293—For Love of Anne Lambart. By Effie Adelaide Rowlands.
292—For Her Only. By Charles Garvice.
291—A Mysterious Wedding Ring. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
290—A Change of Heart. By Effie Adelaide Rowlands.
289—Married in Mask. By Mansfield T. Walworth.
288—Sibyl’s Influence. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
287—The Lady of Darracourt. By Charles Garvice.
286—A Debt of Vengeance. By Mrs. E. Burke Collins.
285—Born to Betray. By Mrs. M. V. Victor.
284—Dr. Jack’s Widow. By St. George Rathborne.
283—My Lady Pride. By Charles Garvice.
282—The Forsaken Bride. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
281—For Love Alone. By Wenona Gilman.
280—Love’s Dilemma. By Charles Garvice.
279—Nina’s Peril. By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller.
278—Laura Brayton. By Julia Edwards.
277—Brownie’s Triumph. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
276—So Nearly Lost. By Charles Garvice.
275—Love’s Cruel Whim. By Effie Adelaide Rowlands.
274—A Romantic Girl. By Evelyn E. Green.
273—At Swords’ Points. By St. George Rathborne.
272—So Fair, So False. By Charles Garvice.
271—With Love’s Laurel Crowned. By W. C. Stiles.
270—Had She Foreseen. By Dora Delmar.
269—Brunette and Blonde. By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller.
268—Olivia; or, It Was for Her Sake. By Charles Garvice.
267—Jeanne. By Charles Garvice.
266—The Welfleet Mystery. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
265—First Love is Best. By S. K. Hocking.
264—For Gold or Soul. By Lurana W. Sheldon.
263—An American Nabob. By St. George Rathborne.
262—A Woman’s Faith. By Henry Wallace.
261—A Siren’s Heart. By Effie Adelaide Rowlands.
260—At a Girl’s Mercy. By Jean Kate Ludlum.
259—By a Golden Cord. By Dora Delmar.
258—An Amazing Marriage. By Mrs. Sumner Hayden.
257—A Martyred Love. By Charles Garvice.
256—Thy Name is Woman. By F. H. Howe.
255—The Little Marplot. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
254—Little Miss Millions. By St. George Rathborne.
253—A Fashionable Marriage. By Mrs. Alex. Frazer.
252—A Handsome Sinner. By Dora Delmar.
251—When Love is True. By Mabel Collins.
250—A Woman’s Soul. By Charles Garvice.
249—What Love Will Do. By Geraldine Fleming.
248—Jeanne, Countess Du Barry. By H. L. Williams.
247—Within Love’s Portals. By Frank Barrett.
246—True to Herself. By Mrs. J. H. Walworth.
245—A Modern Marriage. By Clara Lanza.
244—A Hoiden’s Conquest. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
243—His Double Self. By Scott Campbell.
242—A Wounded Heart. By Charles Garvice.
241—Her Love and Trust. By Adeline Sergeant.
240—Saved by the Sword. By St. George Rathborne.
239—Don Cæsar De Bazan. By Victor Hugo.
238—That Other Woman. By Annie Thomas.
237—Woman or Witch? By Dora Delmar.
235—Gratia’s Trials. By Lucy Randall Comfort.
234—His Mother’s Sin. By Adeline Sergeant.
233—Nora. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
232—A Debt of Honor. By Mabel Collins.
230—A Woman’s Atonement, and A Mother’s Mistake. By Adah M. Howard.
229—For the Sake of the Family. By May Crommelin.
228—His Brother’s Widow. By Mary Grace Halpine.
227—For Love and Honor. By Effie Adelaide Rowlands.
226—The Roll of Honor. By Annie Thomas.
225—A Miserable Woman. By Mrs. H. C. Hoffman.
224—A Sister’s Sacrifice. By Geraldine Fleming.
223—Leola Dale’s Fortune. By Charles Garvice.
222—The Lily of Mordaunt. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
221—The Honorable Jane. By Annie Thomas.
220—A Fatal Past. By Dora Russell.
219—Lost, A Pearle. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
218—A Life for a Love. By Mrs. L. T. Meade.
217—His Noble Wife. By George Manville Fenn.
216—The Lost Bride. By Clara Augusta.
215—Only a Girl’s Love. By Charles Garvice.
214—Olga’s Crime. By Frank Barrett.
213—The Heiress of Egremont. By Mrs. Harriet Lewis.
212—Doubly Wronged. By Adah M. Howard.
211—As We Forgive. By Lurana W. Sheldon.
210—Wild Oats. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
209—She Loved but Left Him. By Julia Edwards.
208—A Chase for a Bride. By St. George Rathborne.
207—Little Golden’s Daughter. By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller.
206—A Daughter of Maryland. By G. Waldo Browne.
205—If Love be Love. By D. Cecil Gibbs.
204—With Heart So True. By Effie Adelaide Rowlands.
203—Only One Love. By Charles Garvice.
202—Marjorie. By Katharine S. MacQuoid.
201—Blind Elsie’s Crime. By Mary Grace Halpine.
200—In God’s Country. By D. Higbee.
199—Geoffrey’s Victory. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
198—Guy Kenmore’s Wife, and The Rose and the Lily. By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller.
197—A Woman Scorned. By Effie Adelaide Rowlands.
196—A Sailor’s Sweetheart. By the author of Dr. Jack.
195—Her Faithful Knight. By Gertrude Warden.
194—A Sinless Crime. By Geraldine Fleming.
193—A Vagabond’s Honor. By Ernest De Lancey Pierson.
192—An Old Man’s Darling, and Jacquelina. By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller.
191—A Harvest of Thorns. By Mrs. H. C. Hoffman.
190—A Captain of the Kaiser. By St. George Rathborne.
189—Berris. By Katharine S. MacQuoid.
188—Dorothy Arnold’s Escape. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
187—The Black Ball. By Ernest De Lancey Pierson.
186—Beneath a Spell. By Effie Adelaide Rowlands.
185—The Adventures of Miss Volney. By Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
184—Sunlight and Gloom. By Geraldine Fleming.
183—Quo Vadis. By Henryk Sienkiewicz.
182—A Legal Wreck. By William Gillette.
181—The Baronet’s Bride. By May Agnes Fleming.
180—A Lazy Man’s Work. By Frances Campbell Sparhawk.
179—One Man’s Evil. By Effie Adelaide Rowlands.
178—A Slave of Circumstances. By Ernest De Lancey Pierson.
177—A True Aristocrat. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
176—Jack Gordon, Knight Errant. By William C. Hudson (Barclay North)
175—For Honor’s Sake. By Laura C. Ford.
174—His Guardian Angel. By Charles Garvice.
173—A Bar Sinister. By the Author of Dr. Jack.
172—A King and a Coward. By Effie Adelaide Rowlands.
171—That Dakota Girl. By Stella Gilman.
170—A Little Radical. By Mrs. J. H. Walworth.
169—The Trials of an Actress. By Wenona Gilman.
168—Thrice Lost, Thrice Won. By May Agnes Fleming.
167—The Manhattaners. By Edward S. Van Zile.
166—The Masked Bridal. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
165—The Road of the Rough. By Maurice M. Minton.
164—Couldn’t Say No. By the author of Helen’s Babies.
163—A Splendid Egotist. By Mrs. J. H. Walworth
162—A Man of the Name of John. By Florence King.
161—Miss Fairfax of Virginia. By the author of Dr. Jack.
160—His Way and Her Will. By Frances Aymar Mathews.
159—A Fair Maid of Marblehead. By Kate Tannatt Woods.
158—Stella, the Star. By Wenona Gilman.
157—Who Wins? By May Agnes Fleming
156—A Soldier Lover. By Edward S. Brooks.
155—Nameless Dell. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
154—Husband and Foe. By Effie Adelaide Rowlands.
153—Her Son’s Wife. By Hazel Wood.
152—A Mute Confessor. By Will N. Harben.
151—The Heiress of Glen Gower. By May Agnes Fleming.
150—Sunset Pass. By General Charles King.
149—The Man She Loved. By Effie Adelaide Rowlands
148—Will She Win? By Emma Garrison Jones.
147—Under Egyptian Skies. By the author of Dr. Jack.
146—Magdalen’s Vow. By May Agnes Fleming.
145—Country Lanes and City Pavements. By Maurice M. Minton.
144—Dorothy’s Jewels. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
143—A Charity Girl. By Effie Adelaide Rowlands.
142—Her Rescue from the Turks. By the author of Dr. Jack.
141—Lady Evelyn. By May Agnes Fleming.
140—That Girl of Johnson’s. By Jean Kate Ludlum.
139—Little Lady Charles. By Effie Adelaide Rowlands.
138—A Fatal Wooing. By Laura Jean Libbey.
137—A Wedded Widow. By T. W. Hanshew.
136—The Unseen Bridegroom. By May Agnes Fleming.
135—Cast Up by the Tide. By Dora Delmar.
134—Squire John. By the author of Dr. Jack.
133—Max. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
132—Whose Was the Crime? By Gertrude Warden.
131—Nerine’s Second Choice. By Adelaide Stirling.
130—A Bitter Bondage. By Bertha M. Clay.
129—In Sight of St Paul’s. By Sutton Vane.
128—The Scent of the Roses. By Dora Delmar.
127—Nobody’s Daughter. By Clara Augusta.
126—The Girl from Hong Kong. By the author of Dr. Jack.
125—Devil’s Island. By A. D. Hall.
124—Prettiest of All. By Julia Edwards.
123—Northern Lights. By A. D. Hall.
122—Grazia’s Mistake. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
121—Cecile’s Marriage. By Lucy Randall Comfort.
120—The White Squadron. By T. C. Harbaugh.
119—An Ideal Love. By Bertha M. Clay
118—Saved From the Sea. By Richard Duffy.
117—She Loved Him. By Charles Garvice.
116—The Daughter of the Regiment. By Mary A. Denison.
115—A Fair Revolutionist. By the author of Dr. Jack.
114—Half a Truth. By Dora Delmar.
113—A Crushed Lily. By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller.
112—The Cattle King. By A. D. Hall.
111—Faithful Shirley. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
110—Whose Wife Is She? By Annie Lisle.
109—A Heart’s Bitterness. By Bertha M. Clay.
108—A Son of Mars. By the author of Dr. Jack.
107—Carla; or, Married at Sight. By Effie Adelaide Rowlands.
106—Lilian, My Lilian. By Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
105—When London Sleeps. By Chas. Darrell.
104—A Proud Dishonor. By Genie Holzmeyer.
103—The Span of Life. By Sutton Vane.
102—Fair But Faithless. By Bertha M. Clay
101—A Goddess of Africa. By the author of Dr. Jack.
100—Alice Blake. By Francis S. Smith.
99—Audrey’s Recompense. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
98—Claire. By Charles Garvice.
97—The War Reporter. By Warren Edwards.
96—The Little Minister. By J. M. Barrie.
95—’Twixt Love and Hate. By Bertha M. Clay.
94—Darkest Russia. By H. Grattan Donnelly.
93—A Queen of Treachery. By T. W. Henshew.
92—Humanity. By Sutton Vane.
91—Sweet Violet. By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller.
90—For Fair Virginia. By Russ Whytal.
89—A Gentleman From Gascony. By Bicknell Dudley.
88—Virgie’s Inheritance. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
87—Shenandoah. By J. Perkins Tracy.
86—A Widowed Bride. By Lucy Randall Comfort.
85—Lorrie; or, Hollow Gold. By Charles Garvice.
84—Between Two Hearts. By Bertha M. Clay.
83—The Locksmith of Lyons. By Prof. Wm. Henry Peck.
82—Captain Impudence. By Edwin Milton Royle.
81—Wedded For an Hour. By Emma Garrison Jones.
80—The Fair Maid of Fez. By the author of Dr. Jack.
79—Marjorie Deane. By Bertha M. Clay.
78—The Yankee Champion. By Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.
77—Tina. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
76—Mavourneen. From the celebrated play.
75—Under Fire. By T. P. James.
74—The Cotton King. By Sutton Vane.
73—The Marquis. By Charles Garvice.
72—Willful Winnie. By Harriet Sherburne.
71—The Spider’s Web. By the author of Dr. Jack.
70—In Love’s Crucible. By Bertha M. Clay.
69—His Perfect Trust. By a popular author.
68—The Little Cuban Rebel. By Edna Winfield.
67—Gismonda. By Victorien Sardou.
66—Witch Hazel. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
65—Won By the Sword. By J. Perkins Tracy.
64—Dora Tenney. By Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller.
63—Lawyer Bell From Boston. By Robert Lee Tyler.
62—Stella Stirling. By Julia Edwards.
61—La Tosca. By Victorien Sardou.
60—The County Fair. By Neil Burgess.
59—Gladys Greye. By Bertha M. Clay.
58—Major Matterson of Kentucky. By the author of Dr. Jack.
57—Rosamond. By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller.
56—The Dispatch Bearer. By Warren Edwards.
55—Thrice Wedded. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
54—Cleopatra. By Victorien Sardou.
53—The Old Homestead. By Denman Thompson.
52—Woman Against Woman. By Effie Adelaide Rowlands.
51—The Price He Paid. By E. Werner.
50—Her Ransom. By Charles Garvice.
49—None But the Brave. By Robert Lee Tyler.
48—Another Man’s Wife. By Bertha M. Clay.
47—The Colonel By Brevet. By the author of Dr. Jack.
46—Off With the Old Love. By Mrs. M. V. Victor.
45—A Yale Man. By Robert Lee Tyler.
44—That Dowdy. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
43—Little Coquette Bonnie. By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller.
42—Another Woman’s Husband. By Bertha M. Clay.
41—Her Heart’s Desire. By Charles Garvice.
40—Monsieur Bob. By the author of Dr. Jack.
39—The Colonel’s Wife. By Warren Edwards.
38—The Nabob of Singapore. By the author of Dr. Jack.
37—The Heart of Virginia. By J. Perkins Tracy.
36—Fedora. By Victorien Sardou.
35—The Great Mogul. By the author of Dr. Jack.
34—Pretty Geraldine. By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller.
33—Mrs. Bob. By the author of Dr. Jack.
32—The Blockade Runner. By J. Perkins Tracy.
31—A Siren’s Love. By Robert Lee Tyler.
30—Baron Sam. By the author of Dr. Jack.
29—Theodora. By Victorien Sardou.
28—Miss Caprice. By the author of Dr. Jack.
27—Estelle’s Millionaire Lover. By Julia Edwards.
26—Captain Tom. By the author of Dr. Jack.
25—Little Southern Beauty. By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller.
24—A Wasted Love. By Charles Garvice.
23—Miss Pauline of New York. By the author of Dr. Jack.
22—Elaine. By Charles Garvice.
21—A Heart’s Idol. By Bertha M. Clay.
20—The Senator’s Bride. By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller.
19—Mr. Lake of Chicago. By Harry DuBois Milman.
18—Dr. Jack’s Wife. By the author of Dr. Jack.
17—Leslie’s Loyalty. By Charles Garvice.
16—The Fatal Card. By Haddon Chambers and B. C. Stephenson.
15—Dr. Jack. By St. George Rathborne.
14—Violet Lisle. By Bertha M. Clay.
13—The Little Widow. By Julia Edwards.
12—Edrie’s Legacy. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
11—The Gypsy’s Daughter. By Bertha M. Clay.
10—Little Sunshine. By Francis S. Smith.
9—The Virginia Heiress. By May Agnes Fleming.
8—Beautiful But Poor. By Julia Edwards.
7—Two Keys. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
6—The Midnight Marriage. By A. M. Douglas.
5—The Senator’s Favorite. By Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller.
4—For a Woman’s Honor. By Bertha M Clay.
3—He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not. By Julia Edwards.
2—Ruby’s Reward. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.
1—Queen Bess. By Mrs. Georgie Sheldon.

[Pg 5]

A LITTLE SOUTHERN BEAUTY;

OR,

TORTURED HEARTS.

By Mrs. ALEX. McVEIGH MILLER,

Author of

“The Senator’s Favorite,” “Little Coquette Bonnie,” “The Senator’s Bride,” “Brunette and Blonde,” “Rosamond,” Etc., Etc.

NEW YORK:
STREET & SMITH, Publishers,
29 Rose Street.

[Pg 6]

“Look at my dress, Madame Orne! Isn’t it sweet?”

The slender figure, standing alone at the open window in quiet contemplation of the beauty of the moonlit Virginia landscape, turned with a pensive smile and looked at the vision of youth and beauty that stood courtesying gayly before her—a dazzling mist of white tulle and silk, pearls, and pink rosebuds that framed the beauty of a young girl, a slender maiden, dark and lovely, with lips like crimson flowers, and proud, dark eyes that flashed with happy radiance.

Before the quiet governess could speak the girl continued joyously:

[Pg 8]

“The boys are here at last! The train was late, of course—always is when it ought to be on time!—so they will have to make their toilets in a fearful hurry! Brother is looking just splendid, dear old fellow!”

“Viva, I wish you wouldn’t say ‘dear old fellow.’ It sounds coarse from a young girl’s lips. And it isn’t correct to apply the adjective fearful to trifles, as you did just now. What would your newly fledged graduates think of such slang?”

“Think?” a smile rippling over the piquant scarlet lips. “Only that I learned it from them! When Max Verne spent a month with us last summer, they talked nothing else. Of course, being their intimate companion, I was duly initiated into their choice vocabulary of expressions, and heard about ‘fearful bores,’ ‘fearful weather,’ and ‘good old fellows,’ and ‘dear old fellows’ and such trifles, every hour in the day. So may it please you to pronounce my pardon, madam?”

She bent with saucy grace, and Madame Orne lifted her delicate white hand and lightly caressed the little dark, curly head as she answered fondly:

“I will blame the boys, not my little Vivian, this time; but remember, love, you are eighteen to-day—quite a grown-up young lady—and you must hereafter set examples for the boys to imitate, not follow their rude lead.”

“Examples for them!” A puzzled look crossed Vivian Leigh’s bright face. “How the boys would laugh to hear you! They are older and wiser than I [Pg 9]am. My brother is five-and-twenty, Earle Essex is the same, and Max Verne is three-and-twenty—all grave and reverend seigniors, you see.”

“They are not too old to learn of you, my child, many things that might profit heedless youth.”

“What things, my grave mentor? Tell me, please?” laughed the joyous girl.

“Not now—you are too gay—to-morrow.”

“‘To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow,’” quoted a musical masculine voice, and Vivian’s brother, entering in faultless evening dress, bowed to the governess.

“Madam, I am most happy to meet you again, and would be charmed to learn the import of that promise of which I only caught the fag-end—‘to-morrow.’”

“Old Curiosity Shop!” laughed Vivian, in an audible aside.

“It was only the threat of a private lecture to my pupil,” Madame Orne answered, a little wearily, and half-turned to the window again, as though dismissing the conversation.

“Come, Vivian, isn’t it time to go down?” asked Charlton, taking her hand.

“Yes, indeed, for I want you to see the tables before our guests come. The caterer has really outdone himself. And such flowers, such confections, such wines, champagnes, verzenay, veuve cliquot, port, sherry—a perfect bouquet of colors!”

He was leading her to the door as she spoke, but she [Pg 10]turned suddenly and floated back to the window where the tall, slight, graceful figure still kept its pensive pose.

“Madam,” she murmured, touching a fold of the soft, sweeping black robe, “will you not come down? And won’t you—just this once—lay aside this gloomy mourning?”

“I shall come down and see you dance by and by, dear.” The tone was sad and languid. “I will wear black lace and white flowers to please you.”

“She is so strange,” Charlton said thoughtfully, as they went arm-in-arm down the stairs.

“But I love her dearly!” cried his sister, then forgot Madame Orne all at once and beamed radiantly, for at the bottom of the stairway two gentlemen were waiting her ladyship’s descent. She gave each a hand in welcome, and spoke to both at once in joyous greeting, but her face turned unconsciously to one, the younger of the pair, and his eyes met hers in eager pleasure.

“It seems awfully jolly to meet you again, Viva,” observed this latter youth, who bore the blushing honors of his Alma Mater thick upon him.

“Thank you,” she murmured demurely, with dimpling cheeks and an amused wonder as to what her dignified governess would have thought of the young graduate’s “awfully jolly” pleasure.

She did not see the dark frown that clouded Earle Essex’s pale face as Max Verne drew her arm in his and led her into the long drawing-room where the [Pg 11]balmy summer breeze came floating in through the lace-draped windows fragrant with the breath of June, and where all was light and splendor. She did not see it, and if she had she would not have dreamed that she called it forth. Who could frown upon her, this fair favorite of fortune, so young, so lovely, so rich and happy! Happy, so happy, for she loved and was loved in return. The heart that was dearest to her on earth was throbbing quick and fast against the beautiful, warm, white arm that rested so confidingly in his. Life to them both was a dream of gladness, the future a distant Paradise.

As they walk up and down the long room she observes with pretty dignity:

“I congratulate you on getting through college with such honors. Brother says you were the valedictorian.”

“Yes, I had that honor,” he answered simply, then asked:

“Are you through with lessons yet, Viva?”

“Through with lessons, but not with lectures.” She glances up to see if he is laughing at her, but only meets a gravely attentive look, so adds: “My education is finished, but papa retains Madame Orne to form my mind and manners.”

“As though either could be improved,” he rejoins gayly, then striking an attitude, quotes, half earnestly, half lightly, but in deep, sweet, musical intonations, Shakespeare’s lines:

[Pg 12]

“Stage-struck,” she comments laughingly.

“Am I?” he asks, looking down at her with a glance that makes her upraised dark eyes fall. “Am I, Viva? I might be, could I play Romeo to your Juliet!”

“I have no fancy for the sighing Juliet,” she answers, with a shrug of her white shoulders; “I shudder at hopeless loves, at poisons, and daggers, and death. I love to be happy.”

A pause.

He is looking down at her with a strangely earnest face, studying her with an intent gravity that makes his handsome young face seem older and more manly.

He has the face of a thinker, this Max Verne—a broad, full, white brow, strongly marked in the perceptive and intellectual organs, and in the regions of courage and self-reliance as well. Sweetness and firmness combined look at you from the beautiful blue gray eyes that go with the clear, fair complexion and silky, slightly curling, light-brown hair. The Grecian nose, the curved red lips, the strong, tall, symmetrical form, so indicative of a well balanced temperament, all show passion and power—intense, passionate power, lying dormant now in his sunny, hopeful youth as the [Pg 13]stormy sea lies calm beneath the sunlight of a summer sky.

Looking at Vivian Leigh, the young man sees a sensitive, passionate, impulsive face, the fair low brow marked with ideality, and mirthfulness as well, the full dark eye beaming with truth and tenderness, while the pretty, piquant nose, the delicate contour of the oval face, the thin scarlet line of her lips, the sweet dimpled chin, all are distinct with exquisite susceptibilities, full of purity and nobility, and breathing in every line deep capacity for either joy or sorrow. He sighs unconsciously as her lips part in a dazzling smile.

“Viva, it would take much to make you happy all your life,” he exclaims; then, half to himself: “He would be a brave man who took the precious trust of your happiness into his keeping.”

“Indeed you mistake,” she cries eagerly, though a blush creeps up to the edge of the silken curls on her brow. “Why, Max, it takes very little to content me. Nothing ever saddens me, or clouds my cheerful spirit. I am always happy.”

“So are the birds and the butterflies, Viva, because like you, they are always in the sunshine, and flitting, round the flowers. But the butterflies perish in the wintry blast, the blithest birds ofttimes lift broken wings when storms have passed above them.”

“Broken wings!” A shadow dims the brightness of the lifted face. “I tell you, Max, I would rather die than live like that. There is my governess, for [Pg 14]instance, so grave, so cold, so sad in her black dress. A widow! What desolation, what heart-weariness must be her fate!”

“But how gravely we are talking,” he exclaims, growing remorseful at the sight of her thoughtful face. “Forgive me, Viva, I never meant to sadden you. Ah, you shall always be happy, little one, if——”

There is a sudden stir and bustle outside, and Viva loses Max’s last words as her brother hastily summons her to receive her guests by her father’s side—an eminent judge, and a handsome man besides, of whom his children are very proud.

The ball-room is soon filled with dancers, and Vivian is the cynosure of all eyes, the darling of all hearts. Her hand is constantly sought in the dance but every one can see that she favors Max Verne above all her other lovers. Madame Orne, from her seat at the window, sees it all—the love and hope that make the young collegian’s face so radiant, the soft response in the brightness of Vivian’s eyes—sees, too, the jealous pain in Earle Essex’s strange, moody dark eyes. He watches every movement of the graceful form, whirling, gliding, coquetting in the airy measure, and when a happy fate makes him her partner, his heart thrills with ecstacy.

Lovely, joyous Vivian does not dream of the passion of love her beauty and sweetness have awakened in Earle’s ardent breast.

She likes him very much, thinks him dark, picturesque, [Pg 15]and rather more dignified than Charlton or Max, but it somehow disconcerts her to meet the full gaze of his gloomy, dark eyes, and to feel the strong, clinging pressure of his hand when he touches hers; and it troubles her somewhat to feel that odd unaccountable fascination in his presence when he comes to her side; an unwilling fascination, like one being charmed by a serpent.

That strange charm, mixed with repugnance, possesses her when Earle Essex leads her from the dances in to supper. She had fully intended to go with Max Verne, but she is powerless against the cool effrontery with which her partner takes possession of her. Biting her lip in silent vexation, she tries not to see the disappointment in her lover’s face as he hurries toward her, then abruptly turns aside at sight of the assured air of her companion.

How slowly the time goes. Vivian is secretly vexed and unhappy over the little contretemps, although she smiles so brightly upon all, and exerts herself to do honor to the occasion, taking wine recklessly several times in response to birthday toasts. And then the weight on her spirits seems to lighten, the daring stimulus of the ruby wine burns in her blood and flashes in her eyes. All her animation, with a spice of daring added, returns in a glowing tide.

At that moment Earle Essex bends over her and smiling into her glorious dark eyes, whispers in tones of surprise:

[Pg 16]

“I think Max Verne, in spite of his queer notions, might honor the occasion by taking at least one sip of wine on your birthday.”

She glances down the long table. Max is there on the right, only a few couples dividing them, and at his plate stands the untouched glass of wine the servant had filled at the first toast. She looks back at Mr. Essex, and says apologetically:

“Max never drinks, you know.”

“Yes, I know that; but one so apparently devoted might peril his weak brains by at least one glass in your honor. Surely he wears his fetters but lightly.”

“You shall see!” cries the girl, with a little triumphant laugh and a dangerous sparkle in her eye. The taunt has roused her as he meant it should.

She has no conception, this innocent young girl, of the evil that lurks in the glass of wine at her elbow. She knows little or nothing about drunkenness, want, and misery. She has been used to seeing liquors on her father’s board, and gentlemen drinking them, all her young life. It always seemed odd and discourteous for Max to decline them, but she never thought much of it until that veiled taunt sent the warm blood tingling indignantly through her veins.

Obeying a sudden, passionate impulse, she turns to a servant, saying imperiously:

“Bring me two glasses of champagne.”

The plotter beside her looks on with a satisfied [Pg 17]smile. He has done his work for the present, and is silent, watching the lovely angry girl by his side.

The wine is brought, and Vivian, taking a glass in either hand, turns her gaze upon Max Verne. The intervening couples have thinned out now, and when she speaks his name Max turns and faces her, a smile upon his boyish face—such a smile, with youth’s high heart of hope beaming in it, as never again lights his brave young face into beauty.

Viva is saying in soft, sweet, almost pleading accents, these simple words:

“Max you have forgotten to wish me a happy return of this day. Will you not pledge me now?”

