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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Forsaken Inn, by Anna Katharine Green
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Forsaken Inn
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Anna Katharine Green
+
+Release Date: November 27, 2007 [EBook #23641]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FORSAKEN INN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE FORSAKEN INN
+
+A NOVEL
+
+BY
+
+ANNA KATHARINE GREEN
+
+Author of
+
+"The Leavenworth Case," "A Matter of Millions," "Behind Closed Doors,"
+etc.
+
+        GROSSET & DUNLAP
+        Publishers      New York
+
+
+        COPYRIGHT, 1889 and 1890
+        BY ROBERT BONNER'S SONS
+
+        COPYRIGHT, 1909
+        THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
+
+
+TO MY HUSBAND.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+
+        CHAPTER                          PAGE
+
+            I. THE OAK PARLOR               5
+
+           II. BURRITT                     25
+
+          III. A FEARFUL DISCOVERY         37
+
+           IV. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS       60
+
+            V. AN INTERIM OF SUSPENSE      71
+
+           VI. THE RECLUSE                 78
+
+          VII. TWO WOMEN                   91
+
+         VIII. A SUDDEN BETROTHAL         110
+
+           IX. MARAH                      116
+
+            X. AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS  130
+
+           XI. HONORA                     136
+
+          XII. EDWIN URQUHART             142
+
+         XIII. BEFORE THE WEDDING         148
+
+          XIV. A CASSANDRA AT THE GATE    160
+
+           XV. THE CATASTROPHE            171
+
+          XVI. A DREAM ENDED              185
+
+         XVII. STRANGE GUESTS             195
+
+        XVIII. MRS. TRUAX TALKS           204
+
+          XIX. IN THE HALLS AT MIDNIGHT   223
+
+           XX. THE STONE IN THE GARDEN    232
+
+          XXI. IN THE OAK PARLOR          247
+
+         XXII. A SURPRISE FOR HONORA      288
+
+        XXIII. IN THE SECRET CHAMBER      301
+
+         XXIV. THE MARQUIS                312
+
+          XXV. MARK FELT                  318
+
+         XXVI. FOR THE LAST TIME          330
+
+        XXVII. A LAST WORD                334
+
+
+
+
+THE FORSAKEN INN.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE OAK PARLOR.
+
+
+[Illustration: I]
+
+I was riding between Albany and Poughkeepsie. It was raining furiously,
+and my horse, already weary with long travel, gave unmistakable signs of
+discouragement. I was, therefore, greatly relieved when, in the most
+desolate part of the road, I espied rising before me the dim outlines of
+a house, and was correspondingly disappointed when, upon riding forward,
+I perceived that it was but a deserted ruin I was approaching, whose
+fallen chimneys and broken windows betrayed a dilapidation so great
+that I could scarcely hope to find so much as a temporary shelter
+therein.
+
+Nevertheless, I was so tired of the biting storm that I involuntarily
+stopped before the decayed and forbidding structure, and was, in truth,
+withdrawing my foot from the stirrup, when I heard an unexpected
+exclamation behind me, and turning, saw a chaise, from the open front of
+which leaned a gentleman of most attractive appearance.
+
+"What are you going to do?" he asked.
+
+"Hide my head from the storm," was my hurried rejoinder. "I am tired,
+and so is my horse, and the town, according to all appearances, must be
+at least two miles distant."
+
+"No matter if it is three miles! You must not take shelter in that
+charnel-house," he muttered; and moved along in his seat as if to show
+me there was room beside him.
+
+"Why," I exclaimed, struck with sudden curiosity, "is this one of the
+haunted houses we hear of? If so, I shall certainly enter, and be much
+obliged to the storm for driving me into so interesting a spot." I
+thought he looked embarrassed. At all events, I am sure he hesitated for
+a moment whether or not to ride on and leave me to my fate. But his
+better impulses seemed to prevail, for he suddenly cried: "Get in with
+me, and leave mysteries alone. If you want to come back here after you
+have learned the history of that house, you can do so; but first ride on
+to town and have a good meal. Your horse will follow easily enough after
+he is rid of your weight."
+
+It was too tempting an offer to be refused; so thankfully accepting his
+kindness, I alighted from my horse, and after tying him to the back of
+the chaise, got in with this genial stranger. As I did so I caught
+another view of the ruin I had been so near entering.
+
+"Good gracious!" I exclaimed, pointing to the structure that, with its
+projecting upper story and ghastly apertures, presented a most
+suggestive appearance, "if it does not look like a skull!"
+
+My companion shrugged his shoulders, but did not reply. The comparison
+was evidently not a new one to him.
+
+That evening, in a comfortable inn parlor, I read the following
+manuscript. It was placed in my hands by this kindly stranger, who in so
+doing explained that it had been written by the last occupant of the
+old inn I was so nearly on the point of investigating. She had been its
+former landlady, and had clung to the ancient house long after decay had
+settled upon its doorstep and desolation breathed from its gaping
+windows. She died in its north room, and from under her pillow the
+discolored leaves were taken, the words of which I now place before you.
+
+
+        JANUARY 28, 1775.
+
+I do not understand myself. I do not understand my doubts nor can I
+analyze my fears. When I saw the carriage drive off, followed by the
+wagon with its inexplicable big box, I thought I should certainly regain
+my former serenity. But I am more uneasy than ever. I cannot rest, and
+keep going over and over in my mind the few words that passed between us
+in their short stay under my roof. It is her face that haunts me. It
+must be that, for it had a strange look of trouble in it as well as
+sickness; but neither can I forget his, so fair, so merry, and yet so
+unpleasant, especially when he glanced at her and--as I could not help
+but think before they went away--when he glanced at me. I do not like
+him, and the chills creep over me whenever I remember his laugh, which
+was much too frequent to be decent, considering how poorly his young
+wife looked.
+
+They are gone, and their belongings with them; but I am as much afraid
+as if they were still here. Why? That is what I cannot tell. I sit in
+the room where they slept, and feel as strange and terrified as if I had
+encountered a ghost there. I dread to stay and dread to move and write,
+because I must relieve myself in some way--that is, if I am to have any
+sleep to-night. Am I ill, or was there something unexplained and
+mysterious in their actions? Let me go over the past and see.
+
+They came last evening about twilight. I was in the front of the house,
+and seeing such a good-looking couple in the carriage, and such a pile
+of baggage with them that they had to have an extra wagon to carry it, I
+ran out in all haste to welcome them. She had a veil drawn over her
+face, and it was so thick that I could not see her features, but her
+figure was slight and graceful, and I took a fancy to her at once,
+perhaps because she held her arms out when she saw me, as if she thought
+she beheld in me a friend. He did not please me so well, though there
+is no gainsaying that he is handsome enough, and speaks, when he wishes
+to, with a great deal of courtesy. But I thought he ought to give his
+attention to his young and ailing wife, instead of being so concerned
+about his baggage. Had that big box of his contained gold, he could not
+have looked at it more lovingly or been more anxious about its handling.
+He said it held books; but, pshaw! what is there in books, that a man
+should love them better than his wife, and watch over their welfare with
+the utmost concern, while allowing a stranger to help her out of the
+carriage and up the inn steps?
+
+But I will not dwell any longer upon this. Men are strange beings, and
+must not be judged by rules that apply to women. Let me see if I can
+remember when it was that I first saw her face. Ah, yes; it was in the
+parlor. She had taken a seat there while her husband looked through the
+house and decided which room to take. There were four empty, and two of
+them were the choicest and airiest in the inn, but he passed by these
+and insisted upon taking one that was stuffy with disuse, because it was
+on the ground floor, and so convenient for us to bring his great box
+into.
+
+His great box! I was so provoked at this everlasting concern about his
+great box, that I ran to the parlor, intending to ask the lady herself
+to interfere. But when I got to the threshold I paused, and did not
+speak, for the lady--or Mrs. Urquhart, as I presently found she called
+herself--had risen from her seat and was looking in the glass with an
+expression so sad and searching that I forgot my errand and only thought
+of comforting her. But the moment she heard my step she drew down the
+veil which she had tossed back, and coming quickly toward me, asked if
+her husband had chosen a room.
+
+I answered in the affirmative, and began to complain that it was not a
+very cheerful one. But she paid small attention to my words, and
+presently I found myself following her to the apartment designated. She
+entered, making a picture, as she crossed the threshold, which I shall
+not readily forget. For in her short, quick walk down the hall she had
+torn the bonnet from her head, and though she was not a strictly
+beautiful woman, she was sufficiently interesting to make her every
+movement attractive. But that is not all. For some reason the moment
+possessed an importance for her which I could not measure. I saw it in
+her posture, in the pallor of her cheeks and the uprightness of her
+carriage. The sudden halt she made at the threshold, the half-startled
+exclamation she gave as her eyes fell on the interior, all showed that
+she was laboring under some secret agitation. But what was the cause of
+that agitation I have not been able to determine. She went in, but as
+she did so, I heard her murmur:
+
+"Oak walls! Ah, my soul! it has come soon!"
+
+Not a very intelligible exclamation, you will allow, but as intelligible
+as her whole conduct. For in another moment every sign of emotion had
+left her, and she stood quite calm and cold in the center of the room.
+But her pallor remained, and I cannot make sure now whether this
+betokened weary resignation or some secret and but half recognized fear.
+
+Had I looked at him instead of at her, I might have understood the
+situation better. But, though I dimly perceived his form drawn up in the
+empty space at the left of the door, it was not until she had passed him
+and flung herself into a chair, that I thought to look in his direction.
+Then it was too late, for he had turned his face aside and was gazing
+with rather an obtrusive curiosity at the old-fashioned room, murmuring,
+as he did so, some such commonplaces to his wife as:
+
+"I hope you are not fatigued, my dear. Fine old house, this. Quite
+English in style, eh?"
+
+To all of which she answered with a nod or word, till suddenly, without
+look or warning, she slipped from her chair and lay perfectly insensible
+upon the dark boards of the worm-eaten floor.
+
+I uttered an exclamation, and so did he; but it was my arms that lifted
+her and laid her on the bed. He stood as if frozen to his place for a
+moment, then he mechanically lifted his foot and set it with an air of
+proprietorship on the box before which he had been standing.
+
+"Strange and inexplicable conduct," thought I, and looked the
+indignation I could not but feel. Instantly he left his position and
+hastened to my side, offering his assistance and advice with that
+heartless officiousness which is so unbearable when life and death are
+at stake.
+
+I accepted as little of his help as was possible, and when, after
+persistent effort on my part, I saw her lids fluttering and her breast
+heaving, I turned to him with as inoffensive an air as my mingled
+dislike and distrust would admit, and asked how long they had been
+married. He flushed violently, and with a sudden rage that at once
+robbed him of that gentlemanly appearance which, in him, was but the
+veneer to a coarse and brutal nature, he exclaimed:
+
+"---- you! and by what right do you ask that?"
+
+But before I could reply he recovered himself and was all false polish
+again, bowing with exaggerated politeness, as he exclaimed:
+
+"Excuse me; I have had much to disturb me lately. My wife's health has
+been very feeble for months, and I am worn out with anxiety and
+watching. We are now on our way to a warmer climate, where I hope she
+will be quite restored."
+
+And he smiled a very strange and peculiar smile, that went out like a
+suddenly extinguished candle, as he perceived her eyes suddenly open,
+and her gaze pass reluctantly around the room, as if forced to a
+curiosity against which she secretly rebelled.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"I think Mrs. Urquhart will do very well now," was his hurried remark at
+this sight. He evidently wished to be rid of me, and though I hated
+to leave her, I really found nothing to say in contradiction to his
+statement, for she certainly looked completely restored. I therefore
+turned away with a heavy heart toward the door, when the young wife,
+suddenly throwing out her arms, exclaimed:
+
+"Do not leave me in this horrible room alone! I am afraid of
+it--actually afraid! Couldn't you have found some spot in the house less
+gloomy, Edwin?"
+
+I came back.
+
+"There are plenty of rooms--" I began.
+
+But he interrupted me without any ceremony.
+
+"I chose this room, Honora, for its convenience. There is nothing
+horrible about it, and when the lamps are lit you will find it quite
+pleasant. Do not be foolish. We sleep here or nowhere, for I cannot
+consent to go upstairs."
+
+She answered nothing, but I saw her eyes go traveling once again around
+the walls, followed in a furtive way by his. Whereupon I looked about
+me, too, and tried to get a stranger's impression of the place. I was
+astonished at its effect upon my imagination. Though I had been in and
+out of the room fifty times before I had never noticed till now the
+extreme dismalness and desolation of its appearance.
+
+Once used as an auxiliary parlor, it had that air of uninhabitableness
+which clings to such rooms, together with a certain something else,
+equally unpleasant, to which at that moment I could give no name, and
+for which I could neither find then nor now any sufficient reason. It
+was paneled with oak far above our heads, and as the walls above had
+become gray with smoke, there was absolutely no color in the room, not
+even in the hangings of the gaunt four-poster that loomed dreary and
+repelling from one end of the room. For here, as elsewhere, time had
+been at work, and tints that were once bright enough had gradually been
+subdued by dust and smoke into one uniform dimness. The floor was black,
+the fireplace empty, the walls without a picture, and yet it was neither
+from this grayness nor from this barrenness that one recoiled. It was
+from something else--something that went deeper than the lack of charm
+or color--something that clung to the walls like a contagion and caught
+at the heart-strings where they are weakest, smothering hope and
+awakening horror, till in each faded chair a ghost seemed sitting,
+gazing at you with immovable eyes that could tell tales, but would not.
+
+There was but one window in the room, and that looked toward the west.
+But the light that should have entered there was frightened, also, and
+halted on the ledge without, balked by the thick curtains that heavily
+enshrouded it. A haunted chamber! or so it appeared at that moment to my
+somewhat excited fancy, and for the first time in my life, here, I felt
+a dread of my own house, and experienced the uncanny sensation of some
+one walking over my grave.
+
+But I soon recovered myself. Nothing of a disagreeable nature had ever
+happened in this room, nor had we had any special reason for shutting it
+up, except that it was in an out-of-the-way place, and not usually
+considered convenient, notwithstanding Mr. Urquhart's opinion to the
+contrary.
+
+"Never mind," said I, with a last effort to soothe the agitated woman.
+"We will let in a little light, and dissipate some of these shadows."
+And I attempted to throw back the curtains of the window, but they fell
+again immediately and I experienced a sensation as of something ghostly
+passing between us and the light.
+
+Provoked at my own weakness, I tore the curtains down and flung them
+into a corner. A straggling beam of sunset color came in, but it looked
+out of place and forlorn upon that black floor, like a stranger who
+meets with no welcome. The poor young wife seemed to hail it, however,
+for she moved instantly to where it lay and stood as if she longed for
+its warmth and comfort. I immediately glanced at the fireplace.
+
+"I will soon have a rousing fire for you," I declared. "These old
+fireplaces hold a large pile of wood."
+
+I thought, but I must be mistaken, that he made a gesture as if about to
+protest, but, if so, reason must have soon come to his aid, for he said
+nothing, though he looked uneasy, as I moved the andirons forward and
+made some other trivial arrangements for the fire which I had promised
+them.
+
+"He thinks I am never going," I muttered to myself, and took pleasure in
+lingering; for, anxious as I was to have the room heated up for her
+comfort, I knew that every moment I stayed there would be one less for
+her to spend with her surly husband alone.
+
+At last I had no further excuse for remaining, and so with the final
+remark that if the fire failed to give them cheer we had a sitting room
+into which they could come, I went out. But I knew, even while saying
+it, that he would not grant her the opportunity of enjoying the sitting
+room's coziness; that he would not let her out of his sight, if he did
+out of the room, and that for her to remain in his presence was to be in
+darkness, solitude and gloom, no matter what walls surrounded her or in
+what light she stood.
+
+My impressions were not far wrong. Mr. and Mrs. Urquhart came to supper,
+but that was all. Before the others had finished their roast they had
+eaten their pudding and gone; and though he had talked, and laughed, and
+shown his white teeth, the impression left behind them was a depressing
+one which even Hetty felt, and she has anything but a sensitive nature.
+
+I went to the room once again in the evening. I found them both seated,
+but in opposite parts of the room; he by his great box, and she in an
+easy chair which I had caused to be brought down from my own room for
+her especial use. I did not look at him, but I did at her, and was
+astonished to see, first, how dignified she was; and next how pretty.
+Had she been happy and at her ease, I should probably have been afraid
+of her, for the firelight, which now shone on her wan young cheek,
+brought out evidences of character and culture in her expression which
+proved her to be, by birth and training, of a position superior to what
+one would be led to expect from her husband's aspect and manner. But she
+was not happy nor at her ease, and wore, instead of the quiet and
+commanding look of the great lady, such an expression of secret dread
+that I almost forgot my position of landlady, and should certainly, if
+he had not been there, fallen at her side and taken her poor, forsaken
+head upon my breast. But that silent, immovable form, sitting
+statue-like beside his big box, smiling, for aught I knew, but if so,
+breathing out a chill that forbade all exhibition of natural feeling,
+held me in check, as it held her, so that I merely inquired whether
+there was anything I could do for her; and when she shook her head,
+starting a tear down her cheek as she did so, I dared do nothing more
+than give her one look of sympathetic understanding, and start for the
+door.
+
+A command from him stopped me.
+
+"My wife will need a slight supper before she goes to bed," said he.
+"Will you be good enough to see that one is brought?"
+
+She roused herself up with quite a startled look of wonder.
+
+"Why, Edwin," she began, "I never have been in the habit--"
+
+But he hushed her at once.
+
+"I know what is best for you," said he. "A small plate of luncheon, Mrs.
+Truax; and let it be nice and inviting."
+
+I courtesied, gave her another glance, and went out. Her countenance had
+not lost its look of wonder. Was he going to be considerate, after all?
+
+The lunch was prepared and taken to her.
+
+Not long after this the inn quieted down, and such guests as were in the
+house prepared for rest. Midnight came; all was dark in room and hall. I
+was sure of this, for I went through the whole building myself, contrary
+to my usual habit, which was to leave this task to my man-of-all-work,
+Burritt. All was dark, all was quiet, and I was just dropping off to
+sleep, when there shot up suddenly from below a shriek, which was
+quickly smothered, but not so quickly that I did not recognize in it
+that tone which is only given by hideous distress or mortal fear.
+
+"It is Mrs. Urquhart!" I cried in terror, to myself; and plunging into
+my clothes, I hurried down stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+BURRITT.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+All was quiet in the halls, but as I proceeded toward their room I
+perceived a figure standing near the doorway, which, in another moment,
+I saw to be that of Burritt. He was trembling like a leaf, and was bent
+forward, listening.
+
+"Hush!" he whispered; "they are talking. All seems to be right. I just
+heard him call her darling."
+
+I drew the man away and took his place. Yes; they were talking in
+subdued but not unkindly tones. I heard him bid her be composed, and
+caught, as I thought, a light reply that ought to have satisfied me that
+Mrs. Urquhart had simply suffered from some nightmare horror at which
+she was as ready to laugh now as he. But my nature is a contradictory
+one, and I was not satisfied. The echo of her cry was still ringing in
+my ears, and I felt as if I would give the world for a momentary peep
+into their room. Influenced by this idea, I boldly knocked, and in an
+instant--too soon for him not to have been standing near the door--I
+heard his breath through the keyhole and the words:
+
+"Who is there, and what do you want?"
+
+"We heard a cry," was my response, "and I feared Mrs. Urquhart was ill
+again."
+
+"Mrs. Urquhart is very well," came hastily, almost gayly, from within.
+"She had a dream, and was willing that every one should know it. Is not
+that all?" he said, seemingly addressing his wife.
+
+There was a murmur within, and then I heard her voice. "It was only a
+dream, dear Mrs. Truax," it said, and convinced against my will, I was
+about to return to my room, when I brushed against Burritt. He had not
+moved, and did not look as if he intended to.
+
+"Come," said I, "there is no use of our remaining here."
+
+"Can't help it," was his whispered reply. "In this hall I stay till
+morning. When I see a lamb in the care of a wolf, I find it hard to
+sleep. There is a door between us, but please God there shan't be
+anything more."
+
+And knowing Burritt, I did not try to argue, but went quietly and
+somewhat thoughtfully to my room, vaguely relieved that I left him
+behind, though convinced there would be no further need of his services.
+
+And so it was. No more sounds disturbed the house, and when I came down,
+with the first streak of daylight, I found Burritt gone about his work.
+
+Breakfast was served to the Urquharts in their own room. I had wished to
+carry it in myself, but I found this inconvenient, and so I sent Hetty.
+When she came back I asked her how Mrs. Urquhart looked.
+
+"Very well, ma'am," was the quick reply. "And see! I don't think she's
+as unhappy as we all thought last night, or she wouldn't be giving me a
+bright new crown."
+
+I glanced at the girl's palm. There was indeed a bright new crown in it.
+
+"Did she give you that?" I inquired.
+
+"Yes, ma'am; she herself. And she laughed when she did it, and said it
+was for the good breakfast I had brought her."
+
+I was busy at the time, and could not stop to give the girl's words much
+thought; but as soon as I had any leisure, I went to see for myself how
+Mrs. Urquhart looked when she laughed.
+
+I was five minutes too late. She had just donned her traveling bonnet
+and veil, and though I heard her laugh slightly once, I did not see her
+face.
+
+I saw his, however, and was surprised at the good nature in it. He was
+quite the gentleman, and if he had not been in such a hurry, would have
+doubtless made, or endeavored to make, himself very agreeable. But he
+was just watching his great box carried out to the wagon, and while he
+took pains to talk to me--was it to keep me from talking to her?--he was
+naturally a little absentminded. He was in haste, too, and insisted upon
+placing his wife in the carriage before all his baggage was taken from
+the room. And she seemed willing to go. I watched her on purpose to see,
+for I was not yet satisfied that she was not playing a part at his
+dictation, but I could discover no hint of reluctance in her manner, but
+rather a quiet alacrity, as if she felt glad to quit a room to which she
+had taken a dislike.
+
+When I saw this, and noted the light step of her feet, I said to myself
+that I had been a fool, and lost a little of the interest I had felt for
+her. Nor did I regain it till after they had driven away, though she
+showed a consideration for me at the last which I had not expected,
+leaning from the carriage to give me a good-by pressure of the hand, and
+even nodding again and again as they disappeared down the road. For the
+fear which could be dissipated in a night was not the fear with which I
+had credited her; and of ordinary excitements and commonplace natures I
+had seen enough in my long experience as landlady to make me unwilling
+to trouble myself with any more of them.
+
+But when the carriage and its accompanying wagon had quite disappeared,
+and Mr. and Mrs. Urquhart were virtually as far beyond my reach as if
+they were already in New York, I became conscious of a great uneasiness.
+This was the more strange in that there seemed to be no especial cause
+for it. They had left my house in apparently better spirits than they
+had entered it, and there was no longer any reason why I should concern
+myself about them. And yet I did concern myself, and came into the house
+and into the room they had just vacated, with feelings so unusual that I
+was astonished at myself, and not a little provoked. I had a vague
+feeling that the woman who had just left was somehow different from the
+one I had seen the night before.
+
+But I am a busy woman, and I do not think I should have let this trouble
+me long if it had not been for Burritt. But when he came into the room
+after me, and shut the door behind him and stood with his back against
+it, looking at me, I knew I was not the only one who felt uncomfortable
+about the Urquharts. Rising from the chair where I had been
+sitting, counting the cost of fitting up that room so as to make it look
+habitable, I went toward him and met his gaze pretty sharply.
+
+"Well, what is it?" I asked.
+
+"I don't know," was the somewhat sullen reply. "I don't feel right about
+those folks, and yet--" He stopped and scratched his head--"I don't know
+what I'm afraid of. Are you sure they left nothing behind them?"
+
+The last words were uttered in such a tone I did not know for a minute
+what to say.
+
+"Left anything behind them!" I replied. "They left their money, if that
+is what you mean. I don't know what else they could have left."
+
+Notwithstanding which assertion, I involuntarily glanced about the room
+as if half expecting to see some one of their many belongings protruding
+from a hitherto unsearched corner. His gaze followed mine, but presently
+returned, and we stood again looking at each other.
+
+"Nothing here," said I.
+
+"Where is it, then?" he asked.
+
+I frowned in displeasure.
+
+"Where is what?" I demanded. "You speak like a fool. Explain yourself."
+
+He took a step toward me and lowered his voice. Every one knows Burritt,
+so I need not describe him. You can all imagine how he looked when he
+said:
+
+"Did you see me handling of the big box, ma'am?"
+
+I nodded yes.
+
+"Saw how I was the one to help carry it in, and also how I was the one
+to first take hold on it when he wanted it carried out?" I again nodded
+yes.
+
+"Well, ma'am, that box was a heavy load to lift into the wagon, but,
+ma'am"--here his voice became quite sepulchral--"it wasn't as heavy as
+it was when we lifted it out, and it hadn't the same feel either. Now,
+what had happened to it, and where is the stuff he took out of it?"
+
+I own I had never in my life felt creepy before that minute. But with
+his eyes staring at me so impressively, and his voice sunk to a depth
+that made me lean forward to hear what he had to say, I do declare I
+felt as if an icy breath had been blown across the roots of my hair.
+
+"Burritt, you want to frighten me," I exclaimed, as soon as I could get
+my voice. "The box seemed heavier to you than it did just now. There
+was no change in it, there could not be, or we should find something
+here to account for it. Remember you did not sleep last night, and lack
+of rest makes one fanciful."
+
+"It does not make a man feel stronger, though, and I tell you the box
+was not near so heavy to-day as yesterday. Besides, as I said before, it
+acted differently under the handling. There was something loose in it
+to-day. Yesterday it was packed tight."
+
+I shook my head, and tried to throw off the oppression caused by his
+manner. But seeing his eyes travel to the window, I looked that way too.
+
+"He didn't carry anything out of the door," declared Burritt, at this
+moment, "because I watched it, and I know. But that window is only three
+feet from the ground, and I remember now that at the instant I first
+laid my ear to the keyhole, I heard a strange, grating sound just like
+that of a window being lowered by a very careful hand. Shall I look
+outside it, ma'am?"
+
+I replied by going quickly to the window myself, lifting it, which I did
+with very little trouble, and glancing out. The familiar garden, with
+its path to the river, lay before me; but though I allowed myself one
+quick look in its direction, it was to the ground immediately beneath
+the window that I turned my attention, and it was here that I instantly,
+and to the satisfaction of both Burritt and myself, discovered
+unmistakable signs of disturbance. Not only was there the impression of
+a finely booted foot imprinted in the loose earth, but there was a large
+stone lying against the house which we were both confident had not been
+there the day before.
+
+"He went roaming through the garden last night," cried Burritt, "and he
+brought back that stone. Why?"
+
+I shuddered instead of replying. Then remembering that I had seen the
+young wife well and happy only a few minutes before, felt confused and
+mystified beyond any power to express.
+
+"I will have a look at that stone," continued Burritt; and without
+waiting for my sanction, he vaulted out of the window and lifted the
+stone.
+
+After a moment's consideration of it he declared:
+
+"It came from the river bank; that is all I can make out of it."
+
+And dropping the stone from his hand, he suddenly darted down the path
+to the river.
+
+He was not gone long. When he came back, he looked still more doubtful
+than before.
+
+"If I know that bank," he declared, "there has been more than one stone
+taken from it, and some dirt. Suppose we examine the floor, ma'am."
+
+We did so, and just where the box had been placed we discovered some
+particles of sand that were not brought in from the road.
+
+"What does it mean?" I cried.
+
+Burritt did not answer. He was looking out toward the river. Suddenly he
+turned his eyes upon me and said in his former suppressed tone:
+
+"He filled the box with stone and earth, and these were what we carried
+out and put into the wagon. But it was full when it came, and very
+heavy. Now, what was it filled with, and what has become of the stuff?"
+
+It was the question then; it is the question now.
+
+Burritt hints at crime, and has gone so far as to spend all the
+afternoon searching the river banks. But he has discovered nothing, nor
+can he explain what it was he looked for or expected to find. Nor are
+my own thoughts and feelings any clearer. I remember that the times are
+unsettled, that the spirit of revolution is in the air, and try to be
+charitable enough to suppose that it was treasure the young husband
+brought with him, and that all the perturbation and distress which I
+imagine myself to have witnessed in his behavior and that of his wife
+were owing to the purpose that they had formed of burying, in this spot,
+the silver and plate which they were perhaps unwilling to risk to the
+chances of war. But when I try to stifle my graver fears with this
+surmise, I recall the fearful nature of the shriek which startled me
+from my sleep, and repeat, tremblingly, to myself:
+
+"Some one was in mortal agony at the moment I heard that cry. Was it the
+young wife, or was it--"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A FEARFUL DISCOVERY.
+
+
+        APRIL 3, 1791.
+
+[Illustration: I]
+
+It is sixteen years since I wrote the preceding chapters of this history
+of mystery and crime. When the pen dropped from my hand--why did it
+drop? Was it because of some noise I heard?
+
+I imagine so now, and tremble. I did not anticipate ever adding a line
+to the words I had written. The impulse which had led me to put upon
+paper my doubts concerning the two Urquharts soon passed, and as nothing
+ever occurred to recall this couple to my mind, I gradually allowed
+their name and memory to vanish from my thoughts, only remembering them
+when chance led me into the oak parlor. Then, indeed, I recollected
+their manner and my fears, and then I also felt repeated, though every
+time with fainter and fainter power, the old thrill of undefined terror
+which stopped my record of that day with the half-finished question as
+to who had uttered the shriek that had startled me the night before.
+To-day I again take up my pen. Why? Because to-day, and only since
+to-day, can I answer this question.
+
+Sixteen years ago! which makes me sixteen years older. My house, too,
+has aged, and the oak parlor--I never refurnished it--is darker,
+gloomier, and more forbidding than it was then, and in truth, why should
+it not be? When I remember what was revealed to me a week ago, I wonder
+that its walls did not drop fungi, and its chill strike death through
+the man or woman who was brave enough to enter it. Horrible, horrible
+room! You shall be torn from my house if the rest of the structure goes
+with you. Neither I nor another shall ever enter your fatal portal
+again.
+
+It was a week ago to-day that the coach from New York set down at my
+door a stranger of fine and quaint appearance, whose white hair
+betokened him to be aged, but whose alert and energetic movements
+showed that, if he had passed the line of fourscore, he had still enough
+of the fire of youth remaining to make his presence welcome in whatever
+place he chose to enter. As had happened sixteen years before, I was
+looking out of the window when the coach drove up, and, being at once
+attracted by the stranger's person and manner, I watched him closely
+while he was alighting, and was surprised to observe what intent and
+searching glances he cast at the house.
+
+"He could not be more interested if he were returning to the home of his
+fathers," I murmured involuntarily to myself, and hastened to the door
+in order to receive him.
+
+He came forward courteously. But after the first few words between us he
+turned again and gazed with marked curiosity up and down the road and
+again at the house.
+
+"You seem to be acquainted with these parts," I ventured. He smiled.
+
+"This is an old house," he answered, "and you are young." (I am
+fifty-five.) "There must have been owners of the place before you. Do
+you know their names?"
+
+"I bought the place of Dan Forsyth, and he of one Hammond. I don't know
+as I can go back any further than that. Originally the house was the
+property of an Englishman. There were strange stories about him, but it
+was so long ago that they are almost forgotten."
+
+The stranger smiled again, and followed me into the house. Here his
+interest seemed to redouble.
+
+Instantly a thought flashed through my brain.
+
+"He is its ancient owner, the Englishman. I am standing in the presence
+of--"
+
+"You wish to know my name," interrupted his genial voice. "It is
+Tamworth. I am a Virginian, and hope to stay at your inn one night. What
+kind of a room have you to offer me?"
+
+There was a twinkle in his eyes I did not understand. He was looking
+down the hall, and I thought his gaze rested on the corridor leading to
+the oak parlor.
+
+"I should like to sleep on the ground floor," he added.
+
+"I have but one room," I began.
+
+"And one is all I want," he smiled. Then, with a quick glance at my
+face: "I suppose you are a little particular whom you put into the oak
+parlor. It is not every one who can appreciate such romantic
+surroundings."
+
+I surveyed him, completely puzzled. Whereupon he looked at me with an
+expression of surprise and incredulity that added to the mystery of the
+moment.
+
+"The room is gloomy and uninviting," I declared; "but beyond that, I do
+not know of any especial claim it has upon our interest."
+
+"You astonish me," was his evidently sincere reply; and he walked on,
+very thoughtfully, straight to the room of which we were speaking. At
+the door he paused. "Don't you know the secret of this room," he asked,
+giving me a very bright and searching glance.
+
+"If you mean anything concerning the Urquharts," I began doubtfully.
+
+"Urquharts!" he carelessly repeated. "I do not know anything about them.
+I am speaking of an old tradition. I was told--let me see how long it is
+now--well, it must be sixteen years at least--that this house contained
+a hidden chamber communicating with a certain oak parlor in the west
+wing. I thought it was curious, and--Why, madam, I beg your pardon; I
+did not mean to distress you. Can it be possible that you were ignorant
+of this fact?--you, the owner of this house!"
+
+"Are you sure it is a fact?" I gasped. I was trembling in every limb,
+but managed to close the door behind us before I sank into a chair. "I
+have lived in this house twenty years. I know its rooms and halls as I
+do my own face, and never, never have I suspected that there was a nook
+or corner in it which was not open to the light of day. Yet--yet it is
+true that the rooms on this floor are smaller than those above, this one
+especially." And I cast a horrified glance about me, that reminded me,
+even against my will, of the searching and peculiar look I had seen cast
+in the same direction by Mr. Urquhart sixteen years before.
+
+"I see that I have stumbled upon a bit of knowledge that has been kept
+from the purchasers of this property," observed the old gentleman.
+"Well, that does not detract from the interest of the occasion. When I
+knew I was to pass this way, I said to myself I shall certainly stop at
+the old inn with the secret chamber in it, but I did not think I should
+be the first one to disclose its secret to the present generation. But
+my information seems to affect you strangely. Is it such a disturbing
+thing to find that one's house has held a disused spot within it, that
+might have been made useful if you had known of its existence?"
+
+I could not answer. I was enveloped in a strange horror, and was only
+conscious of the one wish--that Burritt had lived to help me through the
+dreadful hour I saw before me.
+
+"Let us see if my information has been correct," continued Mr. Tamworth.
+"Perhaps there has been some mistake. The secret chamber, if there is
+one, should be behind this chimney. Shall I hunt for an opening?"
+
+I managed to shake my head. I had not strength for the experiment yet. I
+wanted to prepare myself.
+
+"Tell me first how you heard about this room?" I entreated.
+
+He drew his chair nearer to mine with the greatest courtesy.
+
+"There is no reason why I should not tell you," replied he, "and as I
+see that you are in no mood for a long story, I shall make my words as
+few as possible. Some years ago I had occasion to spend a night in an
+inn not unlike this, on Long Island. I was alone, but there was a merry
+crowd in the tap room, and being fond of good company, I presently found
+myself joining in the conversation. The talk was of inns, and many a
+stirring story of adventure in out-of-the-way taverns did I listen to
+that night before the clock struck twelve. Each man present had some
+humorous or thrilling experience to relate, with the exception of a
+certain glum and dark-browed gentleman, who sat somewhat apart from the
+rest, and who said nothing. His reticence was in such marked contrast to
+the volubility about him that he finally attracted universal attention,
+and more than one of the merry-makers near him asked if he had not some
+anecdote to add to the rest. But though he replied with sufficient
+politeness, it was evident that he had no intention of dropping his
+reserve, and it was not till the party had broken up and the room was
+nearly cleared that he deigned to address any one. Then he turned to me,
+and with a very peculiar smile, remarked:
+
+"'A dull collection of tales, sir. Bah! if they had wanted to hear of
+an inn that was really romantic, I could have told them--'
+
+"'What?' I involuntarily ejaculated. 'You will not torture me by
+suggesting a mystery you will not explain.'
+
+"He looked very indifferent.
+
+"'It is nothing,' he declared, 'only I know of an inn--at least it is
+used for an inn now--which has in its interior a secret chamber so
+deftly hidden away in the very heart of the house that I doubt if even
+its present owner could find it without the minutest directions from the
+man who saw it built. I knew that man. He was an Englishman, and he had
+a fancy to make his fortune through the aid of smuggled goods. He did
+it; and though always suspected, was never convicted, owing to the fact
+that he kept all his goods in this hidden room. The place is sold now,
+but the room remains. I wonder if any forgotten treasures lie in it.
+Imagination could easily run riot over the supposition, do you not think
+so, sir?'
+
+"I certainly did, especially as I imagined myself to detect in every
+line of his able and crafty face that he bore a closer relation to the
+Englishman than he would have me believe. I did not betray my feelings,
+however, but urged him to tell me how in a modern house, a room, or even
+a closet, could be so concealed as not to awaken any one's suspicion. He
+answered by taking out pencil and paper, and showing me, by a few lines,
+the secret of its construction. Then seeing me deeply interested, he
+went on to say:
+
+"'We find what we have been told to search for; but here is a case where
+the secret has been so well kept that in all possibility the question of
+this room's existence has never arisen. It is just as well.'
+
+"Meantime I was studying the plan.
+
+"'The hidden chamber lies,' said I, 'between this room,' designating one
+with my forefinger, 'and these two others. From which is it entered?'
+
+"He pointed at the one I had first indicated.
+
+"'From this,' he affirmed. 'And a quaint, old-fashioned room it is, too,
+with a wainscoting of oak all around it as high as a man's head. It used
+to be called the oak parlor, and many a time has its floor rung to the
+tread of the king's soldiers, who, disappointed in their search for
+hidden goods, consented to take a drink at their host's expense, little
+recking that, but a few feet away, behind the carven chimneypiece upon
+which they doubtless set down their glasses, there lay heaps and heaps
+of the richest goods, only awaiting their own departure to be scattered
+through the length and breadth of the land.'
+
+"'And this house is now an inn?' I remarked.
+
+"'Yes.'
+
+"'Curious. I should like nothing better than to visit that inn.'
+
+"'You doubtless have.'
+
+"'It is not this one?' I suddenly cried, looking uneasily about me.
+
+"'Oh, no; it is on the Hudson River, not fifty miles this side of
+Albany. It is called the Happy-Go-Lucky, and is in a woman's hands at
+present; but it prospers, I believe. Perhaps because she has discovered
+the secret, and knows where to keep her stores.' And with a shrug of his
+shoulders he dismissed the subject, with the remark: 'I don't know why I
+told you of this. I never made it the subject of conversation before in
+my life.'
+
+"This was just before the outbreak in Lexington, sixteen years ago,
+ma'am, and this is the first time I have found myself in this region
+since that day. But I have never forgotten this story of a secret room,
+and when I took the coach this morning I made up my mind that I would
+spend the night here, and, if possible, see the famous oak parlor, with
+its mysterious adjunct; never dreaming that in all these years of your
+occupancy you would have remained as ignorant of its existence as he
+hinted and you have now declared."
+
+Mr. Tamworth paused, looking so benevolent that I summoned up my
+courage, and quietly informed him that he had not told me what kind of a
+looking man this stranger was.
+
+"Was he young?" I asked. "Had he a blond complexion?"
+
+"On the contrary," interrupted Mr. Tamworth, "he was very dark, and, in
+years, as old or nearly as old as myself."
+
+I was disappointed. I had expected a different reply. As he talked of
+the stranger, I had, rightfully or wrongfully, with reason or without
+reason, seen before me the face of Mr. Urquhart, and this description of
+a dark and well-nigh aged man completely disconcerted me.
+
+"Are you certain this man was not in disguise?" I asked.
+
+"Disguise?"
+
+"Are you certain that he was not young, and blond, and--"
+
+"Quite sure," was the dry interruption. "No disguise could transform a
+young blood into the man I saw that night. May I ask--"
+
+In my turn I interrupted him. "Pardon me," I entreated, "but an anxiety
+I will presently explain forces another question from me. Were you and
+this stranger alone in the room when you held this conversation? You say
+that it had been full a few minutes before. Were there none of the crowd
+remaining besides your two selves?"
+
+Mr. Tamworth looked thoughtful. "It is sixteen years ago," he replied,
+"but I have a dim remembrance of a man sitting at a table somewhat near
+us, with his face thrown forward on his arms. He seemed to be asleep; I
+did not notice him particularly."
+
+"Did you not see his face?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Was he young?"
+
+"I should say so."
+
+"And blond?"
+
+"That I cannot say."
+
+"And he remained in that attitude all the time you were talking?"
+
+"Yes, madam."
+
+"And continued so when you left the room?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Was he within earshot? Near enough to hear all you said?"
+
+"Most assuredly, if he listened."
+
+"Mr. Tamworth," I now entreated, "try, if possible, to remember one
+other fact. If each man present told a story that night, you must have
+had ample opportunity of noting each man's face and observing how he
+looked. Now, of all that sat in the room, was there not one of an age
+not exceeding thirty-five, of fair complexion and gentlemanly
+appearance, yet with a dangerous look in his small blue eye, and a
+something in his smile that took all the merriment out of it?"
+
+"A short but telling description," commented my guest. "Let me see. Was
+there such a man among them? Really, I cannot remember."
+
+"Think, think. Hair very thin above the temples, mustache heavy. When he
+spoke he invariably moved his hands; seemed to be nervous, and anxious
+to hide it."
+
+"I see him," was Mr. Tamworth's sudden remark. "That description of his
+hands recalls him to my mind. Yes; there was such a man in the room that
+night. I even recollect his story. It was coarse, but not without wit."
+
+I advanced and surveyed Mr. Tamworth very earnestly. "The man you
+thought asleep--the man who was near enough to hear all the Englishman
+said--was he or was he not the same we have just been talking about?"
+
+"I never thought of it before, but he did look something like him--his
+figure, I mean; I did not see his face."
+
+"It was he," I murmured, with intense conviction, "and the villain--"
+But how did I know he was a villain? I paused and pointed to the huge
+mantel guarding the fireplace. "If you know how to enter the secret
+room, do so. Only I should like to have a few witnesses present besides
+myself. Will you wait till I call one or two of my lodgers?"
+
+He bowed with great urbanity. "If you wish to make the discovery
+public," said he, "I, of course, have no objection."
+
+But I saw that he was disappointed.
+
+"I can never confront the secret of that room alone," I insisted. "I
+must have Dr. Kenyon here at least." And without waiting for my impulses
+to cool, I sent a message to the doctor's room, and was rewarded in a
+moment by the appearance at the door of that excellent man.
+
+It did not take many words for me to explain to him our intentions. We
+were going to search for a secret chamber which we had been told opened
+into the room in which we then found ourselves. As I did not wish to
+make any mystery of the affair, and as I naturally had my doubts as to
+what the room might disclose, I asked the support of his presence.
+
+He was gratified--the doctor always is gratified at any token of
+appreciation--and perceiving that I had no further reason for delay, I
+motioned to Mr. Tamworth to proceed.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+How he discovered the one movable panel in that old-fashioned
+wainscoting, I have never inquired. When I saw him turn toward the
+fireplace and lay his ear to the wall, I withdrew in haste to the
+window, feeling as if I could not bear to watch him, or be the first to
+catch a glimpse of the mysterious depths which in another moment must
+open before his touch. What I feared I cannot say. As far as I could
+reason on the subject, I had no cause to fear anything; and yet my
+shaking frame and unevenly throbbing heart were but the too sure tokens
+of an excessive and uncontrollable agitation. The view from the window
+increased it. Before me lay the river from whose banks sand and stone
+had been taken sixteen years before to replace--what? I knew no more
+this minute than I did then. I might know in the next. By the faint
+tapping that came to my ears I must--and it was this thought that sent a
+chill through me, and made it so difficult for me to stand. And yet why
+should it? Was not that old theory of ours, that the Urquharts had
+brought treasure in their great box, still a plausible one? Nay, more,
+was it not even a probable one, since we had discovered that the house
+held so excellent a hiding place, unknown to the world at large, but
+known to this man, as Mr. Tamworth's story so plainly showed? Yes; and
+yet I started with uncontrollable forebodings, when I heard an
+exclamation of satisfaction behind me, and hardly found courage to turn
+around, even when I knew that an opening had been effected, and that
+they were only waiting for my approach to enter it.
+
+And it took courage, both on my part and on theirs; for the air which
+rushed from the high and narrow slit of darkness before us was stifling
+and almost deadly. But in a few minutes, after one or two experiments
+with a lighted candle, Dr. Kenyon stepped through the opening, followed
+by Mr. Tamworth, and, in a long minute afterward, by myself.
+
+Shall I ever forget my emotions as I looked about me and saw, by the
+lamp which the doctor carried, nothing more startling than an old oak
+chest in one corner, a pile of faded clothing in another, and in a
+third--Heavens! what is it? We all stare, and then a shriek escapes my
+lips as piercing and terror-stricken as any that ever disturbed those
+fearful shadows; and I rush blindly from the spot, followed by Mr.
+Tamworth, whose face, as I turn to look at him, gives me another pang of
+fear, so white and sick it looks in the sudden glare of day.
+
+Worse than I had thought, worse than I had dreamed! I cannot speak, and
+fall into a chair, waiting in mortal terror for the doctor, who stayed
+some minutes behind. When his kindly but not undisturbed countenance
+showed itself again in the gap at the side of the fireplace, I could
+almost have thrown myself at his feet.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"What is it?" I gasped. "Tell me at once. Is it a man or a woman or--"
+
+"It is a woman. See! here is a lock of her hair. Beautiful, is it not?
+She must have been young."
+
+I stared at it like one demented. It was of a peculiar reddish-brown,
+with a strange little kink and curl in it. Where had I seen such hair
+before? Somewhere. I remembered perfectly how the whole bright head
+looked with the firelight playing over it. Oh, no, no, no, it was not
+that of Mrs. Urquhart. Mrs. Urquhart went away from this house well and
+happy. I am mad, or this strand of gleaming hair is a dream. It is not
+her head it recalls to me, and yet--my soul, it is!
+
+The doctor, knowing me well, did not try to break the silence of that
+first grewsome minute. But when he saw me ready to speak, he remarked:
+
+"It is an old crime, perpetrated, probably, before you came into the
+house. I would not make any more of it than you can help, Mrs. Truax."
+
+I scarcely heeded him.
+
+"Is there no bit of clothing or jewelry left upon her by which we might
+hope to identify her?" I asked, shuddering, as I caught Mr. Tamworth's
+eye, and realized the nature of the doubts I there beheld.
+
+"Here is a ring I found upon the wedding finger," he replied. "It was
+doubtless too small to be drawn off at the time of her death, but it
+came away easily enough now."
+
+And he held out a plain gold circlet which I eagerly took, looked at,
+and fell at their feet as senseless as a stone.
+
+On the inner surface I had discovered this legend:
+
+        E. U. to H. D. Jan. 27, 1775.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.
+
+
+Never have I felt such relief as when, upon my resuscitation, I
+remembered that I had put upon paper all the events and all the
+suspicions which had troubled me during that fatal night of January the
+28th, sixteen years before. With that in my possession, I could confront
+any suspicion which might arise, and it was this thought which lent to
+my bearing at this unhappy time a dignity and self-possession which
+evidently surprised the two gentlemen.
+
+"You seem more shocked than astonished," was Mr. Tamworth's first
+remark, as, mistress once more of myself, I led the way out of that
+horrible room into one breathing less of death and the charnel house.
+
+"You are right," said I. "Mysteries which have troubled me for years are
+now in the way of being explained by this discovery. I knew that
+something either fearful or precious had been left in the keeping of
+this house or grounds; but I did not know what this something was, and
+least of all did I suspect that its hiding place was between walls whose
+turns and limitations I thought I knew as well as I do the paths of my
+garden."
+
+"You speak riddles," Dr. Kenyon now declared. "You knew that something
+fearful or precious had been left in your house--"
+
+"Pardon me," I interrupted; "I said house or grounds. I thought it was
+in the grounds, for how could I think that the house could, without my
+knowledge, hold anything of the nature I have just suggested?"
+
+"You knew, then, that a person had been murdered?"
+
+"No," I persisted, with a strange calmness, considering how agitated I
+was, both by my memories and the fears I could not but entertain for the
+future; "I know nothing; nor can I, even with the knowledge of this
+discovery, understand or explain what took place in my house sixteen
+years ago."
+
+And in a few hurried words I related the story of the mysterious couple
+who had occupied that room on the night of January 27, 1775.
+
+They listened to me as if I were repeating a fairy tale, and as I noted
+the sympathizing air with which Dr. Kenyon tried to hide his natural
+incredulity, I again congratulated myself that I had been a weak enough
+woman to keep an account of the events which had so impressed me.
+
+"You think I am drawing upon my imagination," I quietly remarked, as
+silence fell upon my narration.
+
+"By no means," the doctor began, hurriedly; "but the details you give
+are so open to question, and the conclusions you expect us to draw from
+them are so serious, that I wish, for your own sake, we had heard
+something of the Urquharts, and your doubts and suspicions in their
+regard, before we had made the discovery which points to death and
+crime. You see I speak plainly, Mrs. Truax."
+
+"You cannot speak too plainly, Doctor Kenyon; and my opinion so entirely
+coincides with yours that I am going to furnish you with what you ask."
+And without heeding their looks of astonishment, I rang the bell for one
+of the girls, and sent her to a certain drawer in my desk for the folded
+paper which she would find there.
+
+"Here!" I exclaimed, as the paper was brought, "read this, and you will
+soon see how I felt about the Urquharts on the evening of the day they
+left us."
+
+And I put into their hands the record I had made of that day's
+experience.
+
+While they were reading it, I puzzled myself with questions. If this
+body which we had just found sepulchered in my house was, as the
+initials in the ring seemed to declare, that of Honora Urquhart, who was
+the woman who passed for her at the time of the departure of this
+accused couple from my doors? I was with them, and saw the lady, and
+supposed her to be the same I had entertained at my table the night
+before. But then I chiefly noted her dress and height, and did not see
+her face, which was hidden by her veil, and did not hear her voice
+beyond the short and somewhat embarrassed laugh she gave at some little
+incident which had occurred. But Hetty had seen her, and had even
+received money from her hand; and Hetty could not have been deceived,
+nor was Hetty a girl to be bribed. How was I, then, to understand the
+matter? And where, in case another woman had taken Mrs. Urquhart's
+place, had that woman come from?
+
+I thought of the low window, and the ease with which any one could climb
+into it; and then, with a flash of startled conviction, I thought of the
+huge box.
+
+"Great heavens!" I ejaculated, feeling the hair stir anew on my
+forehead. "Can it be that he brought her in that? That she was with them
+all the time, and that the almost hellish tragedy to which this ring
+points was the scheme of two vile and murderous lovers to suppress an
+unhappy wife that stood in the way of their desires?"
+
+I could not think it. I could not believe that any man could be so void
+of mercy, or any woman so lost to every instinct of decency, as to plan,
+and then coolly carry out to the end, a crime so unheard of in its
+atrocity. There must be some other explanation of the facts before us.
+Why, the date in the ring is enough. If that speaks true, the marriage
+between Edwin Urquhart and the gentle Honora was but a day old, and even
+the worst of men take time to weary of their wives before they take
+measures against them. Yet, the look and manner of the man! His
+affection for the box, and his manifest indifference for his wife! And,
+lastly, and most convincing of all, this awful token in the room
+beyond! What should I, what could I think!
+
+At this point in my surmises I grew so faint that I turned to Dr. Kenyon
+and Mr. Tamworth for relief. They had just finished my record of the
+past, and were looking at each other in surprise and horror.
+
+"It surpasses the most atrocious deeds of the middle ages," quoth Mr.
+Tamworth.
+
+"In a country deemed civilized," finished the doctor.
+
+"Then you think," I tremblingly began--
+
+"That you have harbored two demons under your roof, Mrs. Truax. There
+seems to be no doubt that the woman who went away with Mr. Urquhart was
+not the woman who came with him. She lies here, while the other--"
+
+He paused, and Mr. Tamworth took up the word.
+
+"It seems to have been a strangely triumphant piece of villainy. The
+woman who profited by it must have had great self-control and force of
+character. Don't you think so, doctor?"
+
+"Unquestionably," was the firm reply.
+
+"You do not say how you account for her presence here," I now
+reluctantly intimated.
+
+"I think she was hidden in the great box. It was large enough for that,
+was it not, Mrs. Truax?"
+
+I nodded, much agitated.
+
+"His care of it, his call for a supper, the change in its weight, and
+the fact that its contents were of a different character in going than
+coming, all point to the fact of its having been used for the purpose we
+intimated. It strikes one as most horrible, but history furnishes us
+with precedents of attempts equally daring, and if the box was well
+furnished with holes--did you notice any breathing places in it?"
+
+"No," I returned; "but I did not cast two glances at the box. I was
+jealous of it, for the young wife's sake, though, as God knows, I had
+little idea of what it contained, and merely noticed that it was big and
+clumsy, and capable of holding many books."
+
+"Yet you must have noticed, even in a cursory glance, whether its top or
+sides were broken by holes."
+
+"They were not, but--"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"I do remember, now, that he flung his traveling-cloak across it just as
+the men went to lift it from the wagon, and that the cloak remained
+upon it all the time it was in their hands, and until after we had all
+left the room. But it was taken away later, for when I went in the
+second time, I saw it lying across the chair."
+
+"And the box?"
+
+"Was hidden by the foot of the bed behind which he had dragged it."
+
+"And the cloak? Was it over the box when it went out?"
+
+"No; but I have thought since we have been talking, that the box might
+have been turned over after its occupant left it. The holes, if there
+were any, would thus be on the bottom, and would escape our detection."
+
+"Very possible, but the sand with which we supposed the box had been
+filled would have sifted through."
+
+"Not if a good firm piece of stuff was laid in first, and there were
+plenty of such in the secret chamber."
+
+"That is true. But Burritt, you write, was listening at the door, and
+yet you mention no remarks of his concerning any noises heard by him
+from within. And noise must have been made if this was done, as it must
+have had to be done after the tragedy."
+
+"I know I do not," was the hurried reply. "But Burritt probably did not
+remain at the door all the time. There is a window seat at the end of
+the corridor, and upon it he probably lolled during the few hours of his
+watch. Besides, you must remember that Burritt left his post some time
+before daylight. He had his duties to attend to, some of which
+necessitated his being in the stables by four o'clock, at least."
+
+"I see; and so the affair prospered, as most very daring deeds do, and
+they escaped without suspicion, or rather without suspicion pointed
+enough to lead to their being followed. I wonder where they escaped to,
+and if in all the years that have elapsed, they have for one moment
+imagined that they were happy."
+
+"Happy!" was my horrified exclamation. "Oh, if I could find them! If I
+could drag them both to this room and make them keep company with their
+victim for a week, I should feel it too slight a retribution for them."
+
+"Heaven has had its eye upon them. We have been through fearful crises
+since that day, and much unrighteous as well as righteous blood has
+been shed in this land. They may both be dead."
+
+"I do not believe it," I muttered. "Such wretches never die." Then, with
+a renewed remembrance of Hetty, I remarked: "Curses on the duties that
+kept me out of this room on that fatal morning. Had I seen the woman's
+face, this horrid crime would at least been spared its triumph. But I
+was obliged to send Hetty, and she saw nothing strange in the woman,
+though she received money from her hand, and--"
+
+"Where is Hetty?" interrupted the doctor.
+
+"She is married, and lives in the next town."
+
+"So, so. Well, we must hunt her up to-morrow, and see what she has to
+say about the matter now."
+
+But we soon found ourselves too impatient to wait till the morrow, so
+after we had eaten a good supper in a cheerful room, Dr. Kenyon mounted
+his horse, and rode away to the farm house where Hetty lived. While he
+was gone, Mr. Tamworth summoned up courage to re-enter that cave of
+horror, and bring out the contents of the oak chest we had seen there.
+These were mostly stuffs in a more or less good state of preservation,
+and all the assistance they lent to the understanding of the tragedy
+that mystified us was the fact that the chest contained nothing, nor the
+room itself, of sufficient substance to help the wicked Urquhart in
+giving weight to the box which he had emptied of its living freight.
+This is doubtless the reason he resorted to the garden for the sand and
+stone he found there.
+
+Dr. Kenyon returned about midnight, and was met at the door by Mr.
+Tamworth and myself.
+
+"Well?" I cried, in great excitement.
+
+"Just as I supposed," he returned. "She did not see the lady's face
+either. The latter was in bed, and the girl took it for granted that the
+arm and hand which reached her out a silver piece from between the bed
+curtains were those of Mrs. Urquhart."
+
+"My house is cursed!" was my sudden exclamation. "It has not only lent
+itself to the success of the most demoniacal scheme that ever entered
+into the heart of man, but it has kept its secret so long that all hope
+of explaining its details or reaching the guilty must be abandoned."
+
+"Not so," quoth Mr. Tamworth. "Though an old man, I dedicate myself to
+this task. You will hear again of the Urquharts."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+AN INTERIM OF SUSPENSE.
+
+
+        MAY 5, 1791.
+
+[Illustration: H]
+
+How fearful! To hear a spade in the night and know that this spade is
+digging a grave! I sit at my desk and listen to hear if any one in the
+house has been aroused or is suspicious, and then I turn to the window
+and try to pierce the gloom to see if anything can be discerned, from
+the house, of the grewsome act now being performed in the garden. For
+after much consultation and several conferences with the authorities, we
+have decided to preserve from public knowledge, not only the secret of
+the room hidden in my house, but of the discovery which has lately been
+made there. But while much harm would accrue to me by revelations which
+would throw a pall of horror over my inn, and make it no better than a
+place of morbid curiosity forever, the purposes of justice would be
+rather hindered than helped by a publicity which would give warning to
+the guilty couple, and prevent us from surprising them in the imagined
+security which the lapse of so many years must have brought them.
+
+And so a grave is being dug in the garden, where, at the darkest hour of
+night, the remains of the sweet and gentle bride are to be placed
+without tablet or mound.
+
+Meanwhile do there hide in any part of this wicked world two hearts
+which throb with unusual terrors this night? Or does there pass across
+the mirror of a guilty memory any unusual shapes of horror prognostic of
+detection and coming punishment? It would comfort my uneasy heart to
+know; for the spirit of vengeance has seized upon me, and my house will
+never seem washed of its stain, or my conscience be quite at rest as to
+the past, till that vile man and woman pay, in some way, the penalty of
+their crime.
+
+That we know nothing of them but their names lends an interest to their
+pursuit. The very difficulty before us, the hopelessness almost of the
+task we have set ourselves, have raised in me a wild and well-nigh
+superstitious reliance on Providence and the eternal justice, so that it
+seems natural for me to expect aid even from such sources as dreams and
+visions, and make the inquiry in which I have just indulged the
+reasonable expression of my belief in the mysterious forces of right and
+wrong, which will yet bring this long triumphant, but now secretly
+threatened, pair to justice.
+
+Dr. Kenyon, who is as practical as he is pious, smiles at my confidence;
+but Mr. Tamworth neither mocks nor frowns. He has shouldered the
+responsibility of finding this man, and has often observed, in his long
+life, that a woman's intuitions go as far as a man's reasoning.
+
+To-morrow he will start upon his travels.
+
+
+        JUNE 12, 1791.
+
+It is foolish to put every passing thought on paper, but these sheets
+have already served me so well that I cannot resist the temptation of
+making them the repositories of my secret fears and hopes. Mr. Tamworth
+has been gone a month, and I have heard nothing from him. This is all
+the more difficult to bear that Dr. Kenyon also has left me, thus
+taking from my house all in whom I can confide or to whom I can talk.
+For I will not place confidence in servants, and there are no guests
+here at present upon whose judgment I can rely concerning even a lesser
+matter than this which occupies all my thoughts.
+
+I must talk, then, to thee, unknown reader of these lines, and declare
+on paper what I have said a thousand times to myself--what a mystery
+this whole matter is, and how little probability there is of our ever
+understanding it! Why was it that Edwin Urquhart, if he loved one woman
+so well that he was willing to risk his life to gain her, would subject
+himself to the terrors which must follow any crime, no matter how
+secretly performed, by marrying a woman he must kill in twenty-four
+hours? Marriages are not compulsory in this country, and any one must
+acknowledge that it would be easier for a strong man--and he certainly
+was no weakling--to refuse a woman at the nuptial altar than to
+undertake and carry out a scheme so full of revolting details and
+involving so much risk as this which we have been forced to ascribe to
+him.
+
+Then the woman, the unknown and fearful creature who had allowed herself
+to be boxed up and carried, God knows, how many fearful miles, just for
+the purpose of assuming a position which she seemingly might have
+obtained in ways much less repulsive and dangerous! Was it in human
+nature to go through such an ordeal, and if it were, what could the
+circumstances have been that would drive even the most insensible nature
+into such an adventure! I question, and try to answer my own inquiries,
+but my imagination falters over the task, and I am no nearer to the
+satisfaction of my doubts than I was in the harrowing minute when the
+knowledge of this tragedy first flashed upon me.
+
+I must have patience. Mr. Tamworth must write to me soon.
+
+
+        AUGUST 10, 1791.
+
+News, news, and such news! How could I ever have dreamed of it! But let
+me transcribe Mr. Tamworth's letter:
+
+        To Mrs. Clarissa Truax,
+                 Mistress of the Happy-go-lucky Inn:
+
+        RESPECTED MADAM: After a lengthy delay,
+        occupied in researches, made doubly difficult
+        by the changes which have been wrought in the
+        country by the late conflict, I have just come
+        upon a fact that has the strongest bearing upon
+        the serious tragedy which we are both so
+        interested in investigating. It is this:
+
+        That every year the agent of a certain large
+        estate in Albany, N. Y., forwards to France a
+        large sum of money, for the use and behoof of
+        one Honora Quentin Urquhart, daughter of the
+        late Cyrus Dudleigh, of Albany, and wife of one
+        Edwin Urquhart, a gentleman of that same city,
+        to whom she was married in her father's house
+        on January 27, 1775, and with whom she at once
+        departed for France, where she and her husband
+        have been living ever since.
+
+        Thus by chance, almost, have I stumbled upon an
+        explanation of the tragedy we found so
+        inexplicable, and found that clew to the
+        whereabouts of the wretched pair which is so
+        essential to their apprehension and the proper
+        satisfaction of the claims of justice.
+
+        With great consideration I sign myself,
+
+        Your obedient servant,
+            ANTHONY TAMWORTH.
+
+
+        AUGUST 11, 8 o'clock.
+
+I was so overwhelmed by the above letter that I found it impossible at
+the time to comment upon it. To-day it is too late, for this morning a
+packet arrived from Mr. Tamworth containing another letter of such
+length that I am sure it must be one of complete explanation. I burn to
+read it, but I have merely had time to break the seal and glance at the
+first opening words. Will my guests be so kind as to leave me in peace
+to-night, so that I may satisfy a curiosity which has become almost
+insupportable?
+
+        MIDNIGHT.
+
+No time to-night; too tired almost to write this.
+
+
+        AUGUST 12.
+
+The packet is read. I am all of a tremble. What a tale! What a-- But why
+encumber these sheets with words of mine? I will insert the letter and
+let it tell its own portion of the strange and terrible history which
+time is slowly unrolling before us.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+AN OLD ALBANY ROMANCE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE RECLUSE.
+
+
+To Mrs. Clarissa Truax,
+      of the Happy-go-lucky Inn:
+
+RESPECTED MADAM: Appreciating your anxiety, I hasten to give you the
+particulars of an interview which I have just had with a person who knew
+Edwin Urquhart. They must be acceptable to you, and I shall make no
+excuse for the length of my communication, knowing that each detail in
+the lives of the three persons connected with this crime must be of
+interest to one who has brooded upon the subject as long as you have.
+
+The person to whom I allude is a certain Mark Felt, a most eccentric and
+unhappy being now living the life of a recluse amid the forests of the
+Catskills. I became acquainted with his name at the time of my first
+investigation into the history of the Dudleigh and Urquhart families,
+and it was to him I was referred when I asked for such particulars as
+mere neighbors and public officials found it impossible to give.
+
+I was told, however, at the same time, that I should find it hard to
+gain his confidence, as for sixteen years now he had avoided the
+companionship of men, by hiding in the caves and living upon such food
+as he could procure through the means of gun and net. A disappointment
+in love was said to be at the bottom of this, the lady he was engaged to
+having thrown herself into the river at about the time of the marriage
+of his friend.
+
+He was, notwithstanding, a good-hearted man, and if I could once break
+through the reserve he had maintained for so many years, they thought I
+would be able to surprise facts from him which I could never hope to
+reach in any other way.
+
+Interested by these insinuations, and somewhat excited, for an old man,
+at the prospect of bearding such a lion in his den, I at once made up my
+mind to seek this Felt; and accordingly one bright day last week
+crossed the river and entered the forest. I was not alone. I had taken a
+guide who knew the location of the cave which Felt was supposed to
+inhabit, and through his efforts my journey was made as little fatiguing
+as possible. Fallen brambles were removed from my path, limbs lifted,
+and where the road was too rough for the passage of such faltering feet
+as mine, I found myself lifted bodily, in arms as strong and steadfast
+as steel, and carried like a child to where it was smoother.
+
+Thus I was enabled to traverse paths that at first view appeared
+inaccessible, and finally reached a spot so far up the mountain side
+that I gazed behind me in terror lest I should never be able to return
+again the way I had come. My guide, seeing my alarm, assured me that our
+destination was not far off, and presently I perceived before me a huge
+overhanging cliff, from the upper ledges of which hung down a tangle of
+vines and branches that veiled, without wholly concealing, the yawning
+mouth of a cave.
+
+"That is where the man we are seeking lives, eats, and sleeps," quoth my
+guide, as we paused for a moment to regain our breath. And immediately
+upon his words, and as if called forth by them, we perceived an unkempt
+and disheveled head slowly uprear itself through the black gap before
+us, then hastily disappear again behind the vines it had for a moment
+disturbed.
+
+"I will encounter him alone," I thereupon declared; and leaving the
+guide behind me, I pushed forward to the cliff, and pausing before the
+entrance of the cave, I called aloud:
+
+"Mark Felt, do you want to hear news from your friend Urquhart?"
+
+For a moment all was still, and I began to fear that my somewhat daring
+attempt had failed in its effect. But this was only for an instant, for
+presently something between a growl and a cry issued from the darkness
+within, and the next moment the wild and disheveled head showed itself
+again, and I heard distinctly these words:
+
+"He is no friend of mine, your Edwin Urquhart."
+
+"Then," I returned, without a moment's hesitation, "do you want to hear
+news of your enemy?--for I have some, and of the rarest nature, too."
+
+The wild eyes flashed as if a flame of fire had shot from them, and the
+head that held them advanced till I could see the whole bearded
+countenance of the man.
