CHAPTER XXV.

"Love is hurt with jar and fret, Love is made a vague regret, Eyes with idle tears are wet, Idle habit links us yet-- What is love? for we forget; Ah! no, no!"

TENNYSON.

My bright eyed maid had something evidently on her mind the next morning, as stealing early to my bedside, she found me awake and quite ready for her services. I caught sight of her perplexed face in the glass, as she dressed my hair, and said at last, "What are you thinking about, Kitty, has anything happened?"

"Happened? Oh, no, Miss," she said, blushing, and a little confused. "I was only thinking--I was only wondering"----

"Well, Kitty?"

"I mean that--that is--are you very fond of Miss Churchill?"

I laughed and blushed a little in my turn, and said:

"Why no, not particularly, I think."

"Because _I_ think she's a very haughty lady, for my part; and if I am any judge, her maid, Frances, is a much-put-upon young woman, that's all."

"What has led you to that conclusion so soon?" I asked, with a smile.

"Oh! nothing particular, ma'am, only some of Miss Churchill's ruffled morning dresses got crushed in the packing, and Frances was in the laundry till after twelve o'clock last night, fluting 'em over; and I've noticed, Frances starts and flusters when her lady's bell rings, as if there were a scolding for her at the other end of the wire, that's all."

"Oh, that's a trifle! Frances is nervous," I said, apologetically. "What did my aunt say when you told her my message last night?"

"Nothing but 'very well,' and 'I am sorry to hear it.' There wasn't time for any more, for the gentleman they call Captain, with the big moustache, came up for her to play whist, and she went away with him. But," said Kitty, hesitatingly, and looking at me very sharply, "I don't know whether I ought to tell you, but there was a gentleman who didn't seem to take it quite so coolly as Mrs. Churchill did."

"Who, pray?" I asked, as the blood started to my cheeks.

"The young French gentleman, Miss; I think they call him Mr."----

"Oh, Mr. Viennet!"

"I wonder, Miss, why you say 'Oh, Mr. Viennet!' as if you were disappointed," said Kitty, quite nettled. "I'm sure he's the handsomest gentleman among 'em; and if you could have seen him, when he followed me up the stairs, and asked about you, I am sure you'd think better of it; and he's got the handsomest eyes! I can't think why you don't like him."

"I have not said I did not; and besides, Kitty," I continued, gravely, "it's not right for you to talk to the gentlemen; you must be careful."

"I know, Miss; but who could help talking to such a nice gentleman, just answering his questions? I'm sure he could get round Mrs. Roberts herself, if he tried! let alone people that ain't made of stone or leather. And," continued Kitty, "isn't it odd, Miss, but all the time he was talking to me, I couldn't help wondering where I'd seen him before? I know for a certainty, that he's never been within forty miles of Rutledge till now, and I've never been twenty miles away from it; and yet, for my life, I couldn't get it out of my head, that some where or other I'd seen him before!"

"It's a very foolish idea to have in your head, Kitty, and a very improbable one at the best; so I wouldn't trouble myself any further about it, if I were you."

I did not mention it to Kitty, but I could not help being struck with the similarity of my own impressions on first meeting Victor Viennet. It was the vaguest, mistiest chain of reminiscence that his face seemed to stir, but till I had seen him several times, it continued to perplex me. I could not account for it in any way; but the association or recollection, or whatever it was, had faded before a closer acquaintance; and now Victor Viennet's handsome face suggested Victor Viennet, and nobody or nothing more.

"These will match your lilac muslin exactly, Miss," said Kitty, offering me a handful of purple "morning glories." "I ran out to get you some flowers before I came in to wake you, but I was in such a hurry, that I couldn't go as far as the garden, and so just picked these out of the hedge."

I thanked her as I fastened them in my dress; they looked lovely with the dew still shining on them. It was yet a good while to breakfast, but I turned to go downstairs, accepting, with a smile at the newness of such services, the dainty handkerchief that Kitty shook out for me.