“In water, if you please,” he answers rising, and taking a step toward her, while many curious eyes turn on them. But the smile lingers in spite of the warm flush that creeps up to his temples. He believes that she is only in jest.

“No, in rosy wine,” persists the girl, advancing to meet her lover, and extending the glass toward him. “Take it,” she says, imperiously, “take it, Max.”

One moment, under the witchery of her beauty and his love, he wavers, and at the pretty imperious tones lifts his hand until his fingers almost clasp the glass, then a shudder shakes him from head to foot; he starts backward, and murmurs, huskily:

“I cannot!”

But in that moment’s indecision Vivian’s hand has relaxed its hold upon the glass, and falling between [Pg 18]them it crashes on the floor, splashing the pure white folds of her dress with crimson stains like blood drops. She starts to spring aside, makes a misstep, and the thin, white satin dancing slipper comes down on a sharp splinter of the broken crystal. It pierces the thin sole, blood spurts from the wound, and, moaning with pain, Vivian sinks to the floor.

A dozen people spring to her assistance, but Max forestalls them all, and lifts the slight form in his arms.

“Let me pass! She is fainting!”

But life returns at hearing those familiar tones, and with angry violence Vivian writhes herself out of the arms that hold her so tenderly, sobbing with bitter resentment:

“Don’t touch me, coward! It is all your fault! I hate you, hate you!”

Then she falls exhausted in her brother’s arms, and he carries her away to her room. Madame Orne follows, and Earle Essex remains to congratulate himself on the evil he has wrought Max Verne, while Max Verne goes out into the starry night and bares his throbbing brow to the cool breeze while Vivian’s bitter reproaches burn like dagger points in his heart.

Alone with the governess, the wounded foot bandaged, the maid dismissed. Vivian cries pettishly:

[Pg 19]

“My beautiful ball-dress is quite ruined by the wine stains.”

“Yes, nothing will remove the stains,” answered Madame Orne, then she tossed the ruin from her. “What does that matter?” she cried impatiently. “You have done worse little Viva, than spoil your pretty gown to-night. You have tried to stain a human soul with the sinful love of wine.”

“Sinful! Oh, madame, you use strong terms. I love wine, and my father and brother love wine. As I understand, it is only sinful when one gets drunk.”

“Vivian, if you saw a man standing on the verge of a precipice and knew that one touch would topple him over, would you be willing for this little hand to push him down?”

“My hand! No, never! But why do you talk so, Madame Orne? You have wandered from the subject.”

“Not at all. Let me tell you, child, that when you held out your glass of wine to Max Verne to-night you were trying to push him into a vortex of sin and dissipation that must have proved his ruin. He dare not taste one drop of liquor. If he did he could never control himself. He has a strong inherited love for it.”

“How do you know this?”

“He told me so himself last summer when he visited here. It was only his firmness and brave disregard of ridicule that kept him true to himself last night. Vivian, you were wholly in the wrong.”

[Pg 20]

“I do not think so,” she answered proudly. “I cannot respect a man who confesses himself too weak to take one sip of wine, while I, a weak girl, can drink several glasses without any bad effects. No, madam, I do not believe in so poor an excuse. It was sheer obstinacy, a desire to be different from others. He has humbled me before all my friends, and I never will forgive him!”

“Vivian!” reproachfully.

“Never! Never!” she repeats in bitter scorn.

“You are angry now, Viva. You will think better of this to-morrow, and honor the true manhood you now decry. Good-night, dear,” and pressing a light kiss on the girl’s white brow, the governess went out, leaving the willful girl to her own thoughts.

They were not pleasant ones. Long after her most intimate girl friends had peeped in with a hundred expressions of pity and regret, made their adieus and gone—long after father and brother have tapped on the door and bidden her good-night—long after the early summer dawn peeps in at her window, Vivian tosses sleeplessly upon her pillow, consumed by pain and anger, unconscious regret, and furious indignation against Earle Essex and Max Verne both. She falls asleep at last, just as the golden sun is rising—rising upon a world heretofore undiscovered by her—the strange new world of sorrow.

The sun was five hours high when Vivian awakened from her restless slumber. Her maid appeared directly with a tray containing a dainty breakfast, but when she saw a tiny envelope tucked under the edge of her plate she could not swallow one mouthful. She dismissed the girl, and hastily opened the note.

It was in a beautiful chirography, clear, strong, and flowing, and boyishly but earnestly worded:

“Dear Viva—I ask your pardon a million times for my abominable awkwardness of last night by which you suffered so painful an accident, and your forgiveness as well for what seemed rudeness in declining to take wine with you. I hoped to justify myself in your eyes, but your angry words afterward left no hope of being permitted to do so. Still I cannot go away without leaving this note to say to you, Viva, dear little Viva, that I would have died for you had you bade me, but I dared not risk possible dishonor to the name I hoped you would one day bear. I meant to ask you—forgive me—I see how presumptuous that sounds now in the light of your last words of hatred. It was but a dream, and it is over!

Max.”

[Pg 22]

Gone! She is sitting at the window now, and for a moment her face drops in her hands, a red mist seems to float before her eyes, her heart gives a painful throb, and is silent; the world stands still. It is but a moment, then the clogged machinery of life goes whirring on faster than before. The great black word seems painted all over the fair face of nature, and a bird on the bough near her window has heard her whisper it to herself and now flies away, singing it over and over again to his merry mates in the green-wood tree: “Gone! gone! gone!”

A tap at the door makes her crumple the tell-tale note in her hand. She pretends to smile when Charlton enters, looking lazy, bored, and sleepy.

“Well, lady-bird, and how is the little foot to-day?” he asks, and pats the pale cheek as he draws a chair to the window.

“Better,” she calmly responds. “And how is Charlton?”

“Head aches wretchedly, sis. You see Essex and I got gloriously muddled last night after you went up stairs. Nothing like champagne over night to give one a headache next morning.

“That explains my headache this morning. I, too, drank champagne.”

“Apropos of Champagne, Viva weren’t you too hard on Max last night? His rule against drinking is as immutable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. Gay, good-natured fellow as he is, all the boys in college [Pg 23]know and respect his peculiarity, and the wildest one of us all would not dare do what you did last night. Was it only to show your power, Viva?”

She does not reply, only turns her face to the window and shields it from his gaze with one fair little hand. Charlton looks away in kind respect for her emotion, but presently resumes:

“He has gone this morning—cut his visit short off at the start. Father and I were awfully sorry, you know, but we could not smooth over the affair. You are a young lady now, and we could not bring forward the plea of childishness to shield you. It is fearfully dull without Max, though! I had rather it were Essex gone. He is moping about, smoking himself to death. Can you come down and lie in the hammock if I carry you?”

“Certainly,” she answers, with a smothered sigh. She longs to tell him about the taunt that kindled her vanity last night, but maidenly honor and pride forbid. So she keeps silence, and he takes the little white-robed form in his arms and carries her easily down to the hammock that is swung low on the broad piazza of the country mansion. Earle Essex throws away his cigar and comes radiantly to greet the little beauty, but she soon wearies of his flatteries and begins to devise plans for getting rid of the bore of talking to him.

“It is just the hour for Tennyson’s ‘Lotus Eaters.’ Get the book and read to me,” she commands.

[Pg 24]

He is only too happy to obey, since he has a good voice, clear and well-trained, capable of the most tender inflections.

He takes a seat close to the lady of his heart, so as to catch every expression of her face, opens the book and begins.

The smooth, languid sweep of rhythm flows on melodiously, and now and then he looks up, hoping to catch a glance from the bright dark eyes. She half reclines, resting her dark head on one round white arm, from which the lace-trimmed sleeve has fallen back. The red lips are slightly parted, the dark, curly lashes sweep the rounded cheek, her breath comes soft and low. She seems enraptured with the reading, and he tries to feel contented, although she is so silent, not answering any of the comments he interperses between the Tennysonian rhymes.

But how softly the breath flutters over the parted lips—how the lashes droop upon the cheek. He bends nearer, nearer, and to his chagrin finds that beautiful Viva, lulled by the music of his voice and her own weariness, has fallen sweetly asleep in the hammock, and is utterly oblivious of his presence.

Mr. Essex has never felt so affronted in his life as he is this moment by what appears to him as Vivian’s deliberate rudeness. He throws down the book, and walks off in a passion to the farthest end of the piazza, where he pauses, glowering darkly at the fair noonday landscape, wondering moodily if he shall ever win bonny Vivian—Vivian, the fairest, the dearest, the only unwedded daughter of the rich Judge Leigh. Two other fair ones call him father. Viola, the eldest, is married to a wealthy New Yorker and queens it in the gay circles of metropolitan society; and Musa, who comes next, is the sedate bride of a German professor who has carried her off to Europe on a protracted tour. Vivian, the youngest and fairest of them all, is the “darling of her father’s house and heart,” and has been spoiled and petted ever since the hour when her baby eyes opening first to life, had met the first and [Pg 26]last look of love from the frail young mother, who had given her life for this tiny girl.

And this is the girl Earle Essex means to marry.

Why not? he thinks. He is rich, well-born, good-looking, cultured, and a more desirable parti by far than Max Verne, who has nothing but his expectations from a bachelor uncle, who may marry at any time and disappoint the expectant heir. And Max is out of the question now, he thinks, complacently, thanks to his clever strategy of last night. He fears no other rival, and believes that he shall win the prize.

Absorbed in his reflections, he forgets the fact that Charlton Leigh, lounging idly on the velvet turf near by, can watch all the changes of his mobile face until he drawls out presently in his lazy, laughing voice:

“What the duse ails you, Essex? Has my little embryo flirt frightened off the hero of a hundred love affairs?”

“Just ninety-nine too many,” replies Essex, coolly. “This is my first love affair, and the cruel object deliberately fell asleep while I was laying siege to her flinty heart.”

Charlton laughs loud and long as he tosses away his cigar and saunters back upon the piazza, enjoying his friend’s perturbation with all the sang froid of one who laughs at love and lovers.

He is rather handsome, this Charlton Leigh; is tall, well made, with a decided inclination to portliness. His eyes are blue and laughing, his forehead low and [Pg 27]broad, and his fair hair is parted in the center, lending an air of slight effeminacy to his features. A light-brown mustache curves around his mouth, that, with its singularly sweet and winning smile, is the chief attraction of his face. But when he laughs he shows lovely white teeth, and perhaps that is why he always affects good nature, for Charlton has that amiable weakness of fine looking men—he is thoroughly conversant with his best points. One can forgive the failing, though, since it is common to man, and since this man in particular is too indolent to make capital of his good looks in the warfare against the susceptible hearts of the opposite sex. He troubles himself very little about them, and Vivian merrily declares that it is because he is too much in love with himself.

But Charlton only laughs at Vivian’s sarcasms, well knowing himself to be the object of her sisterly devotion. He takes life easy on the whole, and one sees at once that he feels small sympathy for the pretended despair of Essex. His first words fall like cold water on the other’s hopes:

“Sensible girl! Her time is much better employed in sleeping than in listening to idle love-making. Were you so afraid of forgetting the art of flirtation, Essex, that you must try your powers by teasing my simple little sister?”

“I was only reading Tennyson. She asked me herself, and selected the poem—then went to sleep in the middle of it,” sulkily.

[Pg 28]

“Delightful tribute to the soporific powers of yourself and Lord Tennyson. Poor little girl, I don’t think she meant to be rude; she was only tired and ill. But I will awaken her at once, Essex, and bid her apologize.”

“No, pray do not. I will take a turn on the lawn,” Essex answers carelessly, and strides down the steps, lighting the inevitable cigar as he goes.

And Charlton leans over his sister as she stirs and smiles in her sleep, and catches the murmur that escapes her lips in some tender dream—the name of “Max.”

“So that is the way the land lies,” he sagely mutters. “Have the children been playing at love so soon? Why, I never thought when I asked the boys down here summer after summer, that my little Viva——”

“What did you say?” she murmurs, starting suddenly broad awake as he unconsciously thinks aloud. “Did you call me, brother?”

“I was only marveling at your rudeness, Viva,” he promptly responds. “You asked Essex to read to you, and then fell asleep, like a great baby. You certainly play the hostess with much tact. Here you have driven off one of my friends in the first twenty-four hours, and now insulted the other one. What will you do next, little torment?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” penitently, at sight of his comically grave face. “But I am only a little country [Pg 29]girl, you know, and cannot entertain your friends acceptably. But there,” relapsing into pretty petulance, “when the Kingsleys come, you can have a sweetheart apiece, and need not depend on my poor society!”

“What! Eve and Diana? Viva, you don’t mean to tell me they are coming?”

“Yes, indeed,” and she laughed at his mock dismay.

“But what are they coming for? Who wants them? Who asked them?—If, indeed, they waited to be asked?”

“I did.” She is leaning on her elbow, enjoying his perturbed questioning with all her heart. “I wanted them here to make it pleasant for you and the boys. I am sure I have made it very unpleasant in the beginning!”

“But we already had you—one of the disturbing elements was enough—quite enough. We, the boys and I, had come down here to rusticate quietly, and here you have gone and invited a lot of girls—city girls, too—to torment us with dressing and driving and flirting! Why didn’t they come in time for the ball, then?”

“They meant to—but they were disappointed, detained. They sent a telegram explaining.”

“Humph! Ball-dresses were not finished in time, I suppose,” he commented. “But, really, it is too bad, their coming! Viva, we only wanted you!”

“Yes, I dare say, but I had no idea of three great growing men dangling at my apron strings ‘day in [Pg 30]and day out,’ so I arranged to have the girls come so we might have a beau apiece,” demurely.

“How very thoughtful,” he laughs. “Did you provide a beau for your governess, also, Viva?”

“Madame Orne? Why, no. She is above such nonsense. But there is papa, you know; he is very polite to her always.”

“That will do then. But your plans have gone awry. One of the prospective beaux has departed to a bachelor abode where vexatious girls are not. So what will you do about the odd girl now?”

“Diana can have Mr. Essex, and Eve and I can divide you between us,” with a soft little sigh that dies on the scented summer air. The especial beau pretty Viva had intended for herself will, alas, be absent.

Charlton echoes the sigh with comic effect, and inquires:

“When will the siege begin?”

“The siege?” She lifts a puzzled face to his resigned one.

“Certainly. That was what I said, Miss Innocence! You do not expect these belles to come here for any less purpose than to subjugate all our hearts, do you? A lot of girls! Pshaw! I mean to get even with you, Viva, for this!”

But as he sees the pretty face growing sober, he relents, and puts a loving arm about her shoulder.

“It is all right, my pet. The girls are welcome to come; only we would have liked it better with you [Pg 31]alone. But if you are pleased, dear, I will try to be.”

“Thank you,” she murmurs, and leans her head on his shoulder with another little wistful sigh. But the next minute she looks up, saying brightly:

“They are coming this evening. You and Mr. Essex can drive down to the station to meet them. I must stay at home with my foot, you know.”

“Of course you will stay at home if your foot does,” he rejoins teasingly; at which his little sister pouts bewitchingly, and has to be kissed into a good humor again.

It falls to Charlton’s lot to meet the girls at the station that afternoon. Mr. Essex elects to stay at home and play the agreeable to Miss Leigh.

He thinks it politic to ignore her slight of the morning—the wisest plan indeed, for, though she is too willful to apologize, she tries to atone by added courtesy to her guest. Her character of semi invalid makes her, too, a little dependent on masculine care. Charlton has served as a convenient crutch until he went to the station—now it is Essex’s turn, and he is most eager to avail himself of the opportunity. He persuades her to lean on his arm and hobble down as far as the river’s picturesque curve. There they take possession of a garden seat and contemplate the scene.

“How beautiful your home is,” the young man says, looking back at the large white stone building [Pg 33]now bathed in a flood of sunset radiance that sets all the windows on fire with gold and crimson. “How you must love it, Miss Leigh, and how pleasant it must be to dwell always in such an Arcadia, away from the noise and bustle and sin of the crowded cities.”

Her eyes light up with pride and pleasure.

“You like rural life, then? I thought—or Charlton told me—that you always voted the country a bore.”

He flushes at this reminder, but answers readily:

“That was before I had met you, Miss Leigh. Adam would have been lonely without Eve, even in Paradise.

She cannot help blushing as his dark eyes, seeking hers, point the ready application.

“If I am to judge by the specimens I’ve seen,” she remarks severely, “I should say that the chief accomplishment gentlemen acquire at college now is quoting poetry.”

“So poetry is interdicted—you are to be wooed in the plainest of prose?” he queries coolly.

“Yes, in the plainest of prose,” Vivian answers, laughing, but with an earnest gleam in her clear, frank eyes. “I detest you flirting men who deal in meaningless rhymes and flattering words. When my hero comes, he will eschew sentiment and say, sensibly: [Pg 34]‘Vivian, I think you are the dearest girl in the world. Will you marry me?’”

A jealous pang thrills him. Unconsciously to herself the girl has pronounced her own name in just the tone Max Verne always used. Essex notes it, and his heart burns like fire.

“And you will answer——” he begins.

“Oh, I will answer ‘Yes,’” she replies, and she grows suddenly pale and sighs, remembering the words of poor Max’s note. “I meant to have asked you.”

“You are tired,” he says suddenly. “I have brought you too far on that poor little foot. It is too bad you should be lamed just now. I feel like hurling maledictions on Verne’s head for his boorishness.”

“It was hardly that,” she says, gently. “My brother declares that the rudeness was all on my side.”

“Your side! Why, you acted like an angel! No one but a temperance fanatic like Verne could have held out against so much beauty and persuasiveness. A gentleman would have sacrificed his principles for the moment rather than to mortify the sensitive heart of a young girl before all that crowd. You never can forgive him the insult to your pride, and the added injury caused by his carelessness.”

She is silent, but her color rises high, and he continues:

“I thought last summer, when we were here together, that Verne was in love with you; but his rudeness [Pg 35]last night convinced me of my mistake. And—forgive me, Miss Leigh, but I was glad of it, for it showed me that I need not fear him as a rival, that——” He pauses for she holds up an imperative finger.

“Hush, Mr. Essex! Not another word!”

“But I must speak, Vivian!” he cries, impetuously. “I have brought you here to speak to you—here where flowers and birds and rippling waters all breathe the sweet language of love! Oh, let me tell you how I love you, for I cannot live without you, and if you send me from you I will perish by my own rash act! Vivian, will you be my wife?”

His face is pale with passion and excitement, his dark eyes gleam as he lifts them imploringly to hers. She trembles and pulls away the hand he has taken, twining it in the taper fingers of the other for safe-keeping.

“Vivian,” he urges, vehemently, “answer me, or if indeed you dislike the language of poetry and passion, which is the natural speech of love, let me woo you in your own words: ‘Vivian, I think you are the dearest little girl in the world! Will you marry me?’”

“No, Mr. Essex, I will not,” the girl answers sharply and coldly.

The blood burns on his dark cheek, his eyes flash. Naturally fiery in temper, and inflamed by heavy potations of wine at dinner, he forgets his assumed gentleness, and retorts bitterly:

[Pg 36]

“Then my death will lie at your door, proud girl; for unless I win your promise to be mine before I leave Leigh Place this summer, I shall die within your gates by my own suicidal hands.”

“You talk foolishly, madly,” she replies, indignantly. “You cannot force my love from me. Take me back to the house at once, sir, or I will try to crawl there!”

All his vehemence subsides into alarm at her bitter scorn. Falling on his knees before her, he again clasps her hand, and looks at her with despairing eye.

“Oh, forgive my madness!” he pleads. “You do not dream of the passionate strength of the hidden fire and fervor of my love. I worship you; but the madness of disappointment made me show you my desperate heart too plainly. Oh, pardon me, and let me try to win your favor, no matter how long and hard the task!”

Touched by his humility, but firm in her refusal, she answers very gently:

“It is useless to try. I forgive your wild words of just now, but I can never be more to you than a friend.”

“Surely you might learn to love me, Vivian. Oh, give me a little hope. A heart that adores you like mine might almost compel a return.”

“You could not make me love you,” she answers, with blended pain and pity. “You are not like the hero of my fancy. You have few of the attributes I could best love in man.”

[Pg 37]

“Tell me what your ideal is like, Vivian. Let me try to form myself by your model.”

The color rises over her face, flooding it with crimson, and turning her conscious face aside, she misses his heavy frown as she says low but firmly:

“You cannot. It is worse than vain to try. You are not my hero—never can be.”

He rises with a heavy sigh and gives her his arm. They return to the house. The lingering sunset is fading into twilight, but he notes with alarm the pallor of her lovely face as she sinks wearily into the armchair on the piazza. Hurrying into the house, he brings her a glass of wine.

“Drink this wine and it will revive you. I have wearied you with my passionate love,” he says gently.

Her hand trembles as she puts the glass to her lips. For a moment across the ruby wine she seems to see Max Verne’s face, bright, eager, smiling—then grave, reproachful, troubled, as it looked at her last night when he murmured so sadly, “I cannot,” and the draught leaves a bitter taste in her mouth, a bitter pang in her heart. Her head drops on her folded arms. She never looks up again until the crunching of carriage wheels on the gravel announces the arrival of Charlton Leigh with his “lot of girls.” Then with an effort she summons a smile to greet the two girls who come up the steps with Charlton between them. “A rose between two thorns” as he confides in an audible aside to Essex. One pinches his cheek, the other his [Pg 38]arm, then they overwhelm Vivian with kisses and caresses from which she extricates herself with difficulty to present them to Mr. Essex.

But they all smiled mutually before she can speak, and Mr. Essex explains:

“I have had the pleasure of meeting Miss Kingsley and her sister at their home in Richmond last winter.”

And the girls greet him with effusive pleasure, little dreaming that this eligible parti has just been refused by their beautiful cousin, willful Vivian.

Diana Kingsley and Evelyn, her sister, are distant relatives of the Leigh family, and belong to that numerous class of genteel people who are far from being comfortably well-off, but by virtue of good blood and aristocratic connections hold themselves above the “common herd,” and scorn to soil their white hands with labor. Their father being a lawyer of third-class abilities, they keep up a certain dignity of position, dress well, live well, and aim at a rich marriage as the chief end of woman.

Diana Kingsley is a beauty in her way, a veritable “snow-maiden,” tall, fair, graceful, with flaxen hair and eyes of pale, glittering, glacier-like blue. Art and nature have both united to make up a charming personnel for Miss Kingsley, but at twenty-three she is still unwedded—still blooms:

[Pg 40]

Nature has not exhausted much effort in trying to make a beauty of Evelyn Kingsley. She is not as tall and graceful as Diana; her skin is darker, and requires a touch of rose-pink to relieve its sallowness. Her eyes are pale blue, her hair is pale gold, but too scanty to add much to her charms. Fortunately the hair-dresser can supply the deficiency, and really, with the aid of pearl powder and rose-pink, Eve makes up into quite a stylish girl—not a blonde angel like her sister, nor a brunette beauty like her cousin, but still a dashing girl, and a vivacious flirt, with a great fund of small-talk and effervescent spirit.

They profess themselves tired this first evening, and retire early, Charlton surmises, “for a beauty sleep, that they may begin the campaign early next morning.” Vivian does not linger either. She goes to her pillow, but sad thoughts bear her company. This day, which she had anticipated with such pleasure—this first day after the “boys” came—what a long, weary, disappointing day it had been!

Next morning they all meet at breakfast bright and smiling, hiding their wounds like the Spartan boy, under figurative “cloaks.”

“You must all enjoy yourselves in your own fashion,” the young hostess says, after breakfast, when they have adjourned to the piazza. “You can walk or [Pg 41]ride, or amuse yourselves in any way, only don’t expect much of me until my lame foot gets well.”

“Oh, I forgot to ask you how you hurt your foot,” exclaimed Eve curiously.

“I stepped on a splinter of broken glass.”

“Yesterday?”

“The night of the ball,” explains Earle Essex. “She dropped a glass of wine, and in stepping aside set her foot on a splinter of the broken crystal.”

“Rather awkward of you to drop it, Viva,” Eve comments.

“Not under the circumstances,” Charlton puts in lazily. “You see, according to the custom of your sex as far back as your first ancestress, Eve, she was engaged in tempting the man, and the man—grown wiser than Adam—withstood the temptation.”

“I am all at sea. Explain,” Diana says imperiously to Mr. Essex, who is by her side, and in a few words, coldly condemnatory of Max Verne, he obeys.

“Rude fellow!” ejaculates Eve, and her sister adds, with airy contempt:

“One never expects Max Verne to act like other people! He is an odd genius, they say, and scarcely knows the taste of ardent spirits.”

“Nor even of tobacco, I’ve heard. Is it true, Charlton?” asks Eve.

“Perfectly true. You see, Max is a fine, handsome fellow, with a splendid physique, and prefers his high health and strength to the small vices other men [Pg 42]affect. I admire his abstinence principles, but prefer my cigar.”

“I rather like the perfume of a fine cigar,” remarks Eve.

“It is a fascinating vice,” her cousin answers carelessly. “But Max opposes tobacco on hygienic grounds. As a devoted student of the art of healing, he cannot reasonably ignore the teachings of science that convince him of the pernicious effects of the tobacco leaf on the human system.”

“He has chosen his profession, then?” queries Eve, with new interest in the handsome absentee. “He will be a physician?”

“He will be a physician—yes. But, chere cousine, let me amend your phraseology. His profession has chosen him.”

“You are very provoking, Charlton. How do you make it out so oddly?”

“It is simple fact, Eve. Very many men choose their life-work, led by adventitious circumstances, such as the wishes of friends, the chances of fortune, and so often fall into error, and miss their true vocation or calling. Max Verne has always seemed to me born for a doctor, and he has recognized the fact and offered himself up on the altar of the almost divine art that has chosen him for its disciple.”

Vivian listens in pleased surprise. Usually her brother is too indolent to waste his breath in warm weather, and it is certainly wasting breath to talk to [Pg 43]Evelyn Kingsley of anything but fashion, dress, and frivolity. Eve is dreadfully bored, but she stifles a yawn and tries to rise equal to the occasion. For is not Charlton an “eligible,” and if he talks high-flown nonsense she must appear to be interested. So she looks thoughtful, and replies gravely:

“But how is one to recognize one’s calling truly? Is it not possible to make mistakes sometimes? Is nature’s instinct unerring?”

“Nature has written our powers and capabilities so plainly on our heads and faces, Eve, that one may determine his vocation by the bumps on his cranium.”

There is a general laugh, and Earle Essex comes to Eve’s assistance by saying good-naturedly:

“Don’t argue with him, Miss Eve. There is method in his madness. He has been dabbling in phrenology.”

“Oh, Charlton, have you?” cries his sister eagerly.

“A little,” he answers dryly.

“At college?”

“Why no; it was in New York. When I was up there, visiting sisters Viola and Musa. Drifting about with that staid brother-in-law of ours, Professor Van Dysart, he took me to the American Institute of Phrenology, and whom should I meet there but my old college chum, Max Verne—a regular student of the summer class. Of course I was in for it then, and joined the class.”

“So that was where Max learned his vocation,” Viva comments, blushing as she speaks his name.

[Pg 44]

“Yes; Van Dysart went into ecstacies over that fine head and white brow that ladies call so noble, and talked much of the large perceptive faculties, full destructiveness, combativeness, and cautiousness that would render his success as a physician or surgeon certain and remarkable. But I suppose this is all Greek to you, ladies. Let us take a rest, and discuss this tempting basket of peaches.”

“Did you find out your vocation, Charlton?” asks the languid Diana.

“Yes—that of an idler,” he replies coolly, as he passes around the fruit.

“Tell me all about my bumps, darling,” coaxes Vivian, laying her dark curly head on his knee.