+
+"Is he dead?" he asked, with an eagerness and underlying triumph in the
+voice that argued well for the presence of those passions upon the
+rousing of which I relied for the revelations I sought.
+
+"No," said I, "but death is looking his way. With a little more
+knowledge of his early life and a little more insight into his character
+at the time he married Honora Dudleigh, the law will have so firm a hold
+upon him that I can safely promise any one who longs to see him pay the
+penalty of his evil deeds a certain opportunity of doing so."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The vines trembled and suddenly parted their full length, and Mark Felt
+stepped out into the sunshine and confronted me. What he wore I cannot
+say, for his personality was so strong I received no impression of
+anything else. Not that he was tall or picturesque, or even rudely
+handsome. On the contrary, he was as plain a man as I had ever seen,
+with eyes to which some defect lent a strange, fixed glare, and a mouth
+whose under jaw protruded so markedly beyond the upper that his profile
+gave you a shock when any slight noise or stir drew his head to one
+side and thus revealed it to you. Yet, in spite of all this, in spite of
+tangled locks and a wide, rough beard, half brown, half white, his face
+held something that fixed the attention and fascinated the eye that
+encountered it. Did it lie in his eyes? How could it, with one looking
+like a fixed stone of agate and the other like a rolling ball of fire?
+Was it in his smile? How could it be when his smile had no joy in it,
+only a satisfaction that was not of good, but evil, and promised trouble
+rather than relief or sympathy? It must be in the general expression of
+his features, which seemed made only to mirror the emotions of a soul
+full of vitality and purpose--a soul which, if clouded by wrongs and
+embittered by heavy memories, possessed at least the characteristic of
+force and the charm of an unswerving purpose.
+
+He seemed to recognize the impression he had made, for his lips smiled
+with a sort of scornful triumph before he said:
+
+"These are peculiar words for a stranger. May I ask your name and whose
+interests you represent?"
+
+His speech was quick, and had an odd halt in it, such as might be
+expected from one who had not conferred with his fellows for years. But
+there was no rudeness in its tone, nor was there any mistaking the fact
+that he was, both by nature and education, a gentleman. I began to take
+an interest in him apart from my mission.
+
+"Mr. Felt," I replied, "my name is Tamworth. I am from Virginia, and
+only by chance have I become involved in a matter near to you and the
+man who, you tell me, is, or was, your enemy. As for the interests I
+represent, they are those of justice, and justice only; and it is in her
+behalf and for the triumph of law and righteousness that I now ask you
+for your confidence and such details concerning your early intercourse
+with Edwin Urquhart as will enable me to understand a past that will
+certainly yield us a clew to the present. Are you willing to give them?"
+
+"Will I give them?" he laughed. "Will I break the seal which guards the
+tablets of my youth, and let a stranger's eyes read lines to which I
+have shut my own for these many years! Do you not know that for me to
+tell you what I once knew of Edwin Urquhart is to bare my own breast to
+view, and subject to new sufferings a heart that it has taken fifteen
+years of solitude to render callous?"
+
+I gave no answer to this, only looked at him and stood waiting.
+
+"You have hunted me out, you have touched the last string that ceases to
+vibrate in a man's breast--that of a wild desire for vengeance--and now
+you ask me--"
+
+"To ease your memories of a burden. To drag into light the skeleton of
+old days, and by the light thus thrown upon it to see that it is only a
+skeleton, that, once beheld, should be buried and its old bones
+forgotten. You are too much of a man, Felt, to waste away in these
+wilds. Come! forget I am a stranger, and relieve yourself and me by
+opening these tablets you speak of, even if it does cost you a pang of
+the old sorrow. The talk we have had has already made a flutter in the
+long-closed leaves, and should I leave you this minute you could not
+smother the thoughts and memories to which our conversation has given
+rise. Then why not think to purpose and--"
+
+He raised one hand and stopped me. The gesture was full of fire, and so
+was the eye he now turned away from me to gaze up at the overhanging
+steeps above, with their great gorges and magnificent play of light and
+shadow; at the valley beneath, with its broad belt of shining water
+winding in and out through fertile banks and growing towns, and finally
+at the blue dome of the sky, across which great clouds went sailing in
+shapes so varied and of size so majestic that it was like a vision of
+floating palaces on a sea of translucent azure.
+
+Gasping in a strange mood between delight and despair, he flung up his
+arms.
+
+"Ah! I have loved these hills. Of all the longings and affections that
+one by one have perished from my heart, the solitary passion for nature
+has alone remained, unlessened and undisturbed. I love these trees with
+their countless boughs; these rocks, with their hidden pitfalls and
+sudden precipices. The sky that bends above me here is bluer than any
+other sky; and when it frowns and gathers its storms together, and hurls
+them above these ledges and upon my uncovered head, I throw up my arms
+as I do now and exult in the tumult, and become a part of it, till the
+hunger in my soul is appeased, and the blood in my veins runs mildly
+again. And now I must quit all this. I must give to men thoughts that
+have been closely wedded to Nature. I must tear her image from my heart,
+and in her pure place substitute interests in a life I thought forever
+sacrificed to her worship. It is a bitter task, but I will perform it.
+There are other calls than those which reverberate from yon peaks. I
+have just heard one, and my feet go down once more into the valleys."
+
+His arms fell with the last words, and his eyes returned again to my
+face.
+
+"Come into the cave," said he. "I cannot tell my story in the sight of
+these pure skies."
+
+I followed him without a word. He had affected me. The invocation in
+which he had indulged, and which, from another man, and other
+circumstances, would have struck me as a theatrical attempt upon my
+sympathy as forced as it was unnatural, was in him so appropriate, and
+in such keeping with the grandeur of the scene by which we were
+surrounded, that I was disarmed of criticism, and succumbed without
+resistance to his power.
+
+The cave, once entered, was light enough. On the ground were spread in
+profusion leaves and twigs of the sweet-smelling cedar, making a carpet
+as pleasing as it was warm and healthful. On one side I saw a mound of
+the same, making a couch, across which a great cloak was spread; while
+beyond, the half-defined forms of a rude seat and table appeared,
+lending an air of habitableness to the spot, which, from the exterior, I
+had hardly expected to find. A long slab of stone served as a hearth,
+and above it I perceived a hole in the rock, toward which a thin column
+of smoke was rising from a few smouldering embers that yet remained
+burning upon the great stone below. Altogether, it was a home I had
+entered; and awed a little at the remembrance that it had been the
+refuge of this solitary man through years pregnant with events forever
+memorable in the history of the world as those which gave birth to a new
+nation, I sank down upon the pile of cedar he pointed out to me, and
+waited in some impatience for him to begin his tale.
+
+This he seemed in no hurry to do. He waited so long with his chin sunk
+in his two hands and his eyes fixed upon vacancy, that I grew restless
+and was about to break the silence myself, when, without moving, he
+suddenly spoke.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+TWO WOMEN.
+
+
+"You want to hear about Edwin Urquhart. Well, you shall, but first I
+promise you that I shall talk much less of him than of another person.
+Why? because it is on account of this other person that I hate him, and
+solely because of this other person that I avenge myself, or seek to
+assist others in avenging the justice you say he has outraged.
+
+"We were friends from boyhood. Reared in the same town and under the
+same influences, there was a community of interests between us that
+threw us together and made us what is called friends. But I never liked
+him. That is, I never felt a confidence in him which is essential to a
+mutual understanding. And, though I accepted his companionship, and was
+much with him at the most critical time of my life, I always kept one
+side, and that the better side, of my nature closed to him.
+
+"He was a gentleman with no expectations; I the inheritor of a small
+fortune that made my friendship of temporary use to him, even if it did
+not offer him much to rely on in the future. We lived, he with an uncle
+who was ready to throw him off the moment he was assured that he would
+not marry one of his daughters, and I in my own house, which, if no
+manor, was at least my own, and for the present free from debt. I myself
+thought that Urquhart intended to marry one of the girls to whom I have
+just alluded. But it seems that he never meant to do this, and only
+encouraged his uncle to think so because he was not yet ready to give up
+the shelter he enjoyed with him. But of this, as I say, I was ignorant,
+and was consequently very much astonished when, one nightfall, in
+passing the great Dudleigh place, he remarked:
+
+"'How would you like to drink a glass with me in yonder? Better than in
+the Fairfax kitchen, eh?'
+
+"I thought he was joking. ''Tis a fine old house,' I observed. 'No doubt
+its wines are good. But it is no tavern, and I question if Miss Dudleigh
+would make either of us very welcome.'
+
+"'You do! Then you don't know Miss Dudleigh,' he vaunted, with a proud
+swelling of his person, and a lift of his head that almost took my
+breath away. For, though he was a handsome fellow--too handsome for a
+man no worthier than he--I should no more have presumed to have
+associated him in my thoughts with Miss Dudleigh than if he had been a
+worker in her fields. Not so much because she was rich--very rich for
+that day and place--or that her family was an old one, and his but a
+mushroom stock, as that she was a being of the gentlest instincts and
+the purest thoughts, while he was what you may have gathered from my
+words--vain, coarse, cowardly and mean; an abject cur beside her, who
+was, and is, one of the sweetest women the sun ever shone upon."
+
+At this expression of admiration on the part of the hermit, which proved
+him to be in entire ignorance of the crime which had been perpetrated
+against this woman, I found myself struck so aghast that I could not
+forbear showing it. But he was too engrossed in his reminiscences to
+notice my emotion, and presently continued his story by saying:
+
+"I probably betrayed my astonishment to Urquhart, for he gave a great
+laugh, and forced me about toward the gates.
+
+"'We will not be turned out,' he said. 'Let us go in and pay our
+respects.'
+
+"'But,' I stammered.
+
+"'Oh, it's all right,' he pursued. 'The fair lady is of age and has the
+privilege of choosing her future husband. I shall live in clover, eh?
+Well, it is time I lived in something. I have had a hard enough time of
+it so far, for a none too homely fellow.'
+
+"I was overwhelmed; more than that, I was sickened by these words, whose
+import I understood only too well. Not that I had any special interest
+in Miss Dudleigh; indeed, I hardly knew her; but any such woman inspires
+respect, and I could not think of her as allied to this man without a
+spasm of revolt that almost amounted to fear.
+
+"'You are going to marry her, this white rose!' I exclaimed. 'I should
+as soon have thought of your marrying a princess of the royal house. I
+hope you appreciate your unbounded good fortune.'
+
+"He pointed to the great chimneys and imposing facade of the fine
+structure before us. 'Do you think I am so blind as not to know the
+advantage of being the master in a house like that? You must not think
+me quite a fool if I am not as clever a fellow as you are. Remember that
+I am a poorer one and like my ease better.'
+
+"'But Miss Dudleigh?'
+
+"'Oh, she's a trifle peaked and dull, but she's fond and not too
+exacting.'
+
+"I was angry, but had no excuse for showing it. Righteous indignation he
+could never have understood, and to have provoked a quarrel without any
+definite end in view would have been folly. I remained silent,
+therefore, but my heart burned within me.
+
+"It had not lost its heat when we entered her house, and when my eyes
+fell upon her seated at her spinet in front of a latticed window that
+brought out her gentle figure in all its sweet simplicity, I felt like
+clutching, and flinging back over the threshold, which his desecrating
+foot should never have crossed, the hollow-hearted being at my side, who
+could neither see her beauty nor estimate the worth of her innocent
+affection.
+
+"There was an aunt or some such relative in the room with her, but this
+did not hinder the glad smile from rising to her lips as she saw us--or
+rather him, for she hardly seemed to notice my presence. I learned
+afterward that this aunt had been greatly instrumental in bringing these
+incongruous natures together; that for reasons of her own, which I have
+never attempted to fathom, she thought Edwin Urquhart the best husband
+that her niece could have, and not only introduced him into the house,
+but stood so much his friend during the first days of his courtship that
+she gradually imparted to her niece her own enthusiasm, till the poor
+girl saw--or thought she saw--the ideal of her dreams in the base and
+shallow being whom I called my friend.
+
+"However that may be, she certainly rose from her spinet that night in a
+pretty confusion that made her absolutely lovely, and advancing with the
+mingled dignity of the heiress and the tender bashfulness of the maiden
+in the presence of him she loved, she tendered us a courtesy whose grace
+put me out of ease with myself, so much it expressed the manners of
+people removed from the sphere in which it had hitherto been my lot to
+move.
+
+"But Urquhart showed no embarrassment. His fine figure--he had
+that--bent forward with the most courtly of bows, and after the
+introduction of my humble self to her notice, he entered into a
+conversation which, if shallow, was at least bright, and for the moment
+interesting. As I had no wish to talk, I gave myself up to watching her,
+and came away at last more fixed than ever in my belief of her extreme
+worthiness and of his extreme presumption in thinking of calling so
+perfect a creature his.
+
+"'Would to God she was as poor as Janet Fairfax,' I thought to myself.
+'Then she would never have attracted his attention, and might have known
+what happiness was with some man who could appreciate her. Now she is
+doomed, and being fatherless and motherless, will rush on to her fate,
+and no one can stop her.'
+
+"Thus I thought, and thus I continued to think as chance and Urquhart's
+stubborn will led me more and more to her house, and within the radius
+of her gentle influence. But my thoughts never went further. I never saw
+her, even in my dreams, fostered by me, or soothed of an old grief by my
+love and affection. For though she was a dainty and gracious being, with
+beauty enough to delight the eyes and warm the heart, she was not the
+one destined to move me, and awake the tumultuous passions that lay
+dormant in my own scarcely understood nature. Urquhart, therefore, was
+not acting unwisely in taking me there so often, though, if I could have
+foreseen what was likely to be the result of those visits, I should have
+leaped from my house's roof on to the stones below before I had passed
+again under those fatal portals.
+
+"And yet--would I? Do we fear suffering or apathy most? Is it from
+experience or the monotony of a commonplace existence that we quickest
+flee? A man with passions like mine must love; and if that love comes
+girt with flame and mysterious death, he still must embrace it, and rise
+and fall as the destinies will.
+
+"But I talk riddles. I have not yet told you of her; and yet speak of
+fire and death. I will try to be more coherent, if only to show that the
+years have brought me some mastery over myself. One day--it was a fall
+day and beautiful as limpid sunshine and a world of yellowing woods
+could make it--I went to Miss Dudleigh's house to apologize for my
+friend, who had wished to improve the gorgeous sunshine elsewhere.
+
+"I had by this time lost all fear of her, as well as of her rich and
+spacious surroundings, and passed through the hospitable door and along
+the wide halls to the especial room in which we were wont to find her,
+with that freedom engendered by an intimacy as cordial as it was
+sincere. It was the room where first I had seen her, the room with the
+wide latticed window at the back, and the spinet beneath it, and the old
+carven chair of oak in which her white-clad form had always looked so
+ethereal; and I entered it smiling, expecting to see her delicate figure
+rise from the window, and advance toward me with that look of surprise
+and possible disappointment which the absence of Urquhart would be apt
+to arouse in this too loving nature. But the room was empty and the
+spinet closed, and I was about turning to find a servant, when I felt an
+influence stealing over me so subtile and so peculiar that I stood
+petrified and enthralled, hardly knowing if it were music that held me
+spell-bound or some unknown and subduing perfume, that, filling my
+senses, worked upon my brain, and made me feel like a man transported at
+a breath from the land of reality into a land of dreams.
+
+"So potent the spell, so inexplicable its action, that minutes may have
+elapsed before I wrenched myself free from its power and looked to see
+what it was that so moved me. When I did, I found myself at a loss to
+explain it. Whether it was music or perfume, or just the emanation from
+an intense personality, I have never determined. I only know that when I
+turned, I saw standing before me, in an attitude of waiting, a woman of
+such marvelous attractions, and yet of an order of beauty so bizarre and
+out of keeping with the times and the place in which she stood, that I
+forgot to question everything but my own sanity and the reality of a
+vision so unprecedented in all my experience. I therefore simply stood
+like her, speechless and lost, and only came to myself when the figure
+before me suddenly melted from a statue into a woman, and, with a deep
+and graceful courtesy, almost daring in its abandonment, said:
+
+"'You must be Master Felt, I take it. Master Urquhart would never be so
+thrown off his balance by a simple girl like me.'
+
+"There are voices that pierce like arrows and sink deep into the heart,
+which closes over their sweetness forever. So it was with this voice.
+From its first sound to its last it held me enthralled, and had she
+shown but half the beauty she did, those accents of hers would have made
+me her slave. As it was, I was more than her slave. I instantly became
+all and everything to her. I breathed but as she breathed, and in the
+absorbing delight which from that moment took hold of me I lost all
+sense of the proprieties and conventionalities of social intercourse,
+and only thought of drinking in at one draught the strange and
+mysterious loveliness which I saw revealed before me.
+
+"She was not a tall woman, no taller than Miss Dudleigh. Nor was she of
+marked carriage or build. Her form, indeed, seemed only made to express
+suppleness and passion, and was as speaking in its slight proportions as
+if it had breathed forth the nobler attributes of majesty and strength.
+Her dress was dark, and clung to every curve with a loving persistence
+bewildering in its effect upon an eye like mine. Upon the bust, and just
+below the white throat, burned a mass of gorgeous flowers as ruddy as
+wine; and from one delicate hand a long vine trailed to the floor. But
+it was in her face that her power lay; in her eyes possibly, though I
+scarcely think so, for there were curves to her lips such as I have
+never seen in any other, and a delicate turn to her nostril that at
+times made me feel as if she were breathing fire. Her skin was pale, her
+forehead broad and low, her nose straight, and her lips of a brilliant
+vermilion. I, however, saw only her eyes, though I may have been
+influenced by the rest of her bewildering physiognomy; they were so
+large, so changeful, so full of alternating flames and languor, so
+indeterminate in color, and yet so persistent in their effect upon the
+eye and the feelings. Looking at them, I swore she was an anomaly.
+Gazing into them, I resolved that she was this only because she let
+herself be natural and sought to smother none of the fires which had
+been enkindled by a bountiful nature within her soul.
+
+"While I was reasoning thus, she made me another mock courtesy, and
+explaining her presence by saying she was a cousin of Miss Dudleigh's,
+ventured to remark that, if Master Felt would be kind enough to state
+his errand, she would be glad to carry it to Miss Dudleigh. I answered
+confusedly, but with a fervor she could not fail to understand, and
+following up this effort by another, led her into a conversation in
+which my responses gradually became such as she should expect from a
+gentleman and an equal.
+
+"For with her, notwithstanding her beauty, and the sense of splendor and
+luxury which breathed from her mysterious presence, I never felt that
+sense of personal inferiority I experienced at first with Miss Dudleigh.
+Whether I recognized then, as now, the lack of those high qualities
+which lift one mortal above another, I do not know. I am only certain
+that, while I regarded her as a woman to be obeyed, to be loved, to be
+followed through life, through death, into whatsoever regions of horror,
+danger, and pain she might lead me, I never looked upon her as a being
+out of my world or beyond my reach, except so far as her caprice might
+carry her.
+
+"It was therefore with the fixed determination to force from her some of
+the interest she had awakened in me, that I grasped at this first
+opportunity of conversation; and in spite of her unrest--she did not
+want to linger--held her to the spot till I had made her feel that a man
+had come into her life whose will meant something, and to whom, if she
+did not subdue the light of her glances, she must give account for every
+added throb she caused to beat in his proud heart.
+
+"This done I let her go, for Miss Dudleigh was not well and needed her,
+and the door closed behind her mysterious smile, and the sound of her
+steps died out in the hall, and in fancy only could I behold her supple,
+dark-clad form go up the broad staircase, projecting itself now against
+the golden daylight falling through one window, and now against the
+clustering vines that screened another, till she disappeared in regions
+of which I knew nothing and whither even my daring imagination presumed
+not to follow. And the vision never left my eyes nor her form my heart,
+and I went out in my turn, a burning, eager, determined man, where in a
+short half hour before I had entered cold and self-satisfied, without
+hope and without exaltation.
+
+"This was the beginning. In a week the earth and sky held nothing for me
+but that woman. Her name, which I had not learned at our first
+interview, was Marah Leighton--a fitting watch-word for a struggle that
+could terminate only with my life! For I had got to the pass that this
+woman must be mine. I would have her for my wife or see her dead; she
+should never leave the town with another. Yes; homely as I was, without
+recommendation of family, or more means than enough to keep a wife from
+want, I boldly entered upon this determination, and in the face of some
+dozen lovers, that at the first revelation of her beauty began to swarm
+about her steps, pressed my claims and pushed forward my suit till I
+finally gained a hearing, and after that a promise, which, if vague, was
+more than any of her other lovers could boast of, or why did they all
+gradually withdraw from the struggle, leaving me alone in my homage?
+
+"The uncertainties of her position (she was an orphan and dependent upon
+Miss Dudleigh for subsistence) had added greatly to my tenderness for
+her. It also added to my hope. For if I were poor, she was poorer, and
+ought to find in the managing of my humble home a satisfaction she could
+not experience in the enjoyment of a relative's bounty, even if that
+relative was a woman like Honora Dudleigh. And yet one doubts an
+exultant happiness; and as I grew to know her better, I realized that if
+I ever did succeed in making her mine, I must see to it that my
+fortunes bettered, as she would never be happy as a poor man's wife,
+even if that man brought her independence and love.
+
+"She loved splendor, she loved distinction, she loved the frivolities of
+life. Not with a childish pleasure or even a girlish enthusiasm, but
+with a woman's strong and determined spirit. I have seen her pace
+through and through those great halls just for the pleasure of realizing
+their spaciousness; and though the sight made my heart cringe, I have
+admired her step and the poise of her head as much as if she had been
+the queen of it all, and I her humblest vassal. Then her luxury! It
+showed as plainly in her poverty as it could have done in wealth. If it
+were flowers she handled, it was as a goddess would handle them. None
+were too beautiful, or too costly, or too rare for her restless fingers
+to pluck, or her dainty feet to tread on. Had she possessed jewels, she
+would have worn them like roses, and flung them away almost as freely if
+they had displeased her or she had grown weary of them. Love was to her
+a jewel, and she wore it just now because it suited her fancy to do so;
+but would not the day come when she would grow tired of it or demand
+another, and so fling it and me to the dogs?
+
+"I did not ask. I was permitted to walk at her side, and pay her my
+court, and now and then, when the humor took her, to press her hand or
+drop a kiss upon the rosy palm; and while I could do this, was it for me
+to question a future which seemed more likely to hold fewer pleasures
+than more?
+
+"But I grow diffuse; I must return to facts. Honora Dudleigh, who saw my
+devotion, encouraged it. I wondered at it sometimes, for she knew the
+smallness of my fortune, and must have known the nature of the woman I
+expected to share it. But as time passed I wondered less, for her
+woman's intuition must have told her, what observation had as yet failed
+to tell me, that there was trouble in the air, and that Marah needed a
+protector.
+
+"The day that I first recognized this fact made an era in my life. I had
+been so happy, so at ease with myself, so sure of her growing confidence
+and of my coming happiness. That I had cause for this, the conduct of
+her friends and the jealousy of her lovers seemed to prove. Though she
+gave no visible token of her regard, she clung to me as to a support,
+and allowed my passion the constant feast of her presence and the
+stimulation of her voice.
+
+"Her enchantments, and they were innumerable, were never spared me, nor
+did she stint herself of a smile that could allure, nor of a glance that
+could arouse or perplex.
+
+"I was happy, and questioned only the extent of my patience, which I
+felt fast giving way as the preparations for Miss Dudleigh's marriage
+proceeded without my seeing any immediate prospect of my own. You can
+realize, then, the maddening nature of the shock which I received when,
+coming quietly into the house as I did one day, I beheld her face
+disappearing through one of the doorways, with that look upon it which I
+had always felt was natural to it, but which no passion of mine had ever
+been able to evoke, and then perceived in the shadow from which she had
+just glided, Edwin Urquhart, pale as excessive feeling could make him,
+and so shaken by the first real emotion which had ever probably moved
+his selfish soul that he not only failed to see me when I advanced, but
+hastened by me, and away into the solitudes of the garden, without
+noticing my existence, or honoring with a reply the words of wrath and
+confusion which, in my misery and despair, I threw after him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A SUDDEN BETROTHAL.
+
+
+"As for myself," continued Mark Felt, "I stood crushed, and after the
+first torrent of emotion had swept by, lifted my head like a drowning
+man and looked wildly about, as if, in the catastrophe which overwhelmed
+me, all nature must have changed, and I should find myself in a strange
+place. The sight of the door through which Marah Leighton had passed
+stung me into tortured existence again. With a roar of passion and hate
+I sprang toward it, burst it open, and passed in. Instantly silence and
+semi-darkness fell upon me, through which I felt her presence exhaling
+its wonted perfume, though I could see nothing but the dim shapes of
+unaccustomed articles of furniture grouped against a window that was
+almost completely closed from the light of day.
+
+"Advancing, I gazed upon chair after chair. They were all empty, and not
+till I reached the further corner did I find her, thrown at full length
+upon a couch, with her head buried in her arms, and motionless as any
+stone. Confused, appalled even, for I had never seen her otherwise than
+erect and mocking, I stumbled back, and would have fled, but that she
+suddenly arose, and flinging back her head, gave me one look, which I
+felt rather than saw, and bursting into a peal of laughter, called me to
+account for disturbing the first minute of rest she had known that day.
+
+"I was dumfounded. If she had consulted all her wiles, and sought for
+the one best way to silence me, she could not have chanced on one surer
+than this. I gazed at her quite helpless, and forgot--actually
+forgot--what had drawn me into her presence, and only asked to get a
+good glimpse of her face, which, in the dim light, was more like that of
+a spirit than of a woman--a mocking spirit, in whom no love could lodge,
+whatever my fancy might have pictured in the delirium of the moment that
+had just passed.
+
+"She seemed to comprehend my mood, for she flung back the curtain and
+drew herself up to her full height before me.
+
+"'Did you think I was playing the coquette?' she asked. 'Well, perhaps I
+was; women like me must have their amusements; but--'
+
+"Oh! the languishment in that _but_. I shut my eyes as I heard it. I
+could neither bear its sound, nor the sight of her face.
+
+"'You listened to him. He was making love to you--he, the promised
+husband of another; and you--'
+
+"She forced me to open my eyes.
+
+"'And I?' she repeated, with an indescribable emphasis that called up
+the blushes to my cheek.
+
+"'And you,' I went on, answering her demand without hesitation, 'the
+beloved of an honest man who would die to keep you true, and will die if
+you play him false!'
+
+"She sighed. Softness took the place of scorn; she involuntarily held
+out her hand.
+
+"I was amazed; she had never done so much before. I seized that hand, I
+pressed it wildly, hungrily, and with lingering fondness.
+
+"'Do you not know that you are everything to me?' I asked. 'That to win
+you I am ready to do everything, barter anything, suffer anything but
+shame! You are my fate, Marah; will you not let me be yours?'
+
+"She was silent; she had drawn her hand from mine and had locked it in
+its fellow, and now stood with them hanging down before her, fixed as a
+statue, in a reverie I could neither fathom nor break.
+
+"'You are beautiful,' I went on, 'too beautiful for me; but I love you.
+You are proud, also, and would grace the noblest palaces of the old
+world; but they are far away, and my home is near and eager to welcome
+you. You are dainty and have never taught your hands to toil, or your
+feet to walk our common earth; but there are affections that sweeten
+labor, and under my roof you will be so honored, so aided and so
+beloved, that you will soon learn there are pleasures of the fireside
+that can compensate for its cares, and triumphs of the affections that
+are beyond the dignities of outside life.'
+
+"Her lip curled and her hands parted. She lifted one rosy palm and
+looked at it, then she glanced at me.
+
+"'I shall never work,' she said.
+
+"My heart contracted, but I could not give her up. Madness as it was to
+put faith and life in the grasp of such a woman, I was too little of a
+man or too much of a one to turn my back upon a hope which, even in its
+realization, could bring me nothing but pain.
+
+"'You shall not work,' I declared. And I meant it. If I died she should
+not handle anything harsher than rose leaves in her new home.
+
+"'You want me?' She breathed it. I stood in a gasp of hope and fear.
+
+"'More than I want heaven! Or, rather, you are my heaven.'
+
+"'We will be married before Honora,' she murmured. And gliding from my
+side before I had recovered from the shock of a promise so unexpected, a
+bliss so unforeseen and immediate, she vanished from my sight, and
+nothing but the perfume which lingered behind her remained to tell me
+that it was not all a dream, and I the most presumptuous being alive.
+
+"And so the hour that opened in disaster ended in joy; and from the
+heart of what I deemed an irredeemable disaster rose a hope that for
+several days put wings to my feet. Then something began to tarnish my
+delight, an impalpable dread seized me, and though I worked with love
+and fury upon my house, which I had begun adorning for my bride, I began
+to question if she had played the coquette in smiling upon Edwin
+Urquhart, and whether in the mockery of the laugh with which she had
+dismissed my accusations there had not been some regret for a love she
+dared not entertain, but yet suffered to lose. The memory of the glow in
+her eyes, as she turned away from him at my step, returned with growing
+power, and I decided that if this were coquetry, it were sweeter than
+love, and longed to ask her to play the coquette with me. But she never
+did, and though she did not smile upon him again in my presence, I felt
+that her beauty was more bewildering, her voice more enchanting, when he
+was in the room with us than when chance or my purpose found us alone.
+To settle my doubts, I left watching her and began to watch him, and
+when I found that he betrayed nothing, I turned my attention from them
+both and bestowed it upon Miss Dudleigh."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+MARAH.
+
+
+"Great heaven! why had I not noticed Miss Dudleigh before! In her
+changed face, and in the wasting of her delicate form, I saw that my
+fears were not all vain, inasmuch as they were shared by her; and
+shocked at evidences so much beyond my expectations, I knew not whether
+to shed the bitter tears which rose to my eyes in pity for her or in
+rage for myself.
+
+"We were sitting all together, and I had a full opportunity to observe
+the mournful smile that now and then crossed her lips as Marah uttered
+some brighter sally than common or broke--as she often did--into song
+that rippled for a minute through the heavy air and then ceased as
+suddenly as it had begun. She looked much oftener at Marah than at
+Urquhart, and seemed to be asking in what lay the charm that subdued
+everybody, even herself. And when she seemed to receive no answer to her
+secret questioning, her eyes fell and a sigh stirred her lips, which, if
+unheard by the preoccupied man at her side, rang on in my ears long
+after I had bidden farewell to her and the siren whose smiles,
+intentionally or unintentionally, seemed destined to bring shipwreck
+into three lives.
+
+"It was not the last time I heard that sigh. As the weeks progressed it
+fluttered oftener and oftener from between those pale lips, and at last
+the change in Miss Dudleigh became so marked that people stopped in the
+midst of their talk about the stamp act to remark upon Miss Dudleigh's
+growing weakness, and venture assertions that she would never live to be
+a bride. And yet the preparations for her bridal and for mine went on,
+and the day set apart for the latter drew bewilderingly near.
+
+"Marah saw my perplexity and her cousin's grief, but did nothing to
+dispel the one or assuage the other. She seemed to be too busy. She was
+embroidering a famous stomacher for herself, and while a sprig of it
+remained unworked she had neither eyes nor attention for anything else,
+even for the bleeding hearts around her. She would smile--O yes, smile
+upon me, smile upon Honora, and not smile upon him; but she would not
+meet her cousin's true eyes, nor would she grant me one minute apart
+from the rest in which I could utter my fears or demand the breaking of
+that spell whose effects were so visible, even if its workings were
+secret and imperceptible. But at last the stomacher was finished, and as
+it dropped from her hands I threw myself at her feet, and from this
+position, looking into her eyes, I whispered:
+
+"'This is the last thing that shall ever flaunt itself between us. You
+are to be mine now, and in token of your truth come with me into the
+conservatory, for I have words to utter that will not be put off.'
+
+"'You are cruel,' she murmured, 'you are tyrannical. This is a time of
+revolt; shall I revolt, too?'
+
+"Maddened, for her eyes were not looking at me, but at him, I leaped to
+my feet, and, regardless of everything but my determination to end this
+uncertainty then and there, I lifted her and carried her out of the room
+into another, where I could have her alone, and without the humiliating
+sense of his presence.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"My bold act seemed to frighten her, for she stood very still where I
+had placed her, only trembling slightly when I looked at her and
+cried:
+
+"'Did you ask that question of me? Am I to understand you want to break
+your fetters?'
+
+"She plucked a rose from her breast and crumpled it to atoms between her
+hands.
+
+"'O why are they not golden ones!' she asked. 'I am miserable because we
+must be poor; because--because I want to ride in a carriage, because I
+want to wear jewels and own a dozen servants, and trample on the pride
+of women plainer than myself. I hate your humble home, I hate your stiff
+Dutch kitchen, I hate your sordid ways and the decent respectability
+that is all you can offer me. Were you beautiful as Adonis, it would
+make no difference. I was born to drink wine and not water, and I shall
+never forgive you for forcing me to take your crystal goblet in my
+hands, while, if I had waited--'
+
+"She stopped, panting. I let my whole pent-up jealousy out in a word.
+
+"'Edwin Urquhart has not even a crystal goblet to offer you. He is
+poorer than I am, and will remain so till he has actually married Miss
+Dudleigh.'
+
+"'Don't I know it!' she flashed out. 'If it had been otherwise do you
+think--'
+
+"She had the grace or the wisdom to falter. I regret it now. I regret
+that she did not go on and reveal her whole soul to me in one fell burst
+of feeling. As it was, I trembled with jealousy and passion, but I did
+not cast her from me.
+
+"'Then you acknowledge--' I cried.
+
+"But she would acknowledge nothing. 'I love no one,' she asserted, 'no
+one. I want what I want, but none of you can give it to me.'
+
+"Then blame me as you will, I took a great resolve. I determined to give
+her what she craved; convinced of her sordid nature, convinced of her
+heartlessness and the folly of ever thinking she could even understand,
+much less reciprocate my passion, I was so much under her sway at that
+moment that I would have flung at her feet kingdoms had I possessed
+them. Flushing, I seized her hand.
+
+"'You do not know what a man in love can do,' I cried. 'Trust me; give
+me yourself as you have promised, and sooner or later I will give you
+what you have asked. I am not a weak man or an incompetent one. Politics
+opens a vast field to an ambitious nature, and if war breaks out, as we
+all expect it will, you will see me rise to the front, if I have you for
+my wife and inspiration.'
+
+"The scorn in her eyes did not abate. 'O you men!' she cried. 'You think
+you give us everything with a promise. A war! What is the history of
+wars? Demolished homes, broken fortunes, rack, ruin and desolation. Is
+there gold, or honor, or ease in these? A war! It will not be a war. It
+will be a struggle in which men will fight barefoot and on empty
+stomachs for the privilege of calling themselves free. I have no
+sympathy with such a war. It robs us of comfort in the present and
+brings nothing worth waiting for in the future. Were I to have my will,
+I would take the arm of the first officer returning to England and
+remain there. I hate this country, so new, so crude, so democratic! I
+should like to live where I could ride over the necks of common people.'
+
+"A tory and an aristocrat! Another gulf between us. I looked at her in
+horror, but, alas! the horror was strangely mixed with admiration. She
+was such a burning embodiment of pride. Her peculiar beauty--the source
+of which I have never to this day been able to fathom--lent itself so
+readily to the expression of fury and disdain, that, recoil as I would
+from her principles, I could not shut my eyes to the fascination of her
+glance or the torturing charm that hid in the corners of her pouting
+lips. She was a queen. Oh, yes, but the queen of some strange realm in a
+distant oriental land, where right and wrong were only words, and the
+sole end of beauty was delight, without reference to God or one's
+fellows. I saw it all, I felt it all, yet I lingered. She was to be my
+wife in three days, and the intoxication of this prospect was in my
+blood and brain.
+
+"'You will do so and so,' were her next words. 'You will give me what I
+ask when you have won it. But I cannot wait for the winning; I want it
+now. Do you know what I would do to get the wealth I was born to? I
+would risk life! I would walk on burning plowshares! I would--'
+
+"She stopped, and I saw the lines come out in her forehead. She was
+thinking--thinking deeply. I felt the shadow of a great horror creeping
+over me. I caught her impetuously in my arms. I kissed her passionately
+to drive away the demons. I begged and implored her to forget her evil
+thoughts, and be the woman I could love and cherish; and finally I
+moved her. She shook herself free, but she also shook the shadow from
+her brow. She even found a smile to bestow upon me; and was it a tear?
+Could it have been a tear I saw for a moment glisten in her eye as she
+turned half petulantly, half imperiously away? I have never known, but
+the very suspicion filled my heart to overflowing, and the great sobs
+rose in my breast; and--fool that I was--I was about to beg her pardon,
+when she gave me one other look, and I merely faltered out:
+
+"'Where will you find another love like mine, Marah? If you got your
+gold, you would soon miss something which only comes with love. You
+would be unhappy, and curse the day you left my arms. I am your master,
+Marah; why not make me a happy one?'
+
+"'I expect,' she murmured, 'to marry you.'
+
+"'And then?' I could not help it; the words sprang to my lips
+involuntarily.
+
+"Her eyes opened wide; she literally flashed them upon me. I felt their
+lightnings play all about my doubtful nature, and scorch it.
+
+"'I will be your wife,' she uttered gravely.
+
+"I fell at her feet. I kissed the hem of her robe. In that moment I
+adored her. 'O best and fairest!' I cried, 'I will make you happy. I
+will fill your hopes to the full. You shall ride in a carriage, and your
+will shall be a law to those who smile in scorn upon you now, and you
+will be--'
+
+"'Mistress Felt, of most honorable degree,' she finished, with the half
+laughing disdain she could never keep long out of her words.
+
+"And thus I became again her slave, and lived in that sweet, if servile,
+condition till the hour of our nuptials came, and I went to conduct her
+to the church where, in sight of half the town, she was to be made my
+wife. Shall I ever forget that morning? It was a December day, but the
+heavens were blue and the earth white, and not a cloud bespoke a rising
+storm. As for me, I walked on air, all the more that I knew Urquhart was
+out of town and would not be present at the wedding. He had gone away on
+some behest of Miss Dudleigh's immediately after the last interview I
+have mentioned, and would not come back, or so I had been told, till
+after Miss Leighton had been Mistress Felt for a week. So there was
+nothing to mar my day or make my entrance into Miss Dudleigh's house
+anything but one of promise. I saw Miss Dudleigh first. She was
+standing in the vast colonial hall when I entered, and in her gala
+robes, and with the sunshine on her head, she looked almost happy. Yet
+she was greatly changed from her old self, and I felt much like pouring
+out my soul to her and bidding her to break a tie that would never bring
+her peace, or even honor. But I feared to shatter my own hopes. Selfish
+being that I was, I dreaded to have her made free, lest-- What? My
+thoughts did not interpret my fears, for at that moment a sunbeam struck
+down the stairs and through my heart, and, looking up, I saw Marah
+descending, and thought and reason flew to greet her.
+
+"She had been robed by her cousin's bounteous hand, and her dress of
+stiff yellow brocade burned in the morning light with almost as much
+brilliance as the sunshine itself. Folded across her bust was the
+wonderful stomacher, under whose making I had suffered so many emotions
+that each sprig of work upon it seemed to have its own tale of misery
+for my eyes, and fixed against this and her white throat were those
+masses of flowers without which her beauty never seemed quite complete.
+In her hair, which was piled high above her forehead, flashed a huge
+golden comb, and upon her arm gleamed two bracelets, whose exquisite
+workmanship was well known to me, for they had been an heirloom in my
+family for years. She was fair as a dream, proud as a queen, cold as a
+statue, but she was mine! Was not the minister waiting for us at the
+church? and were not the horses that were to take us there even now
+champing their bits before the door?
+
+"She rode with me. Four white horses had been attached to Miss
+Dudleigh's coach, and behind these we passed in state out through the
+noble park that separated this lordly house from the rest, into the
+closely packed streets, where hundreds waited to catch a glimpse of the
+most beautiful woman in Albany, going to be made a bride.
+
+"Miss Dudleigh rode behind us in another coach, and the murmur which
+greeted our appearance did not die out till after she had passed, for
+they knew she would soon be riding the same road with even greater
+state, if not with so much beauty; and the people of Albany loved Honora
+Dudleigh, for she was ever a beneficent spirit to them, and more than
+ever, since a shadow had fallen upon her happiness, and she had come to
+know what misery was.
+
+"And thus we passed on, Marah with a glowing flush of triumph burning on
+her cheek and I in one of those moods of happiness whose rapture was so
+unalloyed that I scarcely heard the half-laughing comments of those who
+saw with wonder how plain was the man who had succeeded in carrying off
+this well-known beauty. And the greater part of the way was traversed,
+and the bells of the old North Church became audible, and in a moment
+more we should have seen the belfry of the church itself rising before
+us, when, suddenly, the woman that I loved, the woman whose nuptials the
+minister was waiting to celebrate, gave a great start, and, turning
+quickly toward me, cried:
+
+"'Turn the horses' heads! I do not go to the church with you to-day. Not
+if you kill me, Mark Felt!'
+
+"You have heard of stray bullets coming singing from some unknown
+quarter and striking a person seated at a feast. Such a bullet struck me
+then. I looked at her in horror."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS.
+
+
+"'You think I am playing with you,' she murmured. 'I am not. I have
+sickened of these nuptials and am going back. If you want to, you may
+kill me where I sit. You carry a dagger, I know; one more red blossom
+will not show on my breast. Give it to me if you will, but turn the
+horses.'
+
+"She meant it, however much my lost heart might cry out for its
+happiness and honor. Leaning forward, I told the pompous driver that
+Miss Leighton had been taken very ill, and bade him drive back; and then
+with the calmness born of utter despair and loss, I said to her:
+
+"'In pity for my pride drop your head upon my shoulder. I have said you
+were sick, and sick you must be. It is the least you can do for me now.'
+
+"She obeyed me. That head on which in fancy I had set the crowns of
+empires, for whose every hair my heart had given a throb, sank coldly
+down till it rested upon the heart she had broken; and while I steadied
+my nerves to meet the changed faces of the crowd, the carriage gave a
+sudden turn, and amid murmurings that fell almost unheeded on my
+benumbed senses, we wheeled about and faced again the gates through
+which we had so lately issued.
+
+"'She is ill,' I shouted to Miss Dudleigh, as we passed her carriage.
+But she gave me no reply. She was gazing over the heads of the crowd at
+some distant object that enthralled her every look and sense; and moved
+by her expression as I thought never to be moved by anything again, I
+followed her glance, and there, on the outskirts of the crowd, crouching
+amid branches that yet refused to hide him, I saw Edwin Urquhart; and
+the miserable truth smote home to my heart that it was he who had
+stopped my marriage--he, whom I had thought far distant, but who had now
+come to hinder, by some secret gesture or glance, my bride on her path
+to the altar.
+
+"A dagger was hidden in my breast, and I still wonder that I did not
+leap from the carriage, burst through the crowd, and slay him where he
+crouched in cowardly ambush. But I let the moment go by, perhaps because
+I dreaded to bring the shadow of another woe into Miss Dudleigh's white
+face, and almost immediately the throng had surged in thickly between
+us, and Miss Dudleigh's carriage had turned after ours, and there was
+nothing further to do but to ride back, with the false face pressed in
+seeming insensibility to my breast, and that false heart beating out its
+cold throbs of triumph upon mine.
+
+"I bore it, glancing down but once upon her. Had the ride before me been
+one of miles I should have gone on in the same mechanical way, for my
+very being was petrified. Rage, fear, sorrow and despair, all seemed
+like dreams to me. I wondered that I had ever felt anything, and stared
+on and on at the blue sky before me, conscious of but one haunting
+thought that repeated itself again and again in my brain--that her power
+lay not in her eyes, as I had always been assured, but in those strange
+curves about her mouth. For her eyes were closed now, and yet I was
+coldly conscious of the fact that she had never looked more beautiful or
+more fitted to move a man, if a man had any heart left to be moved.
+
+"The stopping of the carriage before the great door of Miss Dudleigh's
+house roused me to the necessity for action.
+
+"'I must carry you in,' I whispered. 'I beg your pardon for it, but it
+is necessary to the farce.' And following up my words by action, I
+lifted her from the seat, cold and unresponsive as a stone, and carried
+her into the house and set her down before the astonished eyes of such
+servants as had remained to guard the house in our absence.
+
+"'Miss Leighton has not been married,' I cried. 'She was taken ill on
+the way to church, and I have brought her back. She needs no
+attendance.' And I waved them all back, for their startled, gaping
+countenances infuriated me, and threatened to shatter the dreadful
+calmness which was my only strength.
+
+"As they disappeared, murmuring and peering, Miss Dudleigh entered. I
+gave her one glance and dropped my eyes. She and I could not bear each
+other's looks yet. Meantime Marah stood erect in the center of the hall,
+her face pale, her lips set, her eyes fixed upon vacancy. Not a word
+passed our three mouths. At last a petulant murmur broke the dreadful
+silence, and Marah, tossing her head in disdain, turned away before our
+eyes and began to mount the stairs.
+
+"I felt my blood, which for many minutes had seemed at a standstill,
+pour with a rush through vein and artery, and darting to her side, I
+caught her by the hand and held her to her place.
+
+"'You shall not go up,' I cried, 'till you and I have understood each
+other. You have refused to marry me to-day. Was it some caprice that
+moved you, or--' I paused and looked behind me; Miss Dudleigh had shrunk
+from sight into one of the rooms--'or because you saw Edwin Urquhart in
+the crowd and followed his commanding gesture?'
+
+"The hand which I held grew cold as ice. She drew it away and looked at
+me haughtily, but I saw that I had frightened her.
+
+"'Edwin Urquhart is nothing to me,' came in low but emphatic tones from
+her lips. 'I did not want to marry any one, and I said so. It would be
+better if more brides hesitated on the threshold of matrimony instead of
+crossing it to their ruin.'
+
+"I could have killed her, but I subdued myself. I knew that I had lost
+her; that in another moment she would be gone, never to enter my
+presence again as my promised wife; but I uttered no word, honored her
+with no glance; merely made her a low bow and stepped back, as I
+thought, master of myself again.
+
+"But in that final instant one last arrow entered my breast, and darting
+back to her side, I whispered, in what must have been a terrible voice:
+
+"'Go, falsest of the false! I have done with you! But if you have lied
+to me--if you think to trip up Edwin Urquhart in his duty, and break
+Honora Dudleigh's noble heart, and shame my honor--I will kill you as I
+would a snake in the grass! You shall never approach the altar with
+another as nearly as you have this day with me!'
+
+"And with the last mockery of a look, in which every detail of her
+beauty flashed with almost an unbearable insistence upon my eyes, I
+turned my back upon her and strode toward the outer door."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+HONORA.
+
+
+"But I did not pass it. A sound struck my ear. It was that of a
+smothered sob, and it came from the room where I had first seen Miss
+Dudleigh. Instantly a vision of that sweet form bowed in misery struck
+upon my still palpitating heart; and moved at a grief I knew to be well
+nigh as bitter as my own, I stopped before the half-closed door, and
+gently pushed it open.
+
+"Miss Dudleigh at once advanced to meet me. Tears were on her cheeks,
+but she walked very firmly, and took my hand with an inquiry in her soft
+eyes that almost drove me distracted.
+
+"'What shall I do?' I cried to myself. 'Tell this woman to beware, or
+leave her to fight her battles alone?' No answer came from my inmost
+soul. I was appalled by her weakness and my own selfishness, and bowed
+my head and said nothing.
+
+"'A strange ending to the hopes of this day,' were the words that
+thereupon fell from her lips. 'Is--is--Marah ill, or did one of her
+strange moods overtake her?'
+
+"'I do not understand Miss Leighton,' I replied. 'The time I have spent
+in the study of her character has been wasted. I shall never undertake
+to open the book again.'
+
+"'Then,' she faltered, and an absolute terror grew in her eyes, 'you are
+going to leave her. She is going to be free, and--' The white cheeks
+grew scarlet. She evidently feared that she had shown me her heart.
+
+"Affected, but irresolute still, I took her hand and carried it to my
+lips.
+
+"'Let me thank you,' said I, 'for glimpses into a nature so noble and
+womanly that I am saved in this hour from cursing all womankind.'
+
+"Ah, how she sighed.
+
+"'You are good,' she murmured. 'You have deserved a better fate. But it
+is the lot of goodness and truth ever to meet with misappreciation and
+disdain. Here, here, only,' and she struck her breast with her clenched
+right hand, 'lie the rewards for honesty, long-suffering, and
+tenderness. In the world without there is nothing.'
+
+"Tears, which I could not restrain, welled up to my eyes. I could never
+have wept for my own suffering, but for hers it seemed both natural and
+real. Ah, why had she thrown the treasures of her heart away upon a
+fool? Why had she given the trust of her heart to a villain? I opened my
+lips to speak; she saw his name faltering on my tongue, and stopped me.
+
+"'Don't!' she breathed. 'I know what you would say and I cannot bear it.
+I was motherless, fatherless, almost friendless, and I relied upon the
+wisdom of an aunt, whose judgment was, perhaps, not all that it should
+have been. But it is too late now for regrets. I have launched my boat,
+and it must sail on; only--you are an honest man and will respect my
+confidence--was it Mr. Urquhart I saw on the outskirts of the crowd
+to-day?'
+
+"I bowed. I knew she had not asked because she had any doubts as to the
+fact of his being there, but because she wanted to see if I had
+recognized him and owed any of my misery to that fact.
+
+"'It was he,' said I, and said no more.
+
+"The mask fell from her countenance. She clasped her hands together till
+they showed white as marble.
+
+"'Oh! we are four miserable ones!' she cried. 'He--'
+
+"It was my turn to stop her.
+
+"'I would rather you did not say it,' I exclaimed. 'I can bear much, but
+not to hear another person utter words that will force me to think of
+the dagger I carry always in my breast. Besides, we may be mistaken.' I
+did not believe it, but I forced myself to say it. 'She declares he is
+nothing to her, and if that is so, you might wish to have kept silent.'
+
+"'She says! Ah! can you believe her? do you?'
+
+"'I must--or go mad.'
+
+"'Then I will believe her, too. I am so slightly tied to this world that
+has deceived me, that I will trust on a little while longer, even if my
+trust lands me in my grave. I had rather die than discover deceit where
+I had looked for honesty and gratitude.'
+
+"I was a coward, perhaps, but I did not try to dissuade her. Though she
+was fatherless and motherless, and loverless and friendless, I let her
+grasp at this wisp of hope and cling to it, though I knew it would never
+hold, and that her only chance for happiness was passing from her.
+
+"'If he were not poor,' she now breathed rather than whispered, 'I would
+find it easier to rend myself free. But he has nothing but what lies in
+my future, and if I should make a mistake and do injustice to a man that
+is merely suffering under a temporary intoxication, I should rob him of
+his only hope, without adding one chance to my own.'
+
+"I bowed, and made a movement toward the door. I could not stand much
+more of this strain.
+
+"'You are going?' she cried. 'Well, I cannot keep you. But that dagger!
+You will promise me to throw it away? You do not need it in defense, and
+you do not want to kill me before my time.'
+
+"No, no; I did not want to kill her. Grief was doing that fast enough;
+so I thought at that time. Shuddering, but resolute, I drew the tiny
+steel from my breast and laid it in her hand.
+
+"'It is all I can give you to show you my appreciation of your
+goodness.' And not trusting myself to linger longer lest I should take
+it again from her hand, I went out and walked hastily from the house.
+
+"If you asked me what road I took, or through what streets I passed, or
+whose eye I encountered in my next hour's walking through the town, I
+could not tell you. If jeers followed me, I heard them not; if I was the
+recipient of sympathizing looks and wondering conjectures, they were all
+lost upon eyes that were blind and ears that were deaf. I did not even
+feel; and did not realize till night that I had been wandering for hours
+without my cloak, which I had left in the carriage and forgotten to take
+again when I went out. The first knowledge I had of my surroundings was
+when I found an obstruction in my path, and looking up, saw myself in
+front of my own door, and not two feet from me, Edwin Urquhart."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+EDWIN URQUHART.
+
+
+[Illustration: I]
+
+In that moment Mark Felt paused and cast a glance toward the Hudson far
+below us. Then he resumed his narrative.
+
+"I drew back," he said, "and clenched my hands to keep myself from
+strangling Urquhart. Then I broke into hurried pants, that subsided
+gradually into words of perplexity and amazement as I met his eye, and
+realized that it contained nothing but a rude sort of sympathy and good
+fellowship.
+
+"'How? Why? What do you mean by coming back?' I cried. 'You said you
+would be gone a week. You swore--'
+
+"A gay laugh interrupted me.
+
+"'And must a man keep every oath he makes, especially when it separates
+him from a charming betrothed, and a friend who swore that he would make
+this day his wedding one?'
+
+"'Urquhart!'
+
+"'Felt!'
+
+"'Are you a monster or are you--'
+
+"'A self-possessed man who is going to take in charge a crazy one. Come
+into the house, Mark, a dozen eyes can see us here.'
+
+"He took me in charge; he piloted me into my own dwelling--he whose
+whole body I had always esteemed weaker than my little finger; my enemy
+too, or so I considered him; the cause of half my grief, of all my
+shame, the beginning and end of my hatreds.
+
+"When we were closeted, as we soon were in the room I had expended so
+much upon to make worthy of my bride, he came and stood before me and
+uttered these unexpected words:
+
+"'Felt, I like you. You are the only friend I have, and I am indebted to
+you. Now, what have you against me?'
+
+"I was astonished. His whole look and bearing were so different from
+what I had expected, so different from anything I had ever seen in him
+before. I began to question my doubts, and dropped my eyes as he
+pursued:
+
+"'You have been disappointed in your marriage, I hear; but that need not
+make you as downcast as this. A woman as capricious as Miss Leighton
+might easily imagine she was too ill to go through the ceremony to-day.
+But she must have repented of her folly by this time, and in a week will
+reward you as your patience deserves. But what have I got to do with it?
+For incredible as it appears, your every look and tone assures me that
+you blame me for this mishap.'
+
+"Was he daring me? If so, he should find me his equal. I raised my eyes
+and surveyed him.
+
+"'Shall I tell you why this is so--why I associate Miss Leighton's
+caprice with your return, and regard both with suspicion? Because I have
+seen you look on her with love; because I have surprised the passion in
+your face and beheld her--'
+
+"'Well?'
+
+"The tone was indescribable. It was as if a hand had taken me by the
+throat and choked me. I drew off and was silent.
+
+"He seized the word at once.
+
+"'You have seen nothing. If you think you have, then have you deceived
+yourself. Marah Leighton has beauty, but it is not a kind that moves
+me--'
+
+"He paled. Was it horror of the lie he was uttering? I have never known,
+never shall know.
+
+"'The woman I am going to marry is Honora Dudleigh.'
+
+"I gazed at him, determined to find the truth if it were in him. He bore
+my look unflinchingly, though his color did not return, and his hands
+trembled nervously.
+
+"'You love her?' I asked.
+
+"'I love her,' he returned.
+
+"'And your wedding day--'
+
+"'Is set.'
+
+"'May it have no interruptions,' I remarked.
+
+"He laughed--an uneasy laugh, I thought--but jealousy was not yet dead
+within me.
+
+"'And yours?' he inquired.
+
+"'I have had mine,' I returned. 'I shall never have another.'
+
+"He shook his head and looked at me inquisitively. I repeated my
+assertion.
+
+"'I shall never approach the altar again with a woman. I am done with
+such things, and done with love.'
+
+"He finished his laugh.
+
+"'Wait till you see Marah Leighton smile again,' he cried; and with the
+first reappearance of his old manner that I had seen in him since the
+beginning of this interview, he caught up a wine glass off the table,
+and filling it with wine, exclaimed jovially: 'Here's to our future
+wives! May they be all that love paints them!'
+
+"I thought his mirth indecent, his manner out of keeping with the
+occasion, and the whole situation atrocious. But I saw he was about to
+leave, and said nothing; but I did not drink his toast. When he was
+gone, I broke his glass by flinging it at my own reflection, in a glass
+I had bought to mirror her beauty; and before the day was spent, I had
+destroyed every destructible article in the house whose value or whose
+prettiness spoke of the attempt I had made to alter my home from a
+bachelor's abode to the nest I had thought in keeping with the dove I
+had failed to place there. As I did it I filled the house with mocking
+laughter; that I should have thought that this or that would please her,
+who would have found a palace open to criticism, and the splendors of a
+throne room scarce grand enough for her taste! I was but suffering the
+stings of a lifetime compressed into a day, and was miserable because I
+could see no prospect but further addition to my suffering."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+BEFORE THE WEDDING.
+
+
+"Two weeks after this I was sitting beside my solitary hearth, musing
+upon my misery and longing for the blessed relief of sleep. There was no
+one with me in the house. I had dismissed every servant; for I would
+have no spies about me, prying into my misery; and though I could not
+keep the world of men and women from my doors, I could at least refuse
+to admit them; and this I did--living the life of a recluse almost as
+much as I do here, but with less ease, because the wind would bring
+whispers, and the walls were not thick enough to shut out from my fancy
+the curious glances I felt to be cast upon them by every passer-by that
+wandered through the street.
+
+"On this night I had been thinking of Miss Dudleigh, of whose visibly
+failing health various murmurs had reached me, and I felt,
+notwithstanding my determination to hold myself aloof from every one and
+everything that could in any way reopen my still smarting wound, I
+could more easily find the sleep I longed for if some word from the
+great house would relieve the suspense in which my ignorance kept me.
+But I would not go there if I died of my anxiety, nor would I stoop to
+question any of the market men or women, who were the only persons
+admitted now within my doors.
+
+"The clock was striking, and the strange sense of desolation which is
+inseparable from this sound to a solitary man (you see I have no clock
+here) was stealing over me, when I heard a tap on one of the windows
+overlooking my small garden, and a voice came through the lattice,
+crying:
+
+"'Massa--Massa Felt.'
+
+"I knew the voice at once. It was that of one of Miss Dudleigh's
+servants, an honest black, who had always been devoted to me from the
+day he did me some trifling service with Miss Leighton. Hearing it now,
+and after such thoughts, I was so moved by the promise it gave of news
+from the one quarter I desired, that I stumbled as I rose, and found
+difficulty in answering him. Nor did I recover my self-possession for
+hours; for the story he had to tell--after numerous apologies for his
+presumption in disturbing me--was so significant of coming evil that my
+mind was thrown again into turmoil, and the passions which I had tried
+to smother were roused again into action.
+
+"It was simply this: That one evening after Mr. Urquhart's departure,
+and the extinguishing of all the lights in the house, he had occasion to
+cross the garden. That in doing this he had heard voices, and, stepping
+cautiously forward, perceived, lying upon the snow-covered ground, near
+a certain belt of evergreens, the shadows of two persons, whose forms
+were hidden from his sight. Being both curious and concerned, he halted
+before coming too close and, listening, heard Mr. Urquhart's voice, and
+presently that of Miss Leighton, both speaking very earnestly.
+
+"'Will you undertake it? Can you go through with it without shrinking?'
+was what the former had said.
+
+"'I will undertake it, and I can go through with it,' was what the
+latter had replied.
+
+"Frightened at a discovery which might mean nothing and which might mean
+misery to a mistress the day of whose marriage was scarcely a month
+away, the negro held his breath, determined to hear more. He was
+immediately rewarded by catching the words: 'You are a brave girl and
+my queen!' and then something like a prayer for a kiss, or some such
+favor, as a seal to their compact. But to this she returned a vigorous
+'No,' followed by the mysterious sentence: 'I shall give you nothing
+till I am dead, and then I will give you everything.'
+
+"After which they made a move as if to separate, which action so alarmed
+the now deeply disconcerted negro that he drew back in haste, hiding
+behind some neighboring bushes till they had passed him and disappeared,
+he out of the gate, and she through the small side entrance into the
+house. This was the previous night, and for nearly twenty-four hours the
+poor negro had tortured himself as to what he should do with the
+information thus surreptitiously gained. He lacked the courage to tell
+his mistress, and finally he had thought of me, who was her best friend,
+and who must have known there was something amiss with Miss Leighton, or
+why had I not married her when everything was ready and the minister
+waiting with his book in his hand?
+
+"Not answering this insinuation, I put to him one or two of the many
+questions that were burning in my brain. Had he told any of the other
+servants what he had seen? And did Miss Dudleigh look as if she
+suspected there was anything wrong?
+
+"He answered that he had not dared to speak a word of it even to his
+wife; and as for Miss Dudleigh, she was ill so much of the time that it
+was hard to tell whether she had any other cause for uneasiness or not.
+He only knew that she was greatly changed since this miserable deceiver
+came into the house.
+
+"I believed him, and amid all my struggle and wrath tried to fix my mind
+upon her alone. I succeeded only partially, but enough to enable me to
+write this line, which I entreated him to carry to her:
+
+        'HONORED MISS DUDLEIGH--You will forgive me if
+        I overstep the bounds of friendship in yielding
+        to the inner voice which compels me to say that
+        if before or on your marriage day you need
+        advice or protection, you may command both from
+
+        Your respectful servant,
+                   'MARK FELT.'
+
+"I did not expect a reply to this note, and I did not receive any. I
+thought I went as far as my position toward her allowed, but I have
+questioned it since--questioned if I should not have told her what the
+negro had heard and seen, and let her own judgment decide her fate. But
+I was not in my right mind in those days. I was too much a part of all
+this misery to be a fair judge of my own duty; and then the mysterious
+nature of Miss Leighton's remark, the incomprehensibility of the
+words--'I shall give you nothing till I am dead, and then I shall give
+you everything'--added such unreality to the scene, and awakened such
+curious conjectures, that I did not know where any of us stood, or to
+what especial misery the future pointed.
+
+"'Till she was dead!' What could she, what did she mean? She would then
+give him everything! Ah! ah!--when she was dead! Well, so be it.
+Meanwhile, there was no prospect of death for any one, unless it was for
+Miss Dudleigh, whom rumor acknowledged to be still fading, though
+everything was being done for her comfort, and physician after physician
+employed.
+
+"I saw Cæsar once again in these days. I met him in the street,
+seemingly greatly to his delight, for he smiled till his teeth shone
+from ear to ear, and made haste to remark, in quite a jovial voice:
+
+"'I specs it's all right, massa. Massa Urquhart never looks at Miss
+Leighton now, but always doin' his best for missus, making her smile
+quite happy when she isn't coughing that dreadful cough. We will have a
+gay wedding yet. Yes; Miss Leighton seems to spect that; for she all de
+time making pretty things and trying them on missus, and laughing and
+cheering her up, just as if she didn't spect any one to die.'
+
+"Yes, but this change of manner frightened me. I grew feverishly
+anxious, and spent night and day in asking myself unanswerable
+questions. Nor did these in any way abate when one day I was startled by
+the tidings that all preparations for refitting the great house had
+stopped; that the doctors had decided that Miss Dudleigh must remove to
+a warmer climate, and that accordingly upon her marriage she and her
+husband would set sail for the Bermudas, there to take up their abode
+till her health was quite restored. I doubted my ears; I doubted the
+facts; I doubted Urquhart, and I doubted one other most of all whose
+name I find it hard to mention even to myself.
+
+"Yet I should not have doubted her; I should have remembered the flame
+that was always burning in the depths of her eyes, and had confidence
+in that, if in nothing else. What if she had always been cold to me; she
+was not cold to him, and I should have known this and prepared myself.
+But I did not. I knew neither the extent of his villainy nor that of her
+despair. Had I done so, I might not have been crouching here a
+disappointed and hopeless man, while she--
+
+"But I am running beyond my tale. After the news I had just imparted, I
+heard nothing more till the very week of the wedding. Then one of Miss
+Dudleigh's servants came to me with a note, the result of which was,
+that I walked out in the afternoon, and that she passed me in her
+carriage, and seeing me, stopped the horses and took me in, and that we
+rode on a short distance together.
+
+"'I wish to talk to you,' she said. 'I wish to proffer you a request; to
+beg of you a favor. I want you,' she stammered and her eyes filled with
+tears, 'to see me married.'
+
+"I opened my eyes with a quick denial, but I closed them again without
+speaking. After all, why not please her? Could I suffer more at this
+wedding than in thinking over it in my dungeon of a room at home? She
+would be there, of course, but I need not look at her; and if he or she
+meditated any treachery, where ought I to be but in the one place where
+my presence would be most useful? I decided to gratify Miss Dudleigh,
+almost before the inquiry in her eyes had changed to a look of suspense.
+'Yes, I will come,' said I.
+
+"She drew a deep breath, and smiled with tender sweetness.
+
+"'I thank you,' she rejoined. 'I thank you most deeply and most truly. I
+do not know why I desired it so much. Possibly because I feel something
+like a sister to you, possibly because I feel afraid--'
+
+"She stopped, blushing. 'I do not mean afraid. Why should I feel afraid?
+Edwin is very good to me; very good. I did not know he could be so
+attentive.' And she sighed.
+
+"I felt that sigh go through and through me. Looking at her I took a
+sudden resolution.
+
+"'Honora,' I said (I had never called her by her first name before), 'do
+not give your happiness into Edwin Urquhart's keeping. You have yet
+three days before you for reconsideration. Break your bonds, and,
+unhampered by uncongenial ties, seek in another climate for that peace
+of mind you will never enjoy here or elsewhere as his wife.'
+
+"She stared at me for a moment with wide-open and appealing eyes; then
+she shook her head, and answered quietly:
+
+"'One broken-off wedding in the family is enough. I cannot shock society
+with another. But, oh, Mark! why did you not warn me at first? I think I
+would have listened; I think so.'
+
+"'Forgive me,' I entreated. 'You know it would have been presumptuous in
+me at first; afterward she stood in the way.'
+
+"'I know,' she answered, and turned away her head.
+
+"I saw she did not wish me to leave her yet; so I said:
+
+"'You are going away; you are going to leave Albany.'
+
+"'I must, or so Edwin thinks. He says I will never recover in this
+climate.'
+
+"'Do you wish to go?'
+
+"'Yes; I think I do. I can never be happy here, and perhaps when we are
+far away, and have only each other to think of, the love and confidence
+of which I have dreamed may come. At all events, I comfort myself with
+that hope.'
+
+"'But it is a long, long sea voyage. Have you strength enough to carry
+you through?'
+
+"'If I have not,' she intimated, with a mournful smile, 'he will be
+free, and I released without scandal from a marriage that fills you with
+apprehension.'
+
+"'Oh,' I cried, 'would I were your brother indeed! This should never go
+on.' Then impelled by what I thought to be my duty, I inquired: 'And
+your money, Honora?'
+
+"She flushed, but answered in the same spirit in which I had spoken.
+
+"'As little of it as may be will remain with him. That much my old
+guardian insisted upon. Do not ask me any more questions, Mark.'
+
+"'None of a nature so personal,' I promised. 'But there is one
+thing--can you not guess what it is?--which I ought to know. It is about
+Marah.'