The fresh morning breeze swept softly through the wide hall as I descended the stairs. Summer had come in and taken the gloomy old place by storm. A pyramid of flowers stood on the dark oak table in the centre, a mocking-bird in its gay cage hung at one end, and over the cold marble pavement the sunshine was creeping fast. The house was so quiet, that I could almost fancy I was alone in it, and crossing the hall, I went up to the library door; but a cowardly irresolution made me turn away, and pass on to the north door of the hall, which, as well as the front one, stood wide open. The broad fields stretched far away June-like and lovely in the sunshine; the hedges and trees were in such luxuriant leaf, that they quite hid the stables and outhouses on the left that last fall had been so prominent in the landscape. Looking from the parlor windows, there was the same view of the lake that I had from my room. The mists were rolling up from its fair bosom, and the foliage that crowned its banks was of the freshest and glossiest green. The dew was glittering on the lawn, early birds twittered and sang in the branches overhead, and on the breeze came the rich perfume of the roses that climbed from pillar to pillar of the piazza. Rutledge had fulfilled my anticipations; in my weary, longing day-dreams, I had never pictured anything fairer than this.

It was with a half-defined feeling of curiosity that I wandered through the large parlors, furnished in an odd mixture of old-fashioned splendor and modern elegance. It was _terra incognita_ to me; I had never entered these rooms before. I could hardly understand how the sunshine and fresh air came to be so much at home in them, as it seemed they now were. It was difficult to believe that these finely furnished, habitable looking apartments, had been closed and unused for twenty years and more. They had been thoroughly revised, no doubt, and the past put to the rout; but they were strange and unattractive to me, and I turned again to the library. Listening at the door before I pushed it open, I entered noiselessly. There was no need of so much caution; this room was as untenanted as its neighbors, save by thronging memories and torturing regrets, and they entered with me.

Here at least there was no change; the wide casements were open to the morning, but the white north light seemed subdued and cold after the sunshine of the other rooms, and the dark panelling and frowning moldings looked a defiance at the intruding summer. I liked it better so; there had been change enough without this last stronghold of memory being invaded.

Every article of furniture in the room--the table, with its pile of papers at one end and books at the other, the familiar paper-cutter lying by the unopened review, the heavy bronze inkstand, the graceful lamp, the chair, pushed back half a yard from the table--minded me of the happy hours that it would have been wiser to forget. One of the bookcases stood open, and a book lay on the table as if recently read, and a card marked the reader's place. I took it up involuntarily. It was Sintram, and the words swam before me as I bent over its familiar pages. On the card that had served for a mark, were written a few lines in a well known hand; and as I raised my eyes from them to the window, I saw Mr. Rutledge himself approaching the house from the direction of the stables. With a hurried movement I slipped the card in my pocket, and finding nothing else to replace it with, pulled one of the flowers from my bosom, and hastily shutting it between the leaves, threw the book on the table, and ran into the hall. If I had been a fugitive from justice, I could not have had a more guilty feeling than that which now impelled me to escape from meeting Mr. Rutledge. But there was no time to get upstairs; he would see me from the piazza if I went into the parlor; and while I stood in the hall, trembling with eagerness, and alarm, and irresolution, my retreat was cut off by the sudden appearance of Victor descending the stairs, who with an exclamation of pleasure, hurried toward me, and taking my hand was bowing over it in most devout fashion, when Mr. Rutledge entered the hall. Victor looked a little confused, and paused in the midst of an elegant French speech, while the quick crimson dyed my cheeks, all of which Mr. Rutledge appeared to ignore, as, approaching us, he said good morning with his usual courtesy of manner, expressed his pleasure in the improvement apparent in my looks, and then to Victor his astonishment at finding him a person of such early habits.

