and irrepressible desire for affection, such affection as I had never received since my dying mother laid her trembling hand upon my head and bade me trust the good God for a happiness I had never possessed. My disfigurement owed its deepest sting to the fact, never revealed to others before, and scarcely acknowledged to myself then, that it stood in the way, as I thought, to my ever being passionately beloved. When, therefore, I saw the smile on Dr. Sellick's face, and realized that he was looking for me, I rose up with new hopes in my heart and a new brightness in my life.

"But we said nothing, he or I, beyond the merest commonplaces, and had my powers of observation been as keen then as they are now, since a new light has been shed upon those days, I would have perceived that his eye did not brighten when it rested upon me, save when some chance mention was made of Emma, and of the pleasures she was enjoying abroad. But no doubts came to me at that time. Because my heart was warm I took it for granted that his was so also, and not dreaming of any other reason for his attentions than the natural one of his desiring my society for its own sake, I gradually gave myself up to a feeling of which it is shame now for me to speak, but which, as it was the origin of all my troubles, I must compel myself to acknowledge here in all its force and fervor.

"The fact that he never uttered a word of love or showed me any attention beyond that of being constantly at my side, did not serve to alarm or even dispirit me. I knew him to have just started upon his career as physician, and also knew him to be proud, and was quite content to cherish my hopes and look towards a future that had unaccountably brightened into something very brilliant indeed.

"It was while matters were in this condition that Emma came home from her trip. I remember the occasion well, and how pretty she looked in her foreign gowns. You, who have only seen her under a shadow, cannot imagine how pleasing she was, fresh from her happy experiences abroad, and an ocean trip, which had emphasized the roses on her cheek and the brightness in her eyes. But though I saw it all and felt that I could never compete with the gaiety which was her charm, I did not feel that old sickly jealousy of her winsome ways which once distorted her figure in my eyes, nor did I any longer hate her laugh or shrink from her merry banter. For I had my own happiness, as I thought, and could afford to be lenient towards a gay young thing who had no secret hope like mine to fill her heart and make it too rich with joy for idle mirth.

"It was a gay season for humble little Marston, and various picnics followed by a ball in Hartford promised festivities enough to keep us well alive. I did not care for festivities, but I did care for Dr. Sellick, and picnics and balls offered opportunities beyond those given by his rather commonplace visits to the house. I therefore looked forward to the picnics at the seashore with something like expectancy, and as proof of my utter blindness to the real state of affairs, it never even entered into my head that it would be the scene of his first meeting with Emma after an absence of many months.

"Nor did any behavior on his part at this picnic enlighten me as to his true feelings, or the direction in which they ran. He greeted Emma in my presence, and the unusual awkwardness with which he took her hand told me nothing, though it may have whispered something to her. I only noticed that he had the most refined features and the most intellectual head of any one present, and was very happy thereat, and disposed to accord him an interview if he showed any inclination to draw me away from the rest of the merry-makers. But he did not, though he strolled several times away by himself; and once I saw him chatting with Emma; but this fact made no impression upon me and my Fool's Paradise remained still intact.

"But that night on reaching home I felt that something was going wrong. Aunt Lovell was then with us, and I saw her cast a glance of dismay upon me as I entered the room where she and Emma had been closeted together. Emma, too, looked out of sorts, and hardly spoke to me when I passed her in the hall. Indeed, that quick temper of which I have already spoken was visible in her eyes, and if I had opened my own lips I am sure she would have flashed out with some of her bitter speeches. But I was ignorant of having given her any cause for anger; so, thinking she was jealous of the acquirements which I had made in her absence, and the advantages they now gave me in any gathering where cultured people came together, I hurried by her in some disdain, and in the quiet of my own room regained the equanimity my aunt's look and Emma's manifest ill-feeling towards me had for a moment shaken.

"It was the last time I was to encounter anger in that eye. When I met her next morning I discovered that some great change had passed over her. The high spirits I had always secretly deprecated were gone, and in their place behold an indescribable gentleness of manner which has never since forsaken her.

"But this was not all; her attitude towards me was different. From indifference it had budded into love; and if one can become devoted in a night, then was it devotion that she showed in every look and every word she bestowed upon me from that day. The occasion for this change I did not then know; when I did, a change passed over me also.

"Meantime a grave event took place. I was out walking, and my path took me by the church. I mean the one that stands by itself on the top of the hill. Perhaps you have been there, perhaps you have not. It is a lonesome-looking structure, but it has pleasant surroundings, while the view of the sea which you get from its rear is superb. I often used to go there, just for the breath of salt-water that seemed to hover about the place, and as there was a big flat stone in the very spot most favorable for observation, I was accustomed to sit there for hours with my book or pencil for company.

"Had Edgar Sellick loved me he would have been acquainted with my habits. This is apparent to me now, but then I seemed to see nothing beyond my own wishes and hopes. But this does not explain what happened to me there. I was sitting on the stone of which I have spoken, and was looking at the long line of silver light on the horizon which we call the sea, when I suddenly heard voices. Two men were standing on the other side of the church, engaged, in all probability, in gazing at the landscape, but talking on a subject very remote from what they saw before them. I heard their words distinctly. They were these:

"'I tell you she is beautiful.'

"I did not recognize the voice making use of this phrase, but the one that answered was well known to me, and its tones went through me like a knife.

"'Oh, yes, if you only see one side of her face.'

"They were speaking of me, and the last voice, careless, indifferent, almost disdainful as it was, was that of Edgar Sellick.

"I quailed as at a mortal blow, but I did not utter a sound. I do not know as I even moved; but that only shows the control a woman unconsciously holds over herself. For nothing short of a frenzied scream could have voiced the agony I felt, or expressed the sudden revolt which took place within me, sickening me at once with life, past, present, and future. Not till they had strolled away did I rise and dash down the hill into the wood that lies at its foot, but when I felt myself alone and well shielded from the view of any chance observer, I groaned again and again, and wrung my hands in a misery to which I can do but little justice now. I had been thrust so suddenly out of paradise. I had been so sure of _his_ regard, _his_ love. The scar which disfigured me in other eyes had been, as I thought, no detriment in his. He loved me, and saw nothing in me but what was consistent with that love. And now I heard him with my own ears speak contemptuously of that scar. All that I had hoped, all that I had confided in, was gone from me in an instant, and I felt myself toppling into a misery I could neither contemplate nor fathom. For an hour I walked the paths of that small wood, communing with myself; then I took my resolve. Life, which had brought me nothing but pain and humiliation, was not worth living. The hopes I had indulged, the love in which I had believed, had proved a mockery, and the shame which their destruction brought was worse than death, and so to be more shunned than death. I was determined to die.

"The means were ready to my hand. Further on in that very wood I knew of a pool. It was a deep, dark, deadly place, as its name of Devil's Cauldron betokens, and in it I felt I could most fitly end the life that was dear to no one. I began to stray towards that place. As I went I thought of home, but with no feelings of longing or compunction. Emma might be kind, had been kind for the last day or so, but Emma did not love me, would not sacrifice anything for me, would not grieve, save in the decent way her sisterhood would naturally require. As for my father, he would feel the interruption it would cause in his experiments, but that would not last long, and in a few days he would be again in his beloved laboratory. No one, not a single being, unless it was dear Aunt Lovell, would sincerely mourn me or sigh over the death of the poor girl with a scar. Edgar Sellick might raise his eyebrows in some surprise, and Edgar Sellick should know what a careless word could do. I had a pencil and paper in my pocket, and I meant to use them. He should not go through life happy and careless, when a line from me would show him that the death of one who had some claims upon his goodness, lay at his door.

"The sight of the dim, dark pool did not frighten me from these intentions. I was in that half-maddened state of disgust and shame which makes the promise of any relief look inviting and peaceful. I loved the depth of that cool, clear water. I saw in it rest, peace, oblivion. Had I not had that letter to write I would have tasted that rest and peace, and these words would never have come to your eyes. But the few minutes I took to write some bitter and incoherent lines to Dr. Sellick saved me from the doom I contemplated. Have I reason to be thankful it was so? To-morrow morning will tell me.