+
+"The words came with effort, and hurt her as much as me. But she
+answered bravely:
+
+"'She returns to Schenectady the same day that we depart. I hoped she
+would not linger to the wedding, but she seems to have a strange desire
+to face again the people who have talked about her so freely these last
+few weeks. So what can I say to dissuade her?'
+
+"'Let her stay,' I muttered; 'but let her beware how she behaves on that
+day, for there will be two eyes watching her, prompt to see any
+treachery, and prompt, too, to avenge it.'
+
+"'You will have nothing to avenge,' murmured Honora; 'that is all in the
+past.'
+
+"I prayed to Heaven she might be right, and ere long bowed in adieu and
+left her. I saw neither herself nor any one else again till I entered
+the Dudleigh mansion three days later to witness her nuptials."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+A CASSANDRA AT THE GATE.
+
+
+"Miss Dudleigh, moved, perhaps, by the unpleasant _eclat_ which had
+followed the broken-off marriage of her cousin, chose to celebrate her
+own wedding in her own house, and with as little ceremony as possible.
+Only her most intimate friends, therefore, were invited, but these were
+numerous enough to fill the halls and most of the lower rooms.
+
+"When I entered there was a sudden cessation of conversation; but this I
+had expected. If anything could add to the interest of the occasion,
+certainly it was my presence; and, feeling this, I made them all a
+profound obeisance, and, neither shirking their glances nor inviting
+them, I took my place in the spot I had chosen for myself, and waited,
+with a face as impassive as a mask, but with a heart burning with fury
+and love, not for the coming of the bride, but of her who in this hour
+ought to have been standing at my side as my wife.
+
+"But I miscalculated if I thought she would enter with them. Even her
+bold and arrogant spirit shrank from a position so conspicuous, and it
+was not till they had presented themselves and taken their places in
+front of the latticed window so associated with my past, that I felt
+that peculiar sensation which always followed the entrance of Marah into
+the same room with myself, and, yielding to the force that constrained
+me, I searched the throng with eager looks, and there, where the crowd
+was thickest, and the shadow deepest, I saw her. She was gazing straight
+at me, and there was in her great eyes a look which I did not then
+understand, and about which I have since tortured myself by asking again
+and again if it were remorse, entreaty, farewell, or despair that spoke
+through it. Sometimes I have thought it was fear. Sometimes-- But why
+conjecture? It was an unreadable expression to me then, and even in
+remembrance it is no clearer. Whatever it betokened, my pride bent
+before it, and a flood of the old feeling rushed over my heart, making
+me quite weak for a moment.
+
+"But I conquered myself, as far as all betrayal of my feelings was
+concerned, and turning from the spot that so enthralled me, I fixed my
+gaze upon the bride.
+
+"She was looking beautiful; more beautiful than any one had seen her
+look for weeks. A bright color suffused her delicate cheeks, and in her
+eyes burned a strange excitement, which did the work of happiness in
+lighting up her face. But it was a transient glow which faded
+imperceptibly but surely, as the ceremony proceeded, and passed
+completely away as the last inexorable words were uttered which made her
+the wife of the false being at her side.
+
+"He, on the contrary, was pale up to that same critical moment--very
+pale, when one remembers his naturally florid complexion; but as her
+color went, his rose, and when the minister withdrew, and friends began
+to crowd around them, he grew so jovial and so noisy that more than one
+person glanced at him with suspicion, and cast pitying looks at the now
+quiet and immobile young wife.
+
+"Meantime I sought with eager anxiety to catch one more glimpse of
+Marah. But she had shrunk from sight, and was not to be found. And the
+gayety ran high and the wine was poured freely, and the bridegroom
+drank with ever-increasing excitement, toasting his bride, but never
+looking at her, though her eyes turned more than once upon him with an
+appeal that affected painfully more than one person in the crowd. At
+last she rose, and, at this signal, he put down his glass, and, with a
+low bow to the company, prepared to follow her from the room. They
+passed close to the place where I stood, and I caught one glance from
+his eyes. It was a laughing one, but there was uneasiness in it. There
+might have been something more, but I had not time to search for it, for
+at that moment I felt her dress brush against my sleeve, and turned to
+give her the smile which I knew her friendly heart demanded.
+
+"'You will wait till we go?' fell in a whisper from her lips; and I
+nodded with another smile, and they went on and I stood where they had
+left me, in one of those moods which made me, as far as all human
+intercourse is concerned, as much of an isolated being as I am in these
+mountains. I did not wake again from this abstraction till that same
+premonitory feeling, of which I have so often spoken, told me that
+something in which I was deeply interested was about to happen. Looking
+up, I found myself in the room alone. During the hour of my abstraction
+the guests had gone out, and I had neither noticed their departure nor
+the gradual cessation of the noise which at one time had filled my ears
+with hubbub. But the bride had not gone. She was at that moment coming
+down the stairs, and it was this fact which had pierced to my inner
+consciousness, and aroused once more in me a vivid sense of my
+surroundings. He was with her, and behind them, gliding like a wraith
+from landing to landing, came Marah, clad like the bride in a traveling
+dress, but without the bonnet which betokened an instant departure.
+
+"Not anticipating her presence so near, I felt my courage fail, and
+pushing forward, joined the group of servants at the door. They, seeing
+in this departure of their mistress a possibly endless separation, were
+weeping and uttering exclamations that not only showed their devotion,
+but their fears. Shocked lest these words should reach her ears, I
+quieted them; and then seeing that the carriage which stood outside had
+a stranger for a driver, and that there was no accompanying wagon filled
+with their body servants and baggage, I asked the friendly Cæsar, who
+had pressed close to my side, if Mrs. Urquhart was not going to take a
+maid with her.
+
+"The negro at once growled out an injured 'No!' and when I expressed my
+astonishment, he explained that 'There was no one here good enough to
+please Massa Urquhart. That he was going to pick up with some one in New
+York. That, though missus was sick, he would not even let her have her
+own gal go wid her as far as the city; said he would do everything for
+her hisself--as if any man could do for missus like her own Sally, who
+had been wid her ever since 'fore she was born!'
+
+"'And the baggage?' I asked, troubled more than I can say by what
+certainly augured anything but favorably for her future.
+
+"'Oh, massa send dat round to his house. He got books, an' a lot o'
+things to add to it. Dere's enough o' dat; an' den more went down de
+ribber on a sloop a week an' more ago.'
+
+"'So! so! And they are going to ride?'
+
+"'Yes, sah. You see, dey want to catch de ship w'at set sail for
+Bermudas, an' got to hurry; so massa says.'
+
+"By this time Urquhart and his bride had reached the door. He was still
+gay and she was still quiet. But in her eye glistened a tear, while in
+his there gleamed nothing softer than that vague spark of triumph which
+one might expect to see in a man who had just married the richest
+heiress in Albany.
+
+"'Good-by! good-by! good-by!' came in soft tones from her lips; and she
+was just stepping over the threshold, when there suddenly appeared at
+the foot of the steps an old crone, so seamed and bowed with age, so
+weird and threatening of aspect, that we all started back appalled, and
+were about to draw Mrs. Urquhart out of her path, when the unknown
+creature raised her voice, and pointing with one skinny hand straight
+into the bride's face, shrieked:
+
+"'Beware of oak walls! Beware of oak walls! They are more dangerous to
+you than fire and water! Beware of oak walls!'
+
+"A shriek interrupted her. It came, not from the bride, but from the
+interior of the well-nigh forsaken hall behind us.
+
+"Instantly the old crone drew herself up into an attitude more
+threatening and more terrible than before.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"'And you,' she cried, pointing now beyond us toward a figure which I
+could feel shrinking in inexplicable terror against the wall. 'And you
+cannot trust them either! There is death within oak walls. Beware!
+beware!'
+
+"A curse, a rush, and Edwin Urquhart had flung himself at the old
+witch's throat. But he fell to the pavement without touching her. With
+the utterance of her last word, she had slipped from before our eyes and
+melted into the crowd which curiosity and interest had drawn within the
+gates, to watch this young couple's departure.
+
+"'Who was that creature? Let me have her! Give her up, I say!' leaped
+from the infuriated bridegroom's lips, as he rushed up and down before
+the crowd with threatening arms and flashing eyes.
+
+"But there was no response from the surging throng; while from his
+frightened wife such an appealing cry rung out that he returned from the
+vain pursuit, and regaining his place at Honora's side, put her into the
+carriage. But as he did so he could not refrain from casting a stealthy
+look behind him, which betrayed to me, if to no one else, that his anger
+was more on account of the words uttered to Marah than to the tender
+being clinging to his arm. And a jealous fury took hold of me also, and
+I should not have been sorry if I had seen him fall then and there, the
+victim of a thunderbolt more certain, if not more terrible, than that
+which had just overwhelmed the two women nearest to our hearts.
+
+"'Good-by! good-by! good-by!' came again from the bride's pale lips; and
+this time I felt that the words were for me, and I waved my hand in
+response, but could not speak. And so they rode away, followed by the
+lamentations of the servants, from whom the old crone's ominous outburst
+had torn the last semblance of self-control.
+
+"'Another carriage for Miss Leighton!' I now heard uttered somewhere
+like a command. And startled at the pang it caused me, I darted back
+into the house, determined to have one parting word with my lost love.
+
+"She was not there, nor could she be found by any searching."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE CATASTROPHE.
+
+
+[Illustration: I]
+
+"I have but little more to tell," Mark Felt continued, "but that little
+is everything to me.
+
+"When we became positively assured that Miss Leighton had disappeared
+from the house and would not be on hand to take the stage to
+Schenectady, the excitement, which had been increasing on all sides
+since the ceremony, culminated, and the whole town was set agog to find
+her, if only to solve the mystery of a nature whose actions had now
+become inexplicable.
+
+"I was the first to start the pursuit. Haunted by her last look, and
+thrilled to every extremity by the terror of the shriek she had uttered,
+I did not wait for the alarm to become public, but rushed immediately up
+stairs at the first intimation of her disappearance.
+
+"Though I had never pierced those regions before, my good or evil fate
+took me at once to a room which I saw at one glance to be hers. The
+boxes waiting to be carried down, the tags and ends of ribbons that I
+recognized, the nameless something which speaks of one particular
+personality and no other, all were there to assure me that I stood in
+the chamber which for six months or more had palpitated with the breath
+of the one being I loved.
+
+"But of that I dared not think; it was no time for dreams; and only
+stopping to see that her bonnet had been taken, but her gloves left, I
+hurried down again and out of the house.
+
+"An impulse which I cannot understand took me to Edwin Urquhart's house,
+or, rather, to that portion of a house which he had hired for his use
+since he had been looking forward to his marriage with Miss Dudleigh.
+Why I should go there I cannot say, unless jealousy whispered that only
+in this place could she hope for one final word with him, as he and his
+bride stopped at the door for his portion of the baggage. Be this as it
+may, I turned neither to right nor left till I came to his house, and
+when I had reached it I found that, with all my haste, I was too late,
+for not a soul was in its empty rooms, while far down the street which
+leads to the bridge I saw a carriage disappearing, which, from the wagon
+following it so closely, I knew to be the one containing Urquhart and
+his bride.
+
+"'She has not been here,' thought I, 'or I should have met her,
+unless--' and my eye stole with a certain shrinking terror toward the
+river which skirted along the garden at the back--'unless'-- But even my
+thoughts stopped here. I would not, could not, think of what, if it were
+true, would end all things for me.
+
+"Leaving this place, I wandered aimlessly through the streets, studying
+each face that I met for intimations which should guide me in my search.
+If not a madman, I was near enough to one to make the memory of that
+hour hideous to me; and when at last, worn out as much by my emotions as
+by the countless steps I had taken, I returned to my house for a bite
+and sup, something in the sight of its desolation overpowered me, and
+yielding to a despair which assured me that I should never again see her
+in this world, I sank on the floor inert and powerless, and continued
+thus till morning, without movement and almost without consciousness.
+
+"Fatal repose! And yet I do not know if I should call it so. It only
+robbed me of a few hours less of conscious misery. For when I roused,
+when I became again myself, and looked about my house, there on the
+floor, underneath a curtain window which had been left unlatched, I saw
+a letter containing these words:
+
+        'HONORED AND MUCH ABUSED FRIEND:--When you read
+        this, Marah will be no more. After all that has
+        passed--after our broken marriage and the
+        departure of my cousin--life has become
+        insupportable; and, believing that you would
+        rather know me dead than miserable, I ventured
+        to write you these words, and ask you to
+        forgive me, now that I am gone.
+
+        'I loved him: let that explain everything.
+
+        'Despairingly yours,
+                 'MARAH LEIGHTON.'
+
+"With shrieks I tore from the house. Marah dying! Marah dead! I would
+see about that. Racing down to the gate, I paused. Some one was leaning
+on it. It was Cæsar, and at the first glimpse I had of his face I knew I
+was too late--that all was over, and that the whole town knew it.
+
+"'Oh, massa, I wanted to go in, but I was frightened. I's been waiting
+here an hour, sah; when dey told me dat dey had found her bonnet
+floating on de ribber, I know'd how you'd feel, sah, and so I come here
+and--'
+
+"I found words to ask him a question. 'When was this found, and where?'
+
+"'This morning, sah, at daybreak. It was caught by one of the strings to
+that old log, sah, that lies out in the ribber back of--' he
+hesitated--'Massa Urquhart's house, sah.'
+
+"I knew; and I had glanced that way just as her bright head was perhaps
+sinking under the water. I threw up my arms in anguish and stumbled back
+into the house.
+
+"'Then every one knows--' I managed to say on the threshold.
+
+"'Dat she cared for him? Yes, sah; I fear so. How could dey help it,
+sah? Mor'n one person saw her run down de street and go into massa's old
+house just before de carriage stopped thar, and as she didn't come out
+again, I 'specs it was from dat big log at the foot of the garden she
+jumped into de ribber. All de folks pities you very much, sah--'
+
+"I choked him off with a look.
+
+"'Who has been sent after Mr. and Mrs. Urquhart to inform them of what
+has happened?'
+
+"'No one yet, sah. But Massa Hatton--'
+
+"'Mr. Hatton is an old man. We must have a young one for this business.
+Go saddle me the quickest horse in your stables. I will ride after them,
+and overtake them, too, before they can reach Poughkeepsie. He shall
+know--'
+
+"A glance from the negro's eye warned me to be careful. I smothered my
+impatience and let only my earnestness appear.
+
+"'Mrs. Urquhart ought to know that her cousin is dead,' I declared.
+
+"'I'll tell Massa Hatton,' said the black.
+
+"But my caution was now too much aroused for me to make Mr. Hatton the
+medium of my request--he was Mrs. Urquhart's old guardian and future
+agent; and subduing the extreme fury of my feelings, I obtained his
+permission to act as his messenger. Had he known of the letter which had
+been thrown into my window, he might not have given his consent so
+freely; but I had told no man of that, and he and others saw me ride
+away without a seeming suspicion of the murderous thoughts that
+struggled with my grief, and almost overwhelmed it.
+
+"For to me her death--if she were dead--was the result of a compact
+entered into with the despicable Urquhart, who, if he could not have her
+for himself, was willing she should go where no other man could have
+her. Though the idea seemed quixotic, though it be an anomaly in human
+experience, for a woman thus to sacrifice herself, I could not ascribe
+any other motive to her deed; for the memory of that interview she had
+held with her cousin's future husband in the garden was still fresh in
+my mind. Do you remember the words as told me by the negro who overheard
+them? First, the question from his lips: 'Will you undertake it? Can
+you go through with it without shrinking and without fear?' And the
+reply from hers: 'I will undertake it, and I can go through with it,'
+followed by that assurance which struck me as being so inexplicable at
+the time, and which, with all the light that this late horrible event
+has thrown upon it, still preserves its mystery for me. 'I shall give
+you nothing till I am dead, and then I will give you everything.' If the
+conclusions I drew seemed wild, were they not warranted by these words?
+Did she not speak of death, and did he not encourage her?
+
+"If she were not dead--and sometimes this thought would cross my burning
+brain--then she was with him, forced into the company of his unwilling
+wife in that last interview which they must have held in his cottage. In
+either case he was a villain and a coward, deserving of death; and death
+he should have, and from the hand of him whom he had doubly outraged.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"But as I rode out of town and came in sight of the river, I found
+myself seized by terrifying thoughts. Should I have to ride by the place
+where I could see them stooping with boat hooks and bending with
+peering eyes over some snag they had brought up from the river bottom?
+Could I endure to face this picture, then to pass it, then to ride on,
+feeling it ever at my back, blackening the morning, destroying the
+noontide, making more horrible the night? Could I go from this place
+till I knew whether or not the sullen waters would yield up their
+beautiful prey, and would my body proceed while my heart was on this
+river bank, and my jealousy divided between the wretch who had urged her
+on to death and these other men who might yet touch her unconscious form
+and gaze upon her disfigured beauty? And the answer which welled up from
+within me was, yes, I could go; I could pass that picture; I could feel
+it glooming ever and ever upon me from behind my back, and never turn my
+head;--such an impetus of hate was upon me, driving me forward after the
+wretch fleeing in self-complacency and triumph into a future of wealth
+and social consideration.
+
+"But when I had done all this, when my too fleet horse had carried me
+beyond sight of the city, and nature, with its irresistible beauty, had
+begun to influence my understanding, other thoughts came trooping in
+upon me, and a vision of Honora Dudleigh's face as she took the dagger
+from my hands and an implied promise from my lips, rose before me till I
+could see nothing else. Honora, Honora, Honora who trusted me! who had
+suffered everything but the sight of blood! who was a bride, and whom it
+would be base ingratitude for me to plunge into the depths of dishonor
+and despair! And the struggle was so fierce, and the torture of it so
+keen, that ere long my brain succumbed to the strain, and from the
+height of anguished feeling I sank into apathy, and from apathy into
+unconsciousness, till I no longer knew where I was or possessed power to
+guide my horse. In this condition I was found wandering in a field and
+thence carried to a farm house, where I remained a prey to fever. When I
+returned to consciousness, three weeks had elapsed.
+
+"As soon as I could be moved, I went back to Albany. I found the
+community there settled in the belief that I had joined in death the
+woman I so much loved, and was shown a letter which had been sent me,
+and which had been opened by the authorities after all hope had been
+given up of my return. It was from Mrs. Urquhart, and related how they
+had changed their plans upon reaching New York. Having found a ship on
+the point of sailing for France, they had determined to go there instead
+of to the Bermudas, and, consequently, requested me to inform Mr. Hatton
+of the fact, and also assure him that he would hear from them personally
+as soon as a letter could reach him from the other side. As she was in
+haste--in truth, was writing this in the post office on the way to the
+ship--she would only add that her health had been improved by her long
+journey down the river, and that when I heard from her again, she was
+sure she would be able to write that all her fondest hopes had been
+fully realized.
+
+"And so Marah was in the river, and Urquhart on the seas. I had been
+robbed of everything, even vengeance, and life had nothing for me, and I
+was determined to leave it, not in the vulgar way of suicide, but by
+cloistering myself in the great forests. As no one said me nay, I at
+once carried out this scheme; and to show you how dead I had become to
+the world, I will tell you that as I turned the lock of my door and took
+my first step forward on the road which led to this spot, a great shout
+broke out in the market place:
+
+"'The farmers of Lexington have fired upon the king's troops!'
+
+"And I did not even turn my head!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A DREAM ENDED.
+
+
+There was silence in the cave. Mark Felt's story was at an end.
+
+For a moment I sat and watched him; then, as I realized all that I must
+yet gather from his lips, I broke the stillness by saying, in my lowest
+and most suggestive tone, these two words:
+
+"And Marah?"
+
+The name did not seem unwelcome. Striking his breast, he cried:
+
+"She lies here! Though she despised me, deceived me, broke my heart in
+life, and in death betrayed a devotion for another that was at once my
+dishonor and the downfall of my every hope, I have never been able to
+cast her out of my heart. I love her, and shall ever love her, and so I
+am never lonely. For in my dreams I imagine that death has changed her.
+That she can see now where truth and beauty lie; that she would fain
+come back to them and me; and that she does, walking with softened steps
+through the forest, beaming upon me in the moon rays and smiling upon
+me in the sunshine till--"
+
+Great sobs broke from the man's surcharged breast. He flung himself down
+on the floor of the cave and hid his face in his hands. He had forgotten
+that I had come on an errand of vengeance. He had forgotten the object
+of that vengeance; he had forgotten everything but her.
+
+I saw the mistake I had made, and for the moment I quailed before the
+prospect of rectifying it. He had shown me his heart. I had peered into
+its depths, and it seemed an impossible thing to tear the last hope from
+his broken life; to show her in her true light to his horrified eyes; to
+tell him she was not dead; that it was Honora Urquhart who was dead; and
+that the woman he mourned and beheld in his visions as a sanctified
+spirit was not only living upon the fruits of a crime, but triumphing in
+them; that, in short, he had thrown away communion with men to brood
+upon a demon.
+
+My feelings were so strong, my shrinking so manifest, that he noticed
+them at last. Rising up, he surveyed me with a growing apprehension.
+
+"How you look at me!" he cried. "It is not only pity for the past I see
+in your eyes, but fear for the future. What is it? What can threaten me
+now of importance enough to call up such an expression to your face?
+Since Marah is dead--"
+
+"Wait!" I cried. "First let me ask if Marah is dead." His face, which
+was turned toward me, grew so pale I felt my own heart contract.
+
+"If--Marah--is--dead!" he gasped, growing huskier with each intonation
+till the last word was almost unintelligible.
+
+"Yes," I continued, ignoring his glance and talking very rapidly; "her
+body was never found. You have no proof that she perished. The letter
+that she wrote you may have been a blind. Such things have happened. Try
+and remember that such things have happened."
+
+He did not seem to hear me. Turning away, he looked about him with
+wide-open and questioning eyes, like a child lost in a wood.
+
+"I cannot follow you," he murmured. "Marah living?" His own words seemed
+to give him life. He turned upon me again. "Do you know that she is
+living?" he asked. "Is it this you have come to tell me? If so, speak,
+speak! I can bear the news. I have not lost all firmness. I--I--"
+
+He stopped and looked at me piteously. I saw I must speak, and summoned
+up my courage.
+
+"Marah may not be living," I said, "but she did not perish in the river.
+It would have been better for you, though, and infinitely better for her
+if she had. She only lived to do evil, Mr. Felt. In bemoaning her you
+have wasted a noble manhood."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+The cry came suddenly, and rang through the cavern like a knell. I could
+not bear it, and hurried forward my revelation.
+
+"You tell me that you received a letter from Mrs. Urquhart before she
+set sail for France. Was it the only letter which she has ever sent you?
+Have you never heard from her since?"
+
+"Never!" He looked at me almost in anger. "I did not want to. I bade the
+postmaster to destroy any letters which came for me. I had cut myself
+loose from the world."
+
+"Have you that letter? Did you keep it?"
+
+"No; I gave it back to the men who opened it. What was it to me?"
+
+"Mark Felt," I now asked, "did you know Honora Dudleigh's writing?"
+
+"Of course. Why should you question it? Why--"
+
+"And was this letter in her writing? written by her hand?"
+
+"Of course--of course; wasn't it signed with her name?"
+
+"But the handwriting? Couldn't it have been an imitation? Wasn't it one?
+Was it not written by Marah, and not Honora? She was a clever woman,
+and--"
+
+"Written by Marah? By Marah? Great heavens, did she go with them, then?
+Were my secret doubts right? Is she lost to me in eternity as well as
+here? Is she living with him?"
+
+"She was living with him, and there is good reason to believe she is
+doing so still. There is a Mr. Urquhart in Paris, and a Mrs. Urquhart.
+As Marah is the woman he loved, she must be this latter."
+
+"Must be? I do not see why you should say must be! Is Honora dead? Is--"
+
+"Honora is dead--has been dead for sixteen years. The woman who sailed
+with Mr. Urquhart called herself Honora, but she was not Honora. She who
+rightfully bore this name was dead and hidden away. It is of crime that
+I am speaking. Edwin Urquhart is a murderer, and his victim was--"
+
+It was not necessary to say more. In the suddenly outstretched hand,
+with its open palm; in the white face so drawn that his mother would not
+have known it; in the gradual sinking and collapsing of the whole body,
+I saw that I had driven the truth home at last, and that silence now was
+the only mercy left to show him.
+
+I was silent, therefore, and waited as we wait beside a death bed for
+the final sigh of a departing spirit. But life, and not death, was in
+the soul of this man before me. Ere long he faintly stirred, then a
+smothered moan left his lips, followed by one word, and that word was
+the echo of my own:
+
+"Murder."
+
+The sound it made seemed to awake whatever energy of horror lay dormant
+within him. Bestirring himself, he lifted his head and repeated again
+that fearsome word:
+
+"Murder!"
+
+Then he leaped to his feet, and his aspect grew terrible as he looked up
+and shouted, as it were, into the heavens that same dread word:
+
+"Murder!"
+
+Filled with horror, I endeavored to take him by the arm, but he shook me
+off, and cried in a terrible voice:
+
+"A fiend, a demon, a creature of the darkest hell! I have worshiped her,
+pardoned her, dreamed of her for fifteen years in solitudes dedicated to
+God! O Creator of all good! What sacrilege I have committed! How shall I
+ever atone for a manhood wasted on a dream, and for thoughts that must
+have made the angels of Heaven veil their faces in wonder and pity.
+
+"You must have a story to tell," he now said, turning toward me, with
+the first look of natural human curiosity which I had seen in his face
+since I came.
+
+"Yes," said I, "I have; but it will not serve to lessen your horror; it
+will only add to it."
+
+"Nothing can add to it," was his low reply. "And yet I thank you for the
+warning."
+
+Encouraged by his manner, which had become strangely self-possessed, I
+immediately began, and told him of the visit of this bridal party at
+your inn; then as I saw that he had judged himself correctly, and that
+he was duly prepared for all I could reveal, I added first your
+suspicions, and then a full account of our fatal discovery in the secret
+chamber.
+
+He bore it like a man upon whom emotion has spent all its force; only,
+when I had finished, he gave one groan, and then, as if he feared I
+would mistake the meaning of this evidence of suffering, he made haste
+to exclaim:
+
+"Poor Honora! My heart owes her one cry of pity, one tear of grief. I
+shall never weep for any one else; though, if I could, it would be for
+myself and the wasted years with which I have mocked God's providence."
+
+Relieved to find him in this mood, I rose and shook his hand cordially.
+
+"You will come back to Albany with me?" I entreated. "We have need of
+you, and this spot will never be a home to you again."
+
+"Never!"
+
+The echo was unexpected, but welcome. I led the way out of the cave.
+
+"See! it is late," I urged.
+
+He shook his head and cast one prolonged look around him.
+
+"What do I not leave behind me here? Love, grief, dreams. And to what
+do I go forward? Can you tell me? Has the future in it anything for a
+man like me?"
+
+"It has vengeance!"
+
+He gave a short cry.
+
+"In which she is involved. Talk to me not of that! And yet," he
+presently added, "what it is my duty to do, I shall do. It is all that
+is left to me now. But I will do nothing for vengeance. That would be to
+make a slave of myself again."
+
+I had no answer for this, and therefore gave none. Instead I shouted to
+my guide, and after receiving from him such refreshments as my weary
+condition demanded, I gave notice that I was ready to descend, and asked
+the recluse if he was ready to accompany me.
+
+He signified an instant acquiescence, and before the sun had quite
+finished its course in the west we found ourselves at the foot of the
+mountains. As civilization broke upon us Mr. Felt drew himself up, and
+began to question me about the changes which the revolution had made in
+our noble country.
+
+. . . . .
+
+I will not weary you, my dear Mrs. Truax, with the formalities which
+followed upon our return to Albany. I will merely add that you may
+expect a duly authorized person to come to you presently for such
+testimony in this matter as it may be in your power to give; after which
+a suitable person will proceed to France with such papers as may lead to
+the delivering up of these guilty persons to the United States
+authorities; in which case justice must follow, and your inn will be
+avenged for the most hideous crime which has ever been perpetrated
+within our borders.
+
+        Most respectfully,
+               ANTHONY TAMWORTH.
+
+
+
+
+PART III.
+
+RETRIBUTION.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+STRANGE GUESTS.
+
+
+        SEPTEMBER 29, 1791.
+
+Two excitements to-day. First, the appearance at my doors of the person
+of whose coming I was advised by Mr. Tamworth. He came in his own
+carriage, and is a meager, hatchet-faced man, whose eye makes me
+restless, but has not succeeded in making me lose my self-possession. He
+stayed three hours, all of which he made me spend with him in the oak
+parlor, and when he had finished with me and got my signature to a long
+and complicated affidavit, I felt that I would rather sell my house and
+flee the place than go through such another experience. Happily it is
+likely to be a long time before I shall be called upon to do so. A
+voyage to France and back is no light matter; and what with
+complications and delays, a year or more is likely to elapse before the
+subject need be opened again in my hearing. I thank God for this. For
+not only shall I thus have the opportunity of regaining my equanimity,
+which has been sorely shaken by these late events, but I shall have the
+chance of adding a few more dollars to my store, against the time when
+scandal will be busy with this spot, and public reprobation ruin its
+excellent character and custom.
+
+The oak parlor I have shut and locked. It will not be soon entered again
+by me.
+
+The other excitement to which I referred was the coming of two new
+guests from New York, elegant ladies, whose appearance and manners quite
+overpowered me in the few minutes of conversation I held with them when
+they first entered my house.
+
+. . . . .
+
+Good God! what is that? I thought I felt something brush my sleeve. Yet
+there is no one near me, and nothing astir in the room! And why should
+such a sudden vision of the old oak parlor rise before my eyes? And why,
+if I must see it, should it be the room as it looked to me on that
+night when the two Urquharts sat within it, and not the room as I saw it
+to-day!
+
+Positively I must throw away the key of that room; its very presence in
+my desk makes me the victim of visions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        OCTOBER 5, 1791.
+
+Why is it that we promise ourselves certain things, even swear that we
+will perform such and such acts, and yet never keep our promises or hold
+to our oaths? Sixteen years ago I expressed a determination to refit the
+oak parlor and make it look more attractive to the eye; I never did it.
+A year since I declared in language as strong as I knew how to employ,
+not that I would refit the oak parlor, but that I would tear it from the
+house, even at the cost of demolishing the whole structure.
+
+And now, only a week since, I promised myself, as my diary will testify,
+that I would throw away the key of this place, if only to rid myself of
+unpleasant reminders. But the key is still with me, and the room intact.
+I have neither the power nor the inclination to touch it. The ghost of
+the woman who perished there restrains me. Why? Because we are not done
+with that room. The end of its story is not yet. This I feel; and I feel
+something further; I feel that it will be entered soon, and that the
+person who is to enter it is already in my house.
+
+I have spoken of two ladies--God knows with but little realization of
+the fatal interest they would soon possess for me. They came without
+servants some four days ago, and saying they wished to remain for a
+short time in this beautiful spot, at once accepted the cheerful south
+room which I reserve for such guests as these. As they are very handsome
+and distinguished-looking, I felt highly gratified at their patronage,
+and was settling down to a state of complacency over the prospects of a
+profitable week, when something, I cannot tell what, roused in me a
+spirit of suspicion, and I began to notice that the elder lady was of a
+very uneasy disposition, exhibiting a proneness to wander about the
+house and glide through its passages, especially those on the ground
+floor, which at first made me question her sanity, and then led me to
+wonder if through some means unknown to me she had not received a hint
+as to our secret chamber. I watch, but cannot yet make out. Meanwhile a
+description of these women may not come amiss.
+
+They are both beautiful, the younger especially. When I first saw them
+seated in my humble parlor, I thought them the wife and daughter of one
+of our great generals, they looked so handsome and carried themselves so
+proudly. But I was presently undeceived, for the name they gave was a
+foreign one, which my English tongue finds it very hard even yet to
+pronounce. It is written Letellier, with a simple Madame before it for
+the mother, and Mademoiselle for the daughter, but how to speak
+it--well, that is a small matter. I do speak it and they never smile,
+though the daughter's eye lights up at times with a spark of what I
+should call mirth, if her lips were not so grave and her brow so
+troubled.
+
+Yes; troubled is the word, though she is so young. I find it difficult
+to regard her in any other light than that of a child. Though she
+endeavors to appear indifferent and has a way of carrying herself that
+is almost noble, there is certainly grief in her eye and care on her
+brow. I see it when she is alone, or rather before she becomes aware of
+another's presence; I see it when she is with her mother; but when
+strangers come in or she assembles with the rest of the household in the
+parlor or at the table, then it vanishes, and a sweet charm comes that
+reminds me--
+
+But this is folly, sheer folly. How could she look like Mrs. Urquhart?
+Imagination carries me too far. Equal innocence and a like gentle temper
+have produced a like result in sweetening the expression. That is all,
+and yet I remember the one woman when I look at the other, and shudder;
+for the woman who calls this child daughter has her eye on the oak
+parlor, and may meditate evil--must, if she knows its secret and yet
+wishes to enter it. But my imagination is carrying me too far again.
+This woman, whatever her faults, loves her daughter, and where love is
+there cannot be danger. Yet I shudder.
+
+Madame Letellier merits the description of an abler pen than mine. I
+like her, and I hate her. I admire her, and I fear her. I obey her, and
+yet hold myself in readiness for rebellion, if only to prove to myself
+that I will be strong when the time comes; that no influence, however
+exerted, or however hidden under winning smiles or quietly controlling
+glances, shall have power to move me from what I may consider my duty,
+or from the exercise of such vigilance as my secret fears seem to
+demand. I hate her; let me remember that. And I distrust her. She is
+here for evil, and her eye is on the oak parlor. Though it is locked and
+the key hidden on my person, she will find means to possess herself of
+that key and open that door. How? We will see. Meantime all this is not
+a description of Madame Letellier.
+
+She is finely formed; she is graceful; she is youthful. She dresses with
+a taste that must always make her conspicuous wherever she may be. You
+could not enter a room in which she was without seeing her, for her
+glance has a strange power that irresistibly draws your glance to it,
+though her eyes are lambent rather than brilliant, and if large, rarely
+opened to their full extent. Her complexion is dark; that is, in
+comparison with her daughter's, which is of a marble-like purity. But it
+has strange flushes in it, and at times seems almost to sparkle. Her
+hair is brown, and worn high, with a great comb in it, setting off the
+contour of her face, which is almost perfect. But it is in the
+expression of her mouth that her fascination lies. Without sweetness,
+except when it smiles upon her daughter, without mirth, without any
+expression speaking of good-will or tenderness, there is yet a turn to
+the lips that moves the gazer peculiarly, making it dangerous to watch
+her long unless you are hardened by doubts, as I am. Her hands are
+exquisite, and her form beauty itself.
+
+The daughter is statuesque; not in the sense of coldness or immobility,
+but in the regularity of her features and the absence of any coloring in
+her cheeks. She is lovely, and there breathes through every trait a
+gentle soul that robs my admiration of all awe and makes my old and
+empty heart long to serve her. Her eyes are gray and her hair a reddish
+brown, with kinks and curls in it like-- But, pshaw! there comes that
+dream again! Was Honora Urquhart's hair so very unique that a head of
+wavy brown hair should bring her up so startlingly to my mind?
+
+They are stopping here on their way to Albany--so the elder lady says.
+They came from New York. So they did, but if my intuitions are not
+greatly at fault, the place they started from was France. The fact that
+the marks and labels have all been effaced from their baggage is
+suspicious in itself. Can they be friends of the two miserable wretches
+who dishonored my house with a ghastly crime? Is it from them that
+madame's knowledge comes, if she has any knowledge? The thought awakens
+my profoundest distrust. Would that Mr. Tamworth were within reach! I
+think I will write him. But what could I write that would not look
+foolish on paper? I had better wait a while till I see something or hear
+something more definite.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+MRS. TRUAX TALKS.
+
+
+        OCTOBER 7, 1791.
+
+[Illustration: T]
+
+This morning I was exceedingly startled by one of my guests suddenly
+asking me before several of the others, if my inn had a ghost.
+
+"A ghost!" I cried, for the moment quite aghast.
+
+"Yes," was the reply; "it has the look of a house which could boast of
+such a luxury. Don't you think so, Mr. Westgate?"
+
+This is a newcomer who had just been introduced.
+
+"Well," observed the latter, "as I have seen only this room, and as this
+room is anything but ghostlike at the present moment, I hardly consider
+myself competent to judge."
+
+"But the exterior! Surely you noticed the exterior. Such a rambling old
+structure; such a beetling top to it, as if it had settled down here to
+brood over a mysterious past. I never see it, especially at twilight,
+that I don't wonder what lies so heavily upon its conscience. Is it a
+crime? There would be nothing strange about it if it was. Such old
+houses rarely have a clean past."
+
+It was nonchalantly said, but it sank deep into my heart. Not that I
+felt that he had any motive in saying it--I knew the young scapegrace
+too well--but that I was conscious from his first word of two eyes
+burning on my face, which robbed me of all self-possession, though I
+think I sat without movement, and only paled the slightest in the world.
+
+"A house that dates back to a time when the white men and the red fought
+every inch of the territory on which it stands would be an anomaly if it
+did not have some drops of blood upon it," I ventured to say, as soon as
+I could command my emotions.
+
+"True," broke in a low, slow voice--that of Madame Letellier. "Do you
+know of any especial tragedy that makes the house memorable?"
+
+I turned and gave her a look before replying. She was seated in the
+shadows of a remote corner, and had so withdrawn herself behind her
+daughter that I could see nothing of her face. But her hands were
+visible, and from the force with which she held them clasped in her lap
+I perceived that the subject we were discussing possessed a greater
+interest for her than for any one else in the room. "She has heard
+something of the tragedy connected with this house," was my inward
+comment, as I prepared to answer her.
+
+"There is one," I began, and paused. Something of the instinct of the
+cat with the mouse had entered into me. I felt like playing with her
+suspense, cruel as it may seem.
+
+"Oh, tell us!" broke in the daughter, a sudden flush of interest
+suffusing for a moment her white cheek. "That is, if it is not too
+horrible. I never like horrible stories; they frighten me. And as for a
+ghost--if I thought you kept such a creature about your house, I should
+leave it at once."
+
+"We have no ghosts," I answered, with a gravity that struck even myself
+unpleasantly, it was in such contrast to her mellow and playful tones.
+"Ghosts are commonplace. We countenance nothing commonplace here."
+
+"Good!" broke in a voice from the crowd of young men. "The house is
+above such follies. It must have some wonderful secret, then. What is
+it, Mrs. Truax? Do you own a banshee? Have you a--"
+
+"Mamma, you hurt me!"
+
+The cry was involuntary. Madame had caught her daughter by the hand and
+was probably unaware what passion she had put into her clasp.
+Mademoiselle Letellier blushed again at the sound of her own voice, and
+prayed her mother's pardon with the most engaging of smiles. As she did
+so, I caught a glimpse of that mother's face. It was white as death.
+"Decidedly, she knows more than she ought to," thought I. "And yet she
+wants to know more. Why?"
+
+"The Happy-Go-Lucky Inn," I observed, as soon as the flutter caused by
+this incident had subsided, "is no more haunted by a banshee than by a
+ghost. But that is not saying it should not be. It is old enough, it is
+respectable enough; it has traditions enough. I could tell you tales of
+its owners, and incidents connected with the coming and going of the
+innumerable guests who have frequented it both before and during the
+revolution, that would keep you here till morning. But the one story I
+will tell must suffice. We should lose our character of mystery if I
+told you all. Besides, how could I tell all? Who could ever tell the
+complete story of such a house as this?"
+
+"Hear! hear!" cried another young man.
+
+"Years ago--" I stopped again, wickedly stopped. "Madame, will you not
+come forward where it is lighter?"
+
+"I thank you," Madame Letellier responded.
+
+She rose deliberately and came forward, tall, mute and commanding. She
+sat down in the light; she looked me in the face; she robbed me even of
+my doubts. I felt my heart turn over in my breast and wondered.
+
+"You do not proceed," she murmured.
+
+"Pardon me," said I; and assuming a nonchalance I was far from feeling,
+I commenced again. I had played with her fears. I would play with them
+further. I would see how much she could bear. I resumed:
+
+"Years ago, when I was younger and had been mistress of this place but a
+short time, there entered this place one evening, at nightfall, a young
+couple. Did you speak, madame? Excuse me, it was your daughter, then?"
+
+"Yes," chimed in the latter, coming forward and taking her stand by the
+mother, greatly to the delight of the young gentlemen present, who asked
+for nothing better than an opportunity to gaze upon her modest but
+exquisite face. "Yes; it was I. I am interested, that is all."
+
+I began to hate my role, but went on stolidly.
+
+"They were a handsome pair, and I felt an interest in them at once. But
+this interest immeasurably heightened when the young man, almost before
+the door had closed upon them, drew me apart and said: 'Madame, we are
+an unhappy couple. We have been married just four hours.'"
+
+Here I paused for breath, and to take a good look at madame.
+
+She was fixed as a stone, but her eyes were burning. Evidently she
+expected the relation of a story which she knew. I would disappoint her.
+I would cause in her first a shock of relief, and then I would reawaken
+her fears and probe her very soul. Slowly, and as if it were a matter of
+course, I proceeded to say:
+
+"It was a run-away match, and as the young husband remarked, 'a great
+disappointment to my wife's father, who is an English general and a
+great man. My wife loves me, and will never allow herself to be torn
+from me; but she is not of age, and her father is but a few minutes'
+ride behind us. Will you let us come in? We dare not risk the encounter
+on the road; he would shoot me down like a dog, and that would kill my
+young wife. If we see him here, he may take pity on our love, and--'
+
+"He needed to say no more. My own compassion had been excited, as much
+by her countenance as by his words, and I threw open the doors of this
+very room.
+
+"'Go in,' said I, 'I have a woman's heart, and cannot bear to see young
+people in distress. When the general comes--'
+
+"'We shall hear him,' cried the girl; 'he has half a dozen horsemen with
+him. We saw them when we were on the brow of the hill.'
+
+"'Take comfort, then,' I cried, as I closed the door, and went to see
+after the solitary horse which had brought them to this place.
+
+"But before I could provide the meal with which I meant to strengthen
+them for the scene that must presently ensue, I heard the anticipated
+clattering of hoofs, and simultaneously with it, the unclosing of this
+door and the cry of the young wife to her husband:
+
+"'I cannot bear it. At his first words I should fall in a faint; and how
+could I resist him then? No; let me fly; let me hide myself; and when he
+comes in, swear that you are here alone; that you brought no bride; that
+she left you at the altar--anything to baffle his rage and give us
+time.' And the young thing sprang out before me, and lifting her hands,
+prayed with great wide-open eyes that I would assist the lie, and swear
+to her father, when he came in, that her husband had ridden up alone.
+
+"I was not as old then as I am now, I say, and I was very tender toward
+youthful lovers. Though I thought the scheme a wild one and totally
+impracticable, she so governed me by her looks and tones that I promised
+to do what she asked, saying, however, that if she hid herself she must
+do it well, for if she were found my reputation for reliability would be
+ruined. And standing there where you see that jog in the wall, she
+promised, and giving just one look of love to her companion, who stood
+white but firm on the threshold, she sped from our sight down the hall.
+
+"A moment later the general's foot was where hers had been, and the
+general's voice was filling the house, asking for his daughter.
+
+"'She is not here,' came from the young man in firm and stern accents.
+'You have been pleased to think she was with me all these miles, but you
+will not find her. You can search if you please. I have nothing to say
+against that. But it will be time wasted.'
+
+"'We will see about that. The girl is here, is she not?' the father
+asked, turning to me.
+
+"'No,' was my firm reply; 'she is not.'
+
+"I do not know how I managed the lie, but I did. Something in the young
+man's aspect had nerved me. I began to think she would not be found,
+though I could see no good reason for this conclusion.
+
+"'Scatter!' he now shouted to his followers. 'Search the house well. Do
+not leave a nook or cranny unpenetrated. I am not General B---- for
+nothing.' And turning to me, he added: 'You have brought this on
+yourself by a lie. I saw my daughter in this fellow's arms as they
+passed over the ridge of the hill. She is here, and in half an hour
+will be in my hands.'
+
+"But the clock on the staircase struck not only the half hour, but the
+hour, and yet, though every room and corridor, the cellar and the
+garret, were searched, no token was found of the young wife's presence.
+Meanwhile the husband stood like a statue on the threshold, waiting with
+what seemed to me a strange certitude for the return of the father from
+his fruitless search.
+
+"'Has she escaped from one of the windows?' I asked, moved myself to a
+strange curiosity.
+
+"He looked at me, but made no reply.
+
+"'It is dark; it is late. If the general chooses to remain here
+to-night--'
+
+"'He will not find her,' was the reply.
+
+"I was frightened--I know not why, but I was frightened. The young man
+had a supernatural air. I began to think of demon lovers, and was glad
+when the general finally appeared, storming and raving.
+
+"'It is a conspiracy!' was his cry. 'You are all in league to deceive
+me. Where is my daughter, Mrs. Truax? I ask you because you have a
+character to lose.'
+
+"'It is impossible for me to tell you,' was my reply. 'If she was to be
+found in my house, you must have found her. As you have not, there is
+but one conclusion to draw. She is not within these walls.'
+
+"'She is not outside of them. I set a watch in the beginning, at the
+four corners of the house. None of my men have seen so much as a flutter
+of her dress. She is here, I say, and I ask you to give her up.'
+
+"'This I am perfectly willing to do,' I rejoined, 'but I do not know
+where to find her. Let that but once be done, and I shall not stand in
+the way of your rights.'
+
+"'Very well,' he cried. 'I will not search further to-night; but
+to-morrow--' A meaning gesture finished his sentence; he turned to the
+young man. 'As for you,' he cried, 'you will remain here. Unpleasant as
+it may be for us both, we will keep each other's company till morning. I
+do not insist upon conversation.' And without waiting for a reply, the
+sturdy old soldier took up his station in the doorway, by which action
+he not only shut the young man in, but gave himself a position of
+vantage from which he could survey the main hall and the most prominent
+passages.
+
+"The rest were under charge of his followers, whom he had stationed all
+through the house, just as if it were in a state of siege. One guarded
+the east door and another the west, and on each landing of the staircase
+a sentinel stood, silent but alert, like a pair of living statues.
+
+"I did not sleep that night; the mystery of the whole affair would have
+kept me awake even if my indignation had let me rest. I sat in the
+kitchen with my girls, and when the morning came, I joined the general
+again with offers of a breakfast.
+
+"But he would eat nothing till he had gone through the house again; nor
+would he, in fact, eat here at all; for his second search ended as
+vainly as his first, and he was by this time so wroth, not only at the
+failure to recover his child, but at the loss which his dignity had
+suffered by this failure, that he had no sooner reached this spot, and
+found the young husband still standing where he had left him, than with
+a smothered execration, leveled not only at him, but the whole house, he
+strode out through the doorway, and finding his horse ready saddled in
+front, mounted and rode away, followed by all his troop.
+
+"And now comes the strangest part of the tale.
+
+"He was no sooner gone, and the dust from his horse's hoofs lost in the
+distance, than I turned to the young husband, and cried:
+
+"'And now where is she? Let us have her here at once. She must be
+hungry, and she must be cold. Bring her, my good sir.'
+
+"'I do not know where she is. We must be patient. She will return
+herself as soon as she thinks it safe.'
+
+"I could not believe my ears.
+
+"'You do not know where she is?' I repeated. 'How could you be so
+self-possessed through all these hours and all this maddened searching
+if you did not know she was safe?'
+
+"'I did know she was safe. She swore to me before she set foot on your
+doorstep that she could so hide herself in these walls that no one could
+ever find her till she chose to reveal herself; and I believed her, and
+felt secure.'
+
+"I did not know what to say.
+
+"'But she is a stranger,' I murmured. 'What does she know about my
+house?'
+
+"'She is a stranger to you,' he retorted, 'but she may not be a stranger
+to the house. How long have you lived here?'
+
+"I could not say long. It was at the most but a year; so I merely shook
+my head, but I felt strangely nonplussed.
+
+"This feeling, however, soon gave way to one much more serious as the
+moments fled by and presently the hours, and she did not come. We tried
+to curb our impatience, tried to believe that her delay was only owing
+to extra caution; but as morning waxed to noon, alarm took the place of
+satisfaction in our breasts, and we began to search the house ourselves,
+calling her name up and down the halls and through the empty rooms, till
+it seemed as if the very walls must open and reveal us the being so
+frantically desired.
+
+"'She is not in the house,' I now asserted to the almost frenzied
+bridegroom. 'Our lies have come back upon our heads, and it is in the
+river we must look for her.'
+
+"But he would not agree with me in this, and repeated again and again:
+'She said she would hide here. She would not deceive me, nor would she
+have sought death alone. Leave me to look for her another hour. I must,
+I can, I will find her yet!'
+
+"But he never did. After that last fond look with which she turned down
+that very hall you see before you, we saw her no more; and if my house
+owns no ghost and never echoes to the sound of a banshee's warning, it
+is not because it does not own a mystery which is certainly thrilling
+enough to give us either."
+
+"Oh!" cried out several voices, as I ceased, "is that all? And what
+became of the poor bridegroom? And did the father ever come back? And
+haven't you ever really found out where the poor thing went to? And do
+you think she died?"
+
+For reply I rose. I had never taken my eye off madame, and the strain
+upon us both had been terrible; but I let my glance wander now, and
+smiling genially into the eager faces which had crowded around me, I
+remarked:
+
+"I never spoil a good story by too many explanations. You have heard all
+you will from me to-night. So do not question me further. Am I not
+right, madame?"
+
+"Perfectly," came in her even tones. "And I am sure we are all very much
+obliged to you."
+
+I bowed and slipped away into the background. I was worn out.
+
+An hour later I was passing through the hall above on my way to my own
+room. As I passed madame's door, I saw it open, and before I had taken
+three steps away I felt her soft hand on my arm.
+
+"Your pardon, Mrs. Truax," were her words; "but my daughter has been
+peculiarly affected by the story you related to us below. She says it is
+worse than any ghost story, and that she cannot rid herself of the
+picture of the young wife flitting out of sight down the hall. I am
+really afraid it has produced a very bad effect upon her, and that she
+will not sleep. Is it--was it a true story, Mrs. Truax, or were you
+merely weaving fancies out of a too fertile brain?"
+
+I smiled, for she was smiling, and shook my head, looking directly into
+her eyes.
+
+"Your daughter need not lose her sleep," I said, "on account of any
+story of mine. I saw they wanted something blood-curdling, so I made up
+a tale to please them. It was all imagination, madame; all imagination.
+I should not have told it if it had been otherwise. I think too much of
+my house."
+
+"And you had nothing to found it upon? Just drew upon your fancy?"
+
+I smiled. Her light tone did not deceive me as to the anxiety underlying
+all this; but it was not in my plan to betray my powers of penetration.
+I preferred that she should think me her dupe.
+
+"Oh," I returned, as ingenuously as if I had never had a suspicious
+thought, "I do not find it difficult to weave a tale. Of course such a
+story could not be true. Why, I should be afraid to stay in the inn
+myself if it were. I could never abide anything mysterious. Everything
+with me must be as open as the day."
+
+"And with me," she laughed; but there was a false note in her mirth,
+though I did not appear to notice it. "I did not suppose the story was
+real, but I thought you must have some old tradition to found it upon;
+some old wife's tale or some secret history which is a part and parcel
+of the house, and came to you with it."
+
+But I shook my head, still smiling, and answered, quite at my ease:
+
+"No old wife's tale that I have ever heard amounts to much. I can make
+up a better story any day than those which come down with a house like
+this. It was all the work of my imagination, I assure you. I tried to
+please them, and I hope I did it."
+
+Her face changed at once. It was as if a black veil had been drawn away
+from it.
+
+"My daughter will be so relieved," she affirmed. "I don't mind such
+lugubrious tales myself, but she is young and sensitive, and so
+tender-hearted. I am sure I thank you, Mrs. Truax, for your
+consideration, and beg leave to wish you a good-night."
+
+I returned her civility, and we passed into our several rooms. Would I
+could know with what thoughts, for my own were as much a mystery to me
+as were hers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        OCTOBER 9, 1791.
+
+Madame never addresses her daughter by her first name. Consequently we
+do not know it. This is a matter of surprise to the whole house, and
+many are the conjectures uttered by the young men as to what it can be.
+I have no especial curiosity about it--I would much rather know the
+mother's, and yet I frequently wonder; for it seems unnatural for a
+mother always to address her child as mademoiselle. Is she her mother?
+I sometimes think she is not. If the interest in the oak parlor is what
+I think it is, then she cannot be, for what mother would wish to bring
+peril to her child? And peril lies at the bottom of all interest there;
+peril to the helpless, the trusting and the ignorant. But is she as
+interested there as I thought her? I have observed nothing lately to
+assure me of it. Perhaps, after all, I have been mistaken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+IN THE HALLS AT MIDNIGHT.
+
+
+        OCTOBER 10, 1791.
+
+I was not mistaken. Madame is not only interested in, but has serious
+designs upon the oak parlor. Not content with roaming up and down the
+hallway leading to it, she was detected yesterday morning trying to open
+its door, and when politely questioned as to whom she was seeking,
+answered that she was looking for the sitting room, which, by the way,
+is on the other side of the house. And this is not all. As I lay in my
+bed last night resting as only a weary woman can rest, I heard a light
+tap at my door. Rising, I opened it, and was astonished to see standing
+before me the light figure of mademoiselle.
+
+"Excuse me for troubling you," said she, in her pure English--they both
+speak good English, though with a foreign accent--"I am sorry to wake
+you, but I am so anxious about my mother. She went to bed with me, and
+we fell asleep; but when I woke a little while ago she was missing, and
+though I have waited for her a long time, she does not return. I am not
+well, and easily frightened! Oh, how cold it is."
+
+I drew her in, wrapped a shawl about her, and led her back to her room.
+
+"Your mother will return speedily," I promised. "Doubtless she felt
+restless, and is taking a turn or two up and down the hall."
+
+"Perhaps; for her dressing gown and slippers are gone. But she never did
+anything like this before, and in a strange house--"
+
+A slight trembling stopped the young lady from continuing.
+
+Urging her to get into bed, I spoke one or two further words of a
+comforting nature, at which the lovely girl seemed to forget her pride,
+for she threw her arms about my neck with a low sigh, and then, pushing
+me softly from her, observed:
+
+"You are a kind woman; you make me feel happier whenever you speak to
+me."
+
+Touched, I made some loving reply, and withdrew. I longed to linger,
+longed to tell her how truly I was her friend; but I feared the mother's
+return--feared to miss the knowledge of madame's whereabouts, which my
+secret suspicion made important; so I subdued my feelings and hastened
+quickly to my room, where I wrapped myself in a long, dark cloak. Thus
+equipped, I stole back again to the hall, and gliding with as noiseless
+a step as possible, found my way to the back stairs, down which I crept,
+holding my breath, and listening intently.
+
+To many who read these words the situation of those back stairs is well
+known; but there may be others who will not understand that they lead
+directly, after a couple of turns, to that hall upon which opens the oak
+parlor. Five steps from the lower floor there is a landing, and upon
+this landing there is a tall Dutch clock, so placed as to offer a very
+good hiding place behind it to any one anxious to gaze unobserved down
+the hall. But to reach the clock one has to pass a window, and as this
+looks south, and was upon this night open to the moonlight, I felt that
+the situation demanded circumspection.
+
+I, therefore, paused when I reached the last step above the platform,
+and listened intently before proceeding further. There was no noise; all
+was quiet, as a respectable house should be at two o'clock in the
+morning. Yet from the hall below came an undefinable something which
+made me feel that she was there; a breathing influence that woke every
+nervous sensibility within me, and made my heart-beats so irregular that
+I tried to stop them lest my own presence should be betrayed. She was
+there, a creeping, baleful figure, blotting the moonshine with her tall
+shadow, as she passed, panther-like, to and fro before that closed door,
+or crouched against the wall in the same attitude of listening which I
+myself assumed. Or so I pictured her as I clung to the balustrade above,
+asking myself how I could cross that strip of moonlight separating me
+from that vantage-point I longed to gain. For that I knew her to be
+there was not enough. I must see her, and learn, if possible, what the
+attraction was which drew her to this fatal door. But how, how, how? If
+she were watching, as secrecy ever watches, I could not take a step upon
+that platform without being discerned. Not even if a friendly cloud came
+to obscure the brightness of the moon, could I hope to project my dark
+figure into that belt of light without discovery. I must see what was to
+be seen from the step where I stood, and to do this I knew but one way.
+Taking up the end of my long cloak, I advanced it the merest trifle
+beyond the edge of the partition that separated me from the hall below.
+Then I listened again. No sound, no stir. I breathed deeply and thrust
+my arm still further, the long cloak hanging from it dark and
+impenetrable to the floor below. Then I waited. The moonlight was not
+quite as bright as it had been; surely that was a cloud I saw careering
+over the face of the sky above me, and in another moment, if I could
+wait for it, the hall would be almost dark. I let my arm advance an inch
+or so further, and satisfied now that I had got the slit which answers
+for an arm-hole into a position that would afford me full opportunity of
+looking through the black wall I had thus improvised, I watched the
+cloud for the moment of comparative darkness which I so confidently
+expected. It came, and with it a sound--the first I had heard. It was
+from far down the hall, and was, as near as I could judge, of a jingling
+nature, which for an instant I found it hard to understand. Then the
+quick suspicion came as to what it was, and unable to restrain myself
+longer I separated the slit I have spoken of with the fingers of my
+right hand, and looked through.
+
+There she was, standing before the door of the oak parlor, fitting keys.
+I knew it at my first glimpse, both from her attitude and the slight
+noise which the keys made. Taken aback, for I had not expected this, I
+sank out of sight, cloak and all, asking myself what I should do. I
+finally decided to do nothing. I would listen, and if the least
+intimation came to prove that she had succeeded in her endeavor, I would
+then spring down the steps that separated us and hold her back by the
+hair of her head. Meanwhile I congratulated myself that the lock of that
+room was a peculiar one, and that the only key I knew of that would
+unlock it was under the pillow of the bed I had just left.
+
+She worked several minutes; then the moon came out. Instantly all was
+still. I knew whither she had gone. Near the door she was tampering with
+is a short passageway leading to another window. Into this she had
+slipped, and I could look out now with impunity, sure that she would not
+see me.
+
+But I remained immovable. There was another cloud rushing up from the
+south, and in another moment I was confident that I should hear again
+the slight clatter of the key against the lock. And I did, and not only
+once, but several times, which fact assured me that she had not only
+brought a handful of keys with her, but that these keys must have come
+from some more distant quarter than the town; that indeed she had come
+provided to the Happy-Go-Lucky for this nocturnal visit, and that any
+doubts I might cherish were likely to have a better foundation in fact
+than is usual with women circumstanced like myself.
+
+She did not succeed in her efforts. Had she brought burglar's tools I
+hardly think she would have been able to open that lock; as it was,
+there was no hope for her, and presently she seemed to comprehend this,
+for the slight sounds ceased and, presently, I heard a step, and peering
+recklessly from my corner, I perceived her gliding away toward the front
+stairs. I smiled, but it could not have been in a way she would have
+enjoyed seeing, and crept noiselessly to my own room, and our doors
+closed simultaneously.
+
+This morning I watched with some anxiety for her first look. It was
+slightly inquiring. Summoning up my best smile, I gave her a cheerful
+good-morning, and then observed:
+
+"I am glad to see you look so well this morning! Your daughter seemed to
+be concerned about you in the night because you had left your bed. But I
+told her I was sure all was right, that you were feeling nervous, and
+only wanted a breath of the fresh air you would find in the halls." And
+my glance did not flinch, nor my mouth lose its smile, though she
+surveyed me keenly with eyes whose look might penetrate a stone.
+
+"You understand your own sex," was her light reply, after this short
+study of my face. "Yes; I was very nervous. I have cares on my mind,
+and, though my daughter does not realize it, I often lie awake at her
+side, longing for space to breathe in and freedom to move as freely as
+my uneasiness demands. Last night my feelings were too much for my
+self-control, and I arose. I hope I did not seriously disturb you, or
+awaken anybody, with my restless pacing up and down the hall."
+
+I assured her that it took more than this to disturb me, and that after
+quieting her daughter I had immediately fallen asleep; all of which she
+may have believed or may not; I had no means of reading her mind, as she
+had no means of reading mine.
+
+But whether she was deceived or whether she was not, she certainly
+looked relieved, and after some short remarks about the weather, turned
+from me with the most cheerful air in the world, to greet her daughter.
+
+As for me, I have made up my mind to change my room. I shall not say
+anything about it or make any fuss on the subject, but to-night, and for
+some nights to come, I intend to take up my abode in a certain small
+room in the west wing, not very far removed from the dreadful oak
+parlor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE STONE IN THE GARDEN.
+
+
+        OCTOBER 11, 1791.
+
+This morning the post brought two letters for my strange guests. Being
+anxious to see how they would be received, I carried them up to Madame
+Letellier's room myself.
+
+The ladies were sitting together, the daughter embroidering. At the
+sight of the letters in my hand they both rose, the daughter reaching me
+first.
+
+"Let me have them!" she cried, a glad, bright color showing for a moment
+on her cheek.
+
+"From your father?" asked the mother, in a tone of nonchalance that did
+not deceive me.
+
+The girl shook her head. A smile as exquisite as it was sad made her
+mouth beautiful. "From--" she began, but stopped, whether from an
+instinct of maidenly shame or some secret signal from her mother, I
+cannot say.
+
+"Well, never mind," the mother exclaimed, and turned away toward the
+window in a manner that gave me my dismissal.
+
+So I went out, having learned nothing, save the fact that mademoiselle
+had a lover, and that her lips could smile.
+
+They did not smile again, however. Next day she looked whiter than ever,
+and languid as a broken blossom.
+
+"She is ill," declared madame. "The stairs she has to climb are too much
+for her."
+
+"Ah, ha!" thought I to myself. "That is the first move," and waited for
+the next development.
+
+It has not come as soon as I expected. Two days have passed, and though
+Mademoiselle Letellier grows paler and thinner, nothing more has been
+said about the stairs. But the time has not passed without its incident,
+and a serious enough one, too, if these women are, as I fear, in the
+secret of the hidden chamber.
+
+It is this: In the garden is a white stone. It is plain-finished but
+unlettered. It marks the resting-place of Honora Urquhart. For reasons
+which we all thought good, we have taken no uninterested person into the
+secret of this grave, any more than we have into that of the hidden
+chamber.
+
+Consequently no one in the house but myself could answer Madame
+Letellier, when, stopping in her short walk up and down the garden path,
+she asked what the white stone meant and what it marked. I would not
+answer her. I had seen from the window where I stood the quick surprise
+with which she had come to a standstill at the sight of this stone, and
+I had caught the tremble in her usually steady voice as she made the
+inquiry I have mentioned above. I therefore hastened down and joined her
+before she had left the spot.
+
+"You are wondering what this stone means," I observed, with an
+indifferent tone calculated to set her at her ease. Then suddenly, and
+with a changed voice and a secret look into her face, I added: "It is a
+headstone; a dead body lies here."
+
+She quivered, and her lids fell. For all her self-possession--and she is
+the most self-possessed person I ever saw in my life--she showed a
+change that gave me new thoughts and made me summon up all the strength
+I am mistress of, in order to preserve the composure which her agitation
+had so deeply shaken.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"You shock me," were her first words, uttered very slowly, and with a
+transparent show of indifference. "It is not usual to find a garden
+used for a burial place. May I ask whose body lies here? That of some
+faithful black or of a favorite horse?"
+
+"It is not that of a horse," I returned, calmly. And greatly pleased to
+find that I had placed her in a position where she would be obliged to
+press the question if she would learn anything more, I walked slowly on,
+convinced that she would follow me.
+
+She did, giving me short side glances, which I bore with an equanimity
+that much belied the tempest of doubt, repugnance and horror that were
+struggling blindly in my breast. But she did not renew the subject of
+the grave. Instead of that, she opened one of her most fascinating
+conversations, endeavoring by her wiles and graces to get at my
+confidence and insure my good will.
+
+And I was hypocrite enough to deceive her into thinking she had done so.
+Though I showed her no great warmth, I carefully restrained myself from
+betraying my real feelings, allowing her to talk on, and giving her now
+and then an encouraging word or an inviting smile.
+
+For I felt that she was a serpent and must be met as such. If she were
+the woman I thought her, I should gain nothing and lose all by betraying
+my distrust, while if she felt me to be her dupe I might yet light upon
+the secret of her interest in the oak parlor.
+
+Her daughter was waiting for us in the doorway when we reached the
+house. At the sight of her pure face, with its tender gray eyes and
+faultless features, a strong revulsion seized me, and I found it
+difficult not to raise my arms in protest between her beauty and winning
+womanliness and the subtile and treacherous-hearted being who glided so
+smoothly toward her. But the movement, had I made it, would have been in
+vain. At the sight of each other's faces a lovely smile arose on the
+daughter's lips, while on the mother's flashed a look of love which
+would be unmistakable even on the countenance of a tiger, and which was
+at this moment so vivid and so real that I never doubted again, if I had
+ever doubted before, that mademoiselle was her own child--flesh of her
+flesh, and bone of her bone.
+
+"Ah, mamma," cried one soft voice, "I have been so lonesome!"
+
+"Darling," returned the other, in tones as true and caressing, "I will
+not leave you again, even for a walk, till you are quite well." And
+taking her by the waist, she led her down the hall toward the stairs,
+looking back at me as she did so, and saying: "I cannot take her to
+Albany until she is better. You must think what we can do to make her
+strong again, Mrs. Truax." And she sighed as she looked up the short
+flight of stairs her daughter had to climb.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        OCTOBER 15, 1791.
+
+That stone in the garden seems to possess a magnetic attraction for
+madame. She is over it or near it half the time. If I go out in the
+early morning to gather grapes for dinner, there she is before me,
+pacing up and down the paths converging to that spot, and gazing with
+eager eyes at that simple stone, as if by the force of her will she
+would extract its secret and make it tell her what she evidently burns
+to know. If I want flowers for the parlor mantel, and hurry into the
+garden during the heat of the day, there is madame with a huge hat on
+her head, plucking asters or pulling down apples from the low-hanging
+branches of the trees. It is the same at nightfall. Suspicious, always
+suspicious now, I frequently stop, in passing through the upper western
+hall, to take a peep from the one window that overlooks this part of the
+garden. I invariably see her there; and remembering that her daughter is
+ill, remembering that in my hearing she promised that daughter that she
+would not leave her again, I feel impelled at times to remind her of the
+fact, and see what reply will follow. But I know. She will say that she
+is not well herself; that the breeze from the river does her good; that
+she loves nature, and sleeps better after a ramble under the stars. I
+cannot disconcert her--not for long--and I cannot compete with her in
+volubility and conversational address, so I will continue to play a
+discreet part and wait.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        OCTOBER 17, 1791.