"Pray do not give me any credit for getting up this morning," said Victor with a hasty wave of the hand. "I assure you I detest early rising with my whole French soul, and haven't seen a sun younger than three hours old since I can remember; but, my dear sir, with all homage to the most comfortable of beds, and the pleasantest room I ever occupied in my life, I never passed such a night! When at last I slept, my dreams were so frightful that I was thankful to wake, and would have resorted to any means to have kept myself awake, if there had been the slightest danger of my closing my eyes again."

"What room did you occupy?" I asked.

"The corner room at the north end of the hall, it is, I think."

"It is most unfortunate," said Mr. Rutledge, looking a little annoyed. "Are you subject to wakeful nights?"

"Never remember such an occurrence before," he returned. "I have enjoyed the plebeian luxury of sound sleep all my life, and so am more at a loss to account for my experience of last night."

"Were you disturbed by any noise--conscious of any one moving in the house?"

"No, the house was silent, silent as death! _Ma foi!_ I believe that was the worst of it. If I were superstitious, I should tell you of the only thing that interrupted it; but I know how credulous and absurd it would sound to dispassionate judges, and how I should ridicule anything of the kind in another person; but this strange nightmare has taken such possession of me, I cannot shake it off."

His face expressed intense feeling as he spoke, and the usual levity of his manner was quite gone.

"What was it?" I said earnestly, and Mr. Rutledge looked indeed so far from ridiculing his emotion, that Victor went on rapidly:

"You will think me a person of imaginative and excitable temperament, but I must assure you to the contrary, and that I never before yielded to a superstitious fancy, and have always held in great contempt all who were influenced by such follies. Will you believe me then, when I tell you that last night I was startled violently from my sleep, by a voice that sounded, from its hollowness and ghastliness, as if it came from the fleshless jaws of a skeleton, calling again and again, in tones that made my blood curdle, a familiar name, and one that at any time, I cannot hear without emotion. Sleep had nothing to do with it! I was as wide awake as I am now. But pshaw!" he exclaimed, suddenly turning, "I shall forget all about it in an hour, and I beg you'll do the same," and not giving either of us time to answer, he went on in an altered tone: "Mr. Rutledge, what a fine place you have! I have been admiring the view from my window. Have you purchased it recently? I don't remember to have seen a finer estate in America."

"It is a valuable and well located farm," answered Mr. Rutledge, rather indifferently; "but farming is not my specialty, and I never should have encumbered myself voluntarily with such a care, if it had not devolved upon me by inheritance."

"Ah!" said Victor with a slight accent of irony, that from last night's conversation I was prepared for; "It was then a case of greatness thrust, etc. But sir, it must add a great charm to this already charming home, to think that it has been the birth-place and family altar, as it were, of generations of your ancestors? Surely you are not insensible to such sentiments of pride and affection."

"Associations of that kind, of course, invest a place with a certain kind of interest; but I cannot lay claim to as much feeling on the subject as perhaps would be becoming. Like you, sir," he said, with a bow, "I have a dread of claiming credit for habits and feelings that I do not possess and entertain."

Victor looked a little annoyed that he had not succeeded in drawing out Mr. Rutledge's aristocratic and overbearing sentiments, and he would not have given up the subject, had not Mr. Rutledge, with a firm and quiet hand, put it aside, and led the way to other topics.

"How is it," he said to me, "that you have not noticed your small friend Tigre? He has been at your feet for the last five minutes, looking most wistfully for a kind word."

I started in confusion and surprise, and stooping down, covered the dog with caresses. The poor little rascal was frantic with delight, springing up to my face, and ejaculating his welcome in short barks and low whines, tearing around me, and then running off a little distance and looking back enthusiastically.

"He is evidently inviting you to another steeple-chase," said Mr. Rutledge.

I blushed violently at the recollection, and wished Tigre anywhere but where he was.

"Have you lost your interest in the turf, since your season in town, or have other interests and tastes developed themselves while it has lain dormant?"

"Other tastes have developed themselves, I believe," I answered.

"Break it gently to Tigre, I beg you then, for I am sure he has been living all winter on the hope of another romp. He does not appreciate the lapse of time, and the changes involved, so readily as his betters, you know."

