The Project Gutenberg eBook, Infelice, by Augusta Jane Evans Wilson


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Title: Infelice


Author: Augusta Jane Evans Wilson



Release Date: February 8, 2006  [eBook #17718]

Language: English

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***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INFELICE***


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INFELICE

by

AUGUSTA J. EVANS WILSON

Author of "At the Mercy of Tiberius", "St. Elmo" Etc.

1902







                   "The grace of God forbid
           We should be overbold to lay rough hands
           On any man's opinion. For opinions
           Are, certes, venerable properties,
           And those which show the most decrepitude
           Should have the gentlest handling."
                                              VANINI




London
James Nisbet & Co. Limited
21 Berners Street




INFELICE


CHAPTER I.


"Did you tell her that Dr. Hargrove is absent?"

"I did, ma'am; but she says she will wait."

"But, Hannah, it is very uncertain when he will return, and the night
is so stormy he may remain in town until to-morrow. Advise her to
call again in the morning."

"I said as much at the door, but she gave me to understand she came a
long way, and should not leave here without seeing the Doctor. She
told the driver of the carriage to call for her in about two hours,
as she did not wish to miss the railroad train."

"Where did you leave her? Not in that cold, dark parlour, I hope?"

"She sat down on one of the hall chairs, and I left her there."

"A hospitable parsonage reception! Do you wish her to freeze? Go and
ask her into the library, to the fire."

As Hannah left the room, Mrs. Lindsay rose and added two sticks of
oak wood to the mass of coals that glowed between the shining brass
andirons; then carefully removed farther from the flame on the hearth
a silver teapot and covered dish, which contained the pastor's
supper.

"Walk in, madam. I promise you nobody shall interfere with you. Miss
Elise, she says she wishes to see no one but the Doctor."

Hannah ushered the visitor in, and stood at the door, beckoning to
her mistress, who paused irresolute, gazing curiously at the muffled
form and veiled face of the stranger.

"Do not allow me to cause you any inconvenience, madam. My business
is solely with Dr. Hargrove, and I do not fear the cold."

The voice of the visitor was very sweet though tremulous, and she
would have retreated, but Mrs. Lindsay put her hand on the bolt of
the door, partly closing it.

"Pray be seated. This room is at your disposal. Hannah, bring the tea
things into the dining-room, and then you need not wait longer; I
will lock the doors after my brother comes in."

With an ugly furrow of discontent between her heavy brows, Hannah
obeyed, and as she renewed the fire smouldering in the dining-room,
she slowly shook her grizzled head: "Many a time I have heard my
father say, 'Mystery breeds misery,' and take my word for it, there
is always something wrong when a woman shuns women-folks, and hunts
sympathy and advice from men."

"Hush, Hannah! Charity,--charity; don't forget that you live in a
parsonage, where 'sounding brass or tinkling cymbals' are not
tolerated. All kinds of sorrow come here to be cured, and I fear that
lady is in distress. Did you notice how her voice trembled?"

"Well, I only hope no silver will be missing to-morrow. I must make
up my buckwheat, and set it to rise. Good-night, Miss Elise."

It was a tempestuous night in the latter part of January, and
although the rain, which had fallen steadily all day, ceased at dark,
the keen blast from the north shook the branches of the ancient trees
encircling the parsonage, and dashed the drops in showers against the
windows. Not a star was visible, and as the night wore on the wind
increased in violence, roaring through leafless elm limbs, and
whistling drearily around the corners of the old brick house, whose
ivy-mantled chimneys had battled with the storms of seventy years.

The hands of the china clock on the dining-room mantlepiece pointed
to nine, and Mrs. Lindsay expected to hear the clear sweet strokes of
the pendulum, when other sounds startled her; the sharp, shrill bark
of a dog, and impatient scratching of paws on the hall door. As she
hurried forward and withdrew the inside bolt, a middle-aged man
entered, followed by a bluish-grey Skye terrier.

"Peyton, what kept you so late?"

"I was called to Beechgrove to baptize Susan Moffat's only daughter.
The girl died at eight o'clock, and I sat awhile with the stricken
mother, trying to comfort her. Poor Susan! it is a heavy blow, for
she idolized the child. Be quiet, Biörn."

Mr. Hargrove was leisurely divesting himself of his heavy overcoat,
and the terrier ran up and down the hall, holding his nose high in
the air, and barking furiously.

"Biörn's instincts rarely deceive him. A stranger is waiting in the
library to see you. Before you go in, let me give you your supper,
for you must be tired and hungry."

"Thank you, Elise, but first I must see this visitor, whose errand
may be urgent."

He opened the door of the library, and entered so quietly that the
occupant seemed unaware of his presence.

A figure draped in black sat before the table which was drawn close
to the hearth, and the arms were crossed wearily, and the head bowed
upon them. The dog barked and bounded toward her, and then she
quickly rose, throwing back her veil, and eagerly advancing.

"You are the Rev. Peyton Hargrove?"

"I am. What can I do for you, madam? Pray take this rocking chair."

She motioned it away, and exclaimed:

"Can you too have forgotten me?"

A puzzled expression crossed his countenance as he gazed searchingly
at her, then shook his head.

The glare of the fire, and the mellow glow of the student's lamp fell
full on the pale features, whose exceeding delicacy is rarely found
outside of the carved gems of the Stosch or Albani Cabinets. On camei
and marble dwell the dainty moulding of the oval cheek, the airy
arched tracery of the brows, the straight, slender nose, and clearly
defined cleft of the rounded chin, and nature only now and then
models them as a whole, in flesh. It was the lovely face of a young
girl, fair as one of the Frate's heavenly visions, but blanched by
some flood of sorrow that had robbed the full tender lips of bloom,
and bereft the large soft brown eyes of the gilding glory of hope.

"If I ever knew, I certainly have forgotten you."

"Oh--do not say so! You must recollect me; you are the only person
who can identify me. Four years ago I stood here, in this room. Try
to recall me."

She came close to him, and he heard her quick and laboured breathing,
and saw the convulsive quivering of her compressed lips.

"What peculiar circumstances marked my former acquaintance with you?
Your voice is quite familiar, but----"

He paused, passed his hand across his eyes, and before he could
complete the sentence, she exclaimed:

"Am I then so entirely changed? Did you not one May morning marry in
this room Minnie Merle to Cuthbert Laurance?"

"I remember that occasion very vividly, for in opposition to my
judgment I performed the ceremony; but Minnie Merle was a
low-statured, dark-haired child----" again he paused, and keenly
scanned the tall, slender, elegant figure, and the crimped waves of
shining hair that lay like a tangled mass of gold net on the low,
full, white brow.

"I was Minnie Merle. Your words of benediction made me Minnie
Laurance. God--and the angels know it is my name, my lawful name,--
but man denies it."

Something like a sob impeded her utterance, and the minister took her
hand.

"Where is your husband? Are you widowed so early?"

"Husband--my husband? One to cherish and protect, to watch over, and
love, and defend me;--if such be the duties and the tests of a
husband,--oh! then indeed I have never had one! Widowed did you say?
That means something holy,--sanctified by the shadow of death, and
the yearning sympathy and pity of the world; a widow has the right to
hug a coffin and a grave all the weary days of her lonely life, and
people look tenderly on her sacred weeds. To me, widowhood would be
indeed a blessing, Sir, I thought I had learned composure,
self-control, but the sight of this room,--of your countenance,--even
the strong breath of the violets and heliotrope there on the mantle,
in the same blood-coloured Bohemian vase where they bloomed that
day,--that May day,--all these bring back so overpoweringly the time
that is for ever dead to me,--that I feel as if I should suffocate."

She walked to the nearest window, threw up the sash, and while she
stood with the damp chill wind blowing full upon her the pastor heard
a moan, such as comes from meek, dumb creatures, wrung by the throes
of dissolution.

When she turned once more to the light, he saw an unnatural sparkle
in the dry, lustrous, brown eyes.

"Dr. Hargrove, give me the license that was handed to you by Cuthbert
Laurance."

"What value can it possess now?"

"Just now it is worth more to me than everything else in life,--more
to me than my hopes of heaven."

"Mrs. Laurance, you must remember that I refused to perform the
marriage ceremony, because I believed you were both entirely too
young. Your grandmother who came with you assured me she was your
sole guardian, and desired the marriage, and your husband, who seemed
to me a mere boy, quieted my objections by producing the license,
which he said exonerated me from censure, and relieved me of all
responsibility. With that morning's work I have never felt fully
satisfied, and though I know that any magistrate would probably have
performed the ceremony, I have sometimes thought I acted rashly, and
have carefully kept that license as my defence and apology."

"Thank God, that it has been preserved. Give it to me."

"Pardon me if I say frankly, I prefer to retain it. All licenses are
recorded by the officer who issued them, and by applying to him you
can easily procure a copy."

"Treachery baffles me there. A most opportune fire broke out eighteen
months ago in the room where those records were kept, and although
the court house was saved, the book containing my marriage license
was of course destroyed."

"But the clerk should be able to furnish a certificate of the facts."

"Not when he has been bribed to forget them. Please give me the paper
in your possession."

She wrung her slender fingers, and her whole frame trembled like a
weed on some bleak hillside, where wintry winds sweep unimpeded.

A troubled look crossed the grave, placid countenance of the pastor,
and he clasped his hands firmly behind him, as if girding himself to
deny the eloquent pleading of the lovely dark eyes.

"Sit down, madam, and listen to----"

"I cannot! A restless fever is consuming me, and nothing but the
possession of that license can quiet me. You have no right to
withhold it,--you cannot be so cruel, so wicked,--unless you also
have been corrupted, bought off!"

"Be patient enough to hear me. I have always feared there was
something wrong about that strange wedding, and your manner confirms
my suspicions. Now I must be made acquainted with all the facts, must
know your reason for claiming the paper in my possession, before I
surrender it. As a minister of the Gospel, it is incumbent upon me to
act cautiously, lest I innocently become auxiliary to deception,
--possibly to crime."

A vivid scarlet flamed up in the girl's marble cheeks.

"Of what do you suspect, or accuse me?"

"I accuse you of nothing. I demand your reasons for the request you
have made."

"I want that paper because it is the only proof of my marriage. There
were two witnesses: my grandmother, who died three years ago on a
steamship bound for California, where her only son is living, and
Gerbert Audré, a college student, who is supposed to have been lost
last summer in a fishing smack off the coast of Labrador or
Greenland."

"I am a witness accessible at any time, should my testimony be
required."

"Will you live for ever? Nay,--just when I need your evidence, my ill
luck will seal your lips, and drive the screws down in your coffin
lid."

"What use do you intend to make of the license? Deal candidly with
me."

"I want to hold it, as the most precious thing left in life; to keep
it concealed securely, until the time comes when it will serve me,
save me, avenge me."

"Why is it necessary to prove your marriage? Who disputes it?"

"Cuthbert Laurance and his father."

"Is it possible! Upon what plea?"

"That he was a minor, was only twenty, irresponsible, and that the
license was fraudulent."

"Where is your husband?"

"I tell you, I have no husband! It were sacrilege to couple that
sacred title with the name of the man who has wronged, deserted,
repudiated me; and who intends if possible to add to the robbery of
my peace and happiness, that of my fair, stainless name. Less than
one month after the day when right here, where I now stand, you
pronounced me his wife in the sight of God and man, he was summoned
home by a telegram from his father. I have never seen him since.
General Laurance took his son immediately to Europe, and, sir, you
will find it difficult to believe me, when I tell you that infamous
father has actually forced the son by threats of disinheritance to
many again,--to----"

The words seemed to strangle her, and she hastily broke away the
ribbons which held her bonnet and were tied beneath her chin.

Mr. Hargrove poured some water into a goblet, and as he held it to
her lips, murmured compassionately:

"Poor child! God help you."

Perhaps the genuine pity in the tone brought back sweet memories of
the bygone, and for a moment softened the girl's heart, for tears
gathered in the large eyes, giving them a strange quivering radiance.
As if ashamed of the weakness she threw her head back defiantly, and
continued:

"I was the poor little orphan, whose grandmother did washing and
mending for the college boys--only little unknown Minnie Merle, with
none to aid in asserting her rights;--and she--the new wife--was a
banker's daughter, an heiress, a fashionable belle,--and so Minnie
Merle must be trampled out, and the new Mrs. Cuthbert Laurance dashes
in her splendid equipage through the Bois de Bologne. Sir, give me my
license!"

Mr. Hargrove opened a secret drawer in the tall writing-desk that
stood in one corner of the room, and, unlocking a square tin box,
took from it a folded slip of paper. After some deliberation he
seated himself, and began to write.

Impatiently his visitor paced the floor, followed by Biörn, who now
and then growled suspiciously.

At length, when the pastor laid down his pen, his guest came to his
side, and held out her hand.

"Madam, the statements you have made are so extraordinary, that you
must pardon me if I am unusually cautious in my course. While I have
no right to doubt your assertions, they seem almost incredible, and
the use you might make of the license----"

"What! you find it so difficult to credit the villainy of a man--and
yet so easy to suspect, to believe all possible deceit and wickedness
in a poor helpless woman? Oh, man of God! is your mantle of charity
cut to cover only your own sex? Can the wail of down-trodden
orphanage wake no pity in your heart,--or is it locked against me by
the cowardly dread of incurring the hate of the house of Laurance?"

For an instant a dark flush bathed the tranquil brow of the minister,
but his kind tone was unchanged when he answered slowly:

"Four years ago I was in doubt concerning my duty, but just now there
is clearly but one course for me to pursue. Unless you wish to make
an improper use of it, this paper which I very willingly hand to you
will serve your purpose. It is an exact copy of the license, and to
it I have appended my certificate, as the officiating clergyman who
performed the marriage ceremony. Examine it carefully, and you will
find the date, and indeed every syllable rigidly accurate. From the
original I shall never part, unless to see it replaced in the court
house records."

Bending down close to the lamp, she eagerly read and reread the paper
which shook like an aspen in her nervous grasp; then she looked long
and searchingly into the grave face beside her, and a sudden light
broke over her own.

"Oh, thank you! After all, the original is safer in your hands than
in mine. I might be murdered, but they would never dare to molest
you,--and if I should die, you would not allow them to rob my baby of
her name?"

"Your baby!"

He looked at the young girlish figure and face, and it seemed
impossible that the creature before him could be a mother. A
melancholy smile curved her lips.

"Oh! that is the sting that sometimes goads me almost to desperation.
My own wrongs are sufficiently hard to bear, but when I think of my
innocent baby denied the sight of her father's face, and robbed of
the protection of her father's name, then--I forget that I am only a
woman, I forget that God reigns in heaven to right the wrongs on
earth, and----"

There was a moment's silence.

"How old is your child?"

"Three years."

"And you? A mere child now."

"I am only nineteen."

"Poor thing! I pity you from the depths of my soul."

The clock struck ten, and the woman started from the table against
which she leaned.

"I must not miss the train; I promised to return promptly."

She put on the grey cloak she had thrown aside, buttoned it about her
throat, and tied her bonnet strings.

"Before you go, explain one thing. Was not your hair very dark when
you were married?"

"Yes, a dark chestnut brown, but when my child was born I was ill a
long time, and my head was shaved and blistered. When the hair grew
out, it was just as you see it now. Ah! if we had only died then,
baby and I, we might have had a quiet sleep under the violets and
daisies. I see, sir, you doubt whether I am really little Minnie
Merle. Do you not recollect that when you asked for the wedding ring
none had been provided, and Cuthbert took one from his own hand,
which was placed on my finger? Ah! there was a grim fitness in the
selection! A death's head peeping out of a cinerary urn. You will
readily recognize the dainty bridal token."

She drew from her bosom a slender gold chain on which was suspended a
quaint antique cameo ring of black agate, with a grinning white skull
in the centre, and around the oval border of heavily chased gold
glittered a row of large and very brilliant diamonds.

"I distinctly remember the circumstance."

As the minister restored the ring to its owner, she returned it and
the chain to its hiding-place.

"I do not wear it, I am biding my time. When General Laurance sent
his agent first to attempt to buy me off, and, finding that
impossible, to browbeat and terrify me into silence, one of his
insolent demands was the restoration of this ring, which he said was
an heirloom of untold value in his family, and must belong to none
but a Laurance. He offered five hundred dollars for the delivery of
it into his possession. I would sooner part with my right arm! Were
it iron or lead, its value to me would be the same, for it is the
only symbol of my lawful marriage,--is my child's title deed to a
legitimate name."

She turned toward the door, and Dr. Hargrove asked:

"Where is your home?"

"I have none. I am a waif drifting from city to city, on the
uncertain waves of chance."

"Have you no relatives?"

"Only an uncle, somewhere in the gold mines of California."

"Does General Laurance provide for your maintenance?"

"Three years ago his agent offered me a passage to San Francisco, and
five thousand dollars, on condition that I withdrew all claim to my
husband and to his name, and pledged myself to 'give the Laurances no
further trouble.' Had I been a man, I would have strangled him. Since
then no communication of any kind has passed between us, except that
all my letters to Cuthbert pleading for his child have been returned
without comment."

"How, then are you and the babe supported?"

"That, sir, is my secret."

She drew herself haughtily to her full height, and would have passed
him, but he placed himself between her and the door.

"Mrs. Laurance, do not be offended by my friendly frankness. You are
so young and so beautiful, and the circumstances of your life render
you so peculiarly liable to dangerous associations and influences,
that I fear you may----"

"Fear nothing for me. Can I forget my helpless baby, whose sole dower
just now promises to be her mother's spotless name? Blushing for her
father's perfidy, she shall never need a purer, whiter shield than
her mother's stainless record--so help me, God!"

"Will you do me the favour to put aside for future contingencies this
small tribute to your child? The amount is not so large that you
should hesitate to receive it; and feeling a deep interest in your
poor little babe, it will give me sincere pleasure to know that you
accept it for her sake, as a memento of one who will always be glad
to hear from you, and to aid you if possible."

With evident embarrassment he tendered an old-fashioned purse of
knitted silk, through whose meshes gleamed the sheen of gold pieces.
To his astonishment she covered her face with her hands and burst
into a fit of passionate weeping. For some seconds she sobbed aloud,
leaving him in painful uncertainty concerning the nature of her
emotion.

"Oh, sir!--it has been so long since words of sympathy and real
kindness were spoken to me, that now they unnerve me. I am strong
against calumny and injustice,--but kindness breaks me down. I thank
you in my baby's name, but we cannot take your money. Ministers are
never oppressed with riches, and baby and I can live without charity.
But since you are so good, I should like to say something in strict
confidence to you. I am suspicious now of everybody, but it seems to
me I might surely trust you. I do not yet see my way clearly, and if
anything should happen to me the child would be thrown helpless upon
the world. You have neither wife nor children, and if the time ever
comes when I shall be obliged to leave my little girl for any long
period, may I send her here for safety, until I can claim her? She
shall cost you nothing but care and watchfulness. I could work so
much better, if my mind were only easy about her; if I knew she was
safely housed in this sanctuary of peace."

Ah! how irresistible was the pathetic pleading of the tearful eyes;
but Mr. Hargrove did not immediately respond to the appeal.

"I understand your  silence--you think me presumptuous in my request,
and I daresay I am, but----"

"No, madam, not at all presumptuous. I hesitate habitually before
assuming grave responsibility, and I only regret that I did not
hesitate longer--four years ago. A man's first instincts of
propriety, of right and wrong, should never be smothered by
persuasion, nor wrestled down and overcome by subtle and selfish
reasoning. I blame myself for much that has occurred, and I am
willing to do all that I can toward repairing my error. If your child
should ever really need a guardian, bring or send her to me, and I
will shield her to the full extent of my ability." Ere he was aware
of her intention, she caught his hand, and as she carried it to her
lips he felt her tears falling fast.

"God bless you for your goodness! I have one thing more to ask;
promise me that you will divulge to no one what I have told you. Let
it rest between God and you and me."

"I promise."

"In the great city where I labour I bear an assumed name, and none
must know, at least for the present, whom I am. Realizing fully the
unscrupulous character of the men with whom I have to deal, my only
hope of redress is in preserving the secret for some years, and not
even my baby can know her real parentage until I see fit to tell her.
You will not betray me, even to my child?"

"You may trust me."

"Thank you, more than mere words could ever express."

"May God help you, Mrs. Laurance, to walk circumspectly--to lead a
blameless life."

He took his hat from the stand in the hall, and silently they walked
down to the parsonage gate. The driver dismounted and opened the
carriage door, but the draped figure lingered, with her hand upon the
latch.

"If I should die before we meet again, you will not allow them to
trample upon my child?"

"I will do my duty faithfully."

"Remember that none must know I am Minnie Laurance until I give you
permission; for snares have been set all along my path, and calumny
is ambushed at every turn. Good-bye, sir. The God of orphans will one
day requite you."

The light from the carriage lamp shone down on her as she turned
toward it, and in subsequent years the pastor was haunted by the
marvellous beauty of the spirituelle features, the mournful splendour
of the large misty eyes, and the golden glint of the rippling hair
that had fallen low upon her temples.

"If it were not so late, I would accompany you to the railway
station. You will have a lonely ride. Good-bye, Mrs. Laurance."

"Lonely, sir? Aye--lonely for ever."

She laughed bitterly, and entered the carriage.

     "Laughed, and the echoes huddling in affright,
     Like Odin's hounds fled baying down the night."




CHAPTER II.


With the night passed the storm which had rendered it so gloomy, and
the fair cold day shone upon a world shrouded in icy cerements; a
hushed, windless world, as full of glittering rime-runes as the
frozen fields of Jotunheim. Each tree and shrub seemed a springing
fountain, suddenly crystallized in mid-air, and not all the mediæval
marvels of Murano equalled the fairy fragile tracery of fine spun,
glassy web, and film, and fringe that stretched along fences, hung
from eaves, and belaced the ivy leaves that lay helpless on the
walls. A blanched waning moon, a mere silver crescent, shivered upon
the edge of the western horizon, fleeing before the scarlet and
orange lances that already bristled along the eastern sky-line, the
advance guard of the conqueror, who would ere many moments smite all
that weird icy realm with consuming flames. The very air seemed
frozen, and refused to vibrate in trills and roulades through the
throaty organs of matutinal birds, that hopped and blinked, plumed
their diamonded breasts, and scattered brilliants enough to set a
tiara; and profound silence brooded over the scene, until rudely
broken by a cry of dismay which rang out startlingly from the
parsonage. The alarm might very readily have been ascribed to
diligent Hannah, who, contemptuous of barometric or thermal
vicissitudes, invariably adhered to the aphorism of Solomon, and,
arising "while it is yet night, looketh well to the ways of her
household."

With a broom in one hand, and feather dusting-brush in the other, she
ran down the front steps, her white cap strings flying like distress
signals,--bent down to the ground as a blood-hound might in scenting
a trail,--then dashed back into the quiet old house, and uttered a
wolfish cry:

"Robbers! Burglars! Thieves!"

Oppressed with compassionate reflections concerning the fate of his
visitor, the minister had found himself unable to sleep as soundly as
usual, and from the troubled slumber into which he sank after
daylight he was aroused by the unwonted excitement that reigned in
the hall, upon which his apartment opened. While hastily dressing,
his toilette labours were expedited by an impatient rap which only
Hannah's heavy hand could have delivered. Wrapped in his
dressing-gown he opened the door, saying benignly:

"Is there an earthquake or a cyclone? You thunder as if my room were
Mount Celion. Is any one dead?"

"Some one ought to be! The house was broken open last night, and the
silver urn is missing. Shameless wretch! This comes of mysteries and
veiled women, who are too modest to, look an honest female in the
face, but----!"

"Oh, Hannah I that tongue of thine is more murderous than Cyrus'
scythed chariots! Here is your urn! I put it away last night, because
I saw from the newspapers that a quantity of plate had recently been
stolen. Poor Hannah! don't scowl so ferociously because I have
spoiled your little tragedy. I believe you are really sorry to see
the dear old thing safe in defiance of your prophecy."

Mrs. Lindsay came downstairs laughing heartily, and menacing irate
Hannah with the old-fashioned urn, which had supplied three
generations with tea.

"Is that the sole cause of the disturbance?" asked the master,
stooping to pat Biörn, who was dancing a tarantella on the good man's
velvet slippers.

Somewhat crestfallen the woman seized the urn, began to polish it
with her apron, and finally said sulkily:

"I beg pardon for raising a false alarm, but indeed it looked
suspicious and smelled of foul play, when I found the library window
wide open, two chairs upside down on the carpet,--mud on the
window-sill, the inkstand upset,--and no urn on the sideboard. But as
usual I am only an old fool, and you, sir, and Miss Elise know best I
am very sorry I roused you so early with my racket."

"Did you say the library window wide open? Impossible; I distinctly
recollect closing the blinds, and putting down the sash before I went
to bed. Elise, were you not with me at the time?"

"Yes, I am sure you secured it, just before bidding me goodnight."

"Well--no matter, facts are ugly, stubborn things. Now you two just
see for yourselves, what I found this morning."

Hannah hurried them into the library, where a fire had already been
kindled, and her statement was confirmed by the disarranged
furniture, and traces of mud on the window-sill and carpet. The
inkstand had rolled almost to the hearth, scattering its contents
_en route_, and as he glanced at his desk the minister turned pale.

The secret drawer which opened with a spring had been pulled out to
its utmost extent, and he saw that the tin box he had so carefully
locked the previous night was missing. Some _MSS_ were scattered
loosely in the drawer, and the purse filled with gold coins, a
handsomely set miniature, and heavy watch chain with seal attached,
all lay untouched, though conspicuously alluring to the cupidity of
burglars. Bending over his rifled sanctuary, Mr. Hargrove sighed,
and a grieved look settled on his countenance.

"Peyton, do you miss anything?"

"Only a box of papers."

"Were they valuable?"

"Pecuniarily no;--at least not convertible into money. In other
respects, very important."

"Not your beautiful sermons, I hope," cried his sister, throwing one
arm around his neck, and leaning down to examine the remaining
contents of the drawer.

"They were more valuable, Elise, than many sermons, and some cannot
be replaced."

"But how could the burglars have overlooked the money and jewellery?"

Again the minister sighed heavily, and, closing the drawer, said:

"Perhaps we may discover some trace in the garden."

"Aye, sir,--I searched before I raised an uproar, and here is a
handkerchief that I found under that window, on the violet bed. It
was frozen fast to the leaves."

Hannah held it up between the tips of her fingers, as if fearful of
contamination, and eyed it with an expression of loathing. Mr.
Hargrove took it to the light and examined it, while an unwonted
frown wrinkled his usually placid brow. It was a dainty square of
finest cambric, bordered with a wreath of embroidered lilies, and in
one corner exceedingly embellished "O O" stared like wide wondering
eyes, at the strange hands that profaned it.

"Do you notice what a curious, outlandish smell it has? It struck my
nostrils sharper than hartshorn when I picked it up. No rum-drinking,
tobacco-smoking burglar in breeches dropped that lace rag."

Hannah set her stout arms akimbo, and looked "unutterable things" at
the delicate fabric, that as if to deprecate its captors was all the
while breathing out deliciously sweet but vague hints,--now of
eglantine, and now of that subtle spiciness that dwells in daphnes,
and anon plays hide-and-seek in nutmeg geranium blooms.

Reluctance to admission of the suspicion of unworthiness in others is
the invariable concomitant of true nobility of soul in all pure and
exalted natures,--and with that genuine chivalry, which now, alas! is
welnigh as rare as the _aumônière_ of pilgrims, the pastor bravely
cast around the absent woman the broad, soft ermine of his tender
charity.

"Hannah, if your insinuations point to the lady who called here last
night, I can easily explain the suspicious fact of the handkerchief,
which certainly belongs to her; for the room was close, and my
visitor, having raised that window and leaned out for fresh air,
doubtless dropped her handkerchief without observing the loss."

"Do the initials '_O O_' represent her name?" asked Mrs. Lindsay,
whose adroitly propounded interrogatories the previous evening had
elicited no satisfactory information.

"Do not ladies generally stamp their own monograms when marking
articles that compose their wardrobes?" He put the unlucky piece of
cambric in his pocket, and pertinacious Hannah suddenly stooped and
dealt Biörn a blow, which astonished the spectators even more than
the yelping recipient, who dropped something at her feet and crawled
behind his master.

"You horrid, greedy pest! Are you in league with the thieves, that
you must needs try to devour the signs and tell-tales they dropped in
the track of their dirty work? It is only a glove this time, sir, and
it was all crumpled, just so,--where I first saw it, when I ran out
to hunt for footprints. It was hanging on the end of a rose bush,
yonder near the snowball, and you see it was rather too far from the
window here to have fallen down with the handkerchief. Look, Miss
Elise, your hands are small, but this would pinch even your fingers."

She triumphantly lifted a lady's kid glove, brown in colour and
garnished with three small oval silver buttons, the exact mate of one
which Mr. Hargrove had noticed the previous evening, when the visitor
held up the ring for his inspection. Exulting in the unanswerable
logic of this latest fact, Hannah quite unintentionally gave the
glove a scornful toss, which caused it to fall into the fireplace,
and down between two oak logs, where it shrivelled instantaneously.
Unfortunately science is not chivalric, and divulges the unamiable
and ungraceful truth, that perverted female natures from even the
lower beastly types are more implacably vindictive, more subtly
malicious, more ingeniously cruel than the stronger sex; and when a
woman essays to track, to capture, or to punish--_vae victis_.

"Now, Biörn! improve your opportunity and heap coals of fire on
slanderous Hannah's head, by assuring her you feel convinced she did
not premeditatedly destroy traces, and connive at the escape of the
burglars, by burning that most important glove, which might have
aided us in identifying them."

As Mr. Hargrove caressed his dog, he smiled, evidently relieved by
the opportune accident; but Mrs. Lindsay looked grave, and an
indignant flush purpled the harsh, pitiless face of the servant,
who sullenly turned away, and busied herself in putting the
furniture in order.

"Peyton, were the stolen papers of a character to benefit that
person,--or indeed any one but yourself, or your family?"

He knew the soft blue eyes of his sister were watching him keenly,
saw too that the old servant stood still, and turned her head to
listen, and he answered without hesitation:

"The box contained the deed to a disputed piece of property, those
iron and lead mines in Missouri,--and I relied upon it to establish
my claim."

"Was the lady who visited you last night in any manner interested in
that suit, or its result?"

"Not in the remotest degree. She cannot even be aware of its
existence. In addition to the deed, I have lost the policy of
insurance on this house, which has always been entrusted to me and I
must immediately notify the company of the fact and obtain a
duplicate policy. Elise, will you and Hannah please give me my
breakfast as soon as possible, that I may go into town at once?"

Walking to the window, he stood for some moments, with his hands
folded behind him, and as he noted the splendour of the spectacle
presented by the risen sun shining upon temples and palaces of ice,
prism-tinting domes and minarets, and burnishing after the similitude
of silver stalactites and arcades which had built themselves into
crystal campaniles, more glorious than Giotto's,--the pastor said:
"The physical world, just as God left it,--how pure, how lovely, how
entirely good;--how sacred from His hallowing touch! Oh that the
world of men and women were half as unchangingly true, stainless, and
holy!"

An hour later he bent his steps,--not to the lawyer's, nor yet to the
insurance office, but to the depot of the only railroad which passed
through the quiet, old-fashioned, and comparatively unimportant town
of V----.

The station agent was asleep upon a sofa in the reception-room, but
when aroused informed Dr. Hargrove that the down train bound south
had been accidentally detained four hours, and instead of being "on
time," due at eleven p.m., did not pass through V---- until after
three a.m. A lady, corresponding in all respects with the minister's
description, had arrived about seven on the up train, left a small
valise, or rather traveller's satchel, for safe keeping in the
baggage-room; had inquired at what time she could catch the down
train, signifying her intention to return upon it, and had hired one
of the carriages always waiting for passengers, and disappeared.
About eleven o'clock she came back, paid the coachman, and dismissed
the carriage; seemed very cold, and the agent built a good fire,
telling her she could take a nap as the train was behind time, and he
would call her when he heard the whistle. He then went home, several
squares distant, to see one of his children who was quite ill, and
when he returned to the station and peeped into the reception-room to
see if it kept warm and comfortable not a soul was visible. He
wondered where the lady could have gone at that hour, and upon such a
freezing night, but sat down by the grate in the freight-room, and
when the down train blew for V---- he took his lantern and went out,
and the first person he saw was the missing lady. She asked for her
satchel, which he gave her, and he handed her up to the platform, and
saw her go into the ladies' car.

"Had she a package or box, when she returned and asked for her
satchel?"

"I did not see any, but she wore a waterproof of grey cloth that came
down to her feet. There was so much confusion when the train came in
that I scarcely noticed her, but remember she shivered a good deal,
as if almost frozen."

"Did she buy a return ticket?"

"No, I asked if I should go to the ticket office for her, but she
thanked me very politely, and said she would not require anything."

"Can you tell me to what place she was going?"

"I do not know where she came from, nor where she went. She was most
uncommonly beautiful."

"Are the telegraph wires working south?"

"Why bless you, sir! they are down in several places, from the weight
of the ice, so I heard the station operator say, just before you came
in."

As Dr. Hargrove walked away, an expression of stern indignation
replaced the benign look that usually reigned over his noble
features, and he now resolutely closed all the avenues of compassion,
along which divers fallacious excuses and charitable conjectures had
marched into his heart, and stifled for a time the rigorous verdict
of reason.

He had known from the moment he learned the tin box was missing, that
only the frail, fair fingers of Minnie Merle could have abstracted
it, but justice demanded that he should have indisputable proof of
her presence in V---- after twelve o'clock, for he had not left the
library until that hour, and knew that the train passed through at
eleven.

Conviction is the pitiless work of unbiased reason, but faith is the
acceptance thereof, by will, and he would not wholly believe, until
there was no alternative. _Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus_, and
quite naturally Dr. Hargrove began to discredit the entire narrative
of wrongs, which had attained colossal proportions from her
delineation, and to censure himself most harshly for having suffered
this dazzling Delilah to extort from him a solemn promise of secrecy;
for, unworthy of sympathy as he now deemed her, his rigid rectitude
would not permit him to regard that unworthiness as sufficient
justification for abrogating his plighted word. Suspicious facts
which twelve hours before had been hushed by the soft spell of her
rich plaintive voice, now started up clamorous and accusing, and the
pastor could not avoid beholding the discrepancy between her pleas of
poverty and friendlessness, and the costly appearance of her
apparel,--coupled with her refusal to acquaint him with her means of
maintenance.

If, as she had averred, the stolen license was--with the exception of
his verbal testimony--the sole proof of her marriage, why was she not
satisfied with the copy given to her unless for some unrighteous
motive she desired to possess in order to destroy all evidence?

Surmise, with crooked and uncertain finger, had pointed to New
York--whose broad deep bosom shelters so many helpless human
waifs--as her probable place of destination, and had the
telegraph-wires been in successful operation he would have hazarded
the experiment of requesting her arrest at the terminus of the
railway; but this was impracticable, and each succeeding hour aided
in obliterating the only clue in his possession.

The universal observation of man, ages ago, simmered down and
crystallized into the adage, "Misfortunes never come singly;" and it
is here respectfully submitted--that startling episodes, unexpected
incidents quite as rarely travel alone. Do surprises gravitate into
groups, or are certain facts binary?

Sometimes for a quarter of a century the sluggish stream of life
oozes by, bearing no hint of deeds, or faces,--that perchance shed
glory, or perhaps lent gloom to the far past,--a past well-nigh
forgotten and inurned in the gathering grey of time,--and suddenly
without premonition, the slow monotonous current ripples and swells
into waves that bear to our feet fateful countenances, unwelcome as
grave-ghouls,--and the world grows garrulous of incidents that once
more galvanize the shrouded Bygone. For four years the minister had
received no tidings of those whom he had so reluctantly joined in the
bonds of wedlock, and not even a reminiscence of that singular bridal
party had floated into his quiet parsonage study; but within
twenty-four hours he seemed destined to garner a plentiful harvest of
disagreeable data for future speculation. He had not yet reached his
lawyer's office, when, hearing his name pronounced vociferously, Dr.
Hargrove looked around and saw the postmaster standing in his door
and calling on him to enter.

"Pardon me, my dear sir, for shouting after you so unceremoniously;
but I saw you were not coming in, and knew it would promote your
interest to pay me a visit. Fine day at last, after all the rain and
murky weather. This crisp, frosty air sharpens one's wits,--a sort of
atmospheric pumice, don't you see, and tempts me to drive a good
bargain. How much will you give for a letter that has travelled half
around the world, and had as many adventures as Robinson Crusoe, or
Madame Pfeiffer?"

He took from a drawer a dingy and much-defaced envelope, whose
address was rather indistinct from having encountered a oath on its
journey.

"Are you sure that it is for me?" asked the minister, trying to
decipher the uncertain characters.

"Are there two of your name? This is intended for Reverend Peyton
Hargrove of St. ---- Church -- V----, United States of America. It
was enclosed to me by the Postmaster-General, who says that it
arrived last week in the long-lost mail of the steamship _Algol_,
which you doubtless recollect was lost some time ago,--plying
between New York and Havre; It now appears that a Dutch  sailing
vessel bound for Tasmania--wherever that may be; somewhere among the
cannibals, I presume--boarded her after she had been deserted by the
crew, and secured the mail bags, intending to put in along the
Spanish coast and land them, but stress of weather drove them so far
out to sea, that they sailed on to some point in Africa, and as the
postmasters in that progressive and enlightened region did not serve
their apprenticeship in the United States Postal Bureau, you perceive
that your document has not had 'despatch.' If salt water is ever a
preservative, your news ought not to be stale."

"Thank you. I hope the contents will prove worthy of the care and
labour of its transmission. I see it is dated Paris--one year ago,
nearly. I am much obliged by your kind courtesy. Good-day."

Dr. Hargrove walked on, and, somewhat disappointed in not receiving
a moiety of information by way of recompense, the postmaster added:

"If you find it is not your letter bring it back, and I will start it
on another voyage of discovery, for it certainly deserves to get
home."

"There is no doubt whatever about it. It was intended for me."

Unfolding the letter, he had glanced at the signature, and now
hurrying homeward, read as follows:

                                       "PARIS, _February 1st_,

    "REV. PEYTON HARGROVE,--Hoping that, while entirely ignorant of
    the facts and circumstances, you unintentionally inflicted upon
    me an incalculable injury, I reluctantly address you with
    reference to a subject fraught with inexpressible pain and
    humiliation. Through your agency the happiness and welfare of my
    only child, and the proud and unblemished name of a noble family,
    have been wellnigh wrecked; but my profound reverence for your
    holy office, persuades me to believe that you were unconsciously
    the dupe of unprincipled and designing parties. When my son
    Cuthbert entered ---- University, he was all that my fond heart
    desired, all that his sainted mother could have hoped, and no
    young gentleman on the wide Continent gave fairer promise of
    future usefulness and distinction; but one year of demoralizing
    association with dissipated and reckless youths undermined the
    fair moral and intellectual structure I had so laboriously
    raised, and in an unlucky hour he fell a victim to alluring
    vices. Intemperance gradually gained such supremacy that he was
    threatened with expulsion, and to crown all other errors he was,
    while intoxicated, inveigled into a so-called marriage with a
    young but notorious girl, whose only claim was her pretty face,
    while her situation was hopelessly degraded. This creature,
    Minnie Merle, had an infirm grandmother, who, in order to save
    the reputation of the unfortunate girl, appealed so adroitly to
    Cuthbert's high sense of honour, that her arguments, emphasized
    by the girl's beauty and helplessness, prevailed over reason,
    and--I may add--decency and one day when almost mad with brandy
    and morphine he consented to call her his wife. Neither was of
    age, and my son was not only a minor (lacking two months of being
    twenty), but on that occasion was utterly irrational and
    irresponsible, as I am prepared to prove. They intended to
    conceal the whole shameful affair from me, but the old
    grandmother--fearing that some untoward circumstance might mar
    the scheme of possessing the ample fortune she well knew my boy
    expected  to control--wrote me all the disgraceful facts,
    imploring my clemency, and urging me to remove Cuthbert from
    associates outside of his classmates, who were dragging him to
    ruin. If you, my dear sir, are a father (and I hope you are),
    paternal sympathy will enable you to realize approximately the
    grief, indignation, almost despairing rage into which I was
    plunged. Having informed myself through a special agent sent to
    the University of the utter unworthiness and disreputable
    character of the connection forced upon me, I telegraphed for
    Cuthbert, alleging some extraneous cause for requiring his
    presence. Three days after his arrival at home, I extorted a full
    confession from him, and we were soon upon the Atlantic. For a
    time I feared that inebriation had seriously impaired his
    intellect, but, thank God! temperate habits and a good
    constitution finally prevailed, and when a year after we left
    America Cuthbert realized all that he had hazarded during his
    temporary insanity, he was so overwhelmed with mortification and
    horror that he threatened to destroy himself. Satisfied that he
    was more 'sinned against, than sinning,' I yet endeavoured to
    deal justly with the unprincipled authors of the stain upon my
    family, and employed a discreet agent to negotiate with them, and
    to try to effect some compromise. The old woman went out to
    California; the young one refused all overtures, and for a time
    disappeared, but, as I am reliably informed, is now living in New
    York, supported no one knows exactly by whom. Recently she has
    made an imperious demand for the recognition of a child, who she
    declares shall one day inherit the Laurance estate; but I have
    certain facts in my possession which invalidate this claim, and
    if necessary can produce a certificate to prove that the birth of
    the child occurred only seven months after the date of the
    ceremony, which she contends made her Cuthbert's wife. She
    rejects the abundant pecuniary provision which has been
    repeatedly offered, and in her last impertinent and insanely
    abusive communication, threatens a suit to force the
    acknowledgment of the marriage, and of the child, stating that
    you, sir, hold the certificate or rather the license warranting
    the marriage, and that you will espouse and aid in prosecuting
    her iniquitous claims. My son is now a reformed and comparatively
    happy man, but should this degrading and bitterly repented
    episode of his collage life be thrust before the public, and
    allowed to blacken the fair escutcheon we are so jealously
    anxious to protect, I dread the consequences. Only horror of a
    notorious scandal prevented me long ago from applying for a
    divorce, which could very easily have been obtained, but we
    shrink from the publicity, and moreover the case does not seem to
    demand compliance with even the ordinary forms of law. Believing
    that you, my dear sir, would not avow yourself _particeps
    criminis_ in so unjust and vile a crusade against the peace and
    honour of my family were you acquainted with the facts, I have
    taken the liberty of writing you this brief and incomplete
    _résumé_ of the outrages perpetrated upon me and mine, and must
    refer you for disgraceful details to my agent, Mr. Peleg Peterson
    of Whitefield, ---- Co., ----. Hoping that you will not add to
    the injury you have already inflicted, by further complicity in
    this audacious scheme of fraud and blackmail,

                                "I am, dear sir, respectfully
                                      An afflicted father,
                                           RENÉ LAURANCE.

    "P.S.--Should you desire to communicate with me, my address for
    several months will be, Care of the American Legation, Paris."

How many men or women, with lives of average length and incident,
have failed to recognize, nay to cower before the fact, that all
along the highways and byways of the earthly pilgrimage they have
been hounded by a dismal _cortége_ of retarded messages,--lost
opportunities,--miscarried warnings,--procrastinated prayers,--dilatory
deeds,--and laggard faces,--that howl for ever in their shuddering
ears--"Too late." Had Dr. Hargrove received this letter only
twenty-four hours earlier, the result of the interview on the
previous night would probably have been very different; but
unfortunately, while the army of belated facts--the fatal Grouchy
corps--never accomplish their intended mission, they avenge they
failure by a pertinacious presence ever after that is sometimes
almost maddening.

An uncomfortable consciousness of having been completely overreached
did not soften the minister's feelings toward the new custodian of
his tin box, and an utter revulsion of sentiment ensued, wherein
sympathy for General René Laurance reigned supreme. Oh instability of
human compassion! To-day at the tumultuous flood, we weep for Cæsar
slain; To-morrow in the ebb, we vote a monument to Brutus.

Ere the sun had gone down behind the sombre frozen firs that fringed
the hills of V---- Dr. Hargrove had written to Mr. Peleg Peterson,
desiring to be furnished with some clue by which he could trace
Minnie Merle, and Hannah had been despatched to the post office, to
expedite the departure of the letter.

Weeks and months passed, tearful April wept itself away in the
flowery lap of blue-eyed May, and golden June roses died in the fiery
embrace of July, but no answer came; no additional information
drifted upon the waves of chance, and the slow stream of life at the
parsonage once more crept silently and monotonously on.

     "Some griefs gnaw deep. Some woes are hard to bear.
     Who knows the Past? and who can judge us right?"




CHAPTER III.


The sweet-tongued convent bell had rung the Angelas, and all within
the cloistered courts was hushed, save the low monologue of the
fountain whose minor murmuring made solemn accord with the sacred
harmonious repose of its surroundings. The sun shone hot and blinding
upon the towering mass of brick and slate, which, originally designed
in the form of a parallelogram, had from numerous modern additions
projected here, and curved into a new chapel yonder, until the
acquisitive building had become eminently composite in its present
style of architecture. The belfry, once in the centre, had been left
behind in the onward march of the walls, but it lifted unconquerably
in mid-air its tall gilt cross, untarnished by time, though ambitious
ivy had steadily mounted the buttresses, and partially draped the
Gothic arches, where blue sky once shone freely through.

The court upon which the ancient monastery opened was laid out in the
stiff geometric style, which universally prevailed when its trim
hedges of box were first planted, and giant rosebushes, stately
lilacs, and snowballs attested the careful training and attention
which many years had bestowed. In the centre of this court, and
surrounded by a wide border of luxuriant lilies, was a triangular
pedestal of granite, now green with moss, and spotted with silver
grey lichen groups, upon which stood a statue of St. Francis, bearing
the stigmata, and wearing the hood drawn over his head, while the
tunic was opened to display the wound in his side, and the skull and
the crucifix lay at his feet. Close to the base of the pedestal
crouched a marble lamb, around whose neck crept a slender chain of
bind-weed, and above whom the rank green lances of leaves shot up to
guard the numerous silver-dusted lilies that swung like snowy bells
in the soft breeze, dispensing perfume instead of chimes.

Quite distinct from the spacious new chapel--with its gilded shrine,
picture-tapestried walls, and gorgeous stained windows, where the
outside-world believers were allowed to worship--stood a low
cruciform oratory, situated within the stricter confines of the
monastery, and sacred to the exclusive use of the nuns. This chapel
was immediately opposite the St.  Francis, and to-day, as the
old-fashioned doors of elaborately carved oak were thrown wide, the
lovely mass of nodding lillies seemed bowing in adoration before the
image of the Virgin and Child, who crowned the altar within, while
the dazzling sheen of noon flashing athwart the tessellated floor
kindles an almost unearthly halo around

     "Virgin and Babe, and Saint, who
     With the same cold, calm, beautiful regard,"

had watched for many weary years the kneeling devotees beneath their
marble feet.

On the steps of the altar were a number of china pots containing rose
and apple geraniums in full bloom, and one luxuriant Grand Duke
jasmine, all starred with creamy flowers, so flooded the place with
fragrance that it seemed as if the vast laboratory of floral aromas
had been suddenly unsealed.

Upon the stone pavement, immediately in front of the altar, sat a
little figure so motionless, that a casual glance would probably have
included it among the consecrated and permanent images of the silent
sanctuary;--the figure of a child, whose age could not have been
accurately computed from the inspection of the countenance, which
indexed a degree of grave mature wisdom wholly incompatible with the
height of the body and the size of the limbs.

If devotional promptings had brought her to the Nuns' Chapel, her
orisons had been concluded, for she had turned her back upon the
altar, and sat gazing sorrowfully down at her lap, where lay in
pathetic _pose_ a white rabbit and a snowy pigeon,--both dead, quite
stark and cold,--laid out in state upon the spotless linen apron,
around which a fluted ruffle ran crisp and smooth. One tiny waxen
hand held a broken lily, and the other was vainly pressed upon the
lids of the rabbit's eyes, trying to close lovingly the pink orbs
that now stared so distressingly through glazing film. The first
passionate burst of grief had spent its force in the tears that left
the velvety cheeks and chin as dewy as rain-washed rose leaves, while
not a trace of moisture dimmed the large eyes that wore a proud,
defiant, and much injured look, as though resentment were strangling
sorrow.

Unto whom or what shall I liken this fair, tender, childish face,
which had in the narrow space of ten years gathered such perfection
of outline, such unearthly purity of colour, such winsome grace, such
complex expressions? Probably amid the fig and olive groves of
Tuscany, Fra Bartolomeo found just such an incarnation of the angelic
ideal, which he afterward placed for the admiration of succeeding
generations in the winged heads that glorify the _Madonna della
Misericordia_. The stipple of time dots so lightly, so slowly, that
at the age of ten a human countenance should present a mere fleshy
_tabula rasa_, but now and then we are startled by meeting a child as
unlike the round, rosy, pulpy, dimpling, unwritten faces of ordinary
life, as the churubs of Raphael to the rigid forms of Byzantine
mosaics, or the stone portraiture of Copan.

As she sat there, in the golden radiance of the summer noon, she
presented an almost faultless specimen of a type of beauty that is
rarely found nowaday, that has always been peculiar, and bids fair to
become extinct. A complexion of dazzling whiteness and transparency,
rendered more intensely pure by contrast with luxuriant silky hair of
the deepest black,--and large superbly shaped eyes of clear, dark
steel blue, almost violet in hue,--with delicately arched brows and
very long lashes of that purplish black tint which only the trite and
oft-borrowed plumes of ravens adequately illustrate. The forehead was
not remarkable for height, but was peculiarly broad and full with
unusual width between the eyes, and if Strato were correct in his
speculations with reference to Psyche's throne, then verily my little
girl did not cramp her soul in its fleshy palace. Daintily moulded in
figure and face, every feature instinct with a certain delicate
patricianism, that testified to genuine "blue blood," there was
withal a melting tenderness about the parted lips that softened the
regal contour of one who, amid the universal catalogue of feminine
names, could never have been appropriately called other than Regina.

Over in the new chapel across the court, where the sacristan had
opened two of the crimson and green windows that now lighted the gilt
altar as with sacrificial fire, and now drenched it with cool beryl
tints that extinguished the flames, a low murmur became audible,
swelling and rising upon the air, until the thunder-throated organ
filled all the cloistered recesses with responsive echoes of Rossini.
Some masterly hand played the "Recitative" of _Eia Mater_, bringing
out the bass with powerful emphasis, and concluding with the full
strains of the chorus; then the organ-tones sank into solemn minor
chords indescribably plaintive, and after a while a quartette of
choir voices sang the

                "Sancta Mater! istud agas,
                Crucifixi fige plagas,"

ending with the most impassioned strain of the _Stabat Mater_,--

                "Virgo virginum prædara,
                Mihi jam non sis amara,
                Fac me tecum plangere."

Two nuns came out of an arched doorway leading to the
reception-room of the modern building, and looked up and down the
garden walks, talking the while in eager undertones; then paused near
the lily bank, and one called:

"Regina! Regina!"

"She must be somewhere in the Academy playground, I will hunt for her
there; or perhaps you might find her over in the church, listening to
the choir practising, you know she is strangely fond of that organ."

The speaker turned away and disappeared in the cool dim arch, and the
remaining nun moved across the paved walk with the quick, noiseless,
religious tread peculiar to those sacred conventual retreats where
the clatter of heels is an abomination unknown.

Pausing in front of the chapel door to bend low before the marble
Mother on the shrine, she beheld the object of her search and glided
down the aisle as stealthily as a moonbeam.

"Regina, didn't you hear Sister Gonzaga calling you just now?"

"Yes, Sister."

"Did you answer her?"

"No, Sister."

"Are you naughty to-day, and in penance?"

"I suppose I am always naughty, Sister Perpetua says so; but I am not
in penance."

"Who gave you permission to come into our chapel? You know it is
contrary to the rules. Did you ask Mother?"

"I knew she would say no, so I did not ask, because I was determined
to come."

"Why? what is the matter? you have been crying."

"Oh, Sister Angela! don't you see?"

She lifted the corners of her apron where the dead pets lay, and her
chin trembled.

"Another rabbit gone! How many have you left?"

"None. And this is my last white dove; the other two have coloured
rings around their necks."

"I am very sorry for you, dear, you seem so fond of them. But, my
child, why did you come here?"

"My Bunnie was not dead when I started, and I thought if I could only
get to St. Francis and show it to him he would cure it, and send life
back to my pigeon too. You know, Sister, that Father told us last
week at instruction we must find out all about St. Francis, and next
day Armantine was Refectory Reader, and she read us about St. Francis
preaching to the birds at Bevagno, and how they opened their beaks
and listened, and even let him touch them, and never stirred till he
blessed them and made the sign of the Cross, and then they all flew
away. She read all about the doves at the convent of Ravacciano, and
the nest of larks, and the bad, greedy little lark that St. Francis
ordered to die, and said nothing should eat it, and sure enough, even
the hungry cats ran away from it. Don't you remember that when St.
Francis went walking about the fields, the rabbits jumped into his
bosom, because he loved them so very much? You see, I thought it was
really all true, and that St. Francis could save mine too, and I
carried 'Bunnie' and 'Snowball' to him--out yonder, and laid them on
his feet, and prayed and prayed ever so long, and while I was praying
my 'Bunnie' died right there. Then I knew he could do no good, and I
thought I would try our Blessed Lady over here, because the Nuns'
Chapel seems holier than ours,--but it is no use. I will never pray
to her again, nor to St. Francis either."

"Hush! you wicked child!"

Regina rose slowly from the pavement, gathered up her apron very
tenderly, and, looking steadily into the sweet serene face of the
nun, said with much emphasis:

"What have I done? Sister Angela, I am not wicked."

"Yes, dear, you are. We are all born full of sin, and desperately
wicked; but if you will only pray and try to be good, I have no doubt
St. Francis will send you some rabbits and doves so lovely, that they
will comfort you for those you have lost."