+
+Madame has become bolder, or her curiosity more impatient. Hitherto she
+has been content with haunting the garden, and walking over and about
+that one place in it which possesses peculiar interest for her and me.
+But this evening, when she thought no one was looking, when after a
+hurried survey of the house and grounds she failed to detect my sharp
+eyes behind the curtain of the upper window, she threw aside discretion,
+knelt down on the sod of that grave, and pushed aside the grass that
+grows about the stone, doubtless to see if there was any marks or
+inscription upon it. There are none, but I determined she should not be
+sure of this, so before she could satisfy herself, I threw up the window
+behind which I stood, making so much noise that it alarmed her, and she
+hastily rose.
+
+I met her hasty look with a smile which it was too dark for her to see,
+and a cheerful good evening which I presume fell with anything but a
+cheerful sound upon her ears.
+
+"It is a lovely evening," I cried. "Have you been admiring the sunset?"
+
+"Ah, so much!" was her quick reply, and she began to saunter in slowly.
+But I knew she left her thoughts out there with that mysterious grave.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        12 M.
+
+Another midnight adventure! Late as it is, I must put it down, for I
+cannot sleep, and to-morrow will bring its own story.
+
+I had gone to bed, but not to sleep. The anxieties under which I now
+labor, the sense of mystery which pervades the whole house, and the
+secret but ever-present apprehension of some impending catastrophe,
+which has followed me ever since these women came into the house, lay
+heavily on my mind, and prevented all rest. The change of room may also
+have added to my disturbance. I am wedded to old things, old ways, and
+habitual surroundings. I was not at home in this small and stuffy
+apartment, with its one narrow window and wretched accommodations. Nor
+could I forget near what it lay, nor rid myself of the horror which its
+walls gave me whenever I realized, as I invariably did at night, that
+only a slight partition separated me from the secret chamber, with its
+ghastly memories and ever to be remembered horrors.
+
+I was lying, then, awake, when some impulse--was it a magnetic
+one?--caused me to rise and look out of the window. I did not see
+anything unusual--not at first--and I drew back. But the impulse
+returned, and I looked again, and this time perceived among the shadows
+of the trees something stirring in the garden, though what I could not
+tell, for the night was unusually dark, and my window very poorly
+situated for seeing.
+
+But that there was something there was enough, and after another vain
+attempt to satisfy myself as to its character, I dressed and went out
+into the hall, determined to ascertain if any outlet to the house was
+open.
+
+I did not take a light, for I know the corridors as I do my own hand.
+But I almost wished I had as I sped from door to door and window to
+window; for the events which had blotted my house with mystery were
+beginning to work upon my mind, and I felt afraid, not of my shadow, for
+I could not see it, but of my step, and the great gulfs of darkness that
+were continually opening before my eyes.
+
+However, I did not draw back, and I did not delay. I tried the front
+door, and found it locked; then the south door, and finally the one in
+the kitchen. This last was ajar. I knew then what had happened. Madame
+has had more than one talk with Chloe lately, and the good negress has
+not been proof against her wiles, and has taught her the secret of the
+kitchen lock. I shall talk to Chloe to-morrow. But, meantime, I must
+follow madame.
+
+But should I? I know what she is doing in the garden. She is wandering
+round and round that grave. If I saw her I could not be any surer of the
+fact, and I would but reveal my own suspicions to her by showing myself
+as a spy. No; I will remain here in the shadows of the kitchen, and wait
+for her to return. The watch may be weird, but no weirder than that of a
+previous night. Besides, it will not be a long one; the air is too
+chilly outside for her to risk a lengthy stay in it. I shall soon
+perceive her dark figure glide in through the doorway.
+
+And I did. Almost before I had withdrawn into my corner I heard the
+faint fall of feet on the stone without, then the subdued but
+unmistakable sound of the opening door, and lastly the locking of it and
+the hasty tread of footsteps as she glided across the brick flagging and
+disappeared into the hall beyond.
+
+"She has laid the ghost of her unrest for to-night," thought I.
+"To-morrow it will rise again." And I felt my first movement of pity for
+her.
+
+Alas! does that unrest spring from premeditated or already accomplished
+guilt? Whichever it may be--and I am ready to believe in either or
+both--she is a burdened creature, and the weight of her fears or her
+intentions lies heavily upon her. But she hides the fact with consummate
+address, and when under the eyes of people smiles so brightly and
+conducts herself with such a charming grace that half the guests that
+come and go consider her as lovely and more captivating than her
+daughter. What would they think if they could see her as I do rising in
+the night to roam about a grave, the unmarked head-stone of which
+baffles her scrutiny?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        OCTOBER 18, 1791.
+
+This morning I rose at daybreak, and going into the garden, surveyed the
+spot which I had imagined traversed by Madame Letellier the night
+before. I found it slightly trampled, but what interested me a great
+deal more than this was the fact that, on a certain portion of the
+surface of the stone I have so often mentioned, there were to be seen
+small particles of a white substance, which I soon discovered to be wax.
+
+Thus the mystery of her midnight visit is solved. She has been taking an
+impression of what, in her one short glimpse of yesterday evening, she
+had thought to be an inscription. What a wonderful woman she is! What
+skill she shows; what secrecy and what purpose. If she cannot compass
+her end in one way, she will in another; and I begin to have,
+notwithstanding my repugnance and fear, a wholesome respect for her
+ability and the relentless determination which she shows in every action
+she performs.
+
+When she finds that her wax shows her nothing but the natural
+excrescences and roughnesses of an unhewn stone, will she persist in her
+visits to the garden? I think not.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        OCTOBER 19, 1791.
+
+My last surmise was a true one. Madame has not spent a half hour all
+told in the garden since that night. She has turned her attention again
+to the oak parlor, and soon we shall see her make some decided move in
+regard to it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+IN THE OAK PARLOR.
+
+
+        OCTOBER 20, 1791.
+
+[Illustration: T]
+
+The long expected move has been made. This morning madame asked me if I
+had not some room on the ground floor which I could give to her daughter
+and her in exchange for the one they now occupy. Her daughter had been
+accustomed to living on one floor, and felt the stairs keenly.
+
+I answered at first--"No." Then I appeared to bethink me, and told her,
+with seeming reluctance, that there was one room below which I
+sometimes opened to guests, but that just now it was in such a state of
+dilapidation I had shut it up till I could find the opportunity of
+repairing it.
+
+"Oh!" she replied, subduing her eagerness to the proper point, "you need
+not wait for that. We are not particular persons. Only let me see the
+roses come back to my daughter's cheeks, and I can bear any amount of
+discomfort. Where is this room?"
+
+I pretended not to hear her.
+
+"It would take two days to get it into any sort of condition fit for
+sleeping in," I murmured reflectively. "The floor is so loose in places
+that you cannot walk across it without danger of falling through. Then
+there is the chimney--"
+
+She was standing near me and I heard her draw her breath quickly, but
+she gave no other sign of emotion, not even in the sound of her voice as
+she interrupted me with the words:
+
+"Oh! if you have got to make the room all over, we might as well not
+consider the subject. But I am sure it is not necessary. Do let me see
+it, and I can soon tell you whether we can be comfortable there or not."
+
+I had sworn to myself never to enter that room again, but such oaths
+are easily broken. Leaving her for a moment, I procured my key, and
+taking her with me down the west hall, I unlocked the fatal door and
+bade her enter.
+
+She hesitated for an instant, but only for an instant. Then she walked
+coolly in, and stood waiting while I crossed the floor to the window and
+threw it open. Her first glance flashed to the mantel and its adjacent
+wainscoting; then, finding everything satisfactory in that direction, it
+flew over the desolate walls and stiff, high-backed chairs, till it
+rested on the bare four-poster, denuded of its curtains and coverlets.
+
+"A gloomy place!" she declared; "but you can easily make it look
+inviting with fresh curtains and a cheerful fire. I am sure that, dismal
+as it is, it will be more welcome to my daughter than the sunny room up
+stairs. Besides, the window looks out on the river, and that is always
+interesting. You will let us come here, will you not? I am sure, if we
+are willing, you ought to be."
+
+I gasped inwardly, and agreed with her. Yet I made a few more
+objections. But as I intended that she should sleep in this room, I
+finally cleared my brow, and announced that the room should be ready
+for her occupancy on Friday; and with this she had to be content.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        OCTOBER 21.
+
+Bless God that I am mistress in my own house! I can order, I can have
+performed whatever I choose, without fuss, without noise, and without
+gossip. This is very fortunate just now, for while I am openly having
+the floor mended in the oak parlor, I am secretly having another piece
+of work done, which, if once known, would arouse suspicions and awaken
+conjectures that would destroy all my plans concerning the mysterious
+guests who insist upon inhabiting the accursed oak parlor.
+
+What this work is can be best understood by a glance at the accompanying
+diagram, which is a copy of the one drawn up by the Englishman for Mr.
+Tamworth.
+
+                     +-----------------------+
+                     |                       |
+                     |          C            |
+                     |                       |
+            +--------+----+--------+---------+
+            |        |-   |        |
+            |    B   |6   |        |
+            |     D  |=|= |        |
+            |    | | |=|= |        |
+            |--------|=|  |        |
+            | 1   _  |    |        |
+            |----|2|-|    |        |
+           -|       3|    |        |
+           4|        |    |        |
+           -|        |    |        |
+            |        |-   |        |
+            |   A    |5   |        |
+            |        |-   |        |
+            +--------+    +--------+
+
+            +--------+    +--------+
+            |        |    |        |
+
+
+[Illustration: A--Oak parlor. B--Bedroom. C--Kitchen, etc. D--Passage I
+have had made.
+
+1--Secret chamber. 2--Fire-place. 3--Secret spring. 4--Garden window.
+5--Door to oak parlor. 6--Clock on stairs to second story. Entrance to
+room B under stairway.]
+
+Here you see that the secret chamber lies between the rooms A and B. A
+is the parlor and B is the small room in which I had put up my bed after
+the nocturnal adventure of October 10. It has always been used as a
+store room until now, and as no one handles the keys of this house but
+myself, the fact of my using it for any other purpose is known only to
+Margery and a certain quiet and reticent workman from Cruger's shop, to
+whom I have intrusted the task of opening a passage at D through the
+wall. For I must have proper means of communication with this room
+before I can allow Madame Letellier and her daughter to take up their
+abode in it. Though the former's plans are a mystery to me; though I
+feel that she loves her daughter, and, therefore, cannot meditate evil
+against her, still my doubts of her are so great that I must know her
+intentions, if possible, and to do this I contemplate keeping a watch
+over that den of wicked memories which will be at once both unsuspected
+and vigilant.
+
+The flooring of the parlor is nearly completed, and to-night will see
+the door of communication between my room and the secret chamber hung
+and ready for use.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        OCTOBER 22.
+
+A month ago, if any one had told me that I would not only walk of my own
+free will into the secret chamber, but take up my abode in it, eat in it
+and sleep in it, I would have said that person was mad. And yet this is
+just what I have done.
+
+The result of my first vigil was unexpected. I had looked for--well, I
+hardly know what I did look for. My anticipations were vague, but they
+did not lead me in the right direction. But let me tell the story. After
+I had installed my guests in their new apartment, I informed them that
+I would have to say good-by for a season, as I had an affection of the
+eyes--which was true enough--which at times compelled me to shut myself
+up in a dark room and forego all company. That I felt one of these
+spells coming on--which was not true--and that by a speedy resort to
+darkness and quiet, I hoped to prevent the attack from reaching its
+usual point of distress. Mademoiselle Letellier looked disappointed, but
+madame ill disguised her relief and satisfaction. Convinced now beyond
+all doubt that she had some plan in mind which made her dread my
+watchfulness, I made such final arrangements as were necessary, and
+betook myself at once to my new room. Once there, I moved immediately
+into the dark chamber, and walking with the utmost circumspection,
+crossed to the wall adjoining the oak parlor, and laying my ear against
+the opening into that room, I listened.
+
+At first I heard nothing, probably because its inmates were still. Then
+I caught an exclamation of weariness, and soon some words of desultory
+conversation. Relieved beyond expression, not only because I could hear,
+but because they talked in English, I withdrew again into my own room.
+The most difficult problem in the world was solved. I had found the
+means by which I could insinuate myself, unseen and unsuspected, into
+the secret confidences of two women, at moments when they felt
+themselves alone and at the mercy of no judgment but that of God. Should
+I learn enough to pay me for the humiliation of my position? I did not
+weary myself by questioning. I knew my motive was pure, and fixed my
+mind upon that.
+
+Several times before the day was over did I return to the secret chamber
+and bend my ear to the wall. But in no instance did I linger long, for
+if the two ladies spoke at all it was on trivial subjects, and in such
+tones as indicated that neither their passions nor any particular
+interests were engaged. For such talk I had no ear.
+
+"It will not be always so," I thought to myself. "When night comes and
+the heart opens, they will speak of what lies upon their minds."
+
+And so it happened. As the inn grew quiet and the lights began to
+disappear from the windows, I crept again to my station against the
+partition, and in a darkness and atmosphere that at any other time in my
+life would have completely unnerved me, hearkened to the conversation
+within.
+
+"Oh, mamma," were the first words I heard, uttered in English, as all
+their talk was when they were moved or excited, "if you would only
+explain! If you would only tell me why you do not wish me to receive
+letters from him! But this silence--this love and this silence are
+killing me. I cannot bear it. I feel like a lost child who hears its
+mother's voice in the darkness, but does not know how to follow that
+voice to the refuge it bespeaks."
+
+"Time was when daughters found it sufficient to know that their parents
+disapproved of an act, without inquiring into their reasons for it. Your
+father has told you that the marquis is not eligible as a husband for
+you, and he expects this to content you. Have I the right to say more
+than he?"
+
+"Not the right, perhaps, mamma. I do not appeal to your sense of right,
+but to your love. I am very unhappy. My whole life's peace is trembling
+in the balance. You ought to see it--you do see it--yet you let me
+suffer without giving me one reason why I should do so."
+
+The mother's voice was still.
+
+"You see!" the daughter went on again, after what seemed like a moment
+of helpless waiting. "Though my arms are about you, and my cheek
+pressed close to yours, you will not speak. Do you wonder that I am
+heart-broken--that I feel like turning my face to the wall and never
+looking up again?"
+
+"I wonder at nothing."
+
+Was that madame's voice? What boundless misery! what unfathomable
+passion! what hopeless despair!
+
+"If he were unworthy!" her daughter here exclaimed.
+
+"It you could point to anything he lacks. But he has wealth, a noble
+name, a face so handsome that I have seen both you and papa look at him
+in admiration; and as for his mind and attainments, are they not
+superior to those of all the young men who have ever visited us? Mamma,
+mamma, you are so good that you require perfection in a son-in-law. But
+is he not as near it as a man may be? Tell me, darling, for in my dreams
+he always seems so."
+
+I heard the answer, though it came slowly and with apparent effort.
+
+"The marquis is an admirable young man, but we have another suitor in
+mind whose cause we more favor. We wish you to marry Armand Thierry."
+
+"A shop-keeper and a revolutionist! Oh, mamma!"
+
+"That is why we brought you away. That is why you are here--that you
+might have opportunity to bethink yourself, and learn that the parents'
+views in these matters are the truest ones, and that where we make
+choice, there you must plight your troth. I assure you that our reasons
+are good ones, if we do not give them. It is not from tyranny--"
+
+Here the set, strained voice stopped, and a sudden movement in the room
+beyond showed that the mother had risen. In fact, I presently heard her
+steps pacing up and down the floor.
+
+"I know it is not tyranny," the daughter finished, in the soft tones
+that were so great a contrast to her mother's. "Tyranny I could have
+understood; but it is mystery, and that is not so easily comprehended.
+Why should you and papa be mysterious? What is there in our simple life
+to create secrecy between persons who love each other so dearly? I see
+nothing, know nothing; and yet--"
+
+"Honora!"
+
+The word struck me like a blow. "Honora!" Great heaven! was that the
+name of this young girl?
+
+"You are giving too free range to your imagination. You--"
+
+I did not hear the rest. I was thinking of the name I had just heard,
+and wondering if my suspicions were at fault. They would never have
+called their child Honora. Who were these women, then? Friends of the
+Dudleighs? Avengers of the dead? I glued my ear still closer to the
+wall.
+
+"We have cherished you." The mother was still speaking. "We have given
+you all you craved, and more than you asked. From the moment you were
+born we have both lavished all the tenderness of our hearts upon you.
+And all we ask in return is trust." The hard voice, hard because of
+emotion, I truly believe, quavered a little over that word, but spoke it
+and went on. "What we do for you now, as always, is for your best good.
+Will you not believe it, Honora?"
+
+The last appeal was uttered in a passionate tone. It seemed to move the
+daughter, for her voice had a sob in it as she replied:
+
+"Yes, yes; but why not enlighten me as to your reasons for a course so
+remarkable? Most parents desire their daughters to do well, but you, on
+the contrary, not only wish, but urge me to do ill. A noble lover sues
+for my hand, and his cause is slighted; an ignoble one requests the same
+favor, and you run to grant it. Is there love in this? Is there
+consideration? Perhaps; but if so, you should be able to show where it
+lies. I am not a child, young as I am; I will understand any reasons you
+may advance. Then let me have your confidence; it is all I ask, and
+surely it is not much, when you see how I suffer from my
+disappointment."
+
+The restless steps ceased. I heard a groan close to my ear; the mother
+was evidently suffering frightfully.
+
+"Papa is prosperous," the daughter pleadingly continued. "I know your
+decision cannot be the result of financial difficulties. And then, if it
+were, the marquis is rich, and--"
+
+"Honora!"--the mother had turned. I heard her advance toward her
+daughter--"do you really love the marquis? You have seen him but a few
+times, have held hardly any intercourse with him, and at your age fancy
+often takes the place of love. You do not love him, Honora, my child;
+you cannot; you will forget--"
+
+"Oh, mamma! Oh, mamma! Oh, mamma!"
+
+The tone was enough. Silence reigned, broken at last by Mademoiselle
+Letellier saying: "It is not necessary to see such a man as he is very
+many times in order to adjudge him to be the best and noblest that the
+world contains. But, mamma, you are not correct in saying that I
+scarcely know him. Though you will not be frank with me, I am going to
+be frank with you and tell you something that I have hitherto kept
+closely buried in my breast. I did not think I should ever speak of it
+to any one, not even to you. Some dreams are so sweet to brood upon
+alone. But the shadow which your silence has caused to fall between us
+has taught me the value of openness and truth. I shall never hide
+anything from you again; so listen, sweet mamma, while I open to you my
+heart, and learn, as you can only learn from me, how your Honora first
+came to know and appreciate the Marquis de la Roche-Guyon."
+
+"Was it not," interrupted the mother, "at the great ball where he was
+formally introduced to us?"
+
+"No, mamma."
+
+Madame sighed.
+
+"Girls are all alike," she cried. "You think you know them, and lo!
+there comes a day when you find that it is in a stranger's hand you must
+look for a key to their natures."
+
+"And is not this what God wills?" suggested the child. "Indeed, indeed,
+you must blame nature and not me. I did not want to deceive you. I only
+found it impossible to speak. Besides, if you had looked at me closely
+enough, you would have seen yourself that I had met the marquis before.
+Such blushes do not come with a first introduction. I remember their
+burning heat yet. Are my cheeks warm now? I feel as if they ought to be.
+But there is nothing to grieve you in these blushes. It is only the way
+a loving heart takes to speak. There is no wicked shame in them; none,
+none."
+
+"Oh, God!"
+
+Did the daughter hear that bitter exclamation? She did not appear to;
+for her voice was quite calm, though immeasurably loving, as she
+proceeded in these words:
+
+"I was always a mother-girl. From the first day I can remember, I have
+known nothing sweeter than to sit within reach of your fondling hand.
+You were always so tender with me, mamma, even when I must have grieved
+you or disappointed your hopes or your pride. If I were in the way I
+never saw it, nor can I remember, of all the looks which have sometimes
+puzzled me in your face, one that spoke of impatience or lack of
+sympathy with my pleasures or my griefs. With papa it was not always so.
+No; don't stop me. You must let me speak of him. Though he has never
+been unkind to me, he has a way of frowning at times that frightens me.
+Whether he is displeased or simply ill I cannot say, but I have always
+felt a dread of papa's presence which I never felt of yours; and yet you
+frown, too, at times, though never upon me, mamma, dear--never upon me."
+
+A pause that was filled in by a kiss, and then the tender voice went on:
+
+"You can imagine, then, what a turmoil was aroused in my breast when one
+day, while leaning from the window, I saw a face in the street below
+that awakened within me such strange feelings I could not communicate
+them even to my mother. I who had hitherto confessed to her every
+trivial emotion of my life, shrank in a moment, as it were, from
+revealing a secret no deeper than that I had looked for one half minute
+upon the form of a passing stranger, and in that minute learned more of
+my own heart and of the true meaning of life than in all the sixteen
+years I had hitherto lived. You have seen him since, and you know he
+possesses every grace that can render a man attractive; but to me that
+day he did not look like a man at all, or if I thought of him as such, I
+thought of him as one who set a pattern to his fellows, while retaining
+his own immeasurable superiority. He did not see me. I do not know that
+I wished him to. I was quite content to watch him from where I stood,
+and note his lordly walk and kindly mien, and dream--oh, what did I
+dream that day! The memory of your own girlhood must tell you, mamma. I
+did not know his name; I did not suspect his rank; but from his youth I
+judged him to be single, from his bearing I knew him to be noble, and
+from his look, which called out a reflected brightness on every face he
+chanced to pass, I was assured that he was happy and that he was good.
+And what does a girl's fancy need more? Still a glimpse so short might
+not have had such deep consequences if it had not been followed by an
+event which rendered those first impressions indelible."
+
+"An event, Honora?"
+
+"Yes, mamma. You remember the day you sent me with Cecile to take my
+first lessons in tambour work of Madame Douay?"
+
+"Remember? Oh, my child, that awful day when you came near losing your
+life! When the house fell with you in it, and--"
+
+"Yes, yes, mamma, and I came home looking so pale you thought I was
+hurt, and fainted away, and would have died yourself if I had not kissed
+you back to life. Well, mamma, dear, I was hurt, but not in my body. It
+was my heart that had received a wound--a wound from which I never shall
+recover, for it was made by the greatness, the goodness, the noble
+self-sacrifice of the marquis."
+
+"Honora! And you never mentioned his name--never!"
+
+"I know, I know, mamma; but you have already forgiven me for that. You
+know it was from no unworthy motive. Think how you felt when you first
+saw papa. Think--"
+
+A hurried movement from the mother interrupted her.
+
+"Do not keep me in suspense," she pleaded; "let me hear what you have to
+tell."
+
+"But you are cold; you shudder. Let me get a shawl."
+
+"No, no, child, I am not cold, only impatient. Go on with your story--go
+on. How came you to meet the marquis in that place?"
+
+"Ah," cried the daughter, "it was a strange occurrence. It all came
+about through a mistake of Cecile's. Madame Douay, as we were told by
+the concierge, lived on the fourth floor, but Cecile made a miscount and
+we went up to the fifth, and as there was a Madame Douay there also, we
+did not detect our error, but went into her apartments and were seated
+in the small salon to await madame's presence. We had not told our
+errand, so we could not blame the maid who admitted us, nor, though
+madame failed to appear, did we ever remember to blame any one, for
+presently through the open window near which we sat there came the
+sound of voices from the room above, and a drama began of such startling
+interest that we could think of nothing else.
+
+"Two men were talking. Young men they seemed, and though I could not see
+them, I could tell from the fresh, fine voice of the one that he was a
+true man, and from the sneering, smothered tones of the other that he
+was not only a cynic, but of vicious tendencies. The first one was
+saying, 'I never suspected this,' when my attention was first called to
+their words, and the answer which came was as follows: 'If you had, I
+should not have had the pleasure of seeing you here. Men are not apt to
+rush voluntarily upon their deaths, and that you are a dead man you
+already know; for I have sworn to kill you as the clock strikes three,
+and it is but ten minutes of that time, and you have not a weapon with
+which to defend yourself.'
+
+"Mamma, you can imagine my feelings at hearing these words, though they
+were uttered by a person I could not see, to another person equally
+unknown to me? I looked at Cecile and she looked at me, but we could
+neither of us move. Every faculty seemed paralyzed save that of
+hearing. We held our breaths and listened for the reply. It came
+instantly and without a thrill in its clear accents.
+
+"'You are a gentleman, and no common assassin. How can you reconcile
+such an act as this with your honor, or with what sophistries quiet the
+stings of your conscience when time shall have shown you the sin of so
+unprovoked an onslaught?'
+
+"'It is not unprovoked,' was the harsh and bitter reply. 'You promised
+to marry Mademoiselle de Fontaine, and yesterday, at three o'clock--ah,
+I was there!--you formally renounced your claims. This is an insult that
+calls for blood, and blood it shall have. Twenty-four hours have elapsed
+less ten minutes, since you cast this slur upon a noble lady's good
+name. When the hour is ripe, you will pay the penalty it requires with
+your life.'
+
+"'But,' urged his young companion, 'Mademoiselle de Fontaine had herself
+requested the breaking off of this contract. I am but following the
+lady's behests in withdrawing from a position forced upon us against our
+will, and in direct opposition to her happiness.'
+
+"'And by what right do you presume to follow the behests of a lady still
+under age? Has she not guardians to consult? Should not I--'
+
+"'You?'
+
+"'Pardon me, I have not introduced myself, it seems. I am the Marquis de
+la Roche-Guyon.'"
+
+Honora paused; her mother's exclamation had stopped her:
+
+"The marquis! Oh! Honora, and you have always said he was so good!"
+
+"Wait, mamma; remember it is the cynical voice which is speaking, and
+the marquis's voice is not cynical. The words, however, are what I have
+told you; 'I am the Marquis de la Roche-Guyon.'
+
+"Of course, not knowing either party, nor this name, least of all
+realizing that it was the one by which the gentleman addressed was
+himself known, I did not understand why it should create so great an
+impression. But that it did was evident, not only from the momentary
+hush that followed, but from the violent exclamation that burst from the
+young man's lips. 'You scoundrel!' was his cry. But instantly he seemed
+to regret the word, for he said almost with the same breath: 'Your
+pardon, but there is but one man in the world besides myself who could,
+under any circumstances, have a right to that name.'
+
+"'And that man?'
+
+"'Is my cousin, the deceased marquis's son, long esteemed dead also, and
+now legally accepted as such.'
+
+"'And what assures you that I am not he? Your eyes? Well, I am changed,
+Louis, but not so changed that a good look should not satisfy you that I
+am the man I claim to be. Besides, you should know this mark on my
+forehead. You gave it to me--'
+
+"'Isidor!'
+
+"I could not comprehend it then, but I have learned since that the
+marquis--our marquis, I mean--had only just come into his title; that
+the son of the preceding Marquis de la Roche-Guyon had been so long
+missing that the courts had finally adjudged him dead, and given up his
+inheritance to his cousin; that the first act of the new marquis was to
+liberate the Demoiselle de Fontaine from an engagement that stood in the
+way of her marriage with one more desirable to her; and that the
+unexpected appearance of the real heir in this sudden and mysterious
+manner was as great a surprise to him as any mortal circumstance could
+be. Yet to me, who waited with palpitating heart and anxious ears for
+what should be said next, there was no evidence of this in his tone.
+With the politeness we are accustomed to in Frenchmen he observed:
+
+"'You are welcome, Isidor;' and then, as if struck himself by the
+incongruity between this phrase and the look and manner of his
+companion, he added, in slow tones--'even if you do bring a sword with
+you.'
+
+"The other, the real marquis, as I suppose, seemed to hesitate at this,
+and I began to hope he was ashamed of his dreadful threats and would
+speedily beg the other's pardon. But I did not know the man, or realize
+the determination which lay at the bottom of his furious and
+uncompromising words. But he soon made it evident to us.
+
+"'Louis,' he exclaimed, 'you have always been my evil genius. From our
+childhood you have stood in my way with your superior strength, beauty,
+prowess and address. When I was young I simply shrank from you in shame
+and distaste, but as I grew older I learned to detest you; and now that
+I see you again, after five years of absence, handsome as ever, taller
+than ever, and radiant, notwithstanding your nearness to death, with
+memories such as I have never known, nor can know, and beliefs such as I
+have never cherished nor will cherish, I hate you so that I find it
+difficult to wait for the five minutes yet to elapse before my word will
+let me lift my pistol and fire upon you.'
+
+"'Then it is your hate of me, and not your fondness for your sister,
+that has led you to lay this trap for me?' exclaimed the other. 'I
+should think your hate would be satisfied by the change which your
+return will make in my prospects. From the marquisate of La Roche-Guyon
+to a simple captaincy in his majesty's guards is quite a step, Isidor.
+Will it not suffice to soothe an antagonism which I never shared?'
+
+"'Nothing can soothe it, not even your death! You have robbed me of too
+much. First, of the world's esteem, then of my mother's confidence, and,
+lastly, of my father's love. Yes; deny it if you will, my father loved
+you better than he did me. This was the reason he sent me from home; and
+when, shipwrecked and captured by savages, I found myself thrown into
+an Eastern dungeon, half my misery and all my rage were in the thought
+that he would not consider my loss a misfortune, but die in greater
+peace and hope from knowing that his family honors would devolve upon
+one more after his own heart than myself. Oh! I have had cause, and I
+have had time to nourish my hate. Five years in a dungeon affords one
+leisure, and on every square stone of that wall, and upon every inch of
+its relentless pavement, I have beaten out this determination with my
+bare hands and manacled feet, that if I ever did escape, and ever did
+return to the home of my fathers, I would have full pay for the
+suffering you have caused me, even if I had it in your blood. I have
+returned, and I find my father dead, and in his place yourself, happy,
+insolent, and triumphant. Can you blame me for remembering my vows, for
+resenting what will ever seem an insult to my sister, and for wishing to
+hurry the time that moves so slowly toward the fatal stroke of three?'
+
+"'I do not blame you, because you are a madman. I do not fear you,
+because, having no one in the world to love, I do not greatly dread a
+sudden release from it. But I pity you because you have suffered, and
+will defend myself because your sufferings will be increased rather than
+diminished by the success of your crazy intentions.'
+
+"The answer came, quick and furious:
+
+"'I do not want your pity, and I scorn any defense which you can make.
+Do you think I have not made my calculations well? There is nothing here
+which can give you hope. We are alone on the sixth story. Beneath us are
+only women, and if you call from the window, I can shoot you dead before
+your voice can reach the street. Perhaps, though, you do not think of
+saving yourself, but of ensnaring me. Bah! as if the sight of the
+headsman would stop me now. Besides, I am prepared for flight. Have you
+looked at this house? It is not like other houses; it is double, and the
+room in which we stand has other foundations and walls from this one
+behind me which I guard with my pistol. Let the deed be once done--and
+the clock, as you see, gives us but one minute more--and I leap into
+this other apartment, down another flight of stairs from those you came
+up, and so to another door that opens upon another street. Then shout,
+if you will; I am safe. As to your life, it is as much at my command as
+if my bullet were already in your heart.'
+
+"'We will see!' was the thundering reply, and with these words a rush
+was made that shook the floor above our heads, and scattered bits of
+plaster down upon us. Released by the action from the fearful spell
+which had benumbed my limbs, I felt that I could move at last, and,
+leaping to my feet, I uttered scream after scream. But they perished in
+my throat, smothered by a new fear; for at this moment my arm was caught
+by Cecile, and following, with horrified gaze, the pointing of her
+uplifted hand, I saw the straight line of the window-ledge before me dip
+and curve, and yielding to the force of her agonized strength, I let
+myself be dragged across the floor, while before us, beneath us, above
+us, all was one chaos of heaving and crashing timbers, which, in another
+instant, broke into a thunder of confused sounds, and we beheld beneath
+us a pit of darkness, death, and tumult, where, but an instant before,
+were all the appurtenances of a comfortable and luxurious home.
+
+"We were safe, for we had reached the flooring of the second house
+before that of the first had completely fallen, but I could not think
+of myself, narrow as my escape had been, and marvelous as was the
+warning which had revealed to Cecile the only path of safety. For in the
+clouded space above me, overhanging a gulf I dared not measure with my
+eyes or sound with my imagination, I saw clinging by one arm to a beam
+the awful figure of a man, while crouching near him on a portion of
+flooring that still clung intact to the wall, I beheld another in whose
+noble traits, distorted though they were by the emotions of the moment,
+I recognized him who, but a month before, had changed the world for me
+with his look.
+
+"Ah! mamma, and a thousand deaths lay between us; and we could neither
+reach him nor give any alarm, for the space in which we found ourselves
+was small and shut from the outer world by a door which was locked. How
+it became locked I never knew, but I have thought that the maid in
+flying might have turned the key behind her, under some wild impression
+that by this means she would shut out destruction. However that may be,
+we were helpless and threatened by death. But our own situation did not
+alarm us, for theirs was so much more terrible, especially that of the
+man whose straining arm clung so frantically to a support that
+threatened every moment to slip from his grasp. I could not look at him,
+and scarcely could I look at the other. But I did, for in his face there
+was such a high and noble resolve that it made me forget his danger,
+till suddenly I heard him speak high above the sounds that arose in a
+tempest from the street:
+
+"'Do not despair, Isidor. I think I can reach you and pull you up upon
+the beam. You shall not die a dog's death if I can help it. Hold on and
+I will come.' And he began to move and raise himself upon the narrow
+platform on which he stood, and I saw that he meant what he said, and
+involuntarily and with but little reason I cried:
+
+"'Don't do it! He is your enemy. Save yourself; he is but a murderer;
+let him go.'
+
+"I said that; I who never had a cruel thought before in my life. But he,
+without looking to see whence this voice came, answered boldly:
+
+"'It is because he is my enemy that I wish to save him. I could never
+enjoy a safety won at the expense of his death. Isidor, you must live!
+So hold on, my cousin.'
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"And without saying anything further, this brave man set about a task
+that seemed to me at that moment not only superhuman but impossible.
+Gathering himself up, he prepared to make a spring, and in another
+instant would have launched himself toward that rocking beam, if Cecile,
+driven to extremity by the slow tottering of the floor upon which we
+stood, had not shrieked:
+
+"'And to save him you would leave us to perish?'
+
+"He paused and gave one look. 'Yes!' he cried. 'God help you, but you
+look like innocent women, while he--' The leap was made. He lay clinging
+to the beam. His cousin, who had not fallen, cast one glance up; their
+eyes met, and Isidor, as he was called, gave one great sob. 'Oh, Louis!'
+he murmured, and was silent.
+
+"And then, mamma, there began a struggle for rescue such as I dare not
+even recall. I saw it because I could not look elsewhere, but I crushed
+its meaning from my consciousness, lest I should myself perish before I
+saw him safe. And all the while the figure hanging over us swayed with
+the rocking of the beam, and gave no help until that last terrible
+moment when his cousin, reaching down, was able to sustain him under the
+arm till he could get his other hand up and clasp it around the beam.
+Then it all looked well, and we began to hope, when suddenly and without
+warning the nearly rescued man gave a great shriek, and crying, 'You
+have conquered!' unloosed his grasp, and fell headlong into the abyss.
+
+"Mamma, I did not faint. An unnatural strength seemed given to me. But I
+looked at the marquis, and for the first time he looked at me, and I saw
+the expression of horrified amaze with which he had beheld his cousin
+disappear gradually change to one of the softest and divinest looks that
+ever visited a noble visage, and knew that even out of that pit of death
+love had arisen for us two, and that henceforth we belonged to each
+other, whether our span of life should be cut short in a moment or
+extended into an eternity of years. His own heart seemed to assure him
+of the same sweet fact, for the next moment he was renewing his
+superhuman efforts, but this time for our rescue and his own. He worked
+himself along that beam; he gave another leap; he landed at our side,
+and tore a way for us through that closed door. In another five minutes
+we were in the street, with half Paris surging about us, but before the
+crowd had quite seized upon me, he had found time to whisper in my ear:
+
+"'I am the Marquis de la Roche-Guyon. It will always be a matter of
+thankfulness to me that I was not left to sacrifice the fairest woman in
+the world to the rescue of a thankless coward.'
+
+"Mamma, do you blame me for giving such a man my heart, and do you
+wonder that what I have dedicated to this hero I can never yield to any
+other man?"
+
+The mother was silent--for a long time silent. Was she horror-stricken
+at the story of a danger she had never fully comprehended till now? Or
+were her thoughts busy with her own past, and its possible
+incommunicable secrets of blood and horror? The cry she gave at last
+betrayed anguish, but did not answer this question.
+
+"My child! my child! my child!" That was all, but it seemed torn from
+her heart, that bled after it.
+
+"He was not long in seeking me out, mamma, dear. With grace and
+consideration he paid me his court, and I was happy till I saw that you
+and papa frowned upon an alliance that to me seemed laden with promise.
+I could not understand it, nor could I understand our hurried departure
+from France, nor our secret journey here. All has been a mystery to me;
+but your will is my will, and I dare not complain."
+
+"Pure heart!" broke from the mother's lips. "Would to God--"
+
+"What, dear mamma?"
+
+"That you had been moved by a lesser man than the Marquis de la
+Roche-Guyon."
+
+"A lesser man?"
+
+"With Armand Thierry, since he is the one you will have to marry."
+
+"I shall not marry him."
+
+"Shall not?"
+
+"If I cannot give my hand where my heart is, I remain unmarried. I
+dishonor no man with unmeaning marriage vows."
+
+"Honora!"
+
+"I may never be happy, but I will never be base. You yourself cannot
+wish me to be that. You, who married for love, must understand that a
+woman loses her title to respect when she utters vows to one man while
+her heart is with another."
+
+"But--"
+
+"You did marry for love, didn't you, sweet mamma? I like to think so. I
+like to think that papa never cared for any other woman in all the world
+but you, and that from the moment you first saw him, you knew him to be
+the one man capable of rousing every noble instinct within you. It is so
+sweet to enshrine you in such a pure romance, mamma. Though you have
+been married sixteen years--ah, how old I am!--I see you sit and look at
+papa sometimes, for a long, long time without speaking, and though you
+do not smile, I think, 'She is dreaming of the days when life was pure
+joy, because it was pure love,' and I long to ask you to tell me about
+those days, because I am sure, if you did, you would tell me the
+sweetest story of mutual love and devotion. Isn't it so, mamma mine?"
+
+Would that mother answer? Could she? I seemed to behold her figure
+pausing petrified in the darkness, drawing deep breaths, and scarcely
+knowing whether to curse or pray. I listened and listened, but it was
+long before the answer came. Then it was short and hurried, like the
+pants of one dying.
+
+"Honora, you hurt me." Another silence. "You make my task too hard. If I
+know what love is--" She found it hard to go on; but she did--"all the
+more anguish it must cost me to deny you what is so deeply desired. I--I
+would make you happy if I could. I will make you happy if it is in my
+power to do so, but I can hold out no hope--none, none."
+
+"Nor tell me why?"
+
+"Nor tell you why."
+
+"Mamma, you suffer. I see it now, and somehow it makes it easier for me
+to bear my own suffering. You do not willfully deny me what is as much
+as my life to me."
+
+"Willfully! Honora! Listen." The mother had stopped in her walk, for I
+heard her restless tread no more. "You say that I suffer, child. I have
+never had one happy day. Whatever romance you have woven about me, I
+have never known, from the hour of my birth till now, one moment of such
+delight as you experienced when you saw the character of the marquis
+unfold before you so grandly. The nearest I have ever come to bliss was
+when you were first placed in my arms. Then, indeed, for one wild
+moment, I felt the baptism of true love. I looked at you, and my heart
+opened. Alas! it was to take in pain as well as joy. You had the face--
+Oh, Heaven! what am I saying? This darkness unnerves me, Honora. Let us
+have light, light, anything to keep my reason from faltering."
+
+"Mother, mother, you are ill!"
+
+"No. I am simply weak. I always am when I recall your birth and the
+first few days that followed it. I was so glad to have something I could
+really love; so glad to feel that my heart beat, and to know that it
+beat for one so innocent, so sweet, so helpless as yourself. What if I
+had pains and hours of darkness, did I not have your smile, also, and,
+later on, your love? Child, if there has been any good in my life--and
+sometimes I have thought there was a little--it came from you. So, never
+even question again if I could hurt you willfully. I not only could not
+do this and live, but to save you from pain I would dare-- What would I
+not dare? Let man or angels say."
+
+Before such passion as this young Honora sank helpless.
+
+"Oh, mamma, mamma," she moaned, "forgive me. I did not know--how could
+I know? Don't sob, mamma, dear; let me hold you--so; now lay your cheek
+against mine and simply love me. I will lie quite still and ask no
+questions, and you will rest, too; and God will bless us, as he always
+blesses the loving and the true."
+
+But madame did not comply with this endearing request. Satisfying her
+daughter with a few kisses and some words that the paroxysm of her grief
+was past, she resumed her walk up and down the room, pausing every now
+and then as if to listen, and hastily resuming her walk as some slight
+exclamation from the bed assured her that mademoiselle was not yet
+asleep. As these pauses always took place when she was near the wall
+behind which I crouched, I frequently heard her breath, which came
+heavily, and once the rustle of her gown. But I did not stir. As long as
+her uneasy form flitted about the room, I clung to the partition,
+listening, determined that nothing should move me--not even my own
+terrors. And though night presently merged into midnight, and the
+silence and horror of the spot became frightful, I kept my post, for the
+stealthy tread continued, and so did the desultory scraps of
+conversation, which proved that, if the mother was waiting for the
+daughter to sleep, the daughter was equally waiting for the mother to
+retire. And so daylight came, and with it exhaustion to more than one of
+us three watchers.
+
+And this is the record of the first night spent by me in the secret
+chamber.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+A SURPRISE FOR HONORA.
+
+
+OCTOBER 22, 1791.
+
+[Illustration: E]
+
+Events crowd. This morning the one girl I have taken into my confidence
+came to my room with a strange tale. A stranger had arrived, an elegant
+young gentleman of foreign appearance, who had not yet given his name,
+but who must be a person of importance, if bearing and address go for
+anything. He came on horseback, attended by his valet, and his first
+word, after some directions in regard to his horse, was a request to see
+the landlady. When told she was ill, he asked for the clerk, and to him
+was about to put some question, when an exclamation from the doorway
+interrupted them. Turning, they saw madame standing there, her face
+petrified into an expression of terrified surprise.
+
+"Mrs.--"
+
+"Hush!" sprang from the lady's lips before he could finish his
+exclamation; and advancing, she laid her hand on his arm, saying, in
+French, which, by the way, my clerk understands: "If you hope anything
+from us, do not speak the name that is faltering on your tongue. For
+reasons of our own, for reasons of a purely domestic nature, we are
+traveling incognito. Let me ask you as a gentleman to humor our whim,
+and to know us at present as Madame and Mademoiselle Letellier."
+
+He bowed, but flushed with embarrassment.
+
+"And mademoiselle? She is well, I trust?"
+
+"Quite well."
+
+"And yourself?"
+
+"Quite well, also. May I ask what has brought you into these parts,
+whom we thought in another and somewhat distant country?"
+
+"Need you ask?"
+
+They had drawn a little apart by this time, and the clerk heard no more;
+but their manner--the lady's especially--was so singular that he thought
+I ought to know that she was here under a false name, and so had sent
+Margery to me with the news. As for the gentleman and Madame Letellier,
+they were still conversing in the lowest tones together.
+
+Interested intensely in this new development in the drama hourly
+unfolding before my eyes, I dismissed Margery with an instruction or
+two, and passed into the hidden chamber, where I again laid my ear to
+the wall. The mother would have something to say when she returned, and
+I determined to hear what it was.
+
+I had to wait a long time, but was rewarded at last by the sound of
+voices and the distinct exclamation from the daughter's lips:
+
+"Oh, mamma! what has happened?"
+
+The mother's reply was delayed, but it came at last:
+
+"My face is becoming strangely communicative. You will read all my
+thoughts next. What makes you think anything has happened? Is this a
+place for occurrences?"
+
+"Oh, mamma! you cannot deceive me. Your very limbs are trembling. See,
+you can hardly stand; and then, how you look at me! Oh, mamma, dear! is
+it good news or bad? for from your eyes it might be either. Has he--"
+
+"He, he--always he!" the mother passionately interrupted. "You do not
+love your mother. You are thinking always of one whom you never saw till
+a year ago. My doubts, my fears, my sufferings are nothing to you. I
+might die--"
+
+"Hush! hush! Whenever did you speak like this before, mamma? Love you!
+Did ever a child love her mother more? But our affection is sure, while
+that of him you do not like me to mention is threatened, and its
+existence forbidden. I cannot help but think, mamma, and of him. If I
+could, I were a traitor to the noblest instincts that sway a woman's
+heart. I may not marry him--you say I never will--but think of him I
+must, and pray for him I will, till the last breath has left my lips.
+So, what is your news, dear mamma? Has papa written?"
+
+"It is too early for the mail."
+
+"True, true. Some one has come, then; a messenger, perhaps, from New
+York. M. Dubois--"
+
+"Dubois is a traitor. He has not kept the secret of our whereabouts. We
+have to settle with Monsieur and Madame Dubois, meanwhile--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Honora, can I trust you?"
+
+"Trust me?"
+
+"Ah! who is trembling now?"
+
+"I! I! But how can I help it! You glance toward the door; you seem
+afraid some one will come. You--you--"
+
+"Tut! do not mind me! Answer what I ask. Could you see the marquis--talk
+to him, hear him urge his love and plead for yours, without forgetting
+that your obedience is mine, and that you are not to give him so much as
+the encouragement of a glance, till I either give you permission to do
+so or command from you his immediate and unqualified dismissal?"
+
+"See him?" It was all the poor girl had heard.
+
+"Yes; see him. You have come from Paris--why not he? Since Dubois has
+proved himself a traitor--"
+
+"Oh, mamma!" came now in great sobs, "you are not playing with me. He
+has come; he is here; the horse I heard stop at the door--"
+
+"Was that of the marquis," acknowledged the mother. "He is in the
+sitting room, child, but he does not expect you at present. This evening
+you shall see him if you will promise me what I have asked. Otherwise he
+must go. I will have no complications arising out of a secret betrothal.
+If you have not sufficient strength--"
+
+"Oh, I have strength, mamma! I have strength. Only let me see him, and
+prove to myself that he is not worn by trouble and suspense, and I will
+do all you ask of me. Ah, how well I feel! What a beautiful--what a
+lovely day this is! Must I not go out till evening? May I not take one
+wee walk in the garden?"
+
+"Not one, my child. At nine o'clock you may go to the sitting room for a
+half hour. Till then, think over what I have said, and prepare your lips
+to be dumb and your eyes to remain downcast; for I am firm in my
+demands, and nothing will make me change them."
+
+"You may trust me." There was despair in the tones now....
+
+As they talked but little after this, and as I was greatly interested in
+seeing the young man who had been heralded by such glowing descriptions,
+I stole back to my room, and, putting on a green shade, hastened to join
+my guests in the front part of the house. One glance from beneath my
+hurriedly uplifted shade was sufficient to assure me as to which of the
+gentlemen there assembled was the one I sought. So frank a face, so fine
+a form, so attractive a manner, were not often seen in my inn, and
+prepossessed at once in his favor, I advanced to the owner of all these
+graces, and, calling him by name, bade him welcome to my house.
+
+He must understand our language well, for he immediately turned with
+gentle urbanity, and discerning, perhaps, something in my face which
+assured him of my sympathy and respect, entered into a fluent
+conversation with me that at once increased my admiration and awakened
+my pity. For I saw that his nature was strong and his feelings deep, and
+as the future could have nothing but shame and misery, I instinctively
+felt oppressed by the fate which awaited him.
+
+He did not seem to feel any apprehension himself. His eyes were bright;
+his smile beaming; his bearing full of hope. Now and then his glance
+would steal toward the door or through the open windows, as if he longed
+to catch a glimpse of some passing face or form; and at last, swayed by
+that sympathy which we women all feel for true love in man or woman, I
+asked him to accompany me into the garden, promising him a view that
+would certainly delight him. As the garden was plainly visible from the
+oak parlor, you can readily understand to what view I alluded. But he
+had no suspicion of my meaning, and followed me with some reluctance.
+
+But his aspect changed materially when, in walking up and down the
+paths, I casually remarked:
+
+"This is the least inhabited side of the inn. Only one room is occupied,
+and that by two foreigners--Madame and Mademoiselle Letellier. Yet it
+has a pleasant outlook, as you yourself can see."
+
+"Is she--are they behind those windows?" he asked, with an impetuosity I
+could not but admire in a man with so much to recommend him to the
+consideration of others. "I beg your pardon," he added, a moment later,
+after a stolen glance at the house. "I know those ladies, and anything
+in connection with them is interesting to me."
+
+I believed it, and had hard work to hide my secret trouble. But his
+preoccupation assisted me, and at length I found courage to remark:
+
+"They are from Paris, I understand. A fine woman, Madame Letellier. Must
+be much admired in her own land?"
+
+He seemed to have no reason for resenting my curiosity.
+
+"She is," was his quick reply. "She is not only admired, but respected.
+I have never heard her name mentioned but with honor. I am happy to be
+known as her friend."
+
+I gave him one quick look. Good God! What lay before this man! And he so
+unconscious! I felt like wishing the inn would fall to atoms before our
+eyes, crushing beneath it the sin of the past and his false hopes for
+the future. He saw nothing. He was smiling upon a rose which he had
+plucked and was holding in his hand.
+
+"This inn is one of the antiquities," I now observed, anxious to know if
+any hint of its secrets had ever reached his ears. "They say it is one
+of the first structures reared on the river. Have you ever heard any of
+the traditions connected with it?"
+
+"Oh, no," he smiled. "The Happy-Go-Lucky is quite a stranger to me. You
+cherish up all its legends, though, I have no doubt. Are there any tales
+of ghosts among them? I can easily imagine certain disembodied spirits
+wandering through its narrow halls and up and down its winding
+staircases."
+
+"What spirits?" I asked, convinced, however, by his manner that he was
+talking at random, with the probable aim of prolonging our walk within
+view of the window behind which his darling might stand concealed.
+
+"Madame must inform me. I have too little acquaintance with this country
+to venture among its traditions."
+
+"There is a story," I began; but here a finely modulated but piercing
+voice rang musically down the paths from the house, and we heard:
+
+"Your eyes will certainly suffer, Mrs. Truax, if you let the hot sun
+glare upon them so mercilessly." And, turning, we saw madame's smiling
+face looking from her casement with a meaning that struck us both dumb
+and led me to shorten our walk lest my interest in the romance then
+going on should be suspected and my usefulness thus become abridged.
+
+Was it to forestall my suspicions, rid herself of my vigilance, or to
+insure herself against any forgetfulness on her daughter's part, that
+madame, some two hours later, sent me the following note:
+
+        "DEAR MRS. TRUAX: I can imagine that after your
+        walk in the blazing sunlight you do not feel
+        very well this evening. I must nevertheless
+        request of you a favor, my need being great and
+        you being the only person who can assist me.
+        The Marquis de la Roche-Guyon, with whom I saw
+        you promenading, has come to this place with
+        the express intention of paying court to my
+        daughter. As I am not prepared to frown upon
+        his suit, and equally unprepared to favor it, I
+        do not feel at liberty to refuse him the
+        pleasure of an interview with my daughter, and
+        yet do not desire them to enjoy such an
+        interview alone. As I am ill, quite ill, with a
+        sudden and excruciating attack of pain in my
+        right hip, may I ask if you will fulfill the
+        office of chaperon for me, and, without
+        embarrassment to either party, take such
+        measures as will prevent an absolute confidence
+        between them, till I have obtained the sanction
+        of my husband to an intimacy which I myself
+        dare not encourage?
+
+        "Very truly your debtor, if you accomplish
+        this, MADAME LETELLIER."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+IN THE SECRET CHAMBER.
+
+
+Have only twenty-four hours elapsed? Is it but yesternight that all the
+terrible events took place, the memory of which are now making my frame
+tremble? So the clock says, and yet how hard it is to believe it. Madame
+Letellier-- But I will preserve my old method. I will not anticipate
+events, but relate them as they occurred.
+
+To go back then to the note which I received from madame. I did not like
+it. I did not see its consistency, and I did not mean to be its dupe. If
+she intended remaining in the oak parlor, then over the oak parlor I
+would keep watch; for from her alone breathed whatever danger there
+might be for any of us, and to her alone did I look for the explanation
+of her mysterious presence in a spot that should have held a thousand
+repellent forces for her and hers. As for her sudden illness, that was
+nonsense. She was as well as I was myself. Had I not seen her standing
+at the window an hour or two before?
+
+But here I made a mistake. Madame was really ill, as I presently had
+occasion to observe. For not only was a physician summoned, but word
+came that she wished to see me, also; and when I went to her room I
+found her in bed, her face pallid and distorted with pain, and her whole
+aspect betraying the greatest physical suffering.
+
+It was a rheumatic attack, affecting mainly her right limb, and made her
+so helpless that, for a moment, I stood aghast at what looked to me like
+a dispensation of Providence. But in another instant I began to doubt
+again; for though I knew it was beyond anybody's power to simulate the
+suffering under which she evidently labored, I was made to feel, by her
+penetrating and restless looks, that her mind retained its hold upon its
+purpose, whatever that purpose might be, and that for me to relax my
+vigilance now would be to give her an advantage that would be
+immediately seized upon.
+
+I therefore held my sympathies in check; and, while acting the part of
+the solicitous landlady, watched for that glance or word which should
+reveal her secret intentions. Her daughter, whose eyes were streaming
+with tears, stood over her like a pitying angel, and not till we had
+done all we could to relieve her mother, and subdue her pain, did she
+allow her longing eyes to turn toward the clock that beat out the
+passing moments with mechanical precision. It was just a quarter to
+nine.
+
+The mother saw that glance, and hid her face for a moment; then she took
+mademoiselle by the hand, and drawing her down to her, whispered
+audibly:
+
+"I expect you to keep your appointment. Mrs. Truax will send one of the
+girls to sit with me. Besides, I feel better, and as if I could sleep.
+Only remember your promise, dear. No look, no hint of your feelings."
+
+Mademoiselle flushed scarlet. Stealing a look at me, she drew back
+embarrassed, but oh! how joyous. I felt my old heart quiver as I
+surveyed her, and in spite of the dread form of the redoubtable woman
+stretched before me, in spite of the grewsome room and its more than
+grewsome secrets, something of the fairy light of love seemed to fall
+upon my spirit and lift the darkness from the place for one short and
+glowing moment.
+
+"Look in the glass," the mother now commanded. "You need to tie up your
+curls again and to put a fresh flower at your throat. I do not wish you
+to show weariness. Mrs. Truax"--these words to me in low tones, as her
+daughter withdrew to the other side of the room--"you received my note?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"You will do what I ask?"
+
+I nodded again. Deliberate falsehood it was, but I showed no faltering.
+
+"Then I will excuse you now."
+
+I rose.
+
+"And do not send any one to me. I wish to sleep, and another's presence
+would disturb me. See, the pain is almost gone."
+
+She did look better.
+
+"Your wishes shall be regarded," I assured her. "If you do feel worse,
+ring this bell and Margery will notify me." And placing the bell rope
+near her hand, I drew back and presently quitted the room.
+
+Lingering in the hall just long enough to see the lovely Honora flit
+across the threshold of the sitting-room which I had purposely ordered
+vacant for her use, I hurried to my room.
+
+It was dark, dark as the secret chamber into which I now stole with the
+lightest and wariest of steps. Horror, gloom, and apprehension were in
+the air, which brooded stiflingly in the narrow spot, and had it not
+been for the righteous purpose sustaining me, I should have fallen at
+this critical moment, crushed beneath the terrible weight of my own
+feelings.
+
+But one who has to listen, straining every faculty to catch the purport
+of what is going on behind an impenetrable wall, soon forgets himself
+and his own sensations. As I pressed my ear to the wall and caught the
+sound of a prolonged and painful stir within, I only thought of
+following the movements of madame, who, I was now sure, had left her bed
+and was dragging herself, with what difficulty and distress I could but
+faintly judge by the involuntary groans which now and then left her,
+across the floor toward the door, the key of which I presently heard
+turn.
+
+This done, a heavy silence followed, then the slow, dragging sound began
+again, interrupted now by weary pants and heavy sobs that at first
+chilled me and then shook me with such fear that it was with difficulty
+that I could retain my place against the wall. She was crawling in my
+direction, and at each instant I heard the pants grow louder.
+
+I gradually withdrew, step by step, till I found myself pressed up
+against the wall in the remotest corner I could find. And here was I
+standing, enveloped in darkness and dread, when the sounds changed to
+that of a shuddering, rushing noise which I had heard once before in my
+life, and from a narrow gap through which the faint light in the room
+beyond dimly shone in a thread of lesser darkness, the aperture grew,
+till I could feel rather than see her form, crawling, not walking,
+through the opening, and hear, distinct enough, her horrible, gurgling
+tones as she murmured:
+
+"I shall have to grope for what I want--touch it, feel it, for I cannot
+see. O God! O God! What horror! What punishment!"
+
+Nearer, nearer over the floor she came, dragging her useless limb behind
+her. Her outstretched arm groped, groped about the floor, while I stood
+trembling and agonized with horror till her hand touched the skirt of my
+dress, when, with a great shriek of suddenly liberated feeling, I pushed
+her from me, and crying out, "Murderess! do you seek the bones of your
+victim?" I flung open the door against which I stood and let the light
+from my own room stream in upon us two.
+
+Her face as I saw it at that moment has never left my memory. She had
+fallen in a heap at my first move, and now lay crushed before me, with
+only her wide-staring eyes and shaking lips to tell me that she lived.
+
+"You thought I did not know you," I burst forth. "You thought, because I
+had never seen your face, you could come back here, bringing your
+innocent daughter with you, and cast yourself into the very atmosphere
+of your crime without awakening the suspicion of the woman whose house
+you had made a sepulcher of for so many years. But crime was written too
+plainly on your brow. The spirit of Honora Urquhart, breaking the bounds
+of this room, has walked ever beside you, and I knew you from the first
+moment that you strayed down this hall."
+
+Broken sounds, unintelligible murmurings, were all that greeted me.
+
+"You are punished," I went on, "in the misery of your daughter. Nemesis
+has reached you. The blood of Honora Urquhart has called aloud from
+these walls, and not yourself only, but the still viler being whose name
+you have so falsely shared, must answer to man and God for the life you
+so heartlessly sacrificed and the rights you so falsely usurped."
+
+"Mercy!" came in one quick gasp from the crushed heap of humanity before
+me.
+
+But I was inexorable. I remembered Honora Urquhart's sweet face, and at
+that moment could think of nothing else. So I went on.
+
+"You have had years of triumph. You have borne your victim's name, worn
+your victim's clothes, sported with your victim's money. And he, her
+husband, has looked on and smiled. Day after day, month after month,
+year after year, you have gone in and out before your friends,
+unmolested and unafraid; but God's vengeance, though it halts, is sure
+and keen. Across land and across water the memories of this room have
+drawn you, and not content with awakening suspicion, you must make
+suspicion certainty by moving a spring unknown even to myself, and
+entering this spot, from which the bones of your victim were taken only
+two months ago, Marah Leighton!"
+
+Moved by the name, she stood up. Tottering and agonized with pain, but
+firm once more and determined, she towered before me, her face turned
+toward the room she had left, her hand lifted, her whole attitude that
+of one listening.
+
+"Hark!" she cried.
+
+It was a knock, a faint, low, trembling knock that we heard, then the
+word "Mamma" came in muffled accents from the hallway.
+
+A convulsion crossed the countenance of the miserable woman before me.
+
+"Oh, God! my daughter, my daughter!" she cried. And falling at my feet,
+she groveled in anguish as she pleaded:
+
+"Will you kill her? She knows nothing, suspects nothing. The whole
+fifteen years of her life are pure. She is a flower. I love her--I love
+her, though she looks like the woman I hated and killed. She bears her
+name--why, I do not know--I could not call her anything else; she is my
+living reproach, and yet I love her. Do you not see it was for her I
+crossed the water, for her I plunged my living hand into this tomb to
+learn if our secret had ever been discovered, and if there was any hope
+that she might yet be made happy? Ah, woman, woman, you are not a
+wretch--a demon! You will not sentence this innocent soul to disgrace
+and misery. Even if I must die--and I swear that I will die if you say
+so--leave to my child her hopes; keep secret my sin, and take the
+blessing of the most miserable being that crawls upon the earth, as a
+solace for your old age. Hear me; hear a wretched mother's plea--"
+
+"It is too late," I broke in. "Even were I silent there are others upon
+your track. I doubt if your husband does not already know that the day
+of his prosperity is at an end."
+
+She gave a low cry, and tottered from the place. Entering her own room,
+she threw herself upon the bed. I followed, drawing the curtains about
+her. Then closing the door of communication between the oak parlor and
+the chamber beyond, I passed to the door behind which we could yet hear
+her daughter's soft voice calling, and, unlocking it, let the radiant
+creature in.
+
+"Oh, mamma!" she began, "I could not keep my word--"
+
+But here I held up my hand, and drawing her softly out, told her that
+her mother needed rest just now, and that if she would come to my room
+for a little while it would be best; and so prevailed upon her that she
+promised to do what I asked, though I saw her cast longing glances
+through the partly opened door toward the somber bed so like a tomb, and
+which at that moment was a tomb, had she known it--a tomb of hope, of
+joy, of peace for evermore.
+
+I was just going out, when a slight stir detained me. Looking back, I
+saw a hand thrust out from between the falling curtains. Just a hand,
+but how eloquent it was! Pointing it out to mademoiselle, I said:
+
+"Your mother's hand. Give it a kiss, mademoiselle, but do not part the
+curtains."
+
+She smiled and crossed to that ominous bed. Kneeling, she kissed the
+hand, which thereupon raised itself and rested on her head. In another
+instant it was drawn slowly away, and, with a startled look, the
+half-weeping daughter rose and glided again to my side.
+
+As I closed the door I thought of those words: "And the sins of the
+father shall be visited upon the children to the third and fourth
+generation."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+THE MARQUIS.
+
+
+But the events of the night are not over. As soon as I had seen
+mademoiselle comfortably ensconced in my old room up stairs, I returned
+to the sitting room, where the marquis still lingered. He was standing
+in the window when I entered, and turned with quite a bright face to
+greet me. But that brightness soon vanished as he met my glance, and it
+was with something like dismay that he commented upon my paleness, and
+asked if I were ill.
+
+I told him I was ill at ease; that events of a most serious nature were
+transpiring in the house; that he was concerned in them heavily,
+grievously; that I could not rest till I had taken him into my
+confidence, and shown him upon what a precipice he was standing.
+
+He evidently considered me demented, but as he looked at me longer, and
+noted my steady and unflinching gaze, he gradually turned pale, and
+uttered, in irrepressible anxiety, the one word--"Honora!"
+
+"Miss Urquhart is well," I began, "and is as ignorant as yourself of the
+shadows that hover over her. She is all innocence and truth, sir. Honor,
+candor and purity dwell in her heart, and happiness in her eyes. Yet is
+that happiness threatened by the worst calamity that can befall a
+sensitive human being, and if you hold her in esteem--"
+
+"_Ma foi!_" he broke in, with violent impetuosity. "I do not esteem her;
+I love her. What are these dreadful secrets? How is her happiness
+threatened? Tell me without hesitation, for I have entreated her to be
+my wife, and she--"
+
+"She thinks it is a parent's whim, alone, which keeps her from
+responding fully to your wishes," I finished. "But madame's objections
+have deeper ground than that. Miserable woman as she is, she has some
+idea of honor left. She knew her daughter could not safely marry into a
+high and noble family, and so--"
+
+"What is this you say?" came again in the quick and hurried tones of
+despair. "Mrs. Urquhart--"
+
+"Wait," I broke in. "You call her Mrs. Urquhart, but she has no claim to
+that title. She and Edwin Urquhart have never been married."
+
+He recoiled sharply, with a gesture of complete disbelief.
+
+"How do you know?" he demanded. "They are strangers to you. I have known
+them in their own home. All the world credits their marriage, and--"
+
+"All the world does not know what transpired in this house sixteen years
+ago, when Edwin Urquhart stopped here with his bride on his way to
+France."
+
+He stared, seemed shaken, but presently hastened to remark:
+
+"Ah, madame, you acknowledge that she is his wife. You said bride. One
+does not call a woman by that name without acknowledging a marriage
+service."
+
+"The woman he brought here was his bride. Edwin Urquhart is no common
+criminal, Marquis de la Roche-Guyon."
+
+It was hard to make him understand. It was hard to undermine his trust,
+step by step, inch by inch, till he found no hope, no shred of doubt to
+cling to. But it had to be done. If only to avert worse calamities and
+more heart-rending scenes, he must know at once, and before he took
+another step in relation to Miss Urquhart, just what her position was,
+and to what shame and suffering he was subjecting himself by accepting
+her love and pledging his own.
+
+The task was not done till I had shown him this diary of mine, and
+related all that had just occurred in the room below. Then, indeed, he
+seemed to comprehend his position, and completely crushed and
+horror-stricken, subsided into a dreadful silence before me, the lines
+of years coming into his face as I watched him, till he became scarcely
+recognizable for the lordly and light-hearted cavalier whose dreams of
+love I had so fearfully interrupted some half hour or so before. From
+this lethargy of despair I did not seek to rouse him. I knew when he had
+anything to say he would speak, and till he had faced the situation and
+had made up his mind to his duty, I could wait his decision with perfect
+confidence in his fine nature and nice sense of honor.
+
+You may, therefore, imagine my feelings when, after a long delay--an
+hour at least--he suddenly remarked:
+
+"We have been a proud family. From time immemorial we have held
+ourselves aloof from whatever could be thought to stain our honor or
+impeach our good name. I cannot drag the unfathomable disgrace of all
+these crimes into a record so pure as that of the Roche-Guyon race.
+Though I had wished to bestow upon my wife a name and position of which
+she could be proud, I must content myself with merely giving her the
+comfort of a true heart and such support as can be provided by a loving
+but unaccustomed hand."
+
+"Marquis--" I commenced.
+
+But he cut my words short with a firm and determined gesture.
+
+"My name is Louis de Fontaine," he explained. "Henceforth my cousin will
+be known as the marquis. It is the least I can do for the old French
+honor."
+
+'Twas so simply, so determinedly done that I stood aghast as much at the
+serenity of his manner as the act which required such depth of sacrifice
+from one of his traditions and rearing.