"The passion which guided my pencil was still in my face when I laid the paper down on the bank and placed a stone above it. The eyes which saw those evidences of passion were doubtless terrified by them, for as I passed to the brink of the pool and leaned over it I felt a frenzied grasp on my arm, and turning, I met the look of Emma fixed upon me in mortal terror and apprehension.

"'What are you going to do?' she cried. 'Why are you leaning over the Devil's Cauldron like that?'

"I had not wished to see her or to say good-by to any one. But now, that by some unaccountable chance she had come upon me, in my desperation I would give her one kiss before I went to my doom.

"'Emma,' I exclaimed, meeting her look without any sharp sense of shame, 'life is not as promising for me as it is for you; life is not promising for me at all, so I seek to end it.'

"The horror in her eyes deepened. The grasp on my arm became like that of a man.

"'You are mad,' she cried. 'You do not know what you are doing. What has happened to drive you to a deed like this? I--I thought--' and here she stammered and lost for the moment her self-control--'that you seemed very happy last night.'

"'I was,' I cried. 'I did not know then what a blighted creature I was. I thought some one might be brought to love me, even with this frightful, hideous scar on my face. But I know now that I am mistaken; that no man will ever overlook this; that I must live a lonely life, a suffering life; and I have not the strength or the courage to do so. I--I might have been beautiful,' I cried, 'but----'

"Her face, suddenly distorted by the keenest pain, drew my attention, even at that moment of immeasurable woe, and made me stop and say in less harsh and embittered tones:

"'No one will miss me very much, so do not seek to stop me.'

"Her head fell forward, her eyes sought the ground, but she did not loosen her hold on my arm. Instead of that, it tightened till it felt like a band of steel.

"'You have left a letter there,' she murmured, allowing her eyes to wander fearfully towards it. 'Was it to me? to our father?'

"'No,' I returned.

"She shuddered, but her eyes did not leave the spot. Suddenly her lips gave a low cry; she had seen the word _Sellick_.

"'Yes,' I answered in response to what I knew were her thoughts. 'It is that traitor who is killing me. He has visited me day by day, he has followed me from place to place; he has sought me, smiled upon me, given me every token of love save that expressed in words; and now, now I hear him, when he does not know I am near, speak disrespectfully of my looks, of this scar, as no man who loves, or ever will love, could speak of any defect in the woman he has courted.'

"'You did not hear aright,' came passionately from her lips. 'You are mistaken. Dr. Sellick could not so far forget himself.'

"'Dr. Sellick can and did. Dr. Sellick has given me a blow for which his fine art of healing can find no remedy. Kiss me, Emma, kiss me, dear girl, and do not hold me so tight; see, we might tumble into the water together.'

"'And if we did,' she gasped, 'it would be better than letting you go alone. No, no, Hermione, you shall never plunge into that pool while I live to hold you back. Listen to me, listen. Am I nothing to you? Will you not live for me? I have been careless, I know, happy in my own hopes and pleasures, and thinking too little, oh, much too little, of the possible griefs or disappointments of my only sister. But this shall be changed; I promise you shall all be changed. I will live for you henceforth; we will breathe, work, suffer, enjoy together. No sister shall be tenderer, no lover more devoted than I will be to you. If you do not marry, then will not I. No pleasure that is denied you shall be accepted by me. Only come away from this dark pool; quit casting those glances of secret longing into that gruesome water. It is too awful, too loathsome a place to swallow so much beauty; for you are beautiful, no matter what any one says; so beautiful that it is almost a mercy you have some defect, or we should not dare to claim you for our own, you are so far above what any of us could hope for or expect.'

"But the bitterness that was in my soul could not be so easily exorcised.

"'You are a good girl,' I said, 'but you cannot move me from my purpose.' And I tried to disengage myself from her clasp.

"But the young face, the young form which I had hitherto associated only with what was gay, mirthful, and frivolous, met me with an aspect which impressed even me and made me feel it was no child I had to deal with but a woman as strong and in a state of almost as much suffering as myself.

"'Hermione,' she cried, 'if you throw yourself into that pool, I shall follow you. I will not live ten minutes after you. Do you know why? Because I--_I_ caused you that scar which has been the torment of your life. It was when we were children--babes, and I have only known it since last night. Auntie Lovell told me, in her sympathy for you and her desire to make me more sisterly. The knowledge has crushed me, Hermione; it has made me hate myself and love you. Nothing I can do now can ever atone for what I did then; though I was so young, it was anger that gave me strength to deal the blow which has left this indelible mark behind it. Isn't it terrible? I the one to blame and you the one to suffer!--But there must be no dying, Hermione, no dying, or I shall feel myself a murderess. And you do not want to add that horror to my remorse, now that I am old enough to feel remorse, and realize your suffering. You will be a little merciful and live for my sake if not for your own.'

"She was clinging to me, her face white and drawn, upturned towards mine with pitiful pleading, but I had no words with which to comfort her, nor could I feel as yet any relenting in my fixed purpose. Seeing my unmoved look she burst into sobs, then she cried suddenly:

"'I see I must prepare to die too. But not to-day, Hermione. Wait a month, just one month, and then if you choose to rush upon your fate, I will not seek to deter you, I will simply share it; but not to-day, not in this rush of maddened feeling. Life holds too much,--may yet give you too much, for any such reckless disregard of its prospects. Give it one chance, then, and me one chance--it is all I ask. One month of quiet waiting and then--decision.'

"I knew no month would make any difference with me, but her passionate pleading began to work upon my feelings.

"'It will be a wretched time for me,' said I, 'a purgatory which I shall be glad to escape.'

"'But for my sake,' she murmured, 'for my sake; I am not ready to die yet, and your fate--I have said it--shall be mine.'

"'For your sake then,' I cried, and drew back from the dangerous brink upon which we had both been standing. 'But do not think,' I added, as we paused some few feet away, 'that because I yield now, I will yield then. If after a month of trying to live, I find myself unable, I shall not consult you, Emma, as to my determination, any more than I shall expect you to embrace my doom because in the heat of your present terror you have expressed your intention of doing so.'

"'Your fate shall be my fate, as far as I myself can compass it,' she reiterated. And I, angry at what I thought to be an unwarrantable attempt to put a check upon me, cried out in as bitter a tone as I had ever used:

"'So be it,' and turned myself towards home."

XXI.

IN THE LABORATORY.

"But Emma, with a careful remembrance of what was due to my better nature, stopped to pick up the letter I had left lying under a stone, and joining me, placed it in my hand, by which it was soon crumpled up, torn, and scattered to the wind. As the last bits blew by us, we both sighed and the next minute walked rapidly towards home.

"You will say that all this was experience enough for one day, but fate sometimes crowds us with emotions and eventful moments. As we entered the house, I saw auntie waiting for us at the top of the first stairs; and when she beckoned to Emma only, I was glad--if I could be glad of anything--that I was to be left for a few minutes to myself. Turning towards a little crooked staircase which leads to that part of the house containing my own room and my father's laboratory, I went wearily up, feeling as if each step I took dragged a whole weight of woe behind it.

"I was going to my own room, but as I passed the open laboratory door, I perceived that the place was empty, and the fancy took me, I know not why, to go in. I had never liked the room, it was so unnaturally long, so unnaturally dismal, and so connected with the pursuits I had come to detest. Now it had an added horror for me. Here Dr. Sellick had been accustomed to come, and here was the very chair in which he had sat, and the table at which he had worked. Why, then, with all this old and new shrinking upon me did I persistently cross the threshold and darken my already clouded spirit with the torturing suggestions I found there? I do not know. Perhaps my evil spirit lured me on; perhaps--I am beginning to believe in a Providence now--God had some good purpose in leading me to fresh revelations, though up to this time they have seemed to cause me nothing but agony and shame.