"I know just as well as you do that he has no idea of doing anything
of the kind, and you need not tell me pretty tales that you don't
believe yourself. Sister, it is all humbug; 'Bunnie' is dead, and I
sha'n't waste another prayer on St. Francis! If ever I get another
rabbit, it will be when I buy one, as I mean to do just as soon as I
move to some nice place where owls and hawks never come."

Here the clang of a bell startled Sister Angela, who seized the
child's hand.

"Five strokes!--that is my bell. Come, Regina, we have been hunting
you for some time, and Mother will be out of patience."

"Won't you please let me bury Bunnie and Snowball before I go
upstairs to penance? I can dig a grave in the corner of my little
garden and plant verbena and cypress vine over it."

She shivered as if the thought had chilled her heart, and her voice
trembled, while she pressed the stiffened forms to her, breast.

"Come along as fast as you can, dear, you are wanted in the parlour.
I believe you are going away."

"Oh! has my mother come?"

"I don't know, but I am afraid you will leave us."

"Will you be sorry, Sister Angela?"

"Very sorry, dear child, for we love our little girl too well to give
her up willingly."

Regina paused and pressed her lips to the cold white fingers that
clasped hers, but Sister Angela hurried her on till she reached a
door opening into the Mother's reception-room. Catching the child to
her heart, she kissed her twice, lifted the dead darlings from her
apron, and, pushing her gently into the small parlour, closed the
door.

It was a cool, lofty, dimly lighted room, where the glare of sunshine
never entered, and several seconds elapsed before Regina could
distinguish any object. At one end a wooden lattice work enclosed a
space about ten feet square, and here Mother Aloysius held audience
with visitors whom friendship or business brought to the convent.
Regina's eager survey showed her only a gentleman, sitting close to
the grating, and an expression of keen disappointment swept over her
countenance, which had been a moment before eloquent with expectation
of meeting her mother.

"Come here, Regina, and speak to Mr. Palma," said the soft, velvet
voice behind the lattice.

The visitor turned around, rose, and watched the slowly advancing
figure.

She was dressed in blue muslin, the front of which was concealed by
her white bib-apron, and her abundant glossy hair was brushed
straight back from her brow, confined at the top of her head by a
blue ribbon, and thence fell in shining waves below her waist. One
hand hung listlessly at her side, the other clasped the drooping lily
and held it against her heart.

The slightly curious expression of the stranger gave place to
astonishment and involuntary admiration as he critically inspected
the face and form; and, fixing her clear, earnest eyes on him, Regina
saw a tall, commanding man of certainly not less than thirty years,
with a noble massive head, calm pale features almost stern when in
repose, and remarkably brilliant piercing black eyes, that were
doubtless somewhat magnified by the delicate steel-rimmed spectacles
he habitually wore. His closely cut hair clustered in short thick
waves about his prominent forehead, which in pallid smoothness
resembled a slab of marble, and where a slight depression usually
marks the temples his swelled boldly out, rounding the entire outline
of the splendidly developed brow. He wore neither moustache nor
beard, and every line of his handsome mouth and finely modelled chin
indicated the unbending tenacity of purpose and imperial pride which
had made him a ruler even in his cradle, and almost a dictator in
later years.

In a certain diminished degree children share the instinct whereby
brutes discern almost infallibly the nature of those who in full
fruition of expanded reason tower above and control them; and, awed
by something which she read in this dominative new face, Regina stood
irresolute in front of him, unwilling to accept the shapely white
hand held out to her.

He advanced a step, and took her fingers into his soft warm palm.

"I hope, Miss Regina, that you are glad to see me."

Her eyes fell from his countenance to the broad seal ring on his
little finger, then, gazing steadily up into his, she said:

"I think I never saw you before, and why should I be glad? Why did
you come and ask for me?"

"Because your mother sent me to look after you."

"Then I suppose, sir, you are very good; but I would rather see my
mother. Is she well?"

"Almost well now, though she has been quite ill. If you promise to be
very good and obedient, I may find a letter for you, somewhere in my
pockets. I have just been telling Mother Aloysius, to whom I brought
a letter, that I have come to remove you from her kind sheltering
care, as your mother wishes you for a while at least to be placed in
a different position, and I have promised to carry out her
instructions. Here is her letter. Shall I read it to you, or are you
sufficiently advanced to be able to spell it out without my
assistance?"

He held up the letter, and she looked at him proudly, with a faint
curl in her dainty lip, and a sudden lifting of her lovely arched
eyebrows, which, without the aid of verbal protest, he fully
comprehended. A smile hovered about his mouth, and disclosed a set of
glittering perfect teeth, but he silently resumed his seat. As Regina
broke the seal, Mother said:

"Wait, dear, and read it later. Mr. Palmer has already been detained
some time, and says he is anxious to catch the train. Run up to the
wardrobe, and Sister Helena will change your dress. She is packing
your clothes."

When the door closed behind her a heavy sigh floated through the
grating, and the sweet seraphic face of the nun clouded.

"I wish we could keep her always; it is a sadly solemn thing to cast
such a child as she is into the world's whirlpool of sin and sorrow.
To-day she is as spotless in soul as one of our consecrated
annunciation lilies; but the dust of vanity and selfishness will
tarnish, and the shock of adversity will bruise, and the heat of the
battle of life that rages so fiercely in the glare of the outside
world will wither and deface the sweet blossom we have nurtured so
carefully."

"In view of the peculiar circumstances that surround her, her removal
impresses me as singularly injudicious, and I have advised against
it, but her mother is inflexible."

"We have never been able to unravel the mystery that seems to hang
about the child, although the Bishop assured us we were quite right
in consenting to assume the charge of her."

From beneath her heavy black hood, Mother's meek shy eyes searched
the non-committal countenance before her, and found it about as
satisfactorily responsive as some stone sphinx half-sepulchred in
Egyptic sand.

"May I ask, sir, if you are at all related to Regina?"

"Not even remotely; am merely her mother's legal counsellor, and the
agent appointed by her to transfer the child to different
guardianship. I repeat, I deem the change inexpedient, but
discretionary powers have not been conferred on me. She seems rather
a mature bit of royalty for ten years of age. Is the intellectual
machinery at all in consonance with the refined perfection of the
external physique?"

"She has a fine active brain, clear and quick, and is very well
advanced in her studies, for she is fond of her books. Better than
all, her heart is noble, and generous, and she is a conscientious
little thing, never told a story in her life; but at times we have
had great difficulty in controlling her will, which certainly is the
most obstinate I have ever encountered."

"She evidently does not suggest wax, save in the texture of her fine
skin, and one rarely finds in a child's face so much of steel as is
ambushed in the creases of the rose leaves that serve her as lips. If
her will matches her mother's, this little one certainly was not
afflicted with a misnomer at her baptism." He rose, looked at his
watch, and walked across the room as if to inspect a _Pieta_ that
hung upon the wall. Unwilling to conclude an interview which had
yielded her no information, Mother Aloysius patiently awaited the
result of the examination, but he finally went to the window, and a
certain unmistakable expression of countenance which can be compared
only to a locking of mouth and eyes, warned her that he was alert and
inflexible. With a smothered sigh she left her seat.

"As you seem impatient, Mr. Palma, I will endeavour to hasten the
preparations for your departure."

"If you please, Mother; I shall feel indebted to your kind
consideration."

Nearly an hour elapsed ere she returned leading Regina, and as the
latter stood between Mother and Sister Angela, with a cluster of
fresh fragrant lilies in her hand, and her tender face blanched and
tearful, it seemed to the lawyer as if indeed the pet ewe lamb were
being led away from peaceful flowery pastures, from the sweet
sanctity of the cloistral fold, out through thorny devious paths
where Temptations prowl wolf-fanged, or into fierce conflicts that
end in the social shambles, those bloodless abattoirs where malice
mangles humanity. How many verdure-veiled, rose-garlanded pitfalls
yawned in that treacherous future now stretching before her like
summer air, here all gold and blue, yonder with purple glory crowning
the dim far away? Intuitively she recognized the fact that she was
confronting the first cross roads in her hitherto monotonous life,
and a vague dread flitted like ill-omened birds before her, darkening
her vision.

In the gladiatorial arena of the court-room, Mr. Palma was regarded
as a large-brained, nimble-witted, marble-hearted man, of vast
ambition and tireless energy in the acquisition of his aims; but his
colleagues and clients would as soon have sought chivalric tenderness
in a bronze statue, or a polished obelisk of porphyry. To-day as he
curiously watched the quivering yet proud little girlish face, her
brave struggles to meet the emergency touched some chord far down in
his reticent stern nature, and he suddenly stooped, and took her
hand, folding it up securely in his.

"Are you not quite willing to trust yourself with me?"

She hesitated a moment, then said with a slight wavering in her low
tone:

"I have been very happy here, and I love the Sisters dearly; but you
are my mother's friend, and whatever she wishes me to do of course
must be right."

Oh beautiful instinctive faith in maternal love and maternal wisdom!
Wot ye the moulding power ye wield, ye mothers of America?

Pressing her fingers gently as if to reassure her, he said:

"I dislike to hurry you away from these kind Sisters, but if your
baggage is ready we have no time to spare."

The nuns wept silently as she embraced them for the last time, kissed
them on both cheeks, then turned and suffered Mr. Palma to lead her
to the carriage, whither her trunk had already been sent.

Leaning out, she watched the receding outlines of the convent until a
bend of the road concealed even the belfry, and then she stooped and
kissed the drooping lilies in her lap.

Her companion expected a burst of tears, but she sat erect and quiet,
and not a word was uttered until they reached the railway station and
entered the cars. Securing a double seat he placed her at the window,
and sat down opposite. It was her introduction to railway travel, and
when the train moved off, and the locomotive sounded its prolonged
shriek of departure, Regina started up, but, as if ashamed of her
timidity, coloured and bit her lip. Observing that she appeared
interested in watching the country through which they sped, Mr. Palma
drew a book from his valise, and soon became so absorbed in the
contents that he forgot tie silent figure on the seat before him.

The afternoon wore away, the sun went down, and when the lamps were
lighted the lawyer suddenly remembered his charge.

"Well, Regina, how do you like travelling on the cars?"

"Not at all; it makes my head ache."

"Take off your hat, and I will try to make you more comfortable."

He untied a shawl secured to the outside of his valise, placed it on
the arm of the seat, and made her lay her head upon it.

Keeping his finger as a mark amid the leaves of his book, he said:

"We shall not reach our journey's end until to-morrow morning, and I
advise you to sleep as much as possible. Whenever you feel hungry you
will find some sandwiches, cake, and fruit in the basket at your
feet."

She looked at him intently, and interpreting the expression he added:

"You wish to ask me something? Am I so very frightful that you dare
not question me?"

"Will you tell me the truth, if I ask you?"

"Most assuredly."

"Mr. Palma, when shall I see my mother?"

His eyes went down helplessly before the girl's steady gaze, and he
hesitated a moment.

"Really, I cannot tell exactly,--but I hope----"

She put up her small hand quickly, with a gesture that silenced him.

"Don't say any more, please. I never want to know half of anything,
and you can't tell me all. Good-night, Mr. Palma."

She shut her eyes.

This man of bronze who could terrify witnesses, torture and overwhelm
the opposition, and thunder so successfully from the legal rostrum,
sat there abashed by the child's tone and manner, and as he watched
her he could not avoid smiling at her imperious mandate. Although
silent, it was one o'clock before she fell into a deep, sound
slumber, and then the lawyer leaned forward and studied the dreamer.

The light from the lamp shone upon her, and the long silky black
lashes lay heavily on her white cheeks. Now and then a sigh passed
her lips, and once a dry sob shook her frame, as if she were again
passing through the painful ordeal of parting; but gradually the
traces of emotion disappeared, and that marvellous peace which we
find only in children's countenances, or on the faces of the
dead,--and which is nowhere more perfect than in old Greek
statuary,--settled like a benediction over her features. Her frail
hands clasped over her breast still held the faded lilies, and to
Erle Palma she seemed too tender and fair for rude contact with the
selfish world, in which he was so indefatigably carving out fame and
fortune. He wondered how long a time would be requisite to transform
this pure, spotless, ingenuous young thing into one of the fine
fashionable miniature women with frizzed hair and huge _paniers_,
whom he often met in the city, with school-books in their hands, and
bold, full-blown coquetry in their eyes?

Certainly he was as devoid of all romantic weakness as the
propositions of Euclid, or the pages of Blackstone, but something in
the beauty and helpless innocence of the sleeper appealed with
unwonted power to his dormant sympathy, and, suspecting that lurking
spectres crouched in her future, he mutely entered into a compact
with his own soul, not to lose sight of, but to befriend her
faithfully, whenever circumstances demanded succour.

"Upon my word, she looks like a piece of Greek sculpture, and be her
father whom he may, there is no better blood than beats there at her
little dimpled wrists. The pencilling of the eyebrows is simply
perfect."

He spoke inaudibly, and just then she stirred and turned. As she
moved, something white fluttered from one of the ruffled pockets of
her apron, and fell to the floor. He picked it up and saw it was the
letter he had given her some hours before. The sheet was folded
loosely, and glancing at it, as it opened in his hand, he saw in
delicate characters: "Oh, my baby,--my darling! Be patient and trust
your mother." An irresistible impulse made him look up, and the
beautiful solemn eyes of the girl were fixed upon him, but instantly
her black lashes covered them.

For the first time in years he felt the flush of shame mount into his
cold haughty face, yet even then he noted the refined delicacy which
made her feign sleep.

"Regina."

She made no movement.

"Child, I know you are awake. Do you suppose I would stoop to read
your letter clandestinely? It dropped from your pocket, and I have
seen only one line."

She put out her slender hand, took the letter, and answered:

"My mother writes me that you are her best friend, and I intend to
believe that all you say is true."

"Do you think I read your letter?"

"I shall think no more about it."

                "I will paint her as I see her,
                 Ten times have the lilies blown
                 Since she looked upon the sun,
                 Face and figure of a child,--
                 Though top calm, you think, and tender,
                 For the childhood you would lend her."




CHAPTER IV.


"Indeed, Peyton, you distress me. What can be the matter? I heard you
walking the floor of your room long after midnight, and feared you
were ill."

"Not ill, Elise, but sorely perplexed. If I felt at liberty to
communicate all the circumstances to you, doubtless you would readily
comprehend and sympathize with the peculiar difficulties that
surround me; but unfortunately I am bound by a promise which prevents
me from placing all the facts in your possession. Occasionally
ministers involuntarily become the custodians of family secrets that
oppress their hearts and burden them with unwelcome responsibility,
and just now I am suffering from the consequences of a rash promise
which compassion extorted from me years ago. While I heartily regret
it, my conscience will not permit me to fail in its fulfilment."

An expression of pain and wounded pride overshadowed Mrs. Lindsay's
usually bright, happy face.

"Peyton, surely you do not share the unjust opinion so fashionable
nowaday, that women are unworthy of being entrusted with a secret?
What has so suddenly imbued you with distrust of the sister who has
always shared your cares, and endeavoured to divide your sorrows? Do
you believe me capable of betraying your confidence?

"No, dear. In all that concerns myself, you must know I trust you
implicitly,--trust not only your affection, but your womanly
discretion, your subtle, critical judgment; but I have no right to
commit even to your careful guardianship some facts which were
expressly confided solely to my own."

He laid his hand on his sister's shoulder, and looked fondly, almost
pleadingly, into her clouded countenance, but the flush deepened on
her fair cheek.

"The conditions of secrecy, the envelope of mystery, strongly implies
something socially disgraceful, or radically wicked, and ministers of
the Gospel should not constitute themselves the locked reservoirs of
such turbid streams."

"Granting that you actually believe in your own supposition, why are
you so anxious to pollute your ears with the recital of circumstances
that you assume to be degrading, or sinful?"

"I only fear your misplaced sympathy may induce you to compromise
your ministerial dignity and consistency, for it is quite
evident to me that your judgment does not now acquit you in this
matter--whatever it may be."

"God forbid that, in obeying the dictates of my conscience, I should
transgress even conventional propriety, or incur the charge of
indiscretion. None can realize more keenly than I that a minister's
character is of the same delicate magnolia-leaf texture as a woman's
name,--a thing so easily stained that it must be ever elevated beyond
the cleaving dust of suspicion, and the scorching breath of gossiping
conjecture. The time has passed (did it ever really exist?) when the
prestige of pastoral office hedged it around with impervious
infallibility, and to-day, instead of partial and extenuating
leniency, pure and uncontaminated society justly denies all
ministerial immunities as regards the rigid mandates of social
decorum and propriety,--and the world demands that, instead of
drawing heavily upon an indefinite fund of charitable confidence and
trust in the clergy, pulpit-people should so live and move that the
microscope of public scrutiny can reveal no flaws. Do you imagine I
share the dangerous heresy that the sanctity of the office entitles
the incumbent to make a football of the restrictions of prudence and
discretion? Elise, I hold that pastors should be as circumspect, as
guarded as Roman vestals; and untainted society, guided by even the
average standard of propriety, tolerates no latitudinarians among its
Levites. I grieve that it is necessary for me to add, that I honour
and bow in obedience to its exactions."

The chilling severity of his tone smote like a flail the loving
heart, which had rebelled only against the apparent lack of faith in
its owner, and springing forward Mrs. Lindsay threw her arms around
her brother's neck.

"Oh, Peyton! don't look at me so sternly, as if I were a sort of
domestic Caiaphas set to catechise and condemn you; or as if I were
unjustly impugning your motives. It is all your fault,--of course it
is,--for you have spoiled me by unreserved confidence heretofore, and
you ought not to blame me in the least for feeling hurt when at this
late day you indulge in mysteries. Now kiss me, and forget my ugly
temper, and set it all down to that Pandora legacy of sleepless
curiosity, which dear mother Eve received in her impudent tête-à-tête
with the serpent, and which she spitefully saw fit to bequeath to
every daughter who has succeeded her. So--we are at peace once more?
Now keep your horrid secrets to yourself, and welcome!"

"You persist in believing that they must inevitably be horrid?" said
he, softly stroking her rosy cheek with his open palm.

"I persist in begging that you will not expect me to adopt the
acrobatic style, or require me to instantly attain sanctification
_per saltum!_ You must be satisfied with the assurance that you are
indeed my 'Royal Highness,' and that in my creed it is written the
king can do no wrong. There, dear, I am not at all addicted to humble
pie, and I have already disposed of a large and unpalatable slice."

She made a grimace, whereat he smiled, kissed her again, and answered
very gently:

"Will you permit me to put an appendix to your creed? 'Charity
suffereth long, and is kind; is not easily provoked, thinketh no
evil.' My sister, I want you to help me. In some things I find myself
as powerless without your co-operation as a pair of scissors with the
rivet lost; I cannot cut through obstacles unless you are in your
proper place."

"For shame, you spiteful Pequod! to rivet your treacherous appeal
with so sharply pointed an illustration! Scissors, indeed! I will be
revenged by cutting all your work after a biased fashion. How would
it suit you, reverend sir, to take the rivet out of my tongue, and
repair your clerical scissors?"

"How narrowly you escaped being a genius! That is precisely what I
was about proposing to do, and now, dear, be sure you bid adieu to
all bias. Elise, I received a letter two days since, which annoyed me
beyond expression."

"I inferred as much, from the vindictive energy with which you thrust
it into the fire, and bored it with the end of the poker. Was it
infected with small-pox or leprosy?"

She opened her work basket, and began to crochet vigorously, keeping
her eyes upon her needle.

"Neither. I destroyed it simply and solely because it was the earnest
request of the writer, that I should commit it to the flames."

"_Par parenthèse!_ from the beginning of time have not discord,
mischief, trouble--been personified by females? Has there been a
serious _imbroglio_ since the days of Troy without some vexatious
Helen? Now don't scold me, if in this case I conjecture,--He? She?
It?"

"The letter was from a mother, pleading for her child, whom I several
years ago promised to protect and to befriend. Subsequent events
induced me to hope that she would never exact a fulfilment of the
pledge, and I was unpleasantly surprised when the appeal reached me."

"Let me understand fully the little that you wish to tell me. Do you
mean that you were unprepared for the demand, because the mother had
forfeited the conditions under which you gave the promise?"

"You unduly intensify the interpretation. My promise was
unconditional, but I certainly have never expected to be called upon
to verify it."

"What does it involve?"

"The temporary guardianship of a child ten years old, whom I have
never seen."

"He? She? It?"

"A girl, who will in all probability arrive before noon to-day."

"Peyton!"

The rose-coloured crochet web fell into her lap, and deep
dissatisfaction spread its sombre leaden banners over her telltale
face.

"I regret it more keenly than you possibly can; and, Elise, if I
could have seen the mother before it was too late, I should have
declined this painful responsibility."

"Too late? Is the woman dead?"

"No, but she has sailed for Europe, and notifies me that she leaves
the little girl under my protection."

"What a heartless creature she must be to abandon her child."

"On the contrary, she seems devotedly attached to her, and uses these
words: 'If it were not to promote her interest, do you suppose I
could consent to put the Atlantic between my baby and me?' The
circumstances are so unusual that I daresay you fail to understand my
exact position."

"I neither desire nor intend to force your confidence; but if you can
willingly answer, tell me whether the mother is in every respect
worthy of your sympathy."

"I frankly admit that upon some points I have been dissatisfied, and
her letter sorely perplexes me."

"What claim had she on you, when the promise was extorted?"

"She had none, save such as human misery always has on human
sympathy. I performed the marriage ceremony for her when she was a
mere child, and felt profound compassion for the wretchedness that
soon overtook her as a wife and mother."

"Then, my dear brother, there is no alternative, and you must do your
duty; and I shall not fail to help you to the fullest extent of my
feeble ability. Since it cannot be averted, let us try to put our
hearts as well as hands into the work of receiving the waif. Where
has the child been living?"

"For nearly seven years in a convent."

"_Tant mieux!_ We may at least safely infer she has been shielded
from vicious and objectionable companionship. How is her education to
be conducted in future?"

"Her mother has arranged for the semi-annual payment of a sum quite
sufficient to defray all necessary expenses, including tuition at
school; but she urges me, if compatible with my clerical duties, to
retain the school fees, and teach the child at home, as she dreads
outside contaminating associations, and wishes the little one reared
with rigid ideas of rectitude and propriety. Will you receive her
among your music pupils?"

"Have I a heart of steel, and a soul of flint? And since when did you
successfully trace my pedigree to its amiable source in--

           'Gorgons and hydras and chimeras dire'?

"What is her name?"

Mr. Hargrove hesitated a moment, and, detecting the faint colour that
tinged his olive cheek, his sister smilingly relieved him.

"Never mind, dear. What immense latitude we are allowed! If she prove
a meek, sweet cherub, a very saint in bib-aprons,--with velvety eyes
brown as a hazel nut, and silky chestnut ringlets,--I shall gather
her into my heart and coo over her as--Columba, or Umilta, or
Umbeline, or Una; but should we find her spoiled, and thoroughly
leavened with iniquity,--a blonde, yellow-haired tornado,--then a
proper regard for the 'unities will suggest that I vigorously
enter a Christian protest, and lecture her grimly as Jezebel,
Tomyris,--Fulvia or Clytemnestra.'"

"She shall be called Regina Orme, and if it will not too heavily tax
your kindness, I should like to give her the small room next your
own, and ask Douglass to move across the hall and take the front
chamber opening on the verandah. The little girl may be timid, and it
would comfort her to feel that you are within call should she be sick
or become frightened. I am sure Douglass will not object to the
change."

"Certainly not. Blessings on his royal heart! He would not be my own
noble boy if he failed to obey any wish of yours."

I will at once superintend the transfer of his books and clothes, for
if the child comes to-day you have left me little time for
preparation.

She put away the crochet basket and, looking affectionately at the
grave face that watched her movements, said soberly:

"Do not look so lugubrious; remember Abraham's example of
hospitality, and let us do all we can for this motherless lamb, or
kid,--whichever she may prove. One thing more, and here-after I shall
hold my peace. You need not live in chronic dread, lest the Guy
Fawkes of female curiosity pry into, and explode your mystery; for I
assure you, Peyton, I shall never directly or indirectly question the
child, and until you voluntarily broach the subject I shall never
mention it to you. Are you satisfied?"

"Fully satisfied with my sister, and inexpressibly grateful for her
unquestioning faith in me."

She swept him an exaggerated courtesy, and, despite the grey threads
that began to glint in her auburn hair, ran up the stairway as
lightly as a girl of fifteen.

For some time he stood with his hands behind him, gazing abstractedly
through the open window, and now and then he heard the busy patter of
hurrying feet in the room over head, while snatches of Easter
anthems, and the swelling "Amen" of a "Gloria" rolled down the steps,
assuring him that all doubt and suspicion had been ejected from the
faithful, fond, sisterly heart.

Taking his broad-brimmed gardening hat from the table, the pastor
went down among his flower-beds, followed by Biörn, to whose innate
asperity of temper was added the snarling fretfulness of old age.

A fine young brood of white Brahma chickens, having surreptitiously
effected an entrance into the sacred precincts of the flower-garden,
were now diligently prosecuting their experiments in entomotomy right
in the heart of a border of choice carnations. When Biörn had chased
the marauders to the confines of the poultry yard, and watched the
last awkward fledgling scramble through the palings, his master began
to repair the damage, and soon became absorbed in the favourite task
of tying up the spicy tufts of bloom that deluged the air with
perfume as he lifted and bent the slender stems. His straw hat shut
out the sight of surrounding objects, and he only turned his head
when Mrs. Lindsay put her hand on his shoulder, and exclaimed:

"Peyton, 'the Philistines _be_ upon thee'!"

"Do you mean that she has come?"

"I think so; there is a carriage at the gate, and I noticed a trunk
beside the driver."

He rose hastily, and stood irresolute, visibly embarrassed.

"Why, Peyton! Recollect your text last Sunday: 'No man having put his
hand to the plough,' etc., etc., etc. It certainly is rather hard to
be pelted with, one's own sermons, but it would never do to turn your
back upon this benevolent furrow. Come, pluck up courage, and front
the inevitable."

"Elise, how can you jest? I am sorely burdened with gloomy
forebodings of coming ill. You cannot imagine how I shrink from this
responsibility."

"It is rather too late, dear, to climb upon the stool of repentance.
Take this beast of Bashan by the horns, and have done with it. There
is the bell! Shall I accompany you?"

"Oh, certainly."

Hannah met them, and held up a card.

                  ERLE PALMA,
                        _New York City_.

As the minister entered his parlour, Mr. Palma advanced to meet him,
holding out his hand.

"I hope Dr. Hargrove has been prepared for my visit, and understands
its object?"

"I am glad to know you, sir, and had reason to expect you. Allow me
to present Mr. Palma to my sister, Mrs. Lindsay. I am exceedingly----"

The sentence was never completed, and he stood with his eyes fastened
on the child who leaned against the window watching him with an eager
breathless interest as some caged creature eyes a new keeper,
wondering, mutely questioning, whether cruelty or kindness will
predominate in the strange custodian.

For a moment, oblivious of all else, each gazed into the eyes of the
other, and a subtle magnetic current flashed from soul to soul,
revealing certain arcana, which years of ordinary acquaintance
sometimes fail to unveil. From the pastor's countenance melted every
trace of doubt and apprehension; from that of the girl all shadow of
distrust.

Studying the tableau, Mr. Palma saw the clergyman smile, and as if
involuntarily open his arms; and he was astonished when the shy,
reticent child who had repulsed all his efforts to become acquainted,
suddenly glided forward and into the outstretched arms of her new
guardian. Weary from the long journey and rigid restraint imposed
upon her feelings, the closely pent emotion broke all barriers, and,
clinging to the minister Regina found relief in a flood of tears. Mr.
Hargrove sat down, and, keeping his arm around her, said tenderly:

"Are you so unwilling to come and live under my care? Would you
prefer to remain with Mr. Palma?" She put her hands up, and, clasping
them at the back of his head, answered brokenly:

"No--no I it is not that. Your face shows me you are good--so good!
But I can't help crying,--I have tried so hard to keep from it, ever
since I kissed the Sisters good-bye,--and everything is so
strange--and my throat aches, and aches--oh, don't scold me! Please
let me cry!"

"As much as you please. We know your poor little heart is almost
breaking, and a good cry will help you."

He gathered her close to his bosom, and the lawyer was amazed at the
confiding manner in which she nestled her head against the stranger's
shoulder. Mrs. Lindsay untied and removed the hat and veil, and,
placing a glass of water to the parched trembling lips, softly kissed
her tearful cheek, and whispered:

"Now, dear, try to compose yourself. Come with me and bathe your
face, and then you will feel better."

"Don't take me away. I have stopped crying. It rests me so, to feel
somebody's arms around me."

"Well--suppose you try my arms awhile? I assure you they are quite
ready to take you in, and hug you close. Just let me show you how I
put my arms around my own child, though he is a man. Come, dear."

Mrs. Lindsay gently disengaged the clasped hands resting on her
brother's neck, and drew Regina into her arms, while, won by her
sweet voice and soft touch, the latter allowed herself to be led
into another room.

They had scarcely disappeared when Mr. Palma said:

"I find I was mistaken in supposing that you and your ward were
strangers."

"We are strangers, at least I never saw her until to-day."

"Did you mesmerize her?"

"Not that I am aware of. What suggests such an idea?"

"She receives your friendly overtures so graciously, and rejected
mine with such chill politeness. I presume you are aware of the fact
that we have a joint guardianship over this child?"

"If you will walk into the library, where we can escape intrusion, I
should like to have some confidential conversation with you."

When he had placed his visitor in his own easy chair, and locked the
door of the library, Mr. Hargrove sat down beside the oval table,
and, folding his hands before him, leaned forward scrutinizing the
handsome non-committal face of the stranger, and conjecturing how far
he would be warranted in unburdening his own oppressed heart.

Coolly impassive, and without a vestige of curious interest, the
lawyer quietly met his incisive gaze.

"Mr. Palma, may I ask whether Regina's mother has unreservedly
communicated her history to you?"

"She has acquainted me with only a few facts, concerning which she
desired legal advice."

"Has she given you her real name?"

"I know her only as Madame Odille Orphia Orme, an actress of very
remarkable beauty and great talent."

"Do you understand the peculiar circumstances that attended her
marriage?"

"I merely possess her assurance that she was married by you."

"Have you been informed who is Regina's father?"

"The name has always been carefully suppressed, but she told me
that Orme was merely an _alias_."

"Have you ever suspected the truth?"

"Really, that is a question I cannot answer. I have at times
conjectured, but only in a random unauthorized way. I should very
much like to know, but my client declined giving me all the facts, at
least at present; and while her extreme reticence certainly hampers
me, it prevents me from asking you for the information, which she
promises ere long to give me."

Mr. Hargrove bowed and leaned back more easily in his chair, fully
satisfied concerning the nature of the man with whom he had to deal.

"You doubtless think it singular that Mrs. Orme should commit her
daughter to my care, while keeping me in ignorance of her parentage.
A few days since she signed in the presence of witnesses a cautiously
worded instrument, in which she designated you and me as joint
guardians of Regina Orme, and specified that should death or other
causes prevent you from fulfilling the trust, I should assume
exclusive control of her daughter until she attained her majority,
or was otherwise disposed of. To this arrangement I at length very
reluctantly assented, because it is a charge for which I have no
leisure, and even less inclination; but as she seems to anticipate
the time when a lawsuit may be inevitable, and wishes my services,
she finally overruled my repugnance to the office forced upon me."

"I must ask you one question, which subsequent statements will
explain. Do you regard her in all respects as a worthy, true, good
woman?"

"The mystery of an assumed name always casts a shadow, implying the
existence of facts or of reports inimical to the party thus ambushed;
and concealment presupposes either indiscretion, shame, or crime.
This circumstance excited unfavourable suspicions in my mind, but she
assured me she had a certificate of her marriage, and that you would
verify this statement. Can you do so? Was she legally married when
very young?"

"She was legally married in this room eleven years ago."

"I am glad it is susceptible of proof. This point established, I can
easily answer your question in the affirmative. As far as I am
acquainted with her record, Mrs. Orme is a worthy woman, and I may
add, a remarkably cautious circumspect person for one so
comparatively unaccustomed to the admiration which is now lavished
upon her. I believe it is conceded that she is the most beautiful
woman in New York, but she shelters herself so securely in the
constant presence of a plain but most respectable old couple, with
whom she resides, and who accompany her when travelling, that it is
difficult to see her, except upon the stage. Even in her business
visits to my office she has always been attended by old Mrs. Waul."

"Can you explain to me how one so uneducated and inexperienced as she
certainly was has so suddenly attained, not only celebrity (which is
often cheaply earned), but eminence in a profession, involving the
amount of culture requisite for dramatic success?"

A slight smile showed the glittering line of the lawyer's teeth.

"When did you see her last?"

"Seven years ago."

"Then I venture the assertion that you would not recognize her should
you see her in one of her favourite and famous _rôles_. When, where,
or by whom she was trained I know not, but some acquaintance with the
most popular ornaments of her profession justifies my opinion that no
more cultivated or artistic actress now walks the stage than Madame
Odille Orme. She is no mere _amateur_ or novice, but told me she had
laboriously and studiously struggled up from the comparatively menial
position of seamstress. Even in Paris I have never heard a purer,
finer rendition of a passage in _Phèdre_ than one day burst from her
lips in a moment of deep feeling, yet I cannot tell you how or where
she learned French. She made her _début_ in tragedy, somewhere in the
West, and when she reappeared in New York her success was brilliant.
I have never known a woman whose will was so patiently rigid, so
colossal, whose energy was so tireless in the pursuit of one special
aim. She has the vigilance and tenacity of a Spanish bloodhound."

"In the advancement of her scheme, do you believe her capable of
committing a theft?"

"What do you denominate a theft?"

The piercing black eyes of the lawyer were fixed with increased
interest upon the clergyman.

"Precisely what every honest man means by the term. If Mrs. Orme
resolved to possess a certain paper to which she had been denied
access, do you think she would hesitate to break into a house, open a
secret drawer, and steal the contents?"

"Not unless she had a legal right to the document, which was unjustly
withheld from her, and even then my knowledge of the lady's character
inclines me to believe that she would hesitate, and resort to other
means."

"You consider her strictly honest and truthful?"

"I am possessed of no facts that lead me to indulge a contrary
opinion. Suppose you state the case?"

Briefly Mr. Hargrove narrated the circumstances attending his last
interview with Regina's mother, and the loss of the tin box, dwelling
in conclusion upon the perplexing fact that in the recent letter
received from her relative to her daughter's removal to the
parsonage, Mrs. Orme had implored him to carefully preserve the
license he had retained as the marriage certificate in her possession
might not be considered convincing proof, should litigation ensue. He
could not understand the policy of this appeal, nor reconcile its
necessity with his conviction that she had stolen the license.

Joining his scholarly white hands with the tips of his fingers
forming a cone, Mr. Palma leaned back in his chair and listened,
while no hint of surprise or incredulity found expression in his
cold, imperturbable face. When the recital was ended, he merely
inclined his head.

"Do you not regard this as strong evidence against her? Be frank, Mr.
Palma."

"It is merely circumstantial. Write to Mr. Orme, inform her of the
loss of the license, and I think you will find that she is as
innocent of the theft as you or I. I know she went to Europe
believing that the final proof of her marriage was in your keeping;
for in the event of her death, while abroad, she has empowered me to
demand that paper from you, and to present it with certain others in
a court of justice."

"I wish I could see it as you do. I hope it will some day be
satisfactorily cleared up, but meanwhile I must indulge a doubt. On
one point at least my mind is at rest; this little girl is
unquestionably the child of the man who married her mother, for I
have never seen so remarkable a likeness as she bears to him."

He sighed heavily, and patted the shaggy head which Biörn had some
time before laid unheeded on his knee.

During the brief silence that ensued the lawyer gazed out of the
window, through which floated the spicy messages of carnations, and
the fainter whispers of pale cream-hearted Noisette roses; then he
rose and put both hands in his pockets.

"Dr. Hargrove, you and I have been--with, I believe, equal
reluctance--forced into the same boat, and since _bongré malgré_ we
must voyage for a time together, in the interest of this unfortunate
child, candour becomes us both. Men of my profession sometimes resort
to agencies that the members of yours usually shrink from. I too was
once very sceptical concerning the truth of Mrs. Orme's fragmentary
story, for it was the merest _disjecta membra_ which she entrusted to
me, and my credulity declined to honour her heavy drafts. To satisfy
myself, I employed a shrewd female detective to 'shadow' the pretty
actress for nearly a year, and her reports convinced me that my
client, whilst struggling with Napoleonic ambition and pertinacity to
attain the zenith of success in her profession, was as little
addicted to coquetry as the statue of Washington in Union Square, or
the steeple of Trinity Church; and that in the midst of flattery and
adulation she was the same proud, cold, suffering, almost
broken-hearted wife she had always appeared in her conferences with
me. Induging this belief, I have accepted the joint guardianship of
her daughter, on condition that whenever it becomes necessary to
receive her under my immediate protection, I shall be made
acquainted with her real name."

"Thank you, my dear sir, for your frankness, which I would most
joyfully reciprocate, were I not bound by a promise to make no
revelations until she gives me permission, or her death unseals my
lips. I hope you fully comprehend my awkward position. There is a
conspiracy to defraud her and her child of their social and legal
rights, and I fear both will be victimized; but she insists that
secrecy will deliver her from the snares of her enemies. I suppose
you are aware that General----"

He paused, and bit his lip, and again the lawyer's handsome mouth
disclosed his perfect teeth.

"There is no mischief in your dropped stitch; I shall not pick it up.
I know that Mrs. Orme's husband is in Europe, and I was assured that
motives of a personal character induced her to make certain
professional engagements in England and upon the Continent. I am not
enthusiastic, and rarely venture prophecies, but I shall be much
disappointed if her Richelieu tactics do not finally triumph."

"Can you tell me why she does not openly bring suit against her
husband for bigamy?"

"Simply because she has been informed that the policy of the defence
would be to at once attack her reputation, which she seems to guard
with almost morbid sensitiveness on account of her daughter. She has
been warned of the dangerous consequences of a suit, but if forced to
extremities will hazard it; hence I bide my time."

He threw back his lordly head, and his brilliant eyes seemed to
dilate, as though the suggestion of the suit stirred his pulse, as
the breath of carnage and the din of distant battle that of the
war-horse, panting for the onward dash.

A species of human petrel,--a juridic _Procellaria Pelagica_
whose _habitat_ was the court-house,--Erle Palma lived amid the
ceaseless surges of litigation, watching the signs of rising tempests
in human hearts, plunging in defiant exultation where the billows
rode highest, never so elated as when borne triumphantly upon the
towering crest of some conquering wave of legal _finesse_, or
impassioned invective, and rarely saddened in the flush of victory by
the pale spectres of strangled hope, fortune, or reputation which
float in the _débris_ of the wrecks that almost every day drift
mournfully away from the precincts of courts of justice.

The striking of the clock caused him to draw out his watch and
compare the time.

"I believe the regular train does not leave V---- until night, but
the conductor told me I might catch an excursion train bound south,
and due here about half-past one o'clock. It is necessary for me to
return with as little delay as possible, and after I have spoken to
Regina I must hasten to the depot You will find my address pencilled
on the card, and I presume Mrs. Orme has given you hers. Should you
desire to confer with me at any time relative to the child, I shall
promptly respond to your letters, but have no leisure to spend in
looking after her. The semiannual remittance shall not be neglected,
and Regina has a package for you containing money for contingent
expenses."

They entered the hall, and found the little stranger sitting alone on
the lowest step of the stairway, where Mrs. Lindsay had left her,
while she went to prepare luncheon for the travellers. She was very
quiet, bore no visible traces of tears, but the tender lips wore a
piteously sad expression of heroically repressed grief, and the
purlish shadows under her solemn blue eyes rendered them more than
ever--pleadingly beautiful.

As the two gentlemen stood before her she rose, and caught her
breath, pressing one little palm over her heart, while the other
grasped the balustrade.

"Don't you think, dear, that you ought to be well cared for, when you
have two guardians--two adopted fathers, Mr. Palma and I--to watch
over you? We both intend that you shall be the happiest little girl
in the State. Will you help us?"

"I will try to be good."

Her voice was very low, but steady, as if she realized she was making
a compact.

"Then I know we shall all succeed."

Mr. Hargrove walked to the front door, and the lawyer put on his hat
and came back to the steps.

"Regina, I have explained to you that I brought you here because your
mother so directed me, and I believe Dr. Hargrove will be a kind,
good friend. Little one, I do not like to leave you so soon among
strangers, but it cannot be helped. Will you be contented and happy?"

There was singular emphasis in her reply.

"I shall never complain to you, Mr. Palma."

"Because you think I would not 'Sympathize with you? I am not a man
given to soft words, nor am I accustomed to deal with children, but
indeed I should be annoyed if I thought you were unhappy here."

"Then you must not be annoyed at all."

His quick nervous laugh seemed to startle her unpleasantly, for she
shrank closer to the balustrade.

"How partial you are, preferring Dr. Hargrove already, and flying
into his arms at sight! Do you wish to make me jealous?"

His eyes gleamed mischievously, and he saw the blood rising in her
white cheeks.

"Dr. Hargrove opened his arms to me, because he saw how miserable I
was."

"If I should chance to open mine, do you think that by any accident
you would rush into them?"

"You know you would never have dreamed of doing such a thing. Are you
going away now?"

"In a moment. If you get into trouble, or need anything, will you
write to me? Remember, I am your mother's friend."

"Is not Mr. Hargrove also?"

"Certainly."

He took her hands, and bending down looked kindly into the delicate
lovely face.

"Good-bye, Regina."

"Good-bye, Mr. Palma."

"I hope, little girl, that we shall always be friends."

"You are very good to wish it. Thank you for taking care of me.
Because you are my mother's best friend, I shall pray for you every
night."

His sternly moulded lips twitched with some strange passing
reminiscence of earlier years, but the emotion vanished, and,
pressing her hands gently, he turned and went down the walk leading
to the gate.




CHAPTER V.


"Please let me come in, and help you."

Regina knocked timidly at the door of the parsonage guest's chamber,
and Mrs. Lindsay answered from within:

"Come in? Of course you may, but what help do you imagine you can
render, you useless piece of prettiness? Shall I set you on the
mantlepiece between the china kittens, and the glass lambs, right
under the sharp nose of my grandmother's portrait, where her great
solemn eyes will keep you in order? Whence do all those delectable
odours come? Are you a walking _sachet?_"

She was kneeling before an open drawer of the bureau, methodically
arranging sundry garments, and, pausing in the task, looked over her
shoulder at the girl who stood near, holding her hands behind her.

"I am sure I could help you, if I were only allowed to try. I am
quite a large girl now, more than a year older than when I came here,
and Hannah has taught me to do ever so many things. She says I will
be a famous cook some day. You didn't know that I made up the Sally
Lunn for tea?"

"What an ambitious bit of majesty you are! You wish to reign in the
kitchen, rule in the poultry yard, and now presume to invade my
province--my special kingdom of making things ready for the Bishop?
Have you been anointing yourself with a whole vial of Lubin's extract
of--Ah!--delicious--what is it?"

"Whatever it may be, will you let me fix it to suit myself on the
Bishop's bureau?"

"No, you impertinent, wily Delilah in short clothes! I never promise
in the dark; show it to me first, and then perhaps I may negotiate
with you. You know as well as I do that the Bishop dearly loves
perfumes, and if I should generously concede you the privilege of
presenting 'sweet-smelling savours' unto him you might some day
depose me--and I wish you distinctly to understand that I intend to
reign over him as long as I live; not an inch of territory shall you
filch."

Regina held up her hands, displaying in one several feathery sprays
of Belgian honeysuckle, with half of its petals pearl, half of the
palest pink; in the other a bunch of double violets of the rarest
shade of delicate lilac, so unusual in the floral kingdom.

"You should be called 'Mab,' and ride about the world on a butterfly,
or a streak of moonshine. How did you coax or conjure that
honeysuckle into blooming before its appointed time?"

"Here are three pieces, two for the Bishop, and one for you. May I
fasten it in your hair?"

"You recite a lesson in history every day, don't you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Have you come to the Salem-witches yet?"

"Not yet. What has my history to do with this honeysuckle?"

"When you study metaphysics and begin the chase after that
psychological fox--the-law-of-association-of-ideas, you will
understand. Meanwhile, thank your stars, dear, that you did not live
in Massachusetts some years ago, or you would certainly nave gone to
heaven in the shape of smoke. How you stare, you white owl! As if you
thought St. Vitus had rented my tongue for a dancing-saloon. It is
all because the Bishop is coming. My blessed Bishop! Yes, put the
handsomest spray in my hair, and then, if you make me look young and
very pretty, you may do as you like with the others."

Still kneeling, she inclined her head, while Regina twisted the
wreath around the coil of neatly braided hair. Then, kissing the girl
lightly on her cheek, Mrs. Lindsay closed the drawer and rose.
Drawing a silver cup from her pocket, Regina filled it with water,
placed it close to the mirror, and proceeded to arrange the violets
and honeysuckle. Stepping back to inspect the effect, she folded her
hands and smiled.

"Mrs. Lindsay, tell him I gathered them for him, because he was kind
to me when I came here a stranger, and I wish to thank him. When he
is at home it seems always summer-time, don't you think so?"

The mother's eyes filled, and, laying a hand on the girl's head, she
answered:

"Yes, dear, he is my sunshine, and my summer-time."

"How long will he stay with us?"

"He could not say positively when his last letter was written, but I
hope to keep him several months. You know it is possible he may be
forced to go to England, in order to complete some of his studies
before--oh, Regina! could we bear to have two oceans swelling between
our Bishop and us?"

"Why, then, will you let him go?"

"Can I help it?"

"You are his mother, and he would never disobey you."

"But he is a man, and I cannot tie him to my apron strings as I do my
bunch of keys. I must not stand in the way, and prevent him from
doing his duty."

"I suppose I don't yet know everything about such matters, but I
should think it was his duty first to please you. How devoted he is
to 'duty'? It must be horrible to leave all one loves, and go out to
India among the heathens."

"Pray, what do you know about the heathens?" said a manly voice, and
instantly two strong arms gathered the pair in a cordial embrace.

"My son! You stole a march upon me! Oh, Douglass, I never was half so
glad to see you as now!"

"If you do not stop crying, I shall feel tempted to doubt you. Tears
are so unusual in your eyes that I shall be disposed to regard your
welcome as equivocal."

He kissed her on cheek and lips, and added:

"Regina, can't you contrive to say you are a little glad to see me?"

There was no reply, and, turning to look for her, he found she had
vanished.

"Queer little thing, she has gone without a word, though she insisted
on dressing her silver cup with those flowers, which she thought
would suggest to you her gratitude for your numerous little acts of
kindness. Have you seen your uncle?"

"Yes, mother, I stopped a few moments at the church, where he is
engaged with one of the committee. Uncle Peyton is not looking well.
Has he been sick?"

"He has suffered a good deal with his throat since you left us, and
now and then I notice he coughs. He is overworked, and now that you
can fill his pulpit he will have an opportunity to rest. Oh, my son!
in every respect your visit is a blessing."

Leaning her head on his breast, she looked up with proud and almost
adoring tenderness, and, drawing his face down to hers, held it
close, kissing him with that intense clinging fervour which only
mother-love kindles.

"Does my little mother know that she is spoiling her boy by inches;
making a nursery darling, instead of a hardy soldier of him? You are
weaving silken bonds to fasten me more securely here, when you ought
rather to aid me in snapping the fetters of affection, habit, and
association. Come, be so good as to brush the dust out of my hair,
while you tell me everything about everybody, which you have failed
to write during these long months of absence."

For some time they talked of family matters, of occurrences in V----,
of some invidious and unkind remarks, some caustic personal
criticisms upon the pastor's household affairs, which had emanated
from Mrs. Prudence Potter, a widowed member of the congregation, who
had once rashly dreamed of presiding over the clerical hearth as Mrs.
Peyton Hargrove, and having failed to possess her kingdom had become
a merciless spy upon all that happened in the forbidden realm.

"Poor Mrs. Prue! what a warfare exists between her name and her
character. She should petition the legislature to allow her to be
called--Mrs. Echidna! My son, I think modern civilization will remain
incomplete, will not perform its mission, until it relieves society
from the depredations of these scorpions, by colonizing them where
they will expend their poison without dangerous results. If sting
they must, let it be among themselves. If I were lunatic enough to
desire to vote, I should spend my franchise in favour of a 'Gossip
Reservation'--somewhere close to the Great Western Desert, to which
the disappointed widows, spiteful old maids, and snarling dyspeptic
bachelors of this much-suffering generation should be relegated for
domiciliation and reform. Freedom serves America much as Æsop's stork
did the frogs: we are appallingly free to be devoured by envy,
stabbed by calumny, strangled by slander. I believe if I were a
painter, and desired to portray Cleopatra's death, I would assuredly
give to the asp the baleful features and sneering smirk of Mrs.
Prudence. Every Sunday when she twists those two curls on her
forehead till they lift themselves like horns, puts up her
eye-glasses and pays her respects to our pew, I catch myself
whispering '_Cerastes!_' and wishing that I were only the _camera_
of a photographer."

"Take care, mother! would you accept a homestead in your contemplated
'Reservation'?"

She pinched his ear.

"Don't presume, sir, to preach to me. Really, I often wonder how
Peyton can force himself to smile and parry the vinegar cruets that
woman throws at him in the shape of observations upon the 'rapid
decline of evangelical piety,' and the 'sadly backslidden nature' of
the clergy."

"Because he is the very best man in the world, and faithfully
practises what he preaches--Christian charity. What is Mrs. Pru's
latest grievance?"

"That Peyton does not admit her to his confidence, and supply her
with all the particulars of Regina's history and family, which he
withholds even from you and me, and about which we should never dream
of catechizing him. In a better cause, her bold effrontery would be
sublime. Fortunately she was absent in Vermont for some months after
the child came, and curiosity had subsided into indifference until
she returned,--when lo! a geyser of righteous anxiety and suspicion
boiled up in the congregation, and wellnigh scalded us. What do you
suppose she blandly asked me one day, in the child's presence? 'Were
not Mr. Hargrove's friends mistaken in believing he had never
married?' Now I contend that the law of the land should indict for
just such cruel and wicked innuendoes, because these social crimes
that the statutes do not reach work almost as much mischief and
misery as those offences against public peace which the laws declare
penal. I confess Mrs. Potter is my _bête-noire_, and I feel as no
doubt Paul did when he wrote to Timothy: 'Alexander the coppersmith
did me much evil; the Lord reward him according to his works.'"

"Mother, what reply did you make to her? I can imagine you towering
like Mrs. Siddons."

"You may be sure I unmasked a battery. I looked straight into her
little faded grey eyes, which straggle away from each other as if
ashamed of their mutual ferret experiences,--for you know one looks
out so, and one turns always up,--and I answered, that my brother had
been exceedingly fortunate, as, notwithstanding the numerous
matrimonial nets adroitly spread for him, he had escaped, like the
Psalmist, 'as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers,' and fled for
safety unto the mountain of celibacy. Bishop, if the new school of
science lack the link that binds us to the ophidian type, I can
furnish a thoroughly 'developed' specimen of an 'evolved' Melusina;
for Mrs. Pru's ancestors must have been not very remotely,
cobra-capellos. Such a chronic blister as she is keeps up more
inflammation in a church than all the theology at Andover can cool.
As for general society here in V----, she damages it more than all
the three hundred foxes of Samson did the corn-fields, vineyards,
and olives of the Philistines. What are you laughing at?"

"The ludicrous dismay that will seize you when the constablery of
your progressive civilization notify you that you must emigrate to
the Gossip and Slander Reservation. Poor Mrs. Prudence Potter! from
my earliest recollection she has been practising archery upon the
target of her neighbours' characters, and she seeks social martyrdom
as diligently as Sir Galahad hunted the Sangreal. In the form of
ostracism, I think she is certainly reaping her reward. Mother, let
her rest."

"With all my heart! ''tis a consummation devoutly to be wished;' but
that is just the last thing she proposes, until the muscles of her
tongue and eyes are paralyzed. Rest indeed! Did you ever see a hyena
caged in a menagerie? Did you ever know it to rest for an instant
from its snarling, snapping, grinning round? My son, I would not for
my right hand malign or injure her, but how can I sincerely indulge
charitable reflections concerning a person who has so persistently
persecuted your uncle?"

"Then, dear little mother, do not think of her at all. Be assured her
ill-natured shafts will fall as blunt and harmless upon the noble
well-tried armour of my uncle's Christian character, as a bombardment
of cambric needles against the fortress of Cronstadt. How rapidly
Regina has grown, since she came among us? Her complexion is perfect.
Is she the same straightforward, guileless child I left her?"

"Unchanged except in the rapid expansion of her mind, which develops
surprisingly. She is the most mature child I have ever met, and I
presume it is attributable to the fact that she has never been thrown
with children, and having always associated with older persons, has
insensibly imbibed their staid thoughts, and adopted their quiet
ways. I should not be more astonished to see my prim puritanical
grandmother yonder step down from the frame, and turn a somersault on
the carpet, or indulge in leap-frog, than to find Regina guilty of
any boisterous hoidenish behaviour, or unrefined, undignified
language. If she had been born on the _Mayflower_, raised on Plymouth
Rock, and fed three times a day on the 'Blue Laws' of Connecticut,
she could not possibly have proved a more eminently 'proper' child.
Even Hannah, who you may recollect was so surly, harsh, and
suspicious when she first came here, and who really has as little
cordiality or enthusiasm in her nature as a gridiron or a
rolling-pin, seems now to be completely devoted to her; as nearly
infatuated as one of her flinty temperament can be,--and who conquers
old Hannah's heart--you will admit--must be wellnigh perfect."

"Does my uncle continue to teach her?"

"Yes, and I think it is one of his greatest pleasures. She is
ambitious and studious, and Peyton is never too weary to explain
whatever puzzles her. She is exceedingly fond of him, and he said
last week that she was his 'Jabez;' he had received her so
reluctantly, and she proved such a comfort and blessing?"

"I presume her mother writes to her occasionally?"