+
+"Then you continue to consider yourself the suitor of Miss Urquhart," I
+stammered. "You will marry her, though her parents may be called upon to
+perish upon the scaffold in an ignominy as great as ever befell two
+guilty mortals?"
+
+The answer came brokenly, but with unwavering strength:
+
+"Did you not say that she was innocent? Is she to be crushed beneath the
+guilt of her parents? Am I to take the last prop from one so soon to be
+bereft of all the supports upon which she has leaned from infancy? If I
+cling to her, she may live through her horror and shame; but should I
+fail her--great heavens! would we not have another life to answer for
+before God? Besides," he added, with the simplicity which marked his
+whole bearing, "I love her. I could not do otherwise if I would."
+
+To this final word I could make no rejoinder. With a reverence unmingled
+with the taint of compassion, I took my departure, and being anxious by
+this time to know how my young charge was bearing her seclusion, I went
+to the room where I had left her, and softly opened the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+MARK FELT.
+
+
+[Illustration: S]
+
+Subjected as I have been in the last three hours to distress and
+turmoil, I was delighted to find mademoiselle asleep, and to behold her
+peaceful face. Gazing at it, and noting the happy smile which
+unconsciously lingered on her lips, I could not but feel that, despite
+the hideous revelations which lay before her, her lot was an enviable
+one, allied as it promised to be with that of one of such high
+principles as the marquis. Though I am old now and have had my day, the
+love of the innocent and pure is sacred to me, and in this case it
+certainly has the charm of a spotless lily blooming in the jaws of hell.
+
+As it was late and I was almost exhausted, I began to think of rest. But
+my uneasiness in regard to madame would not let me sleep till I had
+made another visit to her room. So, leaving the gentle sleeper lapped in
+serenest dreams, I proceeded to descend once more. As I passed the great
+clock on the stairs, I noticed that it was almost midnight and began to
+hasten my steps, when I heard a loud knock at the front door.
+
+This is not an infrequent sound with us, but it greatly startled me this
+night. I even remember pausing and looking helplessly up and down the
+hall, as if it were a question whether I should obey the unwelcome
+summons. But such knocking as speedily followed could not be long
+ignored. So, subduing my impatience, I hastened to the door, and
+unlocking it, threw it open. A gust of rain and wind greeted me.
+
+This was my first surprise, for I had not even noticed that the weather
+was unpleasant, so completely had I been absorbed by what had been going
+on in the house. My next was the bearing and appearance of the stranger
+who demanded my hospitality. For though both face and form were unknown
+to me, there was that in his aspect which stirred recollections not out
+of keeping with the unhappy subject then occupying all my thoughts. Yet
+I could not speak his name, or put into words the anticipations that
+vaguely agitated me, and led him through the hall and into the
+comfortable sitting room so lately vacated by the marquis, with no more
+distinct impression in my mind than that something was about to happen
+which would complete rather than interrupt the horrors of this eventful
+night.
+
+And when the light fell full upon him, and I could see his eager eyes,
+this feeling increased, and no sooner had his cloak fallen from his
+shoulders and his hat left his head, than I recognized the prominent jaw
+and earnest face, and putting no curb on my impetuosity, I exclaimed at
+once, and without a doubt:
+
+"Mr. Felt!"
+
+The utterance of this name seemed to cause no surprise to my new guest.
+
+"The same," he replied; "and you are Mrs. Truax, of course. Mr. Tamworth
+has described you to me, also this inn, till I feel as if I knew its
+every stone. I did not wish to visit it, but I could not help myself. An
+unknown influence has been drawing me here for days, and though I
+resisted it with all my strength, it finally became so powerful that I
+rose from my bed at night, saddled my horse, and started in this
+direction. I have been twenty hours on the road, but part of these I
+have spent in the thicket just over against you on the opposite side of
+the road. For the sight of the house awakened in my mind such a
+disturbance that I feared to show myself at the door. A voice out of the
+air seemed to cry, 'Not yet! not yet!' Nevertheless I could not go back
+nor leave the spot, which, once seen, possessed for me a fatal
+fascination."
+
+I was speechless. Good God! were the old psychological influences at
+work, and had they acted upon him at forty miles distance?
+
+"You come from Albany?" I at last stammered forth. "You must have had a
+wet time of it; it storms heavily, I see."
+
+"Storms?" he repeated, glancing at the cloak he had thrown off. "Great
+Heaven! my cloak is saturated, and I did not even know it rained. A
+touch of the old spell," he murmured. "Something is about to happen to
+me; something has drawn me with purpose to this house."
+
+I felt awe-struck. Would he guess next what that something was?
+
+"At eleven o'clock," he went on, with the abstracted air of one
+recalling an experience, "I felt a pang shoot through my breast. I had
+been looking steadfastly at these walls, and somewhere about the
+building a light seemed to go out, for a pall of darkness suddenly
+settled upon it, simultaneously with the cessation of that imaginary cry
+which had hitherto detained me. Where was that light, Mrs. Truax, and
+what has happened here that I should feel myself called upon to cross
+this threshold to-night?"
+
+I did not answer at once, for I was trembling. Was I to be subjected to
+another such an ordeal as I had experienced earlier in the evening and
+be forced to prepare, by such means as lay in my power, a much abused
+man for a most dreadful revelation? It began to look so.
+
+"What has called me here?" he repeated. "Danger to her or death to him?
+They are thousands of miles away, and Tamworth could not have yet
+reached them, but peril of some deadly nature menaces them, I know. A
+stroke has gone home to him or her, and it is in this place I am to
+learn it; is it not so, Mrs. Truax?"
+
+"Perhaps," I tremblingly assented. "There is a gentleman here from
+France who may be able to tell you something of the man and the woman
+you mean. Would it affect you very much to hear disastrous news of
+them?"
+
+"I cannot say," he answered; "it should not. Mr. Tamworth tells me that
+he has acquainted you with the story of my life. Do you think I should
+feel overwhelmed at any retribution following a crime that was committed
+almost as much against me as against the pure and noble being who was
+the visible sufferer?"
+
+"I shrink from answering," I returned; "the human heart is a curious
+thing. If he alone were to suffer--"
+
+"Ah, he!" was the bitter ejaculation.
+
+"Or if she," I proceeded, "were bound by no ties appealing to the
+sympathies! But she is a mother--"
+
+"Good God!"
+
+I had not thought it would affect him so, and stood appalled.
+
+"A mother!" he repeated; "she! she! the tigress, the heartless one, with
+no more soul than the naked dagger I should have plunged into her breast
+and did not! Great Heaven! and this child has lived, I suppose; is
+grown up and--and--"
+
+"Is the sweetest, purest, most unworldly of beautiful women that these
+eyes have ever rested upon."
+
+I thought he would spring upon me, he leaned forward with so much
+impetuosity.
+
+"How do you know?" he asked, and my heart stood still at the question.
+
+"Because I have seen her," I presently rejoined. "Because I have had
+opportunities for studying her heart. She is called Honora, and she is
+like Miss Dudleigh, only more beautiful and with more claims to what is
+called character."
+
+He did not seem to take in my words.
+
+"You have been to France?" he declared.
+
+"No," I corrected; "Miss Urquhart has been here."
+
+He fell back, then started forward again, opened his lips and stared
+wildly, half fearfully about the room.
+
+"Here?" he repeated, evidently overcome at the idea. "Why did they send
+her here? I should as soon have expected them to send her into the murk
+of the bottomless pit. A girl, an innocent girl, you say, and sent
+here?"
+
+"They had reason; besides, she did not come alone."
+
+This time he understood me.
+
+"Oh!" he shrieked, "she in the house. I might have known it," he went on
+more calmly; "I did, only I would not believe it. Her crime has drawn
+her to the place of its perpetration. She could not resist the magnetic
+influence which all places of blood have upon the guilty. She has come
+back! And he?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"The man had less courage," I declared. "Perhaps because he was more
+guilty; perhaps because he had less love."
+
+"Love?"
+
+"It was love for the daughter which drew the mother here, not the spell
+of her crime or the accusing spirit of the dead. The woman who wronged
+you has some heart; she was willing to risk detection, and with it her
+reputation and life, to see if by any possibility she could venture to
+give happiness to the one being whom she really loves."
+
+"Explain; I do not understand. How could she hope to find happiness for
+her child here?"
+
+"By settling the question which evidently tortured her. By determining
+once for all whether the crime of sixteen years back had ever been
+discovered, and if she found it had not, to satisfy at once her own
+pride and her daughter's heart by giving that daughter to as noble a
+gentleman as ever carried a sword."
+
+"And they are here now?"
+
+"They are here."
+
+"And she has discovered--"
+
+"The futility of all her hopes."
+
+He drew back, and his heavy breath echoed in deep pants through the
+room.
+
+"What an end for Marah Leighton!" he gasped.
+
+"What an end! And she is here!" he went on, after a moment of silent
+emotion--"under this roof! No wonder I felt myself called hither. And
+she knows her crime is detected? How came she to know this? Did you
+recognize her and tell her?"
+
+"I recognized her and told her. There was no other course. We met in the
+secret chamber, whither she had come to make her own terrible
+investigations; and the sight of her there, on the spot where she had
+left the innocent to die, was too much for my sense of justice. I
+accused her to her face, and she crouched before me as under the lash.
+There was no possibility of denial after that, and she now lies--"
+
+"Wait!" he cried, catching me painfully by the arm. "When was this day?
+To-day--to-night?"
+
+"Not two hours ago."
+
+His brow took on a look of awe.
+
+"You see," he murmured, "she has power over me yet. When her hope broke,
+something snapped within me here. I abhor her, but I feel her grief. She
+was once all the world to me."
+
+I recognized his right to emotion, and did not profane it by any words
+of mine. Instead of that I sought to leave him, but he would not let me
+go till he had asked me another question.
+
+"And the daughter?" he urged. "Does she know of the opprobrium which
+must fall upon her head?"
+
+"She sleeps," I replied, "with a smile of the shyest delight upon her
+lips. Her lover has followed her to this place, and the last words she
+heard to-night were those of his devotion. Her suffering must come
+to-morrow; yet it will be mitigated, for he will not forsake her,
+whatever shame may follow his loyalty. I have his word for that."
+
+"Then the earth holds two lovers," was Mark Felt's rejoinder. "I thought
+it held but one." And with a sigh he let go my arm and turned to the
+window, with its background of driving rain and pitiless flashes of
+lightning.
+
+I took the opportunity to excuse myself for a few minutes, and hurrying
+again into the hall, hastened, with nervous fear and an agitation
+greatly heightened by the unexpected interview I had just been through,
+to the now oft-opened door leading into the oak parlor.
+
+I found it closed but not locked, and pushing it open, listened for a
+moment, then took a glance within. All was quiet and ghostly. A single
+candle guttering on the table at one end of the room lent a partial
+light by which I could discern the funereal bed and the other heavy and
+desolate-looking articles of furniture with which the room was
+encumbered. Honora's flowers, withering on the window seat, spoke of
+tender hopes not yet vanished from her tender dreams, but elsewhere all
+was hard, all was dreary, all was inexorably forbidding and cold. I
+shuddered as I looked, and shuddered still more as I approached the bed
+and paused firmly before it.
+
+"Madame Letellier"--it was the only name by which I could bring myself
+to address her at that instant--"there is one gleam of brightness in
+your sky. The marquis knows the story of your guilt, yet consents to
+marry your daughter."
+
+I received no reply.
+
+Shaken by fresh doubts, and moved by an inexplicable terror, I stood
+still for a moment gathering up my strength, then I repeated my words,
+this time with sharp emphasis and scarcely concealed importunity.
+
+"Madame," said I, "the marquis knows your guilt, yet consents to marry
+your daughter."
+
+But the silence within remained unbroken, and not a movement displaced
+the somber falling curtains.
+
+Agitated beyond endurance, I stretched forth my hands and drew those
+curtains aside. An unexpected sight met my eyes. There was no madame
+there; the bed was empty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+FOR THE LAST TIME.
+
+
+My eyes turned immediately in the direction of the secret chamber. Its
+entrance was closed, but I knew she was hidden there as well as if the
+door had been open and I had seen her.
+
+What should I do? For a moment I hesitated, then I rushed from the room
+and hastened back to Mr. Felt. I found him standing with his face to the
+door, eagerly awaiting my return.
+
+"What has happened?" he asked, importunately. "Your face is as pale as
+death."
+
+"Because death is in the house. Madame--"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Lies not in her bed, nor is she to be found in her room. There is
+another place, however, in which instinct tells me we shall find her,
+and if we do, we shall find her dead!"
+
+"In her daughter's room? At her daughter's bedside?"
+
+"No; in the secret chamber."
+
+He gazed at me with wild and haggard aspect.
+
+"You are right," he hoarsely assented. "Let us go; let us seek her; it
+may not be too late."
+
+The entrance to this hidden room was closed, as I have said, and as I
+had never assisted at its opening, I did not know where to find the
+hidden spring by means of which the panel was moved. We had, therefore,
+to endure minutes of suspense while Mr. Felt fumbled at the wainscoting.
+The candle I held shook with my agitation, and though I had heard
+nothing of the storm before, it seemed now as if every gust which came
+swooping down upon the house tore its way through my shrinking
+consciousness with a force and menace that scattered the last remnant of
+self-possession. Not an instant in the whole terrible day had been more
+frightful to me, no, not the moment when I first heard the sliding of
+this very panel and the sound of her crawling form approaching me
+through the darkness. The vivid flashes of lightning that shot every now
+and then through the cracks of the closely shuttered window, making a
+skeleton of its framework, added not a little to its terror, there being
+no other light in the room save that and the flickering, almost dying
+flame, with which I strove to aid Mr. Felt's endeavors and only
+succeeded in lighting up his anxious and heavily bedewed forehead.
+
+"Oh, oh!" was my moan; "this is terrible! Let us quit it or go around to
+my own room, where there is an open door."
+
+But he did not hear me. His efforts had become frantic, and he tore at
+the wainscoting as if he would force it open by main strength.
+
+"You cannot reach her that way," I declared. "Perhaps my hand may be
+more skillful. Let me try."
+
+But he only increased his efforts. "I am coming, Marah; I am coming!" he
+called, and at once, as if guided by some angel's touch, his fingers
+slipped upon the spring. Immediately it yielded, and the opening so
+eagerly sought for was made.
+
+"Go in," he gasped, "go in."
+
+And so it was that the fate which had forced me against my will, and in
+despite of such intense shrinking, to pass so frequently into that
+hideous spot, where death held its revel and Nemesis awaited her victim,
+drove me thither once again, and, as I now hope, for the last time. For,
+there upon the floor, and almost in the same spot where we had found
+lying the remains of innocent Honora Urquhart, we saw, as my
+premonition had told me we should, the outstretched form of the unhappy
+being who had usurped her place in life, and now, in retribution of that
+act, had laid her head down upon the same couch in death. She was
+pulseless and quite cold. Upon her mouth her left hand lay pressed, as
+if, with her last breath, she sought to absorb the pure kiss which had
+been left there by the daughter she so much loved.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+A LAST WORD.
+
+
+Did Marah Leighton will the coming of her old lover to my inn on that
+fatal night? That is the question I asked, when, with the first breaking
+of the morning light, I discovered lying on the table under an empty
+phial, a letter addressed, not to her husband, nor to her child, but to
+him, Mark Felt. It is a question that will never be answered, but I know
+that he comforts himself with the supposition, and allows the trembling
+hope to pass, at times, across his troubled spirit, that in the
+bitterness of those last hours some touch of the divine mercy may have
+moved her soul and made her fitter for his memory to dwell upon.
+
+The letter I afterward read. It was as follows:
+
+
+TO THE MAN WHO GAVE ALL, BORE ALL, AND REAPED NOTHING BUT SUFFERING:
+
+        I am not worthy to write you, even with the
+        prospect of death before me. But an influence I
+        do not care to combat drives me to make you, of
+        all men, the confidant of my remorse.
+
+        I did not perish sixteen years ago in the
+        Hudson River. I lived to share in and profit
+        by a crime that has left an indelible stain
+        upon my life and an ineffaceable darkness
+        within my soul. You know, or soon will know,
+        what that crime was and how we prospered in it.
+        Daring as it was dreadful, I heard its fearful
+        details planned by his lips, without a shudder,
+        because I was mad in those days, mad for
+        wealth, mad for power, mad for adventure. The
+        only madness I did not feel was love. This I
+        say to comfort a pride that must have been
+        sorely wounded in those days, as sorely wounded
+        as your heart.
+
+        Edwin Urquhart could make my eyes shine and my
+        blood run swiftly, but not so swiftly as to
+        make me break my troth with you, had he not
+        sworn to me that through him I should gain what
+        moved me more than any man's love. How he was
+        to accomplish this I could not see in the
+        beginning, and was so little credulous of his
+        being able to keep his oaths that I let myself
+        be drawn by you almost to the church door.
+
+        But I got no further. There in the crowd he
+        stood with a command in his eyes which forbade
+        any further advance. Though I comprehended
+        nothing then, I obeyed his look and went back,
+        for my heart was not in any marriage, and it
+        was in the hopes to which his looks seemed to
+        point. Later he told me what those hopes were.
+        He had been down to Long Island, and, while
+        there, had chanced to hear in some tavern of
+        the Happy-Go-Lucky Inn and its secret chamber,
+        and he saw, or thought he saw, how he could
+        make me his without losing the benefit of an
+        alliance with Miss Dudleigh. And I thought I
+        saw also, and entered into his plans, though
+        they comprised crime and entailed horrors upon
+        me from which woman naturally shrinks. I was
+        hard as the nether millstone of which the Bible
+        speaks, and went determinedly on in the path of
+        dissimulation and crime which had been marked
+        out for me, till we came to this inn. Then,
+        owing, perhaps, to my long imprisonment in the
+        dreadful box, I began to feel qualms of
+        physical fear and such harrowing mental
+        forebodings that more than once during that
+        terrible evening I came near shouting for
+        release.
+
+        But I was held back by apprehensions as great
+        as any from which a premature release from my
+        place of hiding could have freed me. I dared
+        not face Honora, and I dared not subject Edwin
+        Urquhart to the consequences of a public
+        recognition of our perfidy, and so I let my
+        opportunity go by, and became the sharer, as I
+        was already the instigator, of the unheard-of
+        crime by which I became, in the eyes of the
+        world, his wife.
+
+        What I suffered during its perpetration no word
+        of mine can convey. I cringed to her moans; I
+        shook under the blow that stifled them. And
+        when all was over, and the bolts which confined
+        me were shot back, and I found myself once more
+        on my feet and in the free air of this most
+        horrible of rooms, I looked about, not for him,
+        but her, and when I did not see her or any
+        token of her death, I was seized by such an
+        agony of revulsion that I uttered a great and
+        irrepressible cry which filled the house, and
+        brought more than one startled inquirer to our
+        door.
+
+        For retribution and remorse were already busy
+        within me, and in the lurking shadows about the
+        fireplace I thought I saw the long and narrow
+        slit made by the half-closed panel standing
+        open between me and the secret place of her
+        entombment. And though it was but an optical
+        delusion, the panel being really closed, it
+        might as well have been the truth, for I have
+        never been able to rid myself of the sight of
+        that chimerical strip of darkness, with its
+        suggestions of guilt and death. It haunted my
+        vision; it ruined my life; it destroyed my
+        peace. If I shut my eyes at night, it opened
+        before me. If I arrayed myself in jewels and
+        rich raiment, and paused to take but a passing
+        look at myself in the glass, this horror
+        immediately came between me and my own image,
+        blotting the vision of wealth from my eyes; so
+        that I went into the homes of the noble or the
+        courts of the king a clouded, miserable thing,
+        seeing nothing but that black and narrow slit
+        closing upon youth and beauty and innocence
+        forever and forever and forever.
+
+        My child came. Ah! that I should have to
+        mention her here! I do it in penance; I do it
+        in despair; since with her my heart woke, and
+        for her that heart is now broken, never to be
+        healed again. Oh, if the knowledge of my misery
+        wakens in you one thought that is not of
+        revenge, cast a pitying eye upon this darling
+        one, left in a hateful country without friends,
+        without lover, without means. For friends and
+        lover and means will all leave her with the
+        revelations which the morning will bring, and
+        unless Heaven is merciful to her innocence as
+        it has been just to my guilt, she will have no
+        other goal before her than that which has
+        opened its refuge to me.
+
+        As for her father, let Heaven deal with him. He
+        gave me this darling child; so I may not curse
+        him, even if I cannot bless.
+
+        MARAH.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        OCTOBER 23, 1791.
+
+I have seen one bright thing to-day, and that was the faint and almost
+unearthly gleam which shot for a moment from beneath Honora's falling
+lids as I told her what love was and how the marquis only awaited her
+permission to speak to assure her of his boundless affection and his
+undying purpose to be true to her even to the point of assuming her
+griefs and taking upon himself the protection of her innocence.
+
+If it had not been for this, I should have felt that the world was too
+dark to remain in, and life too horrible to be endured.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        NOVEMBER 30, 1791.
+
+I thought that when Honora Urquhart left my house to be married to M. De
+Fontaine, in the church below the hill, peace would return to us once
+more.
+
+But there is no peace. This morning another horrible tragedy defiled my
+doorstep.
+
+I was sitting in the open porch waiting for the mail coach, for it
+seemed to me that it was about time I received some word from Mr.
+Tamworth. It was yet some minutes before the time when the rumble of
+the coach is usually heard, and I was brooding, as was natural, over the
+more than terrible occurrences of the last few weeks, when I heard the
+clatter of horses' hoofs, and looking up and down the road, saw a small
+party of men approaching from the south. As they came nearer, I noticed
+that one of the riders was white-haired and presumably aged, and was
+interesting myself in him, when he came near enough for me to
+distinguish his features, and I perceived it was no other than Mr.
+Tamworth.
+
+Rising in perturbation, I glanced at the men behind and abreast of him,
+and saw that one of these rode with lowered head and oppressed mien, and
+was just about to give that person a name in my mind when the horse he
+bestrode suddenly reared, bolted, and dashed forward to where I sat,
+flinging his rider at the very threshold of my house, where he lay
+senseless as the stone upon which his head had fallen.
+
+For an instant both his companions and myself paused aghast at a sight
+so terrible and bewildering; then, amid cries from the road and one wild
+shriek from within, I rushed forward, and turning over the head, looked
+upon the face of the fallen man. It was not a new one to me. Though
+changed and seamed and white now in death, I recognized it at once. It
+was that of Edwin Urquhart.
+
+. . . . .
+
+This noon I took down the sign which has swung for twenty years over my
+front door. "Happy-Go-Lucky" is scarcely the name for an inn accursed by
+so many horrors.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        FEBRUARY 3, 1792.
+
+This week I have fulfilled the threat of years ago. I have had the oak
+parlor and its hideous adjunct torn from my house.
+
+Now, perhaps, I can sleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        MARCH 16.
+
+News from Honora. The distant relative who succeeded to the estates and
+the title of the Marquis de la Roche-Guyon has fallen a victim to the
+guillotine. Would this have been the fate of Honora's husband had he
+forsaken her and returned home? There is reason to believe it. At all
+events, she finds herself greatly comforted by this news for the
+sacrifice which her husband made to his love, and no longer regrets the
+exile to which he has been forced to submit for her sake. Wonderful,
+wonderful Providence! I view its workings with renewed awe every day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        SEPTEMBER 5, 1795.
+
+I have been from home. I have been on a visit to New York. I have tasted
+of change, of brightness, of free and cheerful living, and I can settle
+down now in this old and fast-decaying inn with something else to think
+about than ruin and fearful retribution.
+
+I have been visiting Madame De Fontaine. She wished me to come, I think,
+that I might see how amply her married life had fulfilled the promise of
+her courtship days. Though she and her noble husband live in peaceful
+retirement, and without many of the appurtenances of wealth, they find
+such resources of delight in each other's companionship that it would be
+hard for the most exacting witness of their mutual felicity to wish them
+any different fate, or to desire for them any wider field of social
+influence.
+
+The marquis--I shall always call him thus--has found a friend in General
+Washington, and though he is never seen at the President's receptions,
+or mingles his voice in the councils of his adopted country, there are
+evidences constantly appearing of the confidence reposed in him by this
+great man, which cannot but add to the exile's contentment and
+satisfaction.
+
+Honora has developed into a grand beauty. The melancholy which her
+unhappy memories have necessarily infused into her countenance have
+given depth to her expression, which was always sweet, and frequently
+touching. She looks like a queen, but like a queen who has known not
+only grief, but love. There is nothing of despair in her glance, rather
+a lofty hope, and when her affections are touched, or her enthusiasm
+roused, she smiles with such a heavenly brightness in her countenance,
+that I think there is no fairer woman in the world, as I am assured
+there is none worthier.
+
+Her husband agrees with me in this opinion, and is so happy that she
+said to me one day:
+
+"I sometimes wonder how my heart succeeds in holding the joy which
+Heaven has seen fit to grant me. In it I read the forgiveness of God for
+the unutterable sins of my parents; and though the shadows will come,
+and do come, whenever I think upon the past, or see a face which, like
+yours, recalls memories as bitter as ever overwhelmed an innocent girl
+in her first youth, I find that with every year of love and peaceful
+living the darkness grows less, as if, somewhere in the boundless
+heavens, the mercy of God was making itself felt in the heart of her who
+once called herself my mother."
+
+And hearing her speak thus, I felt my own breast lose something of the
+oppression which had hitherto weighed it down. And as the days passed,
+and I experienced more and more of the true peace that comes with
+perfect love and perfect trust, I found my tears turned to rejoicing and
+the story of my regrets into songs of hope.
+
+And so I have come back comforted and at rest. If there are yet ghosts
+haunting the old inn, I do not see them, and though its walls are
+dismantled, its custom gone, and its renown a thing of the past, I can
+still sit on its grass-grown doorstep and roam through its fast-decaying
+corridors without discovering any blacker shadow following in my wake
+than that of my own figure, bent now with age, and only held upright by
+the firmness of the little cane with which I strive to give aid to my
+tottering and uncertain steps.
+
+The grace of God has fallen at last upon the Happy-Go-Lucky Inn.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
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+
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+
+        "An exciting and absorbing story."--_New York
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+
+
+LAVENDER AND OLD LACE. By Myrtle Reed.
+
+        A charming story of a quaint corner of New
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+
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+
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+
+
+THE MAKING OF A MARCHIONESS, By Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
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+initial letters, tail-pieces, decorative borders. Beautifully printed,
+and daintily bound, and boxed.
+
+        A delightful novel in the author's most
+        charming vein. The scene is laid in an English
+        country house, where an amiable English
+        nobleman is the centre of matrimonial interest
+        on the part of both the English and Americans
+        present.
+
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+        dialogue and action. It is a book about which
+        one is tempted to write ecstatically.
+
+
+THE METHODS OF LADY WALDERHURST, By Francis Hodgson Burnett
+
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+
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+tail-pieces, and borders, by A. K. Womrath. Beautifully printed and
+daintily bound, and boxed.
+
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+        Walderhurst is one of the most charming
+        characters in modern fiction.
+
+
+VAYENNE, By Percy Brebner With illustrations by E. Fuhr.
+
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+        Maritza_ is charged to the brim with adventure.
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+        pass away on every page.
+
+
+DARREL OF THE BLESSED ISLES. By Irving Bacheller. With illustrations by
+Arthur Keller.
+
+        "Darrel, the clock tinker, is a wit,
+        philosopher, and man of mystery. Learned,
+        strong, kindly, dignified, he towers like a
+        giant above the people among whom he lives. It
+        is another tale of the North Country, full of
+        the odor of wood and field. Wit, humor, pathos
+        and high thinking are in this book."--_Boston
+        Transcript._
+
+
+D'RI AND I: A Tale of Daring Deeds in the Second War with the British.
+Being the Memoirs of Colonel Ramon Bell, U. S. A. By Irving Bacheller.
+With illustrations by F. C. Yohn.
+
+        "Mr. Bacheller is admirable alike in his scenes
+        of peace and war. D'ri, a mighty hunter, has
+        the same dry humor as Uncle Eb. He fights
+        magnificently on the 'Lawrence,' and was among
+        the wounded when Perry went to the 'Niagara.'
+        As a romance of early American history it is
+        great for the enthusiasm it creates."--_New
+        York Times._
+
+
+EBEN HOLDEN: A Tale of the North Country. By Irving Bacheller.
+
+        "As pure as water and as good as bread," says
+        Mr. Howells. "Read 'Eben Holden'" is the advice
+        of Margaret Sangster. "It is a forest-scented,
+        fresh-aired, bracing and wholly American story
+        of country and town life. * * * If in the far
+        future our successors wish to know what were
+        the real life and atmosphere in which the
+        country folk that saved this nation grew,
+        loved, wrought and had their being, they must
+        go back to such true and zestful and poetic
+        tales of 'fiction' as 'Eben Holden,'" says
+        Edmund Clarence Stedman.
+
+
+SILAS STRONG: Emperor of the Woods. By Irving Bacheller. With a
+frontispiece.
+
+        "A modern _Leatherstocking_. Brings the city
+        dweller the aroma of the pine and the music of
+        the wind in its blanches--an epic poem * * *
+        forest-scented, fresh-aired, and wholly
+        American. A stronger character than Eben
+        Holden."--_Chicago Record-Herald._
+
+
+VERGILIUS: A Tale of the Coming of Christ. By Irving Bacheller.
+
+        A thrilling and beautiful story of two young
+        Roman patricians whose great and perilous love
+        in the reign of Augustus leads them through the
+        momentous, exciting events that marked the year
+        just preceding the birth of Christ.
+
+        Splendid character studies of the Emperor
+        Augustus, of Herod and his degenerate son,
+        Antipater, and of his daughter "the
+        incomparable" Salome. A great triumph in the
+        art of historical portrait painting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, - NEW YORK
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 336, "shrink" changed to "shrinks" (woman naturally shrinks)
+
+Page 345, "personalties" changed to "personalities" (of dominant
+personalities)
+
+Page 347, "or" changed to "of" (story of a)
+
+Page 348, "breath" changed to "breadth" (hair-breadth escapes)
+
+There were some typesetting errors in the original text resulting in
+misplaced lines on pages 139 and 177.
+
+Original text page 139:
+
+deceit where I had looked for honesty and gratitude.'
+
+the result of a compact entered into with the despicable Urquhart, who,
+if he could not have her grasp at this wisp of hope and cling to it,
+though I knew it would never hold, and that her only chance for
+happiness was passing from her.
+
+Original page 177 text:
+
+almost overwhelmed it.
+
+"For to me her death--if she were dead--was
+
+"I was a coward, perhaps, but I did not try to dissuade her. Though she
+was fatherless and motherless, and loverless and friendless, I let her
+for himself, was willing she should go where no
+
+This was changed to:
+
+Page 139:
+
+deceit where I had looked for honesty and gratitude.'
+
+"I was a coward, perhaps, but I did not try to dissuade her. Though she
+was fatherless and motherless, and loverless and friendless, I let her
+grasp at this wisp of hope and cling to it, though I knew it would never
+hold, and that her only chance for happiness was passing from her.
+
+and Page 177:
+
+almost overwhelmed it.
+
+"For to me her death--if she were dead--was the result of a compact
+entered into with the despicable Urquhart, who, if he could not have her
+for himself, was willing she should go where no
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Forsaken Inn, by Anna Katharine Green
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FORSAKEN INN ***
+
+***** This file should be named 23641-8.txt or 23641-8.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/6/4/23641/
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+
+
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Forsaken Inn, by Anna Katharine Green.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Forsaken Inn, by Anna Katharine Green
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Forsaken Inn
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Anna Katharine Green
+
+Release Date: November 27, 2007 [EBook #23641]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FORSAKEN INN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 258px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="258" height="400" alt="Cover" title="Cover" />
+</div>
+
+<div class='bbox'>
+
+<h1>THE<br />
+FORSAKEN INN</h1>
+</div><div class='bbox'>
+<h3>A NOVEL</h3>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>ANNA KATHARINE GREEN</h2>
+<div class='center'>
+Author of<br />
+"The Leavenworth Case," "A Matter of Millions,"<br />
+"Behind Closed Doors," etc.<br /><br /><br /></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 58px;">
+<img src="images/emblem.jpg" width="58" height="92" alt="Emblem" title="Emblem" />
+</div>
+</div><div class='bbox'>
+<div class='center'>
+GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP<br />
+Publishers      New York<br />
+<br /></div>
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/gs01.jpg" width="600" height="391" alt="Thrown from the horse" title="Thrown from the horse" />
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<div class='center'><small>
+<span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1889 and 1890<br />
+<span class="smcap">By Robert Bonner's Sons</span><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1909<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Bobbs-Merrill Company</span><br /></small>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>TO MY HUSBAND.</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>TABLE OF CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents">
+<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'><small>CHAPTER</small></td><td align='left'><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>I.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Oak Parlor</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_5">5</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>II.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Burritt</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>III.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Fearful Discovery</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>IV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Questions and Answers</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>V.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">An Interim of Suspense</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_71">71</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Recluse</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Two Women</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>VIII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Sudden Betrothal</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_110">110</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>IX.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Marah</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_116">116</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>X.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">At the Foot of the Stairs</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_130">130</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Honora</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Edwin Urquhart</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_142">142</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XIII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Before the Wedding</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XIV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Cassandra at the Gate</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_160">160</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Catastrophe</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XVI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Dream Ended</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_185">185</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XVII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Strange Guests</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_195">195</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XVIII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Mrs. Truax Talks</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_204">204</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XIX.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In the Halls at Midnight</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_223">223</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XX.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Stone in the Garden</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_232">232</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In the Oak Parlor</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_247">247</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Surprise for Honora</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_288">288</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXIII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">In the Secret Chamber</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_301">301</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXIV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Marquis</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_312">312</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXV.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Mark Felt</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_318">318</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXVI.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">For the Last Time</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_330">330</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='right'>XXVII.</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Last Word</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_334">334</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE FORSAKEN INN.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE OAK PARLOR.</h3>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Letter I">
+<tr><td align='left' rowspan='2' valign='top'><img src="images/gs02a.png" width="237" height="352" alt="I illustration left" title="I illustration left" />
+</td><td align='left'><img src="images/gs02b.png" width="361" height="293" alt="I illustration right" title="I illustration right" />
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='unindent'>&nbsp; WAS riding between Albany
+and Poughkeepsie. It was raining
+furiously, and my horse, already weary with
+long travel, gave unmistakable signs of discouragement.
+I was, therefore, greatly relieved when,
+in the most desolate part of the road, I espied
+rising before me the dim outlines of a house, and
+was correspondingly disappointed when, upon riding
+forward, I perceived that it was but a deserted
+ruin I was approaching, whose fallen chimneys
+and broken windows betrayed a dilapidation so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>
+great that I could scarcely hope to find so much
+as a temporary shelter therein.</div></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>Nevertheless, I was so tired of the biting storm
+that I involuntarily stopped before the decayed
+and forbidding structure, and was, in truth, withdrawing
+my foot from the stirrup, when I heard
+an unexpected exclamation behind me, and turning,
+saw a chaise, from the open front of which
+leaned a gentleman of most attractive appearance.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Hide my head from the storm," was my hurried
+rejoinder. "I am tired, and so is my horse,
+and the town, according to all appearances, must
+be at least two miles distant."</p>
+
+<p>"No matter if it is three miles! You must not
+take shelter in that charnel-house," he muttered;
+and moved along in his seat as if to show me
+there was room beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," I exclaimed, struck with sudden curiosity,
+"is this one of the haunted houses we
+hear of? If so, I shall certainly enter, and be
+much obliged to the storm for driving me into so
+interesting a spot." I thought he looked embarrassed.
+At all events, I am sure he hesitated for
+a moment whether or not to ride on and leave me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>
+to my fate. But his better impulses seemed to
+prevail, for he suddenly cried: "Get in with me,
+and leave mysteries alone. If you want to come
+back here after you have learned the history of
+that house, you can do so; but first ride on to
+town and have a good meal. Your horse will
+follow easily enough after he is rid of your
+weight."</p>
+
+<p>It was too tempting an offer to be refused; so
+thankfully accepting his kindness, I alighted from
+my horse, and after tying him to the back of the
+chaise, got in with this genial stranger. As I did
+so I caught another view of the ruin I had been
+so near entering.</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious!" I exclaimed, pointing to
+the structure that, with its projecting upper story
+and ghastly apertures, presented a most suggestive
+appearance, "if it does not look like a skull!"</p>
+
+<p>My companion shrugged his shoulders, but did
+not reply. The comparison was evidently not a
+new one to him.</p>
+
+<p>That evening, in a comfortable inn parlor, I
+read the following manuscript. It was placed
+in my hands by this kindly stranger, who in so
+doing explained that it had been written by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>
+last occupant of the old inn I was so nearly on the
+point of investigating. She had been its former
+landlady, and had clung to the ancient house long
+after decay had settled upon its doorstep and
+desolation breathed from its gaping windows.
+She died in its north room, and from under her
+pillow the discolored leaves were taken, the words
+of which I now place before you.</p>
+
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">January</span> 28, 1775.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I do not understand myself. I do not understand
+my doubts nor can I analyze my fears.
+When I saw the carriage drive off, followed by
+the wagon with its inexplicable big box, I thought
+I should certainly regain my former serenity.
+But I am more uneasy than ever. I cannot rest,
+and keep going over and over in my mind the few
+words that passed between us in their short stay
+under my roof. It is her face that haunts me. It
+must be that, for it had a strange look of trouble
+in it as well as sickness; but neither can I forget
+his, so fair, so merry, and yet so unpleasant, especially
+when he glanced at her and&mdash;as I could
+not help but think before they went away&mdash;when
+he glanced at me. I do not like him, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+chills creep over me whenever I remember his
+laugh, which was much too frequent to be decent,
+considering how poorly his young wife looked.</p>
+
+<p>They are gone, and their belongings with them;
+but I am as much afraid as if they were still here.
+Why? That is what I cannot tell. I sit in the
+room where they slept, and feel as strange and
+terrified as if I had encountered a ghost there. I
+dread to stay and dread to move and write, because
+I must relieve myself in some way&mdash;that is,
+if I am to have any sleep to-night. Am I ill, or
+was there something unexplained and mysterious
+in their actions? Let me go over the past and
+see.</p>
+
+<p>They came last evening about twilight. I was
+in the front of the house, and seeing such a good-looking
+couple in the carriage, and such a pile of
+baggage with them that they had to have an extra
+wagon to carry it, I ran out in all haste to welcome
+them. She had a veil drawn over her face, and it
+was so thick that I could not see her features, but
+her figure was slight and graceful, and I took a
+fancy to her at once, perhaps because she held her
+arms out when she saw me, as if she thought she beheld
+in me a friend. He did not please me so well,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+though there is no gainsaying that he is handsome
+enough, and speaks, when he wishes to, with a
+great deal of courtesy. But I thought he ought
+to give his attention to his young and ailing wife,
+instead of being so concerned about his baggage.
+Had that big box of his contained gold, he could
+not have looked at it more lovingly or been more
+anxious about its handling. He said it held books;
+but, pshaw! what is there in books, that a man
+should love them better than his wife, and watch
+over their welfare with the utmost concern, while
+allowing a stranger to help her out of the carriage
+and up the inn steps?</p>
+
+<p>But I will not dwell any longer upon this. Men
+are strange beings, and must not be judged by
+rules that apply to women. Let me see if I can remember
+when it was that I first saw her face. Ah,
+yes; it was in the parlor. She had taken a seat
+there while her husband looked through the house
+and decided which room to take. There were four
+empty, and two of them were the choicest and
+airiest in the inn, but he passed by these and insisted
+upon taking one that was stuffy with disuse,
+because it was on the ground floor, and so convenient
+for us to bring his great box into.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His great box! I was so provoked at this everlasting
+concern about his great box, that I ran to
+the parlor, intending to ask the lady herself to interfere.
+But when I got to the threshold I paused,
+and did not speak, for the lady&mdash;or Mrs. Urquhart,
+as I presently found she called herself&mdash;had risen
+from her seat and was looking in the glass with an
+expression so sad and searching that I forgot my
+errand and only thought of comforting her. But
+the moment she heard my step she drew down the
+veil which she had tossed back, and coming quickly
+toward me, asked if her husband had chosen a
+room.</p>
+
+<p>I answered in the affirmative, and began to complain
+that it was not a very cheerful one. But she
+paid small attention to my words, and presently I
+found myself following her to the apartment
+designated. She entered, making a picture, as she
+crossed the threshold, which I shall not readily
+forget. For in her short, quick walk down the
+hall she had torn the bonnet from her head, and
+though she was not a strictly beautiful woman, she
+was sufficiently interesting to make her every
+movement attractive. But that is not all. For
+some reason the moment possessed an importance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+for her which I could not measure. I saw it in
+her posture, in the pallor of her cheeks and the
+uprightness of her carriage. The sudden halt she
+made at the threshold, the half-startled exclamation
+she gave as her eyes fell on the interior, all
+showed that she was laboring under some secret
+agitation. But what was the cause of that agitation
+I have not been able to determine. She went
+in, but as she did so, I heard her murmur:</p>
+
+<p>"Oak walls! Ah, my soul! it has come soon!"</p>
+
+<p>Not a very intelligible exclamation, you will allow,
+but as intelligible as her whole conduct. For
+in another moment every sign of emotion had left
+her, and she stood quite calm and cold in the center
+of the room. But her pallor remained, and
+I cannot make sure now whether this betokened
+weary resignation or some secret and but half
+recognized fear.</p>
+
+<p>Had I looked at him instead of at her, I might
+have understood the situation better. But, though
+I dimly perceived his form drawn up in the
+empty space at the left of the door, it was not until
+she had passed him and flung herself into a chair,
+that I thought to look in his direction. Then it
+was too late, for he had turned his face aside and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+was gazing with rather an obtrusive curiosity at
+the old-fashioned room, murmuring, as he did so,
+some such commonplaces to his wife as:</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you are not fatigued, my dear. Fine
+old house, this. Quite English in style, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>To all of which she answered with a nod or
+word, till suddenly, without look or warning, she
+slipped from her chair and lay perfectly insensible
+upon the dark boards of the worm-eaten floor.</p>
+
+<p>I uttered an exclamation, and so did he; but it
+was my arms that lifted her and laid her on the
+bed. He stood as if frozen to his place for a moment,
+then he mechanically lifted his foot and set
+it with an air of proprietorship on the box before
+which he had been standing.</p>
+
+<p>"Strange and inexplicable conduct," thought I,
+and looked the indignation I could not but feel.
+Instantly he left his position and hastened to my
+side, offering his assistance and advice with that
+heartless officiousness which is so unbearable
+when life and death are at stake.</p>
+
+<p>I accepted as little of his help as was possible,
+and when, after persistent effort on my part, I saw
+her lids fluttering and her breast heaving, I turned
+to him with as inoffensive an air as my mingled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+dislike and distrust would admit, and asked how
+long they had been married. He flushed violently,
+and with a sudden rage that at once robbed
+him of that gentlemanly appearance which, in
+him, was but the veneer to a coarse and brutal
+nature, he exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"&mdash;&mdash; you! and by what right do you ask
+that?"</p>
+
+<p>But before I could reply he recovered himself
+and was all false polish again, bowing with exaggerated
+politeness, as he exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me; I have had much to disturb me
+lately. My wife's health has been very feeble for
+months, and I am worn out with anxiety and
+watching. We are now on our way to a warmer
+climate, where I hope she will be quite restored."</p>
+
+<p>And he smiled a very strange and peculiar
+smile, that went out like a suddenly extinguished
+candle, as he perceived her eyes suddenly open,
+and her gaze pass reluctantly around the room, as
+if forced to a curiosity against which she secretly
+rebelled.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/gs03.jpg" width="500" height="384" alt="She slipped from her chair and lay perfectly insensible upon the dark boards" title="She slipped from her chair and lay perfectly insensible upon the dark boards" />
+</div>
+
+<p>"I think Mrs. Urquhart will do very well now,"
+was his hurried remark at this sight. He evidently
+wished to be rid of me, and though I hated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+to leave her, I really found nothing to say in contradiction
+to his statement, for she certainly looked
+completely restored. I therefore turned away
+with a heavy heart toward the door, when the
+young wife, suddenly throwing out her arms, exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"Do not leave me in this horrible room alone!
+I am afraid of it&mdash;actually afraid! Couldn't you
+have found some spot in the house less gloomy,
+Edwin?"</p>
+
+<p>I came back.</p>
+
+<p>"There are plenty of rooms&mdash;" I began.</p>
+
+<p>But he interrupted me without any ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>"I chose this room, Honora, for its convenience.
+There is nothing horrible about it, and when the
+lamps are lit you will find it quite pleasant. Do
+not be foolish. We sleep here or nowhere, for I
+cannot consent to go upstairs."</p>
+
+<p>She answered nothing, but I saw her eyes go
+traveling once again around the walls, followed in
+a furtive way by his. Whereupon I looked about
+me, too, and tried to get a stranger's impression of
+the place. I was astonished at its effect upon my
+imagination. Though I had been in and out of the
+room fifty times before I had never noticed till<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+now the extreme dismalness and desolation of its
+appearance.</p>
+
+<p>Once used as an auxiliary parlor, it had that air
+of uninhabitableness which clings to such rooms,
+together with a certain something else, equally
+unpleasant, to which at that moment I could give
+no name, and for which I could neither find then
+nor now any sufficient reason. It was paneled
+with oak far above our heads, and as the walls
+above had become gray with smoke, there was
+absolutely no color in the room, not even in the
+hangings of the gaunt four-poster that loomed
+dreary and repelling from one end of the room.
+For here, as elsewhere, time had been at work,
+and tints that were once bright enough had gradually
+been subdued by dust and smoke into one
+uniform dimness. The floor was black, the fireplace
+empty, the walls without a picture, and yet
+it was neither from this grayness nor from this
+barrenness that one recoiled. It was from something
+else&mdash;something that went deeper than the
+lack of charm or color&mdash;something that clung to
+the walls like a contagion and caught at the heart-strings
+where they are weakest, smothering hope
+and awakening horror, till in each faded chair<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+a ghost seemed sitting, gazing at you with immovable
+eyes that could tell tales, but would
+not.</p>
+
+<p>There was but one window in the room, and
+that looked toward the west. But the light that
+should have entered there was frightened, also,
+and halted on the ledge without, balked by the
+thick curtains that heavily enshrouded it. A
+haunted chamber! or so it appeared at that moment
+to my somewhat excited fancy, and for the
+first time in my life, here, I felt a dread of my
+own house, and experienced the uncanny sensation
+of some one walking over my grave.</p>
+
+<p>But I soon recovered myself. Nothing of a
+disagreeable nature had ever happened in this
+room, nor had we had any special reason for
+shutting it up, except that it was in an out-of-the-way
+place, and not usually considered convenient,
+notwithstanding Mr. Urquhart's opinion to the
+contrary.</p>
+
+<p>"Never mind," said I, with a last effort to
+soothe the agitated woman. "We will let in a
+little light, and dissipate some of these shadows."
+And I attempted to throw back the curtains of the
+window, but they fell again immediately and I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+experienced a sensation as of something ghostly
+passing between us and the light.</p>
+
+<p>Provoked at my own weakness, I tore the curtains
+down and flung them into a corner. A
+straggling beam of sunset color came in, but it
+looked out of place and forlorn upon that black
+floor, like a stranger who meets with no welcome.
+The poor young wife seemed to hail it, however,
+for she moved instantly to where it lay and stood
+as if she longed for its warmth and comfort. I
+immediately glanced at the fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>"I will soon have a rousing fire for you," I
+declared. "These old fireplaces hold a large pile
+of wood."</p>
+
+<p>I thought, but I must be mistaken, that he made
+a gesture as if about to protest, but, if so, reason
+must have soon come to his aid, for he said nothing,
+though he looked uneasy, as I moved the
+andirons forward and made some other trivial
+arrangements for the fire which I had promised
+them.</p>
+
+<p>"He thinks I am never going," I muttered to
+myself, and took pleasure in lingering; for, anxious
+as I was to have the room heated up for her
+comfort, I knew that every moment I stayed there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
+would be one less for her to spend with her surly
+husband alone.</p>
+
+<p>At last I had no further excuse for remaining,
+and so with the final remark that if the fire failed
+to give them cheer we had a sitting room into
+which they could come, I went out. But I knew,
+even while saying it, that he would not grant her
+the opportunity of enjoying the sitting room's
+coziness; that he would not let her out of his
+sight, if he did out of the room, and that for her
+to remain in his presence was to be in darkness,
+solitude and gloom, no matter what walls surrounded
+her or in what light she stood.</p>
+
+<p>My impressions were not far wrong. Mr. and
+Mrs. Urquhart came to supper, but that was all.
+Before the others had finished their roast they had
+eaten their pudding and gone; and though he
+had talked, and laughed, and shown his white teeth,
+the impression left behind them was a depressing
+one which even Hetty felt, and she has anything
+but a sensitive nature.</p>
+
+<p>I went to the room once again in the evening.
+I found them both seated, but in opposite parts of
+the room; he by his great box, and she in an easy
+chair which I had caused to be brought down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+from my own room for her especial use. I did
+not look at him, but I did at her, and was astonished
+to see, first, how dignified she was; and
+next how pretty. Had she been happy and at
+her ease, I should probably have been afraid of
+her, for the firelight, which now shone on her
+wan young cheek, brought out evidences of character
+and culture in her expression which proved
+her to be, by birth and training, of a position superior
+to what one would be led to expect from
+her husband's aspect and manner. But she was
+not happy nor at her ease, and wore, instead of
+the quiet and commanding look of the great lady,
+such an expression of secret dread that I almost
+forgot my position of landlady, and should certainly,
+if he had not been there, fallen at her side
+and taken her poor, forsaken head upon my breast.
+But that silent, immovable form, sitting statue-like
+beside his big box, smiling, for aught I knew,
+but if so, breathing out a chill that forbade all exhibition
+of natural feeling, held me in check, as it
+held her, so that I merely inquired whether there
+was anything I could do for her; and when she
+shook her head, starting a tear down her cheek as
+she did so, I dared do nothing more than give her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+one look of sympathetic understanding, and start
+for the door.</p>
+
+<p>A command from him stopped me.</p>
+
+<p>"My wife will need a slight supper before she
+goes to bed," said he. "Will you be good enough
+to see that one is brought?"</p>
+
+<p>She roused herself up with quite a startled
+look of wonder.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Edwin," she began, "I never have been
+in the habit&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But he hushed her at once.</p>
+
+<p>"I know what is best for you," said he. "A
+small plate of luncheon, Mrs. Truax; and let it be
+nice and inviting."</p>
+
+<p>I courtesied, gave her another glance, and went
+out. Her countenance had not lost its look of wonder.
+Was he going to be considerate, after all?</p>
+
+<p>The lunch was prepared and taken to her.</p>
+
+<p>Not long after this the inn quieted down, and
+such guests as were in the house prepared for rest.
+Midnight came; all was dark in room and hall.
+I was sure of this, for I went through the whole
+building myself, contrary to my usual habit, which
+was to leave this task to my man-of-all-work,
+Burritt. All was dark, all was quiet, and I was just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+dropping off to sleep, when there shot up suddenly
+from below a shriek, which was quickly
+smothered, but not so quickly that I did not recognize
+in it that tone which is only given by hideous
+distress or mortal fear.</p>
+
+<p>"It is Mrs. Urquhart!" I cried in terror, to myself;
+and plunging into my clothes, I hurried
+down stairs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h3>BURRITT.</h3>
+
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/gs04.jpg" width="300" height="397" alt="A figure standing near the doorway" title="A figure standing near the doorway" />
+</div>
+
+<p>All was quiet in the halls, but as I proceeded
+toward their room I perceived a figure standing
+near the doorway, which, in another moment, I
+saw to be that of Burritt. He was trembling like
+a leaf, and was bent forward, listening.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" he whispered; "they are talking.
+All seems to be right. I just heard him call her
+darling."</p>
+
+<p>I drew the man away and took his place. Yes;
+they were talking in subdued but not unkindly
+tones. I heard him bid her be composed, and
+caught, as I thought, a light reply that ought to
+have satisfied me that Mrs. Urquhart had simply
+suffered from some nightmare horror at which she
+was as ready to laugh now as he. But my nature
+is a contradictory one, and I was not satisfied.
+The echo of her cry was still ringing in my ears,
+and I felt as if I would give the world for a momentary
+peep into their room. Influenced by
+this idea, I boldly knocked, and in an instant&mdash;too
+soon for him not to have been standing near the
+door&mdash;I heard his breath through the keyhole
+and the words:</p>
+
+<p>"Who is there, and what do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"We heard a cry," was my response, "and I
+feared Mrs. Urquhart was ill again."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Urquhart is very well," came hastily, almost
+gayly, from within. "She had a dream, and
+was willing that every one should know it. Is not
+that all?" he said, seemingly addressing his wife.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There was a murmur within, and then I heard
+her voice. "It was only a dream, dear Mrs.
+Truax," it said, and convinced against my will, I
+was about to return to my room, when I brushed
+against Burritt. He had not moved, and did not
+look as if he intended to.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," said I, "there is no use of our remaining
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't help it," was his whispered reply. "In
+this hall I stay till morning. When I see a lamb
+in the care of a wolf, I find it hard to sleep.
+There is a door between us, but please God there
+shan't be anything more."</p>
+
+<p>And knowing Burritt, I did not try to argue,
+but went quietly and somewhat thoughtfully to
+my room, vaguely relieved that I left him behind,
+though convinced there would be no further
+need of his services.</p>
+
+<p>And so it was. No more sounds disturbed the
+house, and when I came down, with the first
+streak of daylight, I found Burritt gone about his
+work.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast was served to the Urquharts in their
+own room. I had wished to carry it in myself,
+but I found this inconvenient, and so I sent Hetty.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+When she came back I asked her how Mrs. Urquhart
+looked.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, ma'am," was the quick reply. "And
+see! I don't think she's as unhappy as we all
+thought last night, or she wouldn't be giving me
+a bright new crown."</p>
+
+<p>I glanced at the girl's palm. There was indeed
+a bright new crown in it.</p>
+
+<p>"Did she give you that?" I inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am; she herself. And she laughed
+when she did it, and said it was for the good breakfast
+I had brought her."</p>
+
+<p>I was busy at the time, and could not stop to
+give the girl's words much thought; but as soon
+as I had any leisure, I went to see for myself how
+Mrs. Urquhart looked when she laughed.</p>
+
+<p>I was five minutes too late. She had just donned
+her traveling bonnet and veil, and though I
+heard her laugh slightly once, I did not see her
+face.</p>
+
+<p>I saw his, however, and was surprised at the
+good nature in it. He was quite the gentleman,
+and if he had not been in such a hurry, would have
+doubtless made, or endeavored to make, himself
+very agreeable. But he was just watching his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+great box carried out to the wagon, and while he
+took pains to talk to me&mdash;was it to keep me from
+talking to her?&mdash;he was naturally a little absentminded.
+He was in haste, too, and insisted upon
+placing his wife in the carriage before all his baggage
+was taken from the room. And she seemed
+willing to go. I watched her on purpose to see,
+for I was not yet satisfied that she was not playing
+a part at his dictation, but I could discover
+no hint of reluctance in her manner, but rather a
+quiet alacrity, as if she felt glad to quit a room
+to which she had taken a dislike.</p>
+
+<p>When I saw this, and noted the light step of
+her feet, I said to myself that I had been a fool,
+and lost a little of the interest I had felt for her.
+Nor did I regain it till after they had driven
+away, though she showed a consideration for me
+at the last which I had not expected, leaning
+from the carriage to give me a good-by pressure
+of the hand, and even nodding again and again
+as they disappeared down the road. For the fear
+which could be dissipated in a night was not the
+fear with which I had credited her; and of ordinary
+excitements and commonplace natures I had
+seen enough in my long experience as landlady to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+make me unwilling to trouble myself with any
+more of them.</p>
+
+<p>But when the carriage and its accompanying
+wagon had quite disappeared, and Mr. and Mrs.
+Urquhart were virtually as far beyond my reach
+as if they were already in New York, I became
+conscious of a great uneasiness. This was the
+more strange in that there seemed to be no especial
+cause for it. They had left my house in apparently
+better spirits than they had entered it,
+and there was no longer any reason why I should
+concern myself about them. And yet I did concern
+myself, and came into the house and into the
+room they had just vacated, with feelings so unusual
+that I was astonished at myself, and not a
+little provoked. I had a vague feeling that the
+woman who had just left was somehow different
+from the one I had seen the night before.</p>
+
+<p>But I am a busy woman, and I do not think I
+should have let this trouble me long if it had not
+been for Burritt. But when he came into the
+room after me, and shut the door behind him and
+stood with his back against it, looking at me, I
+knew I was not the only one who felt uncomfortable
+about the Urquharts. Rising from the chair<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+where I had been sitting, counting the cost of fitting
+up that room so as to make it look habitable, I went
+toward him and met his gaze pretty sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what is it?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know," was the somewhat sullen reply.
+"I don't feel right about those folks, and
+yet&mdash;" He stopped and scratched his head&mdash;"I
+don't know what I'm afraid of. Are you sure
+they left nothing behind them?"</p>
+
+<p>The last words were uttered in such a tone I
+did not know for a minute what to say.</p>
+
+<p>"Left anything behind them!" I replied. "They
+left their money, if that is what you mean. I
+don't know what else they could have left."</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding which assertion, I involuntarily
+glanced about the room as if half expecting
+to see some one of their many belongings protruding
+from a hitherto unsearched corner. His gaze
+followed mine, but presently returned, and we
+stood again looking at each other.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing here," said I.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is it, then?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>I frowned in displeasure.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is what?" I demanded. "You speak
+like a fool. Explain yourself."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He took a step toward me and lowered his
+voice. Every one knows Burritt, so I need not
+describe him. You can all imagine how he looked
+when he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Did you see me handling of the big box,
+ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>I nodded yes.</p>
+
+<p>"Saw how I was the one to help carry it in,
+and also how I was the one to first take hold on
+it when he wanted it carried out?" I again nodded
+yes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, ma'am, that box was a heavy load to lift
+into the wagon, but, ma'am"&mdash;here his voice became
+quite sepulchral&mdash;"it wasn't as heavy as it
+was when we lifted it out, and it hadn't the same
+feel either. Now, what had happened to it, and
+where is the stuff he took out of it?"</p>
+
+<p>I own I had never in my life felt creepy before
+that minute. But with his eyes staring at me
+so impressively, and his voice sunk to a depth
+that made me lean forward to hear what he had
+to say, I do declare I felt as if an icy breath
+had been blown across the roots of my hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Burritt, you want to frighten me," I exclaimed,
+as soon as I could get my voice. "The box<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+seemed heavier to you than it did just now.
+There was no change in it, there could not be,
+or we should find something here to account for
+it. Remember you did not sleep last night, and
+lack of rest makes one fanciful."</p>
+
+<p>"It does not make a man feel stronger, though,
+and I tell you the box was not near so heavy to-day
+as yesterday. Besides, as I said before, it
+acted differently under the handling. There was
+something loose in it to-day. Yesterday it was
+packed tight."</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head, and tried to throw off the oppression
+caused by his manner. But seeing his
+eyes travel to the window, I looked that way too.</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't carry anything out of the door," declared
+Burritt, at this moment, "because I watched
+it, and I know. But that window is only three
+feet from the ground, and I remember now that
+at the instant I first laid my ear to the keyhole,
+I heard a strange, grating sound just like that
+of a window being lowered by a very careful
+hand. Shall I look outside it, ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>I replied by going quickly to the window myself,
+lifting it, which I did with very little trouble,
+and glancing out. The familiar garden, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+its path to the river, lay before me; but though
+I allowed myself one quick look in its direction,
+it was to the ground immediately beneath the
+window that I turned my attention, and it was
+here that I instantly, and to the satisfaction of
+both Burritt and myself, discovered unmistakable
+signs of disturbance. Not only was there the impression
+of a finely booted foot imprinted in the
+loose earth, but there was a large stone lying
+against the house which we were both confident
+had not been there the day before.</p>
+
+<p>"He went roaming through the garden last
+night," cried Burritt, "and he brought back
+that stone. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>I shuddered instead of replying. Then remembering
+that I had seen the young wife well
+and happy only a few minutes before, felt confused
+and mystified beyond any power to express.</p>
+
+<p>"I will have a look at that stone," continued
+Burritt; and without waiting for my sanction, he
+vaulted out of the window and lifted the stone.</p>
+
+<p>After a moment's consideration of it he declared:</p>
+
+<p>"It came from the river bank; that is all I can
+make out of it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And dropping the stone from his hand, he suddenly
+darted down the path to the river.</p>
+
+<p>He was not gone long. When he came back,
+he looked still more doubtful than before.</p>
+
+<p>"If I know that bank," he declared, "there
+has been more than one stone taken from it, and
+some dirt. Suppose we examine the floor,
+ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>We did so, and just where the box had been
+placed we discovered some particles of sand that
+were not brought in from the road.</p>
+
+<p>"What does it mean?" I cried.</p>
+
+<p>Burritt did not answer. He was looking out
+toward the river. Suddenly he turned his eyes
+upon me and said in his former suppressed tone:</p>
+
+<p>"He filled the box with stone and earth, and
+these were what we carried out and put into the
+wagon. But it was full when it came, and very
+heavy. Now, what was it filled with, and what
+has become of the stuff?"</p>
+
+<p>It was the question then; it is the question now.</p>
+
+<p>Burritt hints at crime, and has gone so far as
+to spend all the afternoon searching the river
+banks. But he has discovered nothing, nor can
+he explain what it was he looked for or expected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+to find. Nor are my own thoughts and feelings
+any clearer. I remember that the times are unsettled,
+that the spirit of revolution is in the air,
+and try to be charitable enough to suppose that
+it was treasure the young husband brought with
+him, and that all the perturbation and distress
+which I imagine myself to have witnessed in his
+behavior and that of his wife were owing to the
+purpose that they had formed of burying, in this
+spot, the silver and plate which they were perhaps
+unwilling to risk to the chances of war. But
+when I try to stifle my graver fears with this
+surmise, I recall the fearful nature of the shriek
+which startled me from my sleep, and repeat, tremblingly,
+to myself:</p>
+
+<p>"Some one was in mortal agony at the moment
+I heard that cry. Was it the young wife, or was
+it&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h3>A FEARFUL DISCOVERY.</h3>
+
+
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">April</span> 3, 1791.<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Letter I">
+<tr><td align='left' rowspan='2' valign='top'><img src="images/gs05a.png" width="216" height="342" alt="I left" title="I left" />
+</td><td align='left'><img src="images/gs05b.png" width="384" height="250" alt="I right" title="I right" />
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='unindent'>T is sixteen years since I wrote
+the preceding chapters of this history
+of mystery and crime. When the pen dropped
+from my hand&mdash;why did it drop? Was it
+because of some noise I heard?</div></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<p>I imagine so now, and tremble. I did not
+anticipate ever adding a line to the words I had
+written. The impulse which had led me to put
+upon paper my doubts concerning the two Urquharts
+soon passed, and as nothing ever occurred
+to recall this couple to my mind, I gradually allowed
+their name and memory to vanish from
+my thoughts, only remembering them when
+chance led me into the oak parlor. Then, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>deed,
+I recollected their manner and my fears,
+and then I also felt repeated, though every time
+with fainter and fainter power, the old thrill of
+undefined terror which stopped my record of
+that day with the half-finished question as to who
+had uttered the shriek that had startled me the
+night before. To-day I again take up my pen.
+Why? Because to-day, and only since to-day,
+can I answer this question.</p>
+
+<p>Sixteen years ago! which makes me sixteen
+years older. My house, too, has aged, and the
+oak parlor&mdash;I never refurnished it&mdash;is darker,
+gloomier, and more forbidding than it was then,
+and in truth, why should it not be? When I remember
+what was revealed to me a week ago, I
+wonder that its walls did not drop fungi, and its
+chill strike death through the man or woman
+who was brave enough to enter it. Horrible,
+horrible room! You shall be torn from my house
+if the rest of the structure goes with you. Neither
+I nor another shall ever enter your fatal portal
+again.</p>
+
+<p>It was a week ago to-day that the coach from
+New York set down at my door a stranger of
+fine and quaint appearance, whose white hair be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>tokened
+him to be aged, but whose alert and energetic
+movements showed that, if he had passed
+the line of fourscore, he had still enough of the
+fire of youth remaining to make his presence welcome
+in whatever place he chose to enter. As
+had happened sixteen years before, I was looking
+out of the window when the coach drove up, and,
+being at once attracted by the stranger's person
+and manner, I watched him closely while he was
+alighting, and was surprised to observe what intent
+and searching glances he cast at the house.</p>
+
+<p>"He could not be more interested if he were
+returning to the home of his fathers," I murmured
+involuntarily to myself, and hastened to
+the door in order to receive him.</p>
+
+<p>He came forward courteously. But after the
+first few words between us he turned again and
+gazed with marked curiosity up and down the
+road and again at the house.</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to be acquainted with these parts,"
+I ventured. He smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"This is an old house," he answered, "and you
+are young." (I am fifty-five.) "There must have
+been owners of the place before you. Do you
+know their names?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I bought the place of Dan Forsyth, and he of
+one Hammond. I don't know as I can go back
+any further than that. Originally the house was
+the property of an Englishman. There were
+strange stories about him, but it was so long ago
+that they are almost forgotten."</p>
+
+<p>The stranger smiled again, and followed me
+into the house. Here his interest seemed to redouble.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly a thought flashed through my brain.</p>
+
+<p>"He is its ancient owner, the Englishman. I
+am standing in the presence of&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You wish to know my name," interrupted his
+genial voice. "It is Tamworth. I am a Virginian,
+and hope to stay at your inn one night.
+What kind of a room have you to offer me?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a twinkle in his eyes I did not understand.
+He was looking down the hall, and I
+thought his gaze rested on the corridor leading to
+the oak parlor.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to sleep on the ground floor,"
+he added.</p>
+
+<p>"I have but one room," I began.</p>
+
+<p>"And one is all I want," he smiled. Then, with
+a quick glance at my face: "I suppose you are a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+little particular whom you put into the oak parlor.
+It is not every one who can appreciate such romantic
+surroundings."</p>
+
+<p>I surveyed him, completely puzzled. Whereupon
+he looked at me with an expression of surprise
+and incredulity that added to the mystery
+of the moment.</p>
+
+<p>"The room is gloomy and uninviting," I declared;
+"but beyond that, I do not know of any
+especial claim it has upon our interest."</p>
+
+<p>"You astonish me," was his evidently sincere
+reply; and he walked on, very thoughtfully,
+straight to the room of which we were speaking.