Charlton laughs as he manipulates the little head with a graceful white hand on which a diamond ring catches the sun’s rays like sparks of fire.

“Viva, your cranial developments only indicate what I have known of you all my life. You have small cautiousness and secretiveness, which makes you hasty in judgment, and rash in saying and doing things you are sure to repent of afterward. You have moderate firmness only—I could wish you had more—full moral sentiments, large conscientiousness, spirituality, plenty of ideality. In short, little sister, you ought to be a poet if there’s any truth in phrenology.”

“How flattering! Won’t you indicate my vocation, please?”

It is Eve’s gay voice, and he answers, lightly:

[Pg 45]

“I cannot undertake to find bumps under all those heavy braids. I will confine myself to physiognomy. That sharp little nose of yours, Eve, is the unerring sign-board of a busybody. You will always be at pains to find out all the news—especially other people’s business.”

Eve pouts at this home-thrust, but she is used to giving and taking home-thrusts from this indifferent cousin. Ere she can rally her forces for a sharp retort, Essex breaks in:

“Won’t you favor me, professor?”

Charlton frowns as his hand strays over the low brow, and among the dusky locks.

“I can tell you, Essex, you will never make your mark on the age. Superficial—weak in conscientiousness—firmness perverted—moral sentiments only moderate. You will stickle at little to further your wishes. Really, I would not like to incur your enmity. Better study phrenology, mon ami, and learn how to reform these leading traits.”

Essex’s face is scarlet as he grumbles:

“Thanks, but I do not pin my faith to this new-fangled science.”

“I fear to submit my poor little head to your merciless dissection,” laughs Diana.

But his hand has already fallen on the graceful flaxen head, with its wealth of shining tresses. He is silent a moment, then taps her white brow, vexedly:

“Diana, you handsome, selfish creature, your head [Pg 46]is too small to hold anything but vanity and frivolity; I could put your little contracted soul in Vivian’s gold thimble.”

“Charlton, you must not tease so. You will hurt somebody’s feelings,” remonstrated Viva.

“As if he cared,” says Diana in lofty scorn. “And of course no one believes such superlative nonsense.”

“Do be quiet, children,” responds the professor of phrenology undauntedly. “I have always known that people never relish hearing the truth about themselves. I only wish Van Dysart were here to descant on your cranial developments. Then we might see some quailing. I propose that we all meet him here next summer with Musa. In the meantime, my dears, forget my rudeness, and solace yourselves with peaches. Diana, here is the loveliest one in the basket.”

“How cool and comfortable you look, madam. May I come in and talk to you awhile?”

It is almost a week since the Kingsleys came, and Vivian is hesitating at the door of the large, bright school-room, where Madame Orne sits alone, leisurely cutting the leaves of a new magazine. She lifts a smiling face at Vivian’s question—a very young face, too—and answers fondly:

“Certainly, dear. It is a pleasure to see your bright face in our sanctum again.”

“The girls have gone to their rooms to dress for the evening. I must go, too, presently—but—I wanted to speak to you first.”

Coming nearer, suddenly, she falls on her knees and hides her face on the lady’s lap, her voice breaking in a pathetic sob.

[Pg 48]

The lady smooths the silky head with a loving hand.

“Ah, my love, I understand,” she murmurs. “You are sorry. You have repented your unkindness to Max.”

“Yes, oh, yes. I was hasty and unreasonable. Even Charlton says I was in the wrong. I want Max to know that I am sorry—that I did not mean the unkind words I said in my sudden anger and pain.”

“Has he written, Viva?”

“Only a note.”

She puts it shyly in the governess’ hand, sobbing hysterically as she reads it.

“You have not answered it, dear?” gently.

“No, I was so angry at first I never meant to. But I cannot bear it any longer. I am miserable!”

“Then you will write and tell him so, Viva—you will recall him to your side? Poor boy, he will be so happy when he gets your letter.”

“He will never come unless I write?” pride struggling with her love.

“No, I think not. You have wounded him so bitterly that you owe him a very contrite apology.”

“Then I will write,” she murmurs. “Dear old Max—so true, so kind—we will not be parted by such a trifle.”

“That is my sweet, brave Viva!” The fair, sweet face, so young still, though older and sadder than Viva’s, and bearing too plainly the impress of a heavy sorrow, bends down, and her lips press the white brow.

[Pg 49]

“Write now, before you change your mind,” she urges tenderly.

She obeys; she writes:

“Dear Max:—I am very, very sorry for my rudeness that night. I did not mean one word of it. Won’t you forgive and forget my fault, and come back to us? We miss you more and more.

Your little friend,

Viva.”

Some one flutters in as she bends over her desk addressing the letter, and looking over her shoulder, reads aloud:

“Dr. Max Verne, Richmond, Virginia.”

It is Eve, with Mr. Essex following, and she says maliciously:

“We did not know you were writing to Max, or we would not have come in. But we want you to walk down to the river with us.”

“I am engaged,” Vivian answers brusquely, tossing her letter into the desk and slamming the lid down with a bang. “I must go and dress.” She flirts out angrily, leaving the meddlesome pair to the mercies of Madame Orne.

That lady takes up her book, ignoring them so entirely that they have no alternative but to beat a hasty retreat from the field.

Eve and her companion stroll down to the river, and she laments in velvet tones the quick temper of Vivian, wondering why she was vexed because they saw her letter.

“It is really nothing new, her liking for Max Verne,” she says. “And if she chooses to recall him after their lovers’ quarrel it is no one’s business but her own!”

But the fires of jealousy are seething wildly in Earle Essex’s heart.

Vivian has written—actually written—to his hated rival! Oh, that it were torn into a million fragments! Oh, that he might prevent Max Verne from receiving it!

Eve’s silly chit-chat grows unendurable. Almost rudely he hastens their return to the house, and excusing [Pg 51]himself at the steps, hurries away for a walk to the post-office, saying that he has had no letters for several days.

At the little country store that does duty as mercantile depot and post-office he inquires for letters—his own—and, by the way, he will take the mail for Leigh Place, too—if there is any.

A rustic-looking youth doles out a budget of letters and papers. Essex snatches them and hurries out into the green recesses of the wood, sits down on the mossy roots of a tree to rest and runs over the letters with eager haste.

There are two for Charlton, one for Vivian.

At this latter one he stares and frowns as if the clear, elegant address were a serpent writhing across the fair, white envelope, for well he knows every curve and line of that bold, free hand. Hesitating only a moment he slips that letter inside his breast-pocket.

When he saunters home it is the fashionably late dinner hour, and he hands over all the mail—all except that letter hidden against his breast—hidden from all but the All-Seeing Eye of Heaven.

There was wine for dinner—“rosy wine, golden wine,” said Diana, who loved the vintage of the purple grape. Earle Essex has no appetite for anything else, but he tosses off glass after glass of the fiery liquid, drowning the accusing voice of conscience in those heavy potations.

“All is fair in love or war,” he murmurs to himself [Pg 52]a few hours later, as, safe inside his locked door, he unseals and peruses the letter that Max Verne has written to Vivian.

He yields to overmastering temptation.

“I have but to write another letter in place of this, inclose it in this envelope, and in the bitterness of her wounded pride and love, when she receives it, she will remember my humble devotion and turn to me for solace.”

He starts up, and paces his room excitedly.

A new thought has occurred to him.

“That letter she has written to Max—may it not explain away everything? He will return, there will be a reconciliation.”

But no, no, no!—he will not contemplate such a possibility. Vivian must and shall be his by any means he can find to accomplish it.

But there is her letter to Max—the stumbling-block in his path to success. He ought to see it, he must see it.

And why not? whispers the tempting devil he has put to his lips to steal away his brains.

The letter will not be mailed till morning. It lies there still where she angrily thrust it into the unlocked desk in the open school-room. Madame Orne is out of doors with the girls in the moonlight. How easy to possess himself of the letter and return—how easy, and his heart gives a startled throb—to substitute another in its place! He is an adept at counterfeiting chirography. It is his one talent.

[Pg 53]

There is a tempting devil in strong drink. It stimulates every evil impulse, paralyzes healthy moral sentiment. It inflames Earle Essex’s passions, goads him on to the wicked deed that drives asunder two young, loving hearts that have been linked together in the bonds of tenderest affection.

It is done! The dainty white missive, the letter-dove of peace that has plumed its wings to bear the olive-branch to a sad heart, has been purloined from the desk, and the angry eyes of Essex devour the few girlish lines. Then with alert nerves he seats himself to his task—the writing of a note in Vivian’s dainty hand on a sheet of the same fair paper taken from the desk.

“So there is an end of Verne’s dream,” he mutters, grimly, and goes back to the school-room to return the forged letter to the desk.

Hark! As his nervous hand lifts the desk lid a light step comes along the hall, a light form flits across the threshold, and there is a low, startled cry from a woman’s lips. He turns and faces the governess, standing before him in the flood of white moonlight that pours into the window. The letter drops from his hand and the desk lid falls.

“Good heavens!” she exclaims, scornfully. “You are not surely base enough to be trying to steal Vivian’s letter to Mr. Verne!”

Earle Essex catches at Madame Orne’s words as a loop-hole of escape. After all, his plans may not be frustrated.

With drooping head and a voice of ineffable sadness, he answers:

“It is only too true, madam. I love Miss Leigh, and in the madness of my jealously and despair, I was tempted to destroy the letter that would recall my hated rival. Oh, madam, pity me!”

In the bright moonlight her lip curls with a smile of contempt.

“I could find it in my heart to pity you if your love were a manly one, but you have proved its poor quality by this baseness. Will you assure me that you have not tampered with the seal, sir?” taking the letter from the desk, and scrutinizing it keenly.

But he has done his work so cleverly that there is no sign of treachery.

[Pg 55]

“Madam, I am not capable of such villainy!” drawing his form proudly erect.

“Where we detect small villainies, Mr. Essex, we naturally suspect greater ones. If you repent of the evil you just now contemplated, and from which my entrance just now deterred you, prove it by removing yourself out of temptation’s way. Leave this house to-morrow, and seek in other scenes forgetfulness of the fair girl who never can be yours.”

His dark eyes flash with swift emotion, and he answers resentfully:

“Your pardon, madam, but I decline your dictation in my personal affairs. I do not choose to leave a clear field to my hated rival!”

For a moment she is staggered by his assurance. Then she turns to leave the room, saying coldly:

“Your continued presence, however, may be unwelcome, after I relate the scene I have witnessed to-night.”

He starts forward, catching her hand to stay her exit, crying eagerly:

“Madame Orne, I implore you not to betray my folly! I will never yield to such another temptation.”

“Go to-morrow, and I will keep your secret. Remain longer, and I will warn the Leighs of the false friend they have honored. It is my duty.”

“So, Madame Orne, you utterly refuse to keep my secret, and let me stay?”

“I do,” and she looks like a menacing fate standing [Pg 56]before him so stately and slender in her long, clinging black robe.

And then a strange light of triumph leaps into his eyes.

“Say,” he commands. “I am going to tell you why it is to your interest to keep this secret of mine.”

“There can be no possible reason,” she answers proudly; but he bends toward her and whispers in a threatening tone:

“Is there, then, no secret this lying black dress hides? Is Madame Orne truly a widow?”

She gives a start of surprise, but answers coldly:

“I have never said that I was a widow. People have simply taken it for granted.”

“As you meant them to do. That was why the black dress and the sad face were assumed,” he sneers. “My relentless lady, shall I tell you a few facts I know about you, or shall I use them as an offset to your charge against me?”

“Say on, but be brief,” she replies in cold scorn.

“Remember, you brought this on yourself. I should not have said one word if you had granted my prayer,” he reminds her.

“Do not waste time in apologies,” she retorts impatiently.

He answers with a mocking laugh:

“It sounds like a romance—this story I am about to tell you, but you will recognize its truth.”

She bows, freezingly, and he goes on:

[Pg 57]

“Five years ago, Madame Orne, a fair young girl was wedded in New York. She was an orphan left penniless and desolate by the failure and death of her only surviving parent. Of all the friends of her prosperous days, only one remained faithful—a French gentleman of great wealth and high descent. He married the desolate orphan and made her the mistress of his elegant home. But woman is fickle, or perhaps she never really loved him—you should know best. Anyway, after two years of wedded bliss, the husband pined for his native land and determined to take his fair American bride to la belle France. Their passage was taken, and one day Monsieur Orne—that was the rich Frenchman’s name—stepped on board the steamer, left her in their state-room, and joined some convivial companions on deck. The steamer left her moorings, some time afterward, and in the ‘wee sma’ hours’ of the night, monsieur, who had played at cards rather late, went to rejoin his wife. But the bird had flown. Madam had left the steamer unperceived, deserted her lord, and remained in America. Ah, madam, how ghastly pale you grow! You see that I have recognized you as the Frenchman’s runaway wife!”

She was indeed deathly pale, but her lips parted with something like a gasp as she answered, low and bitterly:

“He was a miserable gamester and drunkard, and like a maniac in his cups. My life was not safe with [Pg 58]him. He was unreasonably jealous and even brutal. He used me like a slave; once he struck me, bruised my body, and broke my heart, so I escaped from him as I would have escaped from a wild beast. Is this your secret, Mr. Essex? Go tell it where you will! Shamed as I would be by the story, I should blush to shield myself by keeping your secret and risking the happiness of sweet Vivian Leigh!”

“But there is more to tell,” he exclaims, with vindictive triumph.

“Say your worst, sir!”

“It is only this. Monsieur Orne returned from France a year ago, and has been seeking his wife ever since. He has traced you as far as Richmond, and is there now prosecuting his search. He is filled with vindictive hatred against you, and swears the most horrible vengeance if he ever finds you.”

She starts up from her seat in wild excitement. She tries to speak, but her voice dies away in a gasp of fear—then she falls back in a limp, trembling heap into the chair, and her head drops against the back, her face in its deathly white beauty looking like a dead woman’s.

Earle Essex looks at her in amazement until one white hand is feebly uplifted toward him, and she moans, in a voice of pain or terror:

“Bring some one, I am ill—faint—dying!”

Shocked at the sad consequences of his malice, Earle Essex dashes down the hall, down the steps, and into [Pg 59]the piazza, where Charlton and the girls are amusing themselves in the moonlight with their usual merry badinage.

“Come, quickly!” he exclaims. “As I was passing through the hall, Madame Orne called to me for assistance from the school-room. She is ill, fainting.”

A handsome, commodious residence set in a smooth green lawn at the aristocratic west end of Richmond. The closed doors at the top of the broad marble steps frown on you with all the grimness of a bachelor establishment; but once within, you pass along a very stately hall, with ghastly statuary glimmering here and there in niches, and mount the stairs—two flights of them—and emerge at one end of the upper regions into a spacious apartment with a skylight set into the top, and commonly known as “the den.”

The windows are wide open, and all the light and beauty of the summer morning float into the room deliciously, while audacious bees and butterflies come roving in with the breeze, and flutter out again precipitately, alarmed by the sight of various entomological specimens pinned over the mantel, or enclosed in glass boxes on the shelves, for Max Verne has gathered [Pg 61]a small museum of boyish treasures here; geological specimens, stuffed birds, imported butterflies, birds’-nests, autumn leaves, while graceful garlands of silvery gray moss entwine about dainty bits of woodland pictures and wreathe a small aquarium that holds a few gold-fish and a water-lily in glorious bloom. On the top of one tall cabinet is placed a human skull, surveying the scene with grinning satisfaction. An opposite cabinet, crowded with scientific works, is surmounted by a phrenological bust in plaster of Paris. Over the low marble mantel hangs a photograph of Vivian Leigh, daintily framed in rustic twigs and wood-moss. Beneath it is a small vase holding a white lily and some sprigs of mignonette, whose fragrance pleasantly pervades the den.

The owner of this heterogeneous collection of curiosities sits writing at a rosewood desk, grimly presided over by an owl with great staring glass eyes.

It is less than a week since he left Leigh Place, but to Max it seems more than a year.

The olden charm of the “den” has flown.

The volumes rest unopened on the shelves, and the ghastly skeleton grins incessantly at his despair. The phrenological head is no longer studied. He is more interested in hearts. The face over the mantel holds his eyes, absorbs all his thoughts.

“It is no go,” he tells himself, in boyish slang, at last. “I can’t feel satisfied to let it all end like this. It was such a lovely dream. I will throw pride to the winds, and write again to little Viva.”

[Pg 62]

So Max is writing a love-letter in spite of his own pride, in spite of the sage, whose staring eyes seem to blink disapproval over his desk, in spite of the grinning skull that laughs at the vanity of human love and hope.

He bends over his task, the careless locks pushed back from the noble white brow, a flush on his cheek, a tender light in the earnest eyes as he pens the impassionate letter. No matter what he writes. I shall not tell you. We all know what beautiful things First Love writes to its faultless idol.

Time drags heavily when the tender missive has gone its way. It will be so long before an answer comes, and he is so impatient. He takes to furious horseback riding in the interval, and gallops miles over the Grove Road daily, to the imminent danger of pedestrians on the way. He takes a new, sweet interest in the prosaic postman on his daily rounds.

And, after all, it is only two days before the reply comes to hand, and is joyously opened in the sunny precincts of the “den” with a hand that trembles in spite of “manhood’s iron nerve.” Oh, what has she written? Surely she will forgive, and “call him back again.”

Her letter is short. It does not cover three sides of the dainty, satin-smoothed sheet.

But the words burn themselves in on Max Verne’s memory, searing it with a red-hot iron:

[Pg 63]

“Your letter received, I wonder how you can presume to write to me. Never dare to do so again. I scorn the offer of your poor, weak love. My heart is given to one who knows how to appreciate me rightly, as your weak, selfish nature never can. This is the last of any intercourse between us two, and I believe that my father and brother have no wish to continue acquaintance with one who is capable of such discourtesy to a lady.

Vivian Leigh.”

That is all, and the dainty sheet falls from his hands, he folds his arms on the desk, and lays down his bonny head upon them in awful silence.

Minutes, nay hours, of the summer afternoon go by unheeded.

The strong, manly form bowed there on the desk is still as death—never stirs save now and then when the light breeze rustles the letter that has fallen at his feet. Then he shudders all over, as if some icy hand had clutched him.

The purple dusk is falling when Max rises and shakes himself out of that cramped position.

His face is very pale, his step a trifle heavy as he takes several dejected turns across the room. Pausing before the mantel, with the muttered word “adieu,” he turns the girl’s fair face to the wall, then picks up the letter, holding it a moment shudderingly in his hand. Then he strides across the room, crumples the letter tightly into the hollow of his hand, then crams it into the cavity of the hideous skull, turning away with a hollow, mirthless laugh.

Just then the tea-bell rings down stairs, startling him to the consciousness of sublunary things.

[Pg 64]

People must eat and drink three times a day, no matter how tragical life may be, and Max’s bachelor uncle loves punctuality. He descends, and they meet at table—a taciturn pair—and the housekeeper’s curious eyes notice that both look strange. Max is pale and unlike himself. His uncle looks flustered, embarrassed, full of a shy consciousness. He starts violently when Max asks for a few moments’ conversation in the library.

“Certainly, certainly, my dear boy. I was about to propose that very thing.”

They pass down the wide hall together, and the heavy door closes behind them, while the old housekeeper shakes her head despondently.

“Vivian, is that you, dear?”

Madame Orne is amazed to open her eyes and find herself in bed, while her pupil sits at the open window gazing with thoughtful dark eyes at the twilight sky.

At her feeble question Vivian rises and comes over to her side with a gentle smile.

“Have I been sick, my dear?”

“Very sick for a few days, madam. You are better now, but you must not talk much. The doctor says you must not be excited.”

“The doctor has been to see me?”

“Twice a day, dear madam. You were taken sick all alone in the school-room, you remember? Mr. Essex was going through the hall and heard you gasp or cry out. He found you in something like a faint, and called for assistance. Charlton carried you upstairs, [Pg 66]and all our efforts failed to rouse you, so we sent for Doctor Barksdale.”

The invalid’s slim white hand goes up to her brow, and her violet-hued eyes have a look of perplexity.

“My head is so heavy I can remember nothing. I feel stupefied,” she complains. “What medicines have I been taking?”

“Only sedatives, I think. You have been much excited, and almost wild at times, screaming and talking to yourself. Your medicines were given to compose you.”

Again that look of perplexity, and the brow is knit in troubled thought.

“But what made me sick? Do you know, Viva?”

She sees a look of hesitancy in the bright dark eyes.

“Viva, there’s a dear girl, tell me what the doctor said.”

“But indeed there is not much to tell. My brother says all the doctors have different hobbies. This particular physician makes a hobby of heart diseases, so he shook his head over the sad state you had been found in, and declared you had spasms of the heart from some sudden shock. But we told him that could not be, for you were quite alone when the attack came on.”

“Thank you, darling.”

“I was right, was I not, madam? You were not frightened over anything were you? Mr. Essex said you were quite alone.”

[Pg 67]

A gleam of remembrance flashes into the dark, blue eyes, and Madame Orne exclaims irrelevantly, it seems:

“Viva, have you mailed Doctor Verne’s letter?”

“Oh, yes, the first day you were sick—that is three days ago.”

“Has he replied?”

“Not yet,” a plaintive sigh ends the words.

The sound of gay voices and laughter floats up to the window. Presently a light step comes along the hall, and Eve Kingsley enters, her riding-habit over her arm, in her hand a budget of letters and papers.

“I have been riding with Mr. Essex, and he stopped at the post-office for the mail. There was nothing for you, Madame Orne, and only this for you, Viva,” she tosses a masculine-looking envelope into the girl’s lap, and Viva takes it with a quickened heart-throb. One glance at the superscription, and she is out of the room like a flash.

“Love likes secrecy,” Eve laughs maliciously. “Well, she may worship her ideal Max Verne if she likes, but for my part I prefer the handsome Essex.”

“Will you be seated, Miss Kingsley?”

“Thanks, no; we are going to a grand ball to-night, and I have my things to fix. Do you feel better, madam?”

“Yes, thank you.”

Something of patient gentleness in the tone moves Eve out of her ordinary selfish indifference. Almost [Pg 68]tenderly she bends and smooths back a stray tendril of silky dark hair that has strayed over the invalid’s brow, thinking to herself that the governess is lovely only for the profound sadness that shadows all her features.

“I am glad you feel better, and sorry you did not have a letter, too—or, did you expect one?” she says gently.

The question is so sudden that the swift blood dyes the face on the pillow, and Madame Orne answers almost gaspingly:

“No—I—did—not. I seldom receive letters. I have no near relatives, and none to whom I care to write.”

“Excuse me, I thought—or, at least Mr. Essex said——” she stops suddenly, biting her lip.

“Mr. Essex said what?” demands Madame Orne with a startled look.

“Nothing—only—only—well, you see—a letter dropped from his pocket yesterday when we were driving to the post-office, and I happened to see the address. It was to a Monsieur Orne in Richmond, and he said you had given it to him to mail several days ago, and he had forgotten it.”

“Eve,” calls Diana’s sharp voice at the door, “if you’re going to help me with the bows for my dress, come on, please.”

“Coming, coming!” answers Eve, and flits out without a backward glance at the white face that buries itself in the pillow, sobbing:

[Pg 69]

“Betrayed! betrayed!”

The lingering sunset fades into dreamy twilight, the myriad lonely sounds of country life in summer float in at the windows, a whip-poor-will calls drearily in the distance. Presently a housemaid brings lights and tea, and finds her pale as death, with wild, dilated eyes and trembling lips.

“Put out the lights and go. I want to sleep,” she moans.

“I never seen such people,” the girl complains. “Nobody wants a light to-night. There’s Miss Viva moping at her window in the dark, and the other ladies getting ready for the ball. Isn’t she going, I wonder?”

“Is Miss Leigh in her room?”

“Yes, ma’am, at the window, without a light, and won’t have one.”

“Go and ask her, Jane, to come to me a moment if convenient.”

The answer comes presently:

“Miss Leigh will come as soon as she is ready for the ball. She is dressing.”

“You may help me to dress, then, Jane. I will sit up a while.”

“You are not well enough to sit up, ma’am. I have my orders to nurse you to-night,” cries the round-eyed country girl staring in surprise.

“I am better, Jane, and stronger. I wish to sit up. You will oblige me.”

[Pg 70]

It takes so long to dress for a ball that she sits there waiting in the chair almost an hour before a slow step comes along the hall to the door, then the swish of a costly silken robe, and—Viva enters, wearing an exquisite robe of white silk and white crape, white roses on her breast, and in her dark, curly hair. So she pauses beside madam’s chair, and lifts her dark eyes to her face. Dull, heavy, tearless, there is a dumb despair in their gaze that goes to madam’s heart.

“Are you ill, Viva?”

“Not at all, dear madam. Is my costume a success?”

“It is a miserable failure. There is no color in face or dress. With your black hair and white roses and crape, you look as if you had gone into mourning.”

She is mute, motionless. Some spell of silence seems to rest on those pale lips, and Madame Orne steals a gentle arm about her waist and whispers anxiously:

“Is it all right with Max, dear?”

“It is all right,” Vivian answers in a mechanical tone, as if through stiff lips.

“Then something else is all wrong, child. I never, saw you quite so deadly pale and strange. Where is all your lost brightness?”

“This is only your fancy, madam: perhaps the effect of the white roses. They do look a little funereal. Shall I change them?”

“Do, please, and put rich red roses in their place. [Pg 71]And your pearls—you must wear them, too, to the grand ball.”

“Yes, I had forgotten. I will go and make the change. Take care of yourself, madam. I will return early.”

She passively takes the lady’s kiss, and turns to go, impatient of the gravely questioning eyes, impatient of the reiterated question:

“Viva, are you really and truly reconciled to Max?”

“It is all right,” she answers, again, and goes out with a weary step.

“Charlton,” she calls over the balustrade, as she hears his step in the hall, “will you bring me some Jacqueminot roses?”

While he is cutting them out in the moonlight she is busy in her room.

She has taken a little ebony casket and put into it a single letter, a little pearl ring that she recklessly tears from her finger, a small photograph from an easel on the mantel. On the small heap she places with a steady hand the white roses just taken from breast and hair.

“Madame Orne was right. They are funereal flowers,” she murmurs, crushing the lid down and locking the casket.

She is standing at the window when Charlton comes [Pg 72]with the roses. She lifts her hand in the air, then it falls listless at her side. She will never look upon her dead again.

She has thrown away the golden key.

“How pale you are,” he exclaims, as she fastens the flowers into place. “You have worn yourself out in your devotion to Madame Orne. I shall not allow you to play sick-nurse again.”

“There is no need, for she is better now,” she replies with forced gayety, as she takes his arm and goes to join the revelers.

Madame Orne, tempted by the beauty of the incense breathing summer night, catches up a white shawl, and throwing it over her shoulders, glides down the stairs to the dim piazza.

Then she pauses abruptly, for Judge Leigh, who has been meditating there alone, rises immediately, and placing a chair for her, observes kindly:

“I am very, very glad you are better.”

She accepts the chair and they glide into conversation. The judge is a good talker, and is probably glad to have a listener so cultured as his daughter’s governess. She is a favorite with him—has been from the first day, now three long years ago, since she first came to Leigh Place.

They talk of courts and laws, especially of those laws that prevent the severance of the marriage tie—she has drawn him into the subject with such fine tact [Pg 74]that he does not even realize that it was not he who began it.

“Apropos of the subject, Judge Leigh, I would like to ask you if drunkenness in a man is a legal cause for divorce, if the wife desires it.”

“My dear madam, no. The sanctity of the marriage tie may not be trifled with thus lightly.”

The delicate lip curls in actual scorn.