"Regularly every fortnight she receives a letter. Sometimes for days
after Regina looks perplexed and sorrowful, but she never divulges
the contents. Once, about two months ago, I found her lying on the
rug in her own room, with her face in her hands, and her mother's
last letter beside her. I asked if she had received any bad news, for
I knew she was crying in her quiet way, and she looked up, and said
in a tone that was really piteous: 'There is nothing new. It is
always the same old thing!--she does not know yet when she can come,
and I must be good and patient. Oh, Mrs. Lindsay! I am so hungry to
see my mother! When I look at her picture, I feel as if I would be
willing to die if I could only kiss her, and hear her say once more,
"My baby! My darling!" Last night I dreamed she took me in her arms
and hugged me tight, and looked at me as she used to do when she came
to the convent, and said, "Papa's own baby! Papa's poor stray lamb!"
Mrs. Lindsay, when I waked I had the pillow in my arms, and was
kissing it.' Now, Douglass, it is a great mystery how a mother could
voluntarily separate herself from such a child as Regina. I asked her
to show me the picture, and she cried a good deal, and said: 'I have
often wished to show it to you, but she says I must let no one see
it. Oh! she is so beautiful! Lovelier than the Madonnas in the
Chapels; only she always has tears in her eyes. I never saw her when
she did not weep. Mrs. Lindsay, help me to be good, teach me to be
smart in everything, that I may be some comfort to my mother.' The
saddest feature in the whole affair is, that Regina begins to suspect
there is some discreditable mystery about her mother and herself; but
Peyton says it is marvellous how delicately she treats the subject.
She came home one day from Sunday school and told him that Mrs.
Prudence asked her in the presence, of her class how her mother could
afford to dress her in such costly clothes; and whether she had ever
seen her father? Peyton wished to know what reply she made, and she
said her answer was: 'Mrs. Potter, if I were you and you were Regina
Orme, I think I would have my tongue cut out, before it should ask
you such questions.' Then Peyton told me she looked at him as if she
were reading his secret soul, and added; 'It is hard not to
understand everything, but I will be patient, for mother writes that
some day I shall know all; and no matter what people say--no matter
how strange things may seem--I will believe in my mother, as I
believe in God!' Most girls of her age would be curious to discover
what is concealed from her, but although your uncle thinks she is
uncertain whether her father be living or dead, she carefully shuns
all reference to the subject. There is the doorbell! Hannah will let
somebody in before I can fly down and tell her to excuse me. How
stupid of people not to know that my Bishop has come! Oh dear! it is
Mrs. Cartney, and she has come for the aprons I promised to make for
the Asylum children, and they have not been touched! Yes, Hannah, I
am coming. Why didn't you say I was engaged with my son?"

She disappeared, and after awhile Douglass Lindsay went down to the
library, and thence through the door opening upon two steps that led
into the garden.

It was one of those rare golden-aired days that sometimes break over
the bleak brows of brawling March in sunny prophecy of yet distant
summer; windless days, when rime and haze are equally unknown, and
tender fingers of the timid spring, lifting the shrouding sod,
advance tendril and leaf and bud as heralds of the annual
resurrection. Double daffodils stood erect and conspicuous like
commissioned officers along the line of yellow jonquils that bordered
the walks, and snowy narcissus and purple and rose hyacinths made a
fragrant mosaic over which the brown bees swung, and hummed their
ceaseless hymn--_laborare est orare_. Following the winding path that
led to the palings which shut out the poultry realm, the young
minister leaned against the gate, overshadowed by a tall lilac, and
looked across at the feathered folk, of which from boyhood he had
been particularly fond.

In the centre of the enclosure was a handsome pigeon-house, circular
in form, and easily accessible by a flight of steps, while upon the
top of a cupola that sprung from the roof was built a small but
prettily painted martin's home, in the quaint shape of the ark as we
find it in Scriptural illustrations. Throughout the length and
breadth of the Continent, probably no other mere _amateur_ fowl
fancier possessed such a collection as Mr. Hargrove had patiently and
gradually gathered from various sources. The peculiarity consisted in
the whiteness of the fowls;--turkeys, guineas, geese, ducks, English
Pile, Leghorn, Brahma chickens all spotlessly pure, while the pigeons
resembling drifting snow-flakes,--and the pheasants gleamed like
silver.

Upon one of the steps of the columbary sat Regina, with a basket of
mixed grain by her side, and in her lap a pair of white rabbits which
she was feeding with celery and cabbage leaves. At her feet stood two
beautiful Chinese geese, whose golden bills now and then approached
the edge of the basket, or encroached upon the rabbits' evening meal.
The girl was bareheaded, and the fading sunshine lingered lovingly
upon the glossy hair and delicate lovely face which had lost naught
of the purity that characterized it eighteen months before, while
during that time she had grown much taller, and gave promise of
attaining unusual height and symmetry.

The dress of Marie-Louise blue merino was relieved at the throat by a
neatly crimped ruffle, and, as in days of yore, she wore the white
apron with pretty pockets, and ruffled bands passing over her
shoulders and down to the belt behind, where broad strings of linen
were looped into a bow. Her abundant hair was plaited in two long
thick braids, and passed twice around her head, forming a jet
coronal, and imparting a peculiarly classic contour.

There was in this quiet fowlyard scene something so innocent, so
peaceful, that it was inexpressibly soothing and attractive to the
man who stood beneath the lilac boughs, jaded with unremitting study,
and laden with wearying schemes of future labour. Douglass Lindsay
was only twenty-five, but the education and habits of a theological
student had stamped a degree of gravity on his handsome face, which
was doubtless enhanced by a slight yet undeniable baldness.

Closely resembling his mother, except in the brownness of his fine
eyes, his countenance lacked the magnetic warmth and merry shifting
lights that rendered hers so pleasant, yet none who looked earnestly
upon it could doubt for an instant that he would prove a stanch,
faithful, worthy ensign of that Banner of Peace, which Jesus unfurled
among the olive-girdled hills of holy Judea.

With no leprous taint of bigotry to sully his soul, blur his vision,
or cramp his sphere of action, the broad stream of Christian charity
flowed from his noble, generous heart, sweeping away obstacles that
would have impeded the usefulness of a minister less catholic in
sympathy, more hampered by creed ligaments and denominational
fetters. To an almost womanly tenderness and susceptibility regarding
the sufferings of his fellow-creatures, he united an inflexible
adherence to the dictates of justice and the rigorous promptings of
conscience; and while devoutly yielding allegiance solely to the
Triune God, to whose service he had reverently dedicated his young
life, there were times when in almost ascetic self-abnegation he
unconsciously bowed down to that stem-lipped, stony Teraph who,
under the name of "Duty," sat a cowled and shrouded idol in the
secret oratory of his unselfish heart. Are there not seasons when
even the most orthodox wonder whether the _Dii Involuti_ passed away
for ever, with the _pateræ_ and _fibulæ_ that once rendered service
in the classic shades of Chusium and Monte-pulciana?

Scholarly in tastes, neither Mr. Lindsay's habits nor inclination led
him often into the flowery mazes of fashionable society, but,
standing upon the verge of Vanity Fair, he had looked curiously down
at the feverish whirl, the gilded shams, the maddening, murderous
conflict for place,--the empty mocking pageantry of the victorious,
the sickening despair and savage irony of the legions of the
defeated; and after the roar and shout and moan of the social
maelstrom, as presented in the great city where his studies had been
pursued, it was pleasant this afternoon to watch the fluttering white
creatures that surrounded that calm beautiful child, and to listen to
the soft cooing of the innocent lovers in the dovecote above her.

Opening the latticed gate he walked toward the group, and lifting the
basket, sat down on the steps.

"Why did you not wait, and invite me to come out and inspect your
pretty pets?"

"I thought your mother could not spare you this first afternoon, she
had so much to say to you; but I am very glad you have not quite
forgotten us. Do you see how tall the China geese have grown? When
the gander stretches his neck he can touch my shoulder with his bill.
Isn't he beautiful?"

"Decidedly the handsomest gander of my acquaintance. When I went away
you were trying to find a name for him. Did you succeed?"

"Yes, I call him Alcibiades."

"Why? Do you wish to insult the memory of the great Athenian?"

"I wish to compliment him, because he was so graceful and beautiful,
and was so fond of birds he carried them about in his bosom. My
Alcibiades is so good-natured he never fights or hisses at my
pigeons, and just now one of them lighted on his back, and picked up
the barley that had fallen on his feathers. Mr. Hargrove promises me
that just as soon as I can make money enough to pay the brickmason,
he will have a large cemented basin built near the pump, where the
geese and ducks can swim about every day."

"How do you propose to make money?" asked Douglass, lifting one of
the rabbits into his lap, and offering it a crisp morsel of celery.

"Don't you know that I sell the eggs? Those of the white guineas
bring three dollars a dozen, and I could sell more of the white
turkeys, at the same price, than we can spare. Our new pigeon palace
was paid for entirely out of the poultry money."

"Who keeps the poultry book?   Have you at last learned to multiply
fractions?"

She looked up, smiling into his laughing eyes.

"Mr. Lindsay, I am not so stupid as when you tried so hard to explain
that sum to me. I keep the account, and your uncle examines it once a
week. He says it will teach me to be accurate in my figures."

"What did you pay for your rabbits? I have a pair of Angolas for you,
but the man from whom I bought them advised me not to remove them
until all danger of cold weather had passed, as they are quite
young."

"Thank you, Mr. Lindsay. You are very kind to remember that I wished
for them last year. I did not buy these----"

She raised the rabbit from her apron, and rubbed her cheek against
its soft fur, then added in a lower and touching tone:

"My mother sent them to me. I can't tell how she found out that of
all things I wished most to have them, but you know, sir, that
mothers seem inspired, they always understand what is in their
children's hearts and minds, and need no telling. So I love these
more than all my pets; they are the latest message from my mother."

She held out her hand, and interpreting the expression in her superb
eyes, he placed the other rabbit in her arms, and for a moment she
pressed them close.

"I must shut them up until to-morrow, or the owls might make a supper
of them, as happened to some the Sisters kept at the convent."

She opened the door of a wired apartment beneath the pigeon-house,
where in an adjoining division the pheasants were settling upon their
perch, and carefully deposited the bouncing furry creatures on a bed
of wheat straw.

"Mr. Lindsay, the fowls are all going to roost, and you must wait
till morning to see the squabs, and broods of Brahmas and Leghorns.
They look like snowballs rolling about after their food."

As she locked up the grain, and balanced the key on her fingers, her
companion said:

"I must persuade Uncle Peyton to get some black Spanish, and a few
Poland chickens."

"Oh no! We don't want any black things; if they laid a dozen eggs a
day they could not come here. We never raise a fowl that has coloured
feathers; all our beauties must be like snow."

"I see you have converted my uncle to your pet doctrine, and before
long I suppose you will persuade him to sell his pretty bay, and buy
a white pony?"

"No, sir, I like 'Sultan' too well to care much about his colour, and
beside, Mr. Hargrove is attached to him. There is one thing we both
want very much indeed, and that is a white Ava cow. Your uncle read
me a description of those cattle last week, and said when you went to
the East he would ask you to try and send him one."

As he looked down at her perfect face, then at one of the doves that
had perched on her shoulder, and thought of treacherous swart Sepoys,
of Bengal tigers, of all the tangled work that lay before him in
Hindoostan jungles, a shadow fell over the young man's brow, and a
dull pain seemed to tighten the valves of his heart. Just then his
appointed lot in the Master's vineyard did not smile as alluringly as
the sunny slopes of Eschol; but he put aside the contrast.

"Regina, I saw Mr. Palma in New York."

"I hope he is well."

"He certainly looked so. Among other things, he asked if the art of
writing had been altogether omitted in your education. I told him I
was unacquainted with your accomplishments in that line, as I had
written you two letters which remained unanswered."

"But your mother thanked you for them in my name."

"Which was very sweet and good in my dear mother, but questionably
courteous in you. Mr. Palma sent you a present."

"He is very kind indeed, but if I am expected to write and thank him,
I would much rather not receive it."

"Do you dislike him?"

"How could I dislike my mother's best friend? I daresay he has a good
heart--of course he must have; but whenever I think of him I feel a
queer chill creep to my very finger-tips, as if the north wind blew
hard upon me, or an iceberg sailed by."

"Guess what he sent you."

"A copybook, pen, and ink?"

"He is too polished a gentleman to punish you so severely. Come and
let me show you his gift."

He led the way to the gallery at the rear of the house, and here they
found Mr. Hargrove and Mrs. Lindsay admiring a young Newfoundland
dog, which was chained to the balusters.

"Look, Regina! it is a waddling snow-bank! So round, so soft and
white! Did he come from Nova Zembla, or Hammerfest, or directly from
'Greenland's icy mountains'?"

"Mr. Palma looked all over New York and Brooklyn before he found a
pure white dog to suit him. It seems he knew Regina's fondness for
snowy pets, and this is the only Newfoundland I have ever seen who
had not even a dark hair. Mr. Palma put this handsome collar and
chain upon him, and asked me to bring him to Regina. He will be very
large when grown; now he is only a few months old."

Regina softly patted the woolly head, and her eyes glistened with
delight.

"How did Mr. Palma guess that I wanted a dog?"

"He requested me to suggest something that would please you, and I
told him that all at the parsonage were grieving over the death of
poor old Biörn. He immediately decided to send you a dog, and this is
a noble sagacious creature."

"What is his name?"

"That is left entirely to your taste; but I hope you will not go all
the way to Greece to find a title, as you did for your classic
gander."

"Then I will call him whatever Mr. Hargrove likes best."

As she spoke Regina nestled her fingers into the pastor's hand, and
he smiled down into her radiant face.

"My dear child, exercise your own preference. Have you no choice?"

"None."

"Suppose you name him 'Erl-King' in compliment to Mr. Palma?"

"I should never dare to call him that; it would seem impertinent. He
is such a splendid dog, I should like a fine, uncommon, grand name
out of some of Mr. Hargrove's learned books."

"Oh don't, Regina! It will be positively cruel to turn Peyton loose
among his folios, and invite him to afflict that innocent orphaned
brute with some dreadful seven-syllabled abomination, which he will
convince you is Arabic, or Sanscrit, classic or mediæval, Gaelic,
Finnish or Norse, but which I warn you will serve your jaws (more
elegant form--'maxillary bones') very much as an attack of mumps
would, and will torture the victim into hydrophobia. Be pitiful, and
say Teazer, Tiger, Towser, but don't throw the sublime nomenclature
of the classics literally to the dogs!"

"Now, mother, I protest against your infringement of Uncle Peyton's
accorded rights. Be quiet, please, and let him give Regina a few
historic names, from which she can select one."

Douglass passed his arm over Mrs. Lindsay's shoulder, and both
watched the eager intent face which the girl lifted to the pastor.

He took off his glasses, wiped them with the end of his coat, and,
readjusting them on his nose, addressed himself to his ward.

"There is an East Indian tradition that a divinely appointed
greyhound guards the golden herds of stars and sunbeams for the Lord
of Heaven, and collects the nourishing rain-clouds as the celestial
cows to the milking-place. That greyhound was called _Saramá_. Will
that suit you?"

She shook her head.

"The Greeks tell us of a dog which was kept in the temple of
Æsculapius at Athens, and on one occasion when a robber entered and
stole the gold and silver treasures from the altar, the dog followed
him for several days and nights, until the thief, who could neither
beat him away nor persuade him to eat meat, was captured and carried
back to Athens. Now, dear, this was a very shrewd and courageous
animal, and his name was Capparus."

"Why did not his owner change it for something handsome, after he
performed such service?"

Regina spoke dubiously, and looked down at the new pet, who wagged
his plumy tail as if to deprecate the punishment of such a title.

"When Pyrrhus died, his favourite and devoted dog refused to stir
from the body, but when it was carried out of the house he leaped
upon the bier, and finally sprang into the funeral pile, and was
burned alive with his master's remains. This exceedingly faithful
creature was Astus."

"Mr. Hargrove, are all the classic names so ugly?"

"I am afraid the little girl's ear is not sufficiently cultivated to
appreciate them. I will try once more. The Welsh Prince Llewellyn had
a noble deerhound, whom he trusted to watch the cradle of his baby
boy while he himself was absent. One day returning home, he found the
cradle upset and empty, the clothes and the dog's mouth dripping with
blood. Concluding that the hound had devoured the child, the father
drew his sword and slew the dog, but a moment after the cry of the
babe from behind the cradle showed him his boy was alive. Looking
around, the prince discovered the body of a huge wolf, which had
entered the house to attack and devour the child, but which had been
kept off and killed by this brave dog, who was named Gillert."

Fearing from the expression of the girl's eloquent face, that Wales
would win the game, Mrs. Lindsay exclaimed with an emphasis that made
the dog prick up his ears:

"_Gwrâch y Rhibyn_--be merciful! The poor wretch looks as if he were
ready to howl at the bare mention of such a heathen, fabulous name.
Anything would be an improvement on the Welsh--Cambyses,
Sardanapalus, are euphonic in comparison.

"Mr. Hargrove, I am much obliged to you for your goodness in telling
me so much about celebrated dogs, and if the queer names sound any
sweeter to me after I am well educated, and grow learned, I will take
one of them; but just now I believe would rather call my dog Hero."

"Regina Orme! you benighted innocent! Don't make Peyton's hair rise
with horror at your slaughter of the 'unities.' Why, my dear, Hero
was a young lady who lived in Sestos a few thousand years ago, and
was not considered a model of prudent behaviour, even then."

"Are not brave noble men called heroes? Did not Mr. Hargrove say last
week that Philo Smith was a hero, when he jumped into the mill-pond
and saved Lemuel Martin from drowning? Does not my history call
Leonidas a hero? I don't know exactly who the 'unities' are, but
until I learn more I intend to call my dog Hero. To me it seems to
mean everything I wish him to be--good, faithful, brave, grand, and I
shall call him Hero. Come along, Hero, and get some supper."




CHAPTER VI.


"Mrs. Orme, now that you are comfortable in your wrapper and
slippers, let me take down your hair, and then I will bring you a cup
of tea; not the vile lukewarm stuff they give us here, but good
genuine tea made out of my own caddy, that has some strength, and
will build you up. Rehearsals don't often serve you so badly."

"Thank you, Mrs. Waul, but the tea would only make me more nervous,
and that is a risk I cannot afford to incur. Please raise both
windows, fresh air, even Parisian air, is better for me than anything
else."

"You have not seemed quite yourself since we came here, and I don't
understand at all why two nights in Paris serve you worse than a
week's acting elsewhere."

"Have I not told you that I dread above every other ordeal the
critical Parisian audience?"

"But you passed so successfully through it!   Last night the
galleries absolutely thundered, and people seemed half wild with
delight. William says the papers are full of praise."

Mrs. Waul crossed the room to lay upon the bureau the steel pins she
had taken from her mistress's hair, and the latter muttered audibly:

"For me the 'ides of March' are  come indeed, but not passed."

"Did you speak to me?"

"There comes your husband. I hear his slow, heavy step upon the
stairs. Open the door."

As an elderly white-haired man entered, Mrs. Orme put put her hand.

"Letters from home, Mr. Waul?"

"One from America, two from London, and a note from the American
minister."

"You saw the minister then? Did he give you the papers we shall
require?"

"He has been sick, I believe, but said he would be at the theatre
to-night, and would call and see you to-morrow."

"Hear this sentence, good people, from his note: 'Only indisposition
prevented my attendance at the theatre last night to witness the
brilliant triumph of my countrywomen. Since the palmy days of Rachel
I have not heard such extravagant eulogies, and as an American I
proudly and cordially congratulate you----'"

"Are you going to faint! Stand back, William, and let me bathe her
face with cologne. What is the matter, Mrs. Orme? You shake as if you
had an ague."

But her mistress sat with eyes fixed upon a line visible only to
herself: "Your countrymen here are very much elated, and to-night I
shall be accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Cuthbert Laurance, son of
General René Laurance, whose wealth and social eminence must have at
least rendered his name familiar to all Americans travelling in
Europe."

"Be quick, Phoebe, and get her a glass of wine. She has no more
colour in her lips than there is in my white beard."

"No--give me nothing. I only want rest--quiet."

She crushed the delicate satin paper in her hand, and rallied her
composure. After a moment she added:

"A slight faintness, that is all. Mr. Waul, before the curtain rises
to-night, I wish you to ascertain in what portion of the house the
American minister's box is located; write it on a slip of paper and
send it to the dressing-room by your wife. Just now I believe I have
no other commissions. If I do not ring my little bell, do not disturb
me until five o'clock, then bring me a cup of strong coffee. And,
Mrs. Waul, please baste a double row of swan's-down around the neck
and sleeves of the white silk I shall wear to-night. Let no one
disturb me; not even the manager."

As the husband and wife withdrew, she followed them to the door,
locked it on the inside, and returned to the easy chair. With a
whitening, hardening face she reread the note, and thrust it into one
of the silk pockets of her robe.

Although nine years had elapsed since we saw her first, in the mellow
lamplight of Mr. Hargrove's library, time had touched her so
daintily, so lovingly, that only two lines were discernible about the
mouth, where habitual compression has set its print; and it would
have been difficult to realize that she was twenty-eight, had not the
treacherous eyes betrayed the gloom, the bitterness, the ceaseless
heartache that filled them with shadows, which prematurely aged the
whole countenance.

The added years seemed only to have ripened and perfected her
exquisite beauty, but with the rounded smoothness, and the fresh,
pure colouring of youth was mingled a weird indescribable expression
of stern hopelessness, of solemn repose, as if she had deliberately
shaken hands for ever with all that makes life bright and precious,
and were fronting with calm smile and quiet pulses a grim and
desperate conflict, which she well knew could have an end only in
the peace of the pall, that long truce, whose signal is the knell and
the requiem.

Had she been reared amid the fatalistic influences of Arabia, she
could not have more completely adopted and exemplified the marble
motto: "Despair is a free man; Hope is a slave." For her the rosy
mist that usually hovers over futurity had been swept rudely aside,
the softening glow of the To-Come had been precipitated into a dull,
pitiless leaden ever present, at which she never raved nor railed,
but inflexibly fought on, expecting neither sunshine nor succour,
unappalled and patient as some stony figure of Fate, which chiselled
when the race was young, feels the shrouding sands of centuries
drifting around and over it, but makes no moan over the buried youth,
and watches the approaching night with the same calm, steadfast gaze
that looked upon the starry dawn, and the golden glory of the noon.

The cautious repression which necessity had long ago rendered
habitual had crystallized into a mask, which even when alone she
rarely laid aside for an instant. In actual life, and among strong
positive natures, the deepest feelings find no vent in the
effervescence of passionate verbal outbreaks, and outside the charmed
precincts of the tragic stage, the world would not tolerate the
raving Hamlets and Othellos, the Macbeths and Medeas, that scowl and
storm and anathematize so successfully in the magic glow of the
footlights.

To-day, as Madame Odille Orme leaned back in her luxuriously
cushioned chair, she seemed quite as a statue, save the restless
movements of her slender fingers, which twined and intertwined
continually; while the concentrated gaze of the imperial eyes never
stirred from the open window, whence she saw--not Parisian monuments
of civic glory and martial splendour--only her own past, her haunting
skull and cross-bones of the Bygone. Her violet-coloured
dressing-gown was unbuttoned at the throat, exposing the graceful
turn of the neck, and the proud poise of the perfectly modelled head,
from which the shining hair fell like Danæ's shower, framing the face
and figure on a back ground as golden as that of some carefully
preserved Byzantine picture.

At last the heavily fringed lids quivered, drooped, the magnificent
eyes closed as if to shut out some vision too torturing even for
their brave penetrating gaze, and in her rigid whiteness she seemed
some unearthly creature, who had done for ever with feverish life and
the frail toys of time.

Raising her arms above her head, she rested her clasped hands upon
her brow, and in a low, strangely quiet tone her words dropped like
icicles.

"It was a groundless fear, that when the long-sought opportunity came
my weak womanish nature would betray me, and I should fail, break
down utterly under the crushing weight of tender memories, sacred
associations. What are they?

"Three dreamy weeks of delirious wifehood, balanced by thirteen years
of toil, aspersion, hatred, persecution; goaded by want, pursued
ceaselessly by the scorpion scourge whose slanderous lash coiled ever
after my name, my reputation. Three weeks a bride,--unrecognized
as such even then,--twelve years an outcast,--repudiated,
insulted,--mother and child, denied, derided,--cast off as a
serpent's skin!--Ah, memory! thou hast no charm to stir the blackened
ashes in a heart extinguished by the steady sleet of a husband's
repudiation. When love is dead, and regret is decently buried, and
the song of hope is hushed for ever, then revenge mounts the chariot
and gathers the reins in her hands of steel; and beyond the writhing
hearts whose blood dyes her rushing wheels sees only the goal. Some
wise anatomists of that frail yet invincible sphinx--woman's nature,
babble of one weighty fact, one conquering  law,--that only the
mother-joy, the  mother-love, fully unseals the slumbering sweetness
and latent tenderness of her being; for me, maternity opened the
sluices of a sea of hate and gall. Had I never felt the velvet touch
of tiny fingers on my cheek, a husband's base desertion might in time
have been forgiven, possibly at least, forgotten; but the first wail
from my baby's lips awoke the wolf in me. My wrongs might slumber
till that last assize, when the pitying eyes of Christ sum up the
record, but hers--have made a hungry panther of my soul. Come,
memory, unlock your treasure house, uncoil your spells, chant all
your witching strains, and let us see whether the towers of _Notre
Dame_ will not tremble and dissolve as soon as I?"

Bending to a trunk near her chair, she unlocked it, and taking out a
_papier-maché_ box, opened it with a small key that hung from her
watch chain, and placed it on the table before her, where she had
thrown the unread letters. Leaning forward, she crossed her arms upon
the marble, and looked down on the contents of the box,--her child's
letters,--her own unanswered appeals in behalf of her babe,--a
photograph of the latter,--and most prominent of all, a large square
ambrotype of a handsome boyish face, with a short curl of black hair
lying inside the case.

"Idolatrous? Yes all women are, embryo pagans, and the only comfort
is, that when the idol crumbles into clay, mocking our prayers and
offerings, we still worship at the same old shrine, having dusted and
garnished and set thereon--maybe the Furies, which bid fair to
survive the wreck of gods, of creeds, and of time. Like Oenone, we
are all betrayed sooner or later by our rose-lipped Paris,--

            'Beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris,'

and after the inevitable foolish tears of vain regret we dry our
eyes, and hunt Cassandra, to listen to the muttering of the thunder
that is gathering to avenge us--in Troy. Bride and bridegroom, face
to face-- Cuthbert! So you looked, when we parted, when you strained
me to your heart, and swore that before a fortnight passed you would
hold 'darling Minnie in your arms once more!' Did you mean it even
then? No, no, already the hounds of slander were snuffing in my path,
and the toils were spread for my unwary feet. Here, look back at me,
my husband, with those fond peerless eyes, as on that day when I saw
you last--all mine! To-night--across the gulf of separation, and of
shameful wrong--we shall look into each other's faces once more,
while another woman wears my name, fills my place at your side. Fair
treacherous face of my first and only love,--handsome as a
god!--false as Apollyon!"

She had lifted the ambrotype and held it close to her eyes, then her
hand sank until the picture dropped back into its place, and the
lonely desolate woman buried her face in her palms. The pretty guilt
clock on the mantle ticked monotonously, and the hum of life, and the
busy roll of vehicles in the vast city, was borne in through the
window, like the faint roar of yet distant Niagara; and after awhile
when the sharp stroke of the clock announced four the bowed figure
raised herself.

Sweeping back the blinding veil of hair, her brilliant brown eyes
shone calm and dry, dimmed by no tears of fond womanly regret, and as
they fell upon the photograph of Regina, a smile of indescribable
bitterness curled the lovely lips that might have served as model for
Psyche's.

"'The trail of the serpent is over all.' Can there be pardon for the
man who makes me shrink shudderingly at times from her whose little
veins were fed from mine, whose pulses are but a throb from my heart,
my baby! My own baby, who, when I snatch her in my arms, smiles at me
with his wonderful eyes of blue; and wellnigh maddens me with the
very echo of a voice whose wily sweetness won my love, to make an
hour's pastime, a cheap toy, soon worn out, worthless and trodden
under foot after three weeks' sport! Stooping over my baby, when she
stretched her little hands and coaxed me to lift her on my lap, I
have started back from the sight of her innocent face, as if a hooded
viper fawned upon me; for the curse of her father's image has smitten
my only darling, my beautiful, proud child! O God! that we had both
died in that dim damp ward of the Hospital, where she first opened
her eyes, unwelcomed by the father, whose features she bears!"

But beneath this Marah tide that was surging so fiercely over her
long-suffering heart, bubbled the pure, sweet, incorruptible fount of
mother-love, and while she studied the fair childish face her own
softened, as that of some snow image whose features gradually melt as
the sunlight creeps across it. It was a picture taken after Regina's
removal to the parsonage, and represented her with the white rabbits
nestling in her arms.

"My proud little Regina! my pure sensitive darling! How much longer
must we be separated? Will the time ever come when the only earthly
rest that remains for me can be taken in her soft clinging arms?
Patience--patience. If it were not for her--for my baby--I might
falter even now,--but she must, she shall be righted--at any
sacrifice, at every cost; and may the widow's and the orphan's God be
pitiful--be pitiful--at last."

She raised her child's picture in her clasped hands, as if appealing
indeed to the justice of Him who "never slumbers, nor sleeps," and
the tremor of her lips and voice told how passionate was the
affection for her daughter, how powerful the motives that sustained
her in the prolonged and torturing ordeal.

Restoring the portraits to their hiding-place, she locked the trunk,
and as she resumed her seat seemed suddenly to recollect the letters
lying on the table.

One was a brief note, from the manager of the London theatre where
she had recently been engaged; the second from a celebrated
money-lender, which bore only the signature, "Simon," and was as
follows:

  "DEAR MADAME,--Since our last conversation relative to the
  purchase of a certain mortgage, I have ascertained that you can
  secure it, by adding one hundred pounds to the amount specified by
  the holder. Should you still desire me to effect the transfer,
  delay might thwart your negotiation, and I respectfully solicit
  prompt instructions."

Twice she read these lines, then slowly tore the paper into strips,
shredded and threw them toward the grate, while a stony expression
settled once more upon her features. The remaining letter was
post-marked New York, and addressed, in a bold, round, mercantile
hand, but when the envelope had been removed, the formal angular
chirography of a schoolgirl displayed itself, and as the sheet was
opened there issued thence a delicate perfume that gushed like a
breath of spring over the heart of the lonely mother.

Several leaves of lemon-verbena and a few violets fell from the folds
of the paper, and, picking them up, Mrs. Orme spread them on her
palm. Only a few withered leaves and faded petals that had crossed
the Atlantic to whisper fragrant messages of love, from the trusting
brave young soul whose inexperienced hand had stiffly traced at the
top of the page--"My darling mother."

Ah! what a yearning tenderness glorified the woman's frozen face, as
the flowers in her hand babbled of the blue eyes that had looked last
upon them, of the childish fingers that brushed the dew from their
purple velvet, of the dainty, almost infantile, lips that had fondly
pressed them, of the holy prayer breathed over them, that ere the
time of violets came again mother and child might be reunited.

Just now she dared not read the letter, dared not surrender to the
softening influences that might melt the rigid purpose of her soul,
and, kissing the flowers reverently, the mother laid them aside until
a more convenient season, and began to walk slowly to and fro....

The play that night was "Kenilworth," and had been cast to admit some
alterations made in the dramatization by Madame Orme, who frequently
introduced startling innovations in her rendering of her parts, and
in almost all her favourite _rôles_ refused rigid adherence to the
written text. The reputation of her beauty and former triumphs, the
success achieved on the previous nights, and certain tart criticisms
upon the freedom of her interpretation of Scott's lovely
heroine--Leicester's wife--combined to draw a crowded house; and ere
the curtain rose every box was occupied save one on the second tier
near the stage.

As the crash of the orchestra died away, and the play opened with the
interview between Lambourn and Foster, followed by Tressilian, and
the encounter with Varney, the door of the box opened, and the
American minister entered, accompanied by a lady and gentleman, who,
after seating themselves and gathering back the folds of the box
curtains, proceeded to scan the audience.

As they disposed themselves comfortably a white-haired man, watching
through a crevice in the side scene, scribbled on a piece of paper
which was handed into the dressing-room: "Second box, second tier,
right-hand side. Two gentlemen, and a lady wearing a scarlet cloak."

Sitting between the minister and her husband, Mrs. Laurance with her
brilliant wrappings was the most prominent of the group, and in the
blaze of the gaslight looked at least thirty-five; a woman of large
proportions compactly built, with broad shoulders that sustained a
rather short thick neck, now exposed in extreme _décolleté_ style, as
if to aid the unsuccessful elongation of nature. Her sallow
complexion was dark, almost bistre, and the strongly marked irregular
features were only redeemed from positive plainness by the large
fiery black eyes, whose beauty was somewhat marred by the intrusive
boldness of their expression. Bowing to some one opposite, her very
full lips parted smilingly over a set of sound strong teeth, rather
uneven in outline, and of the yellowish cast often observed in
persons of humble birth and arduous life. Her dusky hair, belonging
to the family of neutral-brown, was elaborately puffed and frizzed,
and in her ears hung large solitaire diamonds that glowed like globes
of fire, and scattered rays that were reflected in the circlet around
her throat.

Beside her sat her husband, leaning back with negligent grace, and
carelessly stroking his silky black moustache with one gloved hand,
while the other toyed with a jewelled opera glass. Although only two
years her junior, she bore the appearance of much greater seniority,
and the proud patrician cast of his handsome face contrasted as
vividly with the coarser lower type of hers, as though in ancient
Roman era he had veritably worn the _clavus_ and the _bulla_, while
she trudged in lowly guise among the hard-handed heroines of the
_proletarii_.

Over his dreamy violet eyes arched the peculiarly fine jet brows that
Mr. Palma had found so distinctive in Regina's face, and his glossy
hair and beard possessed that purplish black tint so rarely combined
with the transparent white complexion, which now gleamed
conspicuously in his broad, full, untanned forehead.

The indolent _insouciance_ of his bearing was quite in accord with
his social record, as a proud high-born man of cultivated elegant
tastes, and unmistakably dissipated tendencies, which doubtless would
long ago have fructified in thoroughly demoralized habits had not his
wife vigorously exerted her exigeant guardianship.

"Have you heard the last joke at Count T----'s expense?" said Mrs.
Laurance, tapping the arm of the minister with her gilded fan.

"Do you refer to the _contretemps_ of the masks at the Grand Ball?"

"No, something connected with Madame Orme. It seems the Count saw her
in London, became infatuated, as men always are about pretty
actresses, and the first night she played here he was almost frantic;
wrote a note between the acts, and sent it to her twisted in that
costly antique scarf-ring he is so fond of telling people once
belonged to the Duke of Orleans. Before the play ended it was
returned, with the note torn into several strips and bound around it.
Fancy his chagrin! Colonel Thorpe was in the box with him, and told
it next day, when we met at dinner. When I asked T---- his opinion of
Madame, he answered:

"She is perfectly divine! But alas! only an inspired icicle. She
should be called '_Sulitelma_,' which I believe means--Cuthbert, what
did you tell me it meant?"

"Queen of Snows. Abbie, do lower your voice a trifle." He answered
without even glancing at her, and she continued:

"I wanted to see her last night in 'Medea,' but Cuthbert had an opera
engagement, and beside, little Maud had the croup----"

A storm of applause cut short the nursery budget, and all turned to
the stage where Amy Robsart entered, followed by Janet and by Varney.
Advancing with queenly grace and dignity to a pile of cushions in the
centre of the drawing-room at Cumnor Place, she stood a moment with
downcast eyes, till the acclamation ceased, and Varney renewed his
appeal.

Her satin dress was of that exquisite tint which in felicitous French
phraseology is termed _de couleur de fleur de pécher_, and swept down
from her slender figure in statuesque folds that ended in a long
court train, particularly becoming in the pose she had selected. The
Elizabethan ruff, with an edge of filmy lace, softened the effect of
the bodice cut squares across the breast, and revealed the string of
pearls--Leicester's last gift--that shone so fair upon his countess's
snowy neck. From the mass of hair heaped high upon her head soft
tendrils clustered to the edge of her brow, and here and there a long
curl strayed over her shoulder, and glittered like burnished gold in
the glare of the quivering footlights. The lovely arms and hands were
unburdened by jewels, and save the pearls around her throat and the
aigrette of brilliants in the upper bandeau of her hair, she wore no
ornaments. The perfect impersonation of a beautiful, innocent, happy
bride, impatiently expectant of her husband's entrance, she stood
listening to his messenger, a tender smile parting her rosy lips.

The chair of state chanced to be placed in the direction of the
minister's box, and only a few feet distant, and when Varney
attempted to place her upon it, she waved him back, and, raising her
right hand toward it, said in that calm, deep, pure voice which had
such thrilling emphasis in its lowest cadences:

"No good, Master Richard Varney, I take not my place _there_, until
my lord himself conducts me. I am for the present a disguised
countess, and will not take dignity upon me, until authorized by him,
from whom I derived it."

In that brief sentence she knew her opportunity and seized it, for
her glance followed her uplifted hand, mounted into the box, and,
sweeping across the minister, dwelt for some seconds on the dark
womanly countenance beside him, and then fastened upon the face of
Mr. Laurance.

Some whose seats were on that side of the house, and who chanced to
have their lorgnettes levelled at her just then, saw a long shiver
creep over her, as if a blast of cold air had blown down through the
side scene, and a sudden spark blazed up in the dilating eyes, as a
mirror flashes when a candle flame smites its cold dark surface; but
not a muscle quivered in the fair proud face, and only the Varney at
her side noticed that when the slight hand fell back it sought its
mate with a quick groping motion, and the delicate fingers clutched
each other till the nails grew purple.

For fully a moment that burning gaze rested on the features that
seemed to possess some subtle fascination for her, and wandering back
to the wife, a shadowy smile hovered around the lips that were soon
turned, away to answer Varney. As she moved in the direction of a
window, to listen for the clatter of horse's hoofs, Mrs. Laurance
whispered:

"Is not she the loveliest creature you ever beheld? I never saw such
superb eyes, they absolutely seemed to lighten just now. Cuthbert,
did you only notice how she looked right at me? I daresay my
solitaires attracted her attention--and no wonder, they are the
largest in the house, and these actresses always have an eye to the
very best jewellery. Of course it must have been my diamonds."

From the moment when Amy Robsart entered, Cuthbert Laurance felt a
strange magnetic thrill dart through every fibre of his frame; his
sluggish pulse stirred, and as her mesmeric brown eyes, luminous,
overmastering, met his, he drew his breath in quick gasps, and his
heart in its rapid throbbing seemed to pour liquid fire into the
bounding arteries. Some vague bewildering reminiscence danced through
the clouded chambers of his brain, pointing like a mocking fiend now
this way, then in an opposite direction; one instant assuring him
that they had somewhere met before, the next torturing him with the
triumphant taunt that he had hitherto never known any one half so
lovely. Was it merely some lucky accident that had so unexpectedly
brought them during that long flattering gaze thoroughly _en
rapport?_

He no more heard his wife's hoarse whisper, than if a cyclone had
whirled between them, and, leaning forward to catch the measured
melody that floated from the countess's lips, a crimson glow fired
his cheek as he caught the lofty words.

"I know a cure for jealousy. It is to speak truth to my lord at all
times; to hold up my mind, my thoughts, before him as pure as that
polished mirror, so that when he looks into my heart he shall see
only his own features reflected there.[*] _Can he who took my little
hands and made them wifely, laying therein the precious burden of his
honour, afford to doubt the palms are clean?_"

[Footnote: * Mrs. Orme's interpolations are all italicized.]

No wonder Varney stared, and the prompter anathematized the sudden
flicker of the gas jet that caused him to lose his place; there was
no such written sentence as the last, and the rehearsal proved no
sure index of all the countess uttered that night, but the play
rolled on, and when the folding doors flew open and Amy sprang to
meet her noble husband, the house began to warm into an earnest
sympathy.

In the scene that followed she sat with childlike simplicity and
grace on the footstool at Leicester's feet, while he exhibited the
jewelled decorations of his princely garb, and explained the
significance of the various orders; and in the face upturned to him
who filled the chair of state there was a wealth of loving tenderness
that might have moved colder natures than that which now kindled in
the deep violent eyes that watched her from the minister's box.

Gradually the curious, timid, admiring bride is merged in the wife,
with ambition budding in her heart, and exacting pride pleading for
recognition and wifely dignities, and in this transformation the
power of the woman asserted itself.

Bending toward Leicester, until from the low seat she sank
unintentionally upon her knees, she prayed with passionate fervour:

"But shall not your wife, my love, one day soon be surrounded with
the honour which arises neither from the toils of the mechanic who
decks her apartment, nor from the silks and jewels with which your
generosity adorns her, but which is attached to her place among the
matronage, as the avowed wife of England's noblest earl? _'Tis not
the dazzling splendour of your title that I covet, but the richer,
nobler, dearer coronet of your beloved name, the precious privilege
of fronting the world as your acknowledged wife_."

Again, in answer to his flattering evasive sophistries, she asked in
a voice whose marvellous modulations in the midst of intense feeling
seemed to penetrate every nook of that vast building:

"But why can it not be? Why can it not immediately take place, this
more perfect uninterrupted union, for which you say you wish, and
which the laws of God and man alike command? _Think you my unshod
feet would shrink from glowing ploughshares, if crossing them I found
the sacred shelter of my husband's name? Ah, husband! dost blanch
before the storm of condemnation, which has no terrors for a wife's
brave heart? It would seem but scant and tardy justice to own thy
wedded wife!_"

The earl had led her behind the scenes, and the minister had twice
addressed him ere Mr. Laurance recovered himself sufficiently to
perceive that his companions were smiling at his complete absorption.

"Why--Cuthbert--wake up. You look like some one walking open-eyed in
sleep. Has Madame's beauty dazed you as utterly as poor Count T----?"

His wife pinched his arm, but without heeding her he looked quite
past her into the laughing eyes of the minister, and asked:

"Do you know her? Is her husband living?"

"I shall call by appointment to-morrow, but this is the first time I
have seen her. Of her history I know nothing, but rumour pronounces
her a widow."

"Which generally means that these pretty actresses have drunken,
worthless husbands, paid comfortable salaries to shut their eyes and
keep out of the way," added Mrs. Laurance, lengthening the range of
her opera glass, and levelling it at a group where the shimmer of
jewels attracted her attention.

How the words grated on her husband's ear, grown strangely sensitive
within an hour?

Carelessly glancing over the sea of faces beneath and around him, the
minister continued:

"English critics contend that Madame Orme's 'Amy Robsart' is so far
from being Scott's ideal creation, that he would fail to recognize it
were he alive; still where she alters the text, and intensifies the
type, they admit that the dramatic effect is heightened. She appears
to have concentrated all her talent upon the passionate impersonation
of one peculiar phrase of feminine suffering and endurance--that of
the outraged and neglected wife; and her favourite _rôles_ are
'Katherine' from Henry VIII., 'Hermione,' and 'Medea,' though she is
said to excel in 'Deborah.' My brother who saw her last night as
'Medea' pronounced her fully equal to Rachel, and said that in that
scene where she attempted to remove her children from the side of the
new wife, the despairing fury of her eyes literally raised the few
thin hairs that still faithfully cling to the top of his head.
Ah--the parting with Leicester--how marvellously beautiful is she!"

Leaning against a dressing-table loaded with toilet trifles and
_bijouterie_, Amy stood, arrayed in the costume which displayed to
greatest advantage the perfect symmetry of form and the dazzling
purity of her complexion.

The cymar of white silk bordered with swan's-down exposed the
gleaming dimpled shoulders, and from beneath the pretty lace coif the
unbound glory of her long hair swept around her like a cataract of
gold, touching the hem of her silken gown, where, to complete the
witchery, one slippered foot was visible. When her husband entered to
bid her adieu, and the final petition for public acknowledgment was
once more sternly denied, the long-pent agony in the woman's heart
burst all barriers, overflowed every dictate of wounded pride, and
with an utter _abandon_ of genuine poignant grief, she gave way to a
storm that shook her frame with convulsive sobs, and deluged her
cheeks with tears. Despite her desperate efforts to maintain her
self-control, the sight of her husband's magnetic handsome face,
after thirteen weary years of waiting, unnerved, overwhelmed her.
There in the temple of Art, where critical eyes were bent searchingly
upon her, Nature triumphantly asserted itself, and she who wept
passionately from the bitter realisation of her own accumulated
wrongs, was wildly applauded as the queen of actresses, who so
successfully simulated imaginary woes.

By what infallible criterion shall criticdom decide the boundaries of
the Actual and the Ideal? Who shall compute the expenditure of
literal heartache that builds up the popularly successful Desdemonas,
Camilles, and Marie Stuarts; the scalding tears that gradually
crystallize into the classic repose essential to the severe
simplicity of the old Greek tragedies?

The curtain fell upon a bowed and sobbing woman, and the tempest of
applause that shook the building was prolonged until after a time Amy
Robsart, with tears still glistening on her cheeks, came forward to
acknowledge the tribute, and her silken garments were pelted with
bouquets. Among the number that embroidered the stage lay a pyramid
of violets edged with rose geranium leaves, and raising it she bent
her lovely head to the audience and kissed the violets, in memory (?)
of her far-off child--whose withered floral tribute was more precious
to the woman's heart than all the laudatry chaplets of the great
city, which did homage to her genuine tears.

Some time elapsed while the play shifted to the court, recounting the
feuds of Leicester and Sussex, and when Amy Robsart appeared again it
was in the stormy interview where Varney endeavours to enforce the
earl's command that she shall journey to Kenilworth as Varney's wife.
The trembling submissiveness of earlier scenes was thrown away for
ever, and, as if metamorphosed into a Fury, she rose, towered above
him, every feature quivering with hatred, scorn, and defiance.

"Look at him, Janet! that I should go with him to Kenilworth, and
before the Queen and nobles, and in presence of my own wedded lord,
that I should acknowledge him,--him there, that very cloak-brushing,
shoe-cleaning fellow,--him there, my lord's lackey, for my liege
lord and husband! I would I were a man but for five minutes!--but go!
begone!"

She paused panting, then threw back her haughty head, rose on tiptoe,
and, shaking her hand in prophetic wrath and deathless defiance,
almost hissed into the box beneath which Varney stood:

"Go, tell thy master that when I, like him, can forget my plighted
troth, _turn craven, bury honour, and forswear my marriage vows,
then, oh then! I promise him, I will give him a rival, something
worthy of the name!_"

Was the avenging lash of conscience uncoiled at last in Cuthbert
Laurance's hardened soul that the blood so suddenly ebbed from his
lips, and he drew his breath like one overshadowed by a vampire?
Only once had he caught the full gleam of her indignant eyes, but
that long look had awakened torture's that would never entirely
slumber again, until the solemn hush of the shroud and the cemetery
was his portion. No suspicion of the truth crossed his mind, even
for an instant,--for what resemblance could be traced between that
regal woman, and the shy, awkward, dark-haired little rustic, who
thirteen years before had frolicked like a spaniel about him,--loving
but lowly?

In vain he sought to arrest her attention; the actress had only once
looked at the group, and it was not until the close that he succeeded
in catching her glance.

After her escape from Varney, Amy Robsart reached in disguise the
confines of Kenilworth, and standing there, travel-worn, weary,
dejected, in sight of the princely castle, with its stately towers
and battlements, she first saw the home whose shelter was denied her,
the palatial home where Leicester bowed in homage before Elizabeth.
As a neglected, repudiated wife, creeping stealthily to the hearth
where it was her right to reign, Amy turned her wan, woeful face to
the audience, and, fixing her gaze with strange mournful intentness
upon the eyes that watched her from the box, she seemed to throw her
whole soul into the finest passage of the play.

"I have given him all that woman has to give. Name and fame, heart
and hand, have I given the lord of all this magnificence--at the
altar, and England's Queen could give him no more. He is my husband;
I am his wife. I will be bold in claiming my right; even the bolder,
that I come thus unexpected and forlorn. Whom God hath joined, man
cannot sunder."

The irresistible pathos of look and tone electrified that wide
assemblage, and in the midst of such plaudits as only Paris bestows
she allowed her eyes to wander almost dreamily over the surging sea
of human heads, and as if she were in truth some hunted, hopeless,
homeless waif appealing for sympathy, she shrouded her pallid face in
the blue folds of her travelling cloak, and disappeared.

"She must certainly recognize her countrymen, for that splendid
passage seemed almost thrown to us, as a tribute to our nationality.
What a wonderful voice! And yet--she is so tender, so fragile," said
the minister.

"Did you observe how pale she grew toward the last, and so
hollow-eyed, as if utterly worn out in the passionate struggle?"
asked Mrs. Laurance.

"The passion of the remaining parts belongs rather to Leicester and
the Queen. By the way, this is quite a handsome earl, and the whole
cast is decidedly strong and successful. Look, Laurance! were you an
artist, would you desire a finer model for an Egeria? If Madame had
been reared in Canova's studio she could not possibly have
accomplished a more elegant felicitous pose. I should like her
photograph at this moment."

In the grotto scene, Amy was attired in pale sea-green silk, and her
streaming hair braided it with yellow light, as she shrank back from
the haughty visage of the Queen.

Rapidly the end approached, courtiers and maids of honour crowded
upon the stage, and thither Elizabeth dragged the unhappy wife, into
the presence of the earl, crying in thunder tones: "My Lord of
Leicester! knowest thou this woman?"

The craven silence of the husband, the desperate rally of the
suffering wife to shield him from the impending wrath, until at last
she was borne away insensible in Hunsdon's strong arms, all followed
in quick succession, and Amy's ill-starred career approached its
close, in the last interview with her husband.

When Cuthbert Laurance was a grey-haired man, trembling upon the
brink of eternity, there came a vision in the solemn hours of night,
and the form of Amy, wan as some marble statue, breathed again in his
ear the last words she uttered that night.

"Take your ill-fated wife by the hand, lead her to the footstool of
Elizabeth's throne; say that 'in a moment of infatuation moved by
supposed beauty, of which none perhaps can now trace even the
remains, I gave my hand to this poor Amy Robsart.' You will then have
done justice to me, and to your own honour; and should law or power
require you to part from me, I will offer no opposition, since I may
then with honour hide a grieved and broken heart in those shades,
from which your love withdrew me. Then--have but a little
patience--and Amy's life will not long darken your brighter
prospects."

The fatal hour arrived; the gorgeous pomp and ceremonial of the
court-pageant had passed away, and in a dim light the treacherous
balcony at Cumnor Place was visible. In the hush that pervaded the
theatre, the minister heard the ticking of his watch, and Mrs.
Laurance the laboured breathing of her husband.

Upon the profound silence broke the tramp of a horse's hoofs in the
neighbouring courtyard, then Varney's whistle in imitation of the
earl's signal when visiting the countess.

Instantly the door of her chamber swung open, and, standing a moment
upon the threshold, Amy in her fleecy-white drapery wavered like a
drifting cloud, then moved forward upon the balcony; the trapdoor
fell, and the lovely marble face with its lustrous brown eyes sank
into the darkness of death.




CHAPTER VII.


To men and women of intensely emotional nature, it sometimes happens
that a day of keen and torturing suspense, or a night's vigil of
great anguish, mars and darkens a countenance more indelibly than the
lapse of several ordinary monotonous years; and as Madame Orme sat in
her reception-room at one o'clock on the following afternoon,
awaiting the visit of the minister, the blanched face was far sterner
and prouder than when yesterday's sun rippled across it, and bluish
shadows beneath the large eyes that had not closed for twenty-four
hours lent them a deeper and more fateful glow.

The soft creamy folds of her Cashmere robe were relieved at the
throat by a knot of lilac ribbon, and amid its loops were secured
clusters of violets, that matched in hue the long spike of hyacinth
which was fastened in one side of the coiled hair, twined just behind
the ear, and drooped low on the snowy neck. Before her on a gilded
stand was the purple pyramid of flowers she had brought from the
theatre, and beside them lay several perfumed envelopes with
elaborate monograms. These notes contained tributes of praise from
strangers who had been fascinated by her "Amy Robsart," and begged
the honour of an interview, or the favour of a "photograph taken in
the silken cymar which so advantageously displayed the symmetry of
her figure."

Among the latter she had recognized the handwriting of Mr. Laurance,
though the signature was "Jules Duval," and her fingers had shrunk
from the folds of rose paper, as though scorched by flame. Lying
there on the top of the _billets-doux_, the elegant, graceful
chirography of the "Madame Odille Orme" drew her gaze, like the
loathsome fascination of a basilisk, and taking a package of notes
from her pocket, she held them for a moment close to the satin
envelope. Upon one the name of the popular actress; on the others--in
the same peculiar beautiful characters--"Minnie Merle." She put away
the latter, and a flash of scorn momentarily lighted her rigid face.

"Craven as of old! Too cowardly to boldly ask the thing his fickle
fancy favours; he begs under borrowed names. Doubtless his courage
wilts before his swarthy, bold-eyed Xantippe, who allows him scant
latitude for flirtations with pretty actresses. To be thrown
aside--trampled down--for such a creature as Abbie Ames! his
coarse-featured, diamond-dowered bride! Ah! my veins run lava; when I
think of her thick heavy lips, pressing that haughty perfect mouth,
where mine once clung so fondly! Last night the two countenances
seemed like 'as Hyperion to a Satyr!' How completely he sold his
treacherous beauty to the banker's daughter, whom to-day he would
willingly betray for a fairer, fresher face. Craven traitor!"

She passed her handkerchief across her lips, as if to efface some
imaginary stain, and they slowly settled back into their customary
stern curves.

Just then a timid tap upon the door of the reception-room was
followed almost simultaneously by the entrance of Mrs. Waul, who
held a card in her hand.

"The waiter has just brought this up. What answer shall he take
back?"

Mrs. Orme glanced at it, sprang to her feet, and a vivid scarlet
bathed her face and neck.

"Tell him--No! no--no! Madame Orme begs to decline the honour."

Then the crimson tide as suddenly ebbed, she grew ghastly in her
colourlessness, and her bloodless lips writhed, as she called after
the retreating figure:

"Stop! Come back,--let me think."