"No one was in the room, I say, and I went straight to its middle window. Here my father's desk stood, for he used the room for nearly every purpose of his life. I did not observe the desk; I did not observe anything till I turned to leave; then I caught sight of a letter lying on the desk, and stopped as if I had been clutched by an iron hand, for it was an open letter, and the signature at the bottom of the sheet was that of Edgar Sellick.

"'Can I never escape from that man?' thought I, and turned passionately away. But next minute I found myself bending over it, devouring it first with my eyes, and then taking it to my heart, for it was an expression of love for the daughter of the man to whom it was addressed, and that man was my father.

"This language as I now know referred to Emma, and she was under no error in regard to it, nor was my father nor my aunt. But I thought it referred to me, and as I read on and came upon the sentence in which he asked, as I supposed, for my hand and the privilege of offering himself to me at the coming ball, I experienced such a revulsion of feeling that I lost all memory of the words I had overheard him speak, or attributed them to some misunderstanding on my part, which a word or look from him could easily explain.

"Life bloomed for me again, and I was happy, madly happy for a few short moments. Even the horrible old room I was in seemed cheerful, and I was just acknowledging to myself that I should have made a great mistake if I had carried out my wicked impulse toward self-destruction, when my father came in. He shrank back when he saw me; but I thought nothing of that; I did not even wonder why Emma was closeted with aunt. I only thought of the coming ball, and the necessity of preparing myself for it right royally.

"I had come from the desk, and was crossing the floor to go out. My happiness made me turn.

"'Father,' said I, taking what I thought to be an arch advantage of the situation; 'may I not have a new dress for the ball?'

"He paused, cast a glance at his desk, and then another at me. He had been, though I did not know it, in conversation with Emma and my aunt, and was more alive to the matters of the hour than usual. It was therefore with some display of severity that he confronted me and said:

"'You are not going to the ball, Hermione.'

"Struck as by a blow, the more severely that it was wholly unexpected, I gasped:

"'Not going to the ball when you know what depends upon it? Do you not like Dr. Sellick, father?'

"He mumbled something between his lips, and advancing to the desk, took up the letter which he thus knew I had read, and ostentatiously folded it.

"'I like Dr. Sellick well enough,' was his reply, 'but I do not approve of balls, and desire you to keep away from them.'

"'But you said we might go,' I persisted, suspecting nothing, seeing nothing in this but a parent's unreasonable and arbitrary display of power. 'Why have you changed your mind? Is it because Dr. Sellick has fixed upon that time for making me the offer of his hand?'

"'Perhaps,' his dry lips said.

"Angry as I had never been in all my life, I tried to speak, and could not. Had I escaped suicide to have my hopes flung in this wanton way again to the ground, and for no reason that I or any one else could see?'

"'But you acknowledge,' I managed at last to stammer, 'that you like him.'

"'That is not saying I want him for a son-in-law.'

"'Whom do you want?' I cried. 'Is there any one else in town superior to him in wit or breeding? If he loves me----'

"My father's lip curled.

"'He says he does,' I flashed out fiercely.

"'You should not have read my letters,' was all my father replied.

"I was baffled, exasperated, at my wits' end; all the more that I saw his eye roaming impatiently towards the pneumatic trough where some hydrogen gas was collecting for use.

"'Father, father,' I cried, 'be frank to me. What are your objections to Dr. Sellick? He is your friend; he works with you; he is promising in his profession; he has every qualification but that of wealth----'

"'That is enough,' broke in my father.

"I looked at him in dismay and shrank back. How could I know he was honestly trying to save me from a grief and shame they all thought me unequal to meeting. I saw nothing but his cold smile, heard nothing but his harsh words.

"'You are cruel; you are heartless,' burst from me in a rage. 'You never have shown the least signs of a mercenary spirit before, and now you make Dr. Sellick's lack of money an excuse for breaking my heart.'

"'Hermione,' my father slowly rejoined, 'you have a frightful temper. You had better keep down the exhibitions of it when you are in this room.'

"'This room!' I repeated, almost beside myself. 'This grave rather of every gentle feeling and tender thought which a father should have towards a most unfortunate child. If you loved me but half as well as you love these old jars----'

"But here his face, usually mild in its abstraction, turned so pale and hard that I was frightened at what I had said.

"'Hermione,' he cried, 'there is no use trying to show you any consideration. Know the truth then; know that----'

"Why did he not go on? Why was he not allowed to tell me what I may have been but little fitted to hear, but which if I had heard it at that time would have saved me from many grave and fatal mistakes. I think he would have spoken; I think he meant to tell me that Dr. Sellick's offer was for Emma, and not for me, but Emma herself appeared just then at the door, and though I did not detect the gesture she made, I gather that it was one of entreaty from the way he paused and bit his lip.

"'It is useless to talk,' he exclaimed. 'I have said that you are to stay home from the ball. I also say that you are not to accept or refuse Dr. Sellick's addresses. I will answer his letter, and it will not be one of acceptance.'

"Why did I not yield to his will and say nothing? When I saw how everything was against me, why did I not succumb to circumstances, and cease to maintain a struggle I knew then to be useless? Because it was not in my nature to do so; because Providence had given me an indomitable will which had never been roused into its utmost action till now. Drawing myself up till I felt that I was taller than he, I advanced with all the fury of suppressed rage, and quietly said the fatal words which, once uttered, I never knew how to recall:

"'If you play the tyrant, I will not play the part of submissive slave. Keep me here if you will; restrain me from going where my fancy and my desires lead, and I will obey you. But, father, if you do this, if you do not allow me to go to the ball, meet Dr. Sellick, and accept his offer, then mark me, I will never go out of this house again. Where you keep me I will stay till I am carried out a corpse, and no one and nothing shall ever make me change my mind.'

"He stared, laughed, then walked away to his pneumatic trough. 'Suit yourself about that,' said he, 'I have nothing to do with your whims.' Probably he thought I was raving and would forget my words before the day was out.

"But there was another person present who knew me better, and I only realized what I had done when I beheld Emma's slight body lying insensible at my feet."

XXII.

STEEL MEETS STEEL.

Up to this point Frank had read with an absorption which precluded the receiving of all outward impressions. But the secret reached, he drew a long breath and became suddenly conscious of a lugubrious sound breaking in upon the silence with a gloomy iteration which was anything but cheering.

The fog-horn was blowing out on Dog Island.

"I could have done without that accompaniment," thought he, glancing at the sheets still before him. "It gives me a sense of doom."

But the fog was thick on the coast and the horn kept on blowing.

Frank took up the remaining sheets.

* * * * *

"Life for me was now at an end indeed, and not for me only, but for Emma. I had not meant to involve her in my fate. I had forgotten her promise, _forgotten_. But when I saw her lying there I remembered, and a sharp pang pierced me for all my devouring rage. But I did not recall my words, I could not. I had uttered them with a full sense of what they meant to me, and the scorn with which they were received only deepened my purpose to keep the threat I had made. Can you understand such a disposition, and can you continue to love the possessor of it?

"My father, who was shocked at Emma's fall, knowing better than I did perhaps the real misery which lay behind it, cast me a look which did not tend to soften my obduracy, and advanced to pick her up. When he had carried her to her own room, I went proudly to mine, and such was the depth of my anger and the obstinate nature of my will that I really felt better able to face the future now that I had put myself into a position requiring pride and purpose to sustain it. But I did feel some relenting when I next saw Emma--such a change was visible in her manner. Meekness had taken the place of the merriment which once made the house to ring, and the eye which once sparkled now showed sadness and concern. I did not, however suspect she had given up anything but freedom, and though this was much, as I very soon began to find, I was not yet by any means so affected by her devotion, that I could do more than beg her to reconsider her own determination and break a promise from which I would be only too happy to release her.

"But the answer with which she always met my remonstrances was, 'Your fate shall be my fate. When it becomes unbearable to us both you will release me by releasing yourself.' Which answer always hardened me again, for I did not wish to be forced to think that the breaking up of our seclusion rested with me, or that anything but a relenting on my father's part could make any change in my conduct.