“Lightly,” she repeats with keen sarcasm. “Why, Judge Leigh, it seems to me that no greater blow can be struck at the sanctity of marriage than when a man habitually and determinedly addicts himself to the vice of immoderate drinking. Nature herself weakens the tie at so palpable a violation of the promise to love and cherish. No true woman can continue loving a man who lowers himself to the level of the brute, groveling in the dust, and spurning the plea of an agonized wife, while he grossly indulges his vile appetite at the expense of every good thing human or divine.”

She paused, her eyes sparkling with excitement, and he answers slowly:

“You speak strongly, but there is much truth in what you advance. It is a sad existence for a woman to be bound for life to a man who carries his appetite for strong drink to brutal excess. But you must remember the marriage vow is for better or worse; and lightly as the present age esteems the sanctity of wedded ties, there are few things that justify divorce, and drunkenness is not one of them.”

[Pg 75]

“That is a man’s opinion. Oh, that I might help to make the laws——”

She pauses, biting her lips to keep back the impatient words.

Judge Leigh actually laughs at her excitement, little dreaming of her terrible earnestness.

“I fear you have imbibed some woman’s rights notions,” he exclaims. “Be calm, my child. Your happiness, at least, is not at stake.”

“I often interest myself in feminine questions that do not personally concern me,” she replies with assumed carelessness. “I would gladly reform some of man’s laws if I could; and, Judge Leigh, I do think that when a man proves false to a woman’s faith—a noble woman whose soul is stung to madness by her husband’s fall into the fearful vortex of strong drink—I do think that such a woman should deliberately separate herself from such a death in life, and go her way in peace, leaving him to his folly.”

“Perhaps so. I do not gainsay your emotional view of the subject. Women’s hearts sometimes decide these questions better than men’s heads. But still the law would not justify her in her action, and her husband could compel her to return if he chose.”

“Against her will?”

“Undoubtedly. You see, Madame Orne, a man’s wife belongs to him so wholly, that there are few limits to his power if he chooses to exercise it, and if she runs away he may force her to return and no one can lift a finger to prevent it.”

[Pg 76]

“Men make hard laws,” she answers bitterly, and, rising abruptly, flits down the steps and out into the moonlighted grounds. She must escape and let that choking sob have its way.

Spirit-like in her white draperies, she glides along the graveled path, following its winding curve, and losing herself in the odorous thickets of the old-fashioned garden. Ordinarily, she is afraid of the loneliness of the night and the soft sigh of the river passing near, but the fear is lost in a greater dread.

She heeds not the dark, grotesque shadows of the shrubbery that spring out across the moonlighted path waving weird arms as if in threatening—she only hurries on as though driven by some invisible power, till, spent by her hasty flight, she drops down on a rustic seat close to the marble basin of a little fountain.

Summer is at her sweetest here. Lilies bloom whitely in the marble basin of the fountain, roses drop their petals in odorous showers along the path, the almost oppressive fragrance of a night-blooming jessamine just unclosing its pale petals, fills the air with exquisite perfume. Over all the summer moon, a great luminous globe of splendor, shines with up-clouded glory, silvering every leaf and flower, and turning the delicate spray of the fountain into showers of diamonds. Nature is so full of peace, so heavenly calm and still, it jars on her pained sense of human unrest and fear with a sense of helplessness and wrong. Why should she be so unhappy, when [Pg 77]God’s peace seems shining down upon the world with such radiant completeness?

She is feverish and wild, her heart throbs tumultuously, she has a raging headache. Half-unconsciously she pulls the comb from the thick coils of hair and lets the dark mass fall heavily over her shoulders, while the fountain spray blows coolly over her face and hands.

“I would pray if I thought God would listen to my prayers,” she exclaims despairingly. “Does He really care for us, I wonder? Does he even listen to the feeble cry of one poor atom struggling in this distant world that is itself but an atom in the myriad worlds whirling ceaselessly through space?”

“There shall not a sparrow fall to the ground without His knowledge,” answers a low, impressive voice close to her side, and she glances around with a startled cry.

A gentleman has come along the path unheard, and stops now, looking down at her with wondering eyes.

It is Charlton Leigh, tall, stately, handsome, in full evening dress, holding a lighted cigar between his fingers, its red tip gleaming in the soft light. He has an odd, almost irreverent habit of quoting scriptural texts on slight occasions, and just now the careless smile on his face belies the appropriate response of his lips.

“I thought you went to the ball,” she says coldly.

[Pg 78]

“The carriage only holds four, you know, so I sent Essex with the girls and ordered it to return for me. Meanwhile I have been smoking my cigar in the moonlight.”

“I did not know,” she begins confusedly.

“Of course you did not—neither did I. This is a mutual surprise. You are the last person I suspected of being romantic. It was a shock to me when I came upon you just now doing tragedy in the regular heroine style, with flowing hair and clasped hands.”

Madame Orne shrinks sensitively beneath the vailed sarcasm of the words and gathers up the silken waves, winding them about her head with nervous hands. One long tress escapes from the mass and Charlton takes it up, gently winding it around with the rest. By a swift turn of her head his hand comes in contact with her forehead. It is burning hot. In a moment he has pulled the comb from the hair and shaken it loosely over her shoulders again.

“No, let it flow. Your head is burning hot. You are ill. What are you doing out here in defiance of the doctor’s dictum?”

“I wanted the fresh air, and I am well enough to be out,” coldly.

“You are not. Will you not let me take you back to the house?”

“I prefer remaining here,” perversely.

“As you please,” he answers stiffly, and there is a moment’s silence. He is piqued that she is so indifferent [Pg 79]to his kindness. He forgets that he has always seemed indifferent to her, that he has never sought her friendship, has always let her remain an outsider to his heart.

He stands still, watching her moodily, some new emotion at work within him that he does not try to analyze; but how lovely and how sad she looks! A sense of the pathos of her lonely life strikes in on his heart suddenly and keenly.

“Madame Orne, you are ill, you are in trouble,” he exclaims tenderly. “Some sorrow has come into your life. You are a lonely woman, and women are so weak. Can I help you in any way, and make it easier for you to bear?”

She looks up at him in wonder, it is so strange to see sarcastic, indifferent Charlton Leigh, in sober earnest, he who has scarcely ever seemed conscious of her existence. She likes this new phase in him better, and answers less coldly:

“You are right. A great trouble has come to me, but I must bear it alone. No one can help me.”

“But let me try. Men are so much stronger than women, you know.”

To his surprise she replies with bitter emphasis:

“You are right. Men are much stronger than women, and that is why I must suffer.”

“That is a strange reason,” he remonstrates. “Men are the natural protectors of women.”

Something like a low and mocking laugh answers [Pg 80]him, and just then they catch the sound of carriage wheels.

She looks up at him and murmurs gratefully:

“I thank you for your sympathy.”

“Then do let me take you back to the house.”

She shakes her head in silent negation.

“Good-night, then.”

He breaks a white lily from the basin of the fountain, lays it in her lap, and is turning away, when she arrests him with an odd question:

“Mr. Leigh, will you tell me at what hour the express train from Richmond is due at Fair View station?”

“Certainly—at eleven o’clock precisely.”

Something flits across her white face—a shadow of fear and dread—and the violet eyes have the pitiful look of a hunted deer.

“What is it?” he queries, taking her hand in his kindly. “Is any one coming?”

“No, no,” she answers, and he drops her hand with another good-night.

“Good-by,” she answers, and he goes to the gay revel that awaits him, but take a picture in his memory—a face that haunts him in troubled after days as if it had been the last look at a face in its coffin.

For her, she sinks back in her seat and sits passively a long, long time, like one spent with weariness or emotion. She rises by and by and glides down the [Pg 81]path toward the river that seems to woo her with its soft, silvery murmur.

How beautiful it is beneath the summer moon. Feathery willows fringe its banks, and mirror themselves in its bosom. The light breeze dimples the water, the moon and stars look down and find themselves faithfully reflected there. A restless whip-poor-will is swinging on a willow bough, fretfully complaining to the night. Sitting down on the bank she looks down with fascinated eyes into the water.

Hark! Over the stillness of the night shrills the warning shriek of the locomotive whistle! It is eleven o’clock, and the night express from Richmond is slowing into the Fair View station. She springs up, wringing her white hands helplessly.

“He is come!” she moans, “he is come! Oh, where shall I hide myself from this fiend, and his terrible oath of vengeance?”

“Well, Max, I shall be pleased to hear your plans?”

The elder Verne is a good looking man of sixty years, carrying the weight of time well having no greater cares in life than the charge of his younger brother’s early orphaned son. The charge has been faithfully fulfilled, for at three-and-twenty Max is rather a nephew to be proud of, and reflects credit on his indulgent uncle. Heretofore they have been all-in-all to each other, for they have no near relatives to divide their affections, and Max turns a glance of confident love on the other’s face as he answers:

“I believe I told you, sir, when I chose my profession, that I wished to spend several years studying medicine.”

“You are still of the same mind, then?”

“I am more anxious than ever, sir, to carry out my [Pg 83]plan. Indeed, were it possible, I should leave Richmond to-night for Europe.”

A vailed impatience in the tone makes the elder man look curiously at the face of the speaker. Something in its troubled pallor startles him.

“Is not this a sudden resolution?” he asks. “I thought you intended finishing the medical course here before you studied in the French schools.”

“That was my intention. Circumstances have decided me, however, to pursue my studies at Paris instead. I suppose it does not matter to you, uncle—I may go?”

“Do you mean to go alone, Max?”

“Quite alone, sir.”

Is it only his fancy, or does a light of visible relief shine in his uncle’s eyes?

“But I thought, when we talked of this before, that you intended to take a bride with you.”

“I have changed my mind, uncle.”

“Ah? and concluded to defer the happy day until you return with full-fledged honors?”

“No, uncle, it is not that. Indeed, I do not expect ever to marry. My profession may engross my time and interest to the exclusion of all tender ties.”

“Ah, I see now. There has been a lover’s quarrel. Max, why don’t you confide in me? You are strange to-day. What am I to think of your relinquishment of your suit for the hand of the beautiful Miss Leigh?”

[Pg 84]

Max has risen and walked over to the window. There is impatient pain in the face that is turned away from view, but he answers, carelessly—very carelessly:

“It was only a boy’s fancy, uncle.”

A certain embarrassment that has dwelt on Mr. Verne’s face clears away at those brief words, and he smiles.

“That is the way with you boys—one pretty face to-day, another to-morrow. But, seriously, Max, I am glad of what you tell me. It makes more easy that which I have to tell you.”

“What is it, uncle? Do you not wish me to go abroad? Shall you miss me too much?”

“Not so much as I once expected to, for—but sit down, Max, I want to talk seriously.”

“I am listening, uncle.”

“You know, Max, that people have always expected that I should make you my heir. I quite meant to, my boy, but now—you must not feel vexed with your old uncle, dear lad—I have formed other plans that will materially alter your prospects. I shall charge myself with the completion of your education abroad, regardless of expense. But afterward it is quite possible that you may prefer to depend upon yourself, expecting only a legacy at my death.”

“That means, sir——”

“That I am about to marry, my dear boy.”

Surprise and amusement struggle for supremacy in the face of the dethroned heir, but only for a moment; [Pg 85]then Max comes forward with boyish impulsiveness and cordially offers his hand.

“Uncle,” he says cordially, “I hope you may be very happy, and I thank you for your kind intentions toward me. Do not think I shall be disappointed, or love you less for this. You have only given me a stronger incentive to win fame and fortune for myself. How soon are you going to let me start for France?”

“Not until after the wedding, my boy. No, not a word. I won’t hear of your going sooner.”

“And when will the wedding be, uncle?”

“Not until September. I am not going to marry a silly young girl in her teens, Max—your old uncle is not as silly as that, boy. The prospective Mrs. Verne is a dear little woman of forty, who will make me a good wife, and you a good aunt.”

“But can’t you hurry up the wedding, uncle? Time goes so slow, and youth is so restless, you know.

“Then try the mountains or the sea while you are waiting, for the little woman will not be hurried, I know.”

It rains the day after the ball—a pouring summer torrent that deluges the green earth from dawn to sunset, and the weary pleasure-seekers sleep late, lulled by the steady down pour of rain. It is ten o’clock when they dawdle into the dining room.

“Has Madame Orne breakfasted yet?” Viva inquires of the waiter, who answers that breakfast was sent up, but madam was not in her room.

“Go immediately, and ask if she will have it now.”

Mr. Essex tells Vivian solicitously that she does not look well, and inquires if her head aches.

“My heart aches,” she might have answered, but she nodded carelessly, and said:

“Yes, I have a tiresome headache.”

“It was the champagne last night,” laughs Charlton.

“Nonsense!” cries Diana. “I drank three glasses last night, but my head is perfectly clear.”

“It was the dancing, more likely,” interpolates Eve. “I never saw you so gay before, Viva. You danced every time and so turned the heads of all your partners [Pg 87]that their united love-looks followed you all evening like satellites revolving around some brilliant star.”

“Then my pallor is excusable now, for I share the fate of all stars, and fade in the morning light.”

At that moment the waiter enters, reporting that Madame Orne is not in her room, nor anywhere in the house.

“Stupid, go and send Jane here,” Viva cries impatiently, adding, “She cannot have gone out anywhere in such a pouring rain.”

Jane comes, looking sheepish and frightened, but corroborates the boy’s report. The governess has not been seen to-day; and after some alarmed cross-questioning on the part of Vivian and the girls, she admits that she has not seen her since last night. She, Jane, had been dismissed by the lady, had left the room, and did not return until next morning, when she found the curtains up, the windows open, and the bed unslept in.

Thoroughly alarmed now, Vivian calls up the remaining servants, but elicits no new facts. Only one thing is proved most conclusively—the fact that Madame Orne has not been in the house since last night.

The domestic retinue retires kitchenward, and Vivian’s tearful dark eyes turn appealingly to her brother.

“Oh, Charlton, what must we do, what must we think?” she cries.

[Pg 88]

He comes to her tenderly, and takes the trembling little hands into his warm, strong grasp. A vague, indefinable dread is written all over his bright, debonair young face, as he answers slowly and sadly:

“I fear that she has destroyed herself, Viva. We must have the river dragged at once.”

“No, no! it cannot be!” and she clings to him sobbing hysterically.

“But it is not possible that the poor lady has drowned herself. Why should she?” inquires Eve very pertinently.

“Yes, why should she?” echoes Diana.

“Perhaps she went away on the express,” Charlton says reflectively.

“Impossible,” sobs Vivian. “The station is a mile away, and she was too weak to walk there.”

“It is very strange, but I thought her mind was a little queer when I saw her last evening,” adds Eve.

“Then, as I said before, it will be well to drag the river,” Charlton reiterates, and Eve asks again:

“But why do you think of the river?”

“Yes, why? Tell me, Charlton,” murmurs tearful Vivian, and he answers:

“I suppose I am the last one of you all who saw Madame Orne last night. It was while I was waiting for the carriage to return for me. She was sitting by the fountain, with her hair all loose over her shoulders, and seemed greatly agitated and depressed when I came suddenly upon her as I was strolling [Pg 89]down the river path. I advised her to return to the house, as she seemed to be laboring under high mental excitement. She refused to do so, and seemed adverse to talking. She asked me, however, at what time the express from Richmond was due. I told her, and she seemed to become still more agitated. Then the carriage returned, and I left her there.”

“And you really think she might have committed suicide?” shudders Diana.

“I fear so. When I left her in that strange mood, she seemed quite capable of something desperate.”

A shudder thrills the listeners. They are so full of youth and hope, and bounding life that the suggestion of such a death seems chilling in the extreme.

Then Essex speaks for the first time, recovering from what has seemed like a trance of horror.

“I will go to the station and make inquires, while you prosecute the search along the river, Charlton.”

“Thank you, Essex. We will both begin the search and perhaps we may find some clew. Keep up your spirits, girls. It may be that we are making mountains of some small mole-hills.”

Mr. Essex goes to the station, and Charlton down through the grounds, reckless of the steady downpour of the rain.

How changed the scene from a few hours ago. The wind and rain have beaten down the shrubberies, and beside the garden seat at the fountain lies the lily Charlton had given her at parting. It is beaten by the [Pg 90]heavy rain, but he picks it up and holds it in his hand as he follows the sodden path toward the river with moody gaze bent earthward. Twice on the way he finds tokens that lead him on—once a hair-pin shaken from her loose tresses, then a shred of white silk fringe torn from her shawl, on the thorny stem of a rose.

Further on, by the very brink of the muddy, swollen river, he stops, while a pang wrings his strong man’s heart, for here are further tokens of her presence.

Half-in and half-out of the water is the white shawl that had draped her shoulders last night, now all draggled and torn by a thorn-bush, that had entangled its silken meshes. The grass is crushed and broken here, as though rudely trampled down by a man’s feet. Turning away, pale and heart-sick, with the wet shawl on his arm, he sees her little silver comb shining in the long grass. He picks it up with a shuddering glance at the noisy, rushing river, and returns to the house with the tokens, that send Vivian into a long fainting fit.

Essex returns with the information that no person had left Fair View station last night, and so they scour the woods and drag the river, keeping up the search for almost a week. Judge Leigh and his son spare no pains nor money in the search, but time brings no tidings of the lost one, and if indeed the dark river hides her dead form from their yearning eyes it keeps the secret well.

“Everybody is talking about your flirtation with the handsome Essex, Viva. Why don’t you put the poor fellow out of his misery, or say ‘No’ at once and give the rest of us girls a chance at a rich husband?”

“Eve, for mercy’s sake, is it any business of yours?” cries Diana.

“My dear sister, yes; I am vitally interested.”

“Well, please do not pull all the hair out of my head! Ouch! how it hurts! Viva, do not mind her, my dear. Flirt as much as you please.”

It is a month since the disappearance of Madame Orne, and the three girls are together in Miss Kingsley’s room, where the mysteries of dressing for dinner are at their height. At least Diana is making preparations. Eve stands at the back of her chair, combing and plaiting those “lint-white” locks and keeping up a [Pg 92]running fire of small-talk. They are not in any haste, for the gentlemen are in attendance on a bachelor dinner-party and the girls are indulging themselves in loose white wrappers. Viva, in a dainty robe of white mull and Valenciennes lace, is in a low seat at the window.

“I’m sure I never flirt, Di,” she exclaims.

“Why, my dearest girl”—Diana pulls her hair out of Eve’s merciless grasp and faces around to look squarely at her cousin—“I hope I may never see more decided flirting than you have kept up with the gentleman in question—if you intend to refuse his hand!”

“No girl in her senses would do that, I’m sure!” cries Eve. “Mr. Essex is conceded to be the best catch in Richmond—the handsomest mansion on Franklin street and the finest team in the city. The girl is blessed who has a chance to accept all that splendor.”

Vivian only laughs at her rhapsody.

“All you think of, Eve, is a fine catch—in other words, plenty of money. The man that represents it is entirely secondary, I suppose.”

“Certainly, my dear. The money is the main thing. But in this case Earle Essex is really an addition to his wealth—handsome, cultivated, well-born, as good a chance as you will ever have, my little country cousin. I hope you will have sense enough to jump at it.”

“I certainly shall not, then,” cries Vivian vexed, but [Pg 93]laughing in spite of herself, and Diana, who prides herself on being too dignified to flirt, rejoins:

“You have been too cordial with him, then, and given him reason to anticipate the acceptance of his suit.”

“Yes, indeed,” affirms Eve, and Vivian’s dark eyes grow troubled at their verdict. After a moment’s hesitancy, she says earnestly:

“Indeed, Di, I have meant no more than simple courtesy to my brother’s friend and guest. To tell you the truth, girls, I should not like to marry Mr. Essex, anyway, for I have noticed that he drinks much more than is usual at all times, and I know positively that he has come in twice from those bachelor parties so much under the influence of liquor that the servants had to assist him in retiring. I should not like to peril my happiness in the keeping of a man like that—should you, Diana?”

“I should not hesitate a moment on that account,” Diana answers carelessly. “It is a mere bachelor habit of which you can easily break him after marriage, since you are so punctilious about it. For my part, I should not object to my husband drinking in a moderate way. All gentlemen drink.”

“Except Max Verne,” laughs Eve maliciously. “And that reminds me, Viva, that I have some news about your Max. But perhaps he has told you himself—you correspond, do you not?”

“No,” Vivian answers, turning her face away.

[Pg 94]

“Well, I had a letter from a girl in Richmond yesterday—full of news. She says there is quite a sensation in society. Mr. Verne—is about to marry. She has not heard the bride’s name, but it must be a sad mesalliance, for his uncle is furious, and has disinherited him. But here is the letter—read it if you like.”

Eve tosses it into Viva’s lap, and she and Diana look curiously at the white face and the unsteady little hands. Slowly Viva scans the perfumed sheet with its sketchy report of the light gossip afloat about the Vernes—uncle and nephew. The mistake is quite natural, considering the weak foundation on which rumor always rests. The writer has supposed it is the younger Verne who is about to commit matrimony. Of course the reader thinks the same.

“Well, what do you think about it?” queries irrepressible Eve.

“I am surprised, Eve, and sorry, too—not about the marriage, of course—but that his uncle will disinherit him.”

“You don’t care about the marriage, then?”

“No, why should I care? We were only friends,” the proud head held high. “But, really, I must go and dress.”

She is gone, and the sisters look significantly at each other.

“How could you be so cruel, Eve? You know she secretly cares for Verne.”

[Pg 95]

“But they have quarreled, and she ought to know as soon as possible that she can never make it up with him any more. Perhaps she will take Earle Essex now.”

“I thought you wanted him yourself.”

“I did, sister mine, but our lovely cousin was completely mistress of the situation before I came. What use to fight against overwhelming odds? So I have made a friend of the ‘eligible’ instead of a lover, and actually promised to plead his cause with the obdurate fair one—first bridesmaid, and pearl necklace by way of reward, you know. And I have made a discovery, too.”

“What is it you have found out now? I should think you would remember what Charlton said about your curiosity, and quit finding out things.”

“A fig for Charlton! What do I care for his silly jargon? Come closer, Di, and listen.”

“Hasten, then,” impatiently.

“It is this Di. I am sure, quite sure, that Earle Essex knows something about Madame Orne, and might furnish the clew to her remarkable disappearance if he chose.”

“That is a grave charge, Eve.”

“I don’t care. It is a true one. Oh, I don’t charge him with murder or abduction, Di. I have a better opinion of him than that. But a little accident made me suspect him, and I’m certain he knows more about Madame Orne than he chooses to tell. I shall do all I can to get a clew to what he is hiding.”

[Pg 96]

“Well, do so if you can, Eve. I know you will not rest until the secret is in your possession. But do be cautious, and don’t get us both into trouble with your prying ways.”

“Oh, I shall be discreet. I am too anxious for la belle cousine to marry my lord to drop a hint of suspicion.”

“There is the dinner bell,” says Diana, and they meet Viva dancing through the hall with a song upon her lips. Eye and smile have been tutored to indifference, and she has put on woman’s mask of pride along with her dainty dinner dress.

But under the careless smile Viva’s heart is beating in anguish, and she does not pretend to eat her dinner.

“I have no appetite,” she says, and both comprehend the reason. But no word of sympathy can be spoken—Viva is too proud for that. She can suffer in silence:

“It was only a woman’s heart, so unsullied and tender and gay,
Wronged and fretted and broken by ruthless neglect and delay.”

“To-morrow, Vivian, I leave Leigh Place. I have already long outstayed my invitation. But you know the charm that has kept me. I cannot go without your promise to be mine.”

They are walking slowly down the graveled path toward the fountain—Vivian and Earle Essex—and glancing shyly up, she meets his dark, mesmeric eyes fixed on hers with passionate love in their melting glance.

They pause at the fountain. The sunset’s rays are flickering in the crystal spray, and one soft beam streams across the girl’s dark hair and fair low brow, shining over her like a glory.

“Vivian,” he urges, “answer me. Has all my patient wooing been in vain? Does no voice in your heart answer to the passionate appeal of mine?”

A crimson blush steals over the fair young face, and Viva’s dark eyes droop bashfully.

[Pg 98]

Eve’s influence has not been without its effect on Viva. She says to herself that Earle Essex is very handsome, and loves her with slavish devotion. Why not try to love him and forget the past that it is torture to remember.

A moment’s hesitation, and she looks up at him frankly:

“I like you very much. I am touched by your constancy and devotion—but,” she pauses, and then blurts it out. “I should be afraid to marry you. You—you—are too fond of the wine-cup!”

He catches her hand, holding it in a rapturous clasp.

“Oh, how sweet and good you are to take this interest in me!” he cries. “But, believe me, dearest, I can easily overcome the habit you deprecate, if you wish me to do so, for your dear sake. Do you, Vivian? Will you help me to be a better man? I have been reckless and desperate because of your indifference, but you can save me from myself and keep me in the right path. I am like wax in your hands. Love’s power has no limit.”

She is touched and thrilled by his flattering words and his passionate devotion, but she answers lightly:

“Charlton has often told me, Mr. Essex, not to trust the rhapsodies of a man in love. It is hard for me to believe that my influence would be strong enough to restrain your love of intoxicants.”

“I swear to you, dearest one, that I will give them [Pg 99]up altogether if you request me to do it. What is everything else on earth compared to you, my peerless Vivian? Oh, believe what I say, do not listen to Charlton. He is a cynic, and jests at all things. But he knows nothing of love and its miraculous power. Vivian, give me this little hand.”

“It will be the hand without the heart,” she answers, letting it lie listlessly in his.

“I will be content,” he cries, with a ring of triumph in his tone. “Give me but the hand, and trust my devotion to win the tender heart. Is it ‘yes,’ my darling?”

Love from another comes soothingly to the heart when wounded and sore from the sharp pangs of a secret anguish that pride would fain control.

And Vivian’s heart is very sore just now. Max has spurned her repentance, refused to forgive her for her folly. But this man—how true he has been, how he has loved her through all her caprice and waywardness. Her heart gives a little grateful throb, and she does not resist as Earle Essex draws more closely the form so close to his side.

“Mine! all mine!” he exclaims, pressing burning kisses on the listless hand he holds, and Vivian does not say to him nay. In her despair she has made a bold throw for happiness.

Alas! Alas!

Vivian’s engagement proved satisfactory all around. Judge Leigh had hoped not to lose his daughter so soon, but he consents of course, for the match seems unexceptionable, even for his daughter. He does not even take into consideration the young man’s weakness for the wine cup. He will sober down after marriage, of course, so he gives the pair his blessing with a sigh that the time has come so soon, and Earle Essex stays two weeks longer—long enough to persuade the bride-elect to set the wedding for September.

Diana, in Eve’s phraseology, has made her market, too, this summer, and is engaged to a rich old widower whose fine estate is in the neighborhood of Leigh Place. Diana is placidly content, and Eve sinks into insignificance in the new importance of the engaged maidens, but she is a comfort to Charlton, who is sarcastic [Pg 101]on the subject, and seeks less sentimental society.

In truth Charlton is surprised and—chagrined at his sister’s haste to be “off with the old love and on with the new.” If there is to be “marrying and giving in marriage,” he much prefers that his favorite, Max Verne, should be the happy man. He has trusted to time to reunite the estranged lovers, and is vexed and sorry that it is now forever out of the question. Outwardly, however, he says nothing, for he has found out by a fine intuition that Vivian does not like to discuss the matter. Max Verne’s name, once a household word, has become by common consent a dead letter in the family. Diana and Eve might enlighten him as to Viva’s real feelings if they chose. Their keen eyes see plainly through Viva’s mask, and read her secret. But Charlton, who loves his little sister more than any one else on earth, who would give anything to shield her from sorrow, is blind, and does not read the handwriting on the wall, laughs at woman’s fickleness, and lifts no hand to stay the fatal hour that rushes on so fast.