She walked to the window, and stood for several moments as still as
the bronze Mercury on the mantel. When she turned around, her
features were as fixed as if they belonged to some sculptured slab
from Persepolis.

"Pray don't think me weak and fickle, but indeed, Mrs. Waul, some of
my laurels gash like a crown of thorns. Tell the waiter to show this
visitor up, after five minutes, and then I wish you to come back and
sit with your knitting yonder, at the end of the room. And please
drop the curtain there, the pink silk will make me look a trifle less
ghostly after last night's work. You see I am disappointed, I
expected the American minister on business, and he sends this Paris
beau to make his apologies; that is all."

As the old lady disappeared, Mrs. Orme shuddered, and muttered with
clenched teeth:

"All have a Gethsemane sooner or later, and mine has overtaken me
before I am quite ready. God grant me some strengthening angel!"

She sank back into the arm chair, and drew the oval gilt table before
her as a barrier, while some inexplicable, intuitive impulse prompted
her to draw from her bosom a locket containing Regina's miniature.
Touching a spring, she looked at the childish features so singularly
like those she had seen the previous evening, and when Mrs. Waul
returned and seated herself at the end of the room, the spring
snapped, the locket lay in one hand, the minister's card in the
other.

Mrs. Orme heard the sound on the stairs and along the hall--the
well-remembered step. Amid the tramp of a hundred she could have
singled it out, so often in bygone years had she crouched under the
lilacs that overhung the gate, listening for its rapid approach,
waiting to throw herself into the arms that would clasp her so
fondly; to-day that unaltered step smote her ears like an echo from
the tomb, and for an instant her heart stood still, and she shut her
eyes; but the door swung back, and Mr. Laurance stood upon the
threshold. As he advanced, she rose, and when he stood before her
with outstretched hand, she ignored it, merely rested her palm on the
table between them; and glancing at the card in her fingers said:

"Mr. Laurance, I believe, introduced by the American minister. A
countryman of mine, he writes. As such I am pleased to see you, sir,
for when abroad the mere name of American is an _open sesame_ to
American sympathy and hospitality. Pray be seated, Mr. Laurance.
Pardon me, not that stiff-backed ancient contrivance of torture,
which must have been invented by Eymeric. You will find that green
velvet Voltaire, like its namesake, far more easy, affording ample
latitude."

The sweet voice rung its silver chimes as clearly as when she trod
the stage, and no shadow of the past cast its dusky wing over her
proud, pale face, while she gracefully waved him to a seat, and
resumed her own.

"If Madame Orme, so recently from home, yields readily to the
talismanic spell of 'American' she can perhaps imagine the
fascination it exerts over one who for many years has roamed far
from his roof-tree and his hearthstone; but who never more proudly
exulted in his nationality than last night, when as Queen of Tragedy,
Madame lent new lustre to the land that claims the honour of being
her birthplace."

"Thanks. Then I may infer you paid me the tribute of your presence
last evening?"

They looked across the table, into each other's eyes,--hers radiant
with a dangerous steely glitter, his eloquent with the intense
admiration which kindled on the previous evening, now glowed more
fervently from the contemplation of a beauty that to-day appeared
tea-fold more irresistible. The question slightly disconcerted him.

"I had the honour of accompanying our minister, and sharing his box."

"Indeed! I have never had the pleasure of meeting him, and hoped to
have seen him to-day, as he fixed this hour for the arrangement of
some business details, concerning which I was advised to consult him.
One really cannot duly appreciate American liberty until one has been
trammelled by foreign formalities and Continental police quibbles."

An incredulous smile, ambushed in his silky moustache, was reflected
in his fine eyes, as he recalled the flattering emphasis with which
she had certainly singled out his face in that vast auditory, and,
thoroughly appreciating his munificent inheritance of good looks, he
now imagined he fully interpreted her motive in desiring to ignore
the former meeting.

"Doubtless hundreds who shared with me the delight you conferred by
your performance last night would be equally charmed to possess my
precious privilege of expressing my unbounded admiration of your
genius; but unfortunately the impression prevails that my charming
countrywoman sternly interdicts all gentleman visitors, denies access
even to the most ardent of her worshippers, and I deem myself the
most supremely favoured of men in having triumphantly crossed into
the enchanted realm of your presence. Of this flattering distinction
I confess I am very proud."

It was a bold challenge, and sincerely he rued his rashness, when,
raising herself haughtily, she answered in a tone that made his
cheeks tingle:

"Unfortunately your countrywoman has not studied human nature so
superficially as to fail to comprehend the snares and pitfalls which
men's egregious vanity sometimes spring prematurely; and rumour
quotes me aright, in proclaiming me a recluse when the curtain falls
and the lights are extinguished. To-day I deviated from my usual
custom in compliment to the representative of my country, who sends
you--so his card reads--'charged with an explanation of his
unavoidable absence.' As minister-extraordinary, may I venture to
remind Mr. Laurance of his errand?"

Abashed by the scornful gleam in her keen wide eyes, he replied
hastily:

"A telegram from Pau summoned him this morning to the bedside of a
member of his family suddenly attacked with dangerous illness, and he
desired me to assure you that so soon as he returned he would seize
the earliest opportunity of congratulating you upon your brilliant
triumph. In the interim he places at your disposal certain printed
regulations, which will supply the information you desire, and which
you will find in this envelope. May I hope, Madame, that the value of
the contents will successfully plead the pardon of the audacious, yet
sufficiently rebuked messenger?" He rose, and with a princely bow
offered the packet.

Suffering her eyes to follow the motion of his elegantly formed
aristocratic hand, now ungloved, one swift glance showed her that
instead of the unpretending slender gold circlet she had placed on
the little finger of his left hand the day of their marriage--a ring
endeared to her, because it had been her mother's bridal pledge--he
now wore a flashing diamond, in a broad and costly setting. Almost
unconsciously her own left hand glided to the violets on her breast,
beneath which, securely fastened by a strong gold chain, she wore
the antique cameo ring, with its grinning death's head resting upon
her heart.

Slightly inclining her head, she signed to him to place the papers on
the table, and when he had resumed his sect, she asked:

"How long, Mr. Laurance, since you left America?"

"Thirteen or fourteen years ago; yet the memories of my home are
fresh and fragrant as though I quitted it only yesterday."

"Then happy indeed must have been that hearthstone, whose
rose-coloured reminiscences linger so tenderly around your heart, and
survive the attrition of a long residence in Paris. Your _repertoire_
of charming memories tempts me almost to the verge of covetousness.
In what portion of the United States did you reside?"

"My boyhood was spent in one of the middle States, where my estate is
located, but my collegiate life removed me to the north, whence I
came immediately abroad. My residence in Europe confirms the belief
that crossed the Atlantic with me, that in beauty, grace, and all the
nameless charms that constitute the perfect, peerless, fascinating
woman, my own country I pre-eminently bears the palm. Broad as is her
domain, and noble her civil institutions, the crowning glory of
America dwells in her lovely and gifted women."

He had never looked handsomer than at that moment, as, slightly
bending his head in homage, his dangerously beautiful eyes rested
with an unmistakable expression upon the faultless features before
him; and watching him, a cold smile broke up the icy outline of his
companion's delicate lips:

"American beauty might question the sincerity of a champion whose
worship is offered only at foreign shrines, and the precious oblation
of whose heart is laid on distant and strange altars."

"Ah, Madame,--neither at foreign shrines nor strange altars, but ever
unwaveringly at the feet of my divine countrywomen. Is it needful
that I recross the ocean to bow before the reigning muse? Is it not
conceded that the brightest, loveliest planet in Parisian skies,
brought all her splendour from my western home?"

"How you barb with keen regret the mortifying reflection that I,
alas! cannot as an American lay claim to a moiety of your chivalric
allegiance! Ill-fated Odille Orme!"

The stinging sarcasm in the liquid voice perplexed him, and the
strange lambent light that seemed now and then to ray out of the
brilliant eyes that had never wandered from his, sent an
uncomfortable thrill over him.

"Surely the world cannot have erred in according to my own country
the honour of your nationality?"

"I was born upon a French ship, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean."

"Ah, dearest Madame! then it is no marvel that, as you have inherited
the cestus of Aphrodite, your votaries bow as blindly, as helplessly,
as those over whom your ancient Greek mother ruled so despotically.
By divine right of birth you should reign as Odille Anadyomene."

"Madame Odille Orme has abjured the pagan æsthetics that seem to
trench rather closely upon Mr. Laurance's ethics, and shed far too
rosy an Orientalism over his mind and heart; and hopes he will not
forget her proud boast that by divine right she wears a dearer,
nobler, holier title--Odille Orme, wife and mother."

Bolder libertinism than found shelter in Mr. Laurance's perverted
nature, would have cowered before the pure face that now leaned far
forward, with dilated, scornful eyes which seemed to run like
electric rays up and down the secret chambers of his heart.

Involuntarily he shrank back into the depths of his chair, and mutely
questioned as on the previous night, "Where have I heard that voice
before?"

With some difficulty he recovered himself, and said hastily:

"Will you forgive me if I tell you frankly, that ever since I saw you
last night I have been tantalized by a vague yet very precious
consciousness that somewhere you and I have met before? When or
where, I cannot conjecture, but of one thing I am painfully certain,
we can never be strangers henceforth. Some charm in your voice, in
the expression of your eyes when as 'Amy Robsart' the loving woman
you looked so fondly into your 'Leicester's' face, awoke dim memories
that will never sleep again. Happy--enviable indeed--that Leicester
who really rules the empire of your love."

Tightening the clasp of her palms which enclosed the little gold
locket containing the image of their child, a wintry smile broke over
her white face, lending it that mournful glimmer which fading
moonlight sheds on some silent cenotaph in a cemetery.

"If my stage tricks of glance or tone, my carefully studied and
practised attitudes and modulations, recall some neglected memories
of your sunny past, let me hope that Mr. Laurance links me with the
holy associations that cluster about a mother's or a sister's sacred
features; reviving the earlier years, when he offered at the shrine
of friendship, of honour, and of genius, tributes too sincere to
admit the glozing varnish of fulsome, fashionable adulation, which
degrades alike the lips that utter and the ears that listen. If at
some period in the mysterious future, you, whom--because my
countryman--I reluctantly consented to receive, should really
discover a noble lovely woman before whose worth and beauty that
fickle heart you call your own utterly surrenders, and whom winning
as wife, and cherishing as only husbands can the darlings they
worship, you were finally torn away from--by inexorable death--the
only power that can part husbands and wives, then think you, Mr.
Laurance, that the universe holds a grave deep enough to keep you
quiet in your coffin--if vain heartless men profaned her sacred
widowhood by such utterances as you presume to offer me? The stage is
the arena, where in gladiatorial combat I wage my battle with the
beasts of Poverty and Want: there I receive the swelling acclamations
of triumph, or the pelting hisses of defeat; there before the
footlights where I toil for my bread, I am a legitimate defenceless
target for artistic criticism; but outside the precincts of the
theatre, I hold myself as sacred from the world as if I stood in
stone upon an altar behind some convent's bars, and as a lonely,
sorrow-stricken mother widowed of the father of my child, bereft of a
husband's tenderly jealous guardianship, I have a right to claim the
profound respect, the chivalric courtesy, which every high-toned,
honourable gentleman accords to worthy stainless women. Because as an
actress I barter my smiles and tears for food and raiment for my
fatherless child, it were not quite safe to imagine that I share the
pagan tendencies which appear to have smitten some of my countrymen
with moral leprosy."

The words seemed to burst forth like a mountain cataract long locked
in snow, which, melting suddenly under some unseasonable fiery
influence, falls in an impetuous icy torrent, bearing the startling
chill of winter into flowery meadows, where tender verdure sown thick
with primroses and daisies smiles peacefully in summer sunshine.

Twice the visitor half rose and essayed to speak, but that deep
steady voice bore down all interruption, and as he watched her, Mr.
Laurance just then would have given the fortune of the Rothschilds
for the privilege of folding in his own the perfect hands that lay
clasped on the marble slab.

While her extraordinary beauty moved his heart as no other woman had
yet done, the stern bitterness of her rebuke appealed to the latent
chivalry and slumbering nobility of his worldly soul. Looking upon
his flushed handsome face, interpreting its eloquent varying
expressions by the aid of glancing lights which memory snatched from
long-gone years, she saw the struggle in his dual nature, and hurried
on, warned by the powerful magnetism of his almost invincible eyes
that the melting spell of the Past was twining its relaxing fingers
about the barred gateway of her own throbbing heart.

"Trained in the easy school of latitudinarianism so fashionable
nowaday on both sides of the Atlantic, doubtless Mr. Laurance deems
his adopted countrywoman a nervous puritanical prude; and upon my
primitive and wellnigh obsolete ideal of social decorum and
propriety, upon my lofty standard of womanly delicacy and manly
honour, I can patiently tolerate none of the encroachments with which
I have recently been threatened. Just here, sir, permit a pertinent
illustration of the impertinence that sometimes annoys me."

Lifting between the tips of her fingers the pretty peach-bloom-tinted
note, whose accusing characters betrayed the hand that penned it, she
continued, with an outbreak of intense and overwhelming contempt:

"Listen, if you please, to the turbid libation which some rose-lipped
Paris, some silk-locked Sybarite poured out last night, after leaving
the theatre. Under the pretence of adding a leaf to the chaplets, won
by what he is pleased to tern 'diving dramatic genius,' this 'Jules
Duval'--let me see, I would not libel an honourable name; yes, so it
is signed--this Jules Duval, this brainless, heartless, soulless
Narcissus, with no larger sense of honour than could find ample
waltzing room on the point of a cambric needle, insolently avows his
real sentiments in language that your _valet_ might address to his
favourite _grisette_; and closes like some ardent accepted lover,
with an audacious demand for my photograph, 'to wear for ever over
his fond and loyal heart!' That is fashionable homage to my
genius--it is? I call it an insult to my womanhood! Nay--I am
ashamed to read it! 'Twould stain my cheeks, soil my lips, dishonour
your gentlemanly ears. Mr. Laurance, if ever you should become a
husband, and truly love the woman you make your wife, you will
perhaps comprehend my feelings, when some gay unprincipled gallant
profanes the sanctity of her retirement with such unpardonable, such
unmerited insolence."

She held it up between thumb and forefinger, shaking out the pink
folds till the signature in violet ink flaunted before the violet
eyes of its owner, then, crushing it as if it were a cobweb, she
tossed it toward the window.

Turning her head, she said in an altered and elevated tone:

"Mrs. Waul, may I disturb you for a moment?"

The quiet figure, clad in sober grey, and wearing a muslin cap whose
crimped ruffle enclosed in a snowy frame the benevolent wrinkled
countenance, came forward, knitting in hand, spectacles on her nose,
and for the first time the visitor became aware of her presence.

"Please lower the curtain yonder beside the étagère, the sun shines
hot upon Mr. Laurance's brow. Then touch the bell, and order the
carriage to be ready in twenty minutes."

Humiliated as he had never been before, Mr. Laurance resolved upon
one desperate attempt to regain the position his vanity had rashly
forfeited. Waiting until the Quaker-like _duenna_ had retreated to
her former seat, he rose and leaned across the small table, and under
his rich low voice and passionately pleading eyes the actress held
her breath and clutched the locket till its sharp edge sunk into her
quivering flesh.

"You dismiss me as unworthy of your presence, and, acknowledging the
justice of your decree, I sincerely deplore the fatuity that prompted
the offence. Your rebuke was warranted by my foolish presumption,
and, confessing the error into which I was betrayed by your
condescending notice last night, I humbly and sorrowfully solicit
your generous forgiveness. Fervid flattering phrases sorely belie my
real character if, sinking me almost beneath your contempt, you deem
me devoid of a high sense of honour, or of chivalric devotion to
noble womanly delicacy. Madame Orme, if your unparalleled beauty,
grace, and talent bewitched me into a passing folly and vain
impertinence, for which indeed I blush, your stern reproof recalls me
to my senses, to my better nature; and I beg that upon the unsullied
word of an American gentleman, you will accept with my apology the
earnest assurance that in quitting this room I honour and revere my
matchless countrywoman far more than when I entered her noble
presence. Fashionable freedom may have demoralized my tongue, but by
the God above us, I swear it has not blackened my heart, nor deadened
my perception and appreciation of all that constitutes true feminine
refinement and purity. You have severely punished my presumptuous
vanity, and now will you not mercifully pardon a man who, finding in
you the perfect fulfilment of his prophetic dreams of lofty as well
as lovely womanhood, humbly but most earnestly craves permission to
reinstate himself in your regard; to attempt to win your esteem and
friendship, which he will value far more highly than the adoration of
any--yes, of all other women?"

He was so near her that she saw the regular quick flutter of the blue
vein on his fair temples, and as the musical mastering voice so well
remembered and once so fondly loved stole tenderly through the dark,
lonely, dreary recesses of her desolate, aching heart, it waked for
one instant a wild, maddening temptation, an intense longing to lift
her arms, clasp them around his neck, lean forward upon his bosom,
and be at rest.

In the weary years that followed, how bitterly she denounced and
deplored the fever of implacable revenge that held her back on that
memorable day! Verily for each of us a "Nemean Lion lies in wait
somewhere," and a lost opportunity might have cost even Hercules that
tawny skin he wore as trophy.

Mr. Laurance saw a slow dumb motion of the pale lips that breathed no
sound to fill the verbal frame they mutely fashioned--"my husband;"
and then with a gradual drooping of the heavily lashed lids, the eyes
closed. Only until one might have leisurely counted five was he
permitted to scan the wan face in its rare beautiful repose, then
again her eyes pitiless as fate met his--so eager, so wistful--and
she too rose, confronting him with a cold proud smile.

"I fear Mr. Laurance unduly bemoans and magnifies a mistake, which,
whatever its baleful intent, has suffered in my rude inhospitable
hands an 'untimely nipping in the bud,' and most ingloriously failed
of consummation. After to-day the luckless incident of our
acquaintance must vanish like some farthing rushlight set upon a
breezy down to mark a hidden quicksand; for in my future panorama I
shall keep no niche for mortifying painful days like this--and you,
sir, amid the rush and glow and glitter of this bewildering French
capital, will have little leisure and less inclination to recall the
unflattering failure of an attempted flirtation with a pretty but
most utterly heartless actress, who wrung her hands, and did high
tragedy, and stormed and wept for gold! Not for perfumed pink
_billets-doux_, nor yet for adulation and vows of deathless devotion
from high-born gentlemen handsome and heartless enough to serve in _Le
Musée du Louvre_ as statues of Apollo, but for gold, Mr. Laurance,
only for gold!"

"Do not inexorably exile me--do not refuse my prayer for the
privilege of sometimes seeing you. Permit me to come here and teach
you to believe in my----"

"_Le jeu n'en vaut pas la chandelle!_" she exclaimed, with a quick
nervous laugh that grated grievously upon his ear.

"Madame, I implore you not to deny me the delight of an occasional
interview."

A sudden pallor crept across his eager face, and he attempted to
touch the fair dimpled hand which, still grasping the locket, rested
upon the table.

Aware of his purpose, she haughtily shrank back, drew herself up, and
folding her arms so tightly over her breast that the cameo ring
pressed close upon her bounding heart, she looked down on him as from
some distant height, with an intensity of quiet scorn that no
language could adequately render, that bruised his heart like
hail-stones.

"I deny you henceforth all opportunity of sinking yourself still
deeper in my estimation, of annoying me by any future demonstrations
of a style of admiration I neither desire, appreciate, nor intend to
permit. If accident should ever thrust you again across my path, you
will do well to forget that our minister committed the blunder of
sending you here to-day. Mr. Laurance will please accept my thanks
for this package of papers, which shall be returned to-morrow to the
office of the American embassy. Resolved to forget the unpleasant
incidents of to-day, Madame Orme is compelled to bid you good-bye."

Angry but undaunted, his eloquent eyes boldly bore up under hers, as
if in mortal challenge; and he bowed, with a degree of graceful
_hauteur_, fully equal to her own best efforts.

"Madame's commands shall be rigidly and literally obeyed, for
Cuthbert Laurance is far too proud to obtrude his presence or his
homage on any woman; but Mrs. Orme's interdict does not include that
public realm, where she has repeatedly assured me that gold always
secures admission to her smiles, and from which no earthly power can
debar me. Watching you from the same spot, where last night you
floated like an angelic dream of my boyhood, like a glorious
revelation upon my vision and my heart, I shall defy the world to mar
the happiness in store for me, so long as you remain in Paris. A
distant but devoted worshipper, cherishing the memory of those
thrilling glances with which 'Amy Robsart' favoured me, permit me to
wish Madame Orme a pleasant ride, and good afternoon."

He bent his handsome head low before her, and left the room less like
an exile than a conqueror, buoyed by an abiding fatalism, a fond
faith in that magnetic influence and fascination he had hitherto
successfully exerted over all, whom his wayward, fickle, fastidious
fancy had chosen to enslave.

When the sound of his retreating footsteps was no longer audible, the
slender white-robed figure moved unsteadily across the floor, entered
the adjoining dressing-room, and locked the door.

The play was over at last, the long tensions of nerve, the iron
strain on brain and heart, the steel manacles on memory, all snapped
simultaneously; the actress was trampled out of sight, the weak,
suffering, long-tortured woman bowed down in helpless and hopeless
agony before her desecrated mouldering altar, was alone with the dust
of her overturned and crumbling idol.

"My husband! O God! Thou knowest--not hers--not that woman's--but
mine! all mine! My baby's father!--my Cuthbert--my own husband!"

           "Oh past! past the sweet times that I remember well!
           Alas that such a tale my heart can tell!
           Ah, how I trusted him! what love was mine!
           How sweet to feel his arms about me twine,
           And my heart beat with his! What wealth of bliss
           To hear his praises; all to come to this,--
           That now I durst not look upon his face,
           Lest in my heart that other thing have place--
           That which men call hate!"




CHAPTER VIII.


"Nonsense, Elise! She is but a child, and I beg you will not
prematurely magnify her into a woman. There are so few unaffected,
natural children in this generation, that it is as refreshing to
contemplate our little girl's guileless purity and ingenuous
simplicity, as to gaze upon cool green meadows on a sultry, parching
August day. Keep her a child, let her alone."

Mr. Hargrove wiped his spectacles with his handkerchief, and replaced
them on his Roman nose with the injured air of a man who, having been
interrupted in some favourite study to take cognizance of an
unexpected, unwelcome, and altogether unpleasant fact, majestically
refuses to inspect, and dogmatically waves it aside, as if to ignore
were to annihilate.

"Now, Peyton, for a sensible man (to say nothing of the astute
philosopher and the erudite theologian), you certainly do indulge in
the most remarkable spasms of wilful, obstinate, premeditated
blindness. You need not stare so desperately at that page, for I
intend to talk to you, and it is useless to try to snub either me or
my facts. Regina is young, I know, not quite fourteen, but she is
more precocious, more mature, than many girls are at sixteen; and you
seem to forget that, having always associated with grown people, she
has imbibed their ideas and caught their expressions, instead of the
more juvenile forms of thought and speech usual in children who live
among children. She has as far outgrown jumping-ropes as you have
tops and kites, and has no more relish for fairy tales than your
reverence has for base-ball, or my Bishop here for marbles. Suppose
last October I had sprinkled a paper of lettuce-seed in the open
border of the garden, and on the same day you had sown a lot of
lettuce in the hot-beds against the brick wall, where all the
sunshine falls: would you refuse your crisp, tempting, forced salad,
because it had reached perfection so rapidity?"

"Mother, do you intend us to understand that Regina is very tender,
and very verdant?" asked Mr. Lindsay, looking up from a grammar that
lay open before him.

"I intend you, sir, to study your Hindustanee, and your Tamil, while
I experiment upon the value of analogical reasoning in my discussions
with your uncle. Now, Peyton, you see that child's mind has been for
nearly four years in an intellectual hotbed,--sunned in the light of
religion, moistened with the dew of philosophy, cultivated
systematically with the prongs and hoes of regular study, of example,
and precept; and, being a vigorous sprout when she was transplanted,
she has made good use of her opportunities, and, behold! early mental
salad, and very fine! You men theorize, ratiocinate, declaim,
dogmatize about abstract propositions, and finally get your feet
tangled and stumble over facts right under your noses, that women
would never fail to pick up and put aside. The soul of Thales
possesses you all, whereas we who sit at the cradle, and guide the
little tottering feet, study the ground and sweep away the
stumbling-blocks. Day after day you and Douglass discuss all kinds of
scientific theories, and quote pagan authorities and infidel systems
in the presence of Regina, who sits in her low chair over there in
the corner of the fireplace as quiet as a white mouse, listening to
every word, though 'Hans Christian Andersen' lies open on her lap,
and scarcely winking those blue eyes of hers, that are as solemn as
if they belonged to the Judges of Israel. If a child is raised in a
carpenter's shop, with all manner of sharp, dangerous often two-edged
tools scattered around in every direction, who wonders that the
little fingers are prematurely gashed and scarred? You and Douglass
imagine she is dreaming about the number of elves that dance on the
greensward on moonlight nights, or the spangles on their lace wings;
or that she is studying the latitude and longitude of the capital of
the last territory which Congress elevated to the uncertain and
tormenting dignity of nominal self-government, that once (_vide_
'obsolete civil hallucinations') inhered in an American State; or
perhaps you believe the child is longing for a pot of sugar candy?
Then rub your eyes, you ecclesiastical bats, and let me show you the
'outcome' of all this wise and learned chat, with which you edify one
another. You know she beguiled me into giving her lessons on the
organ, as well as the piano, and yesterday when I went over to the
church at instruction hour, I was astonished at a prelude, which she
had evidently improvised. Screened from her view, I listened till she
finished playing. Of course I praised her (for really she has
remarkable talent), and asked her when she began to compose, to
improvise. Now what do you suppose she answered? A brigade of
Philadelphia lawyers could never guess. She looked at me very
steadily, and said as nearly as I can quote her words: 'I really
don't know exactly when I began, but I suppose a long time ago, when
I wore brown feathers, and went to sleep with my head under my wing,
as all nightingales do.' Said I: 'What upon earth do you mean?' She
replied: 'Why of course I mean when I was a nightingale, before I
grew to be a human being. Didn't you hear Mr. Hargrove last week
reading from that curious book, in which so many queer things were
told about transmigration, and how the soul of a musical child came
from the nightingale, the sweetest of singers? And don't you
recollect Mr. Lindsay said that Plato believed it; and that Plotinus
taught that people who lead pure lives and yet love music to excess,
go into the bodies of melodious birds when they die? Just now when I
played, I was wondering how a nightingale felt, swinging in a plum
tree all white with fragrant bloom, and watching the cattle cropping
buttercups and dandelions in the field. Mrs. Lindsay, if my soul is
not perfectly fresh and brand new, I hope it never went into a human
body before mine, because I would much lather it came straight to me
from a sweet innocent bird."

"Surely, Elise, you are as usual, jesting?" exclaimed her brother.

"On the contrary, I assure you I neither magnify nor embellish. I am
merely stating unvarnished facts, that you may thoroughly understand
into what fertile soil your scattered grains of learning fall. I
promise you, with moderate cultivation it will yield an
hundred-fold."

"Mother, what did you say to her, by way of a dose of orthodoxy to
antidote the metempsychosis poison?" asked Mr. Lindsay, who could not
forbear laughing, at the astonished expression of his uncle's
countenance.

"At first I was positively dumb, and stared at the child, very much
as I daresay Mahamaia did, when her boy Arddha-Chiddi stood upon his
feet and spoke five minutes after his entrance into this world of
woe, or when at five months of age he sat unsupported in the air.
Then I shook her, and asked if she had gone to sleep and dreamed she
was a bulbul feeding on rose leaves; whereupon she looked gravely
dignified, and when I proceeded to reason with her concerning the
absurdity of the utterly worn-out doctrine of transmigration, how do
you suppose she met me? With the information that far from being a
worn-out doctrine, learned and scientific men now living were
reviving it as the truth; and that whereas Christianity was only
eighteen hundred years old, that metempsychosis had been believed for
twenty-nine centuries, and at this day numbers more followers, by
millions, than any other religion in the world. I inquired how she
learned all this foolish fustian, and with an indescribable mixture
of pride, pity, and triumph, as if she realized that she was throwing
Mont Blanc at my head, she mentioned you two eminently evangelical
guides, from whose infallible lips she had gleaned her knowledge. As
for you, Douglass, I suggest you abandon Oriental studies, forego the
dim hope of martyrdom in India, and begin your missionary labours at
home. My dear, the Buddhist is at your own door. Now, Peyton, how do
you relish the flavour of your philosophical salad?"

"I am afraid I have been culpably thoughtless in introducing to her
mind various doctrines and theories which I never imagined she could
comprehend, or would even ponder for a moment. Since my sight has
become so impaired and feeble, I have several times called on her to
read some articles which certainly are not healthful pabulum for a
child, and my conversations with Douglass, relative to scientific
theories, have been carried on unreservedly in her presence. I am
very glad you warned me."

"And I am exceedingly sorry, if the effect of my mother's words
should be to hamper and cramp the exercise of Regina's faculties.
Free discussion should be dreaded only by hypocrites and fanatics,
and after all, it is the best crucible for eliminating the false from
the true. Does the contemplation of physical monstrosities engender a
predilection or affection for deformity? Does it not rather by
contrast with symmetry and perfect proportion heighten the power and
charm of the latter? The beauty of truth is never so invincible as
when confronted with sophistry or falsehood; just as youth and health
seem doubly fair and precious, in the presence of trembling
decrepitude and revolting disease."

"Really, Bishop! I thought you had passed the sophomoric stage, and
it is a shameful waste of dialectic ammunition to throw your
antithesis at me. According to your doctrine, America ought to buy up
and import all the deformed unfortunates who are annually exposed in
China, in order that our people should properly appreciate the
superiority of sound limbs, and the value of the five senses; and
healthy young people should throng the lazarettos and alms-houses to
learn the nature of their own disadvantages. It is equally desirable
that wise men like you and Peyton should accustom yourselves to the
society of--well--I use polite diction, of imbeciles, of 'innocents,'
in order to set a true value on learning and your own astute logic?"

"My dear little mother, you chop your logic so furiously with a broad
axe, that you darken the air with a hurricane of chips and splinters.
Like all ladies who attempt to argue, you rush into the _reductio ad
absurdum_, and find it impossible to discriminate between----"

"Wisdom and conceit? Bless you, Bishop, observation has taught me all
the shades and delicate gradations of that difference. We women no
more mistake the latter for the former, than the gods who declined to
turn cannibal when they went to dine with Tantalus, and were offered
a fricassee of Pelops. Now I----

"Ceres did eat of it!" exclaimed her son, adroitly avoiding a tweak
of the ear, by throwing his head back, beyond the touch of her
fingers.

"A wretched pagan fable, sir, with which orthodox bishops should hold
no communion. Tell me, you beardless Gamaliel, where you accumulated
your knowledge relative to the education of girls? Present us a chart
of your experience. You talk of hampering and cramping Regina's
faculties, as if I had put her brains in a pair of stays, and daily
tightened the lacers."

"I am inclined to think the usual forms of female education have
precisely that effect. The fact is, mother, it appears that women in
this country are expected to come the reserve magazines of piety, of
religious fervour, on the certainly powerful principle that
'ignorance is the mother of devotion.' True knowledge, which springs
from fearless investigation, is a far nobler and more reliable
conservator of pure vital Christianity."

"_Exempli gratia_, Miss Martineau and Madame Dudevant, who are
crowned heads among the _cognoscenti?_ Or perhaps you would prefer a
second 'La Pelouse,' governed by Miss Weber, who certainly agrees
with you, 'that girls are trained too delicately to allow the mind to
expand.' Illuminated and expanded by 'philosophy' and 'social
progress' she and Madame Dudevant long ago literally abjured stays,
and glory in the usurpation of vests, pantaloons, coats, and short
hair. Be pleased to fancy my Regina, my blue-eyed snowbird, shorn of
that

             'Gloriole of ebon locks on calmed brows'!

I would rather see her in her coffin, shrouded in a ruffled
pinafore."

"Much as I love her, so would I; but, Elise, we will anticipate no
such dreadful destiny. She has a clear fine mind, is studious and
ambitious, but certainly not a genius, unless it be in music; and she
can be trained into a cultivated refined woman, sufficiently
conversant with the sciences to comprehend their contemporaneous
development, without threatening us with pedantry, or adopting a
style suitable to the groves of Crotona in the days of Damo, or the
abstruse mystical diction that doomed Hypatia to the mercy of the
monks. After all, why scare up a blue-stockinged ogre, which may have
no intention of depredating upon our peace; for to be really learned
is no holiday amusement in this cumulative age, and offers little
temptation to a young girl. Not long since, I found a sentence
bearing upon this subject, which impressed itself upon my mind, as
both strong and healthy: 'And by this you may recognize true
education from false. False education is a delightful thing, and
warms you, and makes you every day think more of yourself; and true
education is a deadly cold thing, with a gorgon's head on her shield,
and makes you every day think worse of yourself. Worse in two ways
also, more is the pity: it is perpetually increasing the personal
sense of ignorance, and the personal sense of fault.'"

"In that event, may I venture to wonder where and how you and
Douglass stand in your own estimation? If quotations are _en règle_,
I can match your reverence, though unfortunately my feminine memory
is not like yours, a tireless beast of burden, and I must be allowed
to read. Here is the book close at hand, in my stocking basket. Now,
wise and gentle sirs, this is my ideal of proper, healthful, feminine
education, as contrasted with pur new-fangled method of making girls
either lay-figures for millinery, jewellery, and frizzled false hair,
or else--far more horrible still--social hermaphrodites, who storm
the posts that have been assigned to men ever since that venerable
and sacred time when 'Adam delved and Eve span,' and who, forsaking
holy home haunts, wage war against nature on account of the mistake
made in their sex, and clamour for the 'hallowed inalienable right'
to jostle and be jostled at the polls; to brawl in the market place,
and to rant on the rostrum, like a bevy of bedlamities. Now when I
begin to read, listen, and tell me frankly, whether when you both
make up your minds to present me, one a sister, the other a daughter,
you will select your wives from among quaint Evelyn's almost obsolete
type, or whether you will commit your name, affections, wardrobe,
larder, pantry and poultry to a strong-minded female 'scientist,' who
will neglect your socks and buttons, to ascertain exactly how many
_Vibriones_ and _Bacteria_ float in a drop of fluid, and when you
come home tired and very hungry, will comfort you, and nobly atone
for the injury of an ill-cooked and worse-served dinner, by regaling
your weary ears with her own ingenious and brilliant interpretation
and translation of _Ælia Lælia Crispis!_ Here is my old-fashioned
English damsel, meek as a violet, fresh as a dewy daisy, and sweet as
a bed of thyme and marjoram. 'The style and method of life are quite
changed, as well as the language, since the days of our ancestors,
simple and plain as they were, courting their wives for their
modesty, frugality, keeping at home, good housewifery, and other
economical virtues then in reputation. And when the young damsels
were taught all these at home in the country at their parents'
houses; the portion they brought being more in virtue than money, she
being a richer match than any one who could bring a million, and
nothing else to commend her. The virgins and young ladies of that
golden age put their hands to the spindle, nor disdained the needle;
were obsequious and helpful to their parents, instructed in the
management of the family, and gave presage of making excellent wives.
Their retirements were devout and religious books, their recreations
in the distillery and knowledge of plants and their virtues for the
comfort of their poor neighbours, and use of the family, which
wholesome diet and kitchen physic preserved in health. Then things
were natural, plain, and wholesome; nothing was superfluous, nothing
necessary wanted. The poor were relieved bountifully, and charity was
as warm as the kitchen, where the fire was perpetual.' Now, if Regina
were only my child, I should with some modifications train her after
this mellow old style."

"Then I am truly thankful she is not my sister! Fancy her pretty
pearly fingers encrusted with gingerbread-dough; or her entrance into
the library heralded by the perfume of moly, or of basil and sage,
tolerable only as the familiars of a dish of sausage meat! Don't soil
my dainty white dove with the dust and soot and rank odours that
belong to the culinary realm."

"Your white dove? Do you propose to adopt her? A month hence when you
are on your way to India, what difference can it possibly make to
you, whether she is as brown as a quail or black as a crow? Before
you come back, she will have been conscripted into the staid army of
matrons, and transmogrified into stout Mrs. Ptolemy Thomson, or lean
and careworn Mrs. Simon Smith, or worse than all, erudite Mrs.
Professor Belshazzar Brown, spelling Hercules after the learned
style, with the loss of the u, and the substitution of a k; or making
the ghost of Ulysses tear his hair, by writing the name of his
enchantress 'Kirké'!"

As Mrs. Lindsay spoke the smile vanished from her lips, and looking
keenly at her son's countenance she detected the change that crossed
it, the sudden glow that mounted to the edge of his hair.

Avoiding her eyes, he answered hastily: "Suppose those distinguished
gentlemen you mention chance to be scholars, _savans_, and disposed
to follow the advice of Joubert in making their matrimonial
selection: 'We should choose for a wife only the woman we should
choose for a friend, were she a man.' Think you mere habits of
domesticity, or skill in herbalism, would arrest and fix their
fancy?"

"But, Bishop, they might consider the Talmud more venerable authority
than Joubert, and the Talmud says, so I am told: 'Descend a step in
choosing a wife; mount a step in choosing a friend.'"

"Thank heaven! there is indeed no Salique Law in the realm of
learning. Mother, I believe one of the happiest auguries of the
future consists in the broadening views of education that are now
held by some of our ablest thinkers. If in the morning of our
religious system, St. Peter deemed it obligatory on us to be able and
'ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason
of the hope that is in you,' how doubly imperative is that duty in
this controversial age, when the popular formula has been adopted,
'to doubt, to inquire, to discover;' when the hammer of the geologist
pounds into dust the idols of tradition, and the lenses of astronomy
pierce the blue wastes of space, which in our childhood we fondly
believed were the _habitat_ of cherubim and seraphim. Now, mother, if
you will only insure my ears against those pink tweezers, of which
they bear stinging recollections, I should like to explain myself."

Mrs. Lindsay plunged her hands into the depths of her stocking
basket, and said sententiously:

"The temple of Janus is closed."

"What is the origin of the doctrine that erudition is the sole
prerogative of men, and that it proves as dangerous in a woman's
hands, as phosphorus or gunpowder in those of a baby----"

"Why Eve's experience, of course. A ton of gunpowder would not have
blown up the garden of Eden more effectually, than did her light
touch upon an outside branch of the tree of knowledge. I should say
Genesis was acceptable authority to a young minister of the Gospel."

"That is a violation of the truce, Elise. You are skirmishing with
his picket line. Go on, Douglass."

"It is evidently a remnant of despotic barbarism, a fungoid growth
from Oriental bondage----"

"Bishop, may I be allowed to ask if you are referring to Genesis?"

"Dear little mother, I refer to the popular fallacy, that in the same
ratio that you thoroughly educate women, you unfit them for the holy
duties of daughter, wife, and mother. Is there an inherent antagonism
between learning and womanliness?"

"Indeed, dear, how can I tell? I am not a 'Della-Cruscan.' I only
'strain' milk into my dairy pans."

"Elise, do be quiet. You break the thread of his argument."

"Then it is entirely too brittle to hold the ponderous propositions
he intends to string upon it. Proceed, my son."

"Are we to accept the unjust and humiliating dogma that the more
highly we cultivate feminine intellect, the more un-feminine,
unlovely, unamiable the individual certainly becomes? Is a woman
sweeter, more gentle, more useful to her family and friends, because
she is unlearned? Does knowledge exert an acidulating influence upon
female temper, or produce an ossifying effect on female hearts? Is
ignorance an inevitable concomitant of refinement and delicacy?
Does the knowledge of Greek and Latin cast a blight over the
flower-garden, or a mildew in the pantry and linen closet; or
do the classics possess the power of curdling all the milk of
human-kindness, all the streams of tender sympathy in a woman's
nature, as rennet coagulates a bowl of sweet milk? Can an
acquaintance with literature, art, and science so paralyze a lady's
energies, that she is rendered utterly averse to and incapable of
performing those domestic offices, those household duties, so
pre-eminently suited to her slender, dexterous busy little fingers?
Why, my own wise precious little mother is a living refutation
of so grossly absurd and monstrous a dogma! Have not you boxed my
ears, because, when stumbling through the 'Anabasis,' my Greek
pronunciation tortured your fastidious and correct taste? Did not you
tell me that you read nearly the whole of Sallust by spreading the
book open on the dairy shelf while you churned, thus saving time? And
did not that same sweet golden butter, made under the shadow of a
Latin dictionary, win you the State Fair Premium, of that very silver
cup, from which I drank my milk, as long as I wore knee-pants and
round jackets? Was it not my father's fond boast that his wife's
proficiency in music was equalled only by her wonderful skill in
making muffins, pastry, and _omelette soujflée?_"

With genuine chivalric tenderness in look and tone he inclined his
head; but though a tear certainly glistened in Mrs. Lindsay's bright
eyes, she answered gayly:

"Am I Cerberus, to be coaxed and cheated by a well-buttered sop of
flattery? Return to your mutton, reverend sir, and know that I am
incorruptible, and disdain to betray my cause for your thirty pieces
of potent praise."

"I think," said Mr. Hargrove, taking a bunch of cherries from the
fruit-stand on the library table,--"I think the whole matter may be
resolved into this; the ambitious clamours and Amazonian excesses of
this epoch, are the inevitable consequence of the rigid tyranny of
former ages; which sternly banished women to the numbing darkness of
an intellectual night, denying them the legitimate and natural right
of developing their faculties by untrammelled exercise. This belief
in feminine inferiority is still expressed in Mohammedan lands, by
the custom of placing a slate or tablet of marble on a woman's grave,
while on that of men a pen or penholder is laid, to indicate that
female hearts are mere tablets, on which man writes whatever pleases
him best. In sociology, as well as physics and dynamics,--the angle
of reflection is always equal to the angle of incidence,--the
psychologic rebound is ever in proportion to the mental pressure; one
extreme invariably impinges upon the opposite,--and when the pendulum
has reached one end of the arc, it must of necessity swing back to
the other. In all social revolutions the moderate and reasonable
concessions which might have appeased the discontent in its
incipiency are gladly tendered much too late in the contest, when the
insurgents stung by injustice and conscious of their grievances,
refuse all temperate compromise, and run riot. This woman's-rights
and woman's-suffrage abomination is no suddenly concocted social
bottle of yeast: it has been fermenting for ages, and, having finally
blown out the cork, is rapidly leavening the mass of female
malcontents."

"But, Uncle Peyton, you surely discriminate between a few noisy
ambitious sciolists who mistake lyceum notoriety for renown, and the
noble band of delicate, refined women whose brilliant attainments in
the republic of letters are surpassed only by their beautiful
devotion to God, family, and home? Fancy Mrs. Somerville demanding a
seat in Parliament, or Miss Herschel elbowing her way to the
hustings! Whose domestic record is more lovely in its pure
womanliness than Hannah More's, or Miss Mitford's, or Mrs.
Browning's? who wears deathless laurels more modestly than Rosa
Bonheur? It seems to me, sir, that it is not so much the amount as
the quality of the learning that just now ought to engage attention.
I see that one of the ablest and strongest thinkers of the day has
handled this matter in a masterly way, and with your permission I
should like to read a passage: 'In these times the educational tree
seems to me to have its roots in the air, its leaves and flowers in
the ground; and I confess I should very much like to turn it upside
down, so that its roots might be solidly embedded among the facts of
Nature, and draw thence a sound nutriment for the foliage and fruit
of literature and of art. No educational system can have a claim to
permanence, unless it recognizes the truth that education has two
great ends, to which everything else must be subordinated. One of
these is to increase knowledge; the other is to develop the love of
right and the hatred of wrong. At present, education is almost
entirely devoted to the cultivation of the power of expression, and
of the sense of literary beauty. The matter of having anything to say
beyond a hash of other people's opinions, or of possessing any
criterion of beauty, so that we may distinguish between the God-like
and the devilish, is left aside as of no moment. I think I do not err
in saying that if science were made the foundation of education,
instead of being at most stuck on as cornice to the edifice, this
state of things could not exist.' Such is the system I should like to
see established in our own country."

"Provided you could reply upon the moderation of the teachers; for
unless wisely and temperately inculcated, this system would soon make
utter shipwreck of the noblest interests of humanity. For many years
I have watched attentively the doublings of this fox, and while I
yield to no man in solemn fidelity to truth, I want to be sure that
what I accept as such, is not merely old error under new garbs, only
a change of disguising terms. Science has its fetich, as well has
superstition, and abstruse terminology does not always conceal its
stolid gross proportions. The complete overthrow and annihilation of
the belief in a personal, governing, prayer-answering God, is the end
and aim of the gathering cohorts of science, and the sooner masking
technicalities are thrown aside the better for all parties.
Scientific research and analysis, nobly brave, patient, tireless, and
worthy of all honour and gratitude, have manipulated, decomposed, and
then integrated the universal clay, but despite microscope and
telescope, chemical analysis, and vivisection, they can go no further
than the whirring of the Potter's wheel, and the Potter is nowhere
revealed. The moulding Creative hand and the plastic clay are still
as distinct, as when the gauntlet was first flung down by proud
ambitious constructive science. Animal and vegetable organisms have
been analyzed, and 'the idea of adaptation developed into the
conception that life itself, "is the definite combination of
heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive in
correspondence with external co-existence and sequences."' Now to the
masses who are pardonably curious concerning this problem of
existence, is this result perfectly satisfactory? The 'Physical basis
of life' has been driven into a corner, hunted down, seized at last,
and over the heads of an eager, panting, chasing generation, is
triumphantly dangled this 'Scientific Fox' brush, 'Nucleated
Protoplasm, the structural unit!' But how or whence sprang the laws
of 'Protein'? Hatred of certain phrases is more bitter than of the
principles they express, and because theologians cling to the words
God,' Creative Acts, Divine Wisdom, Providential Adaptation,
scientists declare them the _dicta_ of ignorance, superstition, and
tradition, and demand that we shall bow before their superior wisdom,
and substitute such terms as 'Biogenesis,' 'Abiogenesis,' and
'Xenogenesis.' But where is the economy of credulity? The problems
are only crowded by a subtle veil of learned or scientific verbiage,
and their solution does not induce the expenditure of faith. The
change of names is not worth the strife, for the Clay and the Potter
are still distinct, and He who created cosmic laws cannot reasonably
or satisfactorily be confounded with, or merged in His own statutes.
Creeds, theories, systems are not valuable because they are religious
and traditional, or because they are scientific or philosophical, but
solely on account of their truth. So, Douglass, I am not sure that
your essentially scientific method will teach Regina any more real
wisdom in ethics, or in  Ætiolgy, than her great-grandmother
possessed."

"You forget, Uncle Peyton, that in this rapidly advancing age only
improved educational systems will enable men and women to appreciate
the importance of its discoveries."

"My dear boy, are sudden and violent changes always synonymous with
advancement? Is transition inevitably improvement? Was the social
status of Paris after the revolution of 1790 an appreciable progress
from the morals, religious or political, that existed in the days of
Fenelon? In mechanical, agricultural, and chemical departments the
march is indeed nobly on and upward, the discoveries and improvements
are vast and wonderful, and for these physical material blessings we
are entirely indebted to Science, toiling, heroic, and truly
beneficent Science. In morals, public or private--religion, national
or individual--or in civil polity, have we advanced? Has liberty of
action kept pace with liberty of opinion? Are Americans as truly free
to-day as they certainly were fifty years ago? In æsthetics do we
surpass Phidias and Praxiteles, Raphael and Michael Angelo? Is our
music more perfect than Pergolesi's or Mozart's? Can we exhibit any
marvels of architecture that excel the glory of Philæ, Athens,
Pæstum, and Agra? Are wars less bloody, or is crime less rampant? Our
arrogant assumption of superiority is sometimes mournfully rebuked.
For instance, one of the most eminent and popular scientists of
England emphasised his views on the necessity of 'improving natural
knowledge,' by ascribing the great plague of 1664, and the great fire
of 1666--which in point of population and of houses, nearly swept
London from the face of the globe--to ignorance and neglect of
sanitary laws, and to the failure to provide suitable organizations
for the suppression of conflagrations. He proudly asserted that the
recurrence of such catastrophes is now prohibited by scientific
arrangements 'that never allow even a street to burn down,' and that
'it is the improvement of our own natural knowledge which keeps back
the plague.' I think I am warranted in the assumption that our
American Fire Departments, Insurance Companies, and Boards of Health
are quite as advanced, progressive, and scientific as similar
associations in Great Britain; yet the week after I read his
argument, an immense city lay almost in ruins; and ere many months
passed, several towns and districts of our land were scourged,
desolated by pestilence so fatal, so unconquerable, that the horrors
of the plague were revived, and the living were scarcely able to
sepulchre the dead. Now and then we have solemn admonitions of the
Sisyphian tendency of the attempt so oft defeated, so persistently
renewed to banish a Personal and Ruling God, and substitute the
scientific fetich, 'Force and Matter,' 'Natural Law,' 'Evolution,' or
'Development.' While I desire that the basis of Regina's education
shall be sufficiently broad, liberal, and comprehensive, I intend to
be careful what doctrines are propounded; for unfortunately all who
sympathize with the atheism of Comte, have not his noble frankness,
and fail to print as he did on his title-page:

                  '_Réorganiser sans Dieu ni roi,
                  Par le culte systematique
                  de l'Humanité_.'"

"Oh, Peyton! what fearfully,  selfishly  long sentences you and
Douglass inflict upon each other, and upon me! The colons and
semicolons gather along the lines of conversation like an army of
martyrs, and to my stupidly weary ears that last, that final period,
was a most 'sweet boon'--a crowning blessing. If Regina's nightingale
soul is to be vexed by such disquisitions as those from which you
have been quoting, I must say it made a sorry bargain in exchanging
brown feathers for pink flesh, and would have had a better time
trilling madrigals in some hawthorn thicket or myrtle grove. I see
plainly I might as well carry my dear old Evelyn--fragrant with
mint and marjoram--back upstairs, and wrap it up in ancient
camphor-scented linen, and put it away tenderly to sleep its last
sleep in the venerable cedar chest, where my grandfather's huge
knee-buckles, and my great-grandmother's yellow brocaded silk-dress,
with its waist the length of my little finger, and the sleeves as
wide as a balloon. Gentlemen, permit me one parting paragraph,
before I write 'finis' on this matter of education, and 'hereafter
for ever hold my peace.' Be it distinctly understood, 'by these
presents,' that if that child Regina grows up a blue-stocking, or a
metempsychosist, a scientist or a freedom-shrieker, a professor of
physics or a practitioner of physic, judge of a court or mayor of a
city, biologist, sociologist, heathen or heretic, it will be no work
or wish of mine; for to each and all of these threatened, progressive
abominations, I, Elise Lindsay, do hold up clean hands, and cry,
Avaunt!"

"I thought my sister had long since learned that borrowing trouble
necessitated the payment of usurious interest? Just now our little
girl carries no gorgon's head; let her alone. The most imperatively
demanded change in our system of female training, is the addition of
a few years in which to work. American girls are turned out upon
society when they should be beginning their apprenticeship under
their mothers' eyes in all household arts and sciences; and they are
wives and mothers before they are able physically, mentally, or
morally to appreciate the sacred, solemn responsibilities that inhere
in such positions. If our girls pursued methodically all the branches
of a liberal and classical education, including domestic economy,
until they were at least twenty, how much misery would be averted!
how many more really elegant interesting women would be added to the
charm of society, usefulness to country, happiness and sanctity of
home! Had I means to bestow in such enterprises, I should
like to endow some institution, and stipulate for a chair of
household-arts-and-sciences-and-home-duties; and Regina should not go
into general society until she had graduated therein."

"Not another word of conspiracy against my little maid's peace! Lean
forward a little, Peyton, and look at her yonder, coming along the
rose-walk. See how the pigeons follow her. She has been gathering
raspberries, and I promised she should make all she could pick into
jelly for poor old Tobitha Meggs. How pure and fair she looks in her
white dress! Dear little thing! Sometimes I am wicked enough to wish
she had no mother, for then she would be wholly ours, and we could
keep her always. Listen, she is singing Schubert's '_Ave Maria_'."

After a moment's silence Mrs. Lindsay rose, and, passing her arm
around her son's neck, leaned her cheek against his head, as he sat
near his uncle, and looking through the open door at the slowly
approaching figure.

"Bishop, if I were an artist, I would paint her as a priestess at
Ephesus, chanting a hymn to Diana; and instead of Hero and the
pigeons, place brown deer and spotted fawns on mossy banks in the
background."

"Pooh! What a hopeless pagan you are, Elise? If I were a sculptor I
would chisel a statue of purity, and give it her countenance."

And Mr. Lindsay smiled in his mother's face, and said only for her
ear:

"Do not her eyes entitle her to be called Glaukopis?"




CHAPTER IX.


The long sultry August day was drawing to a close, and those who had
found the intense heat almost unendurable watched with delight the
slow hands of the clock, whose lagging fingers finally pointed to
five. The sky seemed brass, the atmosphere a blast from Tophet; and
the sun, still standing at some distance above the horizon, glared
mercilessly down over the panting parched: earth, as if a recent and
unusually copious shower of "meteoric cosmical matter" had fallen
into the solar furnace, and prompted it by increased incandescence to
hotly deny the truth of Helmholtz's assertion: "The inexorable laws
of mechanics show that the store of heat in the sun must be finally
exhausted." Certainly to those who had fanned themselves through the
tedious torture long remembered as the "hot Sunday," the
science-predicted period of returning glaciers and polar snows where
palms and lemons now hold sway, seemed even more distant than the
epoch suggested by the speculative. In proportion to the elevation of
the mercurial vein which mounted to and poisoned itself at 100
degrees, the religious, the devotional, pulse sank lower, almost to
zero; consequently, although circumstances of unusual interest
attracted the congregation to the church, where Mr. Lindsay intended
to preach his farewell sermon, only a limited number had braved the
heat to shake hands with the young minister, who ere another sunrise
would have started on his long journey to the pagan East.