"He has, at least, the grace to receive them more kindly," I returned, stooping to pat him. "Tigre, if I am too old to run races, I am not debarred as yet from taking walks, I believe, and I would propose that we indulge in one. Mr. Viennet, are you too old to be of the party?"

Mr. Rutledge turned shortly toward the library, Victor and I passed out on the piazza, and, with Tigre in close attendance, descended the broad steps to the terrace.

Breakfast was nearly completed when we returned, and the party at the table looked up in amazement as we entered the room.

"I should admire to know," exclaimed Ella Wynkar, who affected Boston manners, and "admired" a good deal, "I should admire to know where you two have been! Mr. Arbuthnot declares that Mr. Viennet has been up since daybreak; and as for _you_," she said, turning to me, "I heard your door shut hours ago."

"Restrain your admiration, Miss Wynkar," said Victor, as he placed a chair for me. "We have been taking a short turn on the terrace for the fresh air. I wonder you did not emulate our example."

"Terrace, indeed!" exclaimed Phil. "I've been on the piazza for half an hour, and I'll take my oath you weren't within gunshot of the terrace all that time."

"Don't perjure yourself, my good fellow," said Victor, coolly, "but assist us to some breakfast. The terrace has given us an appetite."

"How is your headache, my dear?" said my aunt, from across the table.

"My headache, ma'am? Oh, I forgot--I beg your pardon; it's better, thank you."

"How serious it must have been!" said Josephine. "Oh! by the way, Mr. Rutledge, it isn't worth while to ask them to join us in _our_ party this morning, is it? They didn't ask us to go with them."

Mr. Rutledge shrugged his shoulders. "I think, Miss Josephine, we are safe in asking them; they wouldn't accept, of course, and we should save our credit, you know."

"I would not trust them, sir. It's my advice that they're not asked."

"Then," returned Mr. Rutledge, with a low bow and his finest smile, "as with me to hear is to obey, I resign all thought of remonstrance, and acquiesce in the decree."

Josephine accepted the homage very graciously, and the jest was kept up around the table till I, for one, was heartily sick of it. No one supposed, however, that I would be fool enough to take it in earnest; but I was just such a fool; and when, an hour or two later, the horses were brought to the door, and the scattered party summoned from library, parlor, billiard-room, and garden, to prepare for the drive, I was struggling with a fit of ill-temper in my own room, which resulted in my "begging to be excused," when Thomas came to the door to announce the carriage.

My refusal didn't seem to damp the spirits of the party much. I looked through the half closed blinds to see them start. Victor at the last minute pleaded a headache, and "begged to be excused," on which occasion the captain made one of the jokes for which he was justly famous, and led off the laugh after it.

"The pretty darling's in the sulks, I suppose," I heard Grace say; but no one was at the pains to resent or applaud the remark, and I listened to the departing carriage-wheels and the lessening sound of merry voices with anything but a merry heart.

One never feels very complacent after spiting oneself; the inelegant describe the state of feeling by the adjective "small;" and I was not rendered any more comfortable by finding that I had made a prisoner of myself for the morning. If Victor had only gone, as I had anticipated, I should have consoled myself for the loss of the drive by a nice ramble around the grounds, and down to the stables; but as it was, I would not, for any consideration, have run the risk of encountering him. I heartily repented my walk before breakfast, and the relative position it seemed to place us in, made worse by our both remaining at home. Everybody and everything seemed to conspire to place us together, and my pride and my honesty both rebelled against such an arrangement. So, after listening to the sound of his steps pacing the terrace, the hall, and the piazza for a full hour, I began to find my captivity intolerable, and determined to make a visit to the housekeeper's room, and pay my devoirs to that functionary. Looking stealthily over the balusters, I ascertained that Victor was still smoking in the hall, so I ran across to the door of Mrs. Roberts' room, which was standing partly open, and asked if I might come in. Receiving permission, I entered, and did my best to appear amiable in Mrs. Roberts' eyes. She was, of course, as stiff as anything human could well be, but she was too busy to be very ungracious. This sudden influx of visitors had startled her out of the slow and steady routine of the last twenty years, and though, on the whole, she acquitted herself well, it was a very trying and bewildering position for the old woman. I longed for something to do to appease the self-reproach I felt for my bad temper, and it struck me that I couldn't do a more praiseworthy and disagreeable thing than to help Mrs. Roberts in some of the duties that seemed to press so heavily upon her. So, sitting down by her, I said:

"Mrs. Roberts, you'd better let me help you with those raisins; I haven't a thing to do this morning."