"Meanwhile that father maintained towards me an air of the utmost indifference. He worked at his experiments as usual, came and went through the sombre house, which was unrelieved now by Emma's once bright sallies and irrepressible laughter, and made no sign that he saw any difference in it or us. Aunt Lovell alone showed sympathy, and when she saw that sympathy accomplished nothing, tried first persuasion and then argument.

"But she had iron and steel to deal with and she soon ceased her gentle efforts, and as the time of her visit was drawing to a close, returned again to those gentle expressions of silent sympathy more natural to her nature; and so the first week passed.

"We had determined, Emma and I, that no one beside our four selves should ever know the secret of our strange behavior. Neighbors might guess, gossips might discuss it, but no one should ever know why we no longer showed ourselves in the street, went to any of the social gatherings of the place, or attended the church from which we had never before been absent. When, therefore, the ball came off and we were not seen there, many were the questions asked, and many were the surmises uttered, but we did not betray our secret, nor was it for some time after this that the people about us awoke to the fact that we no longer left our home.

"What happened when this fact was fully realized, I will not pause to relate, for matters of a much more serious nature press upon me and I must now speak of the bitter and terrible struggle which gradually awoke between my father and myself. He had as I have already related, shown nothing at first but indifference, but after the first week had passed he suddenly seemed to realize that I meant what I said. The result was a conflict between us from the effects of which I am still suffering.

"The first intimation I received of his determination to make me break my word came on a Sunday morning. He had been in his room dressing for church, and when he came out he rapped at my door and asked if I were ready to go with him.

"Naturally I flung wide the door and let him see my wrathful figure in its morning dress.

"'Can you ask,' I cried, 'when you yourself have made it impossible for me to enjoy anything outside of this house, even the breath of fresh air to which all are entitled?'

"He looked as if he would like to strike me, but he did not--only smiled. If I could have known all that lay under that smile, or been able to fathom from what I knew of my own stubborn nature, the terrible depths which its sarcasm barely suggested!

"'You would be a fool if you were not so wicked,' was all he said, and shuffled away to my sister's door.

"In a few minutes he came back.

"'Hermione,' he cried, 'put on your hat and come directly with me to church.'

"I simply looked at him.

"'Do you hear?' he exclaimed, stepping into the room and shutting the door after him. 'I have had enough of this nonsense, and to-day you go out with me to church or you never shall call me father again.'

"'Have you been a father to me?' I asked.

"He shook and quivered and was a picture of rage. I remembered as I looked at him, thinking, 'Behold the source of my own temper,' but I said nothing, and was in no other way affected by what I saw.

"'I have been such a father to you as your folly and blindness deserved,' he exclaimed. 'Should I continue to treat you according to your deserts, I would tell you what would lay you in shame at my feet. But I have promised to be silent, and silent will I be, not out of consideration for you, but because your punishment will some day be the greater. Will you give up this whim and go with me, and so let your sister go also, or will you not?'

"'I will not.'

"He showed a sudden change of manner. 'I will ask you the same question next Sunday,' said he, and left my presence with his old air of indifference and absorption. No subject disconnected with his work could rouse more than a temporary passion in him.

"He kept his word. Every Sunday morning he came on the same errand to my door, and every Sunday he went forth alone. During the week days he did not trouble me. Indeed, I do not know as he thought of me then, or even of Emma, who had always been dearer to him than I. He was engaged on some new experiment, some vital discovery that filled him with enthusiasm and made every moment passed out of his laboratory a trial and a loss to him. He ate that he might work, he slept that he might gather new strength and inspiration for the next day. If visitors came he refused to see them; the one visitor who could have assisted him at the retort and crucible had been denied the door, and any other was a hindrance. Our troubles, our cares, our schemes, or our attempts to supply the table and dress ourselves upon the few and fewer dollars he now allowed us, sank into insignificance before the one idea with which he was engrossed. I do not think he even knew when we ceased having meat for dinner. That Emma was growing pale and I desperate did not attract his attention as much as a speck of dust upon a favorite jar or a crack in one of his miserable tubes.

"That this deep absorption of his was real and not assumed was made evident to me the first Sunday morning he forgot to come to my door. It was a relief not to have to go through the usual formula, but it alarmed me too. I was afraid I was to be allowed to go my own way unhindered, and I was beginning to feel a softness towards Emma and a longing for the life of the world, which made me anxious for some excuse to break a resolution which was entailing upon me so much more suffering than I had anticipated. Indeed, I think if my father had persisted in his practice and come but two or three Sunday mornings more to my door, that my pride would have yielded at last, and my feet in spite of me have followed him out of a house that, since it had become my prison, had become more than ever hateful to me. But he stopped just as a crisis was taking place in my feelings, and my heart hardened again. Before it could experience again the softening effects of Emma's uncomplaining presence the news came that Dr. Sellick had left the town, and my motive for quitting the house was taken from me. Henceforth I felt no more life or hope or ambition than if I had been an automaton.

"This mood received one day a startling interruption. As I was sitting in my room with a book in my hand I felt too listless to read, the door opened, and my father stood before me. As it was weeks since he had appeared on a Sunday morning and months since he had showed himself there on a week day, I was startled, especially as his expression was more eager and impatient than I had ever seen it except when he was leaning over his laboratory table. Was his heart touched at last? Had he good news for me, or was he going to show his fatherhood once more by proffering me an invitation to go out with him in a way which my pride would allow me to accept? I rose in a state of trembling agitation, and made up my mind that if he spoke kindly I would break the hideous bonds which held me and follow him quickly into the street.

"But the words which fell from his lips drove every tender impulse back into my heart.

"'Have you any jewels, Hermione? I think I gave your mother some pearls when we were married. Have you them? I want them if you have.'

"The revulsion of feeling was too keen. Quivering with disappointment, I cried out, bitterly:

"'What to do? To give us bread? We have not had any too much of it lately.'

"He stared, but did not seem to take in my words.

"'Fetch the pearls,' he cried; 'I cannot afford to waste time like this; my experiments will suffer.'

"'And have you no eye, no heart,' I asked, 'for the sufferings of your daughters? With no motive but an arbitrary love of power, you robbed me of my happiness. Now you want my jewels; the one treasure I have left either in the way of value, or as a remembrance of the mother who loved me.'

"Of all this he heard but one word.

"'Are they valuable?' he asked. 'I had hoped so, but I did not know. Get them, child, get them. The discovery upon which my fame may rest will yet be made.'

"'Father, father, you want to sell them,' I screamed. 'My mother's jewels; my dead mother's jewels!'

"He looked at me; this protest had succeeded in entering his ears, and his eye, which had been simply eager, became all at once dangerous.

"'I do not care whose they were,' he hissed, 'so long as they are now mine. It is money I want, and money I will have, and if they will get it for me you had better be thankful. Otherwise I shall have to find some other way to raise it.'

"I was cowed; he did not say what other way, but I knew by his look I had better not drive him into it, so I went to the place where I kept these sacred relics, and taking them out, laid them in his trembling, outstretched hand.

"'Are these all?' he asked. And I wondered, for he had never shown the least shrewdness in any matter connected with money before.

"'All but a trivial little locket which Emma wears,' said I.

"'Is it worth much?'

"'Scarcely five dollars,' I returned.

"'Five dollars would buy the bit of platinum I want,' he muttered. But he did not ask for the locket, for I saw it on Emma's neck the next day.

"This was the beginning of a fresh struggle. My father begrudged us everything: the food we ate; the plain, almost homely, clothes we wore. He himself wellnigh starved his own body, and when in the midst of an experiment, his most valuable retort broke in his hand, you could have heard his shriek of dismay all over the house. The following Sunday he did not go to church; he no longer had a coat to wear; he had sold his only broadcloth suit to a wandering pedlar.

"Our next shock was the dismissal of the man who had always kept our garden in order. Doris would have been sent away also, but that father knew this would mean a disorder in the household which might entail interruption in his labors. He did not dare to leave himself to the tender mercies of his daughters. But her pay was stopped.