At the parsonage it had been a sad day, sad despite the grave
serenity of Mr. Hargrove, the quiet fortitude of Mr. Lindsay, and the
desperate attempts of the mother to drive back tears, compose
fluttering lips, and steady the tones of her usually cheerful voice.
For several days previous, Mr. Hargrove had been quite indisposed,
and as his nephew would leave home at eleven p.m., the customary
Sunday night service had been omitted.

As the afternoon wore away, the family trio assembled on the shaded
end of the north verandah, and with intuitive delicacy, Regina shrank
from intruding on the final interview which appeared so sacred.

Followed by Hero, she went through the shrubbery, and down a walk
bordered with ancient cedars, which led to a small gate that opened
into the adjoining churchyard.

In accordance with a custom long since fallen hopelessly into
desuetude, but prevailing when the venerable church was erected, it
had been placed in the centre of a spacious square, every yard of
which had subsequently become hallowed as the last resting-place of
families who had passed away, since the lofty spire rose like a huge
golden finger pointing heavenward. An avenue of noble elms led from
the iron gate to the broad stone steps; and on either side and
behind the church swelled the lines of mounds, some white with
marble, some green with turf, now and then a heap of mossy
shells--not a few gay with flowers--all scrupulously free from weeds,
and those most melancholy symptoms of neglect, which even in public
cemeteries too often impress the beholder with gloomy premonitions of
his own inevitable future, and recall the solemn admonition of the
Talmud: "Life is a passing shadow. Is it the shadow of a tower, or of
a tree? A shadow that prevails for a while? No, it is the shadow of a
bird in his flight,--away flies the bird, and there remains neither
bird nor shadow."

Has the profoundly religious sentiment of reverence for the domains
of death lost or gained by the modern practice of municipal monopoly
of the right of sepulture? Who, amid the pomp and splendour of
Greedwood or Mount Auburn, where human vanity builds its own proud
monument in the mausoleums of the dead,--who, in hurrying along the
broad and beautiful avenues thronged with noisy groups of chattering
pedestrians, and with gay equipages that render the name "City of
silence" a misnomer, converting it into a _quasi_ Festa ground, a
scene for subdued Sunday _Fête Champêtre_,--who, passing from these
magnificent city cemeteries, into some primitive old-fashioned
churchyard, such as that of V----, has not suddenly been almost
overpowered by the contrast presented: the deep brooding solemnity,
the holy hush, the pervading indwelling atmosphere of true sanctity
that distinguishes the latter?

Could any other than the simple ancient churchyard of bygone days
have suggested that sweetest, purest, noblest elegy in our mother
tongue? Do not our hearts yearn with an intense and tender longing
toward that church, at whose font we were baptized, at whose
communion-table we reverently bowed, before whose altar we breathed
the marriage vows, from whose silent chancel we shall one day be
softly and slowly borne away to our last, long sleep? Why not lay us
down to rest, where the organ that pealed at our wedding and sobbed
its requiem over our senseless clay may still breathe its loving
dirges across our graves in winter's leaden storms, or in fragrant
amber-aired summer days? Would worldly vampires, such as political or
financial schemes, track a man's footsteps down the aisle, and flap
their fatal numbing pinions over his soul so securely even in the
Sanctuary of the Lord, if from his family pew his eyes wandered now
and then to the marble slab that lay like a benediction over the
silver head of an honoured father or mother, or the silent form of a
beloved wife, sister, or brother?

Is there a woman so callous, so steeped in folly, that the tinsel of
Vanity Fair, the paraphernalia of fashion, or all the thousand small
fiends that beleaguer the female soul, could successfully lure her
imagination from holy themes, when sitting in front of the pulpit,
she yet sees through the open windows where butterflies like happy
souls flutter in and out the motionless chiselled cenotaph that rests
like a sentinel above the pulseless heart that once enshrined her
image, called her wife, and beat in changeless devotion against her
own; or the little grassy billow sown thick with violets that speak
to her of the blue eyes beneath them, where in dreamless slumber that
needs no mother's cradling arms, no maternal lullaby, reposes the
waxen form, the darling golden head of her long-lost baby? What spot
so peculiarly suited for "God's acre" as that surrounding God's
temple?

A residence of dearly four years' duration at the parsonage had
rendered this quiet churchyard a favourite retreat with Regina, and,
divesting the graves of all superstitious terrors, had awakened in
her nature only a most profound and loving reverence for the
precincts of the dead.

To-day, longing for some secluded spot in which to indulge the
melancholy feelings that oppressed her, she instinctively sought the
church, yielding unconscious homage to its hallowed and soothing
influence. Passing slowly and carefully among the head-stones, she
went into the church, to which she had access at all times by a key,
which enabled her to enter at will and practise on the small organ
that was generally used in Sabbath-school music.

Fancying that it might be cooler in the gallery, she ascended to the
organ loft, and while Hero stretched himself at her feet, she sat
down on one of the benches close to the open window that looked
toward the mass of trees which so completely embowered the parsonage,
that only one ivy-crowned chimney was visible. Low in the sky, and
just opposite the tall arched window behind the pulpit, the sun
burned like a baleful Cyclopean eye, striking through a mass of ruby
tinted glass that had been designed to represent a lion, and other
symbols of the Redeemer, who soared away above them.

Are there certain subtle electrical currents sheathed in human flesh
that link us sometimes with the agitated reservoirs of electricity
trembling in the bosom of yet distant clouds? Do not our own highly
charged nervous batteries occasionally give the first premonition of
coming thunderstorms? Long before the low angry growl that came
suddenly from some lightning lair in the far south, below the
sky-line, Regina anticipated the approaching war of elements, and
settled herself to wait for it.

Not until to-day had she realized how much of the pleasure of her
life at the parsonage was derived from the sunny presence and
sympathizing companionship which she was now about to lose,
certainly for many years, probably for ever.

Although Mr. Lindsay's age doubled her own, he had entered so fully
into her fancies, humoured so patiently her girlish caprices, with
such tireless interest aided her in her studies, that she seemed to
forget his seniority, and treated him with the quiet affectionate
freedom which she would have indulged toward a young brother. Next to
the memory of her mother, she probably gave him the warmest place in
her heart, but she was a remarkably reserved, composed, and
undemonstrative child, by no means addicted to caresses, and only in
moments of deep feeling betrayed into an impulsive passionate
gesture, or a burst of emotion.

Sincerely attached to the entire household, who had won not merely
her earnest gratitude, but profound respect and admiration, she was
conscious of a peculiar clinging tenderness for Mr. Lindsay, which
rendered the prospect of his departure the keenest trial that had
hitherto overtaken her; and when she thought of the immense distance
that must soon divide them, the laborious nature of the engagement
that would detain him perhaps a lifetime in the far East, her own dim
uncertain future looked dark and dreary. The blazing sun went down at
last, the fiery radiance of the pulpit window faded, and the birds
that frequented the quiet sheltered enclosure sought their perches in
the thickest foliage where they were wont to sleep. But there was no
abatement of the heat. The air was sulphurous, and its inspiration
was about as refreshing as a draught from Phlegethon; while the
distant occasional growl had grown into a frequent thunderous
muttering that deepened with every repetition, and already began to
shake the windows in its reverberations. Two ladies in deep mourning,
who had been hovering like black spectres around a granite
sarcophagus, where they deposited and arranged the customary Sabbath
arkja of white flowers, concluded their loving tribute to the
sleeper, and left the churchyard; and save the continual challenge
of the thunder drawing nearer, the perfect stillness ominous and
dread, which always precedes a violent storm, seemed brooding in
fearful augury above the home of the dead.

With one foot resting on Hero's neck, Regina sat leaning against the
window facing, very pale, but bravely fighting this her first great
battle with sorrow. Her face was eloquent with mute suffering, and
her eyes were full of shadows that left no room for tears.

"Going away to India, perhaps for ever!" was the burden of this woe
that blanched even her lovely coral lips until their curves were lost
in the pallor of her rounded cheek and dimpled chin. "Going away to
India;" like some fateful rune presaging dire disaster, it seemed
traced in characters of flame across the glowing sky, and over the
stony monuments that studded the necropolis.

Suddenly Hero lifted his head, sniffed the air, and rose, and almost
simultaneously Regina heard the sound of footsteps on the gravel
outside, and the low utterances of a voice which she recognized as
Hannah's.

"I never told you before, because I was afraid that in the end you
would cheat me out of my share of the profit. But I have watched and
waited, and bided my time as long as I intend to, and I am too old to
work as I have done."

"It seems to me a queer thing you have hid it so long, so many years,
when you might have turned it into gold. The old General ought to pay
well for the paper. Let's see it."

The response was in a man's voice, harsh and discordant, and, leaning
slightly forward, Regina saw the old servant from the parsonage
standing immediately beneath the window, fanning herself with her
white apron, and earnestly conversing in subdued tones with a
middle-aged man, whose flushed and rather bloated face still retained
traces of having once been, though in a coarse style, handsome. In
length of limb, and compact muscular development he appeared an
athlete, a very son of Anak; but habitual dissipation had set its
brutalizing stamp upon his countenance, and the expression of the
inflamed eyes and sensuous mouth was sinister and forbidding, as if a
career of vice had left the stain of irremediable ruin on his swarthy
face.

As he concluded his remark and stretched out his hand, Hannah laughed
scornfully.

"Do you take me for a fool? Who else would travel around with a match
and a loaded fuse in the same pocket? I haven't it with me; it is too
valuable to be carried about. The care of that scrap of paper has
tormented me all these years, worse than the tomb devils did the
swine that ran down into the sea to cool off; and if I have changed
its hiding-place once, I have twenty times. If the old General
doesn't pay well for it, I shall gnaw off my fingers, on account of
the sin it has cost me. I was an honest woman and could have faced
the world until that night--so many years ago; and since then I have
carried a load on my soul that makes me--even Hannah Hinton, who
never flinched before man or woman or beast--a coward, a quaking
coward! Sin stabs courage, lets it ooze out, as a knife does blood.
Don't bully me, Peleg! I won't bear it. Jeer me if you dare."

"Never fear, Aunt Hannah. I have no mind to do theatre on a small
scale, and show you Satan reproving sin. After all, what is your bit
of _petit larceny_, your thin slice of theft, in comparison with my
black work? But really I don't in the least begrudge my sins, if only
I might have my revenge,--if I could only get Minnie in my power."

"Bah! don't sicken me with any more of the Minnie dose! I hate the
name as I do small-pox or cholera. A pretty life you have led,
dancing after her, as an outright fool might after the pewter-bells
on a baby's rattle!"

"You women can't understand how a man feels when his love changes to
hate; and yet you ought to know all about it, for when you do turn
upon one another you never let go. Aunt Hannah, I loved her better
than everything else upon the broad earth; I would have kissed the
dust where she walked; I always loved her, and she was fond of me,
until that college dandy came between us, and made a fool of her, a
villain of me. When she forsook me, and followed him off, I swore I
would be revenged. There is tiger blood in me, and when I am
thoroughly stirred up I never cool. It is a long, long time since I
lost her trail--soon after the child was born, and eight years ago I
almost gave up and went to Cuba; but if I can only find the track, I
will follow it till I hunt her down. I never received your letters,
or I would have hurried back. Where is Minnie now?"

"That is more than I know, but I think somewhere in Europe. The
letters are always sent to a lawyer in New York, who directs them to
her. I have tried in every way to find out, but they are all too
smart for me."

"Why don't you pump the child?"

"Haven't I? And gained about as much as if I had put a handle on the
side of a lump of cast iron, and pumped. She is closer than sealing
wax, and shrewder than a serpent. If you pumped her till the stars
fell, you would not get an air-bubble, She can neither be scared nor
coaxed."

"Where is the paper?"

"Safely buried here, among the dead."

"What folly! Don't you know the dampness will destroy it? Pshaw! you
have ruined everything."

"See here, Peleg, all the brains of the family did not lodge in your
skull; and I guess I was wiser at your age than you will be at mine.
The paper was safe and sound when I looked at it a month ago, and it
is wrapped up in oil-silk, then in cotton, and kept in a thick tin
box."

"When can I see it? Suppose you get it now?"

"In daylight? You may depend on my steering clear of detection, no
matter what comes. I would take it up to-night, but there is going to
be an awful storm. Do you hear how the thunder keeps bellowing down
yonder, under that dark line crossing the south? There will be wild
work pretty soon; it has been simmering all day, and when it begins
it won't be child's play. Even the marble slabs on the graves are
hot, and the ground scorched my feet, as if Satan and his fires had
burnt through all but a thin crust. I never was afraid of the devil
until my sin brought me close to him. I want to finish this business,
and before day to-morrow I will come over here and dig up my box.
There will be dim moonlight by three o'clock, and if it should be
cloudy, I can shut my eyes and find the place. I tell you, Peleg, I
am sick and tired of this dirty work; and sometimes I think I am no
better than a hyena prowling among dead men's bones. Come around to
the cowshed in the morning, about seven o'clock, when the family will
be in the library holding prayers; and when I go to milk, I will
bring you the paper. Only to look at, to read over, mind you! It
doesn't leave my hands, until the old General's gold jingles in my
pocket. Then he is welcome to it, and Minnie may suffer the
consequences; and you and I will divide the profits. I want to go
away and rest with my sister Penelope the remainder of my life, and
though the family here beg me to stay, I have already given notice
that I intend to stop work next month."

"Very well, don't fail me; I am as anxious to close up the job as you
possibly can be. I should like to see the child, Minnie's child; but
I might spoil everything if she looks like her mother. Good-bye till
to-morrow."

The two walked away, one passing down the avenue of elms out into the
street. The other sauntered in the direction of the parsonage, but
ere she reached the small gate, Hannah turned aside to a low iron
railing that enclosed two monuments; a marble angel with expanded
wings standing above a child's grave, and a broken column wreathed
with sculptured ivy, placed on a mound covered with grass. Just
behind the former and close to the railing, rose a noble Lombardy
poplar that towered even above the elms, and at its base a mass of
periwinkle and ground ivy ran hither and thither in luxuriant
confusion, clasping a few ambitious tendrils even about the ancient
trunk.

Over the railing leaned Hannah, peering down for several moments, at
the lush green creepers, then she walked on to the parsonage gate,
and disappeared.

Watching her movements, Regina readily surmised that somewhere near
that tree the paper was secreted; and she was painfully puzzled to
unravel the thread that evidently linked her with the mystery.

"I am the child she spoke of, and she has tried again and again to
'pump' me, as she called it. 'Minnie' must mean my mother; but that
is not her name. Odilie Orphia Orme never could be twisted into
'Minnie;' and that coarse, common, low, wicked man never could have
dared to love my own dear beautiful proud mother! There must be some
dreadful mistake. Somebody is wrong; but not mother,--no, no--never
my mother! Once she wrote that she was forced to keep some things
secret, because she had bitter enemies; and this man must be one of
them, for he said he would hunt her down. But he shall not! Was it
Providence that brought them here to talk over their wicked schemes
where I could hear them? Oh if I only knew all! Mother--mother! you
might trust your child! I can't believe that I am ignorant even of my
mother's name. Surely she never was that red-faced man's 'Minnie'!"

Covering her face with her hands, she shuddered at the familiar
mention by profane lips of one so hallowed in her estimation, and
this vague threatening of danger to her mother sufficed for a time to
divert her thoughts from the sorrow that for some days past had
engrossed her mind.

Knowing the affection and confidence with which Hannah had always
been treated by the members of the family, and the great length of
time she had so faithfully served in the parsonage household, Regina
was shocked at the discovery of her complicity in a scheme which she
admitted had made her dishonest. Only two days before she had heard
Mrs. Lindsay lamenting that misfortunes never came single, for as if
Douglass's departure were not disaster enough for one year, Hannah
must even imagine that she felt symptoms of dropsy and desired to go
away somewhere in Iowa or Minnesota, where she could rest, and be
nursed by her relatives.

This announcement heightened the gloom that already impended, and
various attempts had been made by Mr. Hargrove and his sister to
induce Hannah to reconsider her resolution. But she obstinately
maintained that she was "a worn-out old horse, who ought to be turned
out to pasture in peace the rest of her days;" yet, notwithstanding
her persistency, she evinced much distress at her approaching
separation from the family, and never alluded to it without a flood
of tears.

What would the members of the household think when they discovered
how mistaken all had been in her real character? But had she a right
to betray Hannah to her employer? Perhaps the paper had no connection
with the parsonage, and no matter whom else she might have wronged,
Hannah had faithfully served the pastor, and repaid his kindness by
devotion to his domestic interests. Regina's nature was generous as
well as just, and she felt grateful to Hannah for many small favours
bestowed on herself, for a uniform willingness to oblige or assist
her, as only servants have it in their power to do.

Sweetening reminiscences of caramels and crullers, of parenthetic
patty-pancakes not ordered or expected on the parsonage bill of fare,
pleaded pathetically for Hannah, and were ably supported by
recollections of torn dresses deftly darned, of unseasonably and
unreasonably soiled white aprons, which the same skilful hands had
surreptitiously washed and fluted before the regular day for
commencing the laundry work, all of which now made clamorous and
desperate demands on the girl's gratitude and leniency. So complete
had been her trust in Hannah that her reticence concerning her mother
sprang solely from Mr. Hargrove's earnest injunction that she would
permit no one to question her upon the subject; consequently she had
very tenderly intimated to the old woman that she was not at liberty
to discuss that matter with any one.

"She is going away very soon, bearing a good character. Would it be
right for me to disgrace her in her old age, by telling Mr. Hargrove
what I accidentally overheard? If I only knew 'Minnie' meant mother,
I could be sure this paper did not refer to Mr. Hargrove, and then I
should see my way clearly; for they both said 'old General,' and no
one calls Mr. or Dr. Hargrove 'General.' I only want to do what is
right."

As she lifted her face from her hands she was surprised at the sudden
gloom that since she last looked out had settled like a pall over the
sky, darkening the church, rendering even the monuments indistinct.

Hero began to whine and bark, and, starting from her seat, Regina
hurried toward the steps leading down from the organ-loft. Ere she
reached them a fearful sound like the roaring of a vast flood broke
the prophetic silence, then a blinding lurid flash seemed to wrap
everything in flame; there was simultaneously an awful detonating
crash, as if the pillars of the universe had given way, and the
initial note ushered in the thunder-fugue of the tempest, that raged
as if the Destroying Angel rode upon its blast.

In the height of its fury it bowed the ancient elms as if they were
mere reeds, and shook the stone church to its foundations as a giant
shakes a child's toy.

Frightened by the trembling of the building, Regina began to descend
the stairs, guided by the incessant flashes of lightning, but when
about half-way down a terrific peal of thunder so startled her that
she missed a step, grasped at the balustrade but failed to find it,
and rolled helplessly to the floor of the vestibule. Stunned and mute
with terror, she attempted to rise, but her left foot, crushed under
her in the fall, refused to serve her, and with a desperate instinct
of faith she crawled through the inside door and down the aisle,
seeking refuge at the altar of God. Dragging the useless member, she
reached the chancel at last, and as the lightning showed her the
railing, she laid herself down, and clasped the mahogany balusters in
both hands.

In the ghastly electric light she saw the wild eyes of the lion in
the pulpit window glaring at her,--but over all the holy smile of
Christ, as, looking down in benediction, He soared away heavenward;
and above the howling of the hurricane rose her cry to Him who
stilleth tempests, and saith to wind and sea, "Peace, be still!": "O
Jesus! save me, that I may see my mother once more!"

She imagined there was a lull, certainly the shrieking of the gale
seemed to subside, but only for half a moment, and in the doubly
fierce renewal of elemental strife, amid deafening peals if thunder
and the unearthly glare that preceded each reverberation, there came
other sounds more appalling, and as the church rocked and quivered
some portion of the ancient edifice fell, adding its crash to the
diapason of the storm.

Believing that the roof was falling upon her, Regina shut her eyes,
and in after years she recalled vividly two sensations that seemed
her last on earth: one, the warm touch of Hero's tongue on her
clenched fingers; the other, a supernatural wail that came down from
the gallery, and that even then she knew was born in the organ. Was
it the weird fingering of the sacrilegious cyclone that concentrated
its rage upon the venerable sanctuary? After a little while the fury
of the wind spent itself, but the rain began to fall heavily, and the
electricity drama continued with unabated vigour and fierceness.

Although  unusually brave for so young  a person, Regina had been
completely terrified, and she lay dumb and motionless, still clinging
to the altar railing. At last, when the wind left the war to the
thunder and the rain, Hero, who had been quite until now, began to
bark violently, left her side, and ran to and fro, now and then
uttering a peculiar sound, which with him always indicated delight.
His subtle instinct was stronger than her hope, and as she raised
herself into a sitting posture she saw that he had sprung upon the
top of one of the side aisle pews, and thence into the window, which
had been left open by the sexton. Here he lingered as if irresolute,
and in an agony of dread at the thought of being deserted, she cried
out:

"Here, Hero! Come back! Hero, don't leave me to die alone."

He whined in answer, and barked furiously as if to reassure her; then
the whole church was illumined with a lurid glory that seemed to
scorch the eyeballs with its intolerable radiance, and in it she saw
the white figure of the dog plunge into the blackness beyond.

She knew the worst was over, unless the lightning killed her, for the
wind had ceased, and the walls were still standing; but the
atmosphere was thick with dust, and redolent of lime, and she
conjectured that the plastering in the gallery had fallen, though the
tremendous crash portended something more serious. She tried to stand
up by steadying herself against the balustrade, but the foot refused
to sustain her weight, and she sank back into her former crouching
posture, feeling very desolate, but tearless and quiet as one of the
apostolic figures that looked pityingly upon her whenever the
lightning smote through them.

She turned her head, so that at every flash she could gaze upon the
placid face of the beatified Christ floating above the pulpit; and in
the intense intervening darkness tried to possess her soul in
patience, thinking of the mercy of God and the love of her mother.

She knew not how long Hero had left her, for pain and terror are not
accurate chronometers, but after what appeared a weary season of
waiting, she started when his loud bark sounded under the window,
through which he had effected his exit. She tried to call him, but
her throat was dry and parched, and her foot throbbed and ached so
painfully, that she dreaded making any movement. Then a voice always
pleasant to her ears, but sweeter now than an archangel's, shouted
above the steady roar of the rain:

"Regina! Regina!"

She rose to her knees, and with a desperate exertion of lungs and
throat, answered:

"I am here! Mr. Lindsay, I am here!"

Remembering that words ending in o were more readily distinguished at
a distance, she added:

"Hero! Oh, Hero!"

His frantic barking told her that she had been heard, and then
through the window came once more the music of the loved voice.

"Be patient. I am coming."

She could not understand why he did not come through the door instead
of standing beneath the window, and it seemed stranger still, that
after a little while all grew silent again. But her confidence never
wavered, and in the darkness she knelt there patiently, knowing that
he would not forsake her.

It seemed a very long time before Hero's bark greeted her once more,
and, turning toward the window, a lingering zigzag flash of lightning
showed her Douglass Lindsay's face, as he climbed in, followed by the
dog.

"Regina! where are you?"

"Oh, here I am!"

He stood on one of the seats, swinging a lantern in his hand, and as
she spoke he sprang toward her.

Still clutching the altar railing with one hand, she knelt, with her
white suffering face upturned piteously to him, and stooping he threw
his arms around her and clasped her to his heart.

"My darling, God has been merciful to you and me!"

She stole one arm up about his neck, and clung to him, while for the
first time he kissed her cheek and brow.

"Does my darling know what an awful risk she ran? The steeple has
fallen, and the whole front of the church is blocked up, a mass of
ruins. I could not get in, and feared you were crushed, until I heard
Hero bark from the inside and followed the sound, which brought me to
the window, whence he jumped out to meet me. At last when you
answered my call, I was obliged to go back for a ladder. Here,
darling, at God's altar, let us thank Him for your preservation."

He bowed his face upon her head, and she heard the whispered
thanksgiving that ascended to the throne of grace, but no words
were audible. Rising he attempted to lift her, but she winced and
moaned, involuntarily sinking back.

"What is the matter? After all, were you hurt?"

"When I came down from the gallery it turned so dark I was
frightened, and I stumbled and fell down the steps. I must have
broken something, for when I stand up my ankle gives way, and I can't
walk at all."

"Then how did you get here? The steps are at the front of the
church."

"I thought the altar was the safest place, and I crawled here on my
hands and knees."

He pressed her head against his shoulder, and his deep manly voice
trembled.

"Thank God, for the thought. It was your salvation, for the stairs
and the spot where you must have fallen are a heap of stone, brick,
and mortar. If you had remained there, you would certainly have been
killed."

"Yes, it was just after I got here and caught hold of the railing
that the crash came. Oh! is it not awful!"

"It was an almost miraculous escape, for which you ought to thank and
serve your God all the days of the life He has mercifully spared to
you. Stand up a minute, even if it pains you, and let me find out
what ails your foot. I know something of surgery, for once it was my
intention to study medicine instead of divinity."

He unbuttoned and removed her shoe, and as he firmly pressed the foot
and ankle, she flinched and sighed.

"I think there are no bones broken, but probably you have wrenched
and sprained the ankle, for it is much swollen already. Now, little
girl, I must go back for some assistance. You will have to be taken
out through the window, and I am afraid to attempt carrying you down
the ladder unaided and in the darkness. I might break your neck,
instead of your ankle."

"Oh, please don't leave me here!"

She stretched out her arms pleadingly, and tears sprang to his eyes
as he noted the pallor of her beautiful face and the nervous
fluttering of her white lips.

"I shall leave Hero and the lantern with you, and you may be sure I
shall be gone the shortest possible time. The danger is over now,
even the lightning is comparatively distant, and you who have been so
brave all the while certainly will not prove a coward at the last
moment."

He took her up as easily as if she had been an infant, and laid her
tenderly down on one of the pew cushions; then placed the lantern on
the pulpit desk, and came back.

"Slip your hand under Hero's collar, to prevent him from following me
if he should try to do so, and keep up your courage. Put yourself in
God's hands, and wait here patiently for Douglass. Don't you know
that I would not leave you here an instant, if it could be avoided?
God bless you, my white dove."

He stooped and kissed her forehead, then hurried away, and after a
moment Regina knew that she and her dog were once more alone in the
ancient church, with none nearer than the dead, who slept so soundly,
while the soft summer rain fell ceaselessly above their coffins.




CHAPTER X.


The town clock was striking nine when the renewal of welcome sounds
beneath the window announced to Regina that her weary dark vigil was
ended. Soon after Mr. Lindsay's departure, the lantern above the
altar grew dim, then went out, leaving the church in total darkness,
relieved only by an occasional glimmer from the electric batteries
that had wheeled far away to the north-east. Erect and alert Hero sat
beside his mistress, now and then rubbing his head against her
shoulder, or placing his paw on her arm, as if to encourage her by
mute assurances of faithful guardianship; and even when the voices
outside cheered him into one quick bark of recognition, he made no
effort to leave the prostrate form.

"All in the dark? Where is your lantern?" asked Mr. Lindsay, as he
climbed through the window.

"It went out very soon after you left. Can you find me? or shall I
try to come to you?"

"Keep still, Regina. Come up the ladder, Esau, and hold your torch so
that I can see. It is black as Egypt inside."

In a few moments the ruddy glare streamed in, and showed the anxious
face of the sexton, and the figure of Mr. Lindsay groping from pew to
pew. Before that cheerful red light how swiftly the trooping spectres
and grim phantoms that had peopled the gloom fled away for ever! What
a blessed, comforting atmosphere of love and protection seemed to
encompass her, when, after handing one of the pew cushions to the
sexton, Mr. Lindsay came to the spot where she lay.

"How are your wounds?"

"My foot is very stiff and sore, but if you will let me hold your
arm, I can hop along."

"Can you, my crippled snow-bird? Suppose I have a different use for
my strong arms?"

He lifted her very gently, but apparently without effort, and
carried her to the window.

"Go down, Esau, set the torch in the ground, and hold the
ladder,--press it hard against the wall. I am coming down
backward,--and if I should miss a round, you must be ready to help
me. Come, Hero, jump out first and clear the way. Steady now, Esau."

Placing his charge on the broad sill, Mr. Lindsay stepped out,
established himself securely on the ladder, and, drawing the girl to
the ledge, took her firmly in his arms, balancing himself with some
difficulty as he did so.

"Now say your prayers. Clasp your hands tight around my neck, and
shut your eyes."

His chin rested upon her forehead, as she clung closely about his
neck, and they commenced the perilous descent.

Once he wavered, almost tottered, but recovered himself, and from the
fierce beating of his heart and the laboured sound of his deep
breathing she knew that it cost him great physical exertion; but at
last his close strain relaxed, he reached the ground safely and stood
resting a moment, while a sigh of relief escaped him.

"Esau, put the end of the torch sideways in Hero's mouth,--mind, so
that it will not burn him; and lay the cushion on the plank.
No!--that is wrong. Turn the torch the other way, so that as he
walks, the wind will blow the flame in the opposite direction, away
from his face. Take it, Hero! That's a noble fellow! Now home, Hero."

When the cushion had been adjusted on the broad plank brought for the
purpose, Mr. Lindsay laid Regina upon it, threw a blanket over her,
and, bidding the sexton take one end of the plank, he lifted the
other, and they began the march.

"Not that way, Hero, although it is the nearest. Truly the 'longest
way round is the shortest way' home this time; for we could not twist
about among the graves, and must go down the avenue, though it is
somewhat obstructed by fallen boughs. Come here, Hero, and walk ahead
of us. Now, Regina, you can shut your eyes and imagine you are riding
in a palankeen, as the Hindustanee ladies do when they go out for
fresh air. The motion is exactly the same, as you will find some day
when you come to Rohilcund or Oude, to see Padre Sahib--Lindsay. You
shall then have a new dooley all curtained close with rose-coloured
silk; but I can't promise that the riding will prove any more easy
than this cushioned plank."

What a stab seemed each word, bringing back all the bitter suffering
his departure would cause,--the reviving the grief, from which the
storm had temporarily diverted her thoughts.

"You are not going to-night? You will not try to start, after this
dreadful storm?" she said, in an unsteady voice.

"Yes, I am obliged to go, in order to keep an appointment for
to-morrow night in New York; otherwise, I would wait a day to learn
the extent of the damage, for I am afraid the hurricane has made sad
havoc. Esau tells me the roof and a portion of the market house was
carried away, and it was the most violent gale I have ever known."

They had reached the street and were approaching the gate of the
parsonage, where Hero turned back, dropped the torch at Mr. Lindsay's
feet, and shook his head vigorously, rubbing his nose with his paw.

"Poor fellow! can't you stand it any longer? It must nave scorched
him, as it burnt low. Brave fellow!"

"Oh, Douglass! is that you?" cried an eager voice at some distance.

"Yes, mother."

Mrs. Lindsay ran to meet them.

"Did you find her?"

"Yes, I am bringing her home."

"Bringing her--oh, my God! Is she dead?"

"No, she is safe."

"My son, don't try to deceive me. What is the matter? You are
carrying something on a litter."

"Why do you not speak, Regina, and assure her of your safety?"

Mrs. Lindsay had groped her way to the side of her son, and put her
hand on the figure stretched upon the cushion.

"I only sprained my foot badly, and Mr. Lindsay was so good as to
bring me home this way."

"Have they got her?" shouted Hannah, who accompanied by Mr. Hargrove
had found it impossible to keep pace with Mrs. Lindsay.

"Oh, it is a corpse you are fetching home!" she added, with a genuine
wail, as in the gloom she dimly saw the outline of several persons.

"Nobody is dead, but we need a light. Run back and get a candle."

Thankful that life had been spared, no more questions were asked
until they reached the house, and deposited their burden on the
lounge in the dining-room.

Then Mr. Lindsay briefly explained what had occurred, and
superintended the anointing and binding up of the bruised ankle, now
much swollen.

As Hannah knelt, holding the foot in her broad palm, to enable Mrs.
Lindsay to wrap it in a linen cloth saturated with arnica, the former
bent her grey head and tenderly kissed the wounded member. She had
been absent for a few minutes during the recital of the accident, and
now asked:

"Where were you, that you could not get home before the storm? Heaven
knows that cloud grumbled and gave warning long enough."

"Hannah, she was in the church, and when she tried to get out, it was
too late."

"In the church! Why I was in the yard, trying to get a breath of air,
not twenty minutes before the cloud rolled up like a mountain of ink,
and I saw nobody."

Regina understood her nervous start, and the eager questioning of her
eyes.

"I was in the organ gallery, and, falling down the steps, I hurt
myself."

"Honey, did you see me?"

Her fingers closed so spasmodically over the girl's foot, that she
winced from the pressure.

"I saw you walking about the churchyard, and would have come home
with you, if I had thought the storm was so near. Please, Hannah,
bring me some cool water."

She pitied the old woman's evident confusion and anxiety, and
rejoiced when Mr. Hargrove changed the topic.

"I am very sorry, Douglass, that I cannot accompany you as far as New
York. When I promised this afternoon to do so, of course I did not
anticipate this storm. There may have been lives lost, as well as
steeples blown down, and it is my duty not to leave my people at such
a juncture. If it were not for the sailing of the steamer, I would
insist on your waiting a day or so, in order that I might go with you
and have a personal interview with Dr. Pitcairns. I ought to have
thought of and attended to that matter before this."

"Pray do not feel annoyed, uncle; it can be easily arranged by
letter. Moreover, as my mother goes with me to Boston, it would not
be right to leave Regina here alone in her present helpless
condition."

"Do not think of me a moment, Mr. Hargrove. Go with him and stay with
him as long as you can; I would if I could. Hannah will take care of
me."

"My dear, I think of my duty, and that keeps me at home. Douglass, I
will write a short note to Pitcairns, and you must explain matters to
him. Elise, it is ten o'clock, and you have not much time."

He went into the library, and Mrs. Lindsay hurried upstairs to put on
her bonnet, calling Hannah to follow and receive, some parting
injunctions. Kneeling by the lounge, Mr. Lindsay took one of the
girl's hands.

"Regina, I desired and intended to have a long talk with you this
afternoon, but could not find you; and now I have no time, except to
say good-bye. You will never know how hard it is for me to leave my
dear little friend; I did not realize it myself until to-night."

"Then why will you go away? Can't you stay, and serve God as well by
being a minister in this country? Can't you change your mind?"

She raised herself on her elbow, and tears gushed over her cheeks,
as, twining her fingers around his, she looked all the intense loving
appeal that words could never have expressed.

Just then his stony Teraph--Duty--smiled very benignantly at the
aching heart he laid upon her dreary cold altar.

"Don't tempt me to look back after putting my hand to the plough. I
must do my duty, though at bitter cost. Will you promise never to
forget your friend Douglass?"

"How could I ever forget you? Oh, if I could only go with you!"

His fine eyes sparkled, and, drawing her hand across his cheek, he
said eagerly:

"Do you really wish it? Think of me, write to me, and love me, and
some day, if it please God to let me come home, you may have an
opportunity of going back with me to my work in India. Would you be
willing to leave all, and help me among the heathens?"

"All but mother. You come next to my mother. Oh, it is hard that I
must be separated from the two I love best!"

For a moment she sobbed aloud.

"You are only a young girl now, but some day you will be a woman, and
I hope and believe a very noble woman. Until then we shall be
separated, but when you are grown I shall see you again, if God
spares my life. Peculiar and unfortunate circumstances surround you;
there are trials ahead of you, my darling, and I wish I could shield
you from them, but it seems impossible, and I can only leave you in
God's hands praying continually for you. You say you love me nest to
your mother. All I ask is, that you will allow no one else, no new
friend, to take my place. When I see you again, years hence, I shall
hope to hear you repeat those words, 'next to my mother.' Far away in
the midst of Hindustan my thoughts and hopes will travel back and
centre in my white dove. Oh, child! my heart is bound to you for
ever."

He drew her head to his shoulder, and held her close, and as in the
church when kneeling before the altar she heard whispers which only
God interpreted.

Mrs. Lindsay came back equipped for her journey, and Mr. Hargrove
entered at the same moment, but neither spoke. At length, fully aware
of their presence, the young missionary raised his head, and, placing
his hand under Regina's chin, looked long at the spirituelle
beautiful face, as if he wished to photograph every feature on his
memory. Without removing his eyes, he said:

"Uncle, take care of her always. She is very dear to me. Keep her
just as she is, in soul 'unspotted from the world.'"

Then his lips quivered, and in a tremulous voice he added:

"God bless you, my darling! My pure lovely dove."

He kissed her, rose instantly, and left the room.

Mrs. Lindsay came to the lounge, and while the tears rolled over her
cheeks she said tenderly:

"My dear child, it seems unkind to desert you in your crippled
condition, but I feel assured Peyton and Hannah will nurse you
faithfully; and every moment that I can be with Douglass seems doubly
precious now."

"Do you think I would keep you even if I could from him? Oh! don't
you wish we were going with him to India?"

"Indeed I do, from the depths of my soul. What shall we do without
our Bishop?"

Bending over the girl the mother wept unrestrainedly, but Mr.
Hargrove called from the threshold:

"Come, Elise."

As Mrs. Lindsay turned to leave the room, she beckoned to Hannah.

"Carry her upstairs and undress her; and if she suffers much pain,
don't fail to send for the doctor."

A white image of hopeless misery, Regina lay listening till the sound
of departing steps became inaudible, and when Hannah left the room
the girl groaned aloud in the excess of her grief:

"I did not even say good-bye. I did not once thank him for all he did
for me in the storm! And now I know, I feel I shall never see him
again! Oh, Douglass!"

The glass door leading into the flower-garden stood open, and Mr.
Lindsay who had been watching her from the cover of the clustering
honeysuckle, stepped back into the room.

With a cry of delight, she held out her arms.

"Dear Mr. Lindsay, I shall thank you, and pray for you, and love you
as long as I live!"

He put a small packet in her hand, and whispered:

"Here is something I wish you to keep until you are eighteen. Do not
open it before that time, unless I give you permission, or unless you
know that I am dead."

He drew her tenderly to his heart, and his lips pressed her cheek.
Then he said brokenly:

"O God! be merciful in all things, to my darling!"

A moment after she heard his rapid footsteps on the gravelled walk,
followed by the clang of the gate; then a great loneliness as of
death fell upon her.

There are indeed sorrows "that bruise the heart like hammers," and
age it suddenly, prematurely. In subsequent years Regina looked back
to the incidents of this eventful Sabbath, and marked it with a black
stone in the calendar of memory as the day on which she "put away
childish things," and began to see life and the world through new,
strange disenchanting lenses, that dispelled all the gilding glamour
of childhood, and unexpectedly let in a grey dull light that chilled
and awed her.

With tearless but indescribably mournful eyes, she looked vacantly at
the door through which her friend had vanished, as it then seemed,
for ever, and, finding that her own remarks were entirely unheard,
unheeded, Hannah touched her shoulder.

"Poor thing! Are you ready to let me carry you upstairs?"

"Thank you, but I am not going upstairs to-night. I want to stay
here, because I am too heavy to be carried up and down, and I can get
about better from here. Bring a pillow and some bedclothes. I can
sleep on this lounge."

"I shall be scolded if you don't go to bed."

"Let me alone, Hannah. I intend to stay where I am. Bring the things
I need. Nobody shall scold you if you will only do as I ask."

"Then I shall have to make a pallet on the floor, for Miss Elise gave
positive orders that I should sleep in your room until she came back.
Don't you mean to undress yourself?"

"No. Please unfasten my clothes and then leave them as they are. You
must not sleep on the floor. Roll in the hall sofa, and it will make
a nice bed."

There was no alternative, and when Mr. Hargrove returned at midnight,
he deemed it useless to reprimand or expostulate, as Regina declared
herself very comfortable, and pleaded for permission to remain until
morning.

Looking very sad and careworn, the pastor stood for some minutes
leaning on his gold-headed cane. As he bade her goodnight and turned
from the lounge, she put her hand on the cane.

"Please, sir, lend me this until morning. Hannah sleeps soundly, and
if I am forced to wake her, I can easily do so by tapping on the
floor with your cane."

"Certainly, dear; keep it as long as you choose. But I am afraid none
of us will sleep much to-night. It is a heavy trial to give up
Douglass. He is my younger, better self."

He walked slowly away, and she thought he looked more aged and infirm
than she had ever seen him, his usually erect head drooping, as if
bowed by deep sorrow.

For an hour after his departure his footsteps resounded in the room
overhead, as he paced to and fro, but when the distant indistinct
echo of the town clock told two all grew quiet upstairs.

In the dining-room the shaded lamp burned dimly, and Regina could see
the outline of Hannah's form on the sofa, and knew from the continual
turning first on one side, then on the other, that the old woman was
awake, though no sound escaped her.

Engrossed by a profound yet silent grief that rendered sleep
impossible, Regina lay with her hands folded over the small packet,
wondering what it contained, regretting that the conditions of the
gift prohibited her opening it for so many long years, and striving
to divest herself of a haunting foreboding that she had looked for
the last time on the bright benignant countenance of the donor, who
was indissolubly linked with the happiest memories of her lonely
life.

Imagination magnified the perils of the tedious voyage that included
two oceans, and as if to intensify and blacken the horrors of the
future all the fiendish tragedies of Delhi, Meerut, and Cawnpore were
vividly revived among the missionaries to whom Mr. Lindsay was
hastening. Deeply interested in the condition of a people whose
welfare was so dear to his heart, she had eagerly read all the
mission reports, and thus imbibed a keen aversion to the Sepoys, who
had become synonymous with treachery and ingenious atrocity.

Is there an inherent affinity between brooding shadows of heart and
soul, and that veil of physical darkness that wraps the world during
the silent reign of night? Why do sad thoughts like corporeal
suffering and disease grow more intense, more tormenting, with the
approach of evening's gloom? Who has not realized that trials,
sorrows, bereavements which in daylight we partly conquer and put
aside, rally and triumph, overwhelming us by the aid of night? Why
are the sick always encouraged, and the grief-laden rendered more
cheerful by the coming of dawn? Is there some physical or chemical
foundation for Figuier's wild dream of reviving sun-worship, by
referring all life to the vivifying rays of the King Star? Does the
mind emit gloomy sombre thoughts at night, as plants exhale carbonic
acid? What subtle connection exists between a cheerful spirit, and
the amount of oxygen we inhale in golden daylight? Is hope, radiant
warm sunny hope, only one of those "beings woven of air by light,"
whereof Moleschott wrote?

To Regina the sad vigil seemed interminable, and soon after the clock
struck four she hailed with inexpressible delight the peculiarly
shrill crowing of her favourite white Leghorn cock, which she knew
heralded the advent of day. The China geese responded from their
corner of the fowlyard, and amid the _reveille_ of the poultry Hannah
rose, crept stealthily to the table and extinguished the lamp.
Intently listening to every movement, Regina felt assured she was
dressing rapidly, and in a few moments the tremulous motion of the
floor, and the carefully guarded sound of the bolt turned slowly,
told her that the old woman had started to fulfil her promise.

Having fully determined her own course, the girl lost no time in
reflection, but hastily fastening her clothes took her shoes in one
hand, the cane in the other, and limping to the glass door softly
unlocked it, loosened the outside Venetian blinds, and sat down on
the steps leading to the garden. Taking off the bandage, she slipped
her shoe on the sprained foot, and wrapping a light white shawl
around her, made her way slowly down the walk that wound toward the
church.


Unaccustomed to the cane, she used it with great difficulty, and the
instant her wounded foot touched the ground, sharp twinges renewed
the remonstrance that had been silent until she attempted to walk.

A waning moon hung above the tree tops on the western boundary of the
enclosure, and its wan spectral lustre lit up the churchyard, showing
Regina the tall form of Hannah, who carried a spade or short shovel
on her shoulder, and had just passed through the gate, leaving it
open. Following as rapidly as she dared, in the direction of the iron
railing, the child was only a few yards in the rear, when the old
woman stopped suddenly, then ran forward, and a cry like that of some
baffled wild beast broke the crystal calm of the morning air.

"The curse of God is upon it! The poplar is gone!"

Gliding along, Regina reached the outer edge of the railing, and,
creeping behind the broken granite shaft which shielded her from
observation, she peered cautiously around the corner, and saw that
the noble towering tree had been struck by lightning and fired.
Whether shivered by electricity, or subsequently blown down by the
fury of the gale, none ever knew; but it appeared to have been
twisted off about two feet above the ground, and in its fall smote
and shattered the marble angel, which a few hours before had hovered
with expanded wings over a child's grave. A wreath of blue smoke
curled and floated from the heart of the stump, showing that the
roots were burning, and the ivy and periwinkle so luxuriant on the
previous day were now a mass of ashes and cinders.

On her knees sank Hannah, raking the hot embers into a heap, and at
last she bent her grey head almost to the ground. Lifting something
on the end of the spade, she uttered a low wail of despair:

"Melted--burnt up! I thought it was tin: it must have been lead!
Either the curse of God, or the work of the devil!"

She fell back like one smitten with a stunning blow, and sobs shook
her powerful frame.

Very near the ground the tree had contained a hollow, hidden by the
rank lush creepers, and in this cavity she had deposited a small can,
cylindrical in form, and similar in appearance to those generally
used for hermetically sealed mushrooms. Upon it several spadefuls of
earth had been thrown, to secure it from detection, should prying
eyes discover the existence of the hollow.

All that remained was a shapeless lump of molten metal.

Along the east a broad band of yellow was rapidly mounting into the
sky, and in the blended light of moon and day the churchyard
presented a melancholy scene of devastation.

The spire and belfry had fallen upon and in front of the church, and
the long building stood like a dismasted vessel among the billowy
graves, that swelled as a restless sea around its grey weather-beaten
sides. Here and there ancient headstones had been blown down on the
mounds they guarded; and one venerable willow in the centre of a
cluster of graves had been torn from the earth, and its network of
roots lifted until they rested against a stone cross.

Awed by the solemn influence of the time and place, and painfully
reminded of her own peril on the previous night, Regina stepped down
from the base of the monument, and approached the figure crouching
over the blasted smoking roots. There was no rustle of grass or leaf
as she limped across the dewy turf, but warned by that mysterious
magnetic instinct which so often announces some noiseless, invisible
human presence, Hannah lifted and turned her head. With a scream of
superstitious terror she sprang to her feet.

Very ghostly the girl certainly appeared, in her snowy mull muslin
dress and white shawl, as she leaned forward on the cane, and looked
steadily at the old woman. Her long black hair, loosened and
disordered by tossing about all night, hung over her shoulders and
gave a weird, almost supernatural, aspect to the blanched and
sorrowful young face, which in that strange chill light seemed
wellnigh as rigid and pallid as a corpse.

"Hannah Hinton!"

"God have mercy! Who are you?"

Hannah seized the spade and brandished it, with hands that shook from
terror.

"You wicked woman, do you want to kill me? Put down that spade."

Regina advanced, but the old woman retreated, still waving the spade.

"Hannah, are you afraid of me?"

"Good Lord! Is it you, Regina?"

"Your sin makes you a coward. Did you really think me a ghost?"

"It is true, I am afraid of everything now, even of my own shadow,
and once I was so brave. But what are you doing here? I thought you
were crippled? What are you tracking me for?"

She threw down the spade, ran forward, and seized the girl's
shoulder, while a scowl of mingled fear and rage darkened her
countenance.

"You are watching, trailing me like a bloodhound! Is it any of your
business where I go? Suppose I do choose to come here and say my
prayers among the dead, while other folks are sound asleep in their
beds, who has the right to hinder me?"

"Don't tell stories, Hannah. If you really said your prayers, you
would never have come here to sell your soul to Satan."

Tightening her clutch, the old woman shook her, as if she had been
a slender weed, and an ashen hue settled upon her wrinkled features,
as she cried in an unnaturally shrill quavering tone:

"Aha! you were eavesdropping yesterday in the church. How I wish to
God it had all blown down on you! And you watched me,--you mean to
disgrace me,--to ruin me,--to arrest me! You do! But you shall not! I
will strangle you first!"

"Take your hands off my shoulders, Hannah. Do you think you can scare
me with such wild desperate threats? In the first place, I am not
afraid to die, and in the second you know very well you dare not kill
me. Let go my shoulder, you hurt me."

Very white but fearless, the young face was lifted to hers, and
before those wrathful glittering eyes that flashed like blue steel,
Hannah quailed.

"Will you promise not to betray me?"

"I will promise nothing while you threaten me. Sit down, you are
shaking all over as if you had an ague. When I came here I had no
intention of betraying you; I only wanted to prevent you from
committing a sin. Are you going to have a spasm? Do sit down."

Hannah's teeth were chattering violently, and her trembling limbs
seemed indeed unable to support her. When she sank down on the stone
base of the shaft, Regina stood before her, leaning more heavily upon
the cane.

"I heard all that you said yesterday, yet I was not 'eavesdropping.'
You came and stood under the window where I sat, and if you had
looked up would have seen me. When I learned you were engaged in a
wicked plot, I determined to try to stop you before it was too late.
I followed you here, hoping that you would give that paper to me,
instead of to that bold, bad man; for though you did very wrong, I
can't believe that you have a wicked cruel heart."

She paused, but the only response was a deep groan, and; Hannah
shrouded her face in her arms.

"Hannah, did my mother ever injure you, ever harm you, in any way?"

"Yes, she caused me to steal, and I shall hate her as long as I live.
I was as honest as an angel until she came that freezing night so
many years ago, and showed me by her efforts, her anxiety to get the
paper, how valuable it was. Beside, it was on her account that my
nephew went to destruction; and I was sure all the blame and
suspicion would fall on her: it seemed so clear that she stole the
paper. I knew Mr. Hargrove gave her a copy of it, and I only wanted
to sell the paper itself to the old General in Europe because I was
poor, and had not money enough to stop work. I have not had a happy
day since; my conscience has tormented me. I have carried a mountain
of lead upon my soul, day and night, and at last when Peleg came, and
I was about to get my gold, the Lord interfered and took it out of my
hands. Oh! it is an awful thing to shut your eyes and stop your ears,
and run down a steep place to meet the devil who is waiting at the
bottom for you, and to feel yourself suddenly jerked back by
something which you know Almighty God has sent to stop you! He sent
that lightning to burn up the paper, and I feel that His curse will
follow me to my grave."

"Not if you earnestly repent, and pray for His forgiveness." Hannah
raised her grey head, and gazed incredulously at the pale delicate
face, into the violet eyes that watched her with almost tender
compassion.

"Oh, child! when our hands are tied, and we are so helpless we can't
do any more mischief, who believes in our repentance?"

"I do, Hannah; and how much more merciful is God?"

"You don't mean that you would ever trust me, ever believe in me
again?"

Her hand caught the white muslin dress, and her haggard wrinkled face
was full of eager, breathless supplication.

"Yes, Hannah, I would. I do not believe you will ever steal again.
Suppose the lightning had struck you as well as the tree where you
hid the stolen paper, what do you think would have become of your
poor wicked soul? You intended to sell that paper to a person who
hates my mother, and who would have used it to injure her; but she is
in God's hands, and you ought to be glad that this sin at least was
prevented. In a few days you are going away, far out to the west, you
say, where we shall probably never see or hear from you again, unless
you choose to write us. Until you are gone, I shall keep all this
secret. Mrs. Lindsay never shall know anything about it; but if Mr.
Hargrove believes my mother took that paper, it is my duty to her to
tell him the truth; and this I must do after you leave us. I promise
he shall suspect nothing while you remain here. Can you ask me to do
more than this for you?"

Hannah was crying passionately, and attempted no answer, save by
drawing the girl closer to her, as if she wanted to take the slender
figure in her brawny arms.

"I am sorry for you, Hannah; sorry for my dear mother; sorry for
myself. The storm came and put an end to all the mischief you meant
to do, so let us be thankful. You say my mother has a copy; and it
would have injured her, if the original paper had been sold. Then you
have harmed only yourself. Don't cry, and don't say anything more.
Let it all rest; I shall never speak to you again on the subject.
Hannah, will you please help me back to the house? My foot pains me
dreadfully, and I begin to feel sick and faint."

In the mellow orange light that had climbed the sky, and was flooding
the world with a mild glory, wherein the wan moon waned ghostly, the
old woman led the white figure toward the parsonage. When they
reached the little gate, Regina grasped the supporting arm, and a
deadly pallor overspread her features.

"Where are you, Hannah? I cannot see----"

The blue eyes closed, she tottered, and as Hannah caught and bore her
up, a swift heavy step on the gravel caused her to glance over her
shoulder.

"What is the matter, Aunt Hannah? You look ill and frightened. Is
that Minnie's child?"

"Hush! our game is all up. For God's sake go away until seven
o'clock, then I will explain. Don't make a noise, Peleg. I must get
her in the house without waking any one. If Mr. Hargrove should see
us, we are ruined."

As Hannah strode swiftly toward the glass door, bearing the slight
form in her stout arms, the stranger pressed forward, eagerly
scrutinizing the girl's face; but at this juncture Hero, barking
violently, sprang down the walk, and the intruder hastily retreated
to the churchyard, securing the gate after he passed through.




CHAPTER XI.


The steamer sailed promptly on the Thursday subsequent to Mrs.
Lindsay's departure from the parsonage, but she had been absent ten
days, detained by the illness of a friend in Boston.

Impatiently her return was anticipated by every member of the
household, and when a telegram announced that she might be expected
on the following morning, general rejoicing succeeded the gloom which
had hung chill and lowering over the diminished family circle. Under
Hannah's faithful, cautious treatment Regina had sufficiently
recovered from the effects of the sprain to walk once more without
much pain, though she still limped perceptibly; but a nameless,
formless foreboding of some impending evil--some baleful
influence--some grievous calamity hovering near--rendered her
particularly anxious for Mrs. Lindsay's comforting presence.

The condition of the church, which was undergoing a complete
renovation, as well as repairing of the steeple, prevented the usual
services, and this compulsory rest and leisure seemed singularly
opportune for Mr. Hargrove, who had been quite indisposed and feeble
for some days. The physician ascribed his condition to the lassitude
induced by the excessive heat, and Regina attributed his pale weary
aspect and evident prostration to grief for the loss of his nephew
and adopted son; but Hannah looked deeper, shook her grizzled head,
and "wished Miss Elise would come home."