+At the door he paused. "Don't you know the
+secret of this room," he asked, giving me a very
+bright and searching glance.</p>
+
+<p>"If you mean anything concerning the Urquharts,"
+I began doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Urquharts!" he carelessly repeated. "I do
+not know anything about them. I am speaking of
+an old tradition. I was told&mdash;let me see how
+long it is now&mdash;well, it must be sixteen years at
+least&mdash;that this house contained a hidden chamber
+communicating with a certain oak parlor in the
+west wing. I thought it was curious, and&mdash;Why,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+madam, I beg your pardon; I did not mean to
+distress you. Can it be possible that you were
+ignorant of this fact?&mdash;you, the owner of this
+house!"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure it is a fact?" I gasped. I was
+trembling in every limb, but managed to close the
+door behind us before I sank into a chair. "I
+have lived in this house twenty years. I know
+its rooms and halls as I do my own face, and never,
+never have I suspected that there was a nook
+or corner in it which was not open to the light of
+day. Yet&mdash;yet it is true that the rooms on this
+floor are smaller than those above, this one especially."
+And I cast a horrified glance about me,
+that reminded me, even against my will, of the
+searching and peculiar look I had seen cast in the
+same direction by Mr. Urquhart sixteen years before.</p>
+
+<p>"I see that I have stumbled upon a bit of knowledge
+that has been kept from the purchasers of
+this property," observed the old gentleman.
+"Well, that does not detract from the interest of
+the occasion. When I knew I was to pass this way,
+I said to myself I shall certainly stop at the old
+inn with the secret chamber in it, but I did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+think I should be the first one to disclose its
+secret to the present generation. But my information
+seems to affect you strangely. Is it such
+a disturbing thing to find that one's house has
+held a disused spot within it, that might have been
+made useful if you had known of its existence?"</p>
+
+<p>I could not answer. I was enveloped in a
+strange horror, and was only conscious of the one
+wish&mdash;that Burritt had lived to help me through
+the dreadful hour I saw before me.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us see if my information has been correct,"
+continued Mr. Tamworth. "Perhaps there has
+been some mistake. The secret chamber, if there
+is one, should be behind this chimney. Shall I
+hunt for an opening?"</p>
+
+<p>I managed to shake my head. I had not
+strength for the experiment yet. I wanted to prepare
+myself.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me first how you heard about this room?"
+I entreated.</p>
+
+<p>He drew his chair nearer to mine with the
+greatest courtesy.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no reason why I should not tell you,"
+replied he, "and as I see that you are in no mood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+for a long story, I shall make my words as few as
+possible. Some years ago I had occasion to spend
+a night in an inn not unlike this, on Long Island.
+I was alone, but there was a merry crowd in the
+tap room, and being fond of good company, I
+presently found myself joining in the conversation.
+The talk was of inns, and many a stirring
+story of adventure in out-of-the-way taverns did I
+listen to that night before the clock struck twelve.
+Each man present had some humorous or thrilling
+experience to relate, with the exception of a certain
+glum and dark-browed gentleman, who sat somewhat
+apart from the rest, and who said nothing.
+His reticence was in such marked contrast to the
+volubility about him that he finally attracted universal
+attention, and more than one of the merry-makers
+near him asked if he had not some anecdote
+to add to the rest. But though he replied
+with sufficient politeness, it was evident that he
+had no intention of dropping his reserve, and it
+was not till the party had broken up and the room
+was nearly cleared that he deigned to address any
+one. Then he turned to me, and with a very peculiar
+smile, remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"'A dull collection of tales, sir. Bah! if they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+had wanted to hear of an inn that was really romantic,
+I could have told them&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'What?' I involuntarily ejaculated. 'You
+will not torture me by suggesting a mystery you
+will not explain.'</p>
+
+<p>"He looked very indifferent.</p>
+
+<p>"'It is nothing,' he declared, 'only I know of
+an inn&mdash;at least it is used for an inn now&mdash;which
+has in its interior a secret chamber so deftly hidden
+away in the very heart of the house that I
+doubt if even its present owner could find it without
+the minutest directions from the man who
+saw it built. I knew that man. He was an Englishman,
+and he had a fancy to make his fortune
+through the aid of smuggled goods. He did it;
+and though always suspected, was never convicted,
+owing to the fact that he kept all his goods in this
+hidden room. The place is sold now, but the
+room remains. I wonder if any forgotten treasures
+lie in it. Imagination could easily run riot
+over the supposition, do you not think so, sir?'</p>
+
+<p>"I certainly did, especially as I imagined myself
+to detect in every line of his able and crafty face
+that he bore a closer relation to the Englishman
+than he would have me believe. I did not betray<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+my feelings, however, but urged him to tell me
+how in a modern house, a room, or even a closet,
+could be so concealed as not to awaken any one's
+suspicion. He answered by taking out pencil and
+paper, and showing me, by a few lines, the secret
+of its construction. Then seeing me deeply interested,
+he went on to say:</p>
+
+<p>"'We find what we have been told to search
+for; but here is a case where the secret has been
+so well kept that in all possibility the question of
+this room's existence has never arisen. It is just
+as well.'</p>
+
+<p>"Meantime I was studying the plan.</p>
+
+<p>"'The hidden chamber lies,' said I, 'between
+this room,' designating one with my forefinger,
+'and these two others. From which is it entered?'</p>
+
+<p>"He pointed at the one I had first indicated.</p>
+
+<p>"'From this,' he affirmed. 'And a quaint, old-fashioned
+room it is, too, with a wainscoting of
+oak all around it as high as a man's head. It used
+to be called the oak parlor, and many a time has
+its floor rung to the tread of the king's soldiers,
+who, disappointed in their search for hidden
+goods, consented to take a drink at their host's
+expense, little recking that, but a few feet away,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+behind the carven chimneypiece upon which they
+doubtless set down their glasses, there lay heaps
+and heaps of the richest goods, only awaiting their
+own departure to be scattered through the length
+and breadth of the land.'</p>
+
+<p>"'And this house is now an inn?' I remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Curious. I should like nothing better than to
+visit that inn.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You doubtless have.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It is not this one?' I suddenly cried, looking
+uneasily about me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, no; it is on the Hudson River, not fifty
+miles this side of Albany. It is called the <b>Happy-Go-Lucky</b>,
+and is in a woman's hands at present;
+but it prospers, I believe. Perhaps because she
+has discovered the secret, and knows where to
+keep her stores.' And with a shrug of his shoulders
+he dismissed the subject, with the remark:
+'I don't know why I told you of this. I never
+made it the subject of conversation before in my
+life.'</p>
+
+<p>"This was just before the outbreak in Lexington,
+sixteen years ago, ma'am, and this is the first
+time I have found myself in this region since that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+day. But I have never forgotten this story of a
+secret room, and when I took the coach this morning
+I made up my mind that I would spend the
+night here, and, if possible, see the famous oak
+parlor, with its mysterious adjunct; never dreaming
+that in all these years of your occupancy you
+would have remained as ignorant of its existence
+as he hinted and you have now declared."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Tamworth paused, looking so benevolent
+that I summoned up my courage, and quietly informed
+him that he had not told me what kind of
+a looking man this stranger was.</p>
+
+<p>"Was he young?" I asked. "Had he a blond
+complexion?"</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary," interrupted Mr. Tamworth,
+"he was very dark, and, in years, as old or nearly
+as old as myself."</p>
+
+<p>I was disappointed. I had expected a different
+reply. As he talked of the stranger, I had, rightfully
+or wrongfully, with reason or without reason,
+seen before me the face of Mr. Urquhart, and this
+description of a dark and well-nigh aged man completely
+disconcerted me.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you certain this man was not in disguise?"
+I asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Disguise?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you certain that he was not young, and
+blond, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite sure," was the dry interruption. "No
+disguise could transform a young blood into the
+man I saw that night. May I ask&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>In my turn I interrupted him. "Pardon me," I
+entreated, "but an anxiety I will presently explain
+forces another question from me. Were you and
+this stranger alone in the room when you held this
+conversation? You say that it had been full a few
+minutes before. Were there none of the crowd
+remaining besides your two selves?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Tamworth looked thoughtful. "It is sixteen
+years ago," he replied, "but I have a dim remembrance
+of a man sitting at a table somewhat near us,
+with his face thrown forward on his arms.
+He seemed to be asleep; I did not notice him
+particularly."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you not see his face?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he young?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should say so."</p>
+
+<p>"And blond?"</p>
+
+<p>"That I cannot say."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And he remained in that attitude all the time
+you were talking?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, madam."</p>
+
+<p>"And continued so when you left the room?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think so."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he within earshot? Near enough to hear
+all you said?"</p>
+
+<p>"Most assuredly, if he listened."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Tamworth," I now entreated, "try, if possible,
+to remember one other fact. If each man present
+told a story that night, you must have had
+ample opportunity of noting each man's face and
+observing how he looked. Now, of all that sat in
+the room, was there not one of an age not exceeding
+thirty-five, of fair complexion and gentlemanly
+appearance, yet with a dangerous look in his small
+blue eye, and a something in his smile that took
+all the merriment out of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"A short but telling description," commented
+my guest. "Let me see. Was there such a man
+among them? Really, I cannot remember."</p>
+
+<p>"Think, think. Hair very thin above the temples,
+mustache heavy. When he spoke he invariably moved
+his hands; seemed to be nervous, and anxious to
+hide it."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I see him," was Mr. Tamworth's sudden remark.
+"That description of his hands recalls him
+to my mind. Yes; there was such a man in the
+room that night. I even recollect his story. It
+was coarse, but not without wit."</p>
+
+<p>I advanced and surveyed Mr. Tamworth very
+earnestly. "The man you thought asleep&mdash;the man
+who was near enough to hear all the Englishman
+said&mdash;was he or was he not the same we have
+just been talking about?"</p>
+
+<p>"I never thought of it before, but he did look
+something like him&mdash;his figure, I mean; I did not
+see his face."</p>
+
+<p>"It was he," I murmured, with intense conviction,
+"and the villain&mdash;" But how did I know he
+was a villain? I paused and pointed to the huge
+mantel guarding the fireplace. "If you know
+how to enter the secret room, do so. Only I should
+like to have a few witnesses present besides myself.
+Will you wait till I call one or two of my
+lodgers?"</p>
+
+<p>He bowed with great urbanity. "If you wish
+to make the discovery public," said he, "I, of
+course, have no objection."</p>
+
+<p>But I saw that he was disappointed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I can never confront the secret of that room
+alone," I insisted. "I must have Dr. Kenyon
+here at least." And without waiting for my impulses
+to cool, I sent a message to the doctor's
+room, and was rewarded in a moment by the
+appearance at the door of that excellent
+man.</p>
+
+<p>It did not take many words for me to explain
+to him our intentions. We were going to search
+for a secret chamber which we had been told
+opened into the room in which we then found
+ourselves. As I did not wish to make any mystery
+of the affair, and as I naturally had my
+doubts as to what the room might disclose, I asked
+the support of his presence.</p>
+
+<p>He was gratified&mdash;the doctor always is gratified
+at any token of appreciation&mdash;and perceiving that
+I had no further reason for delay, I motioned to
+Mr. Tamworth to proceed.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/gs06.jpg" width="500" height="382" alt="The hidden panel" title="The hidden panel" />
+</div>
+
+<p>How he discovered the one movable panel in
+that old-fashioned wainscoting, I have never inquired.
+When I saw him turn toward the fireplace
+and lay his ear to the wall, I withdrew in
+haste to the window, feeling as if I could not bear
+to watch him, or be the first to catch a glimpse of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>
+the mysterious depths which in another moment
+must open before his touch. What I feared I cannot
+say. As far as I could reason on the subject, I had
+no cause to fear anything; and yet my shaking
+frame and unevenly throbbing heart were but the
+too sure tokens of an excessive and uncontrollable
+agitation. The view from the window increased
+it. Before me lay the river from whose banks
+sand and stone had been taken sixteen years before
+to replace&mdash;what? I knew no more this
+minute than I did then. I might know in the next.
+By the faint tapping that came to my ears I must&mdash;and
+it was this thought that sent a chill through
+me, and made it so difficult for me to stand. And
+yet why should it? Was not that old theory of
+ours, that the Urquharts had brought treasure in
+their great box, still a plausible one? Nay, more,
+was it not even a probable one, since we had discovered
+that the house held so excellent a hiding
+place, unknown to the world at large, but known
+to this man, as Mr. Tamworth's story so plainly
+showed? Yes; and yet I started with uncontrollable
+forebodings, when I heard an exclamation of
+satisfaction behind me, and hardly found courage
+to turn around, even when I knew that an open<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>ing
+had been effected, and that they were only
+waiting for my approach to enter it.</p>
+
+<p>And it took courage, both on my part and on
+theirs; for the air which rushed from the high and
+narrow slit of darkness before us was stifling and
+almost deadly. But in a few minutes, after one or
+two experiments with a lighted candle, Dr. Kenyon
+stepped through the opening, followed by
+Mr. Tamworth, and, in a long minute afterward,
+by myself.</p>
+
+<p>Shall I ever forget my emotions as I looked
+about me and saw, by the lamp which the doctor
+carried, nothing more startling than an old oak
+chest in one corner, a pile of faded clothing in
+another, and in a third&mdash;Heavens! what is it?
+We all stare, and then a shriek escapes my lips
+as piercing and terror-stricken as any that ever
+disturbed those fearful shadows; and I rush blindly
+from the spot, followed by Mr. Tamworth,
+whose face, as I turn to look at him, gives me
+another pang of fear, so white and sick it looks in
+the sudden glare of day.</p>
+
+<p>Worse than I had thought, worse than I had
+dreamed! I cannot speak, and fall into a chair,
+waiting in mortal terror for the doctor, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+stayed some minutes behind. When his kindly
+but not undisturbed countenance showed itself
+again in the gap at the side of the fireplace, I could
+almost have thrown myself at his feet.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/gs07.jpg" width="300" height="341" alt="We all stare" title="We all stare" />
+</div>
+
+<p>"What is it?" I gasped. "Tell me at once. Is
+it a man or a woman or&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It is a woman. See! here is a lock of her
+hair. Beautiful, is it not? She must have been
+young."</p>
+
+<p>I stared at it like one demented. It was of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+peculiar reddish-brown, with a strange little kink
+and curl in it. Where had I seen such hair before?
+Somewhere. I remembered perfectly how the
+whole bright head looked with the firelight playing
+over it. Oh, no, no, no, it was not that of
+Mrs. Urquhart. Mrs. Urquhart went away from
+this house well and happy. I am mad, or this
+strand of gleaming hair is a dream. It is not her
+head it recalls to me, and yet&mdash;my soul, it is!</p>
+
+<p>The doctor, knowing me well, did not try to
+break the silence of that first grewsome minute.
+But when he saw me ready to speak, he remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"It is an old crime, perpetrated, probably, before
+you came into the house. I would not make
+any more of it than you can help, Mrs. Truax."</p>
+
+<p>I scarcely heeded him.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there no bit of clothing or jewelry left upon
+her by which we might hope to identify her?" I
+asked, shuddering, as I caught Mr. Tamworth's
+eye, and realized the nature of the doubts I there
+beheld.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is a ring I found upon the wedding finger,"
+he replied. "It was doubtless too small to
+be drawn off at the time of her death, but it came
+away easily enough now."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And he held out a plain gold circlet which I
+eagerly took, looked at, and fell at their feet as
+senseless as a stone.</p>
+
+<p>On the inner surface I had discovered this legend:</p>
+
+<div class="center">E. U. to H. D. Jan. 27, 1775.</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Never have I felt such relief as when, upon my
+resuscitation, I remembered that I had put upon
+paper all the events and all the suspicions which
+had troubled me during that fatal night of January
+the 28th, sixteen years before. With that in
+my possession, I could confront any suspicion
+which might arise, and it was this thought which
+lent to my bearing at this unhappy time a dignity
+and self-possession which evidently surprised the
+two gentlemen.</p>
+
+<p>"You seem more shocked than astonished," was
+Mr. Tamworth's first remark, as, mistress once
+more of myself, I led the way out of that horrible
+room into one breathing less of death and the
+charnel house.</p>
+
+<p>"You are right," said I. "Mysteries which
+have troubled me for years are now in the way of
+being explained by this discovery. I knew that
+something either fearful or precious had been left
+in the keeping of this house or grounds; but I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+did not know what this something was, and least
+of all did I suspect that its hiding place was between
+walls whose turns and limitations I thought
+I knew as well as I do the paths of my garden."</p>
+
+<p>"You speak riddles," Dr. Kenyon now declared.
+"You knew that something fearful or
+precious had been left in your house&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me," I interrupted; "I said house or
+grounds. I thought it was in the grounds, for
+how could I think that the house could, without
+my knowledge, hold anything of the nature I have
+just suggested?"</p>
+
+<p>"You knew, then, that a person had been murdered?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," I persisted, with a strange calmness, considering
+how agitated I was, both by my memories
+and the fears I could not but entertain for the
+future; "I know nothing; nor can I, even with
+the knowledge of this discovery, understand or
+explain what took place in my house sixteen years
+ago."</p>
+
+<p>And in a few hurried words I related the story
+of the mysterious couple who had occupied that
+room on the night of January 27, 1775.</p>
+
+<p>They listened to me as if I were repeating a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+fairy tale, and as I noted the sympathizing air
+with which Dr. Kenyon tried to hide his natural
+incredulity, I again congratulated myself that I
+had been a weak enough woman to keep an account
+of the events which had so impressed me.</p>
+
+<p>"You think I am drawing upon my imagination,"
+I quietly remarked, as silence fell upon my
+narration.</p>
+
+<p>"By no means," the doctor began, hurriedly;
+"but the details you give are so open to question,
+and the conclusions you expect us to draw from
+them are so serious, that I wish, for your own
+sake, we had heard something of the Urquharts,
+and your doubts and suspicions in their regard,
+before we had made the discovery which points
+to death and crime. You see I speak plainly,
+Mrs. Truax."</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot speak too plainly, Doctor Kenyon;
+and my opinion so entirely coincides with
+yours that I am going to furnish you with what
+you ask." And without heeding their looks of
+astonishment, I rang the bell for one of the girls,
+and sent her to a certain drawer in my desk for
+the folded paper which she would find there.</p>
+
+<p>"Here!" I exclaimed, as the paper was brought,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>
+"read this, and you will soon see how I felt about
+the Urquharts on the evening of the day they left
+us."</p>
+
+<p>And I put into their hands the record I had
+made of that day's experience.</p>
+
+<p>While they were reading it, I puzzled myself
+with questions. If this body which we had just
+found sepulchered in my house was, as the initials
+in the ring seemed to declare, that of Honora
+Urquhart, who was the woman who passed for
+her at the time of the departure of this accused
+couple from my doors? I was with them, and saw
+the lady, and supposed her to be the same I had
+entertained at my table the night before. But
+then I chiefly noted her dress and height, and did
+not see her face, which was hidden by her veil,
+and did not hear her voice beyond the short and
+somewhat embarrassed laugh she gave at some
+little incident which had occurred. But Hetty
+had seen her, and had even received money from
+her hand; and Hetty could not have been deceived,
+nor was Hetty a girl to be bribed. How
+was I, then, to understand the matter? And where,
+in case another woman had taken Mrs. Urquhart's
+place, had that woman come from?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I thought of the low window, and the ease with
+which any one could climb into it; and then, with
+a flash of startled conviction, I thought of the
+huge box.</p>
+
+<p>"Great heavens!" I ejaculated, feeling the hair
+stir anew on my forehead. "Can it be that he
+brought her in that? That she was with them all
+the time, and that the almost hellish tragedy to
+which this ring points was the scheme of two vile
+and murderous lovers to suppress an unhappy
+wife that stood in the way of their desires?"</p>
+
+<p>I could not think it. I could not believe that
+any man could be so void of mercy, or any woman
+so lost to every instinct of decency, as to plan, and
+then coolly carry out to the end, a crime so unheard
+of in its atrocity. There must be some
+other explanation of the facts before us. Why,
+the date in the ring is enough. If that speaks
+true, the marriage between Edwin Urquhart and
+the gentle Honora was but a day old, and even
+the worst of men take time to weary of their wives
+before they take measures against them. Yet,
+the look and manner of the man! His affection
+for the box, and his manifest indifference for his
+wife! And, lastly, and most convincing of all,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
+this awful token in the room beyond! What
+should I, what could I think!</p>
+
+<p>At this point in my surmises I grew so faint that
+I turned to Dr. Kenyon and Mr. Tamworth for
+relief. They had just finished my record of the
+past, and were looking at each other in surprise
+and horror.</p>
+
+<p>"It surpasses the most atrocious deeds of the
+middle ages," quoth Mr. Tamworth.</p>
+
+<p>"In a country deemed civilized," finished the
+doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you think," I tremblingly began&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"That you have harbored two demons under
+your roof, Mrs. Truax. There seems to be no
+doubt that the woman who went away with Mr.
+Urquhart was not the woman who came with
+him. She lies here, while the other&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He paused, and Mr. Tamworth took up the word.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to have been a strangely triumphant
+piece of villainy. The woman who profited by it
+must have had great self-control and force of
+character. Don't you think so, doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>"Unquestionably," was the firm reply.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not say how you account for her
+presence here," I now reluctantly intimated.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I think she was hidden in the great box. It was
+large enough for that, was it not, Mrs. Truax?"</p>
+
+<p>I nodded, much agitated.</p>
+
+<p>"His care of it, his call for a supper, the change
+in its weight, and the fact that its contents were of
+a different character in going than coming, all
+point to the fact of its having been used for the
+purpose we intimated. It strikes one as most horrible,
+but history furnishes us with precedents of
+attempts equally daring, and if the box was well
+furnished with holes&mdash;did you notice any breathing
+places in it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," I returned; "but I did not cast two
+glances at the box. I was jealous of it, for the
+young wife's sake, though, as God knows, I had
+little idea of what it contained, and merely noticed
+that it was big and clumsy, and capable of holding
+many books."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet you must have noticed, even in a cursory
+glance, whether its top or sides were broken by
+holes."</p>
+
+<p>"They were not, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But what?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do remember, now, that he flung his traveling-cloak
+across it just as the men went to lift it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+from the wagon, and that the cloak remained upon
+it all the time it was in their hands, and until after
+we had all left the room. But it was taken away
+later, for when I went in the second time, I saw it
+lying across the chair."</p>
+
+<p>"And the box?"</p>
+
+<p>"Was hidden by the foot of the bed behind
+which he had dragged it."</p>
+
+<p>"And the cloak? Was it over the box when it
+went out?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; but I have thought since we have been
+talking, that the box might have been turned
+over after its occupant left it. The holes, if there
+were any, would thus be on the bottom, and
+would escape our detection."</p>
+
+<p>"Very possible, but the sand with which we
+supposed the box had been filled would have
+sifted through."</p>
+
+<p>"Not if a good firm piece of stuff was laid in
+first, and there were plenty of such in the secret
+chamber."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true. But Burritt, you write, was
+listening at the door, and yet you mention no remarks
+of his concerning any noises heard by him
+from within. And noise must have been made if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+this was done, as it must have had to be done
+after the tragedy."</p>
+
+<p>"I know I do not," was the hurried reply.
+"But Burritt probably did not remain at the door
+all the time. There is a window seat at the end
+of the corridor, and upon it he probably lolled
+during the few hours of his watch. Besides, you
+must remember that Burritt left his post some
+time before daylight. He had his duties to attend
+to, some of which necessitated his being in the
+stables by four o'clock, at least."</p>
+
+<p>"I see; and so the affair prospered, as most
+very daring deeds do, and they escaped without
+suspicion, or rather without suspicion pointed
+enough to lead to their being followed. I wonder
+where they escaped to, and if in all the years that
+have elapsed, they have for one moment imagined
+that they were happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Happy!" was my horrified exclamation. "Oh,
+if I could find them! If I could drag them both
+to this room and make them keep company with
+their victim for a week, I should feel it too slight
+a retribution for them."</p>
+
+<p>"Heaven has had its eye upon them. We have
+been through fearful crises since that day, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+much unrighteous as well as righteous blood has
+been shed in this land. They may both be dead."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not believe it," I muttered. "Such
+wretches never die." Then, with a renewed remembrance
+of Hetty, I remarked: "Curses on
+the duties that kept me out of this room on that
+fatal morning. Had I seen the woman's face, this
+horrid crime would at least been spared its triumph.
+But I was obliged to send Hetty, and she
+saw nothing strange in the woman, though she
+received money from her hand, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Hetty?" interrupted the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"She is married, and lives in the next town."</p>
+
+<p>"So, so. Well, we must hunt her up to-morrow,
+and see what she has to say about the matter now."</p>
+
+<p>But we soon found ourselves too impatient to
+wait till the morrow, so after we had eaten a good
+supper in a cheerful room, Dr. Kenyon mounted
+his horse, and rode away to the farm house where
+Hetty lived. While he was gone, Mr. Tamworth
+summoned up courage to re-enter that cave of
+horror, and bring out the contents of the oak
+chest we had seen there. These were mostly
+stuffs in a more or less good state of preservation,
+and all the assistance they lent to the understand<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>ing
+of the tragedy that mystified us was the fact
+that the chest contained nothing, nor the room
+itself, of sufficient substance to help the wicked
+Urquhart in giving weight to the box which he
+had emptied of its living freight. This is doubtless
+the reason he resorted to the garden for the
+sand and stone he found there.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Kenyon returned about midnight, and was
+met at the door by Mr. Tamworth and myself.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" I cried, in great excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"Just as I supposed," he returned. "She did not
+see the lady's face either. The latter was in bed,
+and the girl took it for granted that the arm and
+hand which reached her out a silver piece from
+between the bed curtains were those of Mrs.
+Urquhart."</p>
+
+<p>"My house is cursed!" was my sudden exclamation.
+"It has not only lent itself to the success
+of the most demoniacal scheme that ever entered
+into the heart of man, but it has kept its secret so
+long that all hope of explaining its details or
+reaching the guilty must be abandoned."</p>
+
+<p>"Not so," quoth Mr. Tamworth. "Though an
+old man, I dedicate myself to this task. You will
+hear again of the Urquharts."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h3>AN INTERIM OF SUSPENSE.</h3>
+
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">May 5, 1791.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 210px;">
+<img src="images/gs08.jpg" width="210" height="300" alt="H" title="H" />
+</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'>OW fearful! To hear a spade in
+the night and know that this
+spade is digging a grave! I sit
+at my desk and listen to
+hear if any one in the house
+has been aroused or is suspicious,
+and then I turn to
+the window and try to
+pierce the gloom to see if
+anything can be discerned, from the house, of the
+grewsome act now being performed in the garden.
+For after much consultation and several conferences
+with the authorities, we have decided to
+preserve from public knowledge, not only the
+secret of the room hidden in my house, but of the
+discovery which has lately been made there. But
+while much harm would accrue to me by revelations
+which would throw a pall of horror over
+my inn, and make it no better than a place of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+morbid curiosity forever, the purposes of justice
+would be rather hindered than helped by a publicity
+which would give warning to the guilty
+couple, and prevent us from surprising them in
+the imagined security which the lapse of so many
+years must have brought them.</div>
+
+<p>And so a grave is being dug in the garden,
+where, at the darkest hour of night, the remains
+of the sweet and gentle bride are to be placed
+without tablet or mound.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile do there hide in any part of this
+wicked world two hearts which throb with unusual
+terrors this night? Or does there pass
+across the mirror of a guilty memory any unusual
+shapes of horror prognostic of detection and
+coming punishment? It would comfort my uneasy
+heart to know; for the spirit of vengeance
+has seized upon me, and my house will never
+seem washed of its stain, or my conscience be
+quite at rest as to the past, till that vile man and
+woman pay, in some way, the penalty of their
+crime.</p>
+
+<p>That we know nothing of them but their names
+lends an interest to their pursuit. The very difficulty
+before us, the hopelessness almost of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+task we have set ourselves, have raised in me a
+wild and well-nigh superstitious reliance on Providence
+and the eternal justice, so that it seems
+natural for me to expect aid even from such
+sources as dreams and visions, and make the inquiry
+in which I have just indulged the reasonable
+expression of my belief in the mysterious
+forces of right and wrong, which will yet bring
+this long triumphant, but now secretly threatened,
+pair to justice.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Kenyon, who is as practical as he is pious,
+smiles at my confidence; but Mr. Tamworth neither
+mocks nor frowns. He has shouldered the
+responsibility of finding this man, and has often
+observed, in his long life, that a woman's intuitions
+go as far as a man's reasoning.</p>
+
+<p>To-morrow he will start upon his travels.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">June 12, 1791.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>It is foolish to put every passing thought on
+paper, but these sheets have already served me so
+well that I cannot resist the temptation of making
+them the repositories of my secret fears and hopes.
+Mr. Tamworth has been gone a month, and I have
+heard nothing from him. This is all the more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+difficult to bear that Dr. Kenyon also has left me,
+thus taking from my house all in whom I can
+confide or to whom I can talk. For I will not
+place confidence in servants, and there are no
+guests here at present upon whose judgment I
+can rely concerning even a lesser matter than this
+which occupies all my thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>I must talk, then, to thee, unknown reader of
+these lines, and declare on paper what I have said
+a thousand times to myself&mdash;what a mystery this
+whole matter is, and how little probability there
+is of our ever understanding it! Why was it that
+Edwin Urquhart, if he loved one woman so well
+that he was willing to risk his life to gain her,
+would subject himself to the terrors which must
+follow any crime, no matter how secretly performed,
+by marrying a woman he must kill in
+twenty-four hours? Marriages are not compulsory
+in this country, and any one must acknowledge
+that it would be easier for a strong man&mdash;and
+he certainly was no weakling&mdash;to refuse a
+woman at the nuptial altar than to undertake and
+carry out a scheme so full of revolting details and
+involving so much risk as this which we have
+been forced to ascribe to him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Then the woman, the unknown and fearful creature
+who had allowed herself to be boxed up and
+carried, God knows, how many fearful miles, just
+for the purpose of assuming a position which she
+seemingly might have obtained in ways much less
+repulsive and dangerous! Was it in human nature
+to go through such an ordeal, and if it were,
+what could the circumstances have been that
+would drive even the most insensible nature into
+such an adventure! I question, and try to answer
+my own inquiries, but my imagination falters over
+the task, and I am no nearer to the satisfaction of
+my doubts than I was in the harrowing minute
+when the knowledge of this tragedy first flashed
+upon me.</p>
+
+<p>I must have patience. Mr. Tamworth must
+write to me soon.</p>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">August 10, 1791.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>News, news, and such news! How could I ever
+have dreamed of it! But let me transcribe Mr.
+Tamworth's letter:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">To Mrs. Clarissa Truax,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Mistress of the Happy-go-lucky Inn:</span><br />
+
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Respected Madam</span>: After a lengthy delay,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+occupied in researches, made doubly difficult by
+the changes which have been wrought in the
+country by the late conflict, I have just come
+upon a fact that has the strongest bearing upon
+the serious tragedy which we are both so
+interested in investigating. It is this:</p>
+
+<p>That every year the agent of a certain large
+estate in Albany, N. Y., forwards to France a
+large sum of money, for the use and behoof of one
+Honora Quentin Urquhart, daughter of the late
+Cyrus Dudleigh, of Albany, and wife of one Edwin Urquhart,
+a gentleman of that same city, to
+whom she was married in her father's house on
+January 27, 1775, and with whom she at once departed
+for France, where she and her husband
+have been living ever since.</p>
+
+<p>Thus by chance, almost, have I stumbled upon
+an explanation of the tragedy we found so inexplicable,
+and found that clew to the whereabouts
+of the wretched pair which is so essential to their
+apprehension and the proper satisfaction of the
+claims of justice.</p>
+
+<p>With great consideration I sign myself,</p>
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span style="margin-right: 4em;">Your obedient servant,</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Anthony Tamworth</span>.<br />
+</div></div>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">August 11</span>, 8 o'clock.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I was so overwhelmed by the above letter that
+I found it impossible at the time to comment
+upon it. To-day it is too late, for this morning a
+packet arrived from Mr. Tamworth containing
+another letter of such length that I am sure it
+must be one of complete explanation. I burn to
+read it, but I have merely had time to break the
+seal and glance at the first opening words. Will
+my guests be so kind as to leave me in peace to-night,
+so that I may satisfy a curiosity which has
+become almost insupportable?</p>
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">Midnight.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>No time to-night; too tired almost to write this.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">August 12.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>The packet is read. I am all of a tremble.
+What a tale! What a&mdash; But why encumber
+these sheets with words of mine? I will insert
+the letter and let it tell its own portion of the
+strange and terrible history which time is slowly
+unrolling before us.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PART II.</h2>
+
+<h3>AN OLD ALBANY ROMANCE.</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE RECLUSE.</h3>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'>To Mrs. Clarissa Truax,<br />
+
+
+<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;">of the Happy-go-lucky Inn:</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Respected Madam</span>: Appreciating your anxiety,
+I hasten to give you the particulars of an
+interview which I have just had with a person
+who knew Edwin Urquhart. They must be acceptable
+to you, and I shall make no excuse for
+the length of my communication, knowing that
+each detail in the lives of the three persons connected
+with this crime must be of interest to one
+who has brooded upon the subject as long as you
+have.</p>
+
+<p>The person to whom I allude is a certain Mark
+Felt, a most eccentric and unhappy being now
+living the life of a recluse amid the forests of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+Catskills. I became acquainted with his name at
+the time of my first investigation into the history
+of the Dudleigh and Urquhart families, and it was
+to him I was referred when I asked for such particulars
+as mere neighbors and public officials
+found it impossible to give.</p>
+
+<p>I was told, however, at the same time, that I
+should find it hard to gain his confidence, as for
+sixteen years now he had avoided the companionship
+of men, by hiding in the caves and living
+upon such food as he could procure through the
+means of gun and net. A disappointment in love
+was said to be at the bottom of this, the lady he
+was engaged to having thrown herself into the
+river at about the time of the marriage of his
+friend.</p>
+
+<p>He was, notwithstanding, a good-hearted man,
+and if I could once break through the reserve he
+had maintained for so many years, they thought I
+would be able to surprise facts from him which I
+could never hope to reach in any other way.</p>
+
+<p>Interested by these insinuations, and somewhat
+excited, for an old man, at the prospect of bearding
+such a lion in his den, I at once made up my
+mind to seek this Felt; and accordingly one bright<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+day last week crossed the river and entered the
+forest. I was not alone. I had taken a guide
+who knew the location of the cave which Felt was
+supposed to inhabit, and through his efforts my
+journey was made as little fatiguing as possible.
+Fallen brambles were removed from my path,
+limbs lifted, and where the road was too rough
+for the passage of such faltering feet as mine, I
+found myself lifted bodily, in arms as strong and
+steadfast as steel, and carried like a child to where
+it was smoother.</p>
+
+<p>Thus I was enabled to traverse paths that at
+first view appeared inaccessible, and finally reached
+a spot so far up the mountain side that I gazed
+behind me in terror lest I should never be able to
+return again the way I had come. My guide,
+seeing my alarm, assured me that our destination
+was not far off, and presently I perceived before me
+a huge overhanging cliff, from the upper ledges
+of which hung down a tangle of vines and branches
+that veiled, without wholly concealing, the yawning
+mouth of a cave.</p>
+
+<p>"That is where the man we are seeking lives,
+eats, and sleeps," quoth my guide, as we paused
+for a moment to regain our breath. And imme<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>diately
+upon his words, and as if called forth by
+them, we perceived an unkempt and disheveled
+head slowly uprear itself through the black gap
+before us, then hastily disappear again behind the
+vines it had for a moment disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>"I will encounter him alone," I thereupon declared;
+and leaving the guide behind me, I pushed
+forward to the cliff, and pausing before the entrance
+of the cave, I called aloud:</p>
+
+<p>"Mark Felt, do you want to hear news from
+your friend Urquhart?"</p>
+
+<p>For a moment all was still, and I began to fear
+that my somewhat daring attempt had failed in its
+effect. But this was only for an instant, for presently
+something between a growl and a cry issued
+from the darkness within, and the next moment the
+wild and disheveled head showed itself again, and
+I heard distinctly these words:</p>
+
+<p>"He is no friend of mine, your Edwin Urquhart."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," I returned, without a moment's hesitation,
+"do you want to hear news of your enemy?&mdash;for
+I have some, and of the rarest nature,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>The wild eyes flashed as if a flame of fire had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+shot from them, and the head that held them advanced
+till I could see the whole bearded countenance
+of the man.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he dead?" he asked, with an eagerness and
+underlying triumph in the voice that argued well
+for the presence of those passions upon the rousing
+of which I relied for the revelations I sought.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said I, "but death is looking his way.
+With a little more knowledge of his early life and
+a little more insight into his character at the time
+he married Honora Dudleigh, the law will have
+so firm a hold upon him that I can safely promise
+any one who longs to see him pay the penalty of
+his evil deeds a certain opportunity of doing so."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/gs09.jpg" width="500" height="369" alt="The vines trembled" title="The vines trembled" />
+</div>
+
+<p>The vines trembled and suddenly parted their
+full length, and Mark Felt stepped out into the
+sunshine and confronted me. What he wore I
+cannot say, for his personality was so strong I
+received no impression of anything else. Not
+that he was tall or picturesque, or even rudely
+handsome. On the contrary, he was as plain a
+man as I had ever seen, with eyes to which some
+defect lent a strange, fixed glare, and a mouth
+whose under jaw protruded so markedly beyond
+the upper that his profile gave you a shock when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+any slight noise or stir drew his head to one side
+and thus revealed it to you. Yet, in spite of all
+this, in spite of tangled locks and a wide, rough
+beard, half brown, half white, his face held something
+that fixed the attention and fascinated the
+eye that encountered it. Did it lie in his eyes?
+How could it, with one looking like a fixed stone
+of agate and the other like a rolling ball of fire?
+Was it in his smile? How could it be when his
+smile had no joy in it, only a satisfaction that was
+not of good, but evil, and promised trouble rather
+than relief or sympathy? It must be in the general
+expression of his features, which seemed
+made only to mirror the emotions of a soul full of
+vitality and purpose&mdash;a soul which, if clouded by
+wrongs and embittered by heavy memories, possessed
+at least the characteristic of force and the
+charm of an unswerving purpose.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to recognize the impression he had
+made, for his lips smiled with a sort of scornful
+triumph before he said:</p>
+
+<p>"These are peculiar words for a stranger. May
+I ask your name and whose interests you represent?"</p>
+
+<p>His speech was quick, and had an odd halt in it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+such as might be expected from one who had not
+conferred with his fellows for years. But there
+was no rudeness in its tone, nor was there any
+mistaking the fact that he was, both by nature and
+education, a gentleman. I began to take an interest
+in him apart from my mission.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Felt," I replied, "my name is Tamworth.
+I am from Virginia, and only by chance have I
+become involved in a matter near to you and the
+man who, you tell me, is, or was, your enemy.
+As for the interests I represent, they are those of
+justice, and justice only; and it is in her behalf
+and for the triumph of law and righteousness that
+I now ask you for your confidence and such details
+concerning your early intercourse with Edwin
+Urquhart as will enable me to understand a past
+that will certainly yield us a clew to the present.
+Are you willing to give them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Will I give them?" he laughed. "Will I
+break the seal which guards the tablets of my
+youth, and let a stranger's eyes read lines to
+which I have shut my own for these many years!
+Do you not know that for me to tell you what I
+once knew of Edwin Urquhart is to bare my own
+breast to view, and subject to new sufferings a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+heart that it has taken fifteen years of solitude to
+render callous?"</p>
+
+<p>I gave no answer to this, only looked at him
+and stood waiting.</p>
+
+<p>"You have hunted me out, you have touched
+the last string that ceases to vibrate in a man's
+breast&mdash;that of a wild desire for vengeance&mdash;and
+now you ask me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"To ease your memories of a burden. To
+drag into light the skeleton of old days, and by
+the light thus thrown upon it to see that it is only
+a skeleton, that, once beheld, should be buried
+and its old bones forgotten. You are too much
+of a man, Felt, to waste away in these wilds.
+Come! forget I am a stranger, and relieve yourself
+and me by opening these tablets you speak of,
+even if it does cost you a pang of the old sorrow.
+The talk we have had has already made a flutter
+in the long-closed leaves, and should I leave you
+this minute you could not smother the thoughts
+and memories to which our conversation has given
+rise. Then why not think to purpose and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He raised one hand and stopped me. The gesture
+was full of fire, and so was the eye he now
+turned away from me to gaze up at the overhang<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>ing
+steeps above, with their great gorges and
+magnificent play of light and shadow; at the
+valley beneath, with its broad belt of shining
+water winding in and out through fertile banks
+and growing towns, and finally at the blue dome
+of the sky, across which great clouds went sailing
+in shapes so varied and of size so majestic that it
+was like a vision of floating palaces on a sea of
+translucent azure.</p>
+
+<p>Gasping in a strange mood between delight and
+despair, he flung up his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! I have loved these hills. Of all the longings
+and affections that one by one have perished
+from my heart, the solitary passion for nature has
+alone remained, unlessened and undisturbed. I
+love these trees with their countless boughs; these
+rocks, with their hidden pitfalls and sudden precipices.
+The sky that bends above me here is
+bluer than any other sky; and when it frowns and
+gathers its storms together, and hurls them above
+these ledges and upon my uncovered head, I
+throw up my arms as I do now and exult in the
+tumult, and become a part of it, till the hunger in
+my soul is appeased, and the blood in my veins
+runs mildly again. And now I must quit all this.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+I must give to men thoughts that have been
+closely wedded to Nature. I must tear her image
+from my heart, and in her pure place substitute
+interests in a life I thought forever sacrificed to
+her worship. It is a bitter task, but I will perform
+it. There are other calls than those which reverberate
+from yon peaks. I have just heard one,
+and my feet go down once more into the valleys."</p>
+
+<p>His arms fell with the last words, and his eyes
+returned again to my face.</p>
+
+<p>"Come into the cave," said he. "I cannot tell
+my story in the sight of these pure skies."</p>
+
+<p>I followed him without a word. He had affected
+me. The invocation in which he had indulged,
+and which, from another man, and other circumstances,
+would have struck me as a theatrical
+attempt upon my sympathy as forced as it was
+unnatural, was in him so appropriate, and in such
+keeping with the grandeur of the scene by which
+we were surrounded, that I was disarmed of criticism,
+and succumbed without resistance to his
+power.</p>
+
+<p>The cave, once entered, was light enough. On
+the ground were spread in profusion leaves and
+twigs of the sweet-smelling cedar, making a carpet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+as pleasing as it was warm and healthful. On one
+side I saw a mound of the same, making a couch,
+across which a great cloak was spread; while beyond,
+the half-defined forms of a rude seat and
+table appeared, lending an air of habitableness to
+the spot, which, from the exterior, I had hardly
+expected to find. A long slab of stone served as
+a hearth, and above it I perceived a hole in the
+rock, toward which a thin column of smoke was
+rising from a few smouldering embers that yet
+remained burning upon the great stone below.
+Altogether, it was a home I had entered; and
+awed a little at the remembrance that it had been
+the refuge of this solitary man through years
+pregnant with events forever memorable in the
+history of the world as those which gave birth to
+a new nation, I sank down upon the pile of cedar
+he pointed out to me, and waited in some impatience
+for him to begin his tale.</p>
+
+<p>This he seemed in no hurry to do. He waited
+so long with his chin sunk in his two hands and
+his eyes fixed upon vacancy, that I grew restless
+and was about to break the silence myself, when,
+without moving, he suddenly spoke.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>TWO WOMEN.</h3>
+
+
+<p>"You want to hear about Edwin Urquhart.
+Well, you shall, but first I promise you that I
+shall talk much less of him than of another person.
+Why? because it is on account of this other
+person that I hate him, and solely because of this
+other person that I avenge myself, or seek to
+assist others in avenging the justice you say he
+has outraged.</p>
+
+<p>"We were friends from boyhood. Reared in
+the same town and under the same influences,
+there was a community of interests between us
+that threw us together and made us what is called
+friends. But I never liked him. That is, I never
+felt a confidence in him which is essential to a
+mutual understanding. And, though I accepted
+his companionship, and was much with him at the
+most critical time of my life, I always kept one
+side, and that the better side, of my nature closed
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>"He was a gentleman with no expectations; I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+the inheritor of a small fortune that made my
+friendship of temporary use to him, even if it did
+not offer him much to rely on in the future. We
+lived, he with an uncle who was ready to throw
+him off the moment he was assured that he would
+not marry one of his daughters, and I in my own
+house, which, if no manor, was at least my own,
+and for the present free from debt. I myself
+thought that Urquhart intended to marry one of
+the girls to whom I have just alluded. But it
+seems that he never meant to do this, and only
+encouraged his uncle to think so because he was
+not yet ready to give up the shelter he enjoyed
+with him. But of this, as I say, I was ignorant,
+and was consequently very much astonished when,
+one nightfall, in passing the great Dudleigh place,
+he remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"'How would you like to drink a glass with me
+in yonder? Better than in the Fairfax kitchen,
+eh?'</p>
+
+<p>"I thought he was joking. ''Tis a fine old
+house,' I observed. 'No doubt its wines are good.
+But it is no tavern, and I question if Miss Dudleigh
+would make either of us very welcome.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You do! Then you don't know Miss Dud<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>leigh,'
+he vaunted, with a proud swelling of his
+person, and a lift of his head that almost took my
+breath away. For, though he was a handsome
+fellow&mdash;too handsome for a man no worthier than
+he&mdash;I should no more have presumed to have
+associated him in my thoughts with Miss Dudleigh
+than if he had been a worker in her fields.
+Not so much because she was rich&mdash;very rich for
+that day and place&mdash;or that her family was an old
+one, and his but a mushroom stock, as that she was
+a being of the gentlest instincts and the purest
+thoughts, while he was what you may have gathered
+from my words&mdash;vain, coarse, cowardly and
+mean; an abject cur beside her, who was, and is,
+one of the sweetest women the sun ever shone
+upon."</p>
+
+<p>At this expression of admiration on the part of
+the hermit, which proved him to be in entire
+ignorance of the crime which had been perpetrated
+against this woman, I found myself struck
+so aghast that I could not forbear showing it.
+But he was too engrossed in his reminiscences to
+notice my emotion, and presently continued his
+story by saying:</p>
+
+<p>"I probably betrayed my astonishment to Ur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>quhart,
+for he gave a great laugh, and forced me
+about toward the gates.</p>
+
+<p>"'We will not be turned out,' he said. 'Let us
+go in and pay our respects.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But,' I stammered.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, it's all right,' he pursued. 'The fair lady
+is of age and has the privilege of choosing her
+future husband. I shall live in clover, eh? Well,
+it is time I lived in something. I have had a hard
+enough time of it so far, for a none too homely
+fellow.'</p>
+
+<p>"I was overwhelmed; more than that, I was
+sickened by these words, whose import I understood
+only too well. Not that I had any special
+interest in Miss Dudleigh; indeed, I hardly knew
+her; but any such woman inspires respect, and I
+could not think of her as allied to this man without
+a spasm of revolt that almost amounted to fear.</p>
+
+<p>"'You are going to marry her, this white rose!'
+I exclaimed. 'I should as soon have thought of
+your marrying a princess of the royal house. I
+hope you appreciate your unbounded good fortune.'</p>
+
+<p>"He pointed to the great chimneys and imposing
+facade of the fine structure before us. 'Do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+you think I am so blind as not to know the advantage
+of being the master in a house like that?
+You must not think me quite a fool if I am not as
+clever a fellow as you are. Remember that I am
+a poorer one and like my ease better.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But Miss Dudleigh?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, she's a trifle peaked and dull, but she's
+fond and not too exacting.'</p>
+
+<p>"I was angry, but had no excuse for showing
+it. Righteous indignation he could never have
+understood, and to have provoked a quarrel without
+any definite end in view would have been
+folly. I remained silent, therefore, but my heart
+burned within me.</p>
+
+<p>"It had not lost its heat when we entered her
+house, and when my eyes fell upon her seated at
+her spinet in front of a latticed window that
+brought out her gentle figure in all its sweet simplicity,
+I felt like clutching, and flinging back
+over the threshold, which his desecrating foot
+should never have crossed, the hollow-hearted
+being at my side, who could neither see her beauty
+nor estimate the worth of her innocent affection.</p>
+
+<p>"There was an aunt or some such relative in the
+room with her, but this did not hinder the glad<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+smile from rising to her lips as she saw us&mdash;or
+rather him, for she hardly seemed to notice
+my presence. I learned afterward that this aunt
+had been greatly instrumental in bringing these
+incongruous natures together; that for reasons of
+her own, which I have never attempted to fathom,
+she thought Edwin Urquhart the best husband
+that her niece could have, and not only introduced
+him into the house, but stood so much his friend
+during the first days of his courtship that she
+gradually imparted to her niece her own enthusiasm,
+till the poor girl saw&mdash;or thought she saw&mdash;the
+ideal of her dreams in the base and shallow
+being whom I called my friend.</p>
+
+<p>"However that may be, she certainly rose from
+her spinet that night in a pretty confusion that
+made her absolutely lovely, and advancing with
+the mingled dignity of the heiress and the tender
+bashfulness of the maiden in the presence of him
+she loved, she tendered us a courtesy whose grace
+put me out of ease with myself, so much it expressed
+the manners of people removed from the
+sphere in which it had hitherto been my lot to
+move.</p>
+
+<p>"But Urquhart showed no embarrassment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+His fine figure&mdash;he had that&mdash;bent forward with
+the most courtly of bows, and after the introduction
+of my humble self to her notice, he entered
+into a conversation which, if shallow, was at least
+bright, and for the moment interesting. As I had
+no wish to talk, I gave myself up to watching
+her, and came away at last more fixed than ever
+in my belief of her extreme worthiness and of
+his extreme presumption in thinking of calling so
+perfect a creature his.</p>
+
+<p>"'Would to God she was as poor as Janet Fairfax,'
+I thought to myself. 'Then she would never
+have attracted his attention, and might have
+known what happiness was with some man who
+could appreciate her. Now she is doomed, and
+being fatherless and motherless, will rush on to
+her fate, and no one can stop her.'</p>
+
+<p>"Thus I thought, and thus I continued to think
+as chance and Urquhart's stubborn will led me
+more and more to her house, and within the radius
+of her gentle influence. But my thoughts never
+went further. I never saw her, even in my dreams,
+fostered by me, or soothed of an old grief by my
+love and affection. For though she was a dainty
+and gracious being, with beauty enough to de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>light
+the eyes and warm the heart, she was not
+the one destined to move me, and awake the tumultuous
+passions that lay dormant in my own
+scarcely understood nature. Urquhart, therefore,
+was not acting unwisely in taking me there so
+often, though, if I could have foreseen what was
+likely to be the result of those visits, I should have
+leaped from my house's roof on to the stones below
+before I had passed again under those fatal portals.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet&mdash;would I? Do we fear suffering or
+apathy most? Is it from experience or the monotony
+of a commonplace existence that we quickest
+flee? A man with passions like mine must love;
+and if that love comes girt with flame and mysterious
+death, he still must embrace it, and rise and
+fall as the destinies will.</p>
+
+<p>"But I talk riddles. I have not yet told you of
+her; and yet speak of fire and death. I will try
+to be more coherent, if only to show that the
+years have brought me some mastery over myself.
+One day&mdash;it was a fall day and beautiful as limpid
+sunshine and a world of yellowing woods could
+make it&mdash;I went to Miss Dudleigh's house to
+apologize for my friend, who had wished to improve
+the gorgeous sunshine elsewhere.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I had by this time lost all fear of her, as well
+as of her rich and spacious surroundings, and
+passed through the hospitable door and along the
+wide halls to the especial room in which we were
+wont to find her, with that freedom engendered
+by an intimacy as cordial as it was sincere. It
+was the room where first I had seen her, the room
+with the wide latticed window at the back, and
+the spinet beneath it, and the old carven chair
+of oak in which her white-clad form had always
+looked so ethereal; and I entered it smiling, expecting
+to see her delicate figure rise from the
+window, and advance toward me with that look
+of surprise and possible disappointment which
+the absence of Urquhart would be apt to arouse
+in this too loving nature. But the room was
+empty and the spinet closed, and I was about
+turning to find a servant, when I felt an influence
+stealing over me so subtile and so peculiar
+that I stood petrified and enthralled, hardly knowing
+if it were music that held me spell-bound or
+some unknown and subduing perfume, that, filling
+my senses, worked upon my brain, and made me
+feel like a man transported at a breath from the
+land of reality into a land of dreams.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"So potent the spell, so inexplicable its action,
+that minutes may have elapsed before I wrenched
+myself free from its power and looked to see what
+it was that so moved me. When I did, I found
+myself at a loss to explain it. Whether it was
+music or perfume, or just the emanation from an
+intense personality, I have never determined. I
+only know that when I turned, I saw standing
+before me, in an attitude of waiting, a woman of
+such marvelous attractions, and yet of an order
+of beauty so bizarre and out of keeping with the
+times and the place in which she stood, that I
+forgot to question everything but my own sanity
+and the reality of a vision so unprecedented in
+all my experience. I therefore simply stood like
+her, speechless and lost, and only came to myself
+when the figure before me suddenly melted from
+a statue into a woman, and, with a deep and
+graceful courtesy, almost daring in its abandonment,
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"'You must be Master Felt, I take it. Master
+Urquhart would never be so thrown off his
+balance by a simple girl like me.'</p>
+
+<p>"There are voices that pierce like arrows and
+sink deep into the heart, which closes over their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+sweetness forever. So it was with this voice.
+From its first sound to its last it held me enthralled,
+and had she shown but half the beauty
+she did, those accents of hers would have made
+me her slave. As it was, I was more than her
+slave. I instantly became all and everything to
+her. I breathed but as she breathed, and in the
+absorbing delight which from that moment took
+hold of me I lost all sense of the proprieties and
+conventionalities of social intercourse, and only
+thought of drinking in at one draught the strange
+and mysterious loveliness which I saw revealed
+before me.</p>
+
+<p>"She was not a tall woman, no taller than Miss
+Dudleigh. Nor was she of marked carriage or
+build. Her form, indeed, seemed only made to
+express suppleness and passion, and was as speaking
+in its slight proportions as if it had breathed
+forth the nobler attributes of majesty and strength.
+Her dress was dark, and clung to every curve
+with a loving persistence bewildering in its effect
+upon an eye like mine. Upon the bust, and just
+below the white throat, burned a mass of gorgeous
+flowers as ruddy as wine; and from one
+delicate hand a long vine trailed to the floor. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+it was in her face that her power lay; in her eyes
+possibly, though I scarcely think so, for there
+were curves to her lips such as I have never seen
+in any other, and a delicate turn to her nostril
+that at times made me feel as if she were breathing
+fire. Her skin was pale, her forehead broad
+and low, her nose straight, and her lips of a brilliant
+vermilion. I, however, saw only her eyes,
+though I may have been influenced by the rest of
+her bewildering physiognomy; they were so large,
+so changeful, so full of alternating flames and languor,
+so indeterminate in color, and yet so persistent
+in their effect upon the eye and the feelings.
+Looking at them, I swore she was an anomaly.
+Gazing into them, I resolved that she was this
+only because she let herself be natural and sought
+to smother none of the fires which had been enkindled
+by a bountiful nature within her soul.</p>
+
+<p>"While I was reasoning thus, she made me
+another mock courtesy, and explaining her presence
+by saying she was a cousin of Miss Dudleigh's,
+ventured to remark that, if Master Felt
+would be kind enough to state his errand, she
+would be glad to carry it to Miss Dudleigh. I
+answered confusedly, but with a fervor she could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+not fail to understand, and following up this effort
+by another, led her into a conversation in which
+my responses gradually became such as she should
+expect from a gentleman and an equal.</p>
+
+<p>"For with her, notwithstanding her beauty, and
+the sense of splendor and luxury which breathed
+from her mysterious presence, I never felt that
+sense of personal inferiority I experienced at first
+with Miss Dudleigh. Whether I recognized then,
+as now, the lack of those high qualities which lift
+one mortal above another, I do not know. I am
+only certain that, while I regarded her as a
+woman to be obeyed, to be loved, to be followed
+through life, through death, into whatsoever regions
+of horror, danger, and pain she might lead
+me, I never looked upon her as a being out of my
+world or beyond my reach, except so far as her
+caprice might carry her.</p>
+
+<p>"It was therefore with the fixed determination
+to force from her some of the interest she had
+awakened in me, that I grasped at this first opportunity
+of conversation; and in spite of her unrest&mdash;she
+did not want to linger&mdash;held her to the spot
+till I had made her feel that a man had come into
+her life whose will meant something, and to whom,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+if she did not subdue the light of her glances, she
+must give account for every added throb she
+caused to beat in his proud heart.</p>
+
+<p>"This done I let her go, for Miss Dudleigh was
+not well and needed her, and the door closed behind
+her mysterious smile, and the sound of her
+steps died out in the hall, and in fancy only could
+I behold her supple, dark-clad form go up the
+broad staircase, projecting itself now against the
+golden daylight falling through one window, and
+now against the clustering vines that screened
+another, till she disappeared in regions of which I
+knew nothing and whither even my daring imagination
+presumed not to follow. And the vision
+never left my eyes nor her form my heart, and I
+went out in my turn, a burning, eager, determined
+man, where in a short half hour before I had entered
+cold and self-satisfied, without hope and
+without exaltation.</p>
+
+<p>"This was the beginning. In a week the earth
+and sky held nothing for me but that woman.
+Her name, which I had not learned at our first interview,
+was Marah Leighton&mdash;a fitting watch-word
+for a struggle that could terminate only with
+my life! For I had got to the pass that this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+woman must be mine. I would have her for my
+wife or see her dead; she should never leave the
+town with another. Yes; homely as I was, without
+recommendation of family, or more means
+than enough to keep a wife from want, I boldly
+entered upon this determination, and in the face
+of some dozen lovers, that at the first revelation
+of her beauty began to swarm about her steps,
+pressed my claims and pushed forward my suit
+till I finally gained a hearing, and after that a
+promise, which, if vague, was more than any of
+her other lovers could boast of, or why did they
+all gradually withdraw from the struggle, leaving
+me alone in my homage?</p>
+
+<p>"The uncertainties of her position (she was an
+orphan and dependent upon Miss Dudleigh for
+subsistence) had added greatly to my tenderness
+for her. It also added to my hope. For if I were
+poor, she was poorer, and ought to find in the
+managing of my humble home a satisfaction she
+could not experience in the enjoyment of a relative's
+bounty, even if that relative was a woman
+like Honora Dudleigh. And yet one doubts an
+exultant happiness; and as I grew to know her
+better, I realized that if I ever did succeed in mak<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>ing
+her mine, I must see to it that my fortunes
+bettered, as she would never be happy as a poor
+man's wife, even if that man brought her independence
+and love.</p>
+
+<p>"She loved splendor, she loved distinction, she
+loved the frivolities of life. Not with a childish
+pleasure or even a girlish enthusiasm, but with a
+woman's strong and determined spirit. I have
+seen her pace through and through those great
+halls just for the pleasure of realizing their spaciousness;
+and though the sight made my heart
+cringe, I have admired her step and the poise of
+her head as much as if she had been the queen of
+it all, and I her humblest vassal. Then her luxury!
+It showed as plainly in her poverty as it
+could have done in wealth. If it were flowers she
+handled, it was as a goddess would handle them.
+None were too beautiful, or too costly, or too rare
+for her restless fingers to pluck, or her dainty feet
+to tread on. Had she possessed jewels, she would
+have worn them like roses, and flung them away
+almost as freely if they had displeased her or she
+had grown weary of them. Love was to her a
+jewel, and she wore it just now because it suited
+her fancy to do so; but would not the day come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+when she would grow tired of it or demand
+another, and so fling it and me to the dogs?</p>
+
+<p>"I did not ask. I was permitted to walk at her
+side, and pay her my court, and now and then,
+when the humor took her, to press her hand or
+drop a kiss upon the rosy palm; and while I
+could do this, was it for me to question a future
+which seemed more likely to hold fewer pleasures
+than more?</p>
+
+<p>"But I grow diffuse; I must return to facts.
+Honora Dudleigh, who saw my devotion, encouraged
+it. I wondered at it sometimes, for she
+knew the smallness of my fortune, and must have
+known the nature of the woman I expected to
+share it. But as time passed I wondered less, for
+her woman's intuition must have told her, what
+observation had as yet failed to tell me, that there
+was trouble in the air, and that Marah needed a
+protector.</p>
+
+<p>"The day that I first recognized this fact made
+an era in my life. I had been so happy, so at ease
+with myself, so sure of her growing confidence
+and of my coming happiness. That I had cause
+for this, the conduct of her friends and the jealousy
+of her lovers seemed to prove. Though she gave<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+no visible token of her regard, she clung to me as
+to a support, and allowed my passion the constant
+feast of her presence and the stimulation of her
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Her enchantments, and they were innumerable,
+were never spared me, nor did she stint
+herself of a smile that could allure, nor of a glance
+that could arouse or perplex.</p>
+
+<p>"I was happy, and questioned only the extent of
+my patience, which I felt fast giving way as the
+preparations for Miss Dudleigh's marriage proceeded
+without my seeing any immediate prospect
+of my own. You can realize, then, the maddening
+nature of the shock which I received when,
+coming quietly into the house as I did one day, I
+beheld her face disappearing through one of the
+doorways, with that look upon it which I had
+always felt was natural to it, but which no passion
+of mine had ever been able to evoke, and then perceived
+in the shadow from which she had just
+glided, Edwin Urquhart, pale as excessive feeling
+could make him, and so shaken by the first real
+emotion which had ever probably moved his selfish
+soul that he not only failed to see me when I advanced,
+but hastened by me, and away into the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+solitudes of the garden, without noticing my existence,
+or honoring with a reply the words of
+wrath and confusion which, in my misery and despair,
+I threw after him."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A SUDDEN BETROTHAL.</h3>
+
+
+<p>"As for myself," continued Mark Felt, "I stood
+crushed, and after the first torrent of emotion had
+swept by, lifted my head like a drowning man and
+looked wildly about, as if, in the catastrophe
+which overwhelmed me, all nature must have
+changed, and I should find myself in a strange
+place. The sight of the door through which
+Marah Leighton had passed stung me into tortured
+existence again. With a roar of passion and
+hate I sprang toward it, burst it open, and passed
+in. Instantly silence and semi-darkness fell upon
+me, through which I felt her presence exhaling its
+wonted perfume, though I could see nothing but
+the dim shapes of unaccustomed articles of furniture
+grouped against a window that was almost
+completely closed from the light of day.</p>
+
+<p>"Advancing, I gazed upon chair after chair.
+They were all empty, and not till I reached the
+further corner did I find her, thrown at full length
+upon a couch, with her head buried in her arms,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+and motionless as any stone. Confused, appalled
+even, for I had never seen her otherwise than erect
+and mocking, I stumbled back, and would have
+fled, but that she suddenly arose, and flinging back
+her head, gave me one look, which I felt rather
+than saw, and bursting into a peal of laughter,
+called me to account for disturbing the first minute
+of rest she had known that day.</p>
+
+<p>"I was dumfounded. If she had consulted all
+her wiles, and sought for the one best way to silence
+me, she could not have chanced on one surer
+than this. I gazed at her quite helpless, and forgot&mdash;actually
+forgot&mdash;what had drawn me into her
+presence, and only asked to get a good glimpse of
+her face, which, in the dim light, was more like
+that of a spirit than of a woman&mdash;a mocking spirit,
+in whom no love could lodge, whatever my fancy
+might have pictured in the delirium of the moment
+that had just passed.</p>
+
+<p>"She seemed to comprehend my mood, for she
+flung back the curtain and drew herself up to her
+full height before me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Did you think I was playing the coquette?'
+she asked. 'Well, perhaps I was; women like
+me must have their amusements; but&mdash;'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh! the languishment in that <i>but</i>. I shut my
+eyes as I heard it. I could neither bear its sound,
+nor the sight of her face.</p>
+
+<p>"'You listened to him. He was making love to
+you&mdash;he, the promised husband of another; and
+you&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"She forced me to open my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"'And I?' she repeated, with an indescribable
+emphasis that called up the blushes to my cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"'And you,' I went on, answering her demand
+without hesitation, 'the beloved of an honest man
+who would die to keep you true, and will die if
+you play him false!'</p>
+
+<p>"She sighed. Softness took the place of scorn;
+she involuntarily held out her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I was amazed; she had never done so much
+before. I seized that hand, I pressed it wildly,
+hungrily, and with lingering fondness.</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you not know that you are everything to
+me?' I asked. 'That to win you I am ready to do
+everything, barter anything, suffer anything but
+shame! You are my fate, Marah; will you not
+let me be yours?'</p>
+
+<p>"She was silent; she had drawn her hand from
+mine and had locked it in its fellow, and now stood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+with them hanging down before her, fixed as a statue,
+in a reverie I could neither fathom nor break.</p>
+
+<p>"'You are beautiful,' I went on, 'too beautiful
+for me; but I love you. You are proud, also, and
+would grace the noblest palaces of the old world;
+but they are far away, and my home is near
+and eager to welcome you. You are dainty and
+have never taught your hands to toil, or your
+feet to walk our common earth; but there are
+affections that sweeten labor, and under my roof
+you will be so honored, so aided and so beloved,
+that you will soon learn there are pleasures of the
+fireside that can compensate for its cares, and
+triumphs of the affections that are beyond the
+dignities of outside life.'</p>
+
+<p>"Her lip curled and her hands parted. She
+lifted one rosy palm and looked at it, then she
+glanced at me.</p>
+
+<p>"'I shall never work,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>"My heart contracted, but I could not give her
+up. Madness as it was to put faith and life in the
+grasp of such a woman, I was too little of a man
+or too much of a one to turn my back upon a
+hope which, even in its realization, could bring
+me nothing but pain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'You shall not work,' I declared. And I
+meant it. If I died she should not handle anything
+harsher than rose leaves in her new home.</p>
+
+<p>"'You want me?' She breathed it. I stood in
+a gasp of hope and fear.</p>
+
+<p>"'More than I want heaven! Or, rather, you
+are my heaven.'</p>
+
+<p>"'We will be married before Honora,' she murmured.