But perhaps, of all the surprised ones, Earle Essex is the most surprised. He does not know that Vivian believes Max Verne married to another, and that her acceptance of his suit was prompted by pique and despair. Hard as he had schemed to separate her from her young lover, he had scarcely dared hope for success. But, believing that he caught her heart in [Pg 102]the rebound, he rejoices accordingly. Eve wins the necklace and a bracelet besides, and is first bridesmaid at Viva’s wedding.

At her wedding—yes, for the fatal day came swiftly. With the bridal trousseau from New York comes sister Viola, the rich Mrs. Huntington, to honor the occasion.

The occasion honors her, it is so brilliant. Judge Leigh spares no expense, and his youngest daughter’s wedding is the boast of the country, even when years have come and gone. All the arrangements are on a grand scale, and many friends from Richmond are invited guests. On this point Viva and Charlton have one memorable disagreement.

But Charlton wants to invite Max Verne, and she flatly refuses her consent.

“But why, my dear little sister? It is not right to exclude his name from the list of invitations. Our old friend, too! Surely you will not carry your silly little spite about the wine to such a ridiculous length.”

“Pray leave me alone, Charlton. I will not have Max Verne at my wedding.”

“Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself! I don’t understand your whims of late, Viva. Essex has fairly turned your weak little brain,” and he flings out of the room in a passion.

But Max Verne is not in Richmond to feel slighted by his omission from the wedding guests.

[Pg 103]

He is wooing pleasure by the sea, and to him there comes no knowledge, that moonlight night as he paces “the sea-beat shore” in pensive reverie and fancies that the waves have a sound of human sorrow in their moaning, that the stars are shining on Vivian’s bridal hour—his lost little love “in gloss of satin and glimmer of pearls,” breathing the solemn vows that make her his rival’s bride.

The next day he goes home to the marriage of his uncle, the next day he leaves for New York, then to Europe. It is only when he receives in Paris a budget of papers from home that he reads the news—first the elaborate account of his uncle’s wedding, ending with the item that his nephew, Doctor Max Verne, sailed the ensuing day for Europe to pursue a course of medical study in Paris.

The next society item details at length the grandeurs of Miss Leigh’s wedding at her country home, expatiating on the beauty of the bride and the elegance of the home Mr. Essex has prepared for his wife.

The room grows too small for Max after this. He cannot breathe; he must seek the open air.

He jams his hat down over his eyes, and going out, chance leads him before a vast cathedral, whence comes a sound of music ineffably sad and sweet. Some great and good Catholic is dead, and a solemn requiem mass is being chanted in Latin by the choir.

Max follows the crowd, and asks a gamin on the steps:

[Pg 104]

“What is going on? Is anybody being married here?”

“Non, monsieur, c’est la messe de requiem,” the gamin replies, smiling at the foreign gentleman’s mistake.

But it is all like a dream to Max, and he never even knows what great and good man that funeral chant bewailed. To his dazed mind, in its cruel pain, it was then and ever afterward a funeral dirge for the Vivian who was now dead to him forever.

The newspaper that carried such fatal tidings to Max Verne in Paris holds a surprise for Vivian, too.

Returning from her wedding tour, she finds that Eve has kept for her the Richmond State containing the description of her marriage. Mrs. Essex languidly thanks her, lays it aside, and for a time it is forgotten.

October sets in gloomily, with chilly winds and drizzling rain. Mr. Essex comes in from a drive down town one day and finds his bride lounging at the window in an easy chair, listlessly conning the pages of the State—a picture sweet enough for framing in her rose-hued morning dress, with a white rose nestled in her dark hair. He kisses her and sinks into an armchair close by, where he can watch her lovely face.

She has resumed her reading. The small hand, sparkling with diamonds, holds the paper steadily, the dark-fringed lashes droop to the rose-flushed cheeks, but about the lips in the calmness of repose, there has come the shadow of a change. The sunny sweetness, the arch dimples of old, have given place to wistful gravity. Her husband’s keen eyes note the change, [Pg 106]and again he wonders, as he has often done before, why Vivian married him. She had owned she did not love him, and it was surely not for his money. Was it pride’s solace for the cruel letter she had received the evening her governess had disappeared?

Suddenly the paper rustles in her hands, she looks up, smiles, and speaks with swift impulsiveness:

“There is the oddest mistake in this paper, Earle, or I might say several mistakes. They have confounded the elder Mr. Verne with his nephew, married the elder man, and sent the nephew to Europe, when in truth it is quite the reverse.”

“Let me see,” and taking the paper he reads the statement, then answers:

“There is no mistake, my love. I saw the old gentleman yesterday, and congratulated him on his marriage.”

“But Eve told me——” she begins, then breaks off gasping, as if for breath, and turns her face from him to the window, staring out into the rain with dim, unseeing eyes.

“Eve told you?—go on, dear.”

“It is nothing—only, you see, it was her error, not mine. She said that—that Charlton’s friend, Max Verne, was to be married, and that his uncle was so displeased he had disinherited him.”

“She told you that, Vivian—when?” Earle Essex inquires with a lowering brow, and with a brave pretence of indifference she replies:

[Pg 107]

“Oh, ever so long ago—last summer I believe. Really, it does not matter when—the affair is too trivial for discussion.”

“I differ from you on that point. Can you remember when she told you? Was it before you accepted me?”

“Yes, I think so! Why do you question me so strangely, Earle?”

There is a flash of annoyance in her tone, and she lifts her dark eyes to his face in surprise, but they droop swiftly, for, in the keen eyes reading hers, shines the answer to her petulant question. He will never ask himself again why she married him. Eve’s mischievous gossip had kindled the fires of a reckless pride that consumed every instinct of the heart it fed on. His wife—the beautiful young creature sitting before him with pale lips that mock the smile that wreaths them—with white arms folded over a heart whose wild pulsations spurn her mind’s control—has married him because—she was maddened beyond endurance at the thought of Max Verne’s marriage to another. His heart burns with jealous rage, but it is not for him to breathe one word of blame. He schemed and plotted for this, and he has won her—“the hand without the heart,” as she had bitterly told him.

And Vivian sits still and fights down her heart silently. She has had a terrible shock.

She would not be Earle Essex’s wife to-day if she had not implicitly believed all that Eve had told her. She [Pg 108]would have waited and hoped for a reconciliation with Max. All the same, it is too late to go back. The past is irrevocable. She is married now. All her faith and love are due to the man whose name she bears. She is trying to give him love for love, and persistently tramples every intruding thought of another. Pure as purity, true as truth, every thought of Max Verne now seems to her like a sin.

“I forgot to tell you,” her husband says, moodily, presently. “I saw your cousins to-day, and asked them to dine with us this evening. Diana had another engagement, but Eve will be here without fail.”

“Yes?”

“And I asked another person—recent acquaintance of mine. He will be a charming companion for our volatile Eve—so brilliant and versatile. I hope you will like him, Viva.”

“I hope so,” she answers, and taking up a book, tries to lose herself in its pages. Essex follows her example, pretending to read, but inwardly furious, knowing too well the truth now. She did not give her hand because he had caught her heart in the rebound, but through despair and pique.

“Mrs. Essex, Miss Kingsley, let me present to you my friend, Monsieur Orne.”

Viva gives her guest the tips of her fingers and a graceful greeting, but Evelyn Kingsley starts at the name and glances keenly at the dark, bearded face of her host’s friend. She had seen his name on the back of a letter once, and never forgotten it. She remembers, too, that the letter was addressed in Earle Essex’s hand, although he had told her that Madame Orne had given it to him to mail. She is immediately on the qui vive, and says to him, at the earliest opportunity:

“Your name sounds very familiar to me. My cousin Vivian had for three years a beautiful young governess called Madame Orne. Is it possible, monsieur, that this lady is a relative of yours?”

[Pg 110]

“Scarcely possible,” monsieur replies indifferently, “I have no relatives in this country.”

“Then it seems that she really had no relatives to mourn over her strange fate, for her life closed with a tragedy,” Eve observes, but the polite Frenchman only bows. He does not show any interest in the tragedy that ended the life of the poor young governess. He tacitly dismisses the subject by asking his hostess to sing.

She pleads hoarseness, and installs Eve at the piano. The young lady executes a difficult march in brilliant style, and Monsieur Orne pays her profuse compliments.

Dinner makes a pleasant break in the evening. At the elegant table, sparkling with silver and crystal and adorned with rare hot-house flowers, loaded with delicate viands and costly wines, Eve forgets her curiosity, Essex grows social and witty, the guest brilliant and fascinating, with all the aplomb of a middle-aged man of the world. Vivian is the most quiet of the quartet, but she listens to the quick repartee, the versatile converse of Monsieur Orne with languid pleasure. It takes her out of her own dull thoughts as she follows the gay thread of talk and laughter. But yet she is not really prepossessed in favor of the stranger. She was conscious of a distinct sensation of repulsion when his hand had touched hers at greeting, and she shrinks unaccountably at the glance of his handsome yellow, brown eyes.

[Pg 111]

It was with a sensation of relief, after all, that she rises with Eve to quit the table, and leaves the gentlemen still lingering over their wine, in foreign fashion, to do honor to the Frenchman.

“Where was Di’s engagement this evening, Eve?”

“Oh, only with her dressmaker. The wedding is next month, you know, and Di is hurried to death with the preparations. My dear, does your head ache? You are so pale, and your eyes are heavy.”

“No, my head is all right, but I feel tired and dull. Perhaps your city air does not suit me. I am country-bred, you see.”

“It is the dreary weather, perhaps, or may be you are homesick. Has Charlton been to see you yet?”

“No, nor papa, either; but to change the conversation, Eve, how do you like our guest?”

“He is good-looking and witty. Do you know, I asked him if he was any relation to Madame Orne, but he declared he was not.”

They chat languidly until tired, but it is a long, long while before the gentlemen come in. Then both are very much under the influence of the wine they have been imbibing. The Frenchman has just sense enough left to be conscious of his condition, and very soon makes his courteous adieus and goes. The host throws himself on a luxurious sofa, and falls asleep almost immediately, quite forgetful of the presence of ladies. His heavy breathing and the strong fumes of liquor pervading the apartment announce his condition very [Pg 112]plainly to Eve Kingsley’s quick eyes. She looks at Vivian’s face, and sees it flushed with shame and pain.

“Earle has taken too much wine, don’t you think so, Eve?” she asks anxiously.

“I’m afraid so, dear. You must scold him a little for this, and not permit him to fall into a habit of taking so many extra glasses, with friends at dinner. And now, Viva, I must go, for there is the carriage, and I have an engagement for the opera to-night.”

She says good-by with effusive tenderness, and is driven away, leaving Vivian alone with her intoxicated husband.

He is awake now—the bustle of Eve’s departure has aroused him—and he turns at the soft rustle of a silken gown.

“Come here, my love,” he exclaims, in a maudlin voice.

She looks at him with angry eyes and scornful red lips, and answers bitterly:

“So this is the way you keep your promise to me to give up drinking.”

“My darling wife, you are—are—entirely mistaken—and—do me injustice in talking so! I—am—perfectly sober, m-my dear, but I—really—feel quite ill—was taken sick at dinner—head aches! Put your cool little hand on my head, Viva, and—and—chase away the pain!”

She pulls her little hand out of his clasp scornfully [Pg 113]as he mutters the words, half-asleep. Then he falls back on the pillow, his eyes closed, breathing heavily, entirely oblivious in another moment of her presence. She stands a moment watching his flushed and stupid features, then bursts into swift tears—tears of shame, of anger, of deep humiliation, and futile despair.

Mr. Essex has the grace to be ashamed of himself the following day, when he recovers from his degrading condition, though in the somewhat heated argument he holds with his wife afterward he still adheres to his text that he was sick—an assertion at which her red lip curls in scornful silence.

For Vivian is angry—bitterly angry with her husband, and gives him the full benefit of her indignation.

So the first breach is made between the wedded pair, and only widens as successive offenses against sobriety open Vivian’s eyes to the fact that her husband is notoriously addicted to stimulants. But society, which is very gay in Richmond that winter, smiles indulgently at his follies, but none the less, at a discreet distance, comments on his recklessness.

It is whispered, too, that Essex is fond of play, and, moreover, loses heavily sometimes. His intimacy with Monsieur Orne is a subject of comment, for it is well [Pg 115]known that the Frenchman is the leader of a fast set of young men who are busily sowing a large crop of “wild oats.” It is a set from which prudent Benedicts might well stand aloof in horror, yet Essex throws himself into their company with zest, and bids fair to rival the gayest member of the wild coterie.

Not that he really neglects his wife. She is too beautiful, and he is too madly jealous of her smiles to neglect her; but there is a powerful influence for evil in strong drink, and the wife, however fair or loving, who finds a rival in the wine-cup, is pitted against a demoniac enemy—one strong as death and cruel as the grave.

At Diana’s wedding, which occurs in November, on a grand scale, Mr. Essex goes his length.

To do him justice, he had meant to be very abstinent that night—not that he deemed himself in any danger—but out of real respect for the prejudices of his young wife.

But a gay company is invited, and wine flows so freely, that he finds himself called on to drink more toasts than are safe for his head.

Judge Leigh and his son are present, and also the fast set of young men headed by the brilliant Frenchman. All the beauty and fashion of the city are represented, and among them all Vivian moves like a star—the cynosure of all eyes—radiant in white silk and lace, with diamond ornament that cost a small fortune. Her father and brother look on, well pleased with her beauty and her seeming gladness.

[Pg 116]

But the mask of brightness worn for their loving eyes, falls a moment when she goes to the supper-room, where some convivial spirits still linger, to seek her husband.

“Earle, dear, I want you to come and dance with me,” she whispers, when she has beckoned him to the door.

“Presently, darling. Go back, and I will follow soon.”

“But I want you now,” and she pouts petulantly.

“But, indeed, I cannot go just yet. I was talking to Mr. Owen about a very important matter when you interrupted us. Let me finish the conversation; then I will come to you.”

But she clings to him entreatingly, pleading:

“Oh, come with me now. If you stay here longer, you will forget to come, and only think how mortified I should be if you drank too much to-night, and papa and Charlton both here!”

“Charlton, indeed!” laughs Earle Essex. “Why, my dear, only look at your precious Charlton there in the midst of the wine-bibbers!”

He draws her slightly forward and points to a side-table, where a hilarious group of young men are gathered about a central figure—a tall, manly form, with outstretched hand flourishing an empty glass, and making an impromptu speech to the applauding listeners.

It is Charlton Leigh, flushed with wine and excitement, [Pg 117]staggering so that he can hardly keep his feet.

“Yes, gentlemen,” he cries, with a flourish of his glass. “Yes, I—hic—believe it is good to take a little wine—hic—for the stomach’s sake! I am opposed—hic—to temperance societies on principle. I—hic, hic—believe that they only aggravate the evil! I will never bind myself—hic—by a pledge of total abstinence! I will always,” here he lurches forward and is only saved from a fall by the ready arm of a friend, “always—hic, hic—drink moderately like a gentleman.”

“Hear! hear!” cry several voices; and, encouraged by their cheers, the orator proceeds:

“I will never—hic—get drunk, either! It is ungentlemanly to—hic—drink to excess. Hurrah, boys! Give me—hic, hic—liberty, or—hic—give me—hic—death!” and wildly reeling and gesticulating, the eloquent defender of moderate drinking is about to measure his length on the floor, but is saved by the intervention of one of the waiters, who judiciously leads him from the heated room to the cool back piazza.

Poor Vivian! a low cry bursts from her lips and her nerveless hands fall weekly from her husband’s arms. Essex coolly takes advantage of her consternation to return to his convivial friends, and his wife hurries out on the piazza in search of her brother.

He is there, hugging a column of the porch to steady himself, and she cries out in anguish:

[Pg 118]

“Oh, Charlton! oh, my brother!”

“Is that you, Viva?” he mutters, stupidly. “What’s matter, dear? Sick? So am I. Go in and tell—hic—waiter to give you—hic—glass of wine. Make you feel—hic—better!”

But she clings to him, weeping bitterly. Her lace dress and dark tresses blowing about her in the cold night air.

“What’s matter?” he asks again. “Cold, Viva? Go back—hic—child, into the house.”

But his drunken solicitude fails to move her. She clings fast to him, dazed and shivering, and when Eve comes in search of her presently, she finds her there in the chilly autumn air, unconscious of her naked arms and neck, that are blue with cold.

“This is your fault, Charlton. Viva will be sick, and you are to blame,” her cousin says, sharply, as she drags Viva off to her dressing-room to warm her shivering form before the cozy fire.

Before the glowing blaze, with a white furred cloak about her shoulders, Vivian gets warm again, but a strange weariness and drowsiness steal over her, and turning to her cousin, she says plaintively:

“I am tired, Eve. Will you ask Earle to take me home?”

“So soon, dear? Why, it is only two o’clock, and we mean to dance two hours longer.”

“I am so tired,” Vivian repeats wearily, and leans her head sadly against the back of the chair. How [Pg 119]wan and white her face looks against the violet velvet lining.

“I will go for your husband,” Eve exclaims, with a thrill of pity for the unhappy young wife.

He comes presently, with a scent of wine and cigars that is sickening.

“What, ma petite, tired so early?” caressing her cheek with a shapely white hand.

“Tired to death, Earle. Let us go home, please.”

“Oh, Viva, not yet. It is not so very late. Come and dance with me first,” in the maudlin tone of intoxication.

“I do not care to dance.”

“Only once, love.”

He drags her up, almost rudely, from the seat, and pulls the white cloak from her bare shoulders.

“Don’t wear that thing,” he says, thickly; “I will not have my beautiful wife bundled up like an old woman.”

What use to contend with a drunken man? He will only make a scene, Viva thinks, bitterly; and, full of keenest shame and pain, follows him to the ball-room.

She feels strangely ill, she is hot and cold by turns.

But he does not get the dance. The bride herself interferes.

“Mr. Essex you must not make Viva dance. See how ill she looks. Take her home, and let her get to bed at once. Eve has told me what she has been suffering.”

[Pg 120]

Diana is imperious where she chooses, and she cannot help but be anxious about her cousin, whose pale face is attracting general attention. So Mr. Essex, unwillingly enough, obeys her mandate, and summons his carriage.

Then he goes to find Judge Leigh and Charlton, who are his guests.

Charlton is discovered asleep on a sofa, and is cross and stupid when awakened. After much ado he is put in the carriage and his equally helpless brother-in-law is bundled in after him. Judge Leigh hands his daughter to her seat, and steps in after her. The drive is not a long one, but to the end of her life, Vivian remembers it with all the pain, anger, and disgust, that thrill her now, sitting opposite the two intoxicated men, whose heavy breath taints the silken cushions of her carriage.

“Look, papa! the first snow of the season. How lovely!”

Judge Leigh and his daughter are taking their breakfast tête-à-tête next morning, for his son and son-in-law are still wrapped in deep, lethargic slumbers. Vivian looks white and haggard in the morning light, and now and then a hoarse cough shakes her slight form, making her father look anxious and uneasy.

He smiles at her burst of enthusiasm over the snow, then they adjourn to the library, where he dives into the Dispatch, and she goes to the window to watch the storm, pressing her cheek against the pane, and gazing at the wild whirl of hurrying snow with fascinated eyes.

But she wearies of it at last, and going over to her father’s chair, puts her arm about his neck.

[Pg 122]

“Papa,” she whispers tremulously, “I am so grieved about Charlton.”

“And I am much displeased with him,” the judge returns sternly. “It is the first time I have ever seen him deeply under the influence of liquor, however, and I hope it will be the last. I suppose Diana’s wedding was an exceptional occasion, but it must not occur again—my son’s folly, I mean.”

“And Earle, papa—oh, you cannot think how the habit is growing on him! I am miserable!” she sobs.

“My little girl, you must not make yourself unhappy over a trifle. I don’t think Earle drinks to excess very often. It is all youth and high spirits. He will soon get over it and sober down to his three glasses a day like your old papa.”

She wipes away her tears and answers plaintively:

“Papa, I used to think that way, too, but I have been thinking very seriously about this custom of social drinking, and I have read some on the subject. You must forgive me for differing with you, but I fear you are all wrong in the lenient view you take of the subject. I am persuaded that the world would be better if it adopted for its law and practice the ancient vow of the Rechabites of old.”

“What was that vow, my daughter?”

“‘We will drink no wine, nor strong drink, neither we, nor our sons, and daughters forever.’”

He turns and looks with surprise into the beautiful, earnest young face.

[Pg 123]

“Is not this a very new conviction of yours, my dear?” with the faintest inflection of sarcasm in his tone. “I remember you used to be fond of wine, and liked to see people enjoying it. You were furiously angry with young Verne because he would not drink at your birthnight ball.”

The hot flush of shame on her cheek rivals the rose as she meets his quizzical gaze, and she hides her face on his shoulder.

“I remember it,” she murmurs very low. “But I was wrong. I wish I could undo the folly of that night. People always repent when it is too late—don’t they, papa?”

“It is never too late to do good,” he replies smilingly. “I am glad you do repent your rudeness to poor Max. There was no great harm done, after all, since the lad was too stanch to yield to your temptation. A fine young man—very promising,” exclaims Judge Leigh enthusiastically. “When he comes back to Richmond, Viva, you must make friends with him, my dear, and tell him what you have just told me—that you are sorry for your rudeness.”

“When Max comes back to Richmond!” how the words thrilled her heart, awaking keenest pain!

[Pg 124]

Tell him—tell Max Verne that she was sorry! Great Heaven! the bare idea thrilled her with despair. She has no reply for her father; only turns away abruptly, and goes back to the window, with a silent, passionate prayer in her heart.

“Dear God, do not let him ever come back—the noble heart I spurned away from me—to witness my humiliation as the wife of a man who drinks deeply and recklessly.”

Poor Vivian! already Max Verne is deeply avenged for the wrong he suffered at your hands!

It snows hard and fast until noon, then the whirling white element thins, decreases, stops.

A pale wintry sunshine softens the keenly cold atmosphere.

Vivian remains at the window, watching the joyous people dashing past to the music of sleigh-bells, and it is late noon before Charlton and his host make their appearance.

Both look ashamed, but at luncheon all their cheerfulness returns, and when Mr. Essex has tossed off a glass of brandy and soda he feels quite himself again. He welcomes the “coming of beautiful snow” with eager pleasure, and proposes a sleigh-ride instanter.

Charlton negatives the proposal, for himself, at least. He is sleepy yet, and meditates a nap on the library sofa. Judge Leigh declines leaving an interesting book.

[Pg 126]

“You will come with me, my darling,” Earle exclaims, bending over his wife, and caressing her dark hair with a loving hand.

“I do not wish to go, Earle. I am not well to-day, and sleigh-riding in the keen air will only make me worse. But I do not wish to deprive you of the pleasure. Go after Eve—she will be delighted to accompany you.”

“I want you, not Eve, my darling. It is only a fancy that you are not well. The fresh air will help you. Put on your furs, while I go and order the sleigh brought around.”

“Pray excuse me, Earle.”

“Excuses are not admissible in this case, dear.” His eyes look so pleadingly into hers that she relents against her better judgment. “Get ready, that’s a dear, while I hurry up the sleigh.”

“I will go,” she answers, quietly, and is soon wrapped snugly in her sealskin cloak and cap.

Soon she is whirled away by the beautiful prancing white horses to the joyous tinkle of the silver bells, and Earle beams with pride at her grace and beauty.

“How stupid I feel,” mutters Charlton, in a tone of vexation and regret. “I wish I had not gone and made such a simpleton of myself last night.”

“I am glad you have the grace to feel ashamed of it, Charlton. I felt much mortified at your reckless drinking, and Vivian was distressed beyond measure. I should feel like censuring you severely, had I not [Pg 127]observed that it was through Diana’s urging that you took more wine than was good for you before she left the table. En passant, she is rather more fond of wine herself than is suitable for a lady. I never saw you really drunk before, Charlton, and I hope this will never occur again.”

“It shall not, sir,” Charlton replies, flushing deeply. “Like Diana, I have a fondness for wine, but I also have a will strong enough, when exerted, to keep my taste within proper bounds. You need not fear for me, sir.”

“I am glad you think so, Charlton; but I should not like to see you thrown habitually among such wild young men as those you were with last night. You are much too easily led into error by bad examples.”

“Yet you use wine habitually on your table, sir.”

“Through habit, my son, not through any conviction that it is necessary or right. My ancestors handed down the custom to me along with their silver plate and decanters. It is an old custom, but whether a wise one I doubt, though I never really questioned it until something my daughter said to me this morning set me seriously thinking.”

“What, Viva? Has my little sister gone over to the abstinence side? She is the last person I expected to advocate temperance—she who affronted my best friend because she could not tempt him to drink,” Charlton ended, rather bitterly.

“My poor little girl! I suspect she is learning the [Pg 128]wisdom of abstinence by a first actual knowledge of intemperance,” Judge Leigh observes with unwonted gravity. “I fear that Essex is acquiring rather fast habits—is too fond of his glass.”

“Always was, sir, and the set he effects is not likely to reform his bad habits; but I hoped marriage would sober him down. If he keeps on this way much longer, Viva’s marriage will turn out a terrible mistake.”

He pauses, but, receiving no reply from the judge, goes on thoughtfully:

“Perhaps you ought to advise Earle about this matter. Although he laughs at Viva’s girlish fears, he must respect your mature judgment and experience. It is a pity his parents died just as he came of age, and left him this large property to dissipate as he is doing. There is no question but he will soon make ducks and drakes of it if he keeps on with that Frenchman and his set.”

“But, surely his love for Vivian will influence him for good,” Judge Leigh says uneasily.

“Time will tell,” Charlton answers, with a ring of despondency in his tone. But he knows Earle Essex’s weak nature better than his father, and has no faith in Vivian’s influence for good over such a headstrong nature.

In the early twilight Mr. Essex brings his wife home in a close carriage, instead of the jaunty sleigh. There has been an accident, owing entirely to his own reckless driving.

The horses, angered by the goading of the lash, have run off, overturning the sleigh, and throwing the occupants out into a large snowdrift.

Essex has escaped unhurt (the devil takes care of his own, Charlton thinks bitterly), but Vivian is wet and chilled, and there is a sharp cut on her white temple. A physician, picked up on the way, bears them company, and his skillful fingers soon dress the wound. Then her maid puts her to bed, feverish and ill.

The physician’s face looks very grave as he turns to Essex.

“Mrs. Essex is threatened with a serious illness, the result of a deep cold,” he says frankly. “The symptoms, [Pg 130]I fear, may develop into pneumonia by to-morrow. She must have the most careful attention, and I will see her again to-morrow morning.”

He leaves a prescription, and hurries away.

“Let us send for Eve. She will know how to care for our poor girl,” Charlton cries tremulously.

Eve comes directly, looking sweeter and more womanly by the sick-bed than she ever looked at ball or reception. In her way she is fond of her beautiful cousin, and looks sincerely anxious and troubled at her sad fate.

“Charlton,” she whispers. “I told you last night she would be sick—did I not?”

A heavy sigh is the only answer. Remorse is busy at the true, brotherly heart. He lingers sadly by the sick-bed, where Eve devotes herself assiduously to the invalid.

She is very ill—there is no question of that. Eve sees it all through the long night vigil. The fever rises higher and higher, and incoherent ravings break upon the still air of the night as Vivian dwells upon the events of the last few hours, murmuring mournfully of “the tempter, wine,” whispering the names of Earle and Charlton, and breathing now and then of some mysterious repentance. And then she is at Diana’s wedding, again whirling in the dance, panting, laughing, jesting with her partners. Ah, it is a terrible vigil, but the morning dawns at last, and with it comes the anxious physician.