The pastor's eyes which had long resented the exaggerated taxation
imposed upon them by years of study, had recently rebelled outright,
and he spoke of the necessity of visiting New York to consult an
eminent oculist, who, Mrs. Lindsay wrote, had gone to Canada, but
would return in September, when he hoped to examine and undertake the
treatment of her brother's eyes.

During Thursday morning the minister lay upon his library sofa, while
Regina read aloud for several hours, but in the afternoon, receiving
a summons to attend a sick man belonging to his church, he persisted
in walking to a distant part of the town, to discharge what he
considered a clerical obligation.

In vain Regina protested, assuring him that the heat and fatigue
would completely prostrate him. He only smiled, patted her head, and
said cheerfully as he put on his hat:

"Is the little girl wiser than her guardian? And has she not yet
learned that a pastor's duty knows neither heat nor cold, neither
fatigue nor bodily weaknesses?"

"I am so glad Mrs. Lindsay will come to-morrow. She can keep you at
home, and make you take care of yourself."

Holding his sleeve, she followed him to the front door, and detained
him a moment, to fasten in the button-hole of his coat a tuberose and
sprig of heliotrope, his favourite flowers.

"Thank you, my dear. You have learned all of Elise's pretty petting
tricks, and some day you will be, I hope, just such a noble,
tender-hearted woman. While I am gone, look after the young guineas;
I have not seen them since yesterday. I shall not stay very long."

He walked away, and she went out among the various pets in the
poultry yard.

It was late in August, but the afternoon was unusually close and
warm, and argosies of frail creamy clouds with saffron shadows seemed
becalmed in the still upper air, which was of that peculiar blue that
betokens turbid ether, and hints at showers.

About sunset Regina rolled the large easy chair out on the verandah
at the west of the library, and, placing a table in front of it,
busied herself in arranging the pastor's evening meal. It consisted
of white home-made lightbread, a pineapple of golden butter, deftly
shaped and printed by her own slender hands, a glass bowl filled
with honey from the home hives--honey that resembled melted amber in
cells of snow, a tiny pyramid of baked apples, and a goblet of iced
milk.

Upon a spotless square of damask daintily fringed she placed the
supper, and in the centre a crystal vase filled with beautiful Cloth
of Gold and Prince Albert roses, among which royal crimson and white
carnations held up their stately heads and exhaled marvellous
fragrance. Upon the snowy napkin beside the solitary plate, she left
a Grand Duke jasmine lying on the heart of a rose-geranium leaf.

"Has he come?" asked Hannah, throwing wide the Venetian blinds.

"Not yet; but he must be here very soon."

"Well, I am going to milk. Dapple has been lowing these ten minutes
to let me know I am behind time. I waited to see if a cup of tea
would be wanted, but it is getting late. If he should ask for it, the
kettle is boiling, and I guess you can make it in a minute. I have
lighted the lamp and turned it down low."

She went toward the cattle-shed, swinging her copper milk-pail, which
was burnished to a degree of ruddy glory beautiful to contemplate,
and which, alas! is rarely seen in this age of new fashions and
new-fashioned utensils.

"Come, Hero, let us go and meet the master."

But Regina had not left the verandah before Mr. Hargrove came slowly
towards the easy chair, walking wearily, she thought, as if spent
with fatigue.

"How tired you are! Give me your hat and cane."

"Yes, dear--very tired. I had something like vertigo, accompanied by
severe palpitation as I came home, and was obliged to sit on the
roadside till it passed."

"Let me send for Dr. Melville."

"You silly soft-souled young pigeon! These attacks are not dangerous,
merely annoying while they last."

"Perhaps a cup of tea will strengthen you?"

"Thank you, dear; but I believe I prefer some cool water."

She brought a tumbler of iced water, and a stool which she placed
beneath his feet.

"How delicious! worth all the tea in China; all the wine in Spain."

He handed back the empty glass, and sank down in his comfortable
chair.

"How did you find Mr. Needham?"

"Much worse than when I saw him last. He had another hemorrhage
to-day, and is evidently sinking. I should not so surprised if I were
recalled before to-morrow, for his poor wife is almost frantic and
wished me to remain all night; but I knew you were lonely here."

The exertion of speaking wearied him, and he laid his head back, and
closed his eyes.

"Won't you eat your supper? It will help you; and your milk is
already iced."

"I will try after a while, when I have rested a little. My child, you
are very good to anticipate my wants. I noticed all you have done for
me, and the flowers are lovely; so deliciously sweet too."

He opened his eyes, took the Grand Duke, smelled it, smiled and
stroked her hand which rested on the arm of his chair.

Scarlet plumes and dashes of cirrus cloud that glowed like
sacrificial fires upon the altar of the west, paled, flickered, died
out in ashen grey; and a moon more gold than silver hung in
shimmering splendour among the cloud ships, lending a dazzling fringe
to their edges, and making quaint arabesque patterns of gilt
embroidery on the verandah floor, where the soft light fell through
interlacing vines of woodbine and honeysuckle. With the night came
silence, broken only by the subdued plaint of the pigeons in the
neighbouring yard, and the cooing or a pair of pet ring-doves that
slept in the honeysuckle, and were kept awake by the moonshine which
invaded their nest, and tempted them to gossip. After awhile a
whipporwill which haunted the churchyard elms drew gradually nearer,
finally settling upon a deodar cedar in the flower garden, whence it
poured forth its lonely _miserere_ wail.

Mr. Hargrove sat so still, that Regina hoped he had fallen asleep,
but very soon he said:

"My dear, you need not fan me."

"I hoped you were sleeping, and that a nap would refresh you."

He took her hand, pressed it gently, and said with the grave
tenderness peculiar to him:

"What a thoughtful good little nurse you are! Almost as watchful and
patient as Elise. Have you had your supper?"

"All that I want, some bread and milk. Hero and I ate our supper
before you came. Shall I bring your slippers?"

"Thank you, I believe not. Before long I will go to sleep. Regina,
open the organ, and play something soft and holy, with the Tremulant.
Sing me that dear old 'Protect us through the coming eight,' which my
Douglass loves so well."

"I wish I could, but you know, sir, it is a quartette; and beside, I
should never get through my part: it reminds me so painfully of the
last time we all sang it."

"Well then, my little girl, something else. 'Oh that I had wings like
a dove!' To-night I am almost like a weary child, and only need a
lullaby to hush me to sleep. Go, dear, and sing me to rest."

Reluctantly she obeyed, brightened the library lamp, and sat down
before the cabinet organ which had been brought over to the parsonage
for safe keeping while the church was being repaired. As she
pulled out the stops, Hannah touched her.

"Has he finished his supper? Can I move the dishes and table?"

"Not yet. He is too tired just now to eat."

"Then I will wait here. To tell you the truth, I have a queer feeling
that scares me, makes my flesh creep. While I was straining the milk
just now, a screech-owl flew on the top of the dairy, and its awful
death-warning almost froze the blood in my veins. How I do wish Miss
Elise was here! I hope it is not a sign of a railroad accident to
her, or that the vessel is lost that carried her boy!"

"Hush, you superstitious old Hannah! I often hear that screech-owl,
and it is only hunting for mice. Mrs. Lindsay will come to-morrow."

Her fingers wandered over the keys, and in a sweet, pure, and
remarkably clear voice she sang "Oh that I had wings." With great
earnestness and pathos she rendered the final "to be at rest,"
lingering long on the "Amen."

Then she began one of Mozart's symphonies, and from it glided away
into favourite selections from Rossini's "Moïse."

Once afloat upon the mighty tide of sacred music she drifted on and
on, now into a requiem, now a "Gloria," and at last the grand
triumphant strains of the pastor's favourite "Jubilate" rolled
through the silent house, out upon the calm lustrous summer night.

Of the flight of time she had taken no cognizance, and as she closed
the organ and rose she heard the clock striking nine, and saw that
Hannah was nodding in a corner of the sofa.

Surprised at the lateness of the hour, she stepped out on the
verandah, and approached the arm chair.

The moon had sunk so low that its light had been diminished, but the
reflection from the library lamp prevented total darkness. Mr.
Hargrove had not moved from the posture in which she left him, and
she said very softly:

"Are you asleep?"

He made no answer, and, unwilling to arouse him, she sat down on the
step to wait until he finished his nap.

As the moon went down a light breeze sprang from some blue depths of
the far west, and began to skim the frail foamy clouds that drifted
imperceptibly across the star-lit sky; and to the crystal fingers of
the dew the numerous flowers in the garden below yielded a generous
tribute of perfume that blended into a wave of varied aromas, and
rolled to and fro in the cool night air. Calm, sweet and holy, the
night seemed a very benison, dispensing peace.

Watching the white fire of constellations burning in the vault above
her, Regina wondered whether it were a fair night far out at sea, if
the same glittering stellar clusters swung above the deck of the
noble vessel that had been for many days upon the ocean, or if the
storm fiend held cyclone carnival upon the distant Atlantic.

Her thoughts wandered toward the future, that _terra incognita_ which
Mr. Lindsay's vague words--"There are trials ahead of you"--had
peopled with dread yet intangible phantoms, whose spectral shadows
solemnly presageful, hovered over even the present. Why was her own
history a sealed volume--her father a mystery--her mother a wanderer
in foreign lands?

From this most unprofitable train of reflection she was gradually
recalled by the restless singular behaviour of her dog. He had been
lying near the table, with his head on his paws, but rose, whined,
came close to his mistress and caught her sleeve between his
teeth--his usual mode of attracting her attention.

"What is it, Hero? Are you hungry?"

He barked, ran to the easy chair, rubbed his nose against the
pastor's hand, came back whining to Regina, and finally returning to
the chair, sat down, bent his head to the pastor's feet and uttered a
prolonged and dismal howl.

An undefinable horror made the girl spring toward the chair.

The sleeper had not moved, and stooping over she put her hand on his
forehead. The cold damp touch terrified her, and with a cry of
"Hannah! Oh, Hannah!" she darted into the library, and seized the
lamp. By its light held close to the quiet figure, she saw that the
eyes were closed as in slumber, and the lips half parted, as though
in dreaming he had smiled; but the features were rigid, the hands
stiff and cold, and she could feel no flutter in the wrists or
temples.

"Oh, my God! he is dead!" screamed Hannah, wringing her hands, and
uttering a succession of shrieks, while like a statue of despair the
girl stood staring almost vacantly at the white placid face of the
dead. At last, shuddering from head to foot, she exclaimed:

"Run for Dr. Melville! Run, Hannah! you can go faster now than I
could."

"What is the use? He is dead! stone dead!"

"Perhaps not--he may revive. Oh, Hannah! why don't you go?"

"Leave you alone in the house--with a corpse?"

"Run--run! Tell the doctor to hurry. He may do something."

As the old servant disappeared, Regina fell on her knees, and seizing
the right hand, carried it to her lips; then began to chafe it
violently between her own trembling palms.

"O Lord, spare him a little while! Spare him till his sister comes?"

She rushed into the library, procured some brandy which was kept in
the medicine chest, and with the aid of a spoon tried to force some
down his throat, but the muscles refused to relax, and, pouring the
brandy on her handkerchief, she rubbed his face and the hand she had
already chafed. In the left he tightly held the jasmine, as when he
spoke to her last, and she shrank from touching those fingers.

Finding no change in the fixed white face she took off his shoes and
rubbed his feet with mustard, but no effect encouraged her, and
finally she sat, praying silently, holding the feet tenderly against
her heart.

How long lasted that lonely vigil with the dead, she never knew. Hope
deserted her, and by degrees she realized the awful truth that the
arrival of the physician so impatiently expected would bring no
succour. How bitterly she upbraided herself for leaving him a moment,
even though in obedience to his wishes. Perhaps he had called and the
organ had drowned his voice.

Had he died while she sang, and was his spirit already with God when
she repeated the words "Far away in the regions of the blest"? When
she came on tiptoe, and asked, "Are you asleep?" was he indeed verily
"Asleep in Jesus"? While she waited, fearful of disturbing his
slumber, was his released and rejoicing soul nearing the pearly
battlements of the City of Rest, lead by God's most pitying and
tender angel, loving yet silent Death?

When will humanity reject and disown the hideous, ruthless monster
its own disordered fancy fashioned, and accept instead the beautiful
Oriental Azrael, the most ancient "Help of God," who is sent in
infinite mercy to guide the weary soul into the blessed realm of
Peace?

          "O Land! O Land!
            For all the broken-hearted,
          The mildest herald by our fate allotted--
            Beckons, and with inverted torch doth stand,
          To lead us with a gentle hand
            Into the Land of the great departed,--
          Into the Silent Land."

When the solemn silence that hung like a pall over the parsonage was
broken by the hurried tread of many feet and the confused sound of
strange voices, Regina seemed to be aroused from some horrible
lethargy, and gazed despairingly at the doctor.

"It is too late. You can't do anything for him now," she said,
clinging to his feet, as an attempt was made to lift them from her
lap.

"He must have been dead several hours," answered Dr. Melville.

"None but God and the angels know when he died. I thought he had gone
to sleep; and so indeed he had."

Hannah had spread the alarm, while searching for the doctor, and very
soon Mr. Hargrove's personal friends and some of the members of the
congregation thronged the library, into which the body of the
minister had been removed.

An hour afterward Dr. Melville, having searched for the girl all over
the house, found her crouched on the steps leading down to the flower
garden. She sat with her arm around Hero's neck, and her head bowed
against him. Seating himself beside her, the physician said:

"Poor child, this is an awful ordeal for you, and in Dr. Hargrove's
death you have lost a friend whom the whole world cannot replace. He
was the noblest man, the purest Christian, I ever knew, and if the
church has a hundred pastors in future, none will ever equal him. He
married me, he baptized my children, and when I buried my wife, his
voice brought me the most comfort, the----"

His tone faltered, and a brief silence ensued.

"Regina, I wish you would tell me as nearly as you can how he seemed
to-day, and how it all happened. I could get nothing satisfactory put
of old Hannah."

She described the occurrences of the morning, his debility and entire
lack of appetite, and the long walk in the afternoon, followed by the
attack of vertigo and palpitation, to which he alluded after his
return. When she concluded her recital of the last terrible scene in
the melancholy drama, Dr. Melville sighed, and said:

"It has ended just as I feared, and predicted. His heart has been
affected for some time, and not a month ago I urged him to give up
his pulpit work for a while at least, and try rest and change of air.
But he answered that he considered his work imperative, and when he
died it would be with the harness on. He would not permit me to
allude to the subject in the presence of his family, because he told
me he did not wish to alarm his sister, who is so devoted to him, or
render the parting with his nephew more painful, by adding
apprehensions concerning his health. I fear his grief at the loss of
Douglass has hastened the end."

"When Mrs. Lindsay comes to-morrow it will kill her," groaned Regina,
whose soul seemed to grow sick, as she thought of the devoted fond
sister, and the anguish that awaited her already bruised and aching
heart.

"No, sorrow does not kill people, else the race would become
extinct."

"It has killed Mr. Hargrove."

"Not sorrow, but the disease, which sorrow may have aggravated."

"Mrs. Lindsay would not go to India with her son, because she said
she could not leave her brother whose sight was failing, and who
needed her most. Now she has lost both. Oh, I wish I could run away
to-morrow, somewhere, anywhere, out of sight of her misery!"

"Some one must meet her at the train, and prepare her for the sad
news. My dear child, you would be the best person for that melancholy
task."

"I? Never! I would cut off my tongue before it should stab her heart
with such awful news! Are people ever prepared for trouble like
this?"

"Well, somebody must do it; but, like you, I am not brave enough to
meet her with the tidings. When it is necessary, I can amputate
limbs, and do a great many apparently cruel things, but when it
conies to breaking such bad news as this I am a nervous coward. Mr.
Campbell is a kind, tenderhearted friend of the family, and I will
request him to take a carriage and meet her to-morrow. Poor thing!
what a welcome home!"

Soon after he left her she heard the whistle of the night express,
which arrived simultaneously with the departure of the outward train
bound south, and she knew that it was eleven o'clock.

Hannah was in the kitchen talking with Esau the sexton, and when
several gentlemen who offered to remain until morning came out on the
verandah, leaving the blinds of the library windows wide open, Regina
rose and stole away to escape their observation.

Although walking swiftly she caught sight of the table in the middle
of the room and of a mass of white drapery, on which the lamp-light
fell with ghostly lustre. Twelve hours before she had sat there,
reading to the faithful kind friend whose affectionate gaze rested
all the while upon her; now stiff and icy he was sleeping his last
sleep in the same spot, and his soul? Safely resting, after the
feverish toil and strife of Time, amid the palms of Eternal Peace.
Not the peace of Nirwana; neither the absolute absorption of one
school of philosophy, nor the total extinction inculcated by a yet
grosser system. Not the vague insensate peace of Pantheism, but the
spiritual rest of a heaven of reunion and of recognition promised by
Jesus Christ our Lord, who, conquering death in that lonely rock-hewn
Judæan tomb, won immortal identity for human souls. Not the
succession of progressive changes that constitute the hereafter of--

       "This age that blots out life with question-marks,
       This nineteenth century with its knife and glass
       That make thought physical, and thrust far off
       The heaven, so neighbourly with man of old,
       To voids sparse-sown with alienated stars."

Among the multitudinous philosophic, psychologic, biologic systems
that have waxed and waned, dazzled and deluded, from the first
utterances of Gotama, to the very latest of the advanced
Evolutionists, is there any other than the Christian solution of the
triple-headed riddle--Whence? Wherefore? Whither?--that will deliver
us from the devouring Sphinx Despair, or yield us even shadowy
consolation when the pinions of gentle yet inexorable death poise
over our household darling, and we stand beside the cold silent clay,
which natural affection and life-long companionship render so
inexpressibly precious?

When we lower the coffin of our beloved is there soothing comfort in
the satisfactory reflection that perhaps at some distant epoch, by
the harmonious operation of "Natural Selection" and by virtue of the
"Conservation of Force," the "Survival of the fittest" will certainly
ensure the "Differentiation" the "Evolution" of our buried treasure
into some new, strange, superior type of creature, to us for ever
unknown and utterly unrecognizable? Tormented by aspirations which
neither time nor space, force nor matter, will realize or satisfy,
consumed by spiritual hunger fiercer than Ugolino's, we are invited
to seize upon the Barmecide's banquet of "The Law which formulates
organic development as a transformation of the homogeneous into the
heterogeneous;" and that "this universal transformation is a change
from indefinite homogeneity to definite heterogeneity; and that only
when the increasing multiformity is joined with increasing
definiteness, does it constitute Evolution, as distinguished from
other changes that are like it, in respect of increasing
heterogeneity."

Does this wise and simple pabulum cure spiritual starvation?

"God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And the
Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."
Nay--thunders Science--put away such childish superstition, smite
such traditionary idols; man was first made after the similitude of a
marine ascidian, and once swam as a tadpole in primeval seas.

In all the wide universe of modern speculation there remains no
unexplored nook or cranny, where an immortal human soul can find
refuge or haven. Having hunted it down, trampled and buried it as one
of the little "inspired legendary" foxes that nibble and bruise the
promising sprouts of the Science Vineyard, what are we requested to
accept in lieu of the doctrine of spiritual immortality? "Natural
Evolution."

One who has long been regarded as an esoteric in the Eleusis of
Science, and who ranks as a crowned head among its hierophants,
frankly tells us: "What are the core and essence of this hypothesis
Natural Evolution? Strip it naked, and you stand face to face with
the notion that not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular or
animal life, not alone the nobler forma of the horse and lion, not
alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human body, but
that the human mind itself--emotion, intellect, will, and all their
phenomena--were once latent in a fiery cloud. Many who hold it would
probably assent to the position that at the present moment all our
philosophy, all our poetry, all our science, all our art--Plato,
Shakespeare, Newton, and Raphael--are potential in the fires of the
sun."... A different pedigree from that offered us by Moses and the
Prophets, Christ and the Apostles; but does it light up the
Hereafter?

We are instructed that our instincts and consciousness dwell in the
"sensory ganglia," that "an idea is a contradiction, a motion, a
configuration of the intermediate organ of sense," that "memory is
the organic registration of their effects of impressions," and that
the "cerebrum" is the seat of ideas, the home of thought and reason.
But when "grey-matter" that composes this thinking mechanism becomes
diseased, and the cold touch of death stills the action of fibre and
vesicle, what light can our teachers pour upon the future of that
coagulated substance where once reigned hope, ambition, love, or
hate? Those grey granules that were memory, become oblivion.
Certainly physiology has grown to giant stature since the days of St.
Paul, but does it bring to weeping mourners any more comfort than the
doctrine he taught the Corinthians?

Does the steel Law Mill of Progressive Development grind us either
tonic or balm for the fatal hours of sorest human trial? We have
learned that "the heart of man is constructed upon the recognized
rules of hydraulics, and with its great tubes is furnished with
common mechanical contrivances, valves."

But when the valvular action is at rest under the stern finger of
death, can all the marvellous appliances of this intensely and
wonderfully mechanical age force one ruddy drop through those great
tubes, or coax one solitary throb, where God has said "Be still"?

To the stricken mother, bowed over the waxen image of her darling, is
there any system, theory, or creed that promises aught of the Great
Beyond comparable to the Christian's sublime hope that the pet lamb
is safely and tenderly folded by the Shepherd Jesus?

To the aching heart and lonely soul of sorrowing Regina these vexing
riddles that sit open-mouthed at our religious and scientific
cross-roads, brought no additional gloom; for with the pure holy
faith of unquestioning childhood she seemed to see beside the rigid
form of her pastor and friend the angel who on sea-girt Patmos bade
St. John write, "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, from
henceforth; yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their
labours; and their works do follow them."

Anxious to avoid those who sat within keeping sad watch, the unhappy
girl went around to the front entrance, and sank down on the lowest
step, burying her face in her hands.

The library was merely a continuation of the hall that ran east and
west through the centre of the house, and though comparatively remote
from the front door was immediately opposite, and from the sight of
that room Regina shrank instinctively.

Too much shocked and stunned to weep, she became so absorbed by
thoughts of to-morrow's mournful mission, that she failed to notice
the roll of wheels along the street, or the quick rattle of the
gate-latch. The sound of rapid footsteps and the rustle of drapery on
the pebbled walk, finally arrested her attention, and rising she
would have moved aside, but a hand seized her arm.

"What is the matter? How is my brother?"

"Oh, Mrs. Lindsay!"

"Something must have happened. I had such a presentiment of trouble
at home that I could not wait till to-morrow. I came on the night
express. Why is the house all lighted up? Is Peyton ill?"

Trembling from head to foot, she waited an instant, but Regina only
crouched and groaned, and Mrs. Lindsay sprang up the steps. As she
reached the door, the light in the library revealed the shrouded
table,--the rigid figure resting thereon,--and a piercing wail broke
the silence of death.

"Merciful God!--not my Peyton?"

Thrusting her fingers into her ears, Regina fled down the walk out of
the yard, anywhere to escape the sound and sight of that
broken-hearted woman, whose cry was indeed _de profundis_.

"Console if you will, I can bear it; 'Tis a well-meant alms of
breath; But not all the preaching since Adam Has made Death other
than Death."




CHAPTER XII.


A dreary sunless December day had drawn to a close, prematurely
darkened by a slow drizzling rain, that brought the gloom of early
night, where sunset splendours should have lingered, and deepened the
sombre desolation that mantled the parsonage. In anticipation of the
arrival of the new minister, who was expected the ensuing week, the
furniture had been removed and sold, the books carefully packed and
temporarily stored at the warehouse of a friend, and even the trunks
containing the wearing apparel of the occupants had been despatched
to the railway depot, and checked for transmission by the night
express.

The melancholy preparations for departure were completed, friends had
paid their final visits, and only Esau the sexton waited with his
lantern, to lock up the deserted house, and take charge of the keys.

The last mournful tribute had been offered at the grave in the
churchyard, where the beloved pastor slept serenely; and the cold
leaden rain fell upon a mass of beautiful flowers, which quite
covered the mound, that marked his dreamless couch.

Since that farewell visit to her brother's tomb, Mrs. Lindsay seemed
to have lost her wonted fortitude and composure, and was pacing the
empty library, weeping bitterly, giving vent to the long-pent anguish
which daily duties and business details had compelled her to
restrain.

Impotent to comfort, Regina stood by the mantlepiece, gazing vacantly
at the wood fire on the hearth, which supplied only a dim fitful and
uncertain light in the bare chill room, once the most cosy and
attractive in the whole cheerful house.

How utterly desolate everything appeared now, with only the dreary
monotone of the wintry rain on the roof, and the occasional sob that
fell from the black-robed figure walking to and fro.

It had been such a happy, peaceful, blessed home, where piety,
charity, love, taste, refinement, and education all loaned their
charms to the store of witchery, which made it doubly sad to realize
that henceforth other feet would tread its floors, other voices echo
in its garden and verandahs.

To the girl who had really never known any other home (save the quiet
convent courts) this parsonage was the dearest spot she had yet
learned to love; and with profound sorrow she now prepared to bid
adieu for ever to the haven where her happiest years had passed like
a rosy dream.

The dreary deserted aspect of the house recalled to her mind--

        "How some they have died, and some they have left me,
        And some are taken from me; all are departed"--

of Charles Lamb's quaint tender "Old familiar faces," as full of
melancholy pathos as human eyes brimming with unshed tears; and from
it her thoughts gradually drifted to another poem, which she had
first heard from Mr. Lindsay during the week of his departure, and
later from the sacred lips that were now placidly smiling beneath the
floral cross and crown in the neighbouring churchyard.

To-night the words recurred with the mournful iteration of some
dolorous refrain; and yielding to the spell she leaned her forehead
against the chimney-piece, and repeated them sadly and slowly:

             "'We sat and talked until the night
                 Descending, filled the little room;
               Our faces faded from the sight--
                 Our voices only broke the gloom.
               We spake of many a vanished scene,
                 Of what we once had thought and said,
               Of what had been, and might have been,
                 And who was changed, and who was dead;
               And all that fills the hearts of friends,
                 When first they feel with secret pain,
               Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
                 And never can be one again.
               The very tones in which we spake
                 Had something strange, I could but mark;
               The leaves of memory seemed to make
                 A mournful rustling in the dark.'"

Attracted by the rhythm, which softly beat upon the air like some
muffled prelude striking only minor chords, Mrs. Lindsay came to the
hearth, and with her arm resting on the girl's shoulder, stood
listening.

"How dearly my Douglass loved those lines."

"And on the night before he died, Mr. Hargrove repeated them, asking
me afterward to select some sweet solemn sacred tune with an organ
accompaniment, and sing them for him. But what music is there that
would suit a poem, which henceforth will seem as holy as a psalm to
me?"

"Perhaps after a while you and I may be able to quiet the pain, and
set it to some sweet old chant. Just now our hearts are too sore."

"After a while? What hope has after a while? It cannot bring back the
lost; and does memory ever die? After a while has not given me my
mother; after a while has not taught me to forget her, or made me
more patient in my waiting. After a while I know death will come to
us all, and then there will be no more heartache; but I can't see
that there is any comfort in after a while, except beyond the grave.
Mrs. Lindsay, I do not wish to be wicked or rebellious, but it seems
very hard that I must leave this dear quiet home, and be separated
from you and Mr. Lindsay whom I dearly love, and go and live in a
city, with that cold, hard, harsh, stern man, of whom I am so much
afraid. He may mean well, but he has such unkind ways of showing it.
You have no idea how dreadful the future looks to me."

She spoke drearily, and in the fitful flashes of the firelight the
young face looked unnaturally stern.

"My dear child, you must not despond; at your age one must try to see
only the bright side. If I expected to remain in America, I would not
give you up without a struggle; would beg your mother's permission to
keep you until she claimed you. But I shall only wait to learn that
Douglass has arranged for my arrival. As you know, my sister and
brother-in-law are in Egypt, and if I were with them in Cairo, I
could hear more regularly and frequently from my dear boy. I wish I
could keep you, for you have grown deep into my heart, but my own
future is too uncertain to allow me to involve any one else in my
plans."

"I understand the circumstances, but if mother only knew everything,
I believe she would not doom me to the care of that man of stone. Oh,
if you could only take me across the ocean, and let me go to Venice
to mother."

Mrs. Lindsay tightened her arm around the erect slender figure, and
gently stroked back the hair from her temples.

"My dear, you paint your future guardian too grimly. Mr. Palma
is very reserved, rather haughty, and probably stern, but
notwithstanding has a noble character, I am told, and certainly
appears much interested in and kindly disposed toward you. Dear
Peyton liked him exceedingly, and his two letters to me were full of
generosity and kind sympathy. As I believe I told you, his stepmother
resides with him, and her daughter Miss Neville, though a young lady,
will be more of a companion for you than the older members of the
household. Mr. Palma is one of the most eminent and popular lawyers
in New York, is very ambitious, I have heard, and at his house you
will meet the best society of that great city; by which I mean the
most cultivated, high-toned, and aristocratic people. I am sorry that
he has no religious views, habits, or associations, as I inferred
from the remarks of the lady whom I met in Boston, and who seemed
well acquainted with the Palma household. She told me 'none of that
family had any religion, though of course they kept a pew in the
fashionable church.' But, my dear little girl, I hope your principles
and rules of life are sufficiently established to preserve you from
all free-thinking tendencies. Constant attendance at church does not
constitute religion, any more than the _bonâ  fide_ pulpit means the
spiritual Gospel; but I have noticed that where genuine piety exists,
it is generally united with a recognition of church duties and
obligations. The case of books I packed and sent with your trunks
contains some very admirable though old-fashioned works, written by
such women as Hannah More, Mrs. Chapone, Mrs. Opie, and others, to
mould the character of girls, and instruct them in all that is
requisite to make them noble, refined, intelligent, useful Christian
women. Hannah More's 'Lucilla Stanley' is one of the loveliest
portraitures of female excellence in the whole domain of literature,
and you will find some of the passages marked to arrest your
attention. In this age of rapid deviation from the standard rules
that governed feminine deportment and education when I was a
girl, many of the precepts and admonitions penned by the authors
I have mentioned are derided and repudiated as 'puritanical,'
'old-fashioned,' 'strait-laced,' 'stupid and prudish'; but if these
indeed be faults, certainly in the light of modern innovations they
appear 'to lean to virtue's side.' In fashionable society, such as
you are destined to meet at Mr. Palma's, you will find many things
that no doubt will impress you as strange, possibly wrong; but in all
these matters consult the books I have selected for you, read your
Bible, pray regularly, and under all circumstances hold fast to your
principles. Question and listen to your conscience, and no matter how
keen the ridicule, or severe the condemnation to which your views may
subject you, stand firm. Moral cowardice is the inclined plane that
leads to the first step in sin. Be sure you are right, and then
suffer no persuasion or invective to influence you in questions
involving conscientious scruples. You are young and peculiarly
isolated, therefore I have given you a letter to my valued old friend
Mrs. Mason, who will always advise you judiciously, if you will only
consult her. I hope you will devote as much time as possible to
music, for to one gifted with your rare talent it will serve as a
sieve straining out every ignoble discordant suggestion, and will
help to keep your thoughts pure and holy."

"I suppose there are wicked ways and wicked people everywhere, and it
is not the fashion or the sinfulness that I am afraid of in New York,
but the loneliness I anticipate. I dread being shut up between brick
walls: no flowers, no grass, no cows, no birds, no chickens, none of
the things I care for most."

"But, my dear child, you forget that you have entered your fifteenth
year, and as you grow older you will gradually lose your inordinate
fondness for pets. Your childish tastes will change as you approach
womanhood."

"I hope not. Why should they? When I am an old woman with white hair,
spectacles, wrinkled cheeks, and a ruffled muslin cap like poor
Hannah's, I expect to love pigeons and rabbits, and all pretty white
things, just as dearly as I do now. Speaking of Hannah, how I shall
miss her? Since she went away, I shun the kitchen as much as
possible,--everything is so changed, so sad. Oh! the dear, dear
old-dead-and-gone-days will never, never come back to me."

For some time neither spoke. Mrs. Lindsay wept, the girl only groaned
in spirit; and at length she said suddenly, like one nerved for some
painful task:

"When we separate at the depot, you to take one train and I another,
we may never meet again in this world, and I must say something to
you, which I could mention to no one else. There is a cloud hanging
over me. I have always lived in its cold shadow, even here where
there is, or was, so much to make me happy, and this mystery renders
me unwilling to go into the world of curious, harsh people, who will
wonder and question. I know that Orme is not my real name, but am
forbidden to ask for information until I am grown. I have full faith
in my mother: I must believe that all she has done is right, no
matter how strange things seem; but on one point I must be satisfied.
Is my mother's name Minnie?"

"I cannot tell you, for it was the only secret dear Peyton ever kept
from me. In speaking of her, he always called her Mrs. Orme."

"Do you know anything about the loss of a valuable paper, once in Mr.
Hargrove's possession?"

"A great many years ago, before you came to live with us, some one
entered this room, opened the secret drawer of Peyton's writing desk,
and carried off a tin box containing some important papers."

"And suspicion rested on my mother?"

"My darling girl, who could have been so cruel as to distress you
with such matters? No one----"

Regina interrupted her, with an imperative motion of her hand:

"Please answer my question. Truth is better than kindness, is more to
me than sympathy. Did not you and Mr. Hargrove believe that mother
took--stole that box?"

"Peyton never admitted to me that he suspected her, though some
circumstances seemed to connect the disappearance of the papers with
her visit here the night they were carried off. He accused no one."

Regina was deeply moved, and her whole face quivered as she answered:

"Oh! how good, how truly charitable he was! I wonder if in all the
wide borders of America there are any more like him? If I could only
have told him the facts, and satisfied him that my mother was
innocent! But I waited until Hannah could get away in peace, and
before she was ready to start God called him home. In heaven of
course he knows it all now. I promised Hannah to tell no one but him,
and to defer the explanation until she was safe, entirely beyond the
reach of his displeasure; but since you suspected my mother, it is
right that I should justify her in your estimation."

Very succinctly she narrated what had occurred on the evening of the
storm, and the incidents of the ensuing morning, when she followed
Hannah into the churchyard. As she concluded, an expression of relief
and pleasure succeeded that of astonishment which had rested on Mrs.
Lindsay's worn and faded face.

"I am heartily glad that at last the truth has been discovered, and
that it fully exonerated your mother from all connection with the
theft; for I confess the circumstances prejudiced me against her. Let
us be encouraged, my dear little girl, to believe that in due time
all the other mysteries will be quite as satisfactorily cleared up."

"I can't afford to doubt it; if I did, I should not be able to----"

She paused, while an increasing pallor overspread her features.

"That is right, dear, believe in her. We should drink and live upon
faith in our mothers, as we did their milk that nourished us. When
children lose faith in their mothers, God pity both! Did you learn
from Hannah the character of the paper?"

"How could I question a servant concerning my mother's secrets? I
only learned that Mr. Hargrove had given to my mother a copy of that
which was burned by the lightning."

"In writing to her, did you mention the facts?"

"I have not as yet. I doubted whether I ought to allude to the
subject, lest she should think I was intruding upon her confidence."

"Dismiss that fear, and in your next letter acquaint her fully with
all you learned from poor Hannah; it may materially involve her
interest or welfare. Now, Regina, I am about to say something which
you must not misinterpret, for my purpose is to comfort you, to
strengthen your confidence in your mother. I do not know her real
name, I never heard your father's mentioned, but this I do
know,--dear Peyton told me that in this room he performed the
marriage ceremony that made them husband and wife. Why such profound
secrecy was necessary your poor mother will some day explain to you.
Until then, be patient."

"Thank you, Mrs. Lindsay. It does comfort me to know that Mr.
Hargrove was the minister who married them. Of course it is no secret
to you that my mother is an actress? I discovered it accidentally,
for you know the papers were never left in my way, and in all her
letters she alluded to her 'work being successful,' but never
mentioned what it was; and I always imagined she was a musician
giving concerts. But one day last June, at the Sabbath-school
Festival, Mrs. Potter gave me a Boston paper, containing an article
marked with ink, which she said she wished me to read, because it
would edify a Sunday-school pupil. It was a letter from Italy,
describing one of the theatres there, where Madame Odille Orme was
playing 'Medea.' I cut out the letter, gave it to Mr. Hargrove, and
asked him if it meant my mother. He told me it did, and advised me to
enclose it to her when I wrote. But I could not, I burned it. People
look down on actresses as if they were wicked or degraded, and for
awhile it distressed me very much indeed, but I know there must be
good as well as bad people in all professions. Since then I have been
more anxious to become a perfect musician, so that before long I can
relieve mother from the necessity of working on the stage."

"It was wickedly malicious in Mrs. Prudence to wound you; and we were
all so anxious to shield you from every misgiving on your mother's
account. Some actresses have brought opprobrium upon the profession,
which certainly is rather dangerous, and subjects women to suspicion
and detraction; but let me assure you, Regina, that there have been
very noble, lovely, good ladies who made their bread exactly as your
mother makes hers. There is no more brilliant, enviable, or stainless
record among gifted women than that of Mrs. Siddons'; or to come down
to the present day, the world honours, respects, and admires none
more than Madame Ristori, or Miss Cushman. Personal characteristics
must decide a woman's reputation, irrespective of the fact that she
lives upon the stage; and it is unjust that the faults of some should
reflect discreditably upon all in any profession. Individually I must
confess I am opposed to theatres and actresses, for I am the widow of
a minister, and have an inherited and a carefully educated prejudice
against all such things; but while I acknowledge this fact, I dare
not assert that some who pass their lives before the footlights may
not be quite as conscientious and upright as I certainly try to be. I
should grieve to see you on the stage, yet should circumstances
induce you to select it as a profession, in the sight of God who
alone can judge human hearts, your and your mother's chances of final
acceptance and rest with Christ might be as good, perhaps better,
than mine Let us 'judge not, lest we be judged.'"

"The world has not your charity, but let it do its worst. Come what
may, my mother is still my own mother, and God will hold the scales
and see that justice is done. Perhaps some day we may follow you to
India, and spend the remainder of our lives in some cool quiet
valley, under the shadow of the rhododendrons on the Himalayan hills.
Who knows what the end may be? But no matter how far we wander,
or where we rest, we shall never find a home so sweet, so peaceful,
so full of holy and happy associations, as this dear parsonage has
been to me."

The fire burned low, and in its dull flicker the shadows thickened;
while the rising wind sobbed and wailed mournful as a coranach
around the desolate old house, whence so many generations had glided
into the sheltering bosom of the adjoining necropolis.

Across the solemn gloomy stillness ran the sharp shivering sound of
the door-bell, and when the jarring had ceased Esau entered with his
lantern in his hand.

"The carriage is at the gate. The schedule was changed last week, and
the driver says it is nearly train time. Give me the satchels and
basket."

Slowly the two figures followed the lantern-bearer down the dim bare
hall, and the sound of their departing footsteps echoed strangely,
dismally through the empty, forsaken house. At the front door both
paused and looked back into the darkness that seemed like a vast
tomb, swallowing everything, engulfing all the happy hallowed past.

But Regina imagined that in the dusky library, by the wan flicker of
the dying fire, she could trace the spectral outline of a white
draped table, and of a tall prostrate form bearing a Grand Duke
jasmine in its icy hand. Shuddering violently, she wrapped her shawl
around her and sprang down the steps into the drizzling rain, while
Mrs. Lindsay slowly followed, weeping silently.

            "Were it mine I would close the shutters,
             Like lids when the life is fled,
             And the funeral fire should wind it,
             This corpse of a home that is dead."




CHAPTER XIII.


The snow was falling fast nest morning, when with a long hoarse
shriek the locomotive dashed into New York, and drew up to the
platform, where a crowd of human beings and equipages of every
description had assembled to greet the arrival of the train.

The din of voices, ringing of bells, whistle of engines, and all the
varied notes of that Babel diapason that so utterly bewilders the
stranger stranded on the bustling streets of busy Gotham, fell upon
Regina's ears with the startling force of novelty. She wondered if
there were thunder mixed with swiftly falling snow--that low, dull,
ceaseless roar--that endless monologue of the paved streets--where
iron and steel ground down the stone highways, along which the
Juggernaut of Traffic rolled ponderously, day in and day out.

Gazing curiously down from her window at the sea of faces wherein
cabmen, omnibus drivers, porters, vociferated and gesticulated, each
striving to tower above his neighbour, like the tame vipers in the
Egyptian pitcher, whereof Teufelsdröckh discourses in Sator Resartus,
Regina made no attempt to leave her seat, until the courteous
conductor to whose care Mrs. Lindsay had consigned her touched her
arm to arrest her attention.

"You are Miss Orme, I believe, and here is the gentleman who came to
meet you."

Turning quickly, with the expectation of seeing Mr. Palma, she found
herself in the presence of an elegantly dressed young gentleman, not
more than twenty-two or three years old, who wore ample hay-coloured
whiskers brushed in English style, after the similitude of the fins
of a fish, or the wings of a bat. A long moustache of the same colour
drooped over a mouth feminine in mould, and as he lifted his brown
fur cap and bowed she saw that his light hair was parted in the
middle of his head.

He handed her a card on which was printed, "Elliott Roscoe."

"Regina Orme, I presume. My cousin Mr. Palma desired me to meet you
at the train, and see you safely to his house, as he is not in the
city. I guess you had a tiresome trip; you look worn out. Have you
the checks for your baggage?"

She handed them to him, took her satchel, and followed him out of the
car, through the dense throng, to a _coupé_.

The driver, whose handsome blue coat with its glittering gilt buttons
was abundantly embroidered with snow-flakes, opened the door, and as
Mr. Roscoe assisted the stranger to enter, he said:

"Wait, Farley, until I look after the baggage."

"Yonder is O'Brien with his express waggon. Give him the checks, and
he will have the trunks at home almost as soon as we get there.
Michael O'Brien!"

As the ruddy, beaming pleasant countenance of the express man
approached, and he received the checks, Mr. Roscoe sprang into the
carriage, but Regina summoned courage to speak.

"If you please, I want my dog."

"Your dog! Did you leave it in the car? Is it a poodle?"

"Poodle! He is a Newfoundland, and the express agent has him."

"Then O'Brien will bring him with the trunks," said Mr. Roscoe,
preparing to close the door.

"I would not like to leave him behind."

"You certainly do not expect to carry him in the carriage?" answered
the gentleman, staring at her, as if she had been a refugee from some
insane asylum.

"Why not? There seems plenty of room. I am so much afraid something
might happen to him among all these people. But perhaps you would not
like him shut up in the carriage."

For an instant she seemed sorely embarrassed, then leaning forward,
addressed the coachman.

"Would you mind taking my dog up there with you? thank you very much
if you will please be so kind."

Before the wistful pleading of the violet eyes, and the sweet tones
of the hesitating voice, the surly expression vanished from Farley's
countenance, and, touching his hat, he replied cheerfully:

"Aye, miss; if he is not venomous, I will take him along."

"Thank you. Mr. Roscoe, if you will be so good as to go with me to
the express car, I can get my dog."

"That is not necessary. Besides it is snowing hard, and your wraps
are not very heavy. Give me the receipt, and I will bring him out."

There was some delay, but after a little while Mr. Roscoe came back
leading Hero by a chain attached to his collar. The dog looked sulky
and followed reluctantly, but at sight of his mistress, sprang
forward, barking joyfully.

"Poor Hero! poor fellow! Here I am."

When he had been prevailed upon to jump up beside the driver, and the
carriage rolled homeward, Mr. Roscoe said:

"That is a superb creature. The only pure white Newfoundland I ever
saw. Where did you get him?"

"He was bought in Brooklyn several years ago, and sent to me."

"What is his name?"

"Hero."

"How very odd. Bruno, or Nero, or Ponto, or even Fido, would be so
much more suitable."

"Hero suits him, and suits me."

Mr. Roscoe looked curiously into the face beside him, and laughed.

"I presume you are a very romantic young miss, and have been dreaming
about some rustic Leander in round jacket."

"My dog was not called after the priestess at Sestos. It means hero
the common noun, not Hero the proper name. Holding torches to guide
people across the Hellespont was not heroism."

If she had addressed him in Aramaic he would not have been more
surprised; and for a moment he stared.

"I am afraid your Hero will not prove a thoroughly welcome addition
to my cousin's household. He has no fondness whatever for dogs, or
indeed for pets of any kind, and Mrs. Palma, who has a chronic terror
of hydrophobia, will not permit a dog to come near her."

He saw something like a smile flicker across the girl's mouth, but
she did not look up, and merely asked:

"Where is Mr. Palma?"

"He was unexpectedly called to Philadelphia two days ago, on urgent
business. Do you know him?"

"I have not seen him for several years."

She turned away, fixing her attention upon the various objects of
interest that flitted by, as they rolled rapidly along one of the
principal streets. The young gentleman who in no respect resembled
Mr. Palma, found it exceedingly pleasant to study the fair delicate
face beside him, and not a detail of her dress, from the shape of
her hat to the fit of her kid gloves, escaped his critical
inspection.

Almost faultily fastidious in his Broadway trained tastes, he arrived
at the conclusion that she possessed more absolute beauty than any
one in his wide circle of acquaintance; but her travelling suit was
not cut in the approved reigning style, and the bow of ribbon at her
throat did not exactly harmonize with the shade of the feather in her
hat, all of which jarred disagreeably.

As the carriage entered Fifth Avenue, and drew up before one of the
handsome brown-stone front mansions that stretch like palatial walls
for miles along that most regal and magnificent of American streets,
Mr. Roscoe handed his companion out, and rang the bell.

Hero leaped to the sidewalk, and, patting his head, Regina said:

"Driver, I am very much obliged to you for taking care of him for
me."

"You are quite welcome, miss. He is an uncommon fine brute, and I
will attend to him for you if you wish it."

The door opened, and Regina was ushered in, and conducted by Mr.
Roscoe into the sitting-room, where a blazing coal fire lent pleasant
warmth and a ruddy glow to the elegantly furnished apartment.

"Terry, tell the ladies we have come."

The servant disappeared, and, holding his hands over the fire, Mr.
Roscoe said:

"I believe you are a stranger to all but my cousin; yet you are
probably aware that his stepmother and her daughter reside with him."

Before she could reply the door suddenly opened wide, as if moved by
an impatient hand, and a middle-aged lady, dressed in black silk that
rustled proudly at every step, advanced toward Regina. Involuntarily
the girl shivered, as if an icy east wind had blown upon her.

"Mrs. Palma, I have brought this young lady safely, and transfer her
to your care. This is Regina Orme."

"Miss Orme has arrived on a cold day, and looks as if she realized
it."

She put out her hand, barely touched the fingers of the stranger, and
her keen, probing, inquisitorial eyes of palest grey wandered
searchingly over the face and figure; while her haughty tone was
chill--as the damp breath of a vault.

Catching sight of Hero she started back, and exclaimed with
undisguised displeasure:

"What! A dog in my sitting-room! Who brought that animal here?"

Regina laid a protecting hand on the head of her favourite, and said
timidly, in a voice that faltered from embarrassment:

"It is my dog. Please, madam, allow me to keep him; he will disturb
no one; shall give no trouble."

"Impossible! Dogs are my pet aversion. I would not even allow my
daughter to accept a lovely Italian greyhound which Count Fagdalini
sent her on her last birthday. That huge brute there would give me
hysterics before dinner-time."

"Then you shall not see him. I will keep him always out of eight; he
shall never annoy you."

"Very feasible in a Fifth Avenue house! Do you propose to lock him up
always in your own chamber? How absurd!"

She touched the bell, and added:

"It always saves trouble to start exactly as we expect or intend to
continue. I cannot endure dogs--never could, and yours must be
disposed of at once."

Pitying the distress so eloquently printed on the face of the girl,
Mr. Roscoe interposed:

"Strike, but hear me! Don't banish the poor fellow so summarily. He
can't go mad before May or June, if then; and at least let her keep
him a few days. She feels strange and lonely, and it will comfort her
to have him for a while."

"Nonsense, Elliott! Terry, tell Farley I shall want the carriage in
half an hour, and meantime ask him to come here and help you take out
this dog. We have no room for any such pests. Send Hattie to show
this young lady to her own room."

Mr. Roscoe shrugged his shoulder, and closely inspected his seal
ring.

There was an awkward silence. Mrs. Palma stirred the coals with the
poker, and at last asked abruptly:

"Miss Orme, I presume you have breakfasted?"

"I do not wish any, thank you."

Something in her quiet tone attracted attention, and as the lady and
gentleman turned to look at her, both noticed a brilliant flush on
her cheek, a peculiar sparkle dancing in her eyes.

Passing her arm through the handle of her satchel, she put both her
hands upon Hero's silver collar.

"Hattie will show you up to your room, Miss Orme; and if you need
anything call upon her for it. Farley, take that dog away, and do not
let me see him here again."

The blunt but kind-hearted coachman looked irresolute, glancing first
at his mistress, and then pityingly at the girl. As he advanced to
obey, Regina said in a quiet but clear and decisive tone:

"Don't you touch him. He is mine, and no one shall take him from me.
I am sorry, Mrs. Palma, that I have annoyed you so much, and I have
no right to force unpleasant things upon you, even if I had the
power. Come, Hero! we will find a place somewhere; New York is large
enough to hold us both. Good-bye, Mr. Roscoe. Good-day, Mrs. Palma."

She walked toward the door, leading Hero, who rubbed his head
caressingly against her.

"Where are you going?" cried Mr. Roscoe following, and catching her
arm.

"Anywhere--away from this house," she answered very quietly.

"But Mr. Palma is your guardian! He will be dreadfully displeased."

"He has no right to be displeased with me. Beside, I would not for
forty guardians give up my Hero. Please stand aside, and let me
pass."

"Tell me first, what you intend to do."

"First to get out, where the air is free. Then to find the house of
a lady, to whom I have a letter of introduction from Mrs. Lindsay."

Mrs. Palma was sorely perplexed, and though she trembled with excess
of anger and chagrin, a politic regard for her own future welfare,
which was contingent upon the maintenance of peaceful relations with
her stepson, impelled her to concede what otherwise she would never
have yielded. Stepping forward she said with undisguised scorn:

"If this is a sample of his ward's temper, I fear Erle has resumed
guardianship of Tartary. As Miss Orme is a total stranger in New
York, it is sheer madness to talk of leaving here. This is Erle
Palma's house, not mine, else I should not hesitate a moment; but
under the circumstances I shall insist upon this girl remaining here
at least until his return, which must be very soon. Then the dog
question will be speedily decided by the master of the establishment."

"Let us try and compromise. Suppose you trust your pet to me for a
few days, until matters can be settled? I like dogs, and promise to
take good care of yours, and feed him on game and chicken soup."

He attempted to put his hand on the collar, but Hero, who seemed to
comprehend that he was a _casus belli_, growled and showed his teeth.

"Thank you, sir, but we have only each other now. Mrs. Palma, I do
not wish to disturb or annoy you in any way, and as I love my dog
very much, and you have no room for him, I would much rather go away
now and leave you in peace. Please, Mr. Roscoe, let me pass."

"I can fix things to suit all around, if madam will permit," said the
coachman.

"Well, Farley, what is your proposition?"

His mistress was biting her lip from mortification and ill-concealed
rage.

"I will make a kennel in the corner of the carriage-house, where he
can be chained up, and yet have room to stretch himself; and the
young miss can feed him, and see him as often as she likes, till
matters are better settled."

"Very well. Attend to it at once. I hope Miss Orme is satisfied?"

"No, I do not wish to give so much trouble to you all."

"Oh, miss I it is no trouble worth speaking of; and if you will only
trust me, I will see that no harm happens to him."

For a moment Regina looked up at the honest, open, though somewhat
harsh Hibernian face, then advanced and laid the chain in his hand.

"Thank you very much. I will trust you. Be kind to him, and let me
come and see him after awhile. I don't wish him ever to come into the
house again."

"The baggage-man has brought the trunks," said Terry.

"Have them taken upstairs. Would you like to go to your room, Miss
Orme?"

"If you please, madam."

"Then I must bid you good-bye," said Mr. Roscoe, holding out his
hand.

"Do you not live here?"

"Oh no! I am only a student in my cousin's law-office, but come here
very often. I hope the dog-war is amicably settled, but if
hostilities are reopened, and you ever make up your mind to give Hero
away, please remember that I am first candidate for his ownership."

"I would almost as soon think of giving away my head. Good-bye, sir."

As she turned to follow the servant out of the room, she ran against
a young lady who hastily entered, singing a bar from "Traviata."

"Bless me! I beg your pardon. This is----"

"Miss Orme; Erle's ward."

"Miss Orme does not appear supremely happy at the prospect of
sojourning with us, beneath this hospitable roof. Mamma, I understand
you have had a regular Austerlitz battle over that magnificent dog I
met in the hall,--and alas! victory perched upon the standard of the
invading enemy! Cheer up, mamma! there is a patent medicine just
advertised in the _Herald_ that hunts down, worries, shakes, and
strangles hydrophobia, as Gustave Billon's Skye terrier does rats.
Good-morning, Mr. Elliott Roscoe! Poor Miss Orme looks strikingly
like a half-famished and wholly hopeless statue of Patience that I
saw on a monument at the last funeral I attended in Greenwood.
Hattie, do take her to her room, and give her some hot chocolate, or
coffee, or whatever she drinks."

She had taken both the stranger's hands, shook them rather roughly,
and in conclusion pushed her toward the door.

Olga Neville was twenty-two, tall, finely formed, rather handsome;
with unusually bright reddish-hazel eyes, and a profusion of tawny
hair, which nine persons in ten would unhesitatingly have pronounced
red, but which she persistently asserted was of exactly the classic
shade of ruddy gold, that the Borgia gave to Bembo. Her features were
large, and somewhat irregular in contour, but her complexion was
brilliant, her carriage very graceful, and though one might safely
predict that at some distant day she would prove "fair, fat, and
forty," her full figure had not yet transgressed the laws of
symmetry.

As the door of the sitting-room closed, she put her large white hands
on her mother's shoulders, shook her a little, and kissed her on the
cheek.