+And gliding from my side before I had
+recovered from the shock of a promise so unexpected,
+a bliss so unforeseen and immediate, she
+vanished from my sight, and nothing but the perfume
+which lingered behind her remained to tell
+me that it was not all a dream, and I the most
+presumptuous being alive.</p>
+
+<p>"And so the hour that opened in disaster ended
+in joy; and from the heart of what I deemed an
+irredeemable disaster rose a hope that for several
+days put wings to my feet. Then something began
+to tarnish my delight, an impalpable dread
+seized me, and though I worked with love and
+fury upon my house, which I had begun adorning
+for my bride, I began to question if she had
+played the coquette in smiling upon Edwin Urquhart,
+and whether in the mockery of the laugh<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+with which she had dismissed my accusations
+there had not been some regret for a love she
+dared not entertain, but yet suffered to lose. The
+memory of the glow in her eyes, as she turned
+away from him at my step, returned with growing
+power, and I decided that if this were coquetry,
+it were sweeter than love, and longed to ask
+her to play the coquette with me. But she
+never did, and though she did not smile upon
+him again in my presence, I felt that her beauty
+was more bewildering, her voice more enchanting,
+when he was in the room with us than when
+chance or my purpose found us alone. To settle
+my doubts, I left watching her and began to
+watch him, and when I found that he betrayed
+nothing, I turned my attention from them both
+and bestowed it upon Miss Dudleigh."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>MARAH.</h3>
+
+
+<p>"Great heaven! why had I not noticed Miss
+Dudleigh before! In her changed face, and in
+the wasting of her delicate form, I saw that my
+fears were not all vain, inasmuch as they were
+shared by her; and shocked at evidences so
+much beyond my expectations, I knew not
+whether to shed the bitter tears which rose to
+my eyes in pity for her or in rage for myself.</p>
+
+<p>"We were sitting all together, and I had a full
+opportunity to observe the mournful smile that
+now and then crossed her lips as Marah uttered
+some brighter sally than common or broke&mdash;as
+she often did&mdash;into song that rippled for a minute
+through the heavy air and then ceased as suddenly
+as it had begun. She looked much oftener at
+Marah than at Urquhart, and seemed to be asking
+in what lay the charm that subdued everybody,
+even herself. And when she seemed to receive
+no answer to her secret questioning, her eyes fell
+and a sigh stirred her lips, which, if unheard by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+the preoccupied man at her side, rang on in my
+ears long after I had bidden farewell to her and
+the siren whose smiles, intentionally or unintentionally,
+seemed destined to bring shipwreck into
+three lives.</p>
+
+<p>"It was not the last time I heard that sigh. As
+the weeks progressed it fluttered oftener and oftener
+from between those pale lips, and at last the
+change in Miss Dudleigh became so marked that
+people stopped in the midst of their talk about the
+stamp act to remark upon Miss Dudleigh's growing
+weakness, and venture assertions that she
+would never live to be a bride. And yet the preparations
+for her bridal and for mine went on, and
+the day set apart for the latter drew bewilderingly
+near.</p>
+
+<p>"Marah saw my perplexity and her cousin's
+grief, but did nothing to dispel the one or assuage
+the other. She seemed to be too busy. She was
+embroidering a famous stomacher for herself, and
+while a sprig of it remained unworked she had
+neither eyes nor attention for anything else, even
+for the bleeding hearts around her. She would
+smile&mdash;O yes, smile upon me, smile upon Honora,
+and not smile upon him; but she would not meet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+her cousin's true eyes, nor would she grant me one
+minute apart from the rest in which I could utter
+my fears or demand the breaking of that spell
+whose effects were so visible, even if its workings
+were secret and imperceptible. But at last the
+stomacher was finished, and as it dropped from
+her hands I threw myself at her feet, and from
+this position, looking into her eyes, I whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"'This is the last thing that shall ever flaunt
+itself between us. You are to be mine now, and
+in token of your truth come with me into the
+conservatory, for I have words to utter that will
+not be put off.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You are cruel,' she murmured, 'you are
+tyrannical. This is a time of revolt; shall I revolt,
+too?'</p>
+
+<p>"Maddened, for her eyes were not looking at
+me, but at him, I leaped to my feet, and, regardless
+of everything but my determination to end
+this uncertainty then and there, I lifted her and
+carried her out of the room into another, where
+I could have her alone, and without the humiliating
+sense of his presence.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/gs10.jpg" width="500" height="321" alt="I lifted her" title="I lifted her" />
+</div>
+
+<p>"My bold act seemed to frighten her, for she
+stood very still where I had placed her, only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+trembling slightly when I looked at her and
+cried:</p>
+
+<p>"'Did you ask that question of me? Am I to
+understand you want to break your fetters?'</p>
+
+<p>"She plucked a rose from her breast and
+crumpled it to atoms between her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"'O why are they not golden ones!' she asked.
+'I am miserable because we must be poor; because&mdash;because
+I want to ride in a carriage, because
+I want to wear jewels and own a dozen servants,
+and trample on the pride of women plainer than
+myself. I hate your humble home, I hate your
+stiff Dutch kitchen, I hate your sordid ways and
+the decent respectability that is all you can offer
+me. Were you beautiful as Adonis, it would
+make no difference. I was born to drink wine
+and not water, and I shall never forgive you for
+forcing me to take your crystal goblet in my
+hands, while, if I had waited&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"She stopped, panting. I let my whole pent-up
+jealousy out in a word.</p>
+
+<p>"'Edwin Urquhart has not even a crystal goblet
+to offer you. He is poorer than I am, and will
+remain so till he has actually married Miss Dudleigh.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'Don't I know it!' she flashed out. 'If it had
+been otherwise do you think&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"She had the grace or the wisdom to falter.
+I regret it now. I regret that she did not go on
+and reveal her whole soul to me in one fell burst
+of feeling. As it was, I trembled with jealousy
+and passion, but I did not cast her from me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Then you acknowledge&mdash;' I cried.</p>
+
+<p>"But she would acknowledge nothing. 'I love
+no one,' she asserted, 'no one. I want what I want,
+but none of you can give it to me.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then blame me as you will, I took a great resolve.
+I determined to give her what she craved;
+convinced of her sordid nature, convinced of her
+heartlessness and the folly of ever thinking she
+could even understand, much less reciprocate my
+passion, I was so much under her sway at that moment
+that I would have flung at her feet kingdoms
+had I possessed them. Flushing, I seized her
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'You do not know what a man in love can do,'
+I cried. 'Trust me; give me yourself as you have
+promised, and sooner or later I will give you what
+you have asked. I am not a weak man or an incompetent
+one. Politics opens a vast field to an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+ambitious nature, and if war breaks out, as we all
+expect it will, you will see me rise to the front, if
+I have you for my wife and inspiration.'</p>
+
+<p>"The scorn in her eyes did not abate. 'O you
+men!' she cried. 'You think you give us everything
+with a promise. A war! What is the history
+of wars? Demolished homes, broken fortunes,
+rack, ruin and desolation. Is there gold, or honor,
+or ease in these? A war! It will not be a war.
+It will be a struggle in which men will fight barefoot
+and on empty stomachs for the privilege of
+calling themselves free. I have no sympathy with
+such a war. It robs us of comfort in the present
+and brings nothing worth waiting for in the future.
+Were I to have my will, I would take the arm of
+the first officer returning to England and remain
+there. I hate this country, so new, so crude, so
+democratic! I should like to live where I could
+ride over the necks of common people.'</p>
+
+<p>"A tory and an aristocrat! Another gulf between
+us. I looked at her in horror, but, alas! the
+horror was strangely mixed with admiration. She
+was such a burning embodiment of pride. Her peculiar
+beauty&mdash;the source of which I have never to
+this day been able to fathom&mdash;lent itself so readily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+to the expression of fury and disdain, that, recoil as
+I would from her principles, I could not shut my
+eyes to the fascination of her glance or the torturing
+charm that hid in the corners of her pouting
+lips. She was a queen. Oh, yes, but the queen
+of some strange realm in a distant oriental land,
+where right and wrong were only words, and the
+sole end of beauty was delight, without reference
+to God or one's fellows. I saw it all, I felt it all,
+yet I lingered. She was to be my wife in three
+days, and the intoxication of this prospect was in
+my blood and brain.</p>
+
+<p>"'You will do so and so,' were her next words.
+'You will give me what I ask when you have won
+it. But I cannot wait for the winning; I want it
+now. Do you know what I would do to get the
+wealth I was born to? I would risk life! I would
+walk on burning plowshares! I would&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"She stopped, and I saw the lines come out in
+her forehead. She was thinking&mdash;thinking deeply.
+I felt the shadow of a great horror creeping over
+me. I caught her impetuously in my arms. I
+kissed her passionately to drive away the demons.
+I begged and implored her to forget her evil
+thoughts, and be the woman I could love and che<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>rish;
+and finally I moved her. She shook herself
+free, but she also shook the shadow from her brow.
+She even found a smile to bestow upon me; and
+was it a tear? Could it have been a tear I saw
+for a moment glisten in her eye as she turned
+half petulantly, half imperiously away? I have
+never known, but the very suspicion filled my
+heart to overflowing, and the great sobs rose in my
+breast; and&mdash;fool that I was&mdash;I was about to beg
+her pardon, when she gave me one other look, and
+I merely faltered out:</p>
+
+<p>"'Where will you find another love like mine,
+Marah? If you got your gold, you would soon
+miss something which only comes with love. You
+would be unhappy, and curse the day you left my
+arms. I am your master, Marah; why not make
+me a happy one?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I expect,' she murmured, 'to marry you.'</p>
+
+<p>"'And then?' I could not help it; the words
+sprang to my lips involuntarily.</p>
+
+<p>"Her eyes opened wide; she literally flashed
+them upon me. I felt their lightnings play all
+about my doubtful nature, and scorch it.</p>
+
+<p>"'I will be your wife,' she uttered gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"I fell at her feet. I kissed the hem of her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+robe. In that moment I adored her. 'O best and
+fairest!' I cried, 'I will make you happy. I will
+fill your hopes to the full. You shall ride in a
+carriage, and your will shall be a law to those who
+smile in scorn upon you now, and you will be&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Mistress Felt, of most honorable degree,' she
+finished, with the half laughing disdain she could
+never keep long out of her words.</p>
+
+<p>"And thus I became again her slave, and lived
+in that sweet, if servile, condition till the hour of
+our nuptials came, and I went to conduct her to
+the church where, in sight of half the town, she
+was to be made my wife. Shall I ever forget
+that morning? It was a December day, but the
+heavens were blue and the earth white, and not a
+cloud bespoke a rising storm. As for me, I
+walked on air, all the more that I knew Urquhart
+was out of town and would not be present at the
+wedding. He had gone away on some behest of
+Miss Dudleigh's immediately after the last interview
+I have mentioned, and would not come back,
+or so I had been told, till after Miss Leighton had
+been Mistress Felt for a week. So there was
+nothing to mar my day or make my entrance into
+Miss Dudleigh's house anything but one of pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>mise.
+I saw Miss Dudleigh first. She was standing
+in the vast colonial hall when I entered, and in
+her gala robes, and with the sunshine on her head,
+she looked almost happy. Yet she was greatly
+changed from her old self, and I felt much like
+pouring out my soul to her and bidding her to
+break a tie that would never bring her peace, or
+even honor. But I feared to shatter my own
+hopes. Selfish being that I was, I dreaded to have
+her made free, lest&mdash; What? My thoughts did
+not interpret my fears, for at that moment a sunbeam
+struck down the stairs and through my
+heart, and, looking up, I saw Marah descending,
+and thought and reason flew to greet her.</p>
+
+<p>"She had been robed by her cousin's bounteous
+hand, and her dress of stiff yellow brocade burned
+in the morning light with almost as much brilliance
+as the sunshine itself. Folded across her
+bust was the wonderful stomacher, under whose
+making I had suffered so many emotions that each
+sprig of work upon it seemed to have its own tale
+of misery for my eyes, and fixed against this and
+her white throat were those masses of flowers
+without which her beauty never seemed quite
+complete. In her hair, which was piled high<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+above her forehead, flashed a huge golden comb,
+and upon her arm gleamed two bracelets, whose
+exquisite workmanship was well known to me,
+for they had been an heirloom in my family for
+years. She was fair as a dream, proud as a queen,
+cold as a statue, but she was mine! Was not the
+minister waiting for us at the church? and were
+not the horses that were to take us there even
+now champing their bits before the door?</p>
+
+<p>"She rode with me. Four white horses had
+been attached to Miss Dudleigh's coach, and behind
+these we passed in state out through the noble
+park that separated this lordly house from the
+rest, into the closely packed streets, where hundreds
+waited to catch a glimpse of the most beautiful
+woman in Albany, going to be made a
+bride.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Dudleigh rode behind us in another coach,
+and the murmur which greeted our appearance
+did not die out till after she had passed, for they
+knew she would soon be riding the same road
+with even greater state, if not with so much
+beauty; and the people of Albany loved Honora
+Dudleigh, for she was ever a beneficent spirit to
+them, and more than ever, since a shadow had fal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>len
+upon her happiness, and she had come to know
+what misery was.</p>
+
+<p>"And thus we passed on, Marah with a glowing
+flush of triumph burning on her cheek and I in
+one of those moods of happiness whose rapture was
+so unalloyed that I scarcely heard the half-laughing
+comments of those who saw with wonder how
+plain was the man who had succeeded in carrying
+off this well-known beauty. And the greater part
+of the way was traversed, and the bells of the old
+North Church became audible, and in a moment
+more we should have seen the belfry of the church
+itself rising before us, when, suddenly, the woman
+that I loved, the woman whose nuptials the minister
+was waiting to celebrate, gave a great start,
+and, turning quickly toward me, cried:</p>
+
+<p>"'Turn the horses' heads! I do not go to the
+church with you to-day. Not if you kill me, Mark
+Felt!'</p>
+
+<p>"You have heard of stray bullets coming singing
+from some unknown quarter and striking a
+person seated at a feast. Such a bullet struck me
+then. I looked at her in horror."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<h3>AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>"'You think I am playing with you,' she murmured.
+'I am not. I have sickened of these nuptials
+and am going back. If you want to, you may
+kill me where I sit. You carry a dagger, I know;
+one more red blossom will not show on my breast.
+Give it to me if you will, but turn the horses.'</p>
+
+<p>"She meant it, however much my lost heart
+might cry out for its happiness and honor. Leaning
+forward, I told the pompous driver that Miss
+Leighton had been taken very ill, and bade him
+drive back; and then with the calmness born of
+utter despair and loss, I said to her:</p>
+
+<p>"'In pity for my pride drop your head upon my
+shoulder. I have said you were sick, and sick you
+must be. It is the least you can do for me now.'</p>
+
+<p>"She obeyed me. That head on which in fancy
+I had set the crowns of empires, for whose every
+hair my heart had given a throb, sank coldly
+down till it rested upon the heart she had broken;
+and while I steadied my nerves to meet the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+changed faces of the crowd, the carriage gave a
+sudden turn, and amid murmurings that fell almost
+unheeded on my benumbed senses, we wheeled
+about and faced again the gates through which
+we had so lately issued.</p>
+
+<p>"'She is ill,' I shouted to Miss Dudleigh, as we
+passed her carriage. But she gave me no reply.
+She was gazing over the heads of the crowd at
+some distant object that enthralled her every look
+and sense; and moved by her expression as I
+thought never to be moved by anything again, I
+followed her glance, and there, on the outskirts of
+the crowd, crouching amid branches that yet refused
+to hide him, I saw Edwin Urquhart; and
+the miserable truth smote home to my heart that
+it was he who had stopped my marriage&mdash;he,
+whom I had thought far distant, but who had now
+come to hinder, by some secret gesture or glance,
+my bride on her path to the altar.</p>
+
+<p>"A dagger was hidden in my breast, and I still
+wonder that I did not leap from the carriage,
+burst through the crowd, and slay him where he
+crouched in cowardly ambush. But I let the moment
+go by, perhaps because I dreaded to bring
+the shadow of another woe into Miss Dudleigh's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+white face, and almost immediately the throng had
+surged in thickly between us, and Miss Dudleigh's
+carriage had turned after ours, and there was
+nothing further to do but to ride back, with the
+false face pressed in seeming insensibility to my
+breast, and that false heart beating out its cold
+throbs of triumph upon mine.</p>
+
+<p>"I bore it, glancing down but once upon her.
+Had the ride before me been one of miles I should
+have gone on in the same mechanical way, for my
+very being was petrified. Rage, fear, sorrow and
+despair, all seemed like dreams to me. I wondered
+that I had ever felt anything, and stared on
+and on at the blue sky before me, conscious of
+but one haunting thought that repeated itself
+again and again in my brain&mdash;that her power lay
+not in her eyes, as I had always been assured, but
+in those strange curves about her mouth. For
+her eyes were closed now, and yet I was coldly
+conscious of the fact that she had never looked
+more beautiful or more fitted to move a man, if
+a man had any heart left to be moved.</p>
+
+<p>"The stopping of the carriage before the great
+door of Miss Dudleigh's house roused me to the
+necessity for action.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'I must carry you in,' I whispered. 'I beg
+your pardon for it, but it is necessary to the
+farce.' And following up my words by action, I
+lifted her from the seat, cold and unresponsive as
+a stone, and carried her into the house and set
+her down before the astonished eyes of such
+servants as had remained to guard the house in
+our absence.</p>
+
+<p>"'Miss Leighton has not been married,' I cried.
+'She was taken ill on the way to church, and I
+have brought her back. She needs no attendance.'
+And I waved them all back, for their
+startled, gaping countenances infuriated me, and
+threatened to shatter the dreadful calmness which
+was my only strength.</p>
+
+<p>"As they disappeared, murmuring and peering,
+Miss Dudleigh entered. I gave her one glance
+and dropped my eyes. She and I could not bear
+each other's looks yet. Meantime Marah stood
+erect in the center of the hall, her face pale, her
+lips set, her eyes fixed upon vacancy. Not a
+word passed our three mouths. At last a petulant
+murmur broke the dreadful silence, and
+Marah, tossing her head in disdain, turned away
+before our eyes and began to mount the stairs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I felt my blood, which for many minutes had
+seemed at a standstill, pour with a rush through
+vein and artery, and darting to her side, I caught
+her by the hand and held her to her place.</p>
+
+<p>"'You shall not go up,' I cried, 'till you and I
+have understood each other. You have refused
+to marry me to-day. Was it some caprice that
+moved you, or&mdash;' I paused and looked behind me;
+Miss Dudleigh had shrunk from sight into one of
+the rooms&mdash;'or because you saw Edwin Urquhart
+in the crowd and followed his commanding gesture?'</p>
+
+<p>"The hand which I held grew cold as ice. She
+drew it away and looked at me haughtily, but I
+saw that I had frightened her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Edwin Urquhart is nothing to me,' came in
+low but emphatic tones from her lips. 'I did not
+want to marry any one, and I said so. It would
+be better if more brides hesitated on the threshold
+of matrimony instead of crossing it to their
+ruin.'</p>
+
+<p>"I could have killed her, but I subdued myself.
+I knew that I had lost her; that in another
+moment she would be gone, never to enter my
+presence again as my promised wife; but I utter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>ed
+no word, honored her with no glance; merely
+made her a low bow and stepped back, as I
+thought, master of myself again.</p>
+
+<p>"But in that final instant one last arrow entered
+my breast, and darting back to her side, I whispered,
+in what must have been a terrible voice:</p>
+
+<p>"'Go, falsest of the false! I have done with
+you! But if you have lied to me&mdash;if you think
+to trip up Edwin Urquhart in his duty, and break
+Honora Dudleigh's noble heart, and shame my
+honor&mdash;I will kill you as I would a snake in the
+grass! You shall never approach the altar with
+another as nearly as you have this day with me!'</p>
+
+<p>"And with the last mockery of a look, in which
+every detail of her beauty flashed with almost
+an unbearable insistence upon my eyes, I turned
+my back upon her and strode toward the outer
+door."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>HONORA.</h3>
+
+
+<p>"But I did not pass it. A sound struck my ear.
+It was that of a smothered sob, and it came from
+the room where I had first seen Miss Dudleigh.
+Instantly a vision of that sweet form bowed in
+misery struck upon my still palpitating heart; and
+moved at a grief I knew to be well nigh as bitter
+as my own, I stopped before the half-closed door,
+and gently pushed it open.</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Dudleigh at once advanced to meet me.
+Tears were on her cheeks, but she walked very
+firmly, and took my hand with an inquiry in her
+soft eyes that almost drove me distracted.</p>
+
+<p>"'What shall I do?' I cried to myself. 'Tell
+this woman to beware, or leave her to fight her
+battles alone?' No answer came from my inmost
+soul. I was appalled by her weakness and my
+own selfishness, and bowed my head and said
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"'A strange ending to the hopes of this day,'
+were the words that thereupon fell from her lips.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+'Is&mdash;is&mdash;Marah ill, or did one of her strange moods
+overtake her?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I do not understand Miss Leighton,' I replied.
+'The time I have spent in the study of her character
+has been wasted. I shall never undertake to
+open the book again.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Then,' she faltered, and an absolute terror
+grew in her eyes, 'you are going to leave her.
+She is going to be free, and&mdash;' The white cheeks
+grew scarlet. She evidently feared that she had
+shown me her heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Affected, but irresolute still, I took her hand
+and carried it to my lips.</p>
+
+<p>"'Let me thank you,' said I, 'for glimpses into
+a nature so noble and womanly that I am saved
+in this hour from cursing all womankind.'</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, how she sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"'You are good,' she murmured. 'You have
+deserved a better fate. But it is the lot of goodness
+and truth ever to meet with misappreciation
+and disdain. Here, here, only,' and she struck her
+breast with her clenched right hand, 'lie the rewards
+for honesty, long-suffering, and tenderness.
+In the world without there is nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>"Tears, which I could not restrain, welled up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+to my eyes. I could never have wept for my
+own suffering, but for hers it seemed both natural
+and real. Ah, why had she thrown the treasures
+of her heart away upon a fool? Why had she
+given the trust of her heart to a villain? I opened
+my lips to speak; she saw his name faltering on
+my tongue, and stopped me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't!' she breathed. 'I know what you
+would say and I cannot bear it. I was motherless,
+fatherless, almost friendless, and I relied upon the
+wisdom of an aunt, whose judgment was, perhaps,
+not all that it should have been. But it is too
+late now for regrets. I have launched my boat,
+and it must sail on; only&mdash;you are an honest man
+and will respect my confidence&mdash;was it Mr. Urquhart
+I saw on the outskirts of the crowd to-day?'</p>
+
+<p>"I bowed. I knew she had not asked because
+she had any doubts as to the fact of his being
+there, but because she wanted to see if I had recognized
+him and owed any of my misery to that
+fact.</p>
+
+<p>"'It was he,' said I, and said no more.</p>
+
+<p>"The mask fell from her countenance. She
+clasped her hands together till they showed white
+as marble.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'Oh! we are four miserable ones!' she cried.
+'He&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"It was my turn to stop her.</p>
+
+<p>"'I would rather you did not say it,' I exclaimed.
+'I can bear much, but not to hear another
+person utter words that will force me to think
+of the dagger I carry always in my breast. Besides,
+we may be mistaken.' I did not believe it,
+but I forced myself to say it. 'She declares he is
+nothing to her, and if that is so, you might wish to
+have kept silent.'</p>
+
+<p>"'She says! Ah! can you believe her? do you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I must&mdash;or go mad.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Then I will believe her, too. I am so slightly
+tied to this world that has deceived me, that I
+will trust on a little while longer, even if my trust
+lands me in my grave. I had rather die than discover
+deceit where I had looked for honesty and
+gratitude.'</p>
+
+<p>"I was a coward, perhaps, but I did not try
+to dissuade her. Though she was fatherless and
+motherless, and loverless and friendless, I let her
+grasp at this wisp of hope and cling to it, though
+I knew it would never hold, and that her only
+chance for happiness was passing from her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'If he were not poor,' she now breathed rather
+than whispered, 'I would find it easier to rend
+myself free. But he has nothing but what lies in
+my future, and if I should make a mistake and do
+injustice to a man that is merely suffering under
+a temporary intoxication, I should rob him of his
+only hope, without adding one chance to my
+own.'</p>
+
+<p>"I bowed, and made a movement toward the
+door. I could not stand much more of this
+strain.</p>
+
+<p>"'You are going?' she cried. 'Well, I cannot
+keep you. But that dagger! You will promise
+me to throw it away? You do not need it in defense,
+and you do not want to kill me before my
+time.'</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; I did not want to kill her. Grief was
+doing that fast enough; so I thought at that time.
+Shuddering, but resolute, I drew the tiny steel
+from my breast and laid it in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'It is all I can give you to show you my appreciation
+of your goodness.' And not trusting myself
+to linger longer lest I should take it again from
+her hand, I went out and walked hastily from the
+house.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"If you asked me what road I took, or through
+what streets I passed, or whose eye I encountered
+in my next hour's walking through the town, I
+could not tell you. If jeers followed me, I heard
+them not; if I was the recipient of sympathizing
+looks and wondering conjectures, they were all
+lost upon eyes that were blind and ears that were
+deaf. I did not even feel; and did not realize till
+night that I had been wandering for hours without
+my cloak, which I had left in the carriage and
+forgotten to take again when I went out. The first
+knowledge I had of my surroundings was when I
+found an obstruction in my path, and looking up,
+saw myself in front of my own door, and not two
+feet from me, Edwin Urquhart."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>EDWIN URQUHART.</h3>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Letter I">
+<tr><td align='left' rowspan='2' valign='top'><img src="images/gs11a.png" width="176" height="513" alt="&quot;I&quot; left" title="&quot;I&quot; left" />
+</td><td align='left'><img src="images/gs11b.png" width="424" height="462" alt="&quot;I&quot; right" title="&quot;I&quot; right" />
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='unindent'>N that moment Mark Felt
+paused and cast a glance toward
+the Hudson far below us. Then he resumed his
+narrative.</div></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<p>"I drew back," he said, "and clenched my
+hands to keep myself from strangling Urquhart.
+Then I broke into hurried pants, that subsided
+gradually into words of perplexity and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+amazement as I met his eye, and realized that it
+contained nothing but a rude sort of sympathy
+and good fellowship.</p>
+
+<p>"'How? Why? What do you mean by coming
+back?' I cried. 'You said you would be gone
+a week. You swore&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"A gay laugh interrupted me.</p>
+
+<p>"'And must a man keep every oath he makes,
+especially when it separates him from a charming
+betrothed, and a friend who swore that he would
+make this day his wedding one?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Urquhart!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Felt!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Are you a monster or are you&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'A self-possessed man who is going to take in
+charge a crazy one. Come into the house, Mark,
+a dozen eyes can see us here.'</p>
+
+<p>"He took me in charge; he piloted me into my
+own dwelling&mdash;he whose whole body I had always
+esteemed weaker than my little finger; my enemy
+too, or so I considered him; the cause of half my
+grief, of all my shame, the beginning and end of
+my hatreds.</p>
+
+<p>"When we were closeted, as we soon were in
+the room I had expended so much upon to make<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+worthy of my bride, he came and stood before me
+and uttered these unexpected words:</p>
+
+<p>"'Felt, I like you. You are the only friend I
+have, and I am indebted to you. Now, what have
+you against me?'</p>
+
+<p>"I was astonished. His whole look and bearing
+were so different from what I had expected,
+so different from anything I had ever seen in him
+before. I began to question my doubts, and
+dropped my eyes as he pursued:</p>
+
+<p>"'You have been disappointed in your marriage,
+I hear; but that need not make you as
+downcast as this. A woman as capricious as Miss
+Leighton might easily imagine she was too ill to
+go through the ceremony to-day. But she must
+have repented of her folly by this time, and in a
+week will reward you as your patience deserves.
+But what have I got to do with it? For incredible
+as it appears, your every look and tone assures
+me that you blame me for this mishap.'</p>
+
+<p>"Was he daring me? If so, he should find me
+his equal. I raised my eyes and surveyed him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Shall I tell you why this is so&mdash;why I associate
+Miss Leighton's caprice with your return, and
+regard both with suspicion? Because I have seen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+you look on her with love; because I have surprised
+the passion in your face and beheld her&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well?'</p>
+
+<p>"The tone was indescribable. It was as if a
+hand had taken me by the throat and choked me.
+I drew off and was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"He seized the word at once.</p>
+
+<p>"'You have seen nothing. If you think you
+have, then have you deceived yourself. Marah
+Leighton has beauty, but it is not a kind that
+moves me&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"He paled. Was it horror of the lie he was
+uttering? I have never known, never shall
+know.</p>
+
+<p>"'The woman I am going to marry is Honora
+Dudleigh.'</p>
+
+<p>"I gazed at him, determined to find the truth if
+it were in him. He bore my look unflinchingly,
+though his color did not return, and his hands
+trembled nervously.</p>
+
+<p>"'You love her?' I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'I love her,' he returned.</p>
+
+<p>"'And your wedding day&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Is set.'</p>
+
+<p>"'May it have no interruptions,' I remarked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He laughed&mdash;an uneasy laugh, I thought&mdash;but
+jealousy was not yet dead within me.</p>
+
+<p>"'And yours?' he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"'I have had mine,' I returned. 'I shall never
+have another.'</p>
+
+<p>"He shook his head and looked at me inquisitively.
+I repeated my assertion.</p>
+
+<p>"'I shall never approach the altar again with a
+woman. I am done with such things, and done
+with love.'</p>
+
+<p>"He finished his laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"'Wait till you see Marah Leighton smile again,'
+he cried; and with the first reappearance of his
+old manner that I had seen in him since the beginning
+of this interview, he caught up a wine
+glass off the table, and filling it with wine, exclaimed
+jovially: 'Here's to our future wives!
+May they be all that love paints them!'</p>
+
+<p>"I thought his mirth indecent, his manner out
+of keeping with the occasion, and the whole situation
+atrocious. But I saw he was about to leave,
+and said nothing; but I did not drink his toast.
+When he was gone, I broke his glass by flinging
+it at my own reflection, in a glass I had bought to
+mirror her beauty; and before the day was spent,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+I had destroyed every destructible article in the
+house whose value or whose prettiness spoke of
+the attempt I had made to alter my home from a
+bachelor's abode to the nest I had thought in
+keeping with the dove I had failed to place there.
+As I did it I filled the house with mocking laughter;
+that I should have thought that this or that
+would please her, who would have found a palace
+open to criticism, and the splendors of a throne
+room scarce grand enough for her taste! I was
+but suffering the stings of a lifetime compressed
+into a day, and was miserable because I could see
+no prospect but further addition to my suffering."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>BEFORE THE WEDDING.</h3>
+
+
+<p>"Two weeks after this I was sitting beside my
+solitary hearth, musing upon my misery and longing
+for the blessed relief of sleep. There was no
+one with me in the house. I had dismissed every
+servant; for I would have no spies about me, prying
+into my misery; and though I could not keep
+the world of men and women from my doors, I
+could at least refuse to admit them; and this I did&mdash;living
+the life of a recluse almost as much as I
+do here, but with less ease, because the wind
+would bring whispers, and the walls were not
+thick enough to shut out from my fancy the
+curious glances I felt to be cast upon them by
+every passer-by that wandered through the street.</p>
+
+<p>"On this night I had been thinking of Miss
+Dudleigh, of whose visibly failing health various
+murmurs had reached me, and I felt, notwithstanding
+my determination to hold myself aloof
+from every one and everything that could in any
+way reopen my still smarting wound, I could<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+more easily find the sleep I longed for if some
+word from the great house would relieve the suspense
+in which my ignorance kept me. But I
+would not go there if I died of my anxiety, nor
+would I stoop to question any of the market men
+or women, who were the only persons admitted
+now within my doors.</p>
+
+<p>"The clock was striking, and the strange sense
+of desolation which is inseparable from this sound
+to a solitary man (you see I have no clock here)
+was stealing over me, when I heard a tap on one
+of the windows overlooking my small garden,
+and a voice came through the lattice, crying:</p>
+
+<p>"'Massa&mdash;Massa Felt.'</p>
+
+<p>"I knew the voice at once. It was that of one
+of Miss Dudleigh's servants, an honest black, who
+had always been devoted to me from the day he
+did me some trifling service with Miss Leighton.
+Hearing it now, and after such thoughts, I was so
+moved by the promise it gave of news from the
+one quarter I desired, that I stumbled as I rose,
+and found difficulty in answering him. Nor did I
+recover my self-possession for hours; for the
+story he had to tell&mdash;after numerous apologies for
+his presumption in disturbing me&mdash;was so signifi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>cant
+of coming evil that my mind was thrown
+again into turmoil, and the passions which I had
+tried to smother were roused again into action.</p>
+
+<p>"It was simply this: That one evening after
+Mr. Urquhart's departure, and the extinguishing
+of all the lights in the house, he had occasion to
+cross the garden. That in doing this he had heard
+voices, and, stepping cautiously forward, perceived,
+lying upon the snow-covered ground, near a
+certain belt of evergreens, the shadows of two
+persons, whose forms were hidden from his
+sight. Being both curious and concerned, he
+halted before coming too close and, listening, heard
+Mr. Urquhart's voice, and presently that of Miss
+Leighton, both speaking very earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>"'Will you undertake it? Can you go through
+with it without shrinking?' was what the former
+had said.</p>
+
+<p>"'I will undertake it, and I can go through with
+it,' was what the latter had replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Frightened at a discovery which might mean
+nothing and which might mean misery to a mistress
+the day of whose marriage was scarcely
+a month away, the negro held his breath, determined
+to hear more. He was immediately re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>warded
+by catching the words: 'You are a brave
+girl and my queen!' and then something like a
+prayer for a kiss, or some such favor, as a seal to
+their compact. But to this she returned a vigorous
+'No,' followed by the mysterious sentence: 'I
+shall give you nothing till I am dead, and then I
+will give you everything.'</p>
+
+<p>"After which they made a move as if to separate,
+which action so alarmed the now deeply disconcerted
+negro that he drew back in haste, hiding
+behind some neighboring bushes till they had
+passed him and disappeared, he out of the gate,
+and she through the small side entrance into the
+house. This was the previous night, and for nearly
+twenty-four hours the poor negro had tortured
+himself as to what he should do with the information
+thus surreptitiously gained. He lacked the
+courage to tell his mistress, and finally he had
+thought of me, who was her best friend, and who
+must have known there was something amiss with
+Miss Leighton, or why had I not married her
+when everything was ready and the minister waiting
+with his book in his hand?</p>
+
+<p>"Not answering this insinuation, I put to him
+one or two of the many questions that were burn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>ing
+in my brain. Had he told any of the other
+servants what he had seen? And did Miss Dudleigh
+look as if she suspected there was anything
+wrong?</p>
+
+<p>"He answered that he had not dared to speak a
+word of it even to his wife; and as for Miss Dudleigh,
+she was ill so much of the time that it was
+hard to tell whether she had any other cause for
+uneasiness or not. He only knew that she was
+greatly changed since this miserable deceiver
+came into the house.</p>
+
+<p>"I believed him, and amid all my struggle and
+wrath tried to fix my mind upon her alone. I succeeded
+only partially, but enough to enable me to
+write this line, which I entreated him to carry to
+her:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'<span class="smcap">Honored Miss Dudleigh</span>&mdash;You will forgive
+me if I overstep the bounds of friendship in yielding
+to the inner voice which compels me to say
+that if before or on your marriage day you need
+advice or protection, you may command both
+from</p>
+
+<div class='right'>
+<div style="margin-right: 4em;">Your respectful servant,</div><br />
+'<span class="smcap">Mark Felt</span>.'<br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"I did not expect a reply to this note, and I did
+not receive any. I thought I went as far as my
+position toward her allowed, but I have questioned
+it since&mdash;questioned if I should not have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+told her what the negro had heard and seen, and
+let her own judgment decide her fate. But I was
+not in my right mind in those days. I was too
+much a part of all this misery to be a fair judge of
+my own duty; and then the mysterious nature of
+Miss Leighton's remark, the incomprehensibility
+of the words&mdash;'I shall give you nothing till I am
+dead, and then I shall give you everything'&mdash;added
+such unreality to the scene, and awakened such
+curious conjectures, that I did not know where
+any of us stood, or to what especial misery the
+future pointed.</p>
+
+<p>"'Till she was dead!' What could she, what
+did she mean? She would then give him everything!
+Ah! ah!&mdash;when she was dead! Well, so
+be it. Meanwhile, there was no prospect of death
+for any one, unless it was for Miss Dudleigh, whom
+rumor acknowledged to be still fading, though
+everything was being done for her comfort, and
+physician after physician employed.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw C&aelig;sar once again in these days. I met
+him in the street, seemingly greatly to his delight,
+for he smiled till his teeth shone from ear to
+ear, and made haste to remark, in quite a jovial
+voice:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'I specs it's all right, massa. Massa Urquhart
+never looks at Miss Leighton now, but always
+doin' his best for missus, making her smile quite
+happy when she isn't coughing that dreadful
+cough. We will have a gay wedding yet. Yes;
+Miss Leighton seems to spect that; for she all de
+time making pretty things and trying them on
+missus, and laughing and cheering her up, just as
+if she didn't spect any one to die.'</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but this change of manner frightened me.
+I grew feverishly anxious, and spent night and
+day in asking myself unanswerable questions. Nor
+did these in any way abate when one day I was
+startled by the tidings that all preparations for refitting
+the great house had stopped; that the doctors
+had decided that Miss Dudleigh must remove
+to a warmer climate, and that accordingly upon
+her marriage she and her husband would set sail
+for the Bermudas, there to take up their abode till
+her health was quite restored. I doubted my ears;
+I doubted the facts; I doubted Urquhart, and I
+doubted one other most of all whose name I find it
+hard to mention even to myself.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet I should not have doubted her; I should
+have remembered the flame that was always burn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>ing
+in the depths of her eyes, and had confidence
+in that, if in nothing else. What if she had always
+been cold to me; she was not cold to him, and I
+should have known this and prepared myself. But
+I did not. I knew neither the extent of his villainy
+nor that of her despair. Had I done so, I
+might not have been crouching here a disappointed
+and hopeless man, while she&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"But I am running beyond my tale. After the
+news I had just imparted, I heard nothing more
+till the very week of the wedding. Then one of
+Miss Dudleigh's servants came to me with a note,
+the result of which was, that I walked out in the
+afternoon, and that she passed me in her carriage,
+and seeing me, stopped the horses and took me
+in, and that we rode on a short distance together.</p>
+
+<p>"'I wish to talk to you,' she said. 'I wish to
+proffer you a request; to beg of you a favor. I
+want you,' she stammered and her eyes filled
+with tears, 'to see me married.'</p>
+
+<p>"I opened my eyes with a quick denial, but I
+closed them again without speaking. After all,
+why not please her? Could I suffer more at this
+wedding than in thinking over it in my dungeon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+of a room at home? She would be there, of
+course, but I need not look at her; and if he or
+she meditated any treachery, where ought I to be
+but in the one place where my presence would be
+most useful? I decided to gratify Miss Dudleigh,
+almost before the inquiry in her eyes had
+changed to a look of suspense. 'Yes, I will come,'
+said I.</p>
+
+<p>"She drew a deep breath, and smiled with tender
+sweetness.</p>
+
+<p>"'I thank you,' she rejoined. 'I thank you
+most deeply and most truly. I do not know
+why I desired it so much. Possibly because I
+feel something like a sister to you, possibly because
+I feel afraid&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"She stopped, blushing. 'I do not mean afraid.
+Why should I feel afraid? Edwin is very good
+to me; very good. I did not know he could be
+so attentive.' And she sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"I felt that sigh go through and through me.
+Looking at her I took a sudden resolution.</p>
+
+<p>"'Honora,' I said (I had never called her by
+her first name before), 'do not give your happiness
+into Edwin Urquhart's keeping. You
+have yet three days before you for reconsidera<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>tion.
+Break your bonds, and, unhampered by
+uncongenial ties, seek in another climate for that
+peace of mind you will never enjoy here or elsewhere
+as his wife.'</p>
+
+<p>"She stared at me for a moment with wide-open
+and appealing eyes; then she shook her head, and
+answered quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"'One broken-off wedding in the family is
+enough. I cannot shock society with another.
+But, oh, Mark! why did you not warn me at first?
+I think I would have listened; I think so.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Forgive me,' I entreated. 'You know it
+would have been presumptuous in me at first;
+afterward she stood in the way.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I know,' she answered, and turned away her
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw she did not wish me to leave her yet;
+so I said:</p>
+
+<p>"'You are going away; you are going to leave
+Albany.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I must, or so Edwin thinks. He says I will
+never recover in this climate.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you wish to go?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes; I think I do. I can never be happy
+here, and perhaps when we are far away, and have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+only each other to think of, the love and confidence
+of which I have dreamed may come. At all events,
+I comfort myself with that hope.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But it is a long, long sea voyage. Have you
+strength enough to carry you through?'</p>
+
+<p>"'If I have not,' she intimated, with a mournful
+smile, 'he will be free, and I released without
+scandal from a marriage that fills you with apprehension.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' I cried, 'would I were your brother indeed!
+This should never go on.' Then impelled
+by what I thought to be my duty, I inquired:
+'And your money, Honora?'</p>
+
+<p>"She flushed, but answered in the same spirit
+in which I had spoken.</p>
+
+<p>"'As little of it as may be will remain with him.
+That much my old guardian insisted upon. Do not
+ask me any more questions, Mark.'</p>
+
+<p>"'None of a nature so personal,' I promised.
+'But there is one thing&mdash;can you not guess what
+it is?&mdash;which I ought to know. It is about
+Marah.'</p>
+
+<p>"The words came with effort, and hurt her as
+much as me. But she answered bravely:</p>
+
+<p>"'She returns to Schenectady the same day that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+we depart. I hoped she would not linger to the
+wedding, but she seems to have a strange desire
+to face again the people who have talked about
+her so freely these last few weeks. So what can
+I say to dissuade her?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Let her stay,' I muttered; 'but let her beware
+how she behaves on that day, for there will
+be two eyes watching her, prompt to see any
+treachery, and prompt, too, to avenge it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You will have nothing to avenge,' murmured
+Honora; 'that is all in the past.'</p>
+
+<p>"I prayed to Heaven she might be right, and
+ere long bowed in adieu and left her. I saw
+neither herself nor any one else again till I entered
+the Dudleigh mansion three days later to witness
+her nuptials."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>A CASSANDRA AT THE GATE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>"Miss Dudleigh, moved, perhaps, by the unpleasant
+<i>eclat</i> which had followed the broken-off
+marriage of her cousin, chose to celebrate her own
+wedding in her own house, and with as little ceremony
+as possible. Only her most intimate friends,
+therefore, were invited, but these were numerous
+enough to fill the halls and most of the lower
+rooms.</p>
+
+<p>"When I entered there was a sudden cessation
+of conversation; but this I had expected. If anything
+could add to the interest of the occasion,
+certainly it was my presence; and, feeling this, I
+made them all a profound obeisance, and, neither
+shirking their glances nor inviting them, I took
+my place in the spot I had chosen for myself, and
+waited, with a face as impassive as a mask, but
+with a heart burning with fury and love, not for
+the coming of the bride, but of her who in this
+hour ought to have been standing at my side as
+my wife.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But I miscalculated if I thought she would
+enter with them. Even her bold and arrogant
+spirit shrank from a position so conspicuous, and
+it was not till they had presented themselves and
+taken their places in front of the latticed window
+so associated with my past, that I felt that
+peculiar sensation which always followed the entrance
+of Marah into the same room with myself,
+and, yielding to the force that constrained me,
+I searched the throng with eager looks, and there,
+where the crowd was thickest, and the shadow
+deepest, I saw her. She was gazing straight at
+me, and there was in her great eyes a look which
+I did not then understand, and about which I have
+since tortured myself by asking again and again if
+it were remorse, entreaty, farewell, or despair that
+spoke through it. Sometimes I have thought it
+was fear. Sometimes&mdash; But why conjecture? It
+was an unreadable expression to me then, and even
+in remembrance it is no clearer. Whatever it betokened,
+my pride bent before it, and a flood of the
+old feeling rushed over my heart, making me
+quite weak for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"But I conquered myself, as far as all betrayal
+of my feelings was concerned, and turning from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+the spot that so enthralled me, I fixed my gaze
+upon the bride.</p>
+
+<p>"She was looking beautiful; more beautiful than
+any one had seen her look for weeks. A bright
+color suffused her delicate cheeks, and in her eyes
+burned a strange excitement, which did the work
+of happiness in lighting up her face. But it was
+a transient glow which faded imperceptibly but
+surely, as the ceremony proceeded, and passed
+completely away as the last inexorable words were
+uttered which made her the wife of the false being
+at her side.</p>
+
+<p>"He, on the contrary, was pale up to that same
+critical moment&mdash;very pale, when one remembers
+his naturally florid complexion; but as her color
+went, his rose, and when the minister withdrew,
+and friends began to crowd around them, he grew
+so jovial and so noisy that more than one person
+glanced at him with suspicion, and cast pitying
+looks at the now quiet and immobile young
+wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Meantime I sought with eager anxiety to
+catch one more glimpse of Marah. But she had
+shrunk from sight, and was not to be found. And
+the gayety ran high and the wine was poured<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+freely, and the bridegroom drank with ever-increasing
+excitement, toasting his bride, but never
+looking at her, though her eyes turned more than
+once upon him with an appeal that affected painfully
+more than one person in the crowd. At last
+she rose, and, at this signal, he put down his glass,
+and, with a low bow to the company, prepared to
+follow her from the room. They passed close to
+the place where I stood, and I caught one glance
+from his eyes. It was a laughing one, but there
+was uneasiness in it. There might have been
+something more, but I had not time to search for
+it, for at that moment I felt her dress brush against
+my sleeve, and turned to give her the smile which
+I knew her friendly heart demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"'You will wait till we go?' fell in a whisper
+from her lips; and I nodded with another smile,
+and they went on and I stood where they had left
+me, in one of those moods which made me, as far
+as all human intercourse is concerned, as much of
+an isolated being as I am in these mountains. I
+did not wake again from this abstraction till that
+same premonitory feeling, of which I have so often
+spoken, told me that something in which I was
+deeply interested was about to happen. Looking<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+up, I found myself in the room alone. During the
+hour of my abstraction the guests had gone out,
+and I had neither noticed their departure nor the
+gradual cessation of the noise which at one time
+had filled my ears with hubbub. But the bride
+had not gone. She was at that moment coming
+down the stairs, and it was this fact which had
+pierced to my inner consciousness, and aroused
+once more in me a vivid sense of my surroundings.
+He was with her, and behind them, gliding like a
+wraith from landing to landing, came Marah, clad
+like the bride in a traveling dress, but without the
+bonnet which betokened an instant departure.</p>
+
+<p>"Not anticipating her presence so near, I felt
+my courage fail, and pushing forward, joined the
+group of servants at the door. They, seeing in
+this departure of their mistress a possibly endless
+separation, were weeping and uttering exclamations
+that not only showed their devotion, but
+their fears. Shocked lest these words should reach
+her ears, I quieted them; and then seeing that the
+carriage which stood outside had a stranger for a
+driver, and that there was no accompanying wagon
+filled with their body servants and baggage, I
+asked the friendly C&aelig;sar, who had pressed close<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>
+to my side, if Mrs. Urquhart was not going to
+take a maid with her.</p>
+
+<p>"The negro at once growled out an injured
+'No!' and when I expressed my astonishment, he
+explained that 'There was no one here good
+enough to please Massa Urquhart. That he was
+going to pick up with some one in New York.
+That, though missus was sick, he would not even
+let her have her own gal go wid her as far as
+the city; said he would do everything for her
+hisself&mdash;as if any man could do for missus like
+her own Sally, who had been wid her ever since
+'fore she was born!'</p>
+
+<p>"'And the baggage?' I asked, troubled more
+than I can say by what certainly augured anything
+but favorably for her future.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, massa send dat round to his house. He
+got books, an' a lot o' things to add to it. Dere's
+enough o' dat; an' den more went down de ribber
+on a sloop a week an' more ago.'</p>
+
+<p>"'So! so! And they are going to ride?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, sah. You see, dey want to catch de ship
+w'at set sail for Bermudas, an' got to hurry; so
+massa says.'</p>
+
+<p>"By this time Urquhart and his bride had reach<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>ed
+the door. He was still gay and she was still
+quiet. But in her eye glistened a tear, while in
+his there gleamed nothing softer than that vague
+spark of triumph which one might expect to see
+in a man who had just married the richest heiress
+in Albany.</p>
+
+<p>"'Good-by! good-by! good-by!' came in soft
+tones from her lips; and she was just stepping
+over the threshold, when there suddenly appeared
+at the foot of the steps an old crone, so seamed and
+bowed with age, so weird and threatening of aspect,
+that we all started back appalled, and were
+about to draw Mrs. Urquhart out of her path,
+when the unknown creature raised her voice, and
+pointing with one skinny hand straight into the
+bride's face, shrieked:</p>
+
+<p>"'Beware of oak walls! Beware of oak walls!
+They are more dangerous to you than fire and
+water! Beware of oak walls!'</p>
+
+<p>"A shriek interrupted her. It came, not from
+the bride, but from the interior of the well-nigh
+forsaken hall behind us.</p>
+
+<p>"Instantly the old crone drew herself up into
+an attitude more threatening and more terrible
+than before.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/gs12.jpg" width="500" height="338" alt="At the foot of the steps an old crone" title="At the foot of the steps an old crone" />
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'And you,' she cried, pointing now beyond us
+toward a figure which I could feel shrinking in
+inexplicable terror against the wall. 'And you
+cannot trust them either! There is death within
+oak walls. Beware! beware!'</p>
+
+<p>"A curse, a rush, and Edwin Urquhart had
+flung himself at the old witch's throat. But he
+fell to the pavement without touching her. With
+the utterance of her last word, she had slipped
+from before our eyes and melted into the crowd
+which curiosity and interest had drawn within the
+gates, to watch this young couple's departure.</p>
+
+<p>"'Who was that creature? Let me have her!
+Give her up, I say!' leaped from the infuriated
+bridegroom's lips, as he rushed up and down before
+the crowd with threatening arms and flashing
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"But there was no response from the surging
+throng; while from his frightened wife such an
+appealing cry rung out that he returned from the
+vain pursuit, and regaining his place at Honora's
+side, put her into the carriage. But as he did so
+he could not refrain from casting a stealthy look
+behind him, which betrayed to me, if to no one
+else, that his anger was more on account of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+words uttered to Marah than to the tender being
+clinging to his arm. And a jealous fury took hold
+of me also, and I should not have been sorry if I
+had seen him fall then and there, the victim of a
+thunderbolt more certain, if not more terrible, than
+that which had just overwhelmed the two women
+nearest to our hearts.</p>
+
+<p>"'Good-by! good-by! good-by!' came again
+from the bride's pale lips; and this time I felt that
+the words were for me, and I waved my hand in
+response, but could not speak. And so they rode
+away, followed by the lamentations of the servants,
+from whom the old crone's ominous outburst had
+torn the last semblance of self-control.</p>
+
+<p>"'Another carriage for Miss Leighton!' I now
+heard uttered somewhere like a command. And
+startled at the pang it caused me, I darted back
+into the house, determined to have one parting
+word with my lost love.</p>
+
+<p>"She was not there, nor could she be found by
+any searching."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CATASTROPHE.</h3>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Letter I">
+<tr><td align='left' rowspan='2' valign='top'><img src="images/gs13a.png" width="204" height="594" alt="&quot;I&quot; left" title="&quot;I&quot; left" />
+</td><td align='left' valign='top'><img src="images/gs13b.png" width="296" height="473" alt="&quot;I&quot; right" title="&quot;I&quot; right" />
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='unindent'>HAVE but little more to tell,"
+Mark Felt continued, "but that
+little is everything to me.</div></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>"When we became positively assured that Miss
+Leighton had disappeared from the house and
+would not be on hand to take the stage to Sche<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>nectady,
+the excitement, which had been increasing
+on all sides since the ceremony, culminated,
+and the whole town was set agog to find her, if
+only to solve the mystery of a nature whose
+actions had now become inexplicable.</p>
+
+<p>"I was the first to start the pursuit. Haunted
+by her last look, and thrilled to every extremity
+by the terror of the shriek she had uttered, I did
+not wait for the alarm to become public, but
+rushed immediately up stairs at the first intimation
+of her disappearance.</p>
+
+<p>"Though I had never pierced those regions
+before, my good or evil fate took me at once to a
+room which I saw at one glance to be hers. The
+boxes waiting to be carried down, the tags and
+ends of ribbons that I recognized, the nameless
+something which speaks of one particular personality
+and no other, all were there to assure me
+that I stood in the chamber which for six months
+or more had palpitated with the breath of the
+one being I loved.</p>
+
+<p>"But of that I dared not think; it was no time
+for dreams; and only stopping to see that her
+bonnet had been taken, but her gloves left, I
+hurried down again and out of the house.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"An impulse which I cannot understand took
+me to Edwin Urquhart's house, or, rather, to that
+portion of a house which he had hired for his use
+since he had been looking forward to his marriage
+with Miss Dudleigh. Why I should go there I
+cannot say, unless jealousy whispered that only
+in this place could she hope for one final word
+with him, as he and his bride stopped at the door
+for his portion of the baggage. Be this as it may,
+I turned neither to right nor left till I came to his
+house, and when I had reached it I found that,
+with all my haste, I was too late, for not a soul
+was in its empty rooms, while far down the street
+which leads to the bridge I saw a carriage disappearing,
+which, from the wagon following it so
+closely, I knew to be the one containing Urquhart
+and his bride.</p>
+
+<p>"'She has not been here,' thought I, 'or I should
+have met her, unless&mdash;' and my eye stole with a
+certain shrinking terror toward the river which
+skirted along the garden at the back&mdash;'unless'&mdash; But
+even my thoughts stopped here. I would
+not, could not, think of what, if it were true,
+would end all things for me.</p>
+
+<p>"Leaving this place, I wandered aimlessly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+through the streets, studying each face that I met
+for intimations which should guide me in my
+search. If not a madman, I was near enough to one
+to make the memory of that hour hideous to me;
+and when at last, worn out as much by my emotions
+as by the countless steps I had taken, I
+returned to my house for a bite and sup, something
+in the sight of its desolation overpowered me, and
+yielding to a despair which assured me that I
+should never again see her in this world, I sank
+on the floor inert and powerless, and continued
+thus till morning, without movement and almost
+without consciousness.</p>
+
+<p>"Fatal repose! And yet I do not know if I
+should call it so. It only robbed me of a few
+hours less of conscious misery. For when I
+roused, when I became again myself, and looked
+about my house, there on the floor, underneath a
+curtain window which had been left unlatched, I
+saw a letter containing these words:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'<span class="smcap">Honored and Much Abused Friend</span>:&mdash;When
+you read this, Marah will be no more.
+After all that has passed&mdash;after our broken marriage
+and the departure of my cousin&mdash;life has
+become insupportable; and, believing that you
+would rather know me dead than miserable, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+ventured to write you these words, and ask you
+to forgive me, now that I am gone.</p>
+
+<p>'I loved him: let that explain everything.</p>
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span style="margin-right: 4em;">'Despairingly yours,</span><br />
+'<span class="smcap">Marah Leighton</span>.'<br />
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>"With shrieks I tore from the house. Marah
+dying! Marah dead! I would see about that.
+Racing down to the gate, I paused. Some one
+was leaning on it. It was C&aelig;sar, and at the first
+glimpse I had of his face I knew I was too late&mdash;that
+all was over, and that the whole town knew it.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, massa, I wanted to go in, but I was
+frightened. I's been waiting here an hour, sah;
+when dey told me dat dey had found her bonnet
+floating on de ribber, I know'd how you'd feel, sah,
+and so I come here and&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"I found words to ask him a question. 'When
+was this found, and where?'</p>
+
+<p>"'This morning, sah, at daybreak. It was
+caught by one of the strings to that old log, sah,
+that lies out in the ribber back of&mdash;' he hesitated&mdash;'Massa
+Urquhart's house, sah.'</p>
+
+<p>"I knew; and I had glanced that way just as
+her bright head was perhaps sinking under the
+water. I threw up my arms in anguish and stumbled
+back into the house.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'Then every one knows&mdash;' I managed to say
+on the threshold.</p>
+
+<p>"'Dat she cared for him? Yes, sah; I fear so.
+How could dey help it, sah? Mor'n one person
+saw her run down de street and go into massa's
+old house just before de carriage stopped thar, and
+as she didn't come out again, I 'specs it was from
+dat big log at the foot of the garden she jumped
+into de ribber. All de folks pities you very much,
+sah&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"I choked him off with a look.</p>
+
+<p>"'Who has been sent after Mr. and Mrs. Urquhart
+to inform them of what has happened?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No one yet, sah. But Massa Hatton&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Mr. Hatton is an old man. We must have a
+young one for this business. Go saddle me the
+quickest horse in your stables. I will ride after
+them, and overtake them, too, before they can
+reach Poughkeepsie. He shall know&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"A glance from the negro's eye warned me to
+be careful. I smothered my impatience and let
+only my earnestness appear.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mrs. Urquhart ought to know that her cousin
+is dead,' I declared.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'll tell Massa Hatton,' said the black.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But my caution was now too much aroused
+for me to make Mr. Hatton the medium of my request&mdash;he
+was Mrs. Urquhart's old guardian and
+future agent; and subduing the extreme fury of
+my feelings, I obtained his permission to act as his
+messenger. Had he known of the letter which
+had been thrown into my window, he might not
+have given his consent so freely; but I had told
+no man of that, and he and others saw me ride
+away without a seeming suspicion of the murderous
+thoughts that struggled with my grief, and
+almost overwhelmed it.</p>
+
+<p>"For to me her death&mdash;if she were dead&mdash;was
+the result of a compact entered into with the despicable
+Urquhart, who, if he could not have her
+for himself, was willing she should go where no
+other man could have her. Though the idea
+seemed quixotic, though it be an anomaly in human
+experience, for a woman thus to sacrifice
+herself, I could not ascribe any other motive to
+her deed; for the memory of that interview she
+had held with her cousin's future husband in the
+garden was still fresh in my mind. Do you remember
+the words as told me by the negro who
+overheard them? First, the question from his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+lips: 'Will you undertake it? Can you go through
+with it without shrinking and without fear?' And
+the reply from hers: 'I will undertake it, and I
+can go through with it,' followed by that assurance
+which struck me as being so inexplicable at
+the time, and which, with all the light that this
+late horrible event has thrown upon it, still preserves
+its mystery for me. 'I shall give you
+nothing till I am dead, and then I will give you
+everything.' If the conclusions I drew seemed
+wild, were they not warranted by these words?
+Did she not speak of death, and did he not encourage
+her?</p>
+
+<p>"If she were not dead&mdash;and sometimes this
+thought would cross my burning brain&mdash;then she
+was with him, forced into the company of his unwilling
+wife in that last interview which they
+must have held in his cottage. In either case he
+was a villain and a coward, deserving of death;
+and death he should have, and from the hand of
+him whom he had doubly outraged.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/gs14.jpg" width="500" height="343" alt="I approached the river" title="I approached the river" />
+</div>
+
+<p>"But as I rode out of town and came in sight
+of the river, I found myself seized by terrifying
+thoughts. Should I have to ride by the place
+where I could see them stooping with boat hooks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+they had brought up from the river bottom?
+Could I endure to face this picture, then to pass
+it, then to ride on, feeling it ever at my back,
+blackening the morning, destroying the noontide,
+making more horrible the night? Could I go
+from this place till I knew whether or not the
+sullen waters would yield up their beautiful prey,
+and would my body proceed while my heart was
+on this river bank, and my jealousy divided between
+the wretch who had urged her on to death
+and these other men who might yet touch her unconscious
+form and gaze upon her disfigured
+beauty? And the answer which welled up from
+within me was, yes, I could go; I could pass that
+picture; I could feel it glooming ever and ever
+upon me from behind my back, and never turn my
+head;&mdash;such an impetus of hate was upon me,
+driving me forward after the wretch fleeing in
+self-complacency and triumph into a future of
+wealth and social consideration.</p>
+
+<p>"But when I had done all this, when my too
+fleet horse had carried me beyond sight of the city,
+and nature, with its irresistible beauty, had begun
+to influence my understanding, other thoughts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+came trooping in upon me, and a vision of Honora
+Dudleigh's face as she took the dagger from my
+hands and an implied promise from my lips, rose
+before me till I could see nothing else. Honora,
+Honora, Honora who trusted me! who had suffered
+everything but the sight of blood! who was
+a bride, and whom it would be base ingratitude
+for me to plunge into the depths of dishonor and
+despair! And the struggle was so fierce, and the
+torture of it so keen, that ere long my brain succumbed
+to the strain, and from the height of anguished
+feeling I sank into apathy, and from apathy
+into unconsciousness, till I no longer knew
+where I was or possessed power to guide my
+horse. In this condition I was found wandering
+in a field and thence carried to a farm house,
+where I remained a prey to fever. When I
+returned to consciousness, three weeks had
+elapsed.</p>
+
+<p>"As soon as I could be moved, I went back to
+Albany. I found the community there settled in
+the belief that I had joined in death the woman I
+so much loved, and was shown a letter which had
+been sent me, and which had been opened by the
+authorities after all hope had been given up of my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+return. It was from Mrs. Urquhart, and related
+how they had changed their plans upon reaching
+New York. Having found a ship on the point of
+sailing for France, they had determined to go
+there instead of to the Bermudas, and, consequently,
+requested me to inform Mr. Hatton of
+the fact, and also assure him that he would hear
+from them personally as soon as a letter could
+reach him from the other side. As she was in
+haste&mdash;in truth, was writing this in the post office
+on the way to the ship&mdash;she would only add that
+her health had been improved by her long journey
+down the river, and that when I heard from her
+again, she was sure she would be able to write
+that all her fondest hopes had been fully
+realized.</p>
+
+<p>"And so Marah was in the river, and Urquhart
+on the seas. I had been robbed of everything,
+even vengeance, and life had nothing for me, and
+I was determined to leave it, not in the vulgar way
+of suicide, but by cloistering myself in the great
+forests. As no one said me nay, I at once carried
+out this scheme; and to show you how dead I
+had become to the world, I will tell you that as
+I turned the lock of my door and took my first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+step forward on the road which led to this spot, a
+great shout broke out in the market place:</p>
+
+<p>"'The farmers of Lexington have fired upon
+the king's troops!'</p>
+
+<p>"And I did not even turn my head!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>A DREAM ENDED.</h3>
+
+
+<p>There was silence in the cave. Mark Felt's
+story was at an end.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment I sat and watched him; then, as
+I realized all that I must yet gather from his lips,
+I broke the stillness by saying, in my lowest and
+most suggestive tone, these two words:</p>
+
+<p>"And Marah?"</p>
+
+<p>The name did not seem unwelcome. Striking
+his breast, he cried:</p>
+
+<p>"She lies here! Though she despised me, deceived
+me, broke my heart in life, and in death
+betrayed a devotion for another that was at once
+my dishonor and the downfall of my every hope, I
+have never been able to cast her out of my heart.
+I love her, and shall ever love her, and so I am
+never lonely. For in my dreams I imagine that
+death has changed her. That she can see now
+where truth and beauty lie; that she would fain
+come back to them and me; and that she does,
+walking with softened steps through the forest,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+beaming upon me in the moon rays and smiling
+upon me in the sunshine till&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Great sobs broke from the man's surcharged
+breast. He flung himself down on the floor of the
+cave and hid his face in his hands. He had forgotten
+that I had come on an errand of vengeance.
+He had forgotten the object of that vengeance; he
+had forgotten everything but her.</p>
+
+<p>I saw the mistake I had made, and for the moment
+I quailed before the prospect of rectifying
+it. He had shown me his heart. I had peered
+into its depths, and it seemed an impossible thing
+to tear the last hope from his broken life; to show
+her in her true light to his horrified eyes; to tell
+him she was not dead; that it was Honora Urquhart
+who was dead; and that the woman he
+mourned and beheld in his visions as a sanctified
+spirit was not only living upon the fruits of a
+crime, but triumphing in them; that, in short, he
+had thrown away communion with men to brood
+upon a demon.</p>
+
+<p>My feelings were so strong, my shrinking so
+manifest, that he noticed them at last. Rising up,
+he surveyed me with a growing apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>"How you look at me!" he cried. "It is not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+only pity for the past I see in your eyes, but fear
+for the future. What is it? What can threaten
+me now of importance enough to call up such an
+expression to your face? Since Marah is dead&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait!" I cried. "First let me ask if Marah is
+dead." His face, which was turned toward me, grew
+so pale I felt my own heart contract.</p>
+
+<p>"If&mdash;Marah&mdash;is&mdash;dead!" he gasped, growing huskier
+with each intonation till the last word was almost
+unintelligible.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I continued, ignoring his glance and talking
+very rapidly; "her body was never found. You
+have no proof that she perished. The letter that
+she wrote you may have been a blind. Such things
+have happened. Try and remember that such things
+have happened."</p>
+
+<p>He did not seem to hear me. Turning away, he
+looked about him with wide-open and questioning
+eyes, like a child lost in a wood.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot follow you," he murmured. "Marah
+living?" His own words seemed to give him life.
+He turned upon me again. "Do you know that she
+is living?" he asked. "Is it this you have come to
+tell me? If so, speak, speak! I can bear the news.
+I have not lost all firmness. I&mdash;I&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He stopped and looked at me piteously. I saw
+I must speak, and summoned up my courage.</p>
+
+<p>"Marah may not be living," I said, "but she did
+not perish in the river. It would have been better
+for you, though, and infinitely better for her
+if she had. She only lived to do evil, Mr. Felt.
+In bemoaning her you have wasted a noble manhood."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!"</p>
+
+<p>The cry came suddenly, and rang through the
+cavern like a knell. I could not bear it, and hurried
+forward my revelation.</p>
+
+<p>"You tell me that you received a letter from
+Mrs. Urquhart before she set sail for France.
+Was it the only letter which she has ever sent
+you? Have you never heard from her since?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never!" He looked at me almost in anger.
+"I did not want to. I bade the postmaster to destroy
+any letters which came for me. I had cut
+myself loose from the world."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you that letter? Did you keep it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I gave it back to the men who opened it.
+What was it to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mark Felt," I now asked, "did you know
+Honora Dudleigh's writing?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Of course. Why should you question it?
+Why&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And was this letter in her writing? written by
+her hand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course&mdash;of course; wasn't it signed with
+her name?"</p>
+
+<p>"But the handwriting? Couldn't it have been
+an imitation? Wasn't it one? Was it not written
+by Marah, and not Honora? She was a clever
+woman, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Written by Marah? By Marah? Great heavens,
+did she go with them, then? Were my
+secret doubts right? Is she lost to me in eternity
+as well as here? Is she living with him?"</p>
+
+<p>"She was living with him, and there is good
+reason to believe she is doing so still. There is a
+Mr. Urquhart in Paris, and a Mrs. Urquhart. As
+Marah is the woman he loved, she must be this
+latter."</p>
+
+<p>"Must be? I do not see why you should say
+must be! Is Honora dead? Is&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Honora is dead&mdash;has been dead for sixteen
+years. The woman who sailed with Mr. Urquhart
+called herself Honora, but she was not Honora.