"That's a pity," said Mrs. Roberts, briefly. "In my day, young ladies always thought it most becoming to have some occupation."

"That's just my view of the case, Mrs. Roberts, and if you'll allow me, I'll have an occupation immediately."

Sylvie set the huge bowl of raisins on the table, and I drew them toward me, saying she must allow me to help her with them. Mrs. Roberts thought not; it would spoil my dress.

"Then I'll put an apron on."

She was afraid I did not know how.

"You can teach me, Mrs. Roberts;" and I began without further permission. To say that Mrs. Roberts melted before all this amiability would be to say that Mrs. Roberts had ceased to be Mrs. Roberts. She was a degree or two less gruff, I believe, at the end of the long hour I spent in her service, in the seeding of those wretched raisins; but that was all, and fortunately I had not expected more. I undertook it as a penance, and it did not lose that character from any excess of kindness on her part.

After the raisins were dispatched, Mrs. Roberts applied herself to the copying of a recipe from an old cookery-book, for which she seemed in something of a hurry. Dorothy was waiting for it, Sylvie said. "You'd better let me do it for you, Mrs. Roberts," I said, leaning over her shoulder. Mrs. Roberts declined, with dignity, for some time, but at last thoughtfully slid the spectacles off her nose, and seemed to deliberate about granting my request. She was not a very ready scribe, and she had a dozen other things to do, all of which weighed with my urgency, and in two minutes I was at the desk, copying out of a venerable cookery-book, the receipt that Mrs. Roberts indicated. I was in pretty engrossing business, I found one duty succeeded another very regularly; Mrs. Roberts, I saw, had determined to get as much out of me now as she could.

A dread of draughts was one of her peculiarities, so the door and the front windows were closed against the pleasant breeze, and to this I attribute it that we were unconscious of the return of the riding party till the door opened suddenly and Mr. Rutledge entered.

"Mrs. Roberts," he said, "you are wanted below. Miss Churchill has hurt her ankle in getting out of the carriage, and I have come to you for some arnica."

Mrs. Roberts bustled over to the medicine chest, and, taking the bottle of arnica and a roll of linen in her hand, hurried out of the room; while Mr. Rutledge, crossing over to the table where I sat, stood looking down at me without speaking, while I nervously went on with my writing without raising my eyes.

"Why did you not go with us this morning?" he said at last, sitting down by the table.

"I didn't want to."

"That is a very good reason; but I think you would have done better to have thwarted your inclination for once. There are two reasons why it would have been wiser to have gone."

"What is one?" I demanded.

"One is that your staying looked unamiable, and as if you could not take a joke."

"Well, it only looked as I felt. I was unamiable, and I didn't like the joke. What is the other?"

"The other, I am pretty sure to make you angry by giving, but I must risk that. Your refusing to go looked very much as if you preferred another tête-à-tête, to the society of us all."

"I cannot see that," I said, looking up flushed and angry. "When I supposed that I was the only member of the party who intended to stay at home, I cannot see how it could be inferred that I remained from any such motive."

"I, for one, had no doubt of it."

"You are kind!" I cried. "It is pleasant to feel I am always sure of one, at least, to put the kindest construction on what I do."