"Do, mamma, let us have fair play, or I shall desert to the enemy. It
was not right to open your batteries on that little thing before she
got well into position, and established her line. If I am any judge
of human nature, I rather guess from the set of her lips, and the
stars that danced up and down in her eyes, that she is not quite as
easily flanked as a pawn on a chessboard."

"I wish, Olga, that you were a better judge of common sense, and of
the courtesy due to my opinions. I can tell you we are likely to see
trouble enough with this high-tempered girl added to the family
circle."

"Why, she has not Lucretia-coloured tresses like my own lovely-spun
gold? I thought her hair looked very black."

"I will warrant it is not half as black as her disposition. She
looked absolutely diabolical when she pretended to march out into the
world, playing the _rôle_ of injured, persecuted innocence."

"Now, mamma! She is decidedly the prettiest piece of diabolism I ever
saw. Elliott, what do you think of her?"

"That some day she will be a most astonishing beauty. Can you
recollect that lovely green and white cameo pin set with diamonds
that Tiffany had last spring? Ned Bartlett bought it for his wife the
day they started to Saratoga. Well, this girl is exactly like that
exquisite white cameo head; I noticed the likeness as soon as I saw
her. But she needs polish, city training, society marks, and her
clothes are at least two seasons old in style. I think too your
mother is quite right in believing she has a will of her own. She was
really in earnest, and would have walked out, if Farley had not come
to the rescue. Olga, what are you laughing at?"

"I am anticipating the sport in store for me when her will and Erle
Palma's come in conflict. Won't the sparks fly! We shall have a
domestic shower of meteors to enliven our daily dull routine! You
know the stately and august head of this establishment savours of
Fitz-James, and in all matters of controversy acts fully out what
Scott only dreamed:

        'Come one, come all! this rock shall fly
         From its firm base, as soon as I!'

I daresay it is his terrapin habit that helps Erle Palma to his great
success as a lawyer; when he once takes hold, he never lets go. Now,
mamma, if you do not hoist a white flag as far as that poor girl is
concerned, I shall certainly ask your wary stepson to give her a
sprig of phryxa from Mount Brixaba. Do you understand, Elliott?"

"Of course not I rarely do understand you when you begin your
spiteful challenges. Now, Olga, I always preserve an unarmed
neutrality, so do let me alone."


He made a deprecating gesture, and put on his hat.

"Free schools and universal education is one of my spavined hobbies,
and a brief canter for your improvement in classic lore would be
charitable, so I proceed: Agatho the Samian says that in the Scythian
Brixaba grows the herb phryxa (hating the wicked), which especially
protects step children; and whenever they are in danger from a
stepmother (observe the antiquity of Stepmotherly characteristics!)
the phryxa gives them warning by emitting a bright flame. You see
Erle Palma remembers his classics, and early in life turned his
attention to the cultivation of phryxa, which flourishes----"

"Olga, you vex me beyond endurance. Put on your furs at once; it is
time to go to the Studio. Elliott, will you ride down with us, and
look at the portrait?"

"Thanks! I wish I could, but promised to write out some legal
references before my cousin returns, and must keep my word; for you
very well know he has scant mercy on delinquents."

"I only hope he will bring his usual iron rule to bear upon this new
element in the household, else her impertinent self-assertion will be
unendurable. Will you be at Mrs. Delafield's reception to-night?"

"I promised to attend. Suppose I call for you and Olga about nine?"

"Quite agreeable to all parties. I shall expect you. Good-morning."

When Regina left the sitting-room she followed the housemaid up two
flights of steps, and into a small but beautifully furnished
apartment, where a fire was not really necessary, as the house was
heated by a furnace, still the absence of the cheerful red light she
had left below made this room seem chill and uninviting.

The trunks had been  brought up, and after lowering the curtain of
the window that looked down on the beautiful Avenue, Hattie said:

"Will you have tea, coffee, or chocolate?"

"Neither, I thank you."

"Have you had any breakfast?"

"I do not want any."

"It is no trouble, miss, to get what you like."

Regina only shook her head, and proceeded to take off her hat and
wrappings.

"Are you an orphan?" queried Hattie, her heart warming toward a
stranger who avoided giving trouble.

"No; but my mother is in----is too far for me to go to her."

"Then you aren't here on charity?"

"Charity! No, indeed! Mr. Palma is my guardian until I go to my
mother."

"Well, miss, try to be contented. Miss Olga has a kinder heart than
her mother, and though she has a bitter tongue and rough ways she
will befriend you. Don't fret about your dog, we folks belowstairs
will see that he does not suffer. We will help you take care of him."

"Thank you, Hattie. I shall be grateful to all who are kind to him.
Please give him some water and a piece of bread when you go down."

It was a great relief to find herself once more alone, and, sinking
down wearily into a rocking chair, she hid her face in her hands.

Her heart was heavy, her head ached; her soul rose in rebellion
against the cold selfishness and discourtesy that had characterized
her reception by the inmates of her guardian's house.

Everything around her betokened wealth, taste, elegance; the carpets
and various articles of furniture were of the most costly materials,
but at the thought of living here she shuddered. Fine and fashionable
in all its appointments, but chilly, empty, surface gilded, she felt
that she would stifle in this mansion.

By comparison, how dear and sacred seemed the old life at the
parsonage I how desolate and dreary the present! how inexpressibly
lonely and hopeless the future!

From the thought of Mr. Palma's return, she could borrow no pleasant
auguries, rather additional gloom and apprehension; and his absence
had really been the sole redeeming circumstance that marked her
arrival in New York. With an unconquerable dread which arose from
early childish prejudice and which she never attempted to analyze,
she shrank from meeting him.

There came a quick low rap on the door, but she neither heard nor
heeded it, and started when a warm hand removed those that covered
her face.

"Just as I expected, you are having a good cry all to yourself. No,
your eyes are dry and bright as stars. I daresay you have set us all
down as a family of brutes; as more cruel than the Piutes or Modocs;
as stony hearted as Solomon, when he ordered the poor little baby to
be cut in half and distributed among its several mothers. But there
is so little justice left in the world, that I imagine each
individual would do well to contribute a moiety to the awfully
slender public stock. Suppose you pay tithes to the extent of
counting me out of this nest of persecutors? Thank Heaven! I am not a
Palma! My soul does not work like the piston of a steam-engine,--is
not regulated by a gauge-cock and safety-valve to prevent all
explosions, to keep the even, steady, decorous, profitable tenor of
its sternly politic way. I am a Neville. The blood in my veins is not
'blue' like the Palma's, but red,--and hot enough to keep my heart
from freezing, as the Palma's do, and to melt the ice they
manufacture, wherever they breathe. I am no Don Quixote to redress
your grievances, or storm windmills; for verily neither mamma nor
Erle Palma belongs to that class of harmless innocuous bugaboos, as
those will find to their cost who run against them. I am simply Olga
Neville, almost twenty-three, and quite willing to help you if
possible. Shall we enter into an alliance--offensive and defensive?"

She stood by the mantlepiece, slowly buttoning her glove, and looked
quite handsome, and very elegant in her rich wine-coloured silk and
costly furs.

Looking up into her face, Regina wondered how far she might trust
that apparently frank open countenance, and Olga smiled, and added:

"You are a cunning fledgling, not to be caught with chaff. Have they
sent you anything to eat?"

"I declined having anything. My head aches."

"Then do as I tell you, and you will soon feel relieved. There is a
bath-room on this floor. Ring for Hattie, and tell her you want a
good hot bath. When you have taken it, lie down and go to sleep. One
word before I go. Do try not to be hard on mamma. Poor mamma! She
married among these Palmas, and very soon from force of habit and
association she too grew politic, cautious; finally she also froze,
and has never quite thawed again. She is not unkind,--you must not
think so for an instant; she only keeps her blood down to the safe,
wise prudent temperature of sherbet. Poor mamma! She does not like
dogs; once she was dreadfully bitten, almost torn to pieces by one,
and very naturally she has developed no remarkable 'affinity' for
them since that episode. Hattie will get you anything you need. Take
your bath and go to sleep, and dream good-natured things about
mamma."

She nodded, smiled pleasantly, and glided away as noiselessly as she
came, leaving Regina perplexed, and nowise encouraged with reference
to the stern cold character of her guardian.

She had eaten nothing since the previous day, had been unable to
close her eyes after bidding Mrs. Lindsay farewell; and now, quite
overcome with the reaction from the painful excitement of yesterday's
incidents, she threw herself across the foot of the bed, and clasped
her hands over her throbbing temples. No sound disturbed tier, save
the occasional roll of wheels on the street below, and very soon the
long lashes drooped, and she slept the heavy deep sleep of mental and
physical exhaustion.




CHAPTER XIV.


Led by poppy-wreathed wands, through those fabled ivory gates that
open into the enchanted realm of dreams, the weary girl forgot her
woes, and found blessed reunion with the absent dear ones, whose loss
had so beclouded the morning of her life.

Under the burning sun of India, through the tangled jungles of Oude,
she wandered in quest of the young missionary and his mother, now
springing away from the crouching tigers that glared at her as she
passed; now darting into some Himalayan cavern to escape the wild
ferocious eyes of Nana Sahib, who offered her that wonderful lost
ruby that he carried off in his flight, and when she seized it,
hoping its sale would build a church for mission worship, it
dissolved into blood that stained her fingers. With a fiendish laugh
Nana Sahib told her it was a part of the heart of a beautiful woman
butchered in the "House of Massacre" at Cawnpore. On and on she
pressed, footsore and weary but undaunted, through those awful
mountain solitudes, and finally hearing in the distance the bark of
Hero, she followed the sound, reached the banks of Jumna, and there
amid the ripple of fountains, and the sighing of the cypress, in the
cool shadow cast by the marble minarets and domes of Shah Jehan's
Moomtaj mausoleum, Mr. and Mrs. Lindsay joyfully welcomed her; while
upon the fragrant air floated divine melodies that Douglass told her
were chanted by angels in her mother's grave, beneath the clustering
white columns.

When after many hours she awoke, it was night. A faint light trembled
in one of the globes of the gas chandelier, and a blanket had been
laid over her. Starting up she saw a figure sitting at the window,
apparently watching what passed in the street below.

"I hope you feel refreshed. I can testify you have slept as soundly
as the youths whom Decius put to bed some time since near Ephesus."

Olga rose, turned on the gas that flamed up instantly, and showed her
elaborately dressed in evening toilette. Her shoulders and arms,
round and pearly white, were bare save the shining tracery of jewels
in necklace and bracelets; and in the long train of blue silk that
flowed over the carpet, she looked even taller than in the morning
walking suit. Her ruddy hair, heaped nigh on her head, was surmounted
by a jewelled comb, whence fell a cataract of curls of various
lengths and sizes, that touched the filmy lace which bordered her
shoulders like a line of foam where blue silk broke on dimpled flesh.

As Regina gazed admiringly at her, Olga came closer, and stood under
the gas-light.

"A penny for your thoughts! Am I handsome? Somebody says only 'fools
and children tell the truth.' You are not exactly the latter;
certainly not the former; nevertheless, being a rustic, all unversed
in the fashionable accomplishment of 'fibbing,' you may dispense with
the varnish pot and brush. Tell me, Regina, don't you feel inclined
to fall at my feet and worship me?"

"Not in the least. But I do think you very handsome, and your dress
is quite lovely. Are you going to a party or a ball?"

"To a 'Reception,' where the people will be crowded like sardines,
where my puffs will be mashed as flat as buckwheat cakes, and my
train will go home with various gentlemen, clinging in scraps to
their boot-heels! Were you ever at the seashore? If you have ever
chanced to walk into a settlement of fiddlers, and seen them
squirming, wriggling, backward, forward, sideways, you may
understand that I am going into a similar promiscuous scramble.
Human ingenuity is vastly fertile in the production of fashionable
tortures; and when that outraged and indignant poet savagely
asserted, that 'Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands
mourn,' I have an abiding conviction that he had just been victimized
at a 'Reception,' or 'German,' or 'Kettle-drum,' or 'Masque
Ball,'--or some such fine occasion, where people are amused by
treading on each other's toes, and gnawing (metaphorically) their
nearest neighbour's vertebræ."

"Do you not enjoy going into society?"

"_Cela dépend!_ You are an unsophisticated little package of innocent
rusticity, and have yet to learn

           'Society is now one polished horde,
              Formed of two mighty tribes,
            The Bores and Bored!'

I speak advisedly, for lo these four years I have energetically
preyed, and been preyed upon. When I was your age, I was impatient to
break away from my governess, and soar into the flowery pastures of
fashionable gaiety, with the crowd of other butterflies that seemed
so happy, so lovely; but now that I have bruised my pretty wings, and
tarnished the gilding, and rubbed off the fresh enamelling, I would
if I could crawl back into a safe brown cocoon, or hide in some quiet
and forgotten chrysalis. Did you ever hear of Moloch?"

"Yes, of course; I know it was a brazen image, heated red hot, in
whose arms children were placed by idolatrous heathen parents."

"No such thing! that is a foolish, obsolete Rabbinical myth. You must
not talk such old-fashioned folly. Hearken to the solemn truth that
underlies that fable; Moloch reigns here, in far more pomp and
splendour than the Ammonites ever dreamed of. Crowned and sceptred,
he is now called 'Wealth and Fashion,' holds daily festivals and
mighty orgies where salads, boned turkeys, charlotte russe,
_fistachio soufflés, creams, ices, champagne-julep, champagne
frappé_, and persicot call the multitude to worship; and there while
the stirring notes of Strauss ring above the sighs and groans of the
heroic victims, fathers and mothers bring their sons and daughters
bravely decked in broadcloth and satin, white kid and diamonds, and
offer them in sacrifice; and Moloch clasps, scorches, blackens all!
Wide wonderful blue eyes, how shocked you look!"

Olga laughed lightly, shook out the fringed ends of her broad white
silk sash, and glanced in the mirror of the bureau, to see the
effect.

"Regina, don't begin city life by a system of starvation that would
do infinite credit to a Thebaid anchorite. Eat abundantly. Take
generous care of your body, for spiritual famine is inevitably ahead
of you. Yonder on the table, carefully covered, is your dinner. Of
course it is cold, stone-cold as this world's charity; but people who
sleep until eight o'clock, ought not to expect smoking hot viands. A
good meal gives one far more real philosophy and fortitude, than all
the volumes Aristotle and Plato ever wrote. Do you hear that bell? It
is a signal to attend the festival of Milcom. Oh, Mammon I behold I
come."

She moved towards the door, and said from the threshold:

"I say unto you--eat. Then come downstairs and amuse yourself looking
about the house. There are some interesting things in the parlours,
and if you are musical, you will find a piano that cost one thousand
dollars. When I am away, there are no skeletons in this house, so you
need not fear sleeping here alone. My room is on the same floor.
Good-night."

Refreshed by her sound sleep, Regina bathed her face, rearranged her
hair, and ate the dinner, which although cold, was very temptingly
prepared. When Hattie came to carry down the silver tray containing
the delicate green and gold china dishes, she complimented the
stranger upon the improvement in her appearance, adding:

"Miss Olga directed me to show you the house, and anything you might
like to look at, so I lighted the palours and reception-room; and the
library always has a fire, and the gas burning. That is next to Mr.
Palma's bedroom, and is his special place. He comes and goes so
irregularly that we never can tell when he is in it. Once last year
he got home at nine o'clock unexpectedly, and sat up all night
writing there in the cold. Next morning he gave orders for fire and
light in that room, whether he was at home or not. Miss, if you don't
mind looking about yourself, I should like to run around to Eighth
Avenue for a few minutes, to see my sick aunt. Terry has gone out,
and Mary promised to answer the bell, if any one called. Farley says
be easy about your dog; he had a hearty dinner of soup and meat, and
is on a softer bed than some poor souls lie on to-night. Can I go?"

"Certainly, I am not afraid; and when I get sleepy I will come up and
go to bed. When will Mrs. Palma and Miss Neville come home?"

"Not before midnight, if then."

She explained to Regina how to elevate and extinguish the gas, and
the two went down to the sitting-room, whence Hattie soon
disappeared. Raising the silk curtain that divided this apartment
from the parlours, Regina walked slowly up and down upon the velvet
carpet in which her feet seemed to sink, as on a bed of moss; and her
eyes wandered admiringly over the gilded stands, gleaming bronzes,
marble statuettes, papier maché, ormolu, silk, lace, brocatel,
moquette, satin and silver which attracted her gaze.

Beautiful pictures adorned the tinted walls, and the ceiling was
brilliantly frescoed, while one of the wide bay-windows contained a
stand filled with a superb array of wax flowers. Regina opened the
elegant grand piano, but forbore to touch the keys, and at last when
she had feasted her eyes sufficiently upon some lovely landscapes by
Gifford and Bierstadt, she quitted the richly decorated parlours, and
slowly went up the stairs that led to the room which Hattie had
pointed out as Mr. Palma's library.

Leaving the door partly open, she entered a long lofty apartment, the
floor of which was of marquetry, polished almost as glass, with
furred robes laid here and there before tables, and deep luxurious
easy chairs.

Four spacious lines of book shelves with glass doors bearing silver
handles, girded the sides of the room, and the walls were painted in
imitation of the Pompeian style; while the corners of the ceiling
held lovely frescoes of the season, and in the centre was a zodiac.
Bronze and marble busts shone here and there, and where the panels of
the wall were divided by representations of columns, metal brackets
and wooden consoles sustained delicate figures and groups of
sculpture.

Filled with wonder and delight the girl glided across the shining
mosaic floor, gazing now at the glowing garlands, and winged figures
on the wall, and now at the elegantly bound books Whose gilded titles
gleamed through the plate glass.

She had read of such rooms in "St. Martin's Summer," a volume Mrs.
Lindsay never tired of quoting; but this exquisite reality
transcended all her previous flights of imagination, and, approaching
the bright coal fire, she basked in the genial glow, in the
atmosphere of taste, culture, and rare luxury. A quaint clock inlaid
with designs in malachite, ticked drowsily upon the low black marble
mantle, which represented winged lions bearing up the slab, and near
the hearth was an ebony and gold escritoire which stood open,
revealing a bronze inkstand and velvet penwiper. Before it sat the
revolving chair, with a bright-coloured embroidered cushion for the
feet to rest upon; and in a recess behind the desk, and partly
screened by the sweep of damask Curtains, hung a man's pearl-grey
dressing-gown, lined with silk; while under it rested a pair of black
velvet slippers encrusted with vine leaves and bunches of grapes in
gold bullion.

Wishing to see the effect, Regina took a taper from the Murrhine cup
on the mantle, and standing on a chair lighted the cluster of burners
shaped like Pompeian lamps, in the chandelier nearest the grate; then
went back to the rug before the fire, and enjoyed the spectacle
presented.

What treasures of knowledge were contained in this beautiful, quiet,
brilliant room!

Would she be permitted to explore the contents of those book shelves,
where hundreds of volumes invited her eager investigation? Could she
ever be as happy here as in the humble yet hallowed library at the
dear old parsonage?

An oval table immediately under the gas-globes held a china stand
filled with cigars, and seeing several books lying near it, she took
up one.

It was Gustave Doré's "Wandering Jew," and, throwing herself down on
the rug, she propped her head with one hand, while the other slowly
turned the leaves, and she examined the wonderful illustrations. She
was vaguely conscious that the clock struck ten, but paid little
attention to the flight of time, and after awhile she closed the
book, drew the cushion before the desk to the rug in front of the
fire, laid her head on it, and soothed by the warmth and perfect
repose of the room fell asleep.

Soon after the door opened wider, and Mr. Palma entered, and walked
half way down the room ere he perceived the recumbent figure. He
paused, then advanced on tiptoe and stood by the hearth, warming his
white scholarly hands and looking down on the sleeper.

With the careless grace of a child, innocent of the art of
attitudinizing, she had made herself thoroughly comfortable; and as
the light streamed full upon her, all the marvellous beauty of the
delicate face and the perfect modelling of the small hands and feet
were clearly revealed. The glossy raven hair clung in waving masses
around her white full forehead, and the long silky lashes lay like
jet fringe on her exquisitely moulded cheeks; while the remarkably
fine pencilling of her arched brows, which had attracted her
guardian's notice when he first saw her at the convent, was still
more apparent in the gradual development of her features.

Studying the face and form, and rigidly testing both by the
fastidious canons that often rendered him hypercritical, Mr. Palma
could find no flaw in contour or in colouring, save that the
complexion was too dazzlingly white, lacking the rosy tinge which
youth and health are wont to impart.

Stretching his arm to the escritoire, he softly opened a side drawer,
took out an oval-shaped engraving of his favourite Sappho, and
compared the nose, chin, and ear with those of the unconscious girl.
Satisfied with the result, he restored the picture to its
hiding-place. Four years had materially changed the countenance he
had seen last at the parsonage, but the almost angelic purity of
expression which characterized her as a child, had been intensified
by time and recent grief, and watching her in her motionless repose
he thought that unquestionably she was the fairest image he had ever
seen in flesh; though a certain patient sadness about her beautiful
lips told him that the waves of sorrow were already beating hoarsely
upon the borders of her young life.

Standing upon his own hearth, a man of magnificent stature and almost
haughty bearing, Erle Palma looked quite forty, though in reality
younger; and the stern repression, the cautious reticence which had
long been habitual, seemed to have hardened his regular handsome
features. Weary with the business cares, the professional details of
a trip that had yielded him additional laurels and distinction, and
gratified his towering pride, he had come home to rest; and found it
singularly refreshing to study the exquisite picture of innocence
lying on his library rug.

He wondered how the parents of such a child could entrust her to the
guardianship of strangers; and whether it would be possible for her
to carry her peculiar look of holy purity safely into the cloudy
Beyond--of womanhood?

While he pondered the clock struck, and Regina awoke.

At sight of that tall stately figure, looming like a black statue
between her and the glow of the grate, she sprang first into a
sitting posture, then to her feet.

He made no effort to assist her, only watched every movement, and
when she stood beside him, he held out his hand.

"Regina, I am glad to see you in my house; and am sorry I could not
have been at home to receive you."

Painfully embarrassed by the thought of the position in which he had
found her, she covered her face with her hand; and at the sound of
his grave deep voice the blood swiftly mounted from her throat to the
tip of her small shell-shaped ears.

He waited for her to speak, but she could not sufficiently conquer
her agitation, and with a firm hand he drew down the shielding
fingers, holding, them in his.

"There is nothing very dreadful in your being caught fast asleep,
like a white kitten on a velvet rug. If you are never guilty of
anything worse, you and your guardian will not quarrel."

Her face had drooped beyond the range of his vision, and when he put
one hand under her chin and raised it, he saw that the missing light
in the alabaster vase had been supplied, and her smooth cheeks were
flushed to brilliant carmine.

How marvellously lovely she was in that rush of colour that dyed her
dainty lips, and made the large soft eyes seem radiant as stars, when
they bravely struggled up to meet his, so piercing, so coolly
critical.

"Will you answer me one question, if I ask it?"

"Certainly, Mr. Palma; at least I will try.

"Are you afraid of me?"

The sweet mouth quivered, but the clear lustrous eyes did not sink.

"Yes, sir; I have always been afraid of you."

"Do you regard me as a monster of cruelty?"

"No, sir."

"Will your conscience allow you to say, 'My guardian, I am glad to
see you'?"

She was silent.

"That is right, little girl. Be perfectly truthful, and some day we
may be friends. Sit down."

He handed her a chair, and, rolling forward one of the deep cushioned
seats, made himself comfortable in its soft luxurious latitude.
Throwing his massive head back against the purple velvet lining, he
adjusted his steel-rimmed spectacles, joined his hands, and built a
pyramid with his fingers; while he scrutinized her as coldly, as
searchingly as Swammerdam or Leeuwenhoek might have inspected some
new and as yet unclassified animalculum, or as Filippi or Pasteur
studied the causes of "_Pébrine_."

"What do you think of New York?"

"It seems a vast human sea, in which I could easily lose myself, and
be neither missed nor found."

"Have you studied mythology at all? Or was your pastor-guardian
afraid of paganizing you? Did you ever hear of Argus?"

"Yes, sir, I understand you."

"He was merely a dim prophecy of our police system; and when
adventurous girls grow rebellious and essay to lose themselves a
hundred Arguses are watching them. You seem to like my library?"

"It is the most beautiful room I have ever seen."

"Wait until you examine the triumph of upholstering skill and genius
which Mrs. Palma calls her parlours."

"I saw all the pretty things downstairs, but nothing will compare
with this lovely place." She glanced around with undisguised
admiration.

"Pretty things! _Objets de luxe!_ Oh, ye gods of fashionable
_bric-à-brac!_ verily 'out of the mouths of babes,' etc., etc. Be
very careful to suppress your heretical and treasonable preference in
the presence of Mrs. Palma, who avoids this pet library of mine as if
it were a magnified Pandora's box. Regina, I have reason to apprehend
that you and she declared war at sight."

"I know she does not like me."

"And you fully reciprocate the prejudice?"

"Mrs. Palma of course has a right to consult her own wishes in the
management of her home and household."

"Just here permit me to correct you. My house, if you please, my
household, over which at my request she presides. Upon your arrival
you did not find her quite as cordial as you anticipated?"

Her gaze wandered to the fire, and she was silent.

"Be so good as to look at me when I speak to you. Mrs. Palma appeared
quite harsh to you to-day?"

"I have made no complaint against your mother."

"Pardon me, Mrs. Palma, my father's wife, if you please. Tell me the
particulars of your reception here."

The beautiful face turned pleadingly to him.

"You must excuse me, sir. I have nothing to tell you."

"And if I will not excuse you?"

She folded her hands together, and compressed her lips.

"Then I have some things to tell you. I am acquainted with all that
occurred to-day."

"I thought you were in Philadelphia? How could you know?'

"Roscoe told me everything, and I have questioned Farley, who has not
taken your vow of silence. Mrs. Palma has some prejudices, which, as
far as is compatible with reason, a due sense of courtesy constrains
me to respect; and as I have invited her to officiate as mistress of
my establishment, it is eminently proper that I should consult her
opinions, and encourage no rebellion against her domestic
regulations. One of her sternest mandates, inexorable as Mede and
Persian statutes, prohibits dogs. Now what do you expect of me?"

He leaned forward, eyeing her keenly.

"That you will do exactly----"

"As I please?" he interrupted.

"No, sir, exactly right."

"That amounts to the same thing, does it not?"

She shook her head.

"Your impression is, that I will not please to do exactly right?"

"I have not said so, sir."

"Your eyes are very brave honest witnesses, and need no support from
your lips. Suppose we enter into negotiations and compromise matters
between Mrs. Palma and you? This troublesome dog is a pestiferous
creature, which might possibly be tolerated in country clover fields,
but is most woefully out of place in a Fifth Avenue house. Beside,
you will soon be a young lady, and your beaux will leave you no
leisure to pet him. You are fifteen?"

"Not yet; and if I were fifty it would make no difference. I don't
want any beaux, sir; but--I must have my Hero."

"Of course, all misses in their teens believe that their favourite is
a hero."

"Mr. Palma, Hero is my dog's name."

He could detect a quiver in her slender nostril, and understood the
heightening arch of her lip.

"Oh! is it indeed? Well, no dog that ever barked is worth a household
hurricane. You must make up your mind to surrender him, to shed a few
tears and say _vale_ Hero! Now I am disposed to be generous for once,
though understand that is not my habit, and I will buy him. I will
pay you--let me see--thirty-five, forty--well, say fifty dollars?
That will supply you with Maillard's _bonbons_ for almost a year;
will sweeten your bereavement."

She rose instantly, with a peculiar sparkle leaping up in her
splendid eyes.

"There is not gold enough in New York to buy him."

"What! I must see this surly brute, that in your estimation is beyond
all price. Tell me truly, do you cling to him so fondly, because some
schoolboy sweetheart, some rosy-cheeked lad in V---- gave him to you
as a love token? Trust me; we lawyers are locked iron safes for all
such tender secrets, and I will never betray yours."

The rich glow overflowed her cheeks once more.

"I have no sweetheart. I love my Hero, because he is truly noble and
sagacious; because he loves me, and because he is mine--all mine."

"Truly satisfactory and sufficient reasons. I might ask how he came
into your possession; but probably you shrink from divulging your
little secret, and I am unwilling to force your confidence."

She looked curiously into his face, but the handsome mouth and chin
might have been chiselled in stone for any visible alteration in
their fixed stern expression, and his piercing black eyes seemed
diving into hers through microscopic glasses.

"At least, Regina, I venture the hope that he came properly and
honestly into your heart and hands?"

"I hope so too, because you gave him to me."

"I?"

"Yes, sir. You know perfectly well that you sent him to me."

"I sent you a dog? When? Is he black, brown, striped, or spotted?"

"Snow-white, and you know as well as I do that you asked Mr. Lindsay
to bring him to me soon after you left me at V----."

"Indeed! Was I guilty of so foolish a thing? Did you thank me for the
present?"

"I asked dear Mr. Hargrove to tell you when he wrote that I was
exceedingly grateful for your kindness."

"Certainly it appears so. All these years the dog was not worth even
a simple note of thanks; now all the banks in Gotham cannot buy him."

The chill irony of his tone painfully embarrassed her.

"You positively refuse to sell him to me?"

"Yes, sir."

"Because you love him?"

"Because I love him more than I can ever make you comprehend."

"You regard me as a dullard in comprehending canine qualities?"

"I did not say so."

"Do you really find yourself possessed of any sentiment of gratitude
toward me? If so, will you do me a favour?"

"Certainly, if I can."

"Thank you. I shall always feel exceedingly obliged. Pray do not look
so uneasy, and grow so white; it is a small matter. I gave you the
dog years ago, little dreaming that I was thereby providing future
discord for my own hearthstone. With a degree of flattering delicacy,
which I assure you I appreciate, you decline to sell what was a
friendly gift; and now I simply appeal to your generosity, and ask
you please to give him back to me."

She recoiled a step, and her fingers clutched each other.

"Oh, Mr. Palma! Don't ask me. I cannot give up my Hero. I would give
you anything, everything else that I own."

"Rash little girl! What else have you to give? Yourself?"

He was smiling now, and the unbending of his lips, and glitter of his
remarkably fine teeth, gave a strange charm to his countenance,
generally so grave.

"You would give yourself away, sooner than that unlucky dog?"

"I belong to my mother. But he belongs to me, and I never, never will
part with him!"

"_Jacta est alea!_" muttered the lawyer, still smiling.

"Mr. Palma, I hope you will excuse me. It may seem very selfish and
obstinate in me, and perhaps it really is so, but I can't help it. I
am so lonely now, and Hero is all that I have left to comfort me.
Still I know as well as you or any one else, that it would be very
wrong and unkind to force him into a house where dogs are
particularly disliked; and therefore we will annoy no one here,--we
will go away."

"Will you? Where?"

He rose, and they stood side by side.

Her face wore its old childish look of patient pain, reminding him of
the time when she stood with the cluster of lilies drooping against
her heart. He saw that tears had gathered in her eyes, tendering them
larger, more wistful.

"I do not know yet. Anywhere that you think best, until we can write
and get mother's permission for me to go to her. Will you not please
use your influence with her?"

"To send you from the shelter of my roof? That would be eminently
courteous and hospitable on my part. Besides your mother does not
want you."

Observing how sharply the words wounded her, he added:

"I mean, that at present she prefers to keep you here, because it is
best for your own interests; and in all that she does, I believe your
future welfare is her chief aim. You understand me, do you not?"

"I do not understand why or how it can be best for a poor girl to be
separated from her mother, and thrown about the world, burdening
strangers. Still, whatever my mother does must be right."

"Do you think you burden me?"

"I believe, sir, that you are willing for mother's sake to do all you
can for me, and I thank you very much; but I must not bring trouble
or annoyance into your family. Can't you place me at school? Mrs.
Lindsay has a dear friend--the widow of a minister--living in New
York, and perhaps she would take me to board in her house? I have a
letter to her. Do help me to go away from here."

He turned quickly, muttering something that sounded very like a
half-smothered oath, and took her little trembling hand, folding it
gently between his soft warm palms.

"Little girl, be patient; and in time all things will be conquered.
As long as I have a home, I intend to keep you, or until your mother
sends for you. She trusts me fully, and you must try to do so, even
though sometimes I may appear harsh,--possibly unjust. Of course Hero
cannot remain here at present, but I will take him down to my office,
and have him carefully attended to; and as often as you like you
shall come and see him, and take him to ramble with you through the
parks. As soon as I can arrange matters, you shall have him with you
again."

"Please, Mr. Palma! send me to a boarding school; or take me back to
the convent."

"Never!"

He spoke sternly, and his face suddenly hardened, while his fingers
tightened over hers like a glove of steel.

"I shall never be contented here."

"That remains to be seen."

"Mrs. Palma does not wish me to reside here."

"It is my house, and in future you will find no cause to doubt your
welcome."

She knew that she might as efficaciously appeal to an iron column,
and her features settled into an expression that could never have
been called resignation,--that plainly meant hopeless endurance. She
attempted twice to withdraw her hand, but his clasp tightened.
Bending his haughty head, he asked:

"Will you be reasonable?"

A heavy sigh broke over her compressed mouth, and she answered in a
low, but almost defiant tone:

"It seems I cannot help myself."

"Then yield gracefully to the inevitable, and you will learn that
when struggles end, peace quickly follows."

She chose neither to argue, nor acquiesce, and slowly shook her head.

"Regina."

She merely lifted her eyes.

"I want you to be happy in my house."

"Thank you, sir."

"Don't speak in that sarcastic manner. It does not sound respectable
to one's guardian."

She was growing paler, and all her old aversion to him was legible in
her countenance.

"Let us be friends. Try to be a patient, cheerful girl."

"Patient,--I will try. Cheerful,--no, no, not here! How can I be
happy in this house? Am I a brute, or a stone? Oh! I wish I could
have died with my dear, dear Mr. Hargrove, that calm night when he
went to rest for ever while I sang!"

One by one the tears stole over her long lashes, and rolled swiftly
down her cheeks.

"Will you tell me the circumstances of his death?"

"Please do not ask me now. It would bring back all the sad things
that began when Mr. Lindsay left me. Everything was so bright until
then,--until he went away. Since then nothing but trouble, trouble."

A frown clouded the lawyer's brow; then with a half smile he asked:

"Of the two ministers, who did you love best? Mr. Hargrove, or the
young missionary?"

"I do not know, both were so noble, good, and kind; and both are so
very dear to me. Mr. Palma, please let go my hand; you hurt me."

"Pardon me! I forgot I held it."

He opened his hands, and, looking down at the almost childish
fingers, saw that his seal ring had pressed heavily upon, and
reddened the soft palm.

"I did not intend to bruise you so painfully, but in some respects
you are such a tender little thing, and I am only a harsh, selfish
strong man, and hurt you without knowing it. One word more, before I
send you off to sleep. Olga has the most kindly ways, and really the
most affectionate heart under this roof of mine, and she will do all
she can for your comfort and happiness. Be respectful to Mrs. Palma,
and she shall meet you half way. This is as you say the most
attractive room in the house, this is exclusively and especially
mine; but at all times, whether I am absent, or present, you must
consider yourself thoroughly welcome, and recollect, all it contains
in the book line is at your service. To-morrow I will talk with you
about your studies, and examine you in some of your text-books. _A
propos!_ I take my breakfast alone, before the other members of the
family are up, and unless you choose to rise early and join me at the
seven o'clock table, you need not be surprised if you do not see me
until dinner, which is usually at half-past six. If you require
anything that has not been supplied in your room, do not hesitate to
ring and order it. Try to feel at home."

"Thank you, sir."

She moved a few steps, and he added:

"Do not imagine that Hero is suffering all the torments painted in
Dante's 'Inferno'; but go to sleep like a good child, and accept my
assurance that he is resting quite comfortably. When I came home, I
took a light, went out and examined his kennel; found him liberally
provided with food, water, bed, every accommodation that even your
dog, which all New York can't buy, could possibly wish. Good-night,
little one. Don't dream that I am Blue Beard or Polyphemus."

"Good-night, Mr. Palma."




CHAPTER XV.


"Mrs. Orme, I am afraid you will overtax your strength. You seem to
forget the doctor's caution."

"No, I am not in the least fatigued, and this soft fresh air and
sunshine will benefit me more than all the medicine in your ugly
vials. Mrs. Waul, recollect that I have been shut up for two months
in a close room, and this change is really delicious."

"You have no idea how pale you look."

"Do I? No wonder, bleached as I have been in a dark house. I daresay
you are tired, and I insist that you sit yonder under the trees, and
rest yourself while I stroll a little farther. No, keep the shawl,
throw it around your own shoulders, which seem afflicted with a
chronic chill. Here is a New York paper; feast on American news till
I come back."

Upon a seat in the garden of the Tuileries Mrs. Orme placed her
grey-haired Duenna attendant, and gathering her black-lace drapery
about her turned away into one of the broad walks that divided the
flower-bordered lawns.

Thin, almost emaciated, she appeared far taller than when last she
swept across the stage, and having thrown back her veil, a startling
and painful alteration was visible in the face that had so completely
captivated fastidious Paris.

Pallid as Mors, the cheeks had lost their symmetrical oval, were
hollow, and under the sunken eyes clung dusky circles that made them
appear unnaturally large, and almost Dantesque in their mournful
gleaming. Even the lips seemed shrunken, changed in their classic
contour; and the ungloved hand that clasped the folds of lace across
her bosom was wasted, wan, diaphanous.

That brilliant Parisian career, which had opened so auspiciously,
closed summarily during the second week of her engagement in darkness
that threatened to prove the unlifting shadow of death. The severe
tax upon her emotional nature, the continued intense strain on her
nerves, as night after night she played to crowded houses--shunning
as if it contained a basilisk, the sight of that memorable box--where
she felt, rather than saw, that a pair of violet eyes steadily
watched her, all this had conquered even her powerful will, her stern
resolute purpose, and one fatal evening the long-tried woman was
irretrievably vanquished.

The _rôle_ was "Queen Katherine," and the first premonitory faintness
rendered her voice uneven, as, kneeling before King Henry, the
unhappy wife uttered her appeal:

                             ..."Alas, sir,
         In what have I offended you?  What cause
         Hath my behaviour given to your displeasure,
         That thus you should proceed to put me off,
         And take your good grace from me? Heaven witness,
         I have been to you a true and humble wife."...

As the play proceeded, she was warned by increasing giddiness, and a
tremulousness that defied her efforts to control it; and she rushed
on toward the close, fighting desperately with physical prostration.

Upon the last speech of the dying and disowned wife she had safely
entered, and a few more minutes would end her own fierce struggle
with numbing faintness, and bring her succour in rest. But swiftly
the blazing footlights began to dance like witches of Walpurgis night
on Brocken heights; now they flickered, suddenly grew blue, then
black, an icy darkness as from some ghoul-haunted crypt seized her,
and while she threw out her hands with a strange groping motion, like
a bird beating the air with dying wings, her own voice sounded far
off, a mere fading echo:

"Farewell--farewell. Nay, Patience----"

She could only hear a low hum, as of myriads of buzzing bees; she
realized that she must speak louder, and thus blind, shivering,
reeling, she made her last brave rally:

                              ..."Strew me o'er
          With maiden flowers, that all the world may know
          I was a chaste wife to my grave; embalm
          Then lay me forth;--although unqueened,--yet--
          Yet--like--like----"

The trembling shadowy voice ceased; the lips moved to utter the few
remaining words, but no sound came. The wide eyes stared blankly at
the vast audience, where people held their breath, watching the
ghastly livid pallor that actually settled upon the face of the dying
Queen, and in another instant the proud lovely head drooped like a
broken lily, and she fell forward senseless.

As the curtain was rung hastily down, Mr. Laurance leaned from his
box, and hurled upon the stage a large crown of white roses, which
struck the shoulder of the prostrate figure, and shattering,
scattered their snowy petals over the marble face and golden hair.

The enthusiastic acclaim of hundreds of voices announced the triumph
of the magnificent acting; but after repeated calls and prolonged
applause, during which she lay unconscious, the audience was briefly
informed that Madame Orme was too seriously indisposed to appear
again, and receive the tribute she had earned at such fearful cost.

Recovering slowly from that long swoon, she was carefully wrapped up,
and led away, supported by the arms of Mr. Waul and his wife. As they
lifted her into the carriage at the rear entrance of the theatre, she
sank heavily back upon the cushions, failing to observe a manly form
leaning against the neighbouring lamp-post, or to recognize the
handsome face where the gas shone full lighting up the anxious blue
eyes that followed her.

For several days she was too languid to move from her couch, where
she persisted in reclining, supported by  pillows; still struggling
against the prostration that hourly increased, and at last the
disease asserted itself fever, ensued, bringing unconsciousness and
delirium.

Not the scorching violent type that rapidly consumes the vital
forces, but a low tenacious fever that baffled all opposition, and
steadily gained ground, creeping upon the nerve centre, and sapping
the foundations of life.

For many weeks there seemed no hope of rescue, and two physicians,
distinguished by skill and success in their profession, finally
admitted that they were powerless to cope with this typhoid serpent,
whose tightening folds were gradually strangling her.

At length most unexpectedly, when science laid down its weapons to
watch the close of the struggle, and nature the Divine Doctor quietly
took up the gage of battle, the tide of conflict turned. Slowly the
numbed brain began to exert its force, the fluttering thready pulse
grew calmer, and one day the dreamer awoke to the bitter
consciousness of a renewal of all the galling burden of woes which
the tireless law of compensation had for those long weeks mercifully
loosed and lifted.

Although guarded with tender care by the faithful pair, who had
followed her across the Atlantic, she convalesced almost
imperceptibly, and out of her busy life two months fruitful alone in
bodily pain glided away to the silent grey of the past.

Dimly conscious that days and weeks were creeping by unimproved, she
retained in subsequent years only a dreamy reminiscence of the period
dating from the moment when she essayed to utter the last words of
Queen Katherine, words which ran zigzag, hither and thither like an
electric thread through the leaden cloud of her delirium, to the
hour, when with returning strength, keen goading thrusts from the
unsheathed dagger of memory, told her that the Sleeping Furies had
once more been aroused on the threshold of the temple of her life.

Noticing some rare hothouse flowers in a vase upon the table near her
bed, Mrs. Waul hastened to explain to the invalid that every other
day during her illness, bouquets had been brought to their hotel by
the servant of some American gentleman, who was anxious to receive
constant tidings of Mrs. Orme's condition, adding that the physicians
had forbidden her to keep the flowers in the sick-room, until all
danger seemed passed. No card had been attached, no name given, and
by the sufferer none was needed. Gazing at the superb heart's-ease,
whose white velvet petals were enamelled with scarlet, purple, and
gold, the mockery stung her keenly, and with a groan she turned away,
hiding her face on the pillow. Hearts-ease from the man who had
bruised, trampled, broken her heart? She instructed Mrs. Waul to
decline receiving the bouquet when next the messenger came, and to
request him to assure his master that Madame Orme was fully conscious
once more and wished the floral tribute discontinued. During the
tedious days of convalescence she contracted a cold that attacked her
lungs, and foreboded congestion; and though yielding to medical
treatment, it left her as _souvenir_, a. troublesome cough.

Her physician informed her that her whole nervous system had received
a shock so severe that only perfect and prolonged rest of mind and
freedom from all excitement could restore its healthful tone.
Interdicting sternly the thought of dramatic labour for at least a
year, they urged her to seek a quiet retreat in Italy, or Southern
France, as her lungs had already become somewhat involved.

More than once she had been taken in a carnage through the Bois de
Boulogne, but to-day for the first time since her recovery she
ventured on foot, in quest of renewed vigour from outdoor air and
exercise.

Wrapped in a mental cloud of painful speculation concerning her
future career, a cloud unblessed as yet by silver lining, and
unfringed with gold, she wandered aimlessly along the walk, taking no
notice of passers-by until she approached the water, where swans were
performing their daily regatta evolutions for the amusement of those
who generally came provided with crumbs or grain wherewith to feed
them.

The sound of a sob attracted Mrs. Orme's attention, and she paused to
witness a scene that quickly aroused her sympathy.

A child's carriage had been pushed close to the margin of the basin,
to enable the occupant to feast the swans with morsels of cake, and
in leaning over to scatter the food a little hat composed of lace,
silk, and flowers, had fallen into the water. Near the carriage stood
a boy apparently about ten years old, who with a small walking-stick
was maliciously pushing the dainty millinery bubble as far beyond
reach as possible.

In the carriage, and partly covered by a costly and brilliant afghan,
reclined a forlorn and truly pitiable creature, who seemed to have
sunk down helplessly on the cushions. Although her age was seven
years, the girl's face really appeared much older, and in its
shrunken, sallow, pinched aspect indicated lifelong suffering.

The short thin dark hair was dry and harsh, lacking the silken gloss
that belongs to childhood, and the complexion a sickly yellowish
pallor. Her brilliant eyes were black, large and prominent, and
across her upper lip ran a diagonal scar, occasionally seen in those
so afflicted as to require the merciful knife of a skilful surgeon to
aid in shaping the mouth.

The unfortunate victim of physical deformity, increased by a fall
which prevented the possibility of her ever being able to walk,
nature had with unusual malignity stamped her with a feebleness of
intellect that at times bordered almost on imbecility.

Temporarily deserted by her nurse, the poor little creature was
crying bitterly over the fate of her hat. Walking up behind the boy,
who was too much engrossed by his mischievous sport to observe her
approach, Mrs. Orme seized his arms.

"You wicked boy! How can you be so cruel as to torment that afflicted
child?"

Taking his pretty mother-of-pearl-headed cane, she tried to touch the
hat, but it was just beyond her reach, and, resolved to rescue it,
she fastened the cane to the handle of her parasol, using her
handkerchief to bind them together. Thus elongated it sufficed to
draw the hat to the margin, and, raising it, she shook out the water,
and hung the dripping bit of finery upon one of the handles of the
carriage.

"Give me my walking-stick," said the boy, whose pronunciation
proclaimed him thoroughly English.

"No, sir. I intend to punish you for your cruelty. You tyrannized
over that helpless little girl, because you were the strongest. I
think I have more strength than you, and you shall feel how pleasant
such conduct is."

Untying the cane, she raised it in the air, and threw it with all the
force she could command into the middle of the water.

"Now if you want it, wade in with your best boots and Sunday clothes
and get it; and go home and tell your parents, if you have any, that
you are a bad, rude, ugly-behaved boy. When you need your toy, think
of that hat."

The cane had sunk instantly, and with a sullen scowl of rage at her,
and a grimace at the occupant of the carriage, the boy walked sulkily
away.

With her handkerchief, Mrs. Orme wiped off the water that adhered to
the hat, squeezed and shook out the ribbons and laid it upon the
afghan, in reach of the fingers that more nearly resembled claws than
the digits of a human hand.

"Don't cry, dear. It will soon dry now."

The solemn black eyes, still glistening with tears, stared up at her,
and impelled by that peculiar pitying tenderness that hovers in the
hearts of all mothers, Mrs. Orme bent down and gently smoothed the
elfish locks around the sallow forehead.

"Has your nurse run away and left you? Don't be afraid; nothing shall
trouble you. I will stay with you till she comes back."

"Hellene is gone to buy candy," said the dwarf, timidly,

"My dear, what is your name?"

"Maud Ames Laurance."

The stranger had compassionately taken one of the thin hands in her
own, but throwing it from her as if it had been a serpent, she
recoiled, involuntarily pushing the carriage from its resting-place.
It rolled a few steps and stopped, while she stood shuddering.

Her first impulse was to hurry away; the second was more feminine in
its promptings, and conquered. Once more she approached the
unfortunate child, and scrutinized her, with eyes that gradually
kindled into a blaze.

She bore in no respect the faintest resemblance to her father, but
Mrs. Orme fancied she traced the image of the large-featured
bold-eyed mother; and as she contrasted this feeble deformed creature
with the remembered face and figure of her own beautiful darling
girl, a bitter but intensely triumphant laugh broke suddenly on the
air.

"Maud Ames Laurance! A proud name truly--and royally you grace it!
Ah, Nemesis! Christianity would hunt you down as a pagan myth, but
all honour, glory to you, incorruptible pitiless Avenger! Accept my
homage, repay my wrongs, and then demand in sacrificial tribute what
you will, though it were my heart's best blood! Aha! will she lend
lustre to the family name? Shall the splendour of her high-born
aristocratic beauty gild the crime that gave her being? Yes verily,
it seems that after all, even for me the Mills of the Gods do not
forget to grind. '_The time of their visitation will come, and that
inevitably; for, it is always true, that if the fathers have eaten
sour grapes, the children's teeth are set on edge_' Command my
lifelong allegiance, oh Queenly Nemesis!"

Sometimes grovelling in the dust of gross selfishness which clings
more or less to all of us, we bow worshipping before the gods, into
which we elevate the meanest qualities of our own nature,
apotheosizing sinful lusts of hate and vengeance; and while we vow
reckless tribute and measureless libations, lo, we are unexpectedly
called upon for speedy payment!

Looking down with exultant delight on the ugly deformity who stared
back wonderingly at her, Mrs. Orme's wan thin face grew radiant, the
brown eyes dilated, glowed, and the blood leaped to her hollow
cheeks, burning in two scarlet spots; but the invocation seemed
literally answered, when she was suddenly conscious of a strange
bubbling sensation, and over her parted, laughing lips crept the
crimson that fed her heart.

At this moment the child's nurse, a pretty bright-eyed young
coquette, hurried toward the group, accompanied by a companion of the
same class; and as she approached and seized the handles of the
carriage, Mrs. Orme turned away. The hemorrhage was not copious, but
steady, and lowering her thick veil, she endeavoured to stanch its
flow. Her handkerchief, already damp from contact with the wet hat,
soon became saturated, and she was obliged to substitute the end of
her lace mantle.

Fortunately Mrs. Waul, impatiently watching for her return, caught a
glimpse of the yet distant figure and hastened to meet her.

"Are you crying? What is the matter?"

"My lungs are bleeding; lend me a handkerchief. Try and find a
carriage."

"What caused it? Something must have happened?"

"Don't worry me now. Only help me to get home."

Screened both by veils and parasols, the two had almost gained the
street, when they met a trio of gentlemen.

One asked in unmistakable New-England English:

"Laurance, where is your father?"

And a voice which had once epitomized for Minnie Merle the "music of
the spheres," answered in mellow tones:

"He has been in London, but goes very soon to Italy."

Mrs. Waul felt a trembling hand laid on her arm, and turned anxiously
to her companion.

"Give me time. My strength fails me. I can't walk so fast."

The excitement of an hour had overthrown the slow work of weeks; and
after many days the physicians peremptorily ordered her away from
Paris.

"Home! Let us go home. You have not been yourself since we reached
this city. In New York you will get strong."

As Mrs. Waul spoke she stroked one of the invalid's thin hands, that
hung listlessly over the side of the sofa.

"I think Phoebe is right. America would cure you," added the
grey-haired man, whose heart was yearning for his native land.

Alluring, seductive as the Siren song that floated across Sicilian
waves, was the memory of her fair young daughter to this suffering
weary mother; and at the thought of clasping Regina in her arms, of
feeling her tender velvet lips once more on her cheek, the lonely
heart of the desolate woman throbbed fiercely.

Her sands of life seamed ebbing fast,--the end might not be distant;
who could tell? Why not go back--give up the chase for the empty
shadow of a name--gather her baby to her bosom, and die, finding
under an humble cenotaph the peace that this world denied her?

An intolerable yearning for the sight of her child, for the sound of
her voice, broke over her like some irresistible wave bearing away
the vehement protests of policy, the sterner barriers of vindictive
purpose, and with a long shivering moan she clasped her hands and
shut her eyes.

Impatiently the old man and his wife watched her countenance,
confident that the decision would not long be delayed, trusting that
the result would be a compliance with their wishes. But hope began to
fade as they noticed the gradual compression of her pale sorrowful
mouth,--the slow gathering of the brows that met in a heavy
frown,--the tightening of the clenched fingers,--the greyish shadow
that settled down on the face where renunciation was very legibly
written. The temptation had been fierce, but she put it aside, after
bitter struggles to hush the wail of maternal longing; and before she
spoke the two friends looked at each other and sighed.

Lifting her marble eyelids that seemed so heavy with their sweeping
brown lashes, the invalid raised herself on one elbow, and said
mournfully:

"Not yet,--oh! not yet. I cannot give up the fight without one more
struggle, even if it should prove that of death to me. I must not
return to America until I win what I came for; I will not. But, my
friends,--for such I consider you, such you have proved,--I will not
selfishly prolong your exile; will not exact the sacrifice of your
dearest wishes. Go back home at once, and enjoy in peace the old age
that deserves to be so happy. I am going to Italy, hoping to regain
my health,--possibly to die; but still I shall go. How long I may be
detained, I know not, but meanwhile you shall return to those you
love."

"Idle words--all idle words; not worth the waste of your breath.
Phoebe and I are homesick,--we do not deny it, and we are sorry you
can't see things as we do; but since that night when I stumbled over
you in the snow, and carried you to my own hearth, you have been to
Phoebe and me--as the child we lost; and unless you are ready to go
home with us, we stay here. You know we never will forsake you,
especially now. Hush,--don't speak, Phoebe. Come away, wife; she is
crying like a tired child. I never saw her give way like that before.
It will do her good. Every tear softens the spasms that wring her
poor heart when she thinks of her baby. In crossing the ocean she
said that every rolling wave seemed to her a grave, in which she was
burying her blue-eyed baby. Let her alone to-day; keep out of her
sight. To-morrow we will arrange to quit Paris, I hope for ever."




CHAPTER XVI.


"Mrs. Palma, if you are at leisure, I should like to see you for a
moment."

"Certainly, Miss Orme; come in."

Mrs. Palma looked up for an instant only from the blue sash which she
was embroidering with silver.

"Is your discourse confidential? If so, I shall certainly retire, and
leave you and mamma to tender communings, and an interchange of
souls," said Olga, who reclined on a lounge in her mother's room, and
slowly turned the leaves of a volume of Balzac.

"Not at all confidential. Mrs. Palma, I have reason to fear that my
practising has long annoyed you."

"Upon what do you base your supposition? During the year I have not
found fault with you, have I?"