"Meanwhile his discovery delayed. It was money that he needed, he said, more money, much more money. He began to sell his books. In the midst of this a stranger came to visit him, and now the real story of my misery begins."

XXIII.

A GROWING HORROR.

"There are some men who fill you from the beginning with a feeling of revulsion. Such a one was Antony Harding. When he came into the parlor where I sat, I felt it difficult to advance and greet him with the necessary formalities, so forcibly did I shrink from his glance, his smile, his bow of easy assurance. Not that he was ugly of feature, or possessed of any very distinguishing marks in face or form to render him personally repulsive. He was what some might have called good-looking, and many others a gentlemanly-appearing man. But to me he was simply revolting, and I could not then or now tell why, for, as far as I know, he has never done anything incompatible with his standing as a gentleman and a man of family and wealth.

"He had some claim upon my father, and desired very much to see him. I, who could not dispute that claim, was going to call my father, when Mr. Harding stopped me, thinking, I really believe, that he would not see me again, and I was forced, greatly against my will, to stand and answer some half-dozen innocent enough questions, while his eyes roamed over my features and took in the scar I turned towards him as a sort of defence. Then he let me go, but not before I saw in him the beginning of that fever which made me for a while hate the very name of love.

"With a sense of disgust quite new to me, I rushed from the room to the laboratory. The name by which he had introduced himself was a strange one to me, and I had no idea my father would see him. But as soon as I uttered the word Harding, the impatience with which he always met any interruption gave way to a sudden and irresistible joy, and, jumping up from his seat, he cried:

"'Show him up! show him up. He is a rich man and interested in chemistry. He cannot but foresee the fame which awaits the man who brings to light the discovery I am seeking.'

"'He says he has some claim on you,' I murmured, anything but pleased at this prospect of seeing a man whose presence I so disliked, inveigled into matters which might demand his reappearance in the house.

"'Claims? claims? Perhaps he has; I cannot remember. But send him up; I shall soon make him forget any claims he may have.'

"I did as my father bade me. I sent the smiling, dapper, disagreeably attentive man to the laboratory, and when this was done, went to the window and threw it up with some vague idea of cleansing the room from an influence which stifled me.

"You may imagine then with what a sense of apprehension I observed that my father fairly glowed with delight when he came to the supper-table. From being the half-sullen, half-oblivious companion who had lately chilled our board and made it the scene of anything but cheer or comfort, he had brightened at once into a garrulous old man, ready with jests and full of condescending speeches in regard to his great experiments. Emma, to whom I had said nothing, looked her innocent pleasure at this, and both of us started in amazement when he suddenly turned towards me, and surveyed me with something like interest and pleasurable curiosity.

"'Why do you look at me like that?' I could not help saying. 'I should think you had never seen me before, father.'

"'Perhaps I never have,' he laughed. Then quite seriously: 'I was looking to see if you were as handsome as Mr. Harding said you were. He told me he had never seen so beautiful a woman in his life.'

"I was shocked; more than that, I was terrified; I half-rose from the table, and forgetting everything else which made my life a burden to me, I had some wild idea of rushing from the house, from the town, anywhere to escape the purpose I perceived forming itself in my father's mind.

"'Father,' I cried, with a trembling in my tones that was not common to them, even in the moments of my greatest displeasure; 'I hate that man, and abominate the very idea of his presuming to admire me. Do not ever mention him to me again. It makes my very soul turn sick.'

"It was an unwise speech; it was the unwisest speech I could have made. I felt this to be so the moment I had spoken, and stole a look of secret dismay at Emma, who sat quite still and helpless, gazing, in silent consternation, from my father to myself.

"'You will hate no one who can help me perfect my experiments,' he retorted. 'If I command you to do so, you must even love him, though we have not got so far as that yet.'

"'I will never love anybody again,' I answered bitterly. 'And I would not love this man if your discoveries and my own life even hung upon it.'

"'You would not?' He was livid now. 'Well, we shall see. He is coming here to dinner to-morrow, and if you dare to show him anything but the respect due to an honored guest you will live to rue it as you have never rued anything yet.'

"Threats that are idle on some lips are anything but idle on ours, as I think you have already begun to perceive. I therefore turned pale and said no more, but all night the tormenting terror was upon me, and when the next day came I was but little fitted to sustain the reputation for beauty which I had so unfortunately earned from a distasteful man's lips the day before.

"But Antony Harding was not one to easily change his first impressions. He had made up his mind that I was beautiful, and he kept to that opinion to the last. I had dressed myself in my most expensive but least becoming gown, and I wore my hair in a way to shock the taste of most men. But I saw from the first moment that his eyes fell on my face that this made no difference to him, and that I must take other means to disillusionize him. So then I resorted to a display of stupidity. I did not talk, and looked, if I looked at all, as if I did not understand. But he had seen glimpses of brightness in me the day before, and this ruse succeeded no better than the other. He even acted as if he admired me more as a breathing, sullen image than as a living, combative woman.

"My father, who watched us as he never had watched anything before but rising bubbles of gas or accumulating crystals, did not show the displeasure I feared, possibly because he saw that I was failing in all my endeavors; and when the meal over, he led the way to the parlor, he even smiled upon me in a not altogether unfriendly way. I felt a sinking of the heart when I saw that smile. Better to me were his frowns, for that smile told me that, love or no love, liking or no liking, I was to be made the bait to win this man's money for the uses of chemistry.

"Walking steadfastly into the parlor, I met the stranger's admiring eye.

"'You would not think,' I remarked, 'that my life at present was enclosed within these four walls.'

"It was the first sentence I had voluntarily addressed him, and it must have struck him as a very peculiar one.

"'I do not understand what you mean,' he returned, with that unctuous smile which to me was so detestable. 'Something interesting, I have no doubt.'

"'Very interesting,' I dryly rejoined. 'I have taken a vow never to leave this house, and I mean to keep it.'

"He stared at me now in some apprehension, and my heart gave a bound of delight. I had frightened him. He thought I was demented.

"My father, seeing his look of astonishment, but not knowing what I had said, here advanced and unconsciously made matters worse by remarking, with an effort at jocularity:

"'Don't mind what Hermione says; for a smart girl and a good one, she sometimes talks very peculiarly.'

"'I should think so,' my companion's manner seemed to assert, but he gave a sudden laugh, and made some observation which I scarcely heard in my fierce determination to end this matter at once.

"'Do you not think,' I persisted, 'that a woman who has doomed herself to perpetual seclusion has a right to be peculiar?'

"'A woman of such beauty possesses most any rights she chooses to assert,' was his somewhat lame reply. He had evidently received a shock, and was greatly embarrassed.

"'I laughed low to myself, but my father, comprehending as in a flash what I was attempting, turned livid and made me a threatening gesture.'

"'I fear,' said he, 'that you will have to excuse my daughter for to-night. The misfortune which has befallen her has soured her temper, and this is not one of her amiable days.'

"I made a curtsey deep as my disdain. 'I leave you to the enjoyment of your criticisms,' I exclaimed, and fled from the room in a flutter of mingled satisfaction and fear.

"For though I had saved myself from any possible persecution on the part of Mr. Harding, I had done it at the cost of any possible reconciliation between my father and myself. And I was not yet so hardened that I could contemplate years of such life as I was then living without a pang of dread. Alas! if I had known what I was indeed preparing for myself, and how much worse a future dwelt in his mind than any I had contemplated!

"Emma, who had been a silent and unobtrusive witness to what had occurred, soon followed me to my room.

"'What have you done?' she asked. 'Why speak so to a stranger?'

"'Father wants me to like him; father wants me to accept his attentions, and I detest him. I abhor his very presence in the house.'

"'But----'

"'I know he has only been here but twice; but that is enough, Emma; he shall not come here again with any idea that he will receive the least welcome from me.'