[Pg 131]

His worst anticipations are more than realized. There are long days of illness, long days of watching and hoping, long nights of grief and despairing for the watches around that sick-bed, where Vivian lies raving in delirium, and repeating over and over in their remorseful hearing words that seem graven on her memory:

“Wine! wine! wine! Beware the curse of wine!”

November and December pass before Viva comes out of her sick-room, where she has fought a victorious battle with the grim fiend, Death. Painfully wasted, languid, listless, and indifferent, she is a changed Vivian. There will be no more gayety for her this winter. The physician has sternly interdicted it. The slight but tiresome cough that survives her illness forbids exposure to the night air, or any fashionable dissipation. Judge Leigh takes her home for a long visit, and her husband veers between Richmond and Fair View weekly.

He finds the country intolerably dull at this season of the year, and is heartily glad that Vivian readily assents to his wish to remain in the city. Perhaps it is a relief to him not to have her pale face and large, sad, dark eyes always before him. They are a silent reproach to him. He knows now that it is his fault and Charlton’s that she took cold at Diana’s wedding—knows [Pg 133]that his reckless persistence in taking her sleigh-riding has hastened her illness and made it more dangerous—knows in his heart that if his young wife had died, he must have felt like a murderer. It sobers and frightens him to think how near, how perilously near her feet have been to the verge of that “one loose plank” that waits for all the living—the fatal step that launches into eternity. He is frightened, ashamed, remorseful, and to allay the pangs of accusing conscience makes a sacrifice that appears to him a sufficient atonement for his fault. That is, he makes Vivian a solemn promise never to drink again—a promise that sends her back to Leigh Place with a light heart, and a new hope that the future may yet hold some vistas of peace and happiness—a promise that he really means to keep, but which stands the test of time for about the space of a week after her departure. Then, urged on by his constant companion and evil genius, Monsieur Orne, he yields to his besetting temptation again. Alas, man’s vows are “writ in water.”

It is so hard to follow the course of repeated temptations—so saddening to trace the downward path of the weak soul that palters with wrong, and lacks moral courage to break loose from the bonds of sin! Let us pass but lightly over the next few years—sorrowful [Pg 134]years to Vivian Essex, but which bring her to the eve of a deeper sorrow.

The close of three years finds Earle Essex much changed in fortune and position. Gambling, fast horses—all the evils that follow in the train of drinking—have sadly exhausted his revenues. Money does not last forever when it flows like water, as Mr. Essex finds to his dismay. His fortune, never so great as gossip reported, melted fast as successive extravagances followed each other. He had long ceased to regard his wife’s reproaches and pleadings, and gave up any attempt at reforming himself, and was drifting fast down the tide of destruction. The elegant residence that had made him “the finest catch in Richmond” had been sacrificed—had actually passed into Monsieur Orne’s hands in payment of a gambling debt. A suite of rooms in a hotel had next been taken, then given up for a rented house, small and in an obscure neighborhood, where one servant did the household work, instead of the half dozen that did duty on Grace street.

To add to the pathos of it all, Heaven had sent to Vivian a little dark-eyed son. It was the only solace to her sore heart. It soothed the bitterness of the past, the misery of the present, the hopelessness of the future. The unfathomable depths of tenderness, the holy sweetness of mother-love is beyond all telling. In the wounded depths of the wife’s heart this new love sprang like a fountain of healing.

[Pg 135]

Unto the house of Verne also a son and heir is born, and the elder Verne writes himself down a proud and happy father.

The handsome, quiet residence at the West End is quite transformed by its new dignity, and nursery maids invade the house, while the scholarly silence is broken by the cooing voice of a babe, and the rhapsodies of the gray-haired parents.

One spring morning there comes a foreign looking epistle for the master of the house, and an official looking one for the mistress.

Mr. Verne’s is from his nephew, but before he finishes the perusal Mrs. Verne breaks in eagerly:

“Such good news, my dear. There is a fortune coming to me over in England. I am so glad for my boy’s sake. This fortune added to yours will make our boy—the darling of our hearts—a millionaire.”

His dark eyes catch the infectious gleam in hers. What a fond, foolish pride the old couple take in this tender little life that is to perpetuate their memory.

“You will commission your lawyer, then, to go to England to represent you and attend to your interests?” asks the husband.

“Let us go ourselves,” eagerly.

“At my time of life, Clara?”

“You are not so old—only sixty-three,” she laughs. “Travel amid foreign sights and sounds would refresh and rejuvenate you. Besides England is my mother-land, and I long to revisit its blooming shores.”

[Pg 136]

“And there is Max—we should see Max,” he exclaims. “That would be delightful.”

A few weeks later the staid old pair, with the idolized heir, a nurse and a maid, embark on the grand tour of Europe in pursuit of “phantom fortune.”

One year later Vivian Essex sits in the bare little sitting-room of a tiny cottage in the suburbs of Richmond. The carpetless floor, the plain and meager furniture, her worn calico dress, even the cheap quality of the child’s dress she is making with busy fingers, all indicate but too plainly the pinching hand of poverty. Nothing in or about that poor abode breathes a hint of luxury save and except the presence of Charlton Leigh, who sits at an open window as nonchalantly elegant as ever.

“Viva,” he is saying in a voice of real solicitude, “I wish you would consent to let father give you a better house than this to live in. He can afford it.”

“Of what use would it be?” she returns hopelessly. “Everything that papa has given me since my marriage Earle has squandered in drink. Everything he can lay his hands on will go the same way. No, [Pg 138]Charlton, I will not accept any more charity from you nor papa.”

“Viva, let me persuade you to leave Essex and come home to us again. It would be so much better for you and the child.”

Her sweet lips quiver, and hot tears gather in the dark eyes.

“Don’t tempt me, brother,” she answers sadly. “Think of the talk there would be. No, no; let me spare my father’s gray hairs this additional sorrow. And there is my duty to my husband, Charlton; for contemptible as he is, he is still my husband. Oh, I have tried so hard to redeem him, and I must keep on trying still. It is my duty.”

“You’ve made my mamma ky,” cries little Charlie, his black eyes darting angry glances at the offender. “Mamma, don’t ky. Charlie is oor pitty boy!”

“My angel!” the mother murmurs, hiding her wet eyes against the curly little head. “My angel, what a desert my life would be without you.”

Conversation lags a little now, and when Viva speaks again it is to turn the conversation:

“Charlton, have you heard from Viola since her husband failed in business?”

“Father had a brief letter last week; it is a complete wreck, nothing saved, and they have actually gone into lodgings. Huntington wrote that Viola was sick—hysterical, I expect.”

“Poor Viola! Cannot father do anything to help them?”

[Pg 139]

“He has offered them a home with us until Huntington gets on his feet again, but I believe they think it best to stay there and try to struggle up again. It seems there is a small but hopeful outlook for a new beginning if only Viola does not hamper her good husband as she has done in the past. A fashionable wife is a luxury even to a Wall street prince.”

Then he dismisses the subject, and says, thinking of their best-loved sister:

“Musa is coming home next month.”

“Oh, I am so glad, so glad. Musa and her husband have been abroad so many years—seven, isn’t it Charlton?—and to think of her coming home at last.” Then the tears spring to her eyes at the thought of the sorrowful plight in which Musa will find her—a drunkard’s wretched, neglected wife!

“Musa is coming over in the same steamer with the Vernes,” Charlton adds, referring to a letter. “Let me see—they will land in New York about the twenty-fifth of next month. By the thirtieth they intend to be in Richmond.”

“Not Max?” she asks, looking out of the low window.

“No, not Max; only his uncle and his family. It seems Max does not care to return to his native land. Musa writes glowing accounts of his success in Paris, but, of course, you don’t care to hear about him, you always had a prejudice against him. But, Viva, there was a grand match for you if you could have liked [Pg 140]him. What if he did lose the fortune he was brought up to expect? He will make his mark on the age for all that.”

“Run, Charlie, to the gate. There is grandpapa coming,” says Viva. “Well, Charlton, and did Mrs. Verne secure the English fortune?”

“Musa says not. Some English claimants started up, and Verne got disgusted, and insisted on bringing his wife home. The suit at law is still in progress. I am sure I don’t care if Mrs. Verne loses it. She cheated my friend out of his inheritance, and I don’t care if she suffers in her turn, the little willful miser that she is, tramping over the world after more money.”

Judge Leigh comes in, and greets his daughter with his usual grave tenderness, but she notes that his usually florid face is pale and wan to-day.

“You do not look well, papa,” she says anxiously, and Charlton notes that the arm that clasps his little grandson is trembling like a leaf.

“Father——” he exclaims, but the old man telegraphs him a sudden comprehensive glance that says plainly:

“Notice nothing. I will explain later.”

Viva draws a low seat to her father’s knee, like a child, and takes his cold hand in hers.

“You are not well, papa,” she repeats in a sweet, distressed voice. “And I have nothing to offer you—no wine, no cordial, none of the things we kept at home for sick people.”

[Pg 141]

“My dear, do not distress yourself over that. I am not ill,” he replies, gently, letting his hand fall caressingly on the dark head close to his knee.

Her sensitive lips quiver at his loving glance, and she is silent from deep emotion, letting the prattle of the joyous little child fill up the pauses in the conversation.

“Call a carriage for me, Charlton,” Judge Leigh says, feebly, when he has left Vivian’s house after a short call. “My limbs fail me; I cannot walk to the hotel.”

He seems to rally his strength surprisingly when he and Charlton are alone in a room together. His almost livid face turns purplish red, his eyes flash fire, he strides up and down the floor, muttering wrathfully to himself. Charlton, regarding him in troubled curiosity, hears such words as “Robber! Thief! To beggar an old man! The cowardly, drunken scoundrel!”

“What is it, father? Has Essex been up to any more deviltry?” the young man exclaims anxiously.

“Mischief! The villain!” Judge Leigh repeats, in a dazed way, and he continues to heap wild terms of approbrium on the object of his wrath.

[Pg 143]

“Father, please explain yourself. This is alarming. You have had some terrible shock!”

“A shock! Good heavens, Charlton!” striding up and down in wild excitement. “Don’t you understand yet? That scoundrel has beggarded me!”

“Father!”

“By forged checks on the bank. He has gambled away thousands upon thousands, and even overdrawn my account. We are ruined! Leigh Place will have to be sold!”

“Poor father!”

“Poor Charlton, you should say, my boy, for a life of poverty lies before you. I am old! Life’s sands are ebbing fast. I——” he reels, and falls in an apoplectic fit.

A physician is summoned, and does all he can, but human skill is powerless now. Judge Leigh never speaks again, and before the dawn of another day he is lying dead.

To Vivian, whom he had summoned immediately to her father’s bedside, Charlton gave no intimation of nature of the shock that had stricken down this gracious, kindly life.

The shock of her affections was so terrible in itself that it seemed to her brother the additional knowledge of her husband’s crime must have ended the sad young life.

He bore her fainting form from the room of death, and left her to the care of sympathizing women, who came from their rooms with one accord and vied with each other in kindly efforts to revive and comfort the bereaved daughter.

Later in the day Earle Essex, unconscious that his sin had found him out, came to the hotel to offer condolences. Charlton felt a thrill of bitter anger and indignation as he pushed aside the offered hand of his brother-in-law.

[Pg 145]

“Essex,” the young man said, bitterly, “spare your deceitful words. Words of condolence are wasted between you and me. I know the worthlessness of your protestations. I took your measure long ago. Yonder, across the hall, behind that closed door, lies a despairing woman, broken in heart, in health, in hope, the mere wreck of my once beautiful happy sister. Here in this casket lies a man doubly wronged, doubly outraged, struck down to death by a villain’s crime. Man, it is your fiendish work. Go! I spare you the terrors of the law you have broken, for the sake of my sister and her innocent child, but never let me look upon your face again. Go now before I curse you for your sin.”

He opened the door, pointed to it in chilling silence, and Essex, cowering beneath the blaze of those scornful blue eyes, slunk like a beaten cur out of the room of death.

He paused then, and looked at that door across the hall where Charlton had said his sister was lying—“broken in heart, in health, in hope.” He put his hand before his eyes in a bewildered way, and memory evoked a vision from the vanished past—a fair and radiant girl leaning lightly on her lover’s arm. How noble and happy they had looked, Vivian and her fair-faced lover, on the night of the birthday ball. As he looked back through the vista of years upon the pair whom his jealous love and wicked scheming had driven so widely apart, the one of an exile in the foreign [Pg 146]land, the other “broken in heart, in health, and hope,” a pang of sudden remorse pierced his heart, and he felt keenly how lightly he had valued the prize he had sacrificed so much to win, and how coldly he had chosen his own sinful pleasures, and blighted Vivian’s happiness.

Ah, it is true that if there be “a devil in man there is an angel, too,” and for a moment as that sinner stood between those two closed rooms, within whose doors lay on one side the man he had robbed of wealth and life, and on the other the woman he had robbed of health and happiness, he seemed to hear faintly in his soul a voice unheard for years! The voice of awakened conscience, the good angel of our lives, crying loudly to his hardened heart, “Repent ye!”

He pushed open the door very softly, and found Vivian all alone, lying prostrate on the velvet carpet, sobbing in an agony of hopeless grief, her dark curling tresses flowing loose, like a torrent about her wasted form. At the sight there came over him, with a wild rush, something of the old passionate love he had felt for her before the rosy bloom of youth had faded, washed away by scalding tears.

“My poor little wife, let me take you up and put you on the bed,” he murmured, tenderly, but she only shrank from him.

“Go away, Earle. You cannot comfort me,” she moaned, despairingly, and with a thrill of despair he realized the truth of her words. It was his cruel [Pg 147]hand that had poured the cup of her sorrow full to overflowing.

She turned her face away from him in mute despair, and he felt that his presence was an intrusion upon the sacredness of her sorrow. He had no right by her side, he who had become her husband by a fraud, who had murdered her happiness, and slain her father.

“Does she know it,” he wondered. “No, for Charlton said he would spare me, for her sake and the child’s. What if I make an effort to reform, and retrieve my sinful past? I will, I will. I will go and sign the temperance pledge to-day, and try to get work like an honest man, and support my family,” and full of this new resolve for good he stole out of the room.

The funeral is over. Friends from far and near have gathered to pay the last sad tribute of respect to the departed. The long aisles of St. Paul’s have echoed the solemn steps of his bearers, the heavy hearts of the mourners have taken what comfort they could from those impressive words, “I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

“Dust to dust” has been spoken above Judge Leigh’s grave, the bitter tears of the mourners have rained upon the sod, and in the calm shades of Hollywood they leave him sleeping beside the fair young [Pg 148]wife who went before him years ago to the spirit-land.

The trite proverb that “Misfortunes never come singly” proves itself true in the case of the Leighs. A few weeks only elapse before the whole country thrills with horror at the awful news of the wreck of the Hesperus in mid ocean, with the total loss of all on board.

It is the steamer on which the Van Dysarts and the Vernes had taken passage for home—alas, for their eternal home! for the blue deeps of ocean received their bodies in its vast wandering embrace, and their imperishable souls fled to the God who gave them.

Charlton bears the sad news to Vivian in her poor little home, and holds her gently in his arms while she weeps bitter tears for the beloved sister she will see no more until they meet “as disembodied spirits in the fields of ether.”

“Oh, Charlton, it should have been me!” she cries. “Not Musa! She had love and happiness to bind her to earth, but my life is so empty I long to be at rest!”

What can he say to the wail of this poor, tortured heart? Not one word, but his arms fold her close in silent sympathy, and he lets her weep until she is weary. There is relief in tears.

We have left Miss Kingsley out of our pages for some time because more prominent characters engaged our attention; but let us follow her now as she daintily wends her way to call on her cousin. It is but seldom she ventures into that obscure locality, for since Essex has squandered all his money and moved into “a box with four rooms,” society ignores both him and his wife, and the Kingsleys in some sort follow its example. At least she tells Vivian that she would like to come and see her oftener, but she has so little time for “visiting outside of her own set.”

To-day Eve treads metaphorically on air. It is a few months after the death of Judge Leigh, a bright, cool morning in September, and Eve, in her stylish black silk costume, looks very bright and happy as she sweeps over little Charlie and his kitten on the narrow threshold of the open door. Vivian, who is writing at a little desk, rises at her entrance, pushing some sheets of paper into it, and cordially greets her cousin.

[Pg 150]

“How thin you are, Viva. You have broken mightily since you married,” ejaculates Eve.

“The moral is, never get married, Eve,” Mrs. Essex answers smiling.

“The moral of a story is what no one ever reads,” Eve replies in the same light tone. “Precedent and example are lost upon humanity. No one ever believes that he will come to the same doleful end as his neighbor.”

She pulls off her dark kid glove, and holds up a very white hand adorned with a flashing diamond, while she adds proudly:

“Your moral comes too late to profit me, for I have come to invite you to my wedding, chere cousine.”

Eve’s look and tone of exquisite self-satisfaction awake a feeling of mirth even in Viva’s sad heart. She wonders what Charlton will say when he hears that Eve’s “husband-hunting” has been awarded at last. But she says sweetly:

“I wish you much happiness, Eve.”

“Thank you, dear. And you will come to my wedding? It is one week from to-day. And only think, Viva! It seems so odd, but I shall go as a bride to that very house on Grace street that was once yours. I shall set up housekeeping in style, I assure you, when my reign begins.”

Vivian gives a start of surprise.

“Do you mean that you are to marry Monsieur Orne? I thought you hated each other.”

[Pg 151]

“We did—at first. But I made a dead set at him, all the same. I couldn’t afford to lose such a catch for the sake of a little personal aversion. It has been a long siege, as Charlton would say, but I have won at last. And I shall be rolling in riches—even grander than vain Diana.”

So she rattles on, and Vivian listens in silent amusement, not unmixed with scorn.

“I hope Charlton is well, Viva? How does he bear his loss of fortune?” inquires Eve, with concealed malice.

She hates Charlton Leigh, and is delighted at his poverty.

“He is well—the same indifferent Charlton of old.”

“And your husband, Viva? I hear—is it true—that he has reformed and signed a temperance pledge.”

“It is true,” Viva replies gladly. She takes it out of her Bible, and shows it to Eve. “I keep it right here, where I can look at it often and assure myself of its reality, for it seems almost too good to be true.”

“I am glad, for your sake, Viva,” Eve cries cordially. “Well, I must be going back to mother,” rising.

“Don’t hurry. How is Diana now?”

“She seldom writes. Always the laziest and most selfish of mortals, you know. Her life is spent in dressing and lounging, and drinking a good deal of old Shelton’s good wine, and in rating him because he [Pg 152]will not buy a town residence. She hasn’t spared snubbing me since she married old Shelton’s money, but I’ll queen it over her when I set up housekeeping on Grace street.”

“Eve, I wonder if you are half as bad a girl as you make yourself out to be,” her cousin says, gravely regarding her. “I thought once when I had pneumonia, you know, and you nursed me so faithfully, that there was more good in you than you ever expressed in your talk.”

“My bark is worse than my bite, you mean,” a strange look, half sadness, half remorse, crosses her face. “You were mistaken, you simple child, I am worse even then I pretend to be, much worse. Of course I put the best foot foremost, but secretly I am heartless and selfish. If any fair flowers ever grew in the garden of my soul they were choked out long ago by noisome weeds. It might have been different once, but——” She stops abruptly, and little Charlie, who has been leaning against her knee, looking up into her face, lisps in his childish voice:

“Once?”

She takes the little expectant face in her white hands, and regards it intently.

“Yes, once,” she goes on, with a sarcastic laugh; “once I had heart and soul enough to have made a better girl than I am, but—I fell in love. Curious wasn’t it, Viva? and I could have easily turned the other way. Well, the man flirted with me in a lazy, [Pg 153]graceful way; then, just as I began to think it in earnest, he threw me over. That changed me into a devil. Go away, Charlie, to your mamma. You look at me like Charlton, and—I hate Charlton.”

She again rises, and stops abruptly before a small photograph of Musa Van Dysart hanging against the wall.

“Poor, dear Musa! we used to be fond of each other once,” she murmurs sadly. “Oh, how dreadful it was, that wreck. ‘But it’s an ill wind that blows nobody good.’ I guess Doctor Verne thinks so.”

“Doctor Verne?” falters Viva.

“Why, yes—Doctor Max Verne. Don’t you know he is sole heir to his uncle’s property? They say he is coming home directly to step into the property. A lucky thing for him.”

“I don’t believe Max thinks so,” Vivian breaks out warmly. “He loved his uncle dearly.”

“Of course. And he ought to love his memory very dearly, now that he has come into such a fine property,” the visitor answers coolly, and with a parting admonition not to forget to come to her wedding Eve sails away, the incarnation of selfishness and gratified pride.

Somehow, after Eve’s visit to her, Vivian finds it wearisome to go back to her writing. Old thoughts and memories crowd upon her mind. She locks her manuscript into her desk, and sits down in the sunny door-way, trying to lose herself in the chatter of the little child. A great longing overwhelms her to take her little one and fly away to some distant spot, out of reach of the cruel world—just to hide herself with her restless heart, with its numb sense of pain and pride.

Pride! Yes, for Eve’s careless words had set her sensitive nerves all aquiver.

“Doctor Verne is coming home.” Those words beat dreary time in her brain, repeating themselves over and over.

“He is nothing to me, nothing,” she sighs to herself. “But I cannot bear to have him come back here, where he will hear the story of my poverty and Earle’s disgraceful [Pg 155]career. Alas, that he should see me like this—I, who scorned him because he dared refuse the poisoned draught that has wrought me such irredeemable woe.”

Earle Essex, who had been West on a rather mysterious business trip, came home the day before the wedding. He had been on business for Orne, he said, and as soon as Vivian met his eyes she saw that he had been drinking again, that he had broken his pledge. To her passionate reproaches he answered, sullenly:

“I could not get away from Orne without drinking with him. I won’t let him tempt me again, Viva, but I could not resist him, he was so jubilant.”

“Over his approaching marriage, I suppose,” she sneered bitterly, for she hated the wily Frenchman who had wrought her husband’s ruin.

“His marriage?” Essex exclaimed, staring at her blankly.

Viva goes to her desk, comes back without speaking, and puts a large square white envelope in his hand. He draws out the wedding cards, his eyes dilating with surprise.

“Married—and to Eve Kingsley! Well, and I am invited to the wedding. Oh, now I understand why he was so displeased at my return two days earlier than he expected. I was to be kept out of the way.”

A smile that was demoniac in its intensity came over Earle Essex’s dark, dissipated face, and turning to his wife he exclaimed:

[Pg 156]

“Viva, Monsieur Orne has been my evil genius from first to last, and I hate him so that this hour, in which I see my revenge at hand, is the sweetest hour of my life.”

“What would you do?” she exclaimed, in alarm at his strange manner.

“Nothing criminal. Do not be alarmed, Viva. I am going to do something that will make you very happy, dear, but I must go out of town now. Good-by, Viva, dear. I will return in time for Monsieur Orne’s wedding—ha, ha!” and with a wild laugh Earle Essex hurried from the room, and the house, leaving Vivian in a whirl of wonder and perplexity.

“The best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft aglee,” says a Scottish proverb, and Earle Essex learned this truth to his rage and dismay.

He had counted with certainty on being present at the projected wedding. Those limitations with which godly people prefix their intentions, such as, “Providence permitting,” “God willing,” etc., did not enter into his calculations at all. He made no allowance for the uncertainty of railway trains, the probability of accidents, above all, the difficulty of procuring fast teams in the remote Virginia town to which he was hastening, yet, all the same, these delays occurred to him.

To begin with, there occurred an accident that, while involving no loss of life, delayed the train at one station four hours. This proved the prolific parent of other delays, for a telegram from the dispatcher [Pg 158]ordered the conductor to lie over an hour or two at various stations in order to avoid collisions with trains running on their regular time.

Mr. Essex fretted, fumed, and swore at this most provoking detention. It was all he could do to restrain himself from entering a saloon and drinking heavily, but he fought down his almost insane passion for liquor, for he knew that his mission required a clear head and steady nerve. The broad gleams of morning saw the train slowing into the obscure station where his journey ended, yet it was necessary to secure a vehicle of some kind to transport him into the country, for he expected to bring a lady back with him.

A lumbering old carriage, with a lame horse, was all he could procure after the most diligent inquiry, and he set off with a lazy black boy as driver, his mind full of misgivings as to whether he could possibly reach Richmond that night in time for the wedding.

While he is still absent, and the hovering wings of night fall over Richmond, let us gaze, my reader, on the brilliant scene to which he hopes to return in the character of a Nemesis.

All is light and gayety in the superb mansion to which the wedding party have come to hold a reception. It is Monsieur Orne’s house. He has insisted on holding [Pg 159]the reception there, and Eve assents, proud of its elegance and luxury. Diana is there in the gay throng, grown stouter in the air of her country-home, or perhaps through the agency of old port wine, we are in doubt which.

But certainly Diana is not the pale, fair goddess of old. Her delicate features have put on a fullness and redness not at all becoming, and her blue eyes are not so bright. Charlton Leigh is there, too, but quieter, paler, with eyes that have lost much of their old debonair joyousness.

He is there almost against his will, but through an impelling sense of courtesy, and he wonders idly why Eve chooses to flaunt her diamonds and orange blossoms and her wild gayety in his vicinity so often.

But Eve has gone upstairs now to exchange her white satin for a traveling gown. It is twelve o’clock, and one hour later they will go away on their bridal tour.

She comes down presently, graceful, elegant and smiling, and leaning lightly on the arm of her liege lord makes her adieus to her friends.

Gently and quietly, not to disturb the flow of good wishes, two persons pass down the length of the room, and pause opposite the wedded pair. The man is Earle Essex, looking tired, flushed, and excited. He has stopped in the supper-room and poured down in succession several glasses of wine. A veiled lady by his side every one supposes to be his wife.

[Pg 160]

“Friends,” Earle Essex exclaims, raising his voice until its loud, deep, excited tones echo clearly through the room, “while you exhaust your good wishes in behalf of Monsieur Orne’s fair bride, pray spare some of your tender sympathies to his injured wife, who stands before you.”

With a deft movement of his hand he threw back his companion’s heavy black veil, and continued, his voice breaking clearly on the sudden silence:

“Monsieur Orne’s legal wife, whom he has kept shut up in a lonely old mansion in a mountainous district of remote Virginia, guarded by servants bribed to do his bidding, and seeing from year to year no faces but her jailer’s—his wife, whom I have delivered from her prison house, and brought here to confront him with his crimes.”

“You lie!” the Frenchman shouted madly, and springing forward struck his accuser sharply in the face.

Earle Essex recoiled at first, then rallying sprang forward, and closed in a fierce hand-to-hand conflict with his assailant. Before the bystanders could part them, amid shrieks of women and outcries of men, a pistol was seen glimmering in the Frenchman’s hand, its muzzle pressed against the temple of Mr. Essex. The latter was unarmed, but before a moment could elapse the doomed man struck up the arm of his assailant with a strength that turned it completely [Pg 161]backward. The pistol exploded, burying its fatal ball in the forehead of the Frenchman, who fell instantaneously to the floor dead—dead in one second, in which life and time, sin and weakness, and all earthly belongings were exchanged for death and eternity.

Even in that dreadful moment Eve’s burning curiosity made her turn and look into the face of the woman who had come to claim her bridegroom.

It was no unfamiliar face into which Eve looked.

The deep, violet eyes, the delicate, clear-cut features, the sad white loveliness of that face belonged to Madame Orne and no other. She was not sleeping her last long sleep beneath the waves of the dark river, as Eve believed. She had returned to lift the veil of mystery that shrouded her fate, and to snatch from the new-made bride the golden fruit for which she had been shaking Fortune’s tree for years.