"Hattie told me that you often complained that you could no longer
enjoy your morning nap, because the sound of the piano disturbed you;
and I wish to change the hour. The reason why I selected that time
was because I always rose early and practised before breakfast until
I came here; and because later in the day company in the parlours or
reception-room keep me out. I am anxious to do whatever is most
agreeable to you."

"It is very true that when I am out frequently until two and three
o'clock, with Olga, it is not particularly refreshing to be aroused
at seven by scales and exercises. People who live as continually in
society as we do must have a little rest.

"I have been trying to arrange, so as to avoid annoying you, but do
not well see how to correct the trouble. From nine until one Mr. Van
Kleik comes to attend to my Latin, German, French, and mathematics,
and from four until five Professor Hurtzsel gives me my lessons. In
the interval persons are frequently calling, and of course interrupt
me. If you will only tell me what you wish, I will gladly consult
your convenience.

"Indeed, Miss Orme, I do not know when the tiresome practising will
be convenient, though of course it is a necessary evil and must be
borne. The fact is, that magnificent grand piano downstairs ought
never to be thrummed upon for daily practising. I told Erle soon
after you came that it was a shame to have it so abused, but men have
no understanding of the fitness of things."

"Pray, mamma, do not forget your Bible injunction: 'Render unto Cæsar
the things that are Cæsar's,' and to music, the matters that belong
to its own divine art. Until Regina came among us that melodious
siren in the front parlour had a chronic lock-jaw from want of use.
Some of the white keys stuck fast when they were touched, and the
black ones were so stiff they almost required a hammer to make them
sound. Do let her limber them at her own 'sweet will.' Who wants a
piano locked up, like that hideous old china and heavy glass that
your grandfather's fifth cousin brought over from Amsterdam?"

"At what time of day did you practise when you were a young girl?"
asked Regina, appealing to the figure now coiled up on the lounge.

"At none, thank fortune! Regard me as a genuine _rara avis_, a
fashionable young lady with no more aptitude for the 'concord of
sweet sounds,' than for the abstractions of Hegel, or Differential
Calculus. It is traditional, that while in my nurse's arms, I
performed miracles of melody such as Auld Lang Syne, with one little
finger; but such undue precocity, madly stimulated by ambitious mamma
and nurse Nell, resulted fatally in the total destruction of my
marvellous talent, which died of cerebro-musical excitement when
confronted with the gamut. Except as the language in which Strauss
appeals to my waltzing genius, I have no more use for it than for
ancient Aztec. Thank Heaven! this is a progressive age, and girls are
no longer tormented as formerly by piano fiends, who once persisted
in pounding and squeezing music into their poor struggling nauseated
souls, as relentlessly as girls' feet are still squeezed in China. My
talent is not for the musical tones of Pythagoras."

"I should be truly glad to learn in what direction it tends." said
her mother, rather severely.

Up rose the head with its tawny crown, and there was evident emphasis
in the ringing voice and in the fiery glance that darted from her
laughing hazel eyes.

"Cruel mamma! Because Euterpe did not preside when I was lucklessly
ushered into this dancing gilt bubble that we call the world, were
all good gifts denied me? The fairies ordained that I should paint,
should soar like Apelles, Angelo, and Da Vinci into the empyrean of
pure classic art, but no sooner did I dabble in pigment, and plume my
slender artistic pin-feathers, than the granite hands of Palma pride
seized the ambitious ephemeron, cut off the sprouting wings, and bade
me paint only my lips and cheeks, if dabble in paint I must. I am
confident the soul of Zeuxis sleeps in mine, but before the _ukase_
of the Palmas a stouter than Zeuxis would quail, lie low,--be silent.
Hence I am a young miss who has no talent, except for appreciating
Balzac, caramels, Diavolini, _vanille soufflé_, lobster-croquettes,
and Strauss' waltzes; though envious people do say that I have a
decided genius for 'malapropos historic quotations,' which you know
are regarded as unpardonable offences by those who cannot comprehend
them. Come here, St. John, and let me rub your fur the wrong way. The
world will do it roughly if you survive tender kittenhood, and it is
merciful to initiate you early, and by degrees."

She took up a young black cat that was curled comfortably on the
skirt of her dress, and stroking him softly, resumed her book.

Mrs. Palma compressed her lips, knitted her heavy brows, and turned
the silk sash to the light to observe the effect of the silver
snowdrops she was embroidering.

During her residence under the same roof, Regina had become
accustomed to these verbal tournaments between mother and daughter,
and having been kept in ignorance of the ground of Olga's grievance,
she could not understand allusions that were frequently made in her
presence, and which never failed to irritate Mrs. Palma.

Desirous of diverting the conversation from a topic that threatened
renewed tilts, she said timidly:

"You do not in the least assist me, with reference to my music. Would
you object to having a hired piano in the house? I could have it
placed in my room, and then my practising in the middle of the day,
or in the evening would never be interfered with, and you could have
your morning nap."

"Indeed, Miss Orme, a very good suggestion; a capital idea. I will
speak to Erle about it to-night."

Regina absolutely coloured at the shadowy compliment.

"Will it be necessary to trouble Mr. Palma with the matter? He is
always so busy, and besides you know much better than a gentleman
what----"

"I know nothing better than Erle Palma, where it concerns his
_ménage_, or the expenses incident to its control."

"But out of my allowance I will pay the rent, and he need know
nothing of the matter."

"Of course that quite alters the case; and if you propose to pay the
rent, there is no reason why he should be consulted."

"Then will you please select a piano, and order it to be sent up
to-day or to-morrow? An upright could be most conveniently carried
upstairs."

"Certainly, if you wish it. We shall be on Broadway this afternoon,
and I will attend to the matter."

"Thank you, Mrs. Palma."

"Regina Orme! what an embryo diplomatist, what an incipient
Talleyrand, Kaunitz, Bismarck you are! Mamma is as invulnerable to
all human weaknesses as one of the suits of armour hanging in the
Tower of London; and during my extended and rather intimate
acquaintance with her, I have never discovered but one foible
incident to the flesh, love of her morning nap! You have adroitly
struck Achilles in the heel. Sound the timbrel and sing like Miriam
over your victory; for it were better to propitiate one of the house
of Palma, than to strangle Pharaoh. You should apply for a position
in some foreign legation, where your talents can be fitly trained for
the tangles of diplomacy. Now if you were only a man, how admirably
you would suit the Hon. Erle Palma as Deputy----"

"He prefers to appoint his deputies without suggestion from others,
and regrets he can find no vacant niche for you," answered Mr. Palma,
from the threshold of the door where he had been standing for several
moments, unperceived by all but the hazel eyes of the graceful figure
on the lounge.

"Ah! you steal upon one as noiselessly, yet as destructive as the
rats that crept upon the bowstrings at Pelusium! And the music of
your eavesdropping voice;--

          'Oh it came o'er my ear like the sweet south
          That breathes upon a bank of violets.'"

She rose, made him a profound salaam, and with the black kitten in
her arms, quitted the room.

"Will you come, in, Erle? Do you wish to see me?"

Mrs. Palma always looked ill at ease when Olga and her stepbrother
exchanged words, and Regina had long observed that the entrance of
the latter was generally the signal of departure for the former.

"I came in search of Regina, but chancing to hear the piano question
discussed, permit me to say that I prefer to take the matter in my
own hands. I will provide whatever may be deemed requisite, so that
this young lady's Rothschild's allowance may continue to flow
uninterruptedly into the coffers of confectioners and flower-dealers.
Mrs. Palma, if you can spare the carriage, I should like the use of
it for an hour or two."

"Oh, certainly! I had thought of driving to Stewart's, but to-morrow
will suit me quite as well."

"By no means. You will have ample time after my return. Regina, I
wish to see you."

She followed him into the hall.

"In the box of clothing that arrived several days ago, there is a
white cashmere suit with blue silk trimmings?"

"Yes, sir."

"Be so good as to put it on. Then wrap up well, and when ready come
to the library. Do not keep me waiting. Bring your hair-brush and
comb."

Her mother had sent from Europe a tasteful wardrobe, which, when
unpacked, Mrs. Palma pronounced perfect; while Olga asserted that one
particular sash surpassed anything of the kind she had ever seen, and
was prevailed upon to accept and wear it.

With many conjectures concerning the import of Mr. Palma's
supervision of her toilette, Regina obeyed his instructions, and
fearful of trespassing on his patience, hurried down to the library.

With one arm behind him, and the hand of the other holding a
half-smoked cigar, he was walking meditatively up and down the
polished floor, that reflected his tall shadow.

"Where do you suppose you are going?"

"I have no idea."

"Why do you not inquire?"

"Because you will not tell me till you choose; and I know that
questions always annoy you."

"Come in. You linger at the door as if this were the den of a lion at
a menagerie, instead of a room to which you have been cordially
invited several times. I am not voracious, have had my luncheon. You
are quite ready?"

"Quite ready----"

She was slowly walking down the long room, and suddenly caught sight
of something that seemed to take away her breath.

The clock on the mantle had been removed to the desk, and in its
place was a large portrait neither square nor yet exactly kit-cat,
but in proportion more nearly resembled the latter. In imitation of
Da Vinci's celebrated picture in the Louvre, the background
represented a stretch of arid rocky landscape, unrelieved by foliage,
and against it rose in pose and general outline the counterpart of
"_La Joconde_."

The dress and drapery were of black velvet, utterly bare of ornament,
and out of the canvas looked a face of marvellous, yet mysteriously
mournful beauty. The countenance of a comparatively young woman,
whose radiant brown eyes had dwelt in some penetrale of woe, until
their light was softened, saddened; whose regular features were
statuesque in their solemn repose, and whose gold-tinted hair simply
parted on her white round brow, fell in glinting waves down upon her
polished shoulders. The mystical pale face of one who seemed alike
incapable of hope or of regret, who gazed upon past, present, future,
as proud, as passionless and calm as Destiny; and whose perfect hands
were folded in stern fateful rest.

As Regina looked up at it she stopped, then run to the hearth, and
stood with her eyes riveted to the canvas, her lips parted and
quivering.

Watching her, Mr. Palma came to her side, and asked:

"Whom can it be?"

Evidently she did not hear him. Her whole heart and soul appeared
centred in the picture; but as she gazed, her own eloquent face grew
whiter, she drew her breath quickly, and tears rolled over her
cheeks, as she lifted her arms toward the painting.

"Mother I my beautiful sad-eyed mother!"

Sobs shook her frame, and she pressed toward the mantelpiece till the
skirt of her dress swept dangerously close to the fire. Mr. Palma
drew her back, and said quietly:

"For an uncultivated young rustic, I must say your appreciation of
fine painting is rather surprising. Few city girls would have paid
such a tearful tribute of heartfelt admiration to my pretty 'Mona
Lisa.'"

Without removing her fascinated eyes she asked:

"When did it come?"

"I have had it several days. I presume that you know it is a copy of
Da Vinci's celebrated picture, upon which he worked four years, and
which now hangs in the gallery of the Louvre at Paris?"

She merely shook her head.

"In France it is called '_La Joconde_; but I prefer the softer 'Mona
Lisa' for my treasure."

"Is it not mine? She must have sent it to me?"

"She? Are you dreaming? Mona Lisa has been dead three hundred years!"

"Mr. Palma, it is my mother. No other face ever looked like that, no
other eyes except those in the _Mater Dolorosa_ resemble these
beautiful sad brown eyes, that rained their tears upon my head. Do
you think a child ever mistook another for her own mother? Can the
face I first learned to know and to love, the lovely--oh! how
lovely--face that bent over my cradle ever--ever be forgotten? If I
never saw her again in this world, could I fail to recognise her in
heaven? My own mother!"

"Obstinate, infatuated little ignoramus! Read--and be convinced."

He opened and held before her a volume of engravings of the pictures
and statues in the Louvre, and turning to the Leonardo Da Vinci's,
moved his fingers slowly beneath the title.

Her eyes fell upon "_La Joconde_," then wandered back to the portrait
over the fireplace; and through her tears broke a radiant smile.

"Yes, sir, I perfectly understand. Your engraving is of Da Vinci's
painting, and of course I suppose it is very fine, though the face is
not pretty; but up yonder! that is mother! My mother who kissed and
cried over me, and hugged me so close to her heart. Oh! Your Da Vinci
never even dreamed of, much less painted, anything half so heavenly
as my darling mother's face!"

Closing the book, Mr. Palma threw it on the table, and as he glanced
from the lovely countenance of the girl to that of the woman on the
wall, something like a sigh heaved his broad chest.

Did the wan meek shadow of his own patient much-suffering young
mother lift her melancholy image in the long silent adytum of his
proud heart, over whose chill chambers ambition and selfishness had
passed with ossifying touch?

Years ago, at the initial steps of his professional career, he had
set before him one glittering goal, the Chief-Justiceship. In
preparing for the long race that stretched ahead of him, seeing only
the Judicial crown that sparkled afar off, he had laid aside his
tender sensibilities, his warmest impulses of affection and
generosity as so many subtle fetters, so much unprofitable luggage,
so much useless weight to retard and burden him.

While his physical and mental development had brilliantly attested
the efficacy of the stern regiment he systematically imposed,--his
emotional nature long discarded, had grown so feeble and inane from
desuetude, that its very existence had become problematical. But
to-day, deeply impressed by the intensity of love which Regina could
not restrain at the sight of the portrait, strange softening memories
began to stir in their frozen sleep, and to hint of earlier, warmer,
boyish times, even as magnolia, mahogany, and cocoa trunks stranded
along icy European shores, babble of the far sweet sunny south, and
the torrid seas whose restless blue pulses drove them to hyperborean
realms.

"Is it indeed so striking and unmistakable a likeness? After all, the
instincts of nature are stronger than the canons of art. Your mother
is an exceedingly beautiful woman; but, little girl, let me tell you,
that you are not in the least like her."

"I know that sad fact, and it often grieves me."

"You must certainly resemble your father, for I never saw mother and
child so entirely dissimilar."

He saw the glow of embarrassment, of acute pain tinging her throat
and cheeks, and wondered how much of the past had been committed to
her keeping; how far she shared her mother's confidence. During the
year that she had been an inmate of his house she had never referred
to the mystery of her parentage, and despite his occasional efforts
to become better acquainted had shrunk from his presence, and
remained the same shy reserved stranger she appeared the week of her
arrival.

"Is not the portrait for me? Mother wrote that she intended sending
me something which she hoped I would value more than all the pretty
clothes, and it must be this, her own beautiful precious face."

"Yes, it is yours; but I presume you will be satisfied to allow it to
hang where it is. The light is singularly good."

"No, sir, I want it."

"Well you have it, where you can see it at any time."

"But I wish to keep it, all to myself, in my room, where it will be
the last thing I see at night, the first in the morning--my sunrise."

"How unpardonably selfish you are. Would you deprive me of the
pleasure of admiring a fine work of art, merely to shut it in,
converting yourself into a pagan, and the portrait into an idol?"

"But, Mr. Palma, you never loved any one or anything so very dearly,
that it seemed holy in your eyes; much too sacred for others to look
at."

"Certainly not. I am pleased to say that is a mild stage of lunacy,
with which I have as yet never been threatened. Idolatry is a phase
of human weakness I have been unable to tolerate."

He saw a faint smile lurking about the perfect curves of her rosy
mouth, but her eyes remained fixed on the picture.

"I should be glad to know what you find so amusing in my remark."

She shook her head, but the obstinate dimples reappeared.

"What are you smiling at?"

"At the assertion that you cannot tolerate idolatry."

"Well? Of all the men in New York, probably I am the most thoroughly
an iconoclast."

"Yes, sir, of other people's gods; nevertheless, I think you worship
ardently."

"Indeed! Have you recently joined the 'Microscopical Society'? I
solicit the benefit of your discoveries, and shall be duly grateful
if you will graciously point out the unknown fane wherein I secretly
worship. Is it Beauty? Genius? Riches?"

"It is not done in secret. All the world knows that Mr. Palma
imitates the example of Marcus Marcellus, and dedicates his life to
two divinities."

Standing on either side of the gate, and each pressing a hand upon
the slab of the mantle, the lawyer looked curiously down at the
bright young face.

"You are quite fresh in foraging from historic fields,--and since I
quitted the classic shade of Alma Mater I have had little leisure for
Roman lore; but college memories suggest that it was to Honour and
Valour that Marcellus erected the splendid double temple at the
Capene Gate. I bow to your parallel, and gratefully appreciate your
ingeniously delicate compliment."

He laughed sarcastically as he interpreted the protest very legible
in her clear honest eyes, and waited a moment for her to disclaim the
flattery. But she was silently smiling up at her mother's face.

"Does my very observant ward approve of my homage to the Roman
deities?"

"Are your favourite divinities those before whom Marcellus bent his
knee?"

Very steadily her large eyes, blue as the border of a clematis, were
turned to meet his, and involuntarily he took his under lip between
his glittering teeth.

"My testimony would not be admissible before the bar, at which I have
been arraigned. Since you have explored the Holy of Holies, be so
kind as to describe what you find."

"You might consider me presumptuous, possibly impertinent."

"At least I may safely promise not to express any such opinion. What
is there, think you, that Erle Palma worships?"

"A statue of Ambition that stands in the vestibule of the temple of
Fame."

"Olga told you that."

"Oh no, sir! Have not I lived here a year?"

His eyes sparkled, and a proud smile curled his lips.

"Do I offer sacrifices?"

"I think you would, if they were required."

"Suppose my stone god demanded my heart?"

"Ah, sir! you know you gave it to him long ago."

He laughed quite genially, and his whole face softened, warmed.

"At least let us hope my ambition is not sordid; is unstained with
the dross of avarice. It is a stern god, and I shall not deny that
'Ephraim is joined to his idols! Let him alone.'"

A short silence followed, during which his thoughts wandered far from
the precincts of that quiet room.

"Mr. Palma, will you please give me my picture?"

"It is yours of course, but conditionally. It must remain where it
now hangs: first, because I wish it; secondly, because your mother
prefers (for good reasons) that it should not be known just yet as
her portrait; and if it should be removed to your bed-chamber, the
members of the household would probably gossip. Remaining here, it
will be called an imitation of 'Mona Lisa del Giocondo,' and none
will ever suspect the truth. Pray don't straiten your lips in that
grievously defiant fashion, as Perpetua doubtless did when she heard
the bellowing of beasts or the clash of steel in the amphitheatre.
Make this room your favourite retreat. Now that it contains your
painted Penates, convert it into an _atrium_. Come when you may, you
will never disturb me. In a long letter received this week, your
mother directs that your portrait shall be painted in a certain
position, and wishes you to wear the suit you have on. The carriage
is ready, and I will take you at once to the artist. Put on your
hat."

During the drive he was abstracted, now and then consulting a paper
of memoranda, carried in the inside breast-pocket of his coat.

Once introduced into the elegant studio of Mr. Harcourt in Tenth
Street, Regina found much to interest and charm her, while her
guardian arranged the preliminaries, and settled the details of the
picture. Then he removed the hat and cloak, and placed her in the
comfortable seat already prepared.

The artist went into an adjoining room, and a moment after Hero
bounded in, expressing by a succession of barks his almost frantic
delight at the reunion with his mistress. Since her removal to New
York, she saw him so rarely, that the pleasure was mingled with pain,
and now with her arms around his neck, and her face hidden in his
thick white hair, she cried softly, unable to keep back the tears.

"Come, Regina, sit up. Make Hero lie on that pile of cushions, which
will enable you to rest one hand easily on his head. Crying! Mr.
Harcourt paints no such weeping demoiselles. Dry your eyes, and take
down your hair. Your mother wishes it flowing, as when she saw you
last."

While she unbraided the thick coil, and shook out the shining folds,
trying to adjust them smoothly, the lawyer stood patiently beside
her; and once his soft white hand rested on her forehead, as he
stroked back a rippling tress that encroached upon her temple.

The dress of pearly cashmere was cut in the style usually denominated
"infant waist," and fully exposed the dazzling whiteness and dimpling
roundness of the neck and shoulders; while the short puffed sleeves
showed admirably the fine modelling of the arms.

Walking away to the easel, Mr. Palma looked back, and critically
contemplated the effect; and he acknowledged it was the fairest
picture his fastidious eyes had ever rested on.

He put one hand inside his vest, and stood regarding the girl, with
mingled feelings of pride in "Erle Palma's ward," and an increasing
interest in the reticent calm-eyed child, which had first dawned when
he watched her asleep in the railroad car. It was no easy matter to
stir his leaden sympathies, save in some selfish ramification, but
once warmed and set in motion they proved a current difficult to
stem.

In a low voice the artist said, as he selected some brushes from a
neighbouring stand:

"How old is she? Her features have a singularly infantile delicacy
and softness, but the eyes and lips seem to belong to a much older
person."

"Regina, have you not entered upon your sixteenth year?"

"Yes, sir."

"I believe, Mr. Palma, it is the loveliest living face I ever saw. It
is so peculiar, so intensely--what shall I say?--prophet-eyed."

"Yes, I believe that is the right word. When she looks steadily at me
she often reminds me of a Sibyl."

"But is this her usual, every-day expression?"

"Rather sadder than customary, I think."

He went back to the group, and, standing in front of his ward, looked
gravely down in her upturned face.

"Could you contrive to appear a little less solemn?"

She forced a smile, but he made an impatient gesture.

"Oh, don't! Anything would be better than that dire conflict between
the expression of your mouth, and that of your eyes. Have you any
hermetically sealed pleasant thoughts hidden behind that smooth brow,
that you could be prevailed upon to call up for a few moments, just
long enough to cast a glimmer of sunshine over your face? I think you
once indignantly denied ever indulging in the folly of possessing a
sweetheart, but perhaps you have really entertained more _affaires de
coeur_ than you choose to confide to such a grim, iron guardian as
yours? Possibly you may cherish cheerful memories of the kind-hearted
young missionary, whose chances of hastening to heaven, _per_ Sepoy
passport, _viâ_ Delhi route, seem at times to distress you? Does he
ever write you?"

"His mother has written to me twice since she reached India, and once
enclosed a note from him; but although she said he had written, and I
hoped for a letter, none has come."

He noted the quick flutter of her lip, and the shadow that crept into
her eyes.

"Then he went away with the expectation that you would correspond
with him?"

"Yes, sir."

"He is quite a bold, audacious young fellow, and you are a very
disrespectful, imprudent, disobedient young ward, to enter into such
an arrangement without my consent and permission. Suppose I forbid
all communication?"

"I think, sir, you would scarcely be so unreasonable and unjust; and
if you were, I should not obey you. I would appeal to my mother. Mr.
Hargrove, dear good Mr. Hargrove, was my guardian when Mr. Lindsay
went away, and he did not object to the promise I made concerning a
correspondence."

The starry sparkle which during the last twelve months he had learned
meant the signal of mutiny flashed up in her eyes.

"Take care! when iron gloves are recklessly thrown down, serious
mischief sometimes ensues. My laws are rarely Draconian, until reason
has been exhausted; but nature endowed me with a miserly share of
patience, and I do not think it entirely politic in you to challenge
me. Here is a document that has an intensely Hindustanee appearance,
and is, as you see, at my mercy. Where it has been since it left
Calcutta last June, I know not. That Padre Sahib penned it, I indulge
no doubt. Pray sit still. So the sunshine has come to your
countenance at last, and all the way from India! Verily, happiness is
the best cosmetic, and hope the brightest illuminator; even more
successful than Bengal lights."

He held up a letter post-marked Calcutta, and coldly watched the glow
that overspread her face, as her gaze eagerly followed the motion of
his hand.

"I have not touched the seal; but as your guardian, It is proper that
I should be made acquainted with the contents. When you have devoured
it, I presume you will yield to the promptings of respect due to my
position and wishes. When I assume guardianship of any person or
thing, I invariably exert all the authority, exact all the obedience,
and claim all the privileges and perquisites to which the
responsibility entitles me."

He placed the letter on the cushion, where Hero nestled, and turning
to the artist, added:

"I leave Miss Orme in your care, Mr. Harcourt, and shall send Mr.
Roscoe to remain during the sitting, and take her home. Paint her
just as she is now. Good-morning."




CHAPTER XVII.


Through the creamy lace curtains that draped the open windows, the
afternoon sun shone into the library, making warm lanes of yellow
light across the rich mosaic of many coloured woods that formed the
polished floor. Upon one of the round tables was a silver salver,
whereon stood a wine-cooler of the same material, representing
Bacchus crushing ripe clusters into the receptacles, that now
contained a bottle of Rüdesheim, and a crystal claret jug. In
tempting proximity rose a Sevres _epergne_ of green and gold, whose
weight was upborne by a lovely figure, evidently modelled in
imitation of Titian's Lavinia; and the crowning basket was heaped
with purple and amber grapes, crimson-cheeked luscious peaches, and
golden pears sun-flushed into carmine flecks.

Two tall glittering Venice glasses stood upon the salver, casting
prismatic radiance over the silver, as the sunbeams smote their
slender fluted sides, and a pair of ruby tinted finger-bowls
completed the colour chord.

On one side of the table sat Mr. Palma, who had returned an hour
before from Washington, and was resting comfortably in his favourite
chair, with his head thrown back, and a cigar between his lips. His
eyes were turned to the mantlepiece, where since the day the portrait
was first suspended, ten months ago, Regina had never failed to keep
a fresh dainty bouquet of fragrant flowers. This afternoon, the
little vase held only apple-geranium leaves, and a pyramidal cluster
of tuberoses; and her guardian had observed that when white blossoms
could be bought, coloured ones were never offered in tribute.

Opposite the lawyer was his cousin _protégé_, and occupied in
peeling a juicy peach, with one of the massive silver fruit-knives.

"I have never doubted the success of the case; it was a foregone
conclusion when you assumed charge of it. Certainly considering the
strength of the defence, it is a brilliant triumph for you, and
compensates for the toil you have spent upon it. I have never seen
you labour more indefatigably."

"Yes, for forty-eight hours I did not close my eyes, and of course
the result gratifies me, for the counsel for the defence was the most
stubbornly contestant I have dealt with for a long time. The
Government influence was immense. Where have Mrs. Palma and Olga
gone?"

"To Manhattanville, I believe."

"How long since Regina left the house?"

"Only a few moments before you arrived. It seems to me singularly
imprudent to allow her to wander about the city as she does."

"Explain yourself."

"I offered to accompany her as escort, but she rather curtly declined
my attendance."

"And in your estimation, that constitutes 'imprudence'?"

"I certainly consider it imprudent for any young girl to stroll
around alone in New York on Sunday afternoon; especially one so very
attractive, so conspicuously beautiful as Regina."

"During my absence has any one been kidnapped or garrotted in broad
daylight?"

"I do not study the police records."

"Do you imagine that she perambulates about the sacred precincts of
'Five Points,' or the purlieus of Chatham Street?"

"I imagine nothing, sir; but I know that she frequents a distant
portion of this city, where I should think young ladies of her social
status would find no attraction."

"You have followed her then?" Mr. Palma raised himself and struck the
ashes from his cigar.

"I have not; but others certainly have, and commented upon the fact."

"Will you oblige me with the remarks, and the name of the author?"

"No, Cousin Erle, certainly not the last. But I will tell you that a
couple of young gentlemen met her on Eighth Avenue, and were so
impressed by her face that they turned round and followed her; saw
her finally enter one of a row of poor tenement buildings in ----
Street. Soon after she came out and retraced her steps. They watched
her till she entered your house, and next day one of them asked me if
she were a sewing girl. No ward of mine should have such latitude."

"Not Elliott Roscoe; but I happen to be her guardian. She visits by
my permission the house you so vaguely designate, and the first time
she entered it I accompanied her and pointed out the location, and
the line of street cars that would carry her almost to the square. At
present the house is occupied by Mrs. Mason, the widow of a minister
who was related to Mr. Hargrove, Regina's former guardian; and the
references furnished me by the lady give satisfactory assurance that
the acquaintance is unobjectionable, although the widow is evidently
in very reduced circumstances. I consented some weeks ago that my
ward should occasionally spend Sunday afternoon with her."

"I presume you are the best judge of the grave responsibility of your
position," replied the young gentleman, stiffly.

"Certainly I think so, sir; and as you may possibly have observed, I
am not particularly grateful for volunteer suggestions relative to my
duty. Has it ever occurred to you that the green goggles you wear at
present may accidentally lend an unhealthy tinge to your vision?"

A wave of vivid scarlet flowed to the edge of Mr. Roscoe's fair
harvest-hued hair, as he answered angrily:

"You are the only person who could with impunity make such an
insinuation."

"In insinuations I never indulge, and impunity I neither arrogate,
nor permit in others. Keep cool, Elliott, or else change your
profession. A man who cannot hold his temper in leash, and who flies
emotional signals from every feature in his face, has slender chance
of success in an avocation which demands that body and soul, heart
and mind, abjure even secret signal service, and deal only in cipher.
The youthful _naïveté_ with which you permit your countenance to
reflect your sentiments, renders it quite easy for me to comprehend
the nature of your feeling for my ward. For some weeks your interest
has been very apparent, and while I am laying no embargo on your
affections, I insist that jealousy must not jaundice your estimate of
my duties, or of Regina's conduct. Moreover, Elliott, I suggest that
you thoroughly reconnoitre the ground before beginning this campaign,
for, my dear fellow, I tell you frankly, I believe Cupid has already
declared himself sworn ally of a certain young minister, who entered,
and enjoys pre-emption right over what amount of heart may have thus
far been developed in the girl. In addition she is too young, not yet
sixteen, and I rigidly interdict all love passages; besides her
parentage is to some extent a secret; she has no fortune but her
face; and you are poor in all save hope and social standing.
_Verbum_, etc., etc."

Walking to the window, where he stood with his countenance averted,
Mr. Roscoe said hesitatingly:

"I would rather my weakness had been discovered by the whole world
than that you should know it; you, who never having indulged such
emotions, regard them as the height of folly. I am aware that at this
moment you think me an idiot."

"Not necessarily. A known weakness thoroughly conquered sometimes
becomes an element of additional strength in human character. As the
exercise of muscle builds up physical vigour, so the persistent
exertion of will develops mental and moral power. Men who have a
paramount aim in life should never hesitate in strangling all
irrelevant and inferior appellants for sympathy. A comparatively
briefless attorney should trample out as he would an invading worm
the temptation to dream rose-coloured visions, wherein bows, arrows,
and bleeding hearts are thick and plentiful as gooseberries. Love in
a cottage with honeysuckle on the porch, and no provisions in the
larder, belongs to the age of fables, is as dead as feudal tenure."

"That you are quite incapable of such impolitic weakness, I am well
aware; for under the heel of your iron will your heart would not even
struggle. But unfortunately I am an impulsive, foolish, human Roscoe,
not a systematically organized, well-regulated, and unerring Palma."
His cousin bowed complacently.

"Be kind enough to hand me the cigars. This is defective; will not
smoke."

He leisurely lighted one, and resumed: "While on the cars to-day I
read an article which contained a passage to this effect, and I offer
it for your future reflection: 'That man, I think, has had a liberal
education, who has been so trained in his youth, that his body is the
ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the
work that as a mechanism it is capable of; whose intellect is a
clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength and
in smooth working order; ready like a steam-engine to be turned to
their kind of work.' Elliott, young gentlemen should put their hearts
in their pockets, until they fully decide before what shrine it would
be most remunerative to offer them. The last time we dined at Judge
Van Zandt's, certainly not more than three months ago, you were all
devotion to his second daughter, Clara of the ruby lips and _cèdre_
hair."

"Clara Van Zandt, no thank you! I would not give Regina's pure face
and sweet violet eyes for all the other feminine flesh in New York!"

Had his attention been fixed just then upon Mr. Palma, he might have
detected the sudden flash in his black eyes, and the nervous
clenching of his right hand that rested on the arm of the chair; but
the younger man was absorbed by his own emotions, and very soon his
cousin rose.

"In future we will not discuss this folly. At present, please
recollect that my ward's face has not yet been offered in the
matrimonial market; consequently your bid is premature. Those papers
I spoke of must be prepared as early as possible in the morning, and
submitted to me for revision. Be careful in copying the record. Have
a cigar? I shall not be back before dark."

The happiest hours Regina had known during her residence in New York
had been spent in the room where she now sat; a basement room with
low ceiling, and faded olive-tinted walls. The furniture was limited
to an old-fashioned square table of mahogany, rich with that colour
which comes only from the mellowing touch of age, and polished until
it reflected the goblet of white and crimson phlox, which Regina had
placed in the centre; a few chairs, some swinging shelves filled with
books, and a couch or lounge covered with pink and white chintz,
whereon lay a pillow with a freshly ironed linen case, whose ruffled
edges were crisply fluted.

Upon the whitewashed hearth were several earthen pots, filled with
odorous geraniums; and over the two windows that opened on a narrow
border of ground between the house wall and the street were carefully
trained a solanum jasminoides white with waxen stars, and an
abutilor, whose orange bells striped and veined with scarlet, swung
in every breath of air that fluttered the spotless white cotton
curtains, so daintily trimmed with a calico border of rose-coloured
convolvulus. In the morning when the sun shone hot upon the front of
the building, this room was very bright and cheerful, but its
afternoon aspect was dim, cool, shadowy. A gentle breeze now floated
across a bunch of claret-hued carnations growing in a wooden box on
the window-sill, which was on a level with the ground outside, and
brought on its waves that subtle spiciness that dwells only in the
deep heart of pinks.

In an old-fashioned maplewood rocking chair sat Mrs. Mason, with her
wasted and almost transparent hands resting on her open Bible. The
faded face which in early years had boasted of unusual comeliness,
bore traces of severe sorrows meekly borne; and the patient sweetness
that sat on the lip, and smiled serenely in the mild grey eyes,
invested it with that irresistible charm that occasionally renders
ripe old age more attractive than flushing dimpled youth. Her hair,
originally pale brown, was as snow-white as the tarlatan cap that now
framed it in a crimped border; and her lustreless black dress was
relieved at the neck and wrists by ruffles of the same material.

On the Bible lay her spectacles, and upon the third finger of the
left hand was a gold ring, worn so thin that it was a mere glittering
thread.

Near her sat Regina, playing with a large white and yellow cat that
now and then sprang to catch a spray of lemon-scented geranium, which
was swung teasingly just beyond the reach of her velvet paws.

"I am glad, my dear, to hear you speak so kindly of the members of
your guardian's family. I have never yet seen that person who had not
some redeeming trait. Many years ago, I knew Louise Neville very
well. She was then the handsome happy bride of a young naval officer,
who was soon after drowned in the Bay of Biscay; before the birth of
their only child, Olga. At first Louise seemed heart-broken by the
loss of her husband, but not more than two years afterward she
married Mr. Godwin Palma, who was reputed very wealthy. I have not
seen her since Olga was a child, but have heard that her second
husband was an exceedingly stem, exacting man; treating her with far
less tenderness than she received from poor Leo Neville, who was
certainly very fond of her. Mr. Godwin Palma died suddenly one day,
while riding down in his carriage to his office on Wall Street, but
he had made a will only a few weeks previous, in which he bequeathed
all his fortune--except a small annuity to Louise--to his son Erle,
whose own mother had possessed a handsome estate. Louise contested
the will, but the court sustained it; and I have heard that Mr. Erle
Palma has always treated her with marked kindness and respect, and
that he provides liberally for her and Olga. Louise is a proud,
ambitious woman, fond of pomp and splendour; but in those tastes she
was educated, and I always liked her, valued her kindness of heart,
and strict integrity of purpose."

"You do not know my guardian?"

"I never met him till the day he brought you first to see me, and I
was surprised to find him so comparatively young a man, for he is
rapidly building up a very enviable reputation in his profession. He
has been quite generous in his treatment of some  relatives, who were
at one time much reduced. His father's sister, Julia Palma, married a
dissipated young physician named Roscoe, and your guardian has almost
entirely educated one of the boys; sent him to college, and then took
him into his law-office, besides assisting in the maintenance of Mrs.
Roscoe, who died about three years ago. Regina, I had a letter from
Elise Lindsay since you were here. She sends kindest messages of love
to you, and says you must not allow new friends to supplant old ones.
She mentioned also that the climate of India did not seem very
desirable for Douglass, who has been quite sick more than once since
his settlement in Rohilcund. I am glad that Elise has gone to
Douglass, for his father died of consumption, and I always feared he
might have inherited the tendency, though his constitution seems
tolerably good. After Peyton's death, she had nothing to keep her
from her noble boy. God grant that India may never prove as fatal to
all her earthly hopes as it has been to mine."

A spasm of pain made her gentle patient face quiver, and Regina
remembered that Mrs. Mason's only daughter had married a gentleman
connected with the English Board of Missions, and with her husband
and babe perished in the Sepoy butchery.

Dropping the fragrant geranium sprig that so tormented the cat, the
girl's fingers interlaced tightly, and she asked almost under her
breath:

"Is Mr. Lindsay's health seriously impaired?"

"I hope not Elise merely said he had had two severe attacks of
pneumonia, and it rendered her anxious. No man of his age ranks
higher in the ministry than Douglass Lindsay, and as an Oriental
scholar I am told he has few equals in this country. His death would
be a great loss to his church, and----"

"Oh, do not speak of it! How can you? It would kill his mother,"
cried Regina, passionately, clasping her hands across her eyes, as if
to shut out some horrible vision.

"Let us pray God to mercifully avert such a heavy blow. But, my dear,
keep this in mind: with terrible bereavement comes the strength to
bear it. The strength of endurance,--a strength born only in the
darkest hours of a soul's anguish; and at last when affliction has
done its worst, and all earthly hope is dead, patience with tender
grace and gentle healing mutely sits down in hope's vacant place.
To-day I found a passage in a new book that impressed me as
beautiful, strong, and true. Would you like to hear it?"

"If it will teach me patience, please let me hear it."

"Give me the book lying on the lounge."

She opened it, put on her spectacles, and read:

"There is the peace of surrendered, as well as of fulfilled,
hopes,--the peace, not of satisfied, but of extinguished
longings,--the peace, not of the happy love and the secure fireside,
but of unmurmuring and accepted loneliness,--the peace, not of the
heart which lives in joyful serenity afar from trouble and from
strife, but of the heart whose conflicts are over, and whose hopes
are buried,--the peace of the passionless as well as the peace of the
happy;--not the peace which brooded over Eden, but that which crowned
Gethsemane.'"

"My dear Regina, only religion brings this blessed calm; this is
indeed that promised 'Peace that passeth all understanding,' and
therefore we would all do well to heed the words of Isaiah: 'Their
strength is to sit still.'"

Looking reverently up at her pale, worn placid face, the girl thought
it might have been considered a psalm of renunciation. Almost
sorrowfully she answered:

"I begin to see that there is far more shadow than sunshine in this
world; the night is longer than the day."

"You are too young to realize such solemn things, and should
endeavour to catch all the dew of life that glistens within your
reach; for the withering heat of the noon will come soon enough to
even the most favoured. An erroneous impression has too long
prevailed, that religious fervour, and a cheerful, hopeful, happy
spirit are incompatible; that devoutness manifests itself in a
lugubrious or at least solemn visage, and that a joyous mirthful
temperament is closely allied to 'the world, the flesh, and the
devil.' A more mischievous fallacy never found favour. Innocent
happiness in our hearts is acceptable worship to our God, who has
given us the language of joy, as He gave to birds the power of song.
In the universal canticle which nature sends up to its Creator, shall
humanity, the noblest of the marvellous mechanism, alone be silent?
The innocent joyousness of a pure heart is better than incense swung
in the temples of the Lord."

"Mrs. Mason, I wish to consult you on a subject that has given me
some anxiety. Would you approve of my attending the theatre and
opera? I have never yet gone, because I think neither Mr. Hargrove
nor Mr. Lindsay would have advised me to do so; and I am perplexed
about the matter, for Mr. Palma says that next winter he shall insist
on my seeing the best plays and operas. What ought I to do?"

"If you were a member of any church, which expressly prohibited such
amusements, I should say, do not infringe the rules which you
voluntarily promised to respect and obey; but as yet you have taken
no ecclesiastical vows. Habitual attendance upon such scenes as you
refer to is very apt, I think, to vitiate the healthful tone of one's
thoughts and feelings, but an occasional visit would probably injure
none but very weak minds. Your guardian is, I daresay, a prudent
judicious man, and would be careful in selecting plays that could
offend neither morality nor delicacy. There are many things upon the
stage which are sinful, vicious, and vulgar, but there are hundreds
of books quite as bad and dangerous. As we choose only the best
volumes to read, so be sure to select only pure plays and operas.
'Lear' would teach you the awful results of filial disobedience;
'Merchant of Venice,' the sin of avarice; 'Julius Cæsar' that of
unsanctified ambition. There are threads of wisdom, patience,
charity, and heroism which might be gathered from the dramatic
spindle, and woven advantageously into the garment of our daily lives
and thoughts. There is a marvellous pathos, fervour, sanctity, in the
'Casta Diva' of 'Norma' that appeals to my soul, as scarcely any
other piece of music ever has done; and I really should be glad to
hear it played on the organ every Sunday morning. Why? Because I
recognize in it the spirit of prayer from a tortured erring human
soul invoking celestial aid, and to me it is no longer a pagan Druid
song, trilled by the popular Prima-Donna at the Academy of Music, but
a hymn to the Heavenly powers, as consecrated as an _Ave Maria_, or
as Rossini's  'Inflammatus.' Are we lower than the bees, who wisely
discriminate between pure honey and poisonous sweets? Touching these
things, Lowell has nobly set us an example of

          'Pleading for whatsoever touches life
           With upward impulse: be He nowhere else,
           God is in all that liberates and lifts,
           In all that humbles, sweetens, and consoles,'

I think that in the matters you mention, you may safely defer to your
guardian's wishes, bearing always in mind this fact, that he
professes no religious faith; and praying God's Holy Spirit to guide
you, and keep your heart faithful and pure."

Regina longed to ask something more explicit concerning the stage,
but the thought of her mother peremptorily forbade a discussion that
seemed to imply censure of her profession.

"There is the bell for service. Are you not going to church this
afternoon?"

"No, dear, I am not very well; and besides, I promised to stay at
home, and see a poor old friend, who has no time to visit during the
week, and is just now in great affliction. You are not afraid to go
alone?"

"Not afraid, Mrs. Mason, still I wish you could go with me. When you
answer dear Mrs. Lindsay's letter ask her not to forget me, and tell
her I am trying to do right in all things, as far as I can see my
way. Good-bye, Mrs. Mason."

She bent her head, so that the faded placid lips could kiss her
cheek, and went out into the quiet street.

Instead of turning homeward, she hastened in an opposite direction,
toward a small brick church whose bell was ringing, and whose
afternoon service she had several times attended with Mrs. Mason.
Walking more slowly as she approached the building, she had not yet
reached it, when steps which she had heard behind her for several
minutes, paused at her side.

"Regina, is this the way home?"

"Good-evening, Mr. Palma. I am going to church."

Although he had been absent a week he did not even offer his hand,
and it never occurred to her to remind him of the omission.

"Are you in the habit of coming here alone? If so, your visits to
this neighbourhood cease."

"Mrs. Mason has always accompanied me until this after noon, and as
she could not leave home I came alone."

"I prefer you should not attend strange churches without a companion,
and now I will see you safely home."

She looked up, saw a few persons ascending the broad steps, and her
soul rose in rebellion;

"What possible harm can overtake me in God's house? Don't try to
stand between me and my duty."

"Do you not consider obedience to my wishes part of your duty?"

"Sometimes, sir; but not when it conflicts with my conscience."

"What is conscience?"

"The feeling God put into my soul when He gave it to me, to teach me
right from wrong."

"Is it? And if you were a Calmuck or a Mongol, it would teach you to
reverence Shigemooni as the highest god; and bid you fall down and
worship Dalai-lama, praying him to give you a pill of consecrated
dough."

"You mean that conscience is merely education? Even if it should be
so--which is not true, I think--the Bible says 'the heathen are a law
unto themselves,' and God knows they worship the best they can find
until revelation shows them their error. But I do not live in Lassa,
and my going to church here, is not akin to Lamaism. Nothing will
happen to me, and I assure you, sir, I will come home as soon as the
service is over."

"Is your eternal salvation dependent on church going?"

"I don't know, I rather think not; because if it were impossible for
me to attend service the Lord would know it, and He only requires
what He makes possible. But at least you must admit it cannot harm
me; and I enjoy coming to this church more than any I have seen since
I left our own dear old one at V----."

"It is a small, very plain affair, in no respect comparable to St.
Thomas's Church, where Mrs. Palma takes you every Sunday morning.
Where you not there to-day?"

"Yes, sir; but----"

"But--what? Speak out."
"Perhaps I ought not to say so,--and it may be partly my fault, but
indeed there seems to me more real religion in this plain little
chapel, at least it does me more good to come here."

"For instance, it incites and helps you defy your guardian on the
street!"

Until now she had resolutely kept her face set churchward, but as he
uttered the last words in a severer tone than he often used in
conversation with her, she turned quite around and retraced her
steps.

Walking beside her, he could only see the long soft lashes of her
downcast eyes, and the firm compression of her mouth.

"Little girl, are you very angry?"

She looked up quickly into his brilliant smiling eyes, and her cheek
dimpled.

"Mr. Palma, I wanted so very much to go, and I do feel disappointed;
but not angry."

"Then why do you not ask me to go with you?"

"You go there? Is it possible that you would ever do such a thing?
Really would you go, sir?"

"Try me."

"Please Mr. Palma, go with me."

He raised his hat, bowed, and said:

"I will."

"Oh, thank you!"

They turned and walked back in silence until they reached the door,
and he asked:

"Are the pews free?"

"Yes, sir; but Mrs. Mason and I generally sit yonder by that column."

"Very well, you must pilot me."

She turned into the side aisle next the windows, and they seated
themselves in a pew just beyond the projection of the choir gallery.

The edifice was small, but the altar and pulpit were handsome, and
though the windows were unstained, the light was mellowed by buff
inside blinds. The seats were by no means filled, and the
congregation was composed of people whose appearance denoted that
many belonged to the labouring class, and none to the Brahmin caste
of millionnaires, though all were neatly and genteely apparelled.

As the silver-haired pastor entered the pulpit the organ began to
throb in a low prelude, and four gentlemen bore shallow waiters
through the assemblage, to receive the contribution for the
"Destitute." Mr. Palma saw his companion take something from her
glove, and when the waiter reached them and she put in her small
alms, which he judged amounted to twenty-five cents, he slipped his
fingers in his vest pocket and dropped a bill on the plate.

"Is all that huge sum going to India to the missionaries?" he
gravely whispered.

"It is to feed the poor of this church."

As the organ swelled fuller and louder, Mr. Palma saw Regina start,
and listen intently; then the choir begin to sing, and she turned
very pale and shut her eyes. He could discover nothing remarkable in
the music,--"Oh that I had wings!" but as it progressed the girl's
emotion increased, became almost uncontrollable, and through the
closed lids the tears forced themselves rapidly, while she trembled
visibly, and seemed trying to swallow her sobs.

He moved closer to her, and the blue eyes opened and looked at him
with such pleading deprecating misery in their beautiful depths, that
he was touched, and involuntarily laid his ungloved hand on her
little bare fingers. Instantly they closed around it, twining like
soft tendrils about his, and unconsciously his clasp tightened.

All through the singing her tears fell unchecked, sliding over her
cheeks and upon her white dress, and when the congregation knelt in
prayer, Mr. Palma only leaned his head on the back of the pew in
front, and watched the figure bowed on her knees, close beside him,
crying silently, with her face in her hands.

When the prayer ended and the minister announced the hymn, she seemed
to have recovered her composure, and finding the page, offered her
pretty gilt hymn-book to her guardian. He accepted it mechanically,
and during the reading of the Scriptures that soon followed he slowly
turned over the leaves until he reached the title-page. On the
fly-leaf that fluttered over was written: "Regina Orme. With the love
and prayers of Douglass Lindsay."

Closing the book, he laid it in his lap, leaned back and folded his
arms over his chest.

The preacher read the sixty-third Psalm, and from it selected his
text: "My soul followeth hard after Thee."

Although certainly not a modern Chrysostom, he was an earnest,
faithful, and enlightened man, full of persuasive fervour; and to the
brief but interesting discourse he delivered--a discourse
occasionally sprinkled with felicitous metaphors and rounded with
several eloquent passages--Mr. Palma appeared to listen quite
attentively. Once a half smile moved his mouth, as he wondered what
his associates at the "Century" would think, if they could look in
upon him there; otherwise his deportment was most gravely decorous.
As he heard the monotonous rise and fall of the minister's tone, the
words soon ceased to bear any meaning to ears that gradually caught
other cadences long hushed; the voice of memory calling him from afar
off, back to the dewy days of his early boyhood, when walking by his
mother's side he had gone to church, and held her book as he now held
Regina's. Since then, how many changes time had wrought! How holy
seemed that distant, dim, church-going season!

At long intervals, and upon especially august occasions he had now
and then attended service in the elegant church where his pew-rent
was regularly paid; but not until to-day had he been attacked by the
swarming reminiscences of his childhood, all eagerly babbling of the
long-forgotten things once learned--

           "At that best academe, a mother's knee."

From the benignant countenance of the earnest preacher his keen cold
eyes began to wander, and after awhile rested upon the pale tender
face at his side.

Except that the lashes were heavy with moisture that no longer
overflowed in drops, there was no trace of the shower that had
fallen; for hers was one of those rare countenances, no more
disfigured by weeping, than the pictured _Mater Dolorosa_ by the tear
on her cheek.

To-day in the subdued sadness that filled her heart, while she
pondered the depressing news from India, her face seemed
etherealized, singularly sublimated; and as he watched the expression
of child-like innocence, the delicate tracery of nose and brows, the
transparent purity of the complexion, and the unfathomable purplish
blue of the eyes uplifted to the pulpit, a strange thrill never
experienced before stirred his cold stony heart, and quickened the
beat of his quiet, slow steady pulse.

He had smiled and bowed before lovely women of various and bewitching
types of beauty, had his abstract speculative ideal of feminine
perfection, and had been feted, flattered, coaxed, baited, and
welcomed to many shrines, whereon grace, wit, and wealth had lavished
their choicest charms; but the carefully watched and well-regulated
valvular machine he was pleased to designate his heart, had never as
yet experienced a warmer sensation than that of mere critical
admiration for classic contours, symmetrical figures, or voluptuous
Paul Veronese colouring.

Once only, early in his professional career, he had coolly,
dispassionately, sordidly, and with a hand as firm as Astræa's own,
held the matrimonial scales, and weighed the influence and preferment
that he could command by a politic and brilliant marriage, against
the advantages of freedom, and the glory of unassisted success and
advancement. For the lady herself--a bright, mirthful, pretty
brunette, who in contrast with his frigid nature seemed a gaudy
tropical bird fluttering around a stolid arctic auk--he had not even
a shadow of affection; and looked quite beyond the graceful lay
figure draped with his name to the lofty judicial eminence where her
distinguished father held sway, and could rapidly elevate him.

No softer emotion than ambition had suggested the thought, and after
a patient balancing of the opposing weights of selfishness, he had
utterly thrown aside the thought of entangling himself in any
Hymeneal snares.

Probably few men have attained his age without having breathed vows
of love into some rosy ear; but his colossal professional pride and
vanity had absolutely absorbed him--left him neither room nor time
for other and softer sentiments.

The numerous attempts to entrap his dim chilly affections had
somewhat lowered his estimate of female delicacy; and possessing the
flattering assurance that no fair hand was held too high for his
grasp, should he choose to claim it, he had grown rather arrogant. Of
coquetry he was entirely innocent; it seemed too contemptible even
for mere sport, and he scorned the thought of feeding his vanity by
feminine sacrifices.

Too sternly proud to owe success to any but his own will and
resolution, he had never proposed or even desired to marry any woman;
and was generally regarded as a hopelessly icy bachelor, whom all
welcomed with smiles, but despaired of captivating.

After forty years' sole undisputed mastery of his heart, something
suddenly and unexpectedly wakened there, groped about, would not
"down" at his bidding; and a new sensation made itself felt.

A brief sentence of Elliott Roscoe had like Moses' rod smitten the
rock of his affections, and forthwith gushed a flood of riotous
feelings never known before. At the thought of any man claiming
Regina's perfect dainty lips and peerless imperial eyes a hot wave of
indignant protest rolled over his whole being. That she should belong
to another now seemed monstrous, sacrilegious, and all the strength
of his own nature rose in mutiny.

Never until to-day had he analyzed his sentiments toward his ward,
never had he deemed it possible for his wisely disciplined heart to
bow before anything of flesh; but now, as he sat looking at the sweet
face, he saw that rebellion desperate and uncompromising had broken
out in his rigidly governed, long downtrodden nature, and with the
prompt vigilance habitual to him he calmly counted the cost of
crushing the insurrection.

Shading his countenance with his fingers he deliberately studied her
features, even the modelling of the waxen hands folded together on
her knee; and then and there, weighing all his achievements, all his
pictured future, so dazzling with coveted ermine, he honestly
confessed to his own soul that the universe held for him nothing so
precious as that fair pure young girl.

How superlatively presumptuous appeared Elliott Roscoe's avowed
admiration and preference! How dared that humble impecunious divinity
student now sojourning in the "Land of the Veda," lift his eyes
toward this priceless treasure, which Erle Palma wanted to call his
own!

Just then Regina took her hymn-book to search for the closing verses
designated by the minister, and as she opened the volume the
inscription on the fly-leaf showed conspicuously. The lawyer set his
teeth, and the fingers of his right hand opened, then closed hard and
tight, a gesture in which he often unconsciously indulged when
resolving on some future step.

The benediction was pronounced, and the congregation dispersed.

Walking silently beside her guardian, until they had proceeded some
distance from the church, Regina wondered how she should interpret
the grave preoccupied expression of his countenance. Had he been
sadly bored, and did he repent the sacrifice made to gratify her
caprice?

"Mr. Palma, I am very much obliged to you for kindly consenting to
accompany me. Of course I know this church and service must seem
dull and plain in comparison with that to which you are accustomed,
but I hope you liked Mr. Kelsey's sermon?"

"In some respects this afternoon has been a revelation, and I am sure
I shall never forget the occas