"'Is he a person known to father? Is he----'

"'Rich? Oh, yes; he is rich. That is why father thinks him an eligible son-in-law. His thousands would raise the threatened discovery into a fact.'

"'I see. I pity you, Hermione. It is hard to disappoint a father in his dearest hopes.'

"I stared at her in sudden fury.

"'Is that what you are thinking of?' I demanded, with reckless impetuosity. 'After all the cruel disappointment he has inflicted upon me----'

"But Emma had slipped from the room. She had no words now with which to meet my gusts of temper.

"A visit from my father came next. Though strong in my resolve not to be shaken, I secretly quaked at the cold, cruel determination in his face. A man after all is so much more unrelenting than a woman.

"'Hermione,' he cried, 'you have disobeyed me. You have insulted my guest, and you have shaken the hopes which I thought I had a right to form, being your father and the author of your being. I said if you did this you should suffer, but I mean to give you one more chance. Mr. Harding was startled rather than alienated. If you show yourself in future the amiable and sensible woman which you can be, he will forget this foolish ebullition and make you the offer his passion inspires. This would mean worldly prosperity, social consideration, and everything else which a reasonable woman, even if she has been disappointed in love, could require. While for me--you cannot know what it would be for me, for you have no capability for appreciating the noble study to which I am devoted.'

"'No,' I said, hard and cold as adamant, 'I have no appreciation for a study which, like another Moloch, demands, not only the sacrifice of the self-respect, but even the lives of your unhappy children.'

"'You rave,' was his harsh reply. 'I offer you all the pleasures of life, and you call it immolation. Is not Mr. Harding as much of a gentleman as Dr. Sellick? Do I ask you to accept the attentions of a boor or a scape-grace? He is called a very honorable man by those who know him, and if you were ten times handsomer than you are, ten times more amiable, and had no defect calculated to diminish the regard of most men, you would still be scarcely worthy to bear the name of so wealthy, honorable, and highly esteemed a young man.'

"'Father, father!' I exclaimed, scarcely able to bear from him this allusion to my misfortune.

"'Why he has taken such a sudden, and, if I may say it, violent fancy to you, I find it hard to understand myself. But he has done this, and he has not scrupled to tell me so, and to intimate that he would like the opportunity of cultivating your good graces. Will you, then--I ask it for the last time--extend him a welcome, or must I see my hopes vanish, and with them a life too feeble to survive the disappointment which their loss must occasion.'

"'I cannot give any sort of welcome to this man,' I returned. 'If I did, I would be doing him a wrong, as well as you and myself. I dislike him, father, more than I can make you understand. His presence is worse than death to me; I would rather go to my coffin than to his arms. But if I liked him, if he were the beau-ideal of my dreams, could I break the vow I made one day in your presence? This man is not Dr. Sellick; do not then seek to make me forget the oath of isolation I have taken.'

"'Fool! fool!' was my father's furious retort. 'I know he is not Dr. Sellick. If he were I should not have his cause to plead to _you_.'

"How nearly his secret came out in his rage. 'If I could make you understand; make you see----'

"'You make me see that I am giving you a great and bitter disappointment,' I broke in. 'But it only equalizes matters; you have given me one.'

"He bounded to my side; he seized my arm and shook it.

"'Drop that foolish talk,' he cried. 'I will hear no more of it, nor of your staying in the house on that account or any other. You will go out to-morrow. You will go out with Mr. Harding. You will----'

"'Father,' I put in, chill as ice, 'do you expect to carry me out in your arms?'

"He fell back; he was a small man, my father, and I, as you know, am large for a woman.

"'You vixen!' he muttered, 'curses on the day when you were born!'

"'That curse has been already pronounced,' I muttered.

"He stood still, he made no answer, he seemed to be gathering himself together for a final appeal. Had he looked at me a little longer; had he shown any sympathy for my position, any appreciation for my wrongs, or any compunction for the share he had taken in them, I might have shown myself to have possessed some womanly softness and latent gentleness. But instead of that he took on in those few frightful moments such a look of cold, calculating hate that I was at once steeled and appalled. I hardly knew what he said when he cried at last:

"'Once! twice! thrice! Will you do what I desire, Hermione?'

"I only knew he had asked something I could not grant, so I answered, with what calmness I could, in the old formula, now for some months gone into disuse, 'I will not,' and sank, weary with my own emotions, into a chair.

"He gave me one look--I shall never forget it,--and threw up his arms with what sounded like an imprecation.

"'Then your sin be upon your own head!' he cried, and without another word left the room.

"I was frightened; never had I seen such an expression on mortal face before. And this was my father; the man who had courted my mother; who had put the ring upon her finger at the altar; who had sat at her dying bed and smiled as she whispered: 'For a busy man, you have always been a good husband to me.' Was this or that the real man as he was? Had these depths been always hidden within him, or had I created them there by my hardness and disobedience? I will never know."

XXIV.

FATHER AND CHILD.

"The night which followed this day was a sleepless one for me. Yet how I dreaded the morning! How I shrank from the first sight of my father's face! Had Auntie Lovell been with us I should have prevailed upon her to have gone to him and tried to smooth the way to some sort of reconciliation between us, but she was in Chicago, and I was not yet upon such terms with Emma that I could bear to make of her a go-between. I preferred to meet him without apology, and by dutifulness in all other respects make him forget in time my failure to oblige him in one. _I had made up my mind to go out of the house that day, though not with Mr. Harding._

"But sometimes it seems as if Providence stepped in our way when we try to recover from any false position into which we have been betrayed by the heat and stress of our own passions. When I tried to rise I found myself ill, and for several days after that I knew little and cared less where I was, or what my future was like to be. When I was well enough to get up and go about my duties again, I found the house and my father in very much the same condition as they were before the fatal appearance of Mr. Harding. No look from his eye revealed that any great change had taken place in his attitude towards me, and after learning that Mr. Harding had come once since my illness, been closeted with my father for some time, and had then gone away with a rather formal and hard good-by to the anxious Emma, I began to feel that my fears had been part of the delirium of the fever which had afterwards set in, and that I was alarming myself and softening my heart more than was necessary.

"The consequence was that I did not go out that afternoon, nor the next morning, nor for a week after, though I was always saying to myself that I would surprise them yet by a sudden dash out of the house when they showed, or rather my father showed, any such relenting in his studied attitude of indifference as would make such an action on the part of one constituted like myself, possible.

"But he was thinking of anything else but relenting, and even I began to see in a few days that something portentous lay behind the apparent apathy of his manner. He worked as he had of old, or rather he shut himself up in his laboratory from morning until night, but when he did appear, there was something new in his manner that deeply troubled me. I began to shrink at the sound of his step, and more than once went without a meal rather than meet the cold glance of his eye.

"Emma, who seemed to have little idea of what I suffered and of what I dreaded (what did I dread? I hardly knew) used to talk to me sometimes of our father's failing health; but I either hushed her or sat like a stone, I was in such a state of shuddering horror. I remember one day as I stole past the laboratory door, I beheld her with her arms round his neck, and the sight filled me with tumult, but whether it was one of longing or repugnance, or a mixture of both, I can hardly tell. But I know it was with difficulty I repressed a cry of grief, and that when I found myself alone my limbs were shaking under me like those of one stricken with ague. At last there came a day when father was no longer to be seen at the table. He ordered his meals brought to the laboratory, but denied being sick. I stared at Emma, who delivered this message, and asked her what she thought of it.

"'That he _is_ ill,' she declared.

* * * * *

"Two weeks later my father called me into his presence. I went in fear and trembling. He was standing by his desk in the laboratory, and I could not repress a start of surprise when I saw the change which had taken place in him. But I said nothing, only stood near the doorway and waited for what he had to say.

"'Look at me,' he commanded. 'I am standing to-day; to-morrow I shall be sitting. I wish you to watch your work; now go.'

"I turned, so shaken by his look and terrible wanness that I could hardly stand. But at the door I paused and cried in irrepressible terror:

"'You are ill; let me send for a doctor. I cannot see you dying thus before my eyes.'