The fires of hatred flamed up in Eve’s heart into a destructive blaze, and her eyes flashed with joy as Madame Orne’s slight figure wavered and fell to the floor, fainting, but not dead, as Eve passionately wished.

[Pg 163]

And Essex? He looked down in a trance of horror at the man lying dead at his feet—his evil genius, the tempter who had led him on, who had baffled all his weak efforts at reform, taken his wealth at the gaming-table, tempted him to forgery, made him the weak, dissipated instrument of all his evil designs—lying dead now, gone to answer at the bar of a just God for all the evil he had wrought in his sinful life. Earle Essex, hardened sinner as he was, semi-intoxicated as he was, shuddered wildly as that solemn thought intruded itself on his mind. His voice broke out wildly, impetuously, in fierce disclaimer of the sin that had sent this unshriven soul before its outraged maker.

“I call you all to witness that this shooting was accidental. This man would have murdered me, unarmed as I was, and I struck up his arm because my own life was at stake. I but acted in self-defense.”

There was no dissent. It was true. They all knew it. A score of men gathered around Earle Essex, and there ensued a brief colloquy.

They advised him to give himself up to the authorities.

It would be a mere matter of form. At the inquest, in a few more hours, the evidence of all the witnesses would establish the accidental nature of the Frenchman’s death.

It was sound advice, and recognizing its value Essex immediately acted upon it.

[Pg 164]

And the widowed bride?

She was led to her room, where she cowered, speechless for once, beneath the magnitude of the blow that had stricken her fair prospects.

But she shed no tears over her dead bridegroom.

To her mind his death was the least part of the calamity.

She had not loved Monsieur Orne, and had she been left the undisputed claimant to his wealth she would have accepted her widowhood complacently. It was the money she had married, not the man.

“What shall I do, Di?” she asked, at last, lifting her heavy eyes to the face of Mrs. Shelton, who hung about her with voluble expressions of sympathy. “Must I go away and give up to this hateful impostor all my rights as Orne’s widow?”

“Certainly not,” replied Mrs. Shelton decidedly. “Do not yield one inch of ground to the enemy. Stay here as a wealthy young widow, and defy her to oust you. Make her prove her claim before you admit it. Don’t allow her to spend an hour beneath your roof. Were I in your place, Eve, I would go this instant and order her out of the house.”

“So I will,” cried Eve maliciously, springing to her feet. “Where is she, Di?”

“In the library on a sofa, with Charlton Leigh and two maids fussing over her, and pretending to rouse her out of a faint. All the company are gone except father and mother.”

[Pg 165]

They descended to the drawing-room, where Madame Orne lay helpless on a sofa, two maids chafing her cold, nerveless hands, while Charlton Leigh, standing close by, anxiously watched the white face whose fluttering eyelids and twitching lips heralded the slow return of consciousness.

“Charlton,” Eve cried out angrily, “tell that woman that she must leave here at once, or I will have a policeman put her out into the street. This is my house, and no impostor shall find a shelter beneath its roof.”

Charlton heard her out in amazed silence, then crossed over to her side where she stood just inside the door.

“Eve, my poor girl,” he said gently, “this shock has surely unsettled your mind. Let your mother take you home at once. This is no place for you.”

“It is my home,” she retorted.

“You mistake, Eve. This is Madame Orne’s house now. It is quite true that she was the wife of—of that man,” shuddering. “I talked with Earle a few minutes before he left here, and he assures me that not a proof is lacking to establish Madame Orne’s position as the dead man’s widow. Essex has known it for years, and Orne would not have dared to attempt a marriage with you, but that he held the secret of a forgery by Essex, and thought he could compel his silence over his first wife’s existence. You see, Eve, I am stating the truth to you plainly, that [Pg 166]you may see more clearly how useless it is for you to contest this lady’s claim. An attempt to do so would only draw down defeat and notoriety on your head. Take my advice, give up the fight for a name and a ring that are not legally yours, and go home with your mother and sister. You are in a false position here.”

His well-meant advice only added fuel to the flame of her wrath.

“That remains to be proved,” she retorted. “I am mistress here now, and intend to remain so. I refuse to even consider the possibility of any justice in that woman’s claim. She is an impostor, I repeat, and she shall leave my house at once.”

“Mr. Leigh,” said a low, musical voice from the sofa, and he turned at the sound and went back to her, leaving the two angry women near the door. “Mr. Leigh,” and the words were distinctly audible to Eve and her sister, “I have nothing to say to Miss Kingsley, but I will explain to you that when Mr. Essex came and took me from my prison he told me nothing of the object he had in view. I understood I was to have my freedom at last, but nothing more. No inducement could have made me knowingly a participant in the scenes enacted here to-night, and no inducement could prompt me to remain here now without the sanction of legal authority.”

“You have every right to remain,” he replied.

“I shall prove that fact to Miss Kingsley soon,” [Pg 167]she replied with gentle dignity. “But for the present I waive my privileges. I must find other shelter, late as it is, for my head to-night.”

“I can take you to Vivian,” he answered gently. “She will give you a shelter—a poor one, it is true, but you will find a loving welcome from my sister.”

To-morrow comes the inquest over that cold shrouded horror lying in the long drawing-room of the stately mansion that seems still to echo the steps of the wedding guests—the still form lying low with the crimson spot in the forehead showing where the fatal ball had sped on its errand of death.

The coroner and jury find their task soon over. There is no difficulty in reaching a verdict. Witness after witness deposes to the facts of the case. The shooting is declared accidental, and the verdict is rendered accordingly. Earle Essex goes forth from the trial a free man.

But, alas! he celebrated his victory by plunging immediately into a prolonged and disgraceful debauch.

A few more days elapse, and the dead man is given [Pg 169]a costly funeral, and borne to a grave in the shades of Hollywood. Eve, in the character of his widow, draped in sable robes, follows him to the grave, then returns to the mansion, and “sets up housekeeping,” as she calls it, in rather dreary style, receiving visits of condolence from curious friends who silently wonder how it is all going to end—in Eve’s defeat or Madame Orne’s.

The latter is lying dangerously ill at Vivian’s humble home, and life and death waver in the balance. Charlton sends her the best doctor in the city; he provides her with every needful comfort, and amuses his little nephew daily, thus leaving his sister free to give every attention to her guest. Viva thinks gratefully how good it is to care in this way for poor Madame Orne, to whom she used to seem so carelessly indifferent.

But in one heart at least there is no echo to Vivian’s prayer for Madame Orne’s recovery.

Eve Kingsley, or Mrs. Orne, as she styles herself, feels bitter, and bad, and wicked, and hopes fervently that the sick woman may soon die, and leave her in peaceable possession of the dead man’s wealth. Her relations and a little coterie of interested friends sustain her in her rebellion against the inevitable and encourage her to hope for success, if she has to go to law with the rival claimant.

“I will never give up without a hard fight,” vows Eve, and engages a lawyer to defend her cause.

[Pg 170]

In November the invalid convalesces, and by the advice of her friends begins suit for the ejectment of Miss Kingsley from the premises on Grace street. So the battle begins, and people look on with curious eyes.

The long debauch that celebrated the acquittal of Earle Essex lasted three weeks, and left him in what he denominated a “rather used-up condition.” One would have thought so to see him wandering through the streets of Richmond, careless and unkempt, his beard unshaven, his eyes bloodshot, his face haggard, his clothing soiled and shabby. And, alas! how few the years that had brought him to this pass! Once he had been rich and honored, now he was a target for all men’s scorn. Now, as he roamed the beautiful streets of his native city, meeting only averted glances, or looks of contemptuous pity, he realized how utterly he had forfeited his once honorable name and his own self-respect. He thought, too, of her who bore that [Pg 172]dishonored name, of her and of his child—alas! the drunkard’s wife and child!

He was thinking of her when he stopped absently, and leaned against the gate of a fine residence in the quiet, aristocratic west end of the city—whose residence he did not think of as he moodily rested his head on his arm and tried to banish the accusing voice of conscience that clamored loudly in his breast.

Presently some one came down the broad marble steps, a man’s firm tread resounded on the graveled walk, a man’s strong hand laid itself on the drunkard’s arm, not rudely to drive him away, but in friendly seeming, while a voice full of kindness broke on the sunset air:

“My friend, you seem in trouble. Can I lend you a helping hand?”

How kind the words, how frank and cheery the tone.

Essex raised his head, and gazed eagerly into the speaker’s face. Then he started and shrank.

“Verne! is it really you?” he exclaimed.

“It is I, no other,” Doctor Verne answered, then started in his turn. “Is it possible you are my old college friend, Earle Essex? I failed to recognize you at first.”

“No wonder. The years have not spared me as they have you,” was the half-shamed, half-bitter reply.

“So it is really you, Earle? Come into the house, [Pg 173]and let us talk about the years that have not spared you. I want to find out where the fault of the change lies—with you or old Father Time.”

But Earle Essex drew back from the kindly compelling hand that was drawing him in, and answered somewhat sarcastically:

“Pardon me, Doctor Verne, but I hesitate, because I am no longer used to invitations to enter grand houses like this. My fortunes are fallen.”

“Let me help you to build them up again,” Max Verne answered cordially, and resolutely drew his reluctant guest with him across the threshold and into the library.

“Sit down, Earle. We will have refreshments here, then a quiet talk. I think I know a way to help you.”

“I don’t see why you should trouble yourself to want to help me. I never did you a good turn, did I?” Essex answered sullenly, hating the handsome open face with its frank eyes and calm brow.

“Why, no, Earle, I don’t think you ever did. Once, indeed, I thought you had done me an ill turn, and—it was hard to forgive you. But I was a boy then, with a boy’s impetuous heart. Graver years have brought me wisdom.”

The entrance of a servant with a tray of refreshments checked the flow of speech. But Essex had the poor appetite common to immoderate drinkers. He ate scarcely anything, and pushing back his plate presently with a weary gesture asked:

[Pg 174]

“How long since you came home, Doctor Verne?”

“I have been in Richmond almost a month. Been very busy since I came, getting my bachelor establishment fixed up.”

“For a bride?” Essex inquired, with a curious glance into the handsome face with its pervading expression of gentle gravity.

“A bride? My dear fellow, I am ages past such a possibility. That is one of the follies of youth—is it not so? I am the most incorrigible of bachelors. Why, I have turned my great roomy house into a—Come, Essex, have you no idea of the sort of a house you are in?”

“No.”

“Then I will tell you. I have converted my bachelor abode into a hospital for the treatment and cure of men who are suffering from that terrible disease—intemperance. I receive them here under my care and that of a brother physician who is associated with me in this good work. We treat them well, but restrict them to certain rules, while we pursue in each case a peculiar but approved mode of treatment. We hope and believe that we shall be able eventually to restore these poor, fallen men to their friends and to society as saved and reformed men. This is the Inebriate Asylum, and now shelters a dozen poor unfortunates who are honestly anxious to be cured of the taste for liquor and restored to their families.”

He stopped speaking, and looked away kindly in [Pg 175]pity for the flush that swept over the face of Essex as he mentally classed himself with those “poor unfortunates.”

“Men call me quixotic, Earle, and say I will never succeed in my undertaking, but it is the fixed purpose of my life to do all the good I can in the world, and I do not see any better field for my labors anywhere than in the great army of recruits under King Alcohol. There is no more prolific source of evil under Heaven than this accursed thirst. I have myself inherited the thirst for strong drink. I dare not taste it, dare not tamper with the fatal thing, and my soul yearns over other men who have gone astray through its fearful influence. I pity them, love them, long to lift them up again and heal them of their madness.”

What a light shone in those dark gray eyes, what a noble smile curved the firm lips! It was plain that he was throwing into his chosen life-work all the ardent power and enthusiasm of a strong, well-balanced nature.

There were no half measures about Doctor Verne. Strong, earnest, intense, he carried beneath an almost [Pg 176]boyish lightness of manner, like froth upon the waves, an undercurrent of will and feeling, powerful and resistless as the rush of some mighty river.

Essex could make no answer to his brave words. He sat still, awed into silence by a feeling of abject inferiority for which he hated himself, yet hated Doctor Verne, too; for how seldom can small, debased minds comprehend and admire the motive power of great ones?

But Max continued:

“Will you pardon me for dwelling a little on your own case, Essex? Remember, I knew you long ago, and it is natural I should be sorry for your fall and anxious for your reform. I heard all your sad story long ago, and am grieved and sorry, and anxious to help you. But, after all, I can do nothing without your co-operation. The question is, Essex, do you care to help yourself?”

A lurking spirit of jealousy and hardihood forced a rude “No” from the drunkard’s lips.

Doctor Verne rose from his seat, and laid his strong, white, symmetrical hand gently on the shoulder of the other. There was a magnetic power in that kind, firm pressure.

It forced the sullen inebriate to lift his heavy eyes, reddened and bleared from long excesses, and meet those clear, frank orbs, deep and pure as wells of truth, that mutely rebuked his ungraciousness.

“Take it back, Essex,” he said gravely; “I am [Pg 177]sure you cannot mean it. I have heard of your several attempts at reformation, and I know you cannot have lost the desire to break loose from your chains. All is not lost yet. Try again.”

“It is too late, too late. I have given over trying to check an appetite that is stronger than my will, that controls me like a demon,” moodily.

“You have been relying on your own strength, I see,” comes the cheerful answer. “Try another plan now—come here and stay with us six weeks, or longer if need be. We will help you, and we will ask God to help you, too. Our weak human wills need the help of divine grace to keep us strong in the midst of temptations.”

“You talk like a parson, Doctor Verne,” sneered the weak, nervous inebriate.

“No matter. Maybe I feel like one, for I can preach as well as pray when I get to fighting with the Evil One. But—will you come, Essex? Or, rather, will you stay, now you are here?”

“No.”

Essex blustered it out abruptly, but the negative was not as strong as the first one.

That determined will of the physician was subduing with its alert force even the petty malice and obstinate evil of Earle Essex’s inferior nature. He would have met any other man’s advances more kindly than this. But this forgiveness, this nobility from the man he had so deeply wronged had in it a poisoned dart that stung him into remorse.

[Pg 178]

“I cannot give you up, Essex. If you won’t do right for your own sake think of others who suffer by your weakness. Think of Viv—think of your wife and child. Try again for their dear sakes.”

But his lips grew white as he said it. Poor Max! still keeping the faithful heart of early youth unchanged by time and grief, sharper than a sword’s point in his heart was the thought that this degraded man called his boyhood’s idol wife.

“Don’t speak of them, Verne. It is three weeks since I saw them. I have been recklessly wandering ever since that terrible night,” he shuddered, “and I have been ill somewhere or other—actually, I cannot remember where—with that fearful scourge, mania a potu. I have suffered from it five times in my life. Don’t you see now I am past saving, past caring for? Let me go out from here, Verne; you cannot help me, I am past helping.”

He strode through the door, and down the hall, but Doctor Verne kept close to his side, still pleading:

“Do stay with us, Earle. We could take such care of you, and you need care. Do you know that you look wretchedly ill, not fit to be out of your bed?”

They were standing at the door looking in each other’s face, and Doctor Verne took the shaking hand of the wretched sinner, holding it for a moment in a strong, friendly grasp as he said:

[Pg 179]

“Earle, have you forgotten our old college days? We were such good friends, you, and I, and Charlton.”

Some echoing chord was touched in the man’s hardened heart by those words. He stepped back over the threshold into the hall.

“Yes, I remember,” he answered, in a low, subdued voice. “I will stay, and you shall help me up the hill again, Max.”

It is the last of November, a dreary, chilly day, and Madame Orne is sitting before a cheerful fire in a room of the house on Grace street.

She has found no difficulty in proving her identity as the wronged wife of the late Monsieur Orne.

It is a mere matter of form. She produces all necessary papers, she summons witnesses from New York, she has Earle Essex, who from the first to the last has enjoyed Orne’s confidence—she has, indeed, more than enough to prove her rights, so the discomfited Miss Kingsley gets legal notice to vacate the premises on which she is unlawfully trespassing, and goes home to her parents. Madame Orne, moving at once into the house, takes with her Vivian and little Charlie. There is no need for Mrs. Essex to keep house now, as it is well known that her husband has become an inmate of [Pg 181]the Inebriate Asylum. Worse than widowed, more unhappy than words can ever tell, poor Vivian clings to the loved friend of her girlhood’s days with the strong confidence of old, loving her even more tenderly now, since her own sorrows have brought her impulsive nature into nearer communion with that sad heart.

They have drifted back to the dead past. Madame Orne is telling Vivian the story of her sorrows:

“I have already told you, dear, that I ran away from my husband. Frightened by his cruelty, and never strong, I developed incipient heart disease. It was then that in my terror of sudden death from the daily excitement I underwent that I fled from him. I had never cared for him much, and soon my only feelings for him were fear and disgust.

“I was but nineteen, you fifteen, when I first became your governess, Viva, but I was competent, for I had been graduated at Vassar. It was tacitly understood that I was a widow, and I did not discourage the idea; I was so thankful for such a good home and such kind friends.”

“And I was so heedless, so thoughtless,” murmured Viva regretfully. “I did not understand, or I should have loved you more.”

“You remember the night I fainted in the school-room, Vivian?”

“Yes.”

“It was then that I received the first news from my [Pg 182]husband after I had left him. Mr. Essex told me he was in Richmond seeking me.”

She paused in pity for the wife’s blush of shame for her husband.

“Go on, dear Marie,” whispered Vivian affectionately.

“Then I fainted, and was ill for several days, you remember. The evening of the ball Eve told me—in one of her spasmodic fits of kindness and curiosity—that Mr. Essex some time previous had mailed a letter addressed to a Monsieur Orne in Richmond. I knew immediately that he had betrayed me to my husband. But, dear Viva, I cannot bear to wound you by telling you this thing of Mr. Essex. Forgive me.”

“Whatever you should tell me I could not scorn Earle Essex more than I do already,” Vivian answered with flashing eyes.

“After you went to the ball a wild fear and unrest drove me out of the house and down to the river-side to listen in agony for the whistle of the train on which I feared he would come. There I crouched, ill, trembling, almost stupefied with fear, and some time after the arrival of the train I heard footsteps coming along the river-bank. Tottering to my feet I stood face to face with my husband, and a strong, rough-looking man, most probably his paid tool in his base mission.

“Oh, Heaven, Viva, I cannot tell you how mad I grew at that sight. Terror possessed me, indeed, for turning at that sight I leaped into the river, forgetting [Pg 183]all my fear of death in the strong new horror of life that possessed me.”

“And then?” asks Vivian breathlessly, and Madame Orne answered:

“Then I remember nothing more save that some one sprang after me and seized my arms just as I was sinking below the surface. I was saved, but became unconscious immediately. Hours afterward, it seemed to me, I revived in a close traveling carriage, still in my wet garments, shaking with ague and burning with fever. Yet my brutal husband continued railing at me during the whole tiresome journey, that ended at last in a dreary old farmhouse in a lonely glen. There I struggled through a long illness, the result of my wetting in the river.

“When I recovered I found myself an absolute prisoner, debarred of every liberty, and guarded by a surly old man and woman, who never accorded me one gracious word. My husband in his rage and malice, desiring to visit me with the severest punishment, had prohibited me everything that could sweeten the terrors of solitude—books, music, employment. From the night I parted with you, Viva, until your husband came and took me away, I led an absolutely idle and miserable existence, my only books the open face of Nature that smiled upon me through my grated windows.”

She paused, and folded her small hands listlessly in her lap. Those white hands, so slender, so beautifully [Pg 184]molded, so waxen fair, lay wearily, as though tired, though they had lifted no burden, and known no toil for five long years. After all, it is harder to wait and be still than to labor. Those beautiful violet blue eyes had a tired, far-off look sometimes that made Vivian tremble. It seemed as if they were looking into heaven, and wondering how long it must be before she should attain that heavenly rest.

Suddenly Charlton Leigh was announced, and the shadows of gloom seemed to flee away before his insouciant presence.

“Let me help you to restore your fallen fortunes,” Doctor Verne had said to Earle Essex, out of the depths of his tender heart, and in his strong pity for weak, erring humanity.

He said always afterward that he had some hope of succeeding until that ill-fated escapade when Earle Essex, maddened by the thirst for drink, stole out one night from the asylum, and plunged into a terrible debauch.

All search for him failed for two days, and then Doctor Verne found him the third night lying drunk in the snow at the asylum gate, a stream of blood pouring from his lips. He was carried into the house and carefully attended, but if a single chance for him had existed before, all hope was at an end now.

Doctor Verne found that the seeds of consumption had been long since sown by dissipation and reckless exposure. Weakened by the inroads of the insidious disease, half-maddened by the fearful and oft-recurring hallucinations of that blood-curdling horror, delirium [Pg 186]tremens, the wretched patient had reached that stage where the most that man’s kindly ministrations can do is to smooth the thorny road that leads to death. It was written in the book of fate that “Life’s fitful fever” was almost over, and after weeks of sinking the patient began to recognize this fact with something like rebellious despair.

When Doctor Verne was sitting with him one day he asked him anxiously:

“Shall I ever be a well man, and go forth among my fellow men to mix with the busy world again, Max, or does this strange weariness, this great sinking of every vital energy, portend the mortal dissolution of a wrecked frame?”

Doctor Verne answered rather evasively:

“You have lost all taste for liquor, Earle, and I am longing to see your health improve again.”

There was a moment’s silence. The invalid’s sunken dark eyes were studying the other’s face with pathetic scrutiny.

“But do you believe that I shall ever get well again?” he exclaimed, with willful impatience. “Tell me the truth.”

Doctor Verne’s face grew very grave, even sad, as he asked slowly:

“Do you wish very much to live?”

“You ask me that?” the invalid cried almost angrily. “Oh, Max, cannot you imagine how much I want to live, now that I am cured of my appetite for [Pg 187]strong drink? Oh, God! if I could only describe to you my remorse for the past—my longing to live, and make the future a reparation, an atonement to—her!”

Doctor Verne’s face expressed mute appreciation and sympathy; but he preserved a silence that was more eloquent than speech; for, moving nearer to the speaker, he laid his shapely white hand on the thin, nervous fingers that worked restlessly on the white pillow. Essex comprehended the import of this deep and quiet sympathy, and a bitter pang pierced his heart, but after a moment he said, with manly resignation:

“So it isn’t to be, Max? All my life’s possibilities for good are merged into the might-have-been.”

“Not quite,” Doctor Verne answered quietly. “There remains a final page that you may inscribe as you will.”

“What can I write there?”

“I shall tell you presently—let us talk of other things now. Why is it you have never expressed a wish to see your family since you came here?”

“I have written to my wife twice since I came here—short letters, to tell her where I was and how I was. I left it to her own choice to visit me here or not. She has not come, you see. I can’t complain; I don’t deserve her compassion.”

“Yet you would like to see her, Earle?”

[Pg 188]

One swift, yearning glance answered him without words.

“You shall see her, then. I have been called professionally to see Madame Orne—she suffers from a heart affection—and I shall have no difficulty in managing it. A hint to Madame Orne will bring it about.”

“It is for the last time—an eternal farewell. You will let Viva know that?”

“But it may not be for the last time, Earle. Your case is uncertain—you may linger on in weakness for months, or you may——”

“Go on, please. Be frank; I can bear it now.”

“You may linger for months, or—you may go from us to-day or to-morrow, as Heaven wills.”

Silence fell as the reluctant words left the speaker’s lips. The shadow of the “wide unknown” seemed to fall on both their hearts.

Then Essex broke the silence in a tone of awful dread:

“To-day—to-morrow,” he repeated. He seemed dazed by the awful nearness of eternity.

“Or months hence, remember—life is so uncertain,” reminded Doctor Verne hopefully. His eyes grew grave and earnest as he added: “Let us hope for the best; but in the meantime may I not talk to you of one who can help you to meet the end with a patient faith? One who can guide your weak hand to write the finis to the book of life?”

[Pg 189]

“And the dark beyond, Max? The dark beyond?” shuddering.

“I shall show you the sinner’s friend, Earle. He will be a lamp unto your feet and a guide unto your path,” was the reverent reply, as Doctor Verne, who was pacing the floor with restless feet, sat down to point a dying sinner to the cross of Christ.

A crisp, cold morning in December, brilliant with the gleam of sunlight falling on a thin, soft carpeting of newly fallen snow.

Along the wide, handsome street leading to the Inebriate Asylum, walks a lady, leading by the hand a laughing, bright-eyed little boy. Her slow, languid step scarcely keeps pace with his, and she keeps fast hold of his hand to restrain his impatience.

“And we shall see papa?” he says to her now and then brightly, and with a shudder she answers:

“Yes, Charlie, we shall see papa.”

As she pauses at the gates of the Inebriate Asylum and lifts a shrinking gaze toward the elegant building, a gentleman steps out on the wide porch, and stands idly a moment, gazing out on the sunny street.

He is equipped for a walk, in overcoat and gloves, and holds his hat in his hand, the winter sunlight falling goldenly on his curly, chestnut locks, and the [Pg 191]tawny mustache, whose graceful curve does not hide the sweet seriousness of his mobile lips.

Mrs. Essex, coming slowly up the steps, looks at this man carelessly, then starts and looks again, while a nervous thrill shakes her whole frame.

He is springing lightly down the steps, and meets her midway, lifting his hat as to a stranger, and passing on.

But before he reaches the gate he turns back, overtaking her at the top of the steps.

“I beg pardon,” with stately deference. “I did not recognize you in the first moment—time has changed you—but surely this must be Mrs. Essex?”

“Doctor Verne,” she answers tremulously, and half extends her hand. He does not seem to see it, and it drops to her side again.

“You are quite well, I hope,” he says stiffly.

“Quite well, I thank you.”

“And this is your little son? He resembles Charlton, I think,” looking at Charlie with grave interest. “Mrs. Essex, I am sorry you will not find your husband as well as when you visited him yesterday—he told me you came—and I think it best to tell you—forgive my frankness—that he is rapidly sinking. No excitement with him, please.”

“I will remember,” she answers and turns from him, going down the wide hallway, a slender, pathetic figure in trailing black, for her loved and lost ones. He stands still, where she left him, watching her, the [Pg 192]bitter waters of memory rising to flood tide in his heart.

And this is their meeting. How different from their parting. He remembers her as she was then—so young, so fair, so happy, in the morning of her life, and now—ah, what a story is written on her blanched cheek, on the hopeless curve of the sweet lips, in the large, dark, melancholy eyes.

Relentless time had avenged his wrongs, had pressed to the lips of her nearest and dearest the soul-destroying glass. She had drained to its very dregs the bitter cup of sorrow. It was time he should forgive her, but he turned and went his way with a chill at his heart that was not born of the winter’s cold.

And Vivian. She has no time to recur to the dead past now. She is in her husband’s room, bending down to listen to the failing voice that welcomes her and the child. He lies still, clinging to her hand, his large, wistful eyes roving from her grave, white face to the little child flitting restlessly about the room—the little one to whom he is leaving the heritage of the drunkard’s child—a dishonored name, and the danger of an inherited appetite for strong drink.

“Viva, dear,” he cries out entreatingly, “I wish you would give the child to Max.”

Starting with surprise, she asks: “Why?”

“Don’t you understand, Viva? Our little boy is so [Pg 193]apt to inherit my fatal appetite, and Doctor Verne is so strong and wise, he can help him—save him from himself.”

“Charlton will be my son’s guardian,” she replies. “He will not lack for loving care.”