"Is my niece accounting for her willfulness in staying at home this morning?" said the slow, soft voice of Mrs. Churchill, that crept into my senses like a subtle poison, and silenced the angry words on my lips. "Are you not penitent, _ma chère_," she said, approaching me, and laying her cold hand lightly on my hair. "Do you not begin to see how unwise such tempers are? How often must I entreat you, my love, to be less hasty and suspicious and self-willed? Though I am not discouraged with these childish faults, Mr. Rutledge," turning to him apologetically, "I own they are somewhat trying. Ever since that unlucky night at the Academy of Music, I have felt"----

"Aunt Edith!" I exclaimed, with flashing eyes, averting my head from her touch and springing up. "Aunt Edith, that time has never been mentioned between us since you gave me my reprimand. I cannot understand why you bring it up now, and before a stranger!"

"Mr. Rutledge can hardly be called a stranger," she began.

"If not so to you, remember he is to me," I interrupted.

"However that may be," she went on, "he was unluckily the witness of that evening's errors. He saw the self-will and temper that you took no pains to conceal, and the love of admiration that led you to a most unaccountable act of imprudence."

"I should think," I returned, trembling with passion, "that that time would have no more pleasant memories for you than me. I should think we might agree not to stir among its ashes. There may be some smoldering remorse alive in them yet!"

For a moment, my aunt's face grew white, and her eye faltered and sunk; angry as I was, I bitterly repented the stab I had given her. Then she raised her eyes and fixed them on my face with a stern and freezing look. I don't know what she said; it was too cruel to listen to. I don't know what I answered; would that it had no record anywhere!

From that date, there was no disguise between aunt and niece of the sentiments they had mutually inspired. The flimsy gauze that reserve and decorum had raised between them was torn to fragments before that storm, and henceforth there was no pretence of an affection that had never existed. Two natures more utterly discordant and unsympathetic could not well be imagined. There was nothing but some frail bands of duty and convenience, that had kept up the mask of sympathy so far, and then and there they were snapped irrevocably; and the mask fell prone upon the ground and was trampled under foot.

They had better have turned me houseless into the street than have turned me out of their hearts in this way; in one case, I could have sought another shelter, and won myself another home. In this, I was driven out, burning with anger and stung with injustice, from every heart I had had a right to seek a home in, and before me lay a cold and inhospitable world. Was the outcast or the world to blame for the inevitable result? The outcast, no doubt; outcasts always are.

* * * * *

"Look--look, Josephine!" cried Grace, bursting into the library, where most of the party were assembled that evening. Josephine, with her foot on the sofa, being the nucleus. "Ella, and Phil, and I have just come from rowing on the lake, and see what we found, up by the pine trees at the other end of the lake, floating on the water."

"What is it?" said Josephine, languidly; "a water-lily?"

"Water-lilies used to be white when I studied botany, Joseph, and this, you may observe, is purple."

"And morning-glories, when I studied botany," said Phil, "did not grow on lakes, but in gardens. Now, as this was discovered on the water, the question naturally arises, how, by whom, and under what circumstances, did it get there?"

"And putting this and that together," said Ella Wynkar, "we think that the young lady who had morning-glories in her dress this morning, must have taken a row on the lake, instead of a walk on the terrace."

"That doesn't follow," said Victor, "any more than it would follow that Miss Wynkar had visited the desert of Sahara, if a straw hat similar to the one she has in her hand, should be found there."

"Mr. Viennet, you are not sufficiently calm for such difficult reasoning. The fact is established; don't attempt to controvert it," said Josephine.

"In any case, I am entitled to the flower, I think," he returned, taking it from the table, and fastening it in his button-hole.

"No one will dispute it with you, I fancy," said Josephine, with a laugh.

"You seem to have marked your way with morning-glories," said Mr. Rutledge, who, sitting by the table, was turning over the leaves of a book. There was another, crushed and faded, and staining the leaves with its purple blood.

"One can hardly believe they are contemporaries," said Victor, "mine is so much fresher."

"They are the frailest and shortest-lived of flowers," said Mr. Rutledge, tossing the flower away. "Hardly worth the passing admiration that their beauty excites."