"'You cannot?' With what a grim chuckle he uttered the words. 'We will see what you can bear.' Then as my eyes opened in terror, and I seemed about to flee, he cried, 'No doctor, do you hear? I will see none. And mark me, no talking about what goes on in this room, if you do not wish my curse.'

"Aghast, I rushed from that unhallowed door. What did his words mean? What was his purpose? Upon what precipice of horror was I stumbling?

"The next day he summoned me again. I felt too weak to go, but I dared not disobey. I opened his door with a shaking hand, and found him sitting, as he had promised, in an old arm-chair that had been his mother's.

"'Do I look any better?' he asked.

"I shook my head. He was evidently much worse.

"'The poison of disobedience works slowly, but it works sure,' he cried.

"I threw up my arms with a shriek.

"He seemed to love the sound.

"'You do not enjoy the fruits of your actions,' said he. 'You love your old father so dearly.'

"I held out my hands; I entreated; I implored.

"'Do not--do not look on me like this. Some dreadful thought is in your mind--some dreadful revenge. Do not cherish it; do not make my already ruined life a worse torture to me. Let me have help, let me send for a doctor----'

"But his sternly lifted finger was already pointing at the door.

"'You have stayed too long,' he muttered. 'Next time you will barely look in, and leave without a word.'

"I crouched, he cowed me so, and then fled, this time to find Emma, Doris, some one.

"They were both huddled in the hall below. They had heard our voices and were terrified at the sound.

"'Don't you think he is very ill?' asked Emma. 'Don't you think we ought to have the doctor come, in spite of his commands to the contrary?'

"'Yes,' I gasped, 'and quickly, or we will feel like murderers.'

"'Dr. Dudgeon is a big know-nothing,' cried Doris.

"'But he is a doctor,' I said. And Doris went for him at once.

"When he came Emma undertook to take him to the laboratory; I did not dare. I sat on the stairs and listened, shaking in every limb. What was going on in that room? What was my father saying? What was the doctor deciding? When the door opened at last I was almost unconscious. The sound of the doctor's voice, always loud, struck upon my ears like thunder, but I could not distinguish his words. Not till he had come half-way down the stairs did I begin to understand them, and then I heard:

"'A case of overwork! He will be better in a day or two. Send for me if he seems any worse.'

"Overwork! that clay-white cheek! those dry and burning lips! the eyes hollowed out as if death were already making a skeleton of him! I seized the doctor's hand as he went by.

"'Are you sure that is all?' I cried.

"He gave me a pompous stare. 'I do not often repeat myself,' said he, and went haughtily out without another word.

"Emma, standing at the top of the stairs, came down as the door closed behind him.

"'Father was not so angry as I feared he would be. He smiled at the doctor and seemed glad to see him. He even roused himself up to talk, and for a few minutes did not look so ill as he really is.'

"'Did the doctor leave medicine?' I asked.

"'Oh, yes, plenty; powder and pills.'

"'Where is it?'

"'On father's desk. He says he will take it regularly. He would not let me give it to him.'

"I reeled; everything seemed turning round with me.

"'Watch him,' I cried, 'watch----' and could say no more. Unconsciousness had come to relieve me.

"It was dark when I came to myself. I was lying on my own bed, and by the dim light burning on a small table near by I saw the form of Doris bending over me. Starting up, I caught her by the arm.

"'What is going on?' I cried.

"Rude noises were in the house. A sound of breaking glass.

"'It comes from the laboratory,' she exclaimed, and rushed from the room.

"I rose and had barely strength enough to follow her. When we reached the laboratory door Emma was already there. A light was burning at one end of the long and dismal room, and amid the weird shadows that it cast we saw our father in a loose gown he often wore when at work, standing over his table with lifted fist. It was bleeding; he had just brought it down upon a favorite collection of tubes.

"'Ah!' he cried, tottering and seizing the table to steady himself; 'you have come to see the end of my famous discovery. Here it is; look!' And his fist came down again upon a jar containing the work of months.

"The smash that followed seemed to echo in my brain. I rushed forward, but was stopped by his look.

"'Another result of your obduracy,' he cried, and sank back fainting upon the hard floor.

"I let Emma and Doris lift him. What place had I at his side?

"'Shall I go for the doctor again?' inquired Doris as she came to my room a half-hour later.

"'Does he seem worse?' I asked.

"'No; but he looks dreadfully. Ever since we got him on the lounge--he would not leave the laboratory--he has lain in one position, his eye upon those broken pieces of glass. He would not even let me wipe up the red liquid that was in them, and it drips from table to floor in a way to make your blood run cold.'

"'Can I see him,' I asked, 'without his seeing me?'

"'Yes,' said she, 'if you come very carefully; his head is towards the door.'

"I did as she bade, and crept towards the open door. As I reached it he was speaking low to himself.

"'Drop by drop,' he was saying, 'just as if it were my life-blood that was dripping from the table to the floor.'

"It was a terrible thing to hear, for _me_ to hear, and I shrank back. But soon a certain sense of duty drove me forward again, and I leaned across the threshold, peering at his rigid and attenuated figure lying just where he could watch the destruction of all his hopes. I could not see his face, but his attitude was eloquent, and I felt a pang strike through all my horror at the sight of a grief the death of both his children could not have occasioned him.

"Suddenly he bounded up.

"'Curse her!' he began, in a frenzy; but instantly seemed to bethink himself, for he sank back very meekly as Emma stooped over him and Doris rushed to his side. 'Excuse me,' said he; 'I fear I am not just in my right mind.'

"They thought so too, and in a few minutes Doris stole out after the doctor, but I knew whatever delirium he had sprang from his hate of me, and was awed into a shrinking inactivity which Emma excused while only partially understanding.

"The doctor came and this time I stood watching. My father, who had not expected this interference, showed anger at first, but soon settled back into a half-jocular, half-indifferent endurance of the interloper, which tended to impress the latter, and did succeed in doing so, with the folly of those who thought he was sick enough to rouse a doctor up at midnight. Few questions brought few replies, and the irritated physician left us with something like a rebuke. He however said he would come again in the morning, as there was a fitfulness in my father's pulse which he did not like.

"But before the doctor appeared that morning father had called me for the third and last time to his side.

"'I wish to see my eldest daughter alone,' he declared, as Emma lingered and Doris hovered about the open door. They at once went out. 'Now shut the door,' said he, as their footsteps were heard descending the stairs.

"I did as I was bid, though I felt as if I were shutting myself in with some horrid doom.

"'Now come in front of me,' he commanded, 'I want to look at you. I have just five minutes left in which to do it.'

"'Five minutes!' I repeated hoarsely, creeping round with tottering and yet more tottering steps to where he pointed.

"'Yes; the poison has done its work at last. At eight o'clock I shall be dead.'

"'Poison!' I shrieked, but in so choked a tone the word sounded like a smothered whisper.

"But he was alarmed by it for all that.

"'Do not tell the world,' he cried. 'It is enough that you know it. Are you pleased that you have driven your father to self-destruction? Will it make your life in this house, in which you have vowed to remain, any happier? I told you that your sin should be on your head; and it will be. For, listen to me: now in this last dreadful hour, I command you, heartless and disobedient one, to keep that vow. By this awful death, by the despair which has driven me to it, beware of leaving these doors. In your anger you swore to remain within these walls; in your remorse see that you keep that oath. Not for love, not for hatred, dare to cross the threshold, or I will denounce you in the grave where I shall be gone, and my curse shall be upon you.'

"He had risen in his passion as he uttered these words, but he sank back as he finished, and I thought he was dead. Terrified, crushed, I sank upon my knees, having no words with which to plead for the mercy for which I now longed. The next minute a horrible groan burst upon my ear.

"'It eats--it burns into my vitals. The suffering has come,--the suffering which I have often noted with unconcern in the animals upon which I tested it. I cannot bear it; I had rather live. Get me the antidote; there, there, in the long narrow drawer in the cabinet by the wall. Not there, not there!' he shrieked, as I stumbled over the floor, which seemed to rise in waves beneath my feet. 'The other cabinet, the other drawer; _you are where the poison is_.'