“I know, dear,” he answers uneasily. “Charlton is a good brother, but—he is very lenient to the habit of drinking. Indeed, I have known him to indulge too much himself sometimes. So he is not quite a safe guardian for the child.”

Viva makes no comment, and he drops the subject with a weary sigh.

“I wish Charlton would come and see me, Viva. Perhaps he can find it in his heart to forgive me some of my sins, now that I am going so fast. Can you forgive me, too, all your wrongs, Viva?”

“Freely,” she answers, with the ineffable goodness of a woman’s heart.

“That is a blind answer, dear. If you knew all——”

He stops, a spasm of pain distorting his ghastly features.

“Do not worry over it, Earle. I forgive, without knowing,” she answers still very gently. “What is past cannot matter now.”

“It always matters, when wrong has been done, that things should be set right again—doesn’t it? I once did not think so, Viva, but things grow clearer to me now, and there is something I must confess to you, dear, before I die. Promise me, Viva, that when you know it you will not hate my memory.”

[Pg 194]

“I promise, Earle.”

“God bless you, Viva. To-morrow, then, you will—come to me, and—I—I will tell you the dark secret I have kept so long. Madame Orne has not told you?”

“No.”

“To-morrow, then. I am so very tired to-day. Somehow I have been getting tired a long, long time, only I did not understand what it meant, and I kept staving off the weakness with strong drink. Do you know I have been told by Doctor Landelle—Max’s friend, you know—that if I had not happened in here that day as I did, I must soon have died in the street from exhaustion. Think of it.”

She shudders through all her slender frame.

“Do not talk any more,” she remonstrates kindly, “your voice is a mere whisper. I will go now and let you sleep. Charlton shall come to you this evening, without fail.”

“And you—to-morrow?”

“Yes, to-morrow,” she replies, answering his wistful smile.

When Charlie kisses papa farewell there is something in that wistful white face that moves her to stoop and kiss him also. Afterward she is glad that she obeyed that sudden impulse.

Out in the wide hall her spoiled child breaks from her gentle hold, and clambering up the stairs disappears in the upper regions.

[Pg 195]

Vivian follows in haste, and finds him taking refuge in the little room we knew in earlier days as “the den.” It wears the same familiar look, though all else is changed. But, oh, horror! little Charlie has mounted a chair, and, with fearless baby fingers, extracts from the top of a cabinet the grinning skull that presides over the room in awful majesty. At his mother’s reproachful cry it drops from his grasp and rolls over the floor to her feet, dislodging from its cavity a crumpled, yellowish paper.

Something familiar in the faded handwriting on it attracts her. She picks it up and looks over it with startled eyes.

“Mine!” cries Charlie, trying to secure the treasure.

“No, it is mine, pet,” Vivian answers hoarsely. She thrusts it into her pocket and leads him away, her face as white as death, her eyes wild with misery.

She comes back, as she had promised, on the morrow, but Earle Essex is too tired still to tell her the secret he had promised—too tired even to lift his heavy eyes to her beloved face. For between the midnight and the dawn Max and Charlton had held his hands in theirs, and gone with him down to the shores of the dark river across whose gloom and blackness glimmered the light of that promise to repentant sinners: “Whosoever believeth in me I will in no wise cast out.”

More than a year has passed away since Earle’s repentant soul passed from earth.

Vivian has been traveling the most of the time with Madame Orne. Charlton has been with them often, but he is glad when they come back to Richmond and settle down again. The dull desk in his law office does not seem so gloomy now when he can spend his evenings at that pleasant home on Grace street.

When Doctor Verne comes to call on them early after their return, he is delighted at the improvement in both. Madame Orne is unaffectedly glad to see him. He has always been a prime favorite with her, from the old collegiate days until now. She greets him with a glad welcome, but Vivian is quiet and constrained. She sits at a distance from them, across the room, unconscious of the lovely picture she makes in her long, white robe with those trailing sprays of white hyacinths twined in the wavy darkness of her hair.

Yet, calm as she is to all outward seeming, her [Pg 197]heart thrills to its very depths listening to the voice of her girlhood’s lover. Every drop of blood in her body seems to answer to his presence as by some strange, occult power. Nervous and restless, she rises at last, and leans from the window, watching the dusky horizon where a continuous display of swift lightning breaks up the oppressive heat of the May evening. A stately magnolia tree looms up in front of the window, and the rapid play of the electric elements among the polished dark green leaves and large, fragrant, white blossoms is inexpressibly weird and beautiful.

“Have you put away childish things? You used to fear the lightning, I remember,” sounded a quiet voice by her side.

Doctor Verne is beside her, watching with admiring eyes the sublime beauty of the night and the storm, for now large drops of rain come pattering down, making weird music in the rustling leaves of the trees. Madame Orne is at the grand organ, waking with skillful fingers a melancholy strain, like a minor chord in the voice of the hurrying storm.

Vivian only smiles and stays beside him, watching the swift rain falling, and the wild gale blowing. How sweet the magnolias are! The wind and rain bruise their white petals and flood the room with their strong yet delicate fragrance. Vivian feels her heart stir with passionate pain, and with an incoherent excuse about Charlie leaves the room.

[Pg 198]

Madame Orne takes her place by Max immediately, but she fears the storm, he can see, by the swift paling of her lips.

Shutting down the window, he leads her to a seat.

“You should never expose yourself to any danger that you fear. Always remember that,” he tells her gravely.

“But, Max, I am quite well now. You told me yourself that quiet and happiness had almost entirely removed my slight heart trouble.”

“But I warned you also that any great shock or painful emotion, even undue excitement, might revive the slumbering symptoms and actually jeopardize your life. I have always been quite frank with you on this subject because you desired me to be. Your chances for a long life rest wholly on quiet, happiness and freedom from the harsher emotions that play on the strings of fear or grief.”

“A stagnant life,” she smiles, but it is a beautiful smile—a smile that is new to her lips, it is so sweet and glad.

“Not a stagnant life, but a quiet life—a summer day and a summer sky. Happiness, not strife.”

“Then I am likely to live long, mon ami, for my life promises to be very fair hereafter.”

“You have a secret. Tell it to me, and I will rejoice with you,” he exclaims in that fascinating manner that is almost impossible to resist.

In another minute she is telling him shyly that [Pg 199]Charlton has sent a little note asking her for a private interview to-morrow. Her quick blushes betray what he has long suspected—that for her and Charlton a new era has dawned—that of love.

“But don’t congratulate me yet,” she continues; “let us talk of yourself and Vivian. I am puzzled over something,” and she tells him the story of that night when Vivian had written to him and she had found Earle Essex tampering with the letter.

“You know I was spirited away so soon afterward, and everything went wrong at Leigh Place. And now let me tell you something, Max. When Earle Essex was ill at the asylum Vivian accidentally became possessed of a letter signed with her name and hidden in the cavity of a skull.”

“I remember it,” he answers, flushing deeply. “That was the letter she wrote me in reply to mine.”

“Vivian never wrote you that letter, Max. The one she wrote you was sweet, warm, impulsive, breathing nothing but kindness and the desire for your forgiveness. That letter was abstracted from her desk and the one you received put in its place. She received soon after a letter signed with your name—a cold, cruel, sarcastic note that maddened the loving, sensitive girl and drove her desperate. She was told soon afterward that you were to be married in September. Do you understand now why poor little Vivian was piqued into marrying Earle Essex?”

Pale to the lips he sat before her—pale and dumb [Pg 200]with agony, comprehending the monstrous wrong that had been done to him and Vivian.

“It was Earle Essex’s sin,” Madame Orne continued solemnly. “He told Viva he had a secret to confess to her before he died—but the morrow on which she was to hear it never came. But could he have lived to confess it, that is what he would have told her—that he deliberately planned and carried out the successful forgeries that widened the breach between you and Viva, until you were irrevocably driven apart.”

“Oh, God, it is too true!” he groaned; “but—the dead are sacred—I must not curse him.”

“And Viva?” she breathes.

Leaning forward, he lifts her delicate hand chivalrously to his lips.

“Madame Orne, may God forever bless you for your goodness to me. To-day you have given me back what I once held inexpressibly dear—my faith in Vivian’s constancy and truth. I thought in those past days that I had won her young heart for my own, but that letter was the coldest and the cruelest that ever struck down a young man’s hope and trust. But, thank God and you, dear madam, I can give her back the faith of old.”

“And the old place in your heart, Max?”

“She has always kept it,” answers this loyal lover.

“I have kept this little memento of you for years, my darling. May I call you by the sweet name written there?”

It is the lazy, musical voice of Charlton Leigh, and he holds in his hand a little silver comb, set with lustrous pearls, and inscribed with the name: “Marie Orne.”

Marie looks up a moment in blushing assent, and he goes on low and tenderly:

“Marie! Sweetest name that ever was written. It lacks but one word to make it the guiding star of my life.”

“That word?” she murmurs in trembling accents.

“My Marie! Shall it be that, dearest? Can you love me well enough to be my cherished wife?”

A shiver of blissful happiness thrills through her at the earnest words.

Charlton has grown into her heart and life so wholly [Pg 202]in this past year that for her the world holds no one else but this handsome, debonair lover.

To be his nearest and dearest—his treasured wife! Can life, that has used her so hardly, hold such sweet possibilities for her yet? Her voice falters from excess of joy as she murmurs:

“My heart’s first, last, and only love is yours, dear Charlton. It needs but one promise from you to make me give my life’s happiness into your keeping.”

“What is that, my darling?”

“Forgive me,” she answers timidly, deprecatingly. “I have suffered so much from the curse of strong drink, and—people say, Charlton, that you love the wine-cup, and that the habit is growing fast upon you.”

Charlton Leigh laughs lightly.

“I acknowledge the first fault,” he answers, “I am fond of wine; but, my dear, you need not be alarmed for me. I shall never be a drunkard.”

“Many men have said the same thing, Charlton, and yet gone down to drunkards’ graves. Oh, Charlton, won’t you give up drinking for my sake?”

“I can safely promise you never to become a drunkard, Marie,” he replies, with a slightly offended air.

[Pg 203]

“But you will promise me never to taste a drop of ardent spirits again, dear Charlton. Then—oh, then, I shall be so happy!”

A sudden spirit of obstinacy is roused in her lover’s breast by her persistency. He has entire confidence in his own strength, and, like many another man, fancies that a pledge of total abstinence is a confession of unmanly weakness.

And steeling himself against the pleading voice and pathetic face, he replies:

“Indeed, Marie, I cannot consent to give up my freedom of action to gratify this whim of yours. I do not believe in the wisdom of total abstinence. Such men as Orne and Essex might have profited by it, but my own strength of mind is sufficient to keep me in the right path. Give up this foolish fancy, I implore you, darling Marie, for indeed you may safely trust your happiness in my keeping.”

“I am afraid, afraid!” Madame Orne sobs nervously, and looking at him in wild appeal. “Oh, Charlton, I could risk all else for you but this! Oh, my dear one, I tremble for your future. Your sister, too—she hates wine as I do—hates it as those only can who have suffered through its dread agency. Ah, you can make us both so happy by one little promise. Will you not speak it?”

“And if I promised, Marie, how easy it would be to break my word! Men often do that, don’t they? Surely you could not base your happiness on so slight a thing as a promise!”

[Pg 204]

“You are the soul of honor, Charlton,” she replies, with fond pride in her lover; “your promise once given, you would hold it sacred.”

“Put aside these vexing fancies, and trust me, dearest, and trust me to be all that your tender heart requires—the fondest of lovers, the most devoted of husbands.”

Tears gather in her eyes and rain down upon her cheeks, her lips quiver, her little hands are outstretched to him.

“Oh, Charlton, my love, my dear, you must give me the promise I ask! It means so much to me—more than you even dream. Oh, do not believe me unreasonable or exacting! But oh, heaven, I have suffered too much as a drunkard’s wife to risk the same fate again.”

But Charlton’s will is stronger than his love. He returns her glance tenderly and hopefully, but with no sign of relenting. He to be ruled by a woman’s will, conquered by a woman’s tears, never!

“I must refuse your unreasonable request, Marie,” coldly.

Her white face drops in her hands, and for long minutes no sound breaks the stillness, save her gasping breath as she struggles to smother her bursting sobs.

Charlton has been heard to say, in his cynical hours, that lovers always fill up the pauses of conversation with sighs and kisses, but no such episode breaks the [Pg 205]long hiatus between these lovers. It grows unendurable to Charlton, that nervous sobbing, and presently he puts his arms around her, but is gently repulsed.

“Marie, you drive me mad,” he exclaims, with passionate impatience. “I will trifle here no longer. One word—will you marry me, or not?”

“It must be no,” she answers, lifting her white face to his with despair in the lovely violet eyes.

“So be it,” he answers angrily; “your prudence is greater than your love.”

He stands proud and erect before her, fighting down his wounded love and pride with iron will, but when she rises also, and faces him, his fierce anger relents at the white and haggard misery of her lovely face. He clasps her fondly to his breast and presses kiss after kiss on her trembling lips. She lies passive in his clasp one moment, then pushes him away from her with a strength born of agony.

“I am going now, Marie, but let me tell you the truth first. I know you love me well, and that it is half-killing you to part from me. Some day you will repent this rash and cruel decision and call me back again. Oh, my darling, let me stay now and save you that suffering.”

“No, no,” she answers firmly, but with her little hands pressed tight upon her heart to stay its mad, bounding pulses. “I shall never marry you without that promise! It is now or never with you, Charlton.”

[Pg 206]

“It is never, then!” he answers angrily. “I shall never see you again, Marie, although I shall love you all my life!”

He goes out with the words, and meets Doctor Verne coming up the steps, but only nods and rushes on. Charlton is passionately angry with his willful love, and equally certain that she will recall him unconditionally in the end. But the suspense is bitter, for Charlton, with a man’s easy vanity, had felt sure of his happiness. Well, it is only delayed, he thinks, only—it is so silly in Marie to hold out like this in the very beginning.

[Pg 208]

Doctor Verne steps across the threshold of the drawing-room, then stops, with a cry of surprise and alarm:

“My dear madam, what has happened?”

She is standing in the center of the floor, like a beautiful statue, the soft, graceful folds of her white cashmere morning dress draping the tall, stately figure regally. Her white hands are fast locked in an anguished clasp, her head droops forlornly forward. Her face is as white as her dress, her lips are purple and drawn back from her pearly teeth in the tense lines of physical pain, while her eyes, usually so soft and thoughtful, are dilated and dark, like great velvety pansies, and stare straight before her with a fixedness of aspect that seem to see nothing.

“Madam!” the young man repeats, in such a startled tone that she looks toward him tremblingly, then tears her clasped hands apart, extending them toward him with a gesture of piteous pleading that says, plainer than words:

“I am sad; I am suffering. Comfort me.”

Tenderly as a brother he puts his arms around the swaying form, and the heavy head falls like a drooping flower upon his breast. She clings to him, trembling with pain, and he bends his head, whispering, with gentle reproach:

“You have suffered yourself to become unduly excited—after all my warnings.”

“My heart”—she gasps faintly, and then the [Pg 209]quivering form grows still, the head droops lower, and he lays her down on a silken lounge and hurries out for assistance, meeting Vivian in the hall. He sends her to watch by the patient, while he hurries to the nearest druggist, in search of medicine.

“Oh, how did it happen?” Vivian cries pathetically, when he returns. She is down on her knees, chafing the unconscious Marie’s cold little hands. “She was here alone with Charlton a little while ago—quite well—quite happy!”

“I cannot tell you,” he answers hurriedly. “I met Charlton going out a moment since, and on entering I found her swooning. She seems to have received an unpleasant shock some way. It is her heart again.”

“Oh, do not tell me there is danger—that—that—” She chokes with a stifled sob, and lifts her large appealing eyes to the face of Doctor Verne. How dark, how soft, how lovely they are, shining on him through a mist of unshed tears. He notes this even while he answers sadly and gravely:

“I must admit there is cause for alarm. She will rally from this swoon, but she will suffer some pain through the day. It is possible she may be quite recovered by to-morrow or it may be—” He stops short, with a strange break in his voice, turning all his attention to the invalid—just in time, for she comes back to life and pain at this moment—sharp, agonizing pain that seems to rend her heart asunder.

[Pg 210]

She will not let them touch her to carry her to her room, so they bring pillows and shawls, and make her as comfortable as possible where she is. Doctor Verne stays all day, and is as gentle as a woman in his efforts to ease her pain. In the afternoon she falls asleep under the influence of a sedative—sleeps, and wakes at last free from pain, finding Vivian by her side and Doctor Verne at the window, watching little Charlie in his childish play on the grass-plot under the magnolia tree.

“You are better, darling,” Vivian cries, kissing her fondly.

Max comes over from the window, looking glad and eager.

They sit by her, beguiling the time with quiet converse, and then Viva asks the cause of her illness.

“It was the old subject, dear—the curse of wine,” Marie answers sadly. “We—that is, Charlton and I—were arguing on the subject, and both became excited. Then he went away, and I—oh, I could not bear it. I wanted him to give up drinking—but he would not promise—so we parted.” Her voice broke in a heavy sob, and she hid her convulsed face in the pillow.

“It was wicked in my brother to excite you so,” Vivian cried indignantly.

“He did not know, dear, as well as you do, how fatal to me would be the excitement I underwent. Do not blame him, dear. Tell him I forgave him.”

[Pg 211]

There was something strangely solemn in the fluttering voice. It pierced Vivian’s heart with a nameless fear, and she cried anxiously:

“After all, might you not have married Charlton and trusted to his high sense of honor to give up the habit we both deplore so much?”

The beautiful violet eyes turn to the speaker—their glances meet—the one tearful and troubled, the other sad and resolute.

“My dear, I am not afraid to go through life alone, I am not afraid to die now, if God will it so—but I am afraid to give my future into the care of one who loves strong drink better than he loves me.”

“Would to God all women felt that way,” Doctor Verne murmurs fervently.

“I am so tired of lying here. I should like to sit in the armchair at the window,” Marie whispers.

Doctor Verne carries her in his arms to the desired seat. She leans back wearily, the beams of the setting sun irradiating her pallid face with unearthly beauty.

“That is so much better,” she breathes softly; then suddenly taking a hand of each, as they hover by her chair, she places Vivian’s in that of Max, and holds both fast in her own.

Something in that act, in its sweet seriousness and silence, is too significant to be misunderstood. Doctor Verne gathers her meaning with a swift glow of consciousness, [Pg 212]and after a moment speaks his heart aloud in a full voice, freighted with feeling.

“Vivian, darling, will you sanction our dear Marie’s gift?”

“Gladly,” Vivian murmurs, with her heart in her dark, upraised eyes; and bending down he solemnly kisses the fair face of his old love—his own again forever.

Just at that moment little Charlie runs in, bright and laughing, and puts a handful of roses in the invalid’s grasp, while he falls to pleading with his mother:

“Come out with me, dear mamma.”

“Yes, go, dear Viva,” Marie urges gently. “Go, and take Max with you. I want to be alone, to sleep a little while. I feel so weary.”

She seems so quiet, so easy, Doctor Verne agrees. He kisses her hand, Viva her lips, and then they go out on the porch together, leaving her alone and quiet as she wished, in the rays of the fading sunset.

“Max,” Viva says, blushing as she breathes the name so long a stranger to her lips, “go and bring Charlton back. Let him see her, and try to undo his work.”

He goes obediently, and Vivian waits in the sunset’s glow for their coming—waits with her heart divided between the suffering invalid and the dear lost lover given back to her heart, never to be estranged again.

How pale Charlton is when he comes, how pale and [Pg 213]awe-stricken in the shadow of the blow they are dreading.

He clasps his sister’s hand in a pressure so close that it is painful.

“Viva,” he says repentantly, “I never dreamed it would hurt her like this. I did not dream how frail she was. Oh, but it may not be too late to undo my folly.”

“Let us go to her, Charlton,” his sister answers with a strangling sob.

She leads the way, and they cross the floor to the still, white form at the window, and look down at the quiet face.

She is sitting just as they left her, the dark head resting easily against the back of the cushioned chair, the eyes half-closed, the shadow of the long-fringed lashes lying on her cheek, a sweet, pathetic smile just parting the pale lips. Only the delicate fingers resting on her lap have relaxed their hold on little Charlie’s love offering, and the delicate buds have fallen unheeded at her feet. But in dropping those fragrant flowers Marie Orne had dropped from her clasp all the transitory things of life, like a child who wearies of its playthings, and, taking firm hold of the Divine Hand, had gone “across Death’s dim hills,” to that land where “there is no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither any more pain; for the former things have passed away.”

[Pg 214]

“Your story is ending too sadly,” say some of my readers to me—light-hearted friends, who love that all should go merrily as marriage bells.

Dear friends, I have written this story to warn you, not to amuse you. I have tried to show you in one man the evil results of intemperance, in another the dignity and glory of total abstinence.

I have tried to show my sister-woman that she, after all, is the greatest sufferer from the curse of wine, and that she should set her face against it as a flint, dread it as a serpent coiling in her path, and fight the way inch by inch with the deadly destroyer, fight for total abstinence, fight for every moral right and every legal law to chain the demon in his lair. There is not under heaven a more forlorn and miserable creature than a drunkard’s hapless wife.

[Pg 216]

Few stories of intemperance ever end in real life even as well as this fiction I have woven to point a moral for the thoughtful reader. Few women ever find their martyrdom ended save with life.

For Vivian, our sweet heroine, the clouds that overshadowed her sky have happily passed away, but there are anguished memories, haunting regrets that will not pass save with life.

She whose thoughtless little hand once held the tempting glass of wine to another’s lips will tremble [Pg 217]and shudder now at a glimpse of “the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup.” She will not cross the threshold of Doctor Verne’s successful Inebriate Asylum, because her very heart grows sick within her at sight of the poor, struggling victims of the Destroyer, out of whose power her noble husband lifts so many souls, sending them forth to the world again cured of their madness.

One picture more ere we close the story of those eventful years.

We leave fair Vivian at Leigh Place, where we saw her first. Madame Orne’s will, made many months before her sudden death, divided her property equally between Vivian and her brother, and especially desired that their old home, lost to them through Earle Essex’s sin, might be repurchased for their summer home. Vivian complied with her wish, but Charlton donated the whole amount of his bequest to the famous Inebriate Asylum. The only souvenir he retains of her is the little silver comb.

Charlton is growing into an old bachelor now. People say he will never marry, and tell him he has no heart; at which Charlton laughs in his old cynical way, and replies that “there is an aching void in its place.” Perhaps it is true.

Anyway, Charlton Leigh is a changed man, though outwardly the careless cynic of old. He has looked upon life’s graver aspects now, has buried the best of [Pg 218]his hopes in a woman’s grave, and long ago yielded to Marie’s memory dead what he would not yield to her living love—his pledge of total abstinence.

As for the Kingsleys, Vivian and Charlton see little of them. Diana has grown fat, and is more selfish than ever. Eve is a sour old maid still looking for the rich husband she will never get.

A summer sunset in the golden days of June—a lady waiting on the long piazza at Leigh Place, a lovely lady, dark-haired and dark-eyed, clad in a fresh white gown with pink roses at her waist. She alternately plays with her beautiful, frolicsome little boy, pelting him with roses, or watches the winding paths of the lawn for her husband who returns to-day from Richmond. He is punctual to the hour, and presently she is flying down the steps for his glad kiss of greeting.

“My darling,” murmurs Doctor Verne, and draws her aside into a shady bower wreathed with honeysuckle and roses, “how cool, how sweet, how lovely you look—like Tennyson’s ‘queen rose of the rosebud garden.’”

She laughs softly at his lover-like praises.

“You are growing poetical, like the Max I knew of old.”

“That reminds me!” he exclaimed smilingly. “I have brought you, my darling, a new volume of poems. They attracted much attention by their simple beauty, in the magazines for several years, and now they have [Pg 219]been collected in a sweet little book, under the author’s nom de plume, with a pathetic dedication, ‘To the memory of Marie.’”

He turns a tender, quizzical glance on her face and it flushes like the roses at her belt.

“Why don’t you share your secret with me, darling? I knew it long ago from our dear lost Marie,” says the proud husband.

“I meant to tell you to-day, but—I was timid. They are such trifles—written,” she says sadly, “to keep the wolf from the door in those dark days.”

He draws her more closely within the clasp of his loving arms.

“My Vivian, ever since I knew you I have worshiped your beauty, and grace, and sweetness. Words alone could never tell you how much more I have loved the pure white soul and gifted mind that won this laurel for your womanly brow.”

Do women ever feel the strong stirrings of ambition, I wonder, or do they only write as the birds sing, because they cannot keep all the music in their hearts? Sometimes I think the latter, for Vivian lets the pretty blue-and-gold volume slide down to the grass unheeded, and touching with one taper finger the spot his lips had pressed on her brow a moment ago, answers, with a smile and a tear:

“Max, dear, I prize your loving caress as a dearer trophy than the laurel!”

THE END.

No author’s works have ever elicited so much heartfelt praise as those of Mrs. Sheldon. Her bright, fascinating stories have enabled thousands to pass happy, well spent hours which ordinarily would have been filled with care. Every book is a masterpiece. The following is a list of those published in the Eagle Series at 10c. These books can be had in no other line.

1. Queen Bess.
2. Ruby’s Reward.
7. Two Keys.
12. Edrie’s Legacy.
44. That Dowdy.
55. Thrice Wedded.
66. Witch Hazel.
77. Tina.
88. Virgie’s Inheritance.
99. Audrey’s Recompense.
111. Faithful Shirley.
122. Grazia’s Mistake.
133. Max.
144. Dorothy’s Jewels.
155. Nameless Dell.
166. The Masked Bridal.
177. A True Aristocrat.
188. Dorothy Arnold’s Escape.
199. Geoffrey’s Victory.
210. Wild Oats.
219. Lost, A Pearle.
222. The Lily of Mordaunt.
233. Nora.
244. A Hoiden’s Conquest.
255. The Little Marplot.
266. The Wellfleet Mystery.
277. Brownie’s Triumph.
282. The Forsaken Bride.

For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid by the publishers, upon receipt of price and 4c. additional to cover postage.

STREET & SMITH, PUBLISHERS
238 WILLIAM STREET                          NEW YORK

Few author’s writings have so suddenly bounded into favor as have those of Charles Garvice. Few authors have written such interesting, original tales, so full of love, pathos and humor. Every one of the following, published in our Eagle Series, is calculated to chase dull care away:

17. Leslie’s Loyalty.
22. Elaine.
24. A Wasted Love.
41. Her Heart’s Desire.
50. Her Ransom.
73. The Marquis.
85. Lorrie; or, Hollow Gold.
98. Claire.
117. She Loved Him.
174. His Guardian Angel.
203. Only One Love.
215. Only a Girl’s Love.
223. Leola Dale’s Fortune.
231. The Earl’s Heir.
236. Her Humble Lover.
242. A Wounded Heart.
250. A Woman’s Soul.
257. A Martyred Love.
267. Jeanne.
268. Olivia.
272. So Fair, So False.
276. So Nearly Lost.
280. Love’s Dilemma.
283. My Lady Pride.
287. The Lady of Darracourt.
292. For Her Only.
296. The Heir of Vering.

These books can be had of all newsdealers, or sent direct upon receipt of price, 10c., and 4c. additional to cover postage.

Street & Smith, Publishers,
238 WILLIAM STREET,       NEW YORK.

A new story by this very popular writer of love fiction. Every reader will be thoroughly enraptured with the heroine, a demure, innocent little lass, who is most cruelly persecuted. It will be published as

Eagle Series 299        Price, 10c.

At all newsdealers, or sent, postpaid by the publishers, upon receipt of price and 4c. additional to cover postage.

STREET & SMITH, Publishers
238 William Street,        New York City