"I halted; weights seemed to be upon my feet; I could not move. He was writhing in agony on the floor; he no longer seemed to know where I stood.

"'Open it--the drawer,' he cried. 'Bring me what is in it.'

"I reached out my hand; heaven and earth seemed to stand still; red lights danced before my eyes; I drew out the drawer.

"'Quick, quick, the powder!' he moaned; 'fetch it!'

"I was staring at him, but my hand groped in the drawer. I felt a little packet of powder; I took it and crossed the room. As soon as I was near him he stretched out his hand and grasped it. I saw him empty it into his mouth; at the same instant his eyes fixed themselves in horror on the drawer I had left open behind me, the drawer in which the poison was kept.

"'Curse you for a----' He never said what. With this broken imprecation upon his lips, he sank back upon the floor, dead."

XXV.

EDGAR AND FRANK.

Frank, who had been reading these words as if swept along by a torrent, started to his feet with a hoarse cry, as he reached this point. He could not believe his eyes, he could not believe his understanding. He shrank from the paper that contained the deadly revelation, as though a snake had suddenly uncoiled itself from amid the sheets. With hair slowly rising on his forehead, he stared and stared, hoping wildly, hoping against hope, to see other words start from the sheet, and blot out of existence the ones that had in an instant made his love a horror, his life a desert.

But no, Heaven works no such miracle, even in sight of such an agony as his; and the words met his gaze relentlessly till his misery was more than he could endure, and he rushed from the room like a madman.

Edgar, who was busy over some medical treatise, rose rapidly as he heard the unsteady footsteps of his friend.

"What is the matter?" he cried, as Frank came stumbling into his presence. "You look----"

"Never mind how I look; comfort me, Edgar, comfort me!" and in his anguish he burst into irrepressible sobs "Hermione is----" He could not say what, but drew his friend after him to the room where the letter lay, and pointed to the few ghastly lines which had undone him. "Read those," he panted. "She had suffered; she was not herself, but, oh----" He broke down again, and did not try to speak further till Edgar had read the hideous confession contained in those closing lines, and some of the revelations which had led up to it. Then he said: "Do not speak to me yet; let me bear the horror alone. I loved her so; ah, I did love her!"

Edgar, who had turned very pale, was considerate enough to respect this grief, and silently wait for Frank to regain sufficient composure to talk with him. This was not soon, but when the moment came, Edgar showed that his heart beat truly under all his apparent indifference. He did not say, "I bade you beware"; he merely took his friend's hand and wrung it. Frank, who was almost overwhelmed with shame and sorrow, muttered some words of acknowledgment.

"I must get out of the town," said he. "I feel as if the very atmosphere here would choke me."

Here came again the long, doleful drone of the foghorn. "How like a groan that is," said he. "An evil day it was for me when I first came within its foreboding sound."

"We will say that when all is over," ventured Edgar, but in no very hopeful tones. "You should not have shown me these words, Frank; the wonder is that she was willing to show them to you."

"She could not otherwise get rid of my importunities. I would take no hint, and so she tells me the truth."

"That shows nobleness," remarked Edgar. "She has some virtues which may excuse you to yourself for the weakness you have shown in her regard."

"I dare not think of it," said Frank. "I dare not think of her again. Yet to leave her when she is suffering so! Is not that almost as cruel a fate as to learn that she is so unworthy?"

"I would you had never come here!" exclaimed Edgar, with unwonted fervency.

"There are more words," observed Frank, "but I cannot read them. "Words of sorrow and remorse, no doubt, but what do they avail? The fact remains that she gave her father in his agony another dose of the poison that was killing him, instead of the antidote for which he prayed."

"Yes," said Edgar, "only I feel bound to say that no antidote would have saved him then. I know the poison and I know the antidote; we have tested them together often."

Frank shuddered.

"He had the heart of a demon," declared Edgar, "to plan and carry out such a revenge, even upon a daughter who had so grievously disappointed him. I can hardly believe the tale, only that I have learned that one may believe anything of human nature."

"She--she did not kill him, then?"

"No, but her guilt is as great as if she had, for she must have had the momentary instinct of murder."

"O Hermione, Hermione! so beautiful and so unhappy!"

"A momentary instinct, which she is expiating fearfully. No wonder she does not leave the house. No wonder that her face looks like a tragic mask."

"No one seems to have suspected her guilt, or even his. We have never heard any whispers about poison."

"Dudgeon is a conceited fool. Having once said overwork, he would stick to overwork. Besides that poison is very subtle; I would have difficulty in detecting its workings myself."

"And this is the tragedy of that home! Oh, how much worse, how much more fearful than any I have attributed to it!"

The Doctor sighed.

"What has not Emma had to bear," he said.

"Emma!" Frank unconsciously roused himself. "If I remember rightly, Hermione has said that Emma did not know all her trouble."

"Thank God! May she never be enlightened."

"Edgar," whispered Frank, "I do not think I can let you read all that letter, though it tells much you ought to know. I have yet some consideration--for--for Hermione--" (How hard the word came from lips which once uttered it with so much pride!)--"and she never expected any other eyes than mine to rest upon these revelations of her heart of hearts. But one thing I must tell you in justice to yourself and the girl upon whom no shadow rests but that of a most loyal devotion to a most wretched sister. Not from her heart did the refusal come which blighted your hopes and made you cynical towards women. There were reasons she could not communicate, reasons she could not even dwell upon herself, why she felt forced to dismiss you, and in the seemingly heartless way she did."

"I am willing to believe it," said Edgar.

"Emma is a pure and beautiful spirit," observed Frank, and gave himself up to grief for her who was not, and yet who commanded his pity for her sufferings and possibly for her provocations.

Edgar now had enough of his own to think of, and if Frank had been less absorbed in his own trouble he might have observed with what longing eyes his friend turned every now and then towards the sheets which contained so much of Emma's history as well as her sister's. Finally he spoke:

"Why does Emma remain in the house to which the father only condemned her sister?"

"Because she once vowed to share that sister's fate, whatever it might be."

"Her love for her sister is then greater than any other passion she may have had."

"I don't know; there were other motives beside love to influence her," explained Frank, and said no more.

Edgar sank again into silence. It was Frank who spoke next.

"Do you think"--He paused and moistened his lips--"Have you doubted what our duty is about this matter?"

"To leave the girl--you said it yourself. Have you any other idea, Frank?"

"No, no; that is not what I mean," stammered Etheridge. "I mean about--about--the father's death. Should the world know? Is it a matter for the--for the police?"

"No," cried Edgar, aghast. "Mr. Cavanagh evidently killed himself. It is a dreadful thing to know, but I do not see why we need make it public."

Frank drew a long breath.

"I feared," he said,--"I did not know but you would think my duty would lie in--in----"

"Don't speak of it," exclaimed Edgar. "If you do not wish to finish reading her confession, put it up. Here is a drawer, in which you can safely lock it."

Frank, recoiling from the touch of those papers which had made such a havoc with his life, motioned to Edgar to do what he would with them.

"Are you not going to write--to answer this in some way?" asked Edgar.

"Thank God she has not made that necessary. She wrote somewhere, in the beginning, I think, that, if I felt the terror of her words too deeply, I was to pass by her house on the other side of the street at an early hour in the morning. Did she dream that I could do anything else?"

Edgar closed the drawer in which he had hidden her letter, locked it, and laid the key down on the table beside Frank.

Frank did not observe the action; he had risen to his feet, and in another moment had left the room. He had reached the point of feeling the need of air and a wider space in which to breathe. As he stepped into the street, he turned in a contrary direction to that in which he had been wont to walk. Had he not done this; had he gone southward, as usual, he might have seen the sly and crouching figure which was drawn up on that side of the house, peering into the room he had just left through the narrow opening made by an imperfectly lowered shade.