+She who rightfully bore this name was dead and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+hidden away. It is of crime that I am speaking. Edwin
+Urquhart is a murderer, and his victim was&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>It was not necessary to say more. In the suddenly
+outstretched hand, with its open palm; in
+the white face so drawn that his mother would not
+have known it; in the gradual sinking and collapsing
+of the whole body, I saw that I had driven
+the truth home at last, and that silence now was
+the only mercy left to show him.</p>
+
+<p>I was silent, therefore, and waited as we wait
+beside a death bed for the final sigh of a departing
+spirit. But life, and not death, was in the
+soul of this man before me. Ere long he faintly
+stirred, then a smothered moan left his lips, followed
+by one word, and that word was the echo
+of my own:</p>
+
+<p>"Murder."</p>
+
+<p>The sound it made seemed to awake whatever
+energy of horror lay dormant within him. Bestirring
+himself, he lifted his head and repeated
+again that fearsome word:</p>
+
+<p>"Murder!"</p>
+
+<p>Then he leaped to his feet, and his aspect grew
+terrible as he looked up and shouted, as it were,
+into the heavens that same dread word:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Murder!"</p>
+
+<p>Filled with horror, I endeavored to take him by
+the arm, but he shook me off, and cried in a terrible
+voice:</p>
+
+<p>"A fiend, a demon, a creature of the darkest
+hell! I have worshiped her, pardoned her, dreamed
+of her for fifteen years in solitudes dedicated
+to God! O Creator of all good! What sacrilege
+I have committed! How shall I ever atone for a
+manhood wasted on a dream, and for thoughts
+that must have made the angels of Heaven veil
+their faces in wonder and pity.</p>
+
+<p>"You must have a story to tell," he now said,
+turning toward me, with the first look of natural
+human curiosity which I had seen in his face since
+I came.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said I, "I have; but it will not serve to
+lessen your horror; it will only add to it."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing can add to it," was his low reply.
+"And yet I thank you for the warning."</p>
+
+<p>Encouraged by his manner, which had become
+strangely self-possessed, I immediately began, and
+told him of the visit of this bridal party at your
+inn; then as I saw that he had judged himself
+correctly, and that he was duly prepared for all I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+could reveal, I added first your suspicions, and
+then a full account of our fatal discovery in the
+secret chamber.</p>
+
+<p>He bore it like a man upon whom emotion has
+spent all its force; only, when I had finished, he
+gave one groan, and then, as if he feared I would
+mistake the meaning of this evidence of suffering,
+he made haste to exclaim:</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Honora! My heart owes her one cry of
+pity, one tear of grief. I shall never weep for
+any one else; though, if I could, it would be for
+myself and the wasted years with which I have
+mocked God's providence."</p>
+
+<p>Relieved to find him in this mood, I rose and
+shook his hand cordially.</p>
+
+<p>"You will come back to Albany with me?" I
+entreated. "We have need of you, and this spot
+will never be a home to you again."</p>
+
+<p>"Never!"</p>
+
+<p>The echo was unexpected, but welcome. I led
+the way out of the cave.</p>
+
+<p>"See! it is late," I urged.</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head and cast one prolonged look
+around him.</p>
+
+<p>"What do I not leave behind me here? Love,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+grief, dreams. And to what do I go forward?
+Can you tell me? Has the future in it anything
+for a man like me?"</p>
+
+<p>"It has vengeance!"</p>
+
+<p>He gave a short cry.</p>
+
+<p>"In which she is involved. Talk to me not of
+that! And yet," he presently added, "what it is
+my duty to do, I shall do. It is all that is left to
+me now. But I will do nothing for vengeance.
+That would be to make a slave of myself again."</p>
+
+<p>I had no answer for this, and therefore gave
+none. Instead I shouted to my guide, and after
+receiving from him such refreshments as my weary
+condition demanded, I gave notice that I was
+ready to descend, and asked the recluse if he was
+ready to accompany me.</p>
+
+<p>He signified an instant acquiescence, and before
+the sun had quite finished its course in the west
+we found ourselves at the foot of the mountains.
+As civilization broke upon us Mr. Felt drew himself
+up, and began to question me about the
+changes which the revolution had made in our
+noble country.</p>
+
+<div class='center'><big><b>.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .</b></big></div>
+
+<p>I will not weary you, my dear Mrs. Truax, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+the formalities which followed upon our return to
+Albany. I will merely add that you may expect
+a duly authorized person to come to you presently
+for such testimony in this matter as it may be in
+your power to give; after which a suitable person
+will proceed to France with such papers as may
+lead to the delivering up of these guilty persons
+to the United States authorities; in which case
+justice must follow, and your inn will be avenged
+for the most hideous crime which has ever been
+perpetrated within our borders.</p>
+
+<div class='right'>
+<div style="margin-right: 4em;">Most respectfully,</div><br />
+<span class="smcap">Anthony Tamworth.</span><br /></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>PART III.</h2>
+
+<h3>RETRIBUTION.</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>STRANGE GUESTS.</h3>
+
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">September 29, 1791.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Two excitements to-day. First, the appearance
+at my doors of the person of whose coming I
+was advised by Mr. Tamworth. He came in his
+own carriage, and is a meager, hatchet-faced man,
+whose eye makes me restless, but has not succeeded
+in making me lose my self-possession. He
+stayed three hours, all of which he made me
+spend with him in the oak parlor, and when he
+had finished with me and got my signature to a
+long and complicated affidavit, I felt that I would
+rather sell my house and flee the place than go
+through such another experience. Happily it is
+likely to be a long time before I shall be called
+upon to do so. A voyage to France and back is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+no light matter; and what with complications
+and delays, a year or more is likely to elapse before
+the subject need be opened again in my hearing.
+I thank God for this. For not only shall I
+thus have the opportunity of regaining my equanimity,
+which has been sorely shaken by these
+late events, but I shall have the chance of adding
+a few more dollars to my store, against the time
+when scandal will be busy with this spot, and public
+reprobation ruin its excellent character and
+custom.</p>
+
+<p>The oak parlor I have shut and locked. It
+will not be soon entered again by me.</p>
+
+<p>The other excitement to which I referred was
+the coming of two new guests from New York,
+elegant ladies, whose appearance and manners
+quite overpowered me in the few minutes of conversation
+I held with them when they first entered
+my house.</p>
+
+<div class='center'><big><b>.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .</b></big></div>
+
+<p>Good God! what is that? I thought I felt
+something brush my sleeve. Yet there is no one
+near me, and nothing astir in the room! And
+why should such a sudden vision of the old oak
+parlor rise before my eyes? And why, if I must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+see it, should it be the room as it looked to me on
+that night when the two Urquharts sat within it,
+and not the room as I saw it to-day!</p>
+
+<p>Positively I must throw away the key of that
+room; its very presence in my desk makes me the
+victim of visions.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">October 5, 1791.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Why is it that we promise ourselves certain
+things, even swear that we will perform such and
+such acts, and yet never keep our promises or hold
+to our oaths? Sixteen years ago I expressed a
+determination to refit the oak parlor and make it
+look more attractive to the eye; I never did it. A
+year since I declared in language as strong as I
+knew how to employ, not that I would refit the
+oak parlor, but that I would tear it from the house,
+even at the cost of demolishing the whole structure.</p>
+
+<p>And now, only a week since, I promised myself,
+as my diary will testify, that I would throw away
+the key of this place, if only to rid myself of unpleasant
+reminders. But the key is still with me,
+and the room intact. I have neither the power
+nor the inclination to touch it. The ghost of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+woman who perished there restrains me. Why?
+Because we are not done with that room. The
+end of its story is not yet. This I feel; and I feel
+something further; I feel that it will be entered
+soon, and that the person who is to enter it is already
+in my house.</p>
+
+<p>I have spoken of two ladies&mdash;God knows with
+but little realization of the fatal interest they
+would soon possess for me. They came without
+servants some four days ago, and saying they
+wished to remain for a short time in this beautiful
+spot, at once accepted the cheerful south room
+which I reserve for such guests as these. As they
+are very handsome and distinguished-looking, I
+felt highly gratified at their patronage, and was
+settling down to a state of complacency over
+the prospects of a profitable week, when something,
+I cannot tell what, roused in me a spirit of
+suspicion, and I began to notice that the elder lady
+was of a very uneasy disposition, exhibiting a
+proneness to wander about the house and glide
+through its passages, especially those on the
+ground floor, which at first made me question her
+sanity, and then led me to wonder if through some
+means unknown to me she had not received a hint<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+as to our secret chamber. I watch, but cannot yet
+make out. Meanwhile a description of these women
+may not come amiss.</p>
+
+<p>They are both beautiful, the younger especially.
+When I first saw them seated in my humble parlor,
+I thought them the wife and daughter of one
+of our great generals, they looked so handsome
+and carried themselves so proudly. But I was
+presently undeceived, for the name they gave was
+a foreign one, which my English tongue finds it
+very hard even yet to pronounce. It is written
+Letellier, with a simple Madame before it for the
+mother, and Mademoiselle for the daughter, but
+how to speak it&mdash;well, that is a small matter. I do
+speak it and they never smile, though the daughter's
+eye lights up at times with a spark of what I
+should call mirth, if her lips were not so grave and
+her brow so troubled.</p>
+
+<p>Yes; troubled is the word, though she is so
+young. I find it difficult to regard her in any
+other light than that of a child. Though she
+endeavors to appear indifferent and has a way of
+carrying herself that is almost noble, there is certainly
+grief in her eye and care on her brow. I
+see it when she is alone, or rather before she be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>comes
+aware of another's presence; I see it when
+she is with her mother; but when strangers come
+in or she assembles with the rest of the household
+in the parlor or at the table, then it vanishes, and
+a sweet charm comes that reminds me&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>But this is folly, sheer folly. How could she
+look like Mrs. Urquhart? Imagination carries
+me too far. Equal innocence and a like gentle
+temper have produced a like result in sweetening
+the expression. That is all, and yet I remember
+the one woman when I look at the other, and
+shudder; for the woman who calls this child
+daughter has her eye on the oak parlor, and may
+meditate evil&mdash;must, if she knows its secret and
+yet wishes to enter it. But my imagination is
+carrying me too far again. This woman, whatever
+her faults, loves her daughter, and where
+love is there cannot be danger. Yet I shudder.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Letellier merits the description of an
+abler pen than mine. I like her, and I hate her.
+I admire her, and I fear her. I obey her, and yet
+hold myself in readiness for rebellion, if only to
+prove to myself that I will be strong when the
+time comes; that no influence, however exerted,
+or however hidden under winning smiles or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
+quietly controlling glances, shall have power to
+move me from what I may consider my duty, or
+from the exercise of such vigilance as my secret
+fears seem to demand. I hate her; let me remember
+that. And I distrust her. She is here
+for evil, and her eye is on the oak parlor. Though
+it is locked and the key hidden on my person, she
+will find means to possess herself of that key
+and open that door. How? We will see. Meantime
+all this is not a description of Madame Letellier.</p>
+
+<p>She is finely formed; she is graceful; she is
+youthful. She dresses with a taste that must
+always make her conspicuous wherever she may
+be. You could not enter a room in which she
+was without seeing her, for her glance has a
+strange power that irresistibly draws your glance
+to it, though her eyes are lambent rather than
+brilliant, and if large, rarely opened to their full
+extent. Her complexion is dark; that is, in comparison
+with her daughter's, which is of a marble-like
+purity. But it has strange flushes in it, and
+at times seems almost to sparkle. Her hair is
+brown, and worn high, with a great comb in it,
+setting off the contour of her face, which is almost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+perfect. But it is in the expression of her mouth
+that her fascination lies. Without sweetness,
+except when it smiles upon her daughter, without
+mirth, without any expression speaking of good-will
+or tenderness, there is yet a turn to the lips
+that moves the gazer peculiarly, making it dangerous
+to watch her long unless you are hardened
+by doubts, as I am. Her hands are exquisite, and
+her form beauty itself.</p>
+
+<p>The daughter is statuesque; not in the sense of
+coldness or immobility, but in the regularity of
+her features and the absence of any coloring in
+her cheeks. She is lovely, and there breathes
+through every trait a gentle soul that robs my admiration
+of all awe and makes my old and empty
+heart long to serve her. Her eyes are gray and
+her hair a reddish brown, with kinks and curls in
+it like&mdash; But, pshaw! there comes that dream
+again! Was Honora Urquhart's hair so very
+unique that a head of wavy brown hair should
+bring her up so startlingly to my mind?</p>
+
+<p>They are stopping here on their way to Albany&mdash;so
+the elder lady says. They came from New
+York. So they did, but if my intuitions are not
+greatly at fault, the place they started from was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
+France. The fact that the marks and labels have
+all been effaced from their baggage is suspicious in
+itself. Can they be friends of the two miserable
+wretches who dishonored my house with a ghastly
+crime? Is it from them that madame's knowledge
+comes, if she has any knowledge? The thought
+awakens my profoundest distrust. Would that
+Mr. Tamworth were within reach! I think I will
+write him. But what could I write that would
+not look foolish on paper? I had better wait
+a while till I see something or hear something
+more definite.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>MRS. TRUAX TALKS.</h3>
+
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">October</span> 7, 1791.<br />
+</div>
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/gs15.png" width="400" height="435" alt="T" title="T" />
+</div>
+<div class='unindent'>HIS morning I was exceedingly
+startled by one of
+my guests suddenly asking
+me before several of
+the others, if my inn had
+a ghost.</div>
+
+<p>"A ghost!" I cried, for
+the moment quite aghast.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," was the reply; "it has the look of a
+house which could boast of such a luxury. Don't
+you think so, Mr. Westgate?"</p>
+
+<p>This is a newcomer who had just been introduced.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," observed the latter, "as I have seen
+only this room, and as this room is anything but
+ghostlike at the present moment, I hardly consider
+myself competent to judge."</p>
+
+<p>"But the exterior! Surely you noticed the exterior.
+Such a rambling old structure; such a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+beetling top to it, as if it had settled down here
+to brood over a mysterious past. I never see it,
+especially at twilight, that I don't wonder what
+lies so heavily upon its conscience. Is it a crime?
+There would be nothing strange about it if it was.
+Such old houses rarely have a clean past."</p>
+
+<p>It was nonchalantly said, but it sank deep into
+my heart. Not that I felt that he had any motive
+in saying it&mdash;I knew the young scapegrace too
+well&mdash;but that I was conscious from his first word
+of two eyes burning on my face, which robbed me
+of all self-possession, though I think I sat without
+movement, and only paled the slightest in the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>"A house that dates back to a time when the
+white men and the red fought every inch of the
+territory on which it stands would be an anomaly
+if it did not have some drops of blood upon it," I
+ventured to say, as soon as I could command my
+emotions.</p>
+
+<p>"True," broke in a low, slow voice&mdash;that of Madame
+Letellier. "Do you know of any especial
+tragedy that makes the house memorable?"</p>
+
+<p>I turned and gave her a look before replying.
+She was seated in the shadows of a remote corner,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+and had so withdrawn herself behind her daughter
+that I could see nothing of her face. But her
+hands were visible, and from the force with which
+she held them clasped in her lap I perceived that
+the subject we were discussing possessed a greater
+interest for her than for any one else in the room.
+"She has heard something of the tragedy connected
+with this house," was my inward comment,
+as I prepared to answer her.</p>
+
+<p>"There is one," I began, and paused. Something
+of the instinct of the cat with the mouse had
+entered into me. I felt like playing with her suspense,
+cruel as it may seem.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, tell us!" broke in the daughter, a sudden
+flush of interest suffusing for a moment her white
+cheek. "That is, if it is not too horrible. I never
+like horrible stories; they frighten me. And as
+for a ghost&mdash;if I thought you kept such a creature
+about your house, I should leave it at once."</p>
+
+<p>"We have no ghosts," I answered, with a gravity
+that struck even myself unpleasantly, it was in
+such contrast to her mellow and playful tones.
+"Ghosts are commonplace. We countenance
+nothing commonplace here."</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" broke in a voice from the crowd of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+young men. "The house is above such follies. It
+must have some wonderful secret, then. What is
+it, Mrs. Truax? Do you own a banshee? Have
+you a&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Mamma, you hurt me!"</p>
+
+<p>The cry was involuntary. Madame had caught
+her daughter by the hand and was probably unaware
+what passion she had put into her clasp.
+Mademoiselle Letellier blushed again at the sound
+of her own voice, and prayed her mother's pardon
+with the most engaging of smiles. As she did so,
+I caught a glimpse of that mother's face. It was
+white as death. "Decidedly, she knows more than
+she ought to," thought I. "And yet she wants to
+know more. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Happy-Go-Lucky Inn," I observed, as
+soon as the flutter caused by this incident had
+subsided, "is no more haunted by a banshee than
+by a ghost. But that is not saying it should not
+be. It is old enough, it is respectable enough; it
+has traditions enough. I could tell you tales of
+its owners, and incidents connected with the coming
+and going of the innumerable guests who have
+frequented it both before and during the revolution,
+that would keep you here till morning. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+the one story I will tell must suffice. We should
+lose our character of mystery if I told you all.
+Besides, how could I tell all? Who could ever tell
+the complete story of such a house as this?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hear! hear!" cried another young man.</p>
+
+<p>"Years ago&mdash;" I stopped again, wickedly stopped.
+"Madame, will you not come forward where
+it is lighter?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thank you," Madame Letellier responded.</p>
+
+<p>She rose deliberately and came forward, tall,
+mute and commanding. She sat down in the light;
+she looked me in the face; she robbed me even of
+my doubts. I felt my heart turn over in my breast
+and wondered.</p>
+
+<p>"You do not proceed," she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me," said I; and assuming a nonchalance
+I was far from feeling, I commenced again.
+I had played with her fears. I would play with
+them further. I would see how much she could
+bear. I resumed:</p>
+
+<p>"Years ago, when I was younger and had been
+mistress of this place but a short time, there entered
+this place one evening, at nightfall, a young
+couple. Did you speak, madame? Excuse me,
+it was your daughter, then?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes," chimed in the latter, coming forward
+and taking her stand by the mother, greatly to the
+delight of the young gentlemen present, who asked
+for nothing better than an opportunity to gaze
+upon her modest but exquisite face. "Yes; it was
+I. I am interested, that is all."</p>
+
+<p>I began to hate my role, but went on stolidly.</p>
+
+<p>"They were a handsome pair, and I felt an interest
+in them at once. But this interest immeasurably
+heightened when the young man, almost
+before the door had closed upon them, drew me
+apart and said: 'Madame, we are an unhappy
+couple. We have been married just four
+hours.'"</p>
+
+<p>Here I paused for breath, and to take a good
+look at madame.</p>
+
+<p>She was fixed as a stone, but her eyes were
+burning. Evidently she expected the relation of
+a story which she knew. I would disappoint her.
+I would cause in her first a shock of relief, and
+then I would reawaken her fears and probe her
+very soul. Slowly, and as if it were a matter of
+course, I proceeded to say:</p>
+
+<p>"It was a run-away match, and as the young
+husband remarked, 'a great disappointment to my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+wife's father, who is an English general and a great
+man. My wife loves me, and will never allow
+herself to be torn from me; but she is not of age,
+and her father is but a few minutes' ride behind
+us. Will you let us come in? We dare not risk
+the encounter on the road; he would shoot me
+down like a dog, and that would kill my young
+wife. If we see him here, he may take pity on
+our love, and&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"He needed to say no more. My own compassion
+had been excited, as much by her countenance
+as by his words, and I threw open the
+doors of this very room.</p>
+
+<p>"'Go in,' said I, 'I have a woman's heart, and
+cannot bear to see young people in distress.
+When the general comes&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'We shall hear him,' cried the girl; 'he has
+half a dozen horsemen with him. We saw them
+when we were on the brow of the hill.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Take comfort, then,' I cried, as I closed the
+door, and went to see after the solitary horse
+which had brought them to this place.</p>
+
+<p>"But before I could provide the meal with
+which I meant to strengthen them for the scene
+that must presently ensue, I heard the antici<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>pated
+clattering of hoofs, and simultaneously with
+it, the unclosing of this door and the cry of the
+young wife to her husband:</p>
+
+<p>"'I cannot bear it. At his first words I should
+fall in a faint; and how could I resist him then?
+No; let me fly; let me hide myself; and when
+he comes in, swear that you are here alone; that
+you brought no bride; that she left you at the
+altar&mdash;anything to baffle his rage and give us
+time.' And the young thing sprang out before
+me, and lifting her hands, prayed with great
+wide-open eyes that I would assist the lie, and
+swear to her father, when he came in, that her
+husband had ridden up alone.</p>
+
+<p>"I was not as old then as I am now, I say,
+and I was very tender toward youthful lovers.
+Though I thought the scheme a wild one and
+totally impracticable, she so governed me by her
+looks and tones that I promised to do what she
+asked, saying, however, that if she hid herself
+she must do it well, for if she were found my
+reputation for reliability would be ruined. And
+standing there where you see that jog in the
+wall, she promised, and giving just one look of
+love to her companion, who stood white but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+firm on the threshold, she sped from our sight
+down the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"A moment later the general's foot was where
+hers had been, and the general's voice was filling
+the house, asking for his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"'She is not here,' came from the young man
+in firm and stern accents. 'You have been
+pleased to think she was with me all these miles,
+but you will not find her. You can search if you
+please. I have nothing to say against that. But
+it will be time wasted.'</p>
+
+<p>"'We will see about that. The girl is here, is
+she not?' the father asked, turning to me.</p>
+
+<p>"'No,' was my firm reply; 'she is not.'</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know how I managed the lie, but I
+did. Something in the young man's aspect had
+nerved me. I began to think she would not be
+found, though I could see no good reason for this
+conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>"'Scatter!' he now shouted to his followers.
+'Search the house well. Do not leave a nook or
+cranny unpenetrated. I am not General B&mdash;&mdash; for
+nothing.' And turning to me, he added: 'You
+have brought this on yourself by a lie. I saw my
+daughter in this fellow's arms as they passed over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+the ridge of the hill. She is here, and in half an
+hour will be in my hands.'</p>
+
+<p>"But the clock on the staircase struck not only
+the half hour, but the hour, and yet, though every
+room and corridor, the cellar and the garret, were
+searched, no token was found of the young wife's
+presence. Meanwhile the husband stood like a
+statue on the threshold, waiting with what seemed
+to me a strange certitude for the return of the
+father from his fruitless search.</p>
+
+<p>"'Has she escaped from one of the windows?'
+I asked, moved myself to a strange curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"He looked at me, but made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>"'It is dark; it is late. If the general chooses
+to remain here to-night&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'He will not find her,' was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>"I was frightened&mdash;I know not why, but I was
+frightened. The young man had a supernatural air.
+I began to think of demon lovers, and was glad when
+the general finally appeared, storming and raving.</p>
+
+<p>"'It is a conspiracy!' was his cry. 'You are
+all in league to deceive me. Where is my daughter,
+Mrs. Truax? I ask you because you have a
+character to lose.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It is impossible for me to tell you,' was my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+reply. 'If she was to be found in my house, you
+must have found her. As you have not, there is
+but one conclusion to draw. She is not within
+these walls.'</p>
+
+<p>"'She is not outside of them. I set a watch
+in the beginning, at the four corners of the house.
+None of my men have seen so much as a flutter
+of her dress. She is here, I say, and I ask you to
+give her up.'</p>
+
+<p>"'This I am perfectly willing to do,' I rejoined,
+'but I do not know where to find her. Let that
+but once be done, and I shall not stand in the way
+of your rights.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Very well,' he cried. 'I will not search further
+to-night; but to-morrow&mdash;' A meaning gesture finished
+his sentence; he turned to the young man.
+'As for you,' he cried, 'you will remain here. Unpleasant
+as it may be for us both, we will keep
+each other's company till morning. I do not insist
+upon conversation.' And without waiting for
+a reply, the sturdy old soldier took up his station
+in the doorway, by which action he not only shut
+the young man in, but gave himself a position of
+vantage from which he could survey the main hall
+and the most prominent passages.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The rest were under charge of his followers,
+whom he had stationed all through the house,
+just as if it were in a state of siege. One guarded
+the east door and another the west, and on each
+landing of the staircase a sentinel stood, silent but
+alert, like a pair of living statues.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not sleep that night; the mystery of the
+whole affair would have kept me awake even if my
+indignation had let me rest. I sat in the kitchen
+with my girls, and when the morning came, I joined
+the general again with offers of a breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>"But he would eat nothing till he had gone
+through the house again; nor would he, in fact,
+eat here at all; for his second search ended as
+vainly as his first, and he was by this time so
+wroth, not only at the failure to recover his child,
+but at the loss which his dignity had suffered by
+this failure, that he had no sooner reached this
+spot, and found the young husband still standing
+where he had left him, than with a smothered execration,
+leveled not only at him, but the whole
+house, he strode out through the doorway, and
+finding his horse ready saddled in front, mounted
+and rode away, followed by all his troop.</p>
+
+<p>"And now comes the strangest part of the tale.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"He was no sooner gone, and the dust from his
+horse's hoofs lost in the distance, than I turned to
+the young husband, and cried:</p>
+
+<p>"'And now where is she? Let us have her here
+at once. She must be hungry, and she must be
+cold. Bring her, my good sir.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I do not know where she is. We must be
+patient. She will return herself as soon as she
+thinks it safe.'</p>
+
+<p>"I could not believe my ears.</p>
+
+<p>"'You do not know where she is?' I repeated.
+'How could you be so self-possessed through all
+these hours and all this maddened searching if you
+did not know she was safe?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I did know she was safe. She swore to me
+before she set foot on your doorstep that she could
+so hide herself in these walls that no one could
+ever find her till she chose to reveal herself; and
+I believed her, and felt secure.'</p>
+
+<p>"I did not know what to say.</p>
+
+<p>"'But she is a stranger,' I murmured. 'What
+does she know about my house?'</p>
+
+<p>"'She is a stranger to you,' he retorted, 'but
+she may not be a stranger to the house. How
+long have you lived here?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I could not say long. It was at the most but
+a year; so I merely shook my head, but I felt
+strangely nonplussed.</p>
+
+<p>"This feeling, however, soon gave way to one
+much more serious as the moments fled by and
+presently the hours, and she did not come. We
+tried to curb our impatience, tried to believe that
+her delay was only owing to extra caution; but as
+morning waxed to noon, alarm took the place of
+satisfaction in our breasts, and we began to search
+the house ourselves, calling her name up and
+down the halls and through the empty rooms, till
+it seemed as if the very walls must open and reveal
+us the being so frantically desired.</p>
+
+<p>"'She is not in the house,' I now asserted to
+the almost frenzied bridegroom. 'Our lies have
+come back upon our heads, and it is in the river
+we must look for her.'</p>
+
+<p>"But he would not agree with me in this, and
+repeated again and again: 'She said she would
+hide here. She would not deceive me, nor would
+she have sought death alone. Leave me to look
+for her another hour. I must, I can, I will find her
+yet!'</p>
+
+<p>"But he never did. After that last fond look<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>
+with which she turned down that very hall you
+see before you, we saw her no more; and if my
+house owns no ghost and never echoes to the
+sound of a banshee's warning, it is not because it
+does not own a mystery which is certainly thrilling
+enough to give us either."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" cried out several voices, as I ceased, "is
+that all? And what became of the poor bridegroom?
+And did the father ever come back? And
+haven't you ever really found out where the poor
+thing went to? And do you think she died?"</p>
+
+<p>For reply I rose. I had never taken my eye
+off madame, and the strain upon us both had
+been terrible; but I let my glance wander now,
+and smiling genially into the eager faces which
+had crowded around me, I remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"I never spoil a good story by too many explanations.
+You have heard all you will from
+me to-night. So do not question me further.
+Am I not right, madame?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly," came in her even tones. "And I
+am sure we are all very much obliged to you."</p>
+
+<p>I bowed and slipped away into the background.
+I was worn out.</p>
+
+<p>An hour later I was passing through the hall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
+above on my way to my own room. As I passed
+madame's door, I saw it open, and before I had
+taken three steps away I felt her soft hand on my
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Your pardon, Mrs. Truax," were her words;
+"but my daughter has been peculiarly affected by
+the story you related to us below. She says it is
+worse than any ghost story, and that she cannot
+rid herself of the picture of the young wife flitting
+out of sight down the hall. I am really
+afraid it has produced a very bad effect upon her,
+and that she will not sleep. Is it&mdash;was it a true
+story, Mrs. Truax, or were you merely weaving
+fancies out of a too fertile brain?"</p>
+
+<p>I smiled, for she was smiling, and shook my
+head, looking directly into her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Your daughter need not lose her sleep," I said,
+"on account of any story of mine. I saw they
+wanted something blood-curdling, so I made up
+a tale to please them. It was all imagination,
+madame; all imagination. I should not have told
+it if it had been otherwise. I think too much of
+my house."</p>
+
+<p>"And you had nothing to found it upon? Just
+drew upon your fancy?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I smiled. Her light tone did not deceive me as
+to the anxiety underlying all this; but it was not
+in my plan to betray my powers of penetration.
+I preferred that she should think me her
+dupe.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," I returned, as ingenuously as if I had
+never had a suspicious thought, "I do not find it
+difficult to weave a tale. Of course such a story
+could not be true. Why, I should be afraid to stay
+in the inn myself if it were. I could never abide
+anything mysterious. Everything with me must
+be as open as the day."</p>
+
+<p>"And with me," she laughed; but there was a
+false note in her mirth, though I did not appear
+to notice it. "I did not suppose the story was
+real, but I thought you must have some old
+tradition to found it upon; some old wife's tale
+or some secret history which is a part and parcel
+of the house, and came to you with it."</p>
+
+<p>But I shook my head, still smiling, and answered,
+quite at my ease:</p>
+
+<p>"No old wife's tale that I have ever heard
+amounts to much. I can make up a better story
+any day than those which come down with a house
+like this. It was all the work of my imagination,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+I assure you. I tried to please them, and I hope
+I did it."</p>
+
+<p>Her face changed at once. It was as if a black
+veil had been drawn away from it.</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter will be so relieved," she affirmed.
+"I don't mind such lugubrious tales myself,
+but she is young and sensitive, and so tender-hearted.
+I am sure I thank you, Mrs. Truax, for
+your consideration, and beg leave to wish you a
+good-night."</p>
+
+<p>I returned her civility, and we passed into our
+several rooms. Would I could know with what
+thoughts, for my own were as much a mystery to
+me as were hers.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">October</span> 9, 1791.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Madame never addresses her daughter by her
+first name. Consequently we do not know it.
+This is a matter of surprise to the whole house,
+and many are the conjectures uttered by the
+young men as to what it can be. I have no
+especial curiosity about it&mdash;I would much rather
+know the mother's, and yet I frequently wonder;
+for it seems unnatural for a mother always to address
+her child as mademoiselle. Is she her mo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>ther?
+I sometimes think she is not. If the interest
+in the oak parlor is what I think it is, then she
+cannot be, for what mother would wish to bring
+peril to her child? And peril lies at the bottom
+of all interest there; peril to the helpless, the
+trusting and the ignorant. But is she as interested
+there as I thought her? I have observed nothing
+lately to assure me of it. Perhaps, after all,
+I have been mistaken.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>IN THE HALLS AT MIDNIGHT.</h3>
+
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">October</span> 10, 1791.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I was not mistaken. Madame is not only interested
+in, but has serious designs upon the oak parlor.
+Not content with roaming up and down the
+hallway leading to it, she was detected yesterday
+morning trying to open its door, and when politely
+questioned as to whom she was seeking, answered
+that she was looking for the sitting room,
+which, by the way, is on the other side of the
+house. And this is not all. As I lay in my bed
+last night resting as only a weary woman can rest,
+I heard a light tap at my door. Rising, I opened
+it, and was astonished to see standing before me
+the light figure of mademoiselle.</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me for troubling you," said she, in her
+pure English&mdash;they both speak good English,
+though with a foreign accent&mdash;"I am sorry to
+wake you, but I am so anxious about my mother.
+She went to bed with me, and we fell asleep; but
+when I woke a little while ago she was missing,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
+and though I have waited for her a long time, she
+does not return. I am not well, and easily frightened!
+Oh, how cold it is."</p>
+
+<p>I drew her in, wrapped a shawl about her, and
+led her back to her room.</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother will return speedily," I promised.
+"Doubtless she felt restless, and is taking a turn
+or two up and down the hall."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps; for her dressing gown and slippers
+are gone. But she never did anything like this
+before, and in a strange house&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A slight trembling stopped the young lady from
+continuing.</p>
+
+<p>Urging her to get into bed, I spoke one or two
+further words of a comforting nature, at which
+the lovely girl seemed to forget her pride, for she
+threw her arms about my neck with a low sigh,
+and then, pushing me softly from her, observed:</p>
+
+<p>"You are a kind woman; you make me feel
+happier whenever you speak to me."</p>
+
+<p>Touched, I made some loving reply, and withdrew.
+I longed to linger, longed to tell her how
+truly I was her friend; but I feared the mother's
+return&mdash;feared to miss the knowledge of madame's
+whereabouts, which my secret suspicion made im<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>portant;
+so I subdued my feelings and hastened
+quickly to my room, where I wrapped myself in
+a long, dark cloak. Thus equipped, I stole back
+again to the hall, and gliding with as noiseless a
+step as possible, found my way to the back stairs,
+down which I crept, holding my breath, and listening
+intently.</p>
+
+<p>To many who read these words the situation of
+those back stairs is well known; but there may be
+others who will not understand that they lead
+directly, after a couple of turns, to that hall upon
+which opens the oak parlor. Five steps from the
+lower floor there is a landing, and upon this landing
+there is a tall Dutch clock, so placed as to offer
+a very good hiding place behind it to any one
+anxious to gaze unobserved down the hall. But
+to reach the clock one has to pass a window, and
+as this looks south, and was upon this night open
+to the moonlight, I felt that the situation demanded
+circumspection.</p>
+
+<p>I, therefore, paused when I reached the last
+step above the platform, and listened intently before
+proceeding further. There was no noise;
+all was quiet, as a respectable house should be at
+two o'clock in the morning. Yet from the hall be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>low
+came an undefinable something which made
+me feel that she was there; a breathing influence
+that woke every nervous sensibility within me,
+and made my heart-beats so irregular that I tried
+to stop them lest my own presence should be betrayed.
+She was there, a creeping, baleful figure,
+blotting the moonshine with her tall shadow, as
+she passed, panther-like, to and fro before that
+closed door, or crouched against the wall in the
+same attitude of listening which I myself assumed.
+Or so I pictured her as I clung to the balustrade
+above, asking myself how I could cross that strip
+of moonlight separating me from that vantage-point
+I longed to gain. For that I knew her to
+be there was not enough. I must see her, and
+learn, if possible, what the attraction was which
+drew her to this fatal door. But how, how, how?
+If she were watching, as secrecy ever watches, I
+could not take a step upon that platform without
+being discerned. Not even if a friendly cloud
+came to obscure the brightness of the moon, could
+I hope to project my dark figure into that belt
+of light without discovery. I must see what was
+to be seen from the step where I stood, and to do
+this I knew but one way. Taking up the end of my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+long cloak, I advanced it the merest trifle beyond
+the edge of the partition that separated me from
+the hall below. Then I listened again. No sound,
+no stir. I breathed deeply and thrust my arm
+still further, the long cloak hanging from it dark
+and impenetrable to the floor below. Then I
+waited. The moonlight was not quite as bright
+as it had been; surely that was a cloud I saw
+careering over the face of the sky above me, and
+in another moment, if I could wait for it, the hall
+would be almost dark. I let my arm advance an
+inch or so further, and satisfied now that I had
+got the slit which answers for an arm-hole into a
+position that would afford me full opportunity
+of looking through the black wall I had thus improvised,
+I watched the cloud for the moment of
+comparative darkness which I so confidently expected.
+It came, and with it a sound&mdash;the first I
+had heard. It was from far down the hall, and
+was, as near as I could judge, of a jingling nature,
+which for an instant I found it hard to understand.
+Then the quick suspicion came as to what it was,
+and unable to restrain myself longer I separated
+the slit I have spoken of with the fingers of my
+right hand, and looked through.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There she was, standing before the door of the
+oak parlor, fitting keys. I knew it at my first
+glimpse, both from her attitude and the slight
+noise which the keys made. Taken aback, for I
+had not expected this, I sank out of sight, cloak
+and all, asking myself what I should do. I finally
+decided to do nothing. I would listen, and if the
+least intimation came to prove that she had succeeded
+in her endeavor, I would then spring down
+the steps that separated us and hold her back by
+the hair of her head. Meanwhile I congratulated
+myself that the lock of that room was a peculiar
+one, and that the only key I knew of that would
+unlock it was under the pillow of the bed I had
+just left.</p>
+
+<p>She worked several minutes; then the moon
+came out. Instantly all was still. I knew whither
+she had gone. Near the door she was tampering
+with is a short passageway leading to another
+window. Into this she had slipped, and I could
+look out now with impunity, sure that she would
+not see me.</p>
+
+<p>But I remained immovable. There was another
+cloud rushing up from the south, and in another
+moment I was confident that I should hear again<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>
+the slight clatter of the key against the lock.
+And I did, and not only once, but several times,
+which fact assured me that she had not only
+brought a handful of keys with her, but that
+these keys must have come from some more distant
+quarter than the town; that indeed she had come
+provided to the Happy-Go-Lucky for this nocturnal
+visit, and that any doubts I might cherish
+were likely to have a better foundation in fact than
+is usual with women circumstanced like myself.</p>
+
+<p>She did not succeed in her efforts. Had she
+brought burglar's tools I hardly think she would
+have been able to open that lock; as it was, there
+was no hope for her, and presently she seemed to
+comprehend this, for the slight sounds ceased and,
+presently, I heard a step, and peering recklessly
+from my corner, I perceived her gliding away toward
+the front stairs. I smiled, but it could not
+have been in a way she would have enjoyed seeing,
+and crept noiselessly to my own room, and
+our doors closed simultaneously.</p>
+
+<p>This morning I watched with some anxiety for
+her first look. It was slightly inquiring. Summoning
+up my best smile, I gave her a cheerful
+good-morning, and then observed:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I am glad to see you look so well this morning!
+Your daughter seemed to be concerned about you
+in the night because you had left your bed. But
+I told her I was sure all was right, that you were
+feeling nervous, and only wanted a breath of the
+fresh air you would find in the halls." And my
+glance did not flinch, nor my mouth lose its smile,
+though she surveyed me keenly with eyes whose
+look might penetrate a stone.</p>
+
+<p>"You understand your own sex," was her light
+reply, after this short study of my face. "Yes; I
+was very nervous. I have cares on my mind, and,
+though my daughter does not realize it, I often
+lie awake at her side, longing for space to breathe
+in and freedom to move as freely as my uneasiness
+demands. Last night my feelings were too much
+for my self-control, and I arose. I hope I did not
+seriously disturb you, or awaken anybody, with
+my restless pacing up and down the hall."</p>
+
+<p>I assured her that it took more than this to disturb
+me, and that after quieting her daughter I
+had immediately fallen asleep; all of which she
+may have believed or may not; I had no means
+of reading her mind, as she had no means of reading
+mine.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But whether she was deceived or whether she
+was not, she certainly looked relieved, and after
+some short remarks about the weather, turned
+from me with the most cheerful air in the world,
+to greet her daughter.</p>
+
+<p>As for me, I have made up my mind to change
+my room. I shall not say anything about it or
+make any fuss on the subject, but to-night, and for
+some nights to come, I intend to take up my abode
+in a certain small room in the west wing,
+not very far removed from the dreadful oak
+parlor.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE STONE IN THE GARDEN.</h3>
+
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">October 11, 1791.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>This morning the post brought two letters for
+my strange guests. Being anxious to see how
+they would be received, I carried them up to
+Madame Letellier's room myself.</p>
+
+<p>The ladies were sitting together, the daughter
+embroidering. At the sight of the letters in my
+hand they both rose, the daughter reaching me first.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me have them!" she cried, a glad, bright
+color showing for a moment on her cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"From your father?" asked the mother, in a
+tone of nonchalance that did not deceive me.</p>
+
+<p>The girl shook her head. A smile as exquisite
+as it was sad made her mouth beautiful.
+"From&mdash;" she began, but stopped, whether from
+an instinct of maidenly shame or some secret signal
+from her mother, I cannot say.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, never mind," the mother exclaimed, and
+turned away toward the window in a manner that
+gave me my dismissal.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>So I went out, having learned nothing, save the
+fact that mademoiselle had a lover, and that her
+lips could smile.</p>
+
+<p>They did not smile again, however. Next day
+she looked whiter than ever, and languid as a
+broken blossom.</p>
+
+<p>"She is ill," declared madame. "The stairs
+she has to climb are too much for her."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, ha!" thought I to myself. "That is the
+first move," and waited for the next development.</p>
+
+<p>It has not come as soon as I expected. Two
+days have passed, and though Mademoiselle Letellier
+grows paler and thinner, nothing more has
+been said about the stairs. But the time has not
+passed without its incident, and a serious enough
+one, too, if these women are, as I fear, in the secret
+of the hidden chamber.</p>
+
+<p>It is this: In the garden is a white stone. It is
+plain-finished but unlettered. It marks the resting-place
+of Honora Urquhart. For reasons which
+we all thought good, we have taken no uninterested
+person into the secret of this grave,
+any more than we have into that of the hidden
+chamber.</p>
+
+<p>Consequently no one in the house but myself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+could answer Madame Letellier, when, stopping
+in her short walk up and down the garden path,
+she asked what the white stone meant and what
+it marked. I would not answer her. I had seen
+from the window where I stood the quick surprise
+with which she had come to a standstill at
+the sight of this stone, and I had caught the tremble
+in her usually steady voice as she made the
+inquiry I have mentioned above. I therefore hastened
+down and joined her before she had left the
+spot.</p>
+
+<p>"You are wondering what this stone means," I
+observed, with an indifferent tone calculated to
+set her at her ease. Then suddenly, and with a
+changed voice and a secret look into her face, I added:
+"It is a headstone; a dead body lies here."</p>
+
+<p>She quivered, and her lids fell. For all her
+self-possession&mdash;and she is the most self-possessed
+person I ever saw in my life&mdash;she showed a change
+that gave me new thoughts and made me summon
+up all the strength I am mistress of, in order
+to preserve the composure which her agitation
+had so deeply shaken.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/gs16.jpg" width="500" height="358" alt="Madame Letellier stopping in her short walk" title="Madame Letellier stopping in her short walk" />
+</div>
+
+<p>"You shock me," were her first words, uttered
+very slowly, and with a transparent show of in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>difference.
+"It is not usual to find a garden used
+for a burial place. May I ask whose body lies
+here? That of some faithful black or of a favorite
+horse?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not that of a horse," I returned, calmly.
+And greatly pleased to find that I had placed her
+in a position where she would be obliged to press
+the question if she would learn anything more,
+I walked slowly on, convinced that she would
+follow me.</p>
+
+<p>She did, giving me short side glances, which I
+bore with an equanimity that much belied the
+tempest of doubt, repugnance and horror that
+were struggling blindly in my breast. But she
+did not renew the subject of the grave. Instead
+of that, she opened one of her most fascinating
+conversations, endeavoring by her wiles and
+graces to get at my confidence and insure my
+good will.</p>
+
+<p>And I was hypocrite enough to deceive her
+into thinking she had done so. Though I showed
+her no great warmth, I carefully restrained myself
+from betraying my real feelings, allowing her
+to talk on, and giving her now and then an encouraging
+word or an inviting smile.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>For I felt that she was a serpent and must be
+met as such. If she were the woman I thought
+her, I should gain nothing and lose all by betraying
+my distrust, while if she felt me to be her dupe
+I might yet light upon the secret of her interest in
+the oak parlor.</p>
+
+<p>Her daughter was waiting for us in the doorway
+when we reached the house. At the sight of her
+pure face, with its tender gray eyes and faultless
+features, a strong revulsion seized me, and I found
+it difficult not to raise my arms in protest between
+her beauty and winning womanliness and the subtile
+and treacherous-hearted being who glided so
+smoothly toward her. But the movement, had I
+made it, would have been in vain. At the sight of
+each other's faces a lovely smile arose on the
+daughter's lips, while on the mother's flashed a
+look of love which would be unmistakable even
+on the countenance of a tiger, and which was at
+this moment so vivid and so real that I never
+doubted again, if I had ever doubted before,
+that mademoiselle was her own child&mdash;flesh of
+her flesh, and bone of her bone.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, mamma," cried one soft voice, "I have
+been so lonesome!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Darling," returned the other, in tones as true
+and caressing, "I will not leave you again, even
+for a walk, till you are quite well." And taking
+her by the waist, she led her down the hall toward
+the stairs, looking back at me as she did so,
+and saying: "I cannot take her to Albany until
+she is better. You must think what we can do to
+make her strong again, Mrs. Truax." And she
+sighed as she looked up the short flight of stairs
+her daughter had to climb.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">October</span> 15, 1791.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>That stone in the garden seems to possess a
+magnetic attraction for madame. She is over it
+or near it half the time. If I go out in the early
+morning to gather grapes for dinner, there she is
+before me, pacing up and down the paths converging
+to that spot, and gazing with eager eyes at
+that simple stone, as if by the force of her will she
+would extract its secret and make it tell her what
+she evidently burns to know. If I want flowers
+for the parlor mantel, and hurry into the garden
+during the heat of the day, there is madame with
+a huge hat on her head, plucking asters or pulling
+down apples from the low-hanging branches of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>
+the trees. It is the same at nightfall. Suspicious,
+always suspicious now, I frequently stop, in passing
+through the upper western hall, to take a peep
+from the one window that overlooks this part
+of the garden. I invariably see her there; and
+remembering that her daughter is ill, remembering
+that in my hearing she promised that daughter
+that she would not leave her again, I feel impelled
+at times to remind her of the fact, and see what reply
+will follow. But I know. She will say that
+she is not well herself; that the breeze from the
+river does her good; that she loves nature, and
+sleeps better after a ramble under the stars. I
+cannot disconcert her&mdash;not for long&mdash;and I cannot
+compete with her in volubility and conversational
+address, so I will continue to play a discreet part
+and wait.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">October 17, 1791.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Madame has become bolder, or her curiosity
+more impatient. Hitherto she has been content
+with haunting the garden, and walking over and
+about that one place in it which possesses peculiar
+interest for her and me. But this evening, when
+she thought no one was looking, when after a hur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>ried
+survey of the house and grounds she failed
+to detect my sharp eyes behind the curtain of the
+upper window, she threw aside discretion, knelt
+down on the sod of that grave, and pushed aside
+the grass that grows about the stone, doubtless to
+see if there was any marks or inscription upon it.
+There are none, but I determined she should not
+be sure of this, so before she could satisfy herself,
+I threw up the window behind which I stood,
+making so much noise that it alarmed her, and she
+hastily rose.</p>
+
+<p>I met her hasty look with a smile which it was
+too dark for her to see, and a cheerful good evening
+which I presume fell with anything but a cheerful
+sound upon her ears.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a lovely evening," I cried. "Have you
+been admiring the sunset?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, so much!" was her quick reply, and she began
+to saunter in slowly. But I knew she left her
+thoughts out there with that mysterious grave.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class='right'>
+12 <span class="smcap">m.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Another midnight adventure! Late as it is,
+I must put it down, for I cannot sleep, and to-morrow
+will bring its own story.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I had gone to bed, but not to sleep. The anxieties
+under which I now labor, the sense of mystery
+which pervades the whole house, and the
+secret but ever-present apprehension of some impending
+catastrophe, which has followed me ever
+since these women came into the house, lay heavily
+on my mind, and prevented all rest. The
+change of room may also have added to my disturbance.
+I am wedded to old things, old ways,
+and habitual surroundings. I was not at home in
+this small and stuffy apartment, with its one narrow
+window and wretched accommodations. Nor
+could I forget near what it lay, nor rid myself
+of the horror which its walls gave me whenever
+I realized, as I invariably did at night, that only
+a slight partition separated me from the secret
+chamber, with its ghastly memories and ever to
+be remembered horrors.</p>
+
+<p>I was lying, then, awake, when some impulse&mdash;was
+it a magnetic one?&mdash;caused me to rise and
+look out of the window. I did not see anything
+unusual&mdash;not at first&mdash;and I drew back. But the
+impulse returned, and I looked again, and this
+time perceived among the shadows of the trees
+something stirring in the garden, though what I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>
+could not tell, for the night was unusually dark,
+and my window very poorly situated for seeing.</p>
+
+<p>But that there was something there was enough,
+and after another vain attempt to satisfy myself
+as to its character, I dressed and went out into the
+hall, determined to ascertain if any outlet to the
+house was open.</p>
+
+<p>I did not take a light, for I know the corridors
+as I do my own hand. But I almost wished I had
+as I sped from door to door and window to window;
+for the events which had blotted my house
+with mystery were beginning to work upon my
+mind, and I felt afraid, not of my shadow, for I
+could not see it, but of my step, and the great
+gulfs of darkness that were continually opening
+before my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>However, I did not draw back, and I did not delay.
+I tried the front door, and found it locked; then
+the south door, and finally the one in the kitchen.
+This last was ajar. I knew then what had happened.
+Madame has had more than one talk with
+Chloe lately, and the good negress has not been
+proof against her wiles, and has taught her the
+secret of the kitchen lock. I shall talk to Chloe
+to-morrow. But, meantime, I must follow madame.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But should I? I know what she is doing in the
+garden. She is wandering round and round that
+grave. If I saw her I could not be any surer of
+the fact, and I would but reveal my own suspicions
+to her by showing myself as a spy. No; I will
+remain here in the shadows of the kitchen, and
+wait for her to return. The watch may be weird,
+but no weirder than that of a previous night. Besides,
+it will not be a long one; the air is too
+chilly outside for her to risk a lengthy stay in it.
+I shall soon perceive her dark figure glide in
+through the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>And I did. Almost before I had withdrawn
+into my corner I heard the faint fall of feet on
+the stone without, then the subdued but unmistakable
+sound of the opening door, and lastly the
+locking of it and the hasty tread of footsteps as
+she glided across the brick flagging and disappeared
+into the hall beyond.</p>
+
+<p>"She has laid the ghost of her unrest for to-night,"
+thought I. "To-morrow it will rise
+again." And I felt my first movement of pity for
+her.</p>
+
+<p>Alas! does that unrest spring from premeditated
+or already accomplished guilt? Whichever it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>
+may be&mdash;and I am ready to believe in either or
+both&mdash;she is a burdened creature, and the weight
+of her fears or her intentions lies heavily upon her.
+But she hides the fact with consummate address,
+and when under the eyes of people smiles so
+brightly and conducts herself with such a charming
+grace that half the guests that come and
+go consider her as lovely and more captivating
+than her daughter. What would they think if
+they could see her as I do rising in the night to
+roam about a grave, the unmarked head-stone of
+which baffles her scrutiny?</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">October 18, 1791.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>This morning I rose at daybreak, and going
+into the garden, surveyed the spot which I had
+imagined traversed by Madame Letellier the night
+before. I found it slightly trampled, but what
+interested me a great deal more than this was the
+fact that, on a certain portion of the surface of the
+stone I have so often mentioned, there were to be
+seen small particles of a white substance, which I
+soon discovered to be wax.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the mystery of her midnight visit is
+solved. She has been taking an impression of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>
+what, in her one short glimpse of yesterday
+evening, she had thought to be an inscription.
+What a wonderful woman she is! What skill she
+shows; what secrecy and what purpose. If she
+cannot compass her end in one way, she will in
+another; and I begin to have, notwithstanding
+my repugnance and fear, a wholesome respect
+for her ability and the relentless determination
+which she shows in every action she performs.</p>
+
+<p>When she finds that her wax shows her nothing
+but the natural excrescences and roughnesses of
+an unhewn stone, will she persist in her visits to
+the garden? I think not.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">October</span> 19, 1791.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>My last surmise was a true one. Madame has
+not spent a half hour all told in the garden since
+that night. She has turned her attention again to
+the oak parlor, and soon we shall see her make
+some decided move in regard to it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>IN THE OAK PARLOR.</h3>
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">October</span> 20, 1791.<br />
+</div>
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Letter T">
+<tr><td align='left' rowspan='2' valign='top'><img src="images/gs17a.png" width="294" height="498" alt="&quot;T&quot; left" title="&quot;T&quot; left" />
+</td><td align='left' valign='top'><img src="images/gs17b.png" width="206" height="385" alt="&quot;T&quot; right" title="&quot;T&quot; right" />
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='unindent'>HE long expected move has
+been made. This morning madame asked me if
+I had not some room on the ground floor which I
+could give to her daughter and her in exchange
+for the one they now occupy. Her daughter had
+been accustomed to living on one floor, and felt
+the stairs keenly.</div></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>I answered at first&mdash;"No." Then I appeared to
+bethink me, and told her, with seeming reluctance,
+that there was one room below which I sometimes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span>
+opened to guests, but that just now it was in
+such a state of dilapidation I had shut it up till
+I could find the opportunity of repairing it.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she replied, subduing her eagerness to
+the proper point, "you need not wait for that.
+We are not particular persons. Only let me see
+the roses come back to my daughter's cheeks, and
+I can bear any amount of discomfort. Where is
+this room?"</p>
+
+<p>I pretended not to hear her.</p>
+
+<p>"It would take two days to get it into any sort
+of condition fit for sleeping in," I murmured reflectively.
+"The floor is so loose in places that
+you cannot walk across it without danger of falling
+through. Then there is the chimney&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She was standing near me and I heard her draw
+her breath quickly, but she gave no other sign of
+emotion, not even in the sound of her voice as
+she interrupted me with the words:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! if you have got to make the room all
+over, we might as well not consider the subject.
+But I am sure it is not necessary. Do let me see
+it, and I can soon tell you whether we can be
+comfortable there or not."</p>
+
+<p>I had sworn to myself never to enter that room<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+again, but such oaths are easily broken. Leaving
+her for a moment, I procured my key, and taking
+her with me down the west hall, I unlocked the
+fatal door and bade her enter.</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated for an instant, but only for an
+instant. Then she walked coolly in, and stood
+waiting while I crossed the floor to the window
+and threw it open. Her first glance flashed to the
+mantel and its adjacent wainscoting; then, finding
+everything satisfactory in that direction, it
+flew over the desolate walls and stiff, high-backed
+chairs, till it rested on the bare four-poster, denuded
+of its curtains and coverlets.</p>
+
+<p>"A gloomy place!" she declared; "but you can
+easily make it look inviting with fresh curtains
+and a cheerful fire. I am sure that, dismal as it
+is, it will be more welcome to my daughter than
+the sunny room up stairs. Besides, the window
+looks out on the river, and that is always interesting.
+You will let us come here, will you not? I
+am sure, if we are willing, you ought to be."</p>
+
+<p>I gasped inwardly, and agreed with her. Yet I
+made a few more objections. But as I intended
+that she should sleep in this room, I finally cleared
+my brow, and announced that the room should be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>
+ready for her occupancy on Friday; and with this
+she had to be content.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">October 21.</span><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Bless God that I am mistress in my own house!
+I can order, I can have performed whatever I
+choose, without fuss, without noise, and without
+gossip. This is very fortunate just now, for while
+I am openly having the floor mended in the oak
+parlor, I am secretly having another piece of work
+done, which, if once known, would arouse suspicions
+and awaken conjectures that would destroy
+all my plans concerning the mysterious
+guests who insist upon inhabiting the accursed
+oak parlor.</p>
+
+<p>What this work is can be best understood by a
+glance at the accompanying diagram, which is a
+copy of the one drawn up by the Englishman for
+Mr. Tamworth.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 259px;">
+<img src="images/diag.jpg" width="259" height="300" alt="A&mdash;Oak parlor. B&mdash;Bedroom. C&mdash;Kitchen, etc. D&mdash;Passage I have had made." title="A&mdash;Oak parlor. B&mdash;Bedroom. C&mdash;Kitchen, etc. D&mdash;Passage I have had made." />
+<span class="caption"><small>A&mdash;Oak parlor. B&mdash;Bedroom. C&mdash;Kitchen, etc. D&mdash;Passage I have had made.<br /><br />1&mdash;Secret chamber. 2&mdash;Fire-place. 3&mdash;Secret spring. 4&mdash;Garden
+window. 5&mdash;Door to oak parlor. 6&mdash;Clock on stairs to second
+story. Entrance to room B under stairway.</small></span>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p>Here you see that the secret chamber lies
+between the rooms A and B. A is the parlor and
+B is the small room in which I had put up my
+bed after the nocturnal adventure of October 10.
+It has always been used as a store room until
+now, and as no one handles the keys of this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>
+house but myself, the fact of my using it for any
+other purpose is known only to Margery and a
+certain quiet and reticent workman from Cruger's
+shop, to whom I have intrusted the task of
+opening a passage at D through the wall. For I
+must have proper means of communication with
+this room before I can allow Madame Letellier
+and her daughter to take up their abode in it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+Though the former's plans are a mystery to me;
+though I feel that she loves her daughter, and,
+therefore, cannot meditate evil against her, still
+my doubts of her are so great that I must know
+her intentions, if possible, and to do this I contemplate
+keeping a watch over that den of wicked
+memories which will be at once both unsuspected
+and vigilant.</p>
+
+<p>The flooring of the parlor is nearly completed,
+and to-night will see the door of communication
+between my room and the secret chamber hung
+and ready for use.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">October</span> 22.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>A month ago, if any one had told me that I
+would not only walk of my own free will into the
+secret chamber, but take up my abode in it, eat in
+it and sleep in it, I would have said that person
+was mad. And yet this is just what I have
+done.</p>
+
+<p>The result of my first vigil was unexpected. I
+had looked for&mdash;well, I hardly know what I did
+look for. My anticipations were vague, but they
+did not lead me in the right direction. But let me
+tell the story. After I had installed my guests in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>
+their new apartment, I informed them that I would
+have to say good-by for a season, as I had an affection
+of the eyes&mdash;which was true enough&mdash;which
+at times compelled me to shut myself up in a dark
+room and forego all company. That I felt one of
+these spells coming on&mdash;which was not true&mdash;and
+that by a speedy resort to darkness and quiet, I
+hoped to prevent the attack from reaching its
+usual point of distress. Mademoiselle Letellier
+looked disappointed, but madame ill disguised her
+relief and satisfaction. Convinced now beyond all
+doubt that she had some plan in mind which made
+her dread my watchfulness, I made such final arrangements
+as were necessary, and betook myself
+at once to my new room. Once there, I moved
+immediately into the dark chamber, and walking
+with the utmost circumspection, crossed to the
+wall adjoining the oak parlor, and laying my ear
+against the opening into that room, I listened.</p>
+
+<p>At first I heard nothing, probably because its
+inmates were still. Then I caught an exclamation
+of weariness, and soon some words of desultory
+conversation. Relieved beyond expression, not
+only because I could hear, but because they talked
+in English, I withdrew again into my own room.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>
+The most difficult problem in the world was solved.
+I had found the means by which I could insinuate
+myself, unseen and unsuspected, into the secret
+confidences of two women, at moments when they
+felt themselves alone and at the mercy of no judgment
+but that of God. Should I learn enough to
+pay me for the humiliation of my position? I did
+not weary myself by questioning. I knew my motive
+was pure, and fixed my mind upon that.</p>
+
+<p>Several times before the day was over did I return
+to the secret chamber and bend my ear to the
+wall. But in no instance did I linger long, for if
+the two ladies spoke at all it was on trivial subjects,
+and in such tones as indicated that neither
+their passions nor any particular interests were
+engaged. For such talk I had no ear.</p>
+
+<p>"It will not be always so," I thought to myself.
+"When night comes and the heart opens, they will
+speak of what lies upon their minds."</p>
+
+<p>And so it happened. As the inn grew quiet and
+the lights began to disappear from the windows,
+I crept again to my station against the partition,
+and in a darkness and atmosphere that at any other
+time in my life would have completely unnerved
+me, hearkened to the conversation within.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mamma," were the first words I heard,
+uttered in English, as all their talk was when they
+were moved or excited, "if you would only explain!
+If you would only tell me why you do
+not wish me to receive letters from him! But this
+silence&mdash;this love and this silence are killing me.
+I cannot bear it. I feel like a lost child who hears
+its mother's voice in the darkness, but does not
+know how to follow that voice to the refuge it bespeaks."</p>
+
+<p>"Time was when daughters found it sufficient
+to know that their parents disapproved of an act,
+without inquiring into their reasons for it. Your
+father has told you that the marquis is not eligible
+as a husband for you, and he expects this to content
+you. Have I the right to say more than he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not the right, perhaps, mamma. I do not appeal
+to your sense of right, but to your love. I
+am very unhappy. My whole life's peace is trembling
+in the balance. You ought to see it&mdash;you
+do see it&mdash;yet you let me suffer without giving
+me one reason why I should do so."</p>
+
+<p>The mother's voice was still.</p>
+
+<p>"You see!" the daughter went on again, after
+what seemed like a moment of helpless waiting.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>
+"Though my arms are about you, and my cheek
+pressed close to yours, you will not speak. Do
+you wonder that I am heart-broken&mdash;that I feel
+like turning my face to the wall and never looking
+up again?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder at nothing."</p>
+
+<p>Was that madame's voice? What boundless
+misery! what unfathomable passion! what hopeless
+despair!</p>
+
+<p>"If he were unworthy!" her daughter here exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"It you could point to anything he lacks. But
+he has wealth, a noble name, a face so handsome
+that I have seen both you and papa look at him in
+admiration; and as for his mind and attainments,
+are they not superior to those of all the young
+men who have ever visited us? Mamma, mamma,
+you are so good that you require perfection in a
+son-in-law. But is he not as near it as a man may
+be? Tell me, darling, for in my dreams he always
+seems so."</p>
+
+<p>I heard the answer, though it came slowly and
+with apparent effort.</p>
+
+<p>"The marquis is an admirable young man, but
+we have another suitor in mind whose cause we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>
+more favor. We wish you to marry Armand
+Thierry."</p>
+
+<p>"A shop-keeper and a revolutionist! Oh, mamma!"</p>
+
+<p>"That is why we brought you away. That is
+why you are here&mdash;that you might have opportunity
+to bethink yourself, and learn that the
+parents' views in these matters are the truest
+ones, and that where we make choice, there you
+must plight your troth. I assure you that our
+reasons are good ones, if we do not give them. It
+is not from tyranny&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Here the set, strained voice stopped, and a sudden
+movement in the room beyond showed that
+the mother had risen. In fact, I presently heard
+her steps pacing up and down the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"I know it is not tyranny," the daughter finished,
+in the soft tones that were so great a contrast
+to her mother's. "Tyranny I could have understood;
+but it is mystery, and that is not so easily
+comprehended. Why should you and papa be
+mysterious? What is there in our simple life to
+create secrecy between persons who love each
+other so dearly? I see nothing, know nothing;
+and yet&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Honora!"</p>
+
+<p>The word struck me like a blow. "Honora!"
+Great heaven! was that the name of this young
+girl?</p>
+
+<p>"You are giving too free range to your imagination.
+You&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>I did not hear the rest. I was thinking of the
+name I had just heard, and wondering if my suspicions
+were at fault. They would never have
+called their child Honora. Who were these
+women, then? Friends of the Dudleighs? Avengers
+of the dead? I glued my ear still closer to
+the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"We have cherished you." The mother was
+still speaking. "We have given you all you
+craved, and more than you asked. From the
+moment you were born we have both lavished
+all the tenderness of our hearts upon you. And
+all we ask in return is trust." The hard voice,
+hard because of emotion, I truly believe, quavered
+a little over that word, but spoke it and went
+on. "What we do for you now, as always, is
+for your best good. Will you not believe it,
+Honora?"</p>
+
+<p>The last appeal was uttered in a passionate tone.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>
+It seemed to move the daughter, for her voice had
+a sob in it as she replied:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes; but why not enlighten me as to your
+reasons for a course so remarkable? Most parents
+desire their daughters to do well, but you, on the
+contrary, not only wish, but urge me to do ill. A
+noble lover sues for my hand, and his cause is
+slighted; an ignoble one requests the same favor,
+and you run to grant it. Is there love in this?
+Is there consideration? Perhaps; but if so, you
+should be able to show where it lies. I am not a
+child, young as I am; I will understand any reasons
+you may advance. Then let me have your
+confidence; it is all I ask, and surely it is not
+much, when you see how I suffer from my disappointment."</p>
+
+<p>The restless steps ceased. I heard a groan close
+to my ear; the mother was evidently suffering
+frightfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Papa is prosperous," the daughter pleadingly
+continued. "I know your decision cannot be the
+result of financial difficulties. And then, if it were,
+the marquis is rich, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Honora!"&mdash;the mother had turned. I heard
+her advance toward her daughter&mdash;"do you real<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>ly
+love the marquis? You have seen him but a
+few times, have held hardly any intercourse with
+him, and at your age fancy often takes the place of
+love. You do not love him, Honora, my child;
+you cannot; you will forget&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mamma! Oh, mamma! Oh, mamma!"</p>
+
+<p>The tone was enough. Silence reigned, broken
+at last by Mademoiselle Letellier saying: "It is
+not necessary to see such a man as he is very
+many times in order to adjudge him to be the
+best and noblest that the world contains. But,
+mamma, you are not correct in saying that I
+scarcely know him. Though you will not be frank
+with me, I am going to be frank with you and tell
+you something that I have hitherto kept closely
+buried in my breast. I did not think I should ever
+speak of it to any one, not even to you. Some
+dreams are so sweet to brood upon alone. But
+the shadow which your silence has caused to fall
+between us has taught me the value of openness
+and truth. I shall never hide anything from you
+again; so listen, sweet mamma, while I open to
+you my heart, and learn, as you can only learn
+from me, how your Honora first came to know
+and appreciate the Marquis de la Roche-Guyon."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Was it not," interrupted the mother, "at the
+great ball where he was formally introduced to
+us?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, mamma."</p>
+
+<p>Madame sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"Girls are all alike," she cried. "You think
+you know them, and lo! there comes a day when
+you find that it is in a stranger's hand you must
+look for a key to their natures."</p>
+
+<p>"And is not this what God wills?" suggested
+the child. "Indeed, indeed, you must blame nature
+and not me. I did not want to deceive you.
+I only found it impossible to speak. Besides, if
+you had looked at me closely enough, you
+would have seen yourself that I had met the marquis
+before. Such blushes do not come with a
+first introduction. I remember their burning heat
+yet. Are my cheeks warm now? I feel as if they
+ought to be. But there is nothing to grieve you
+in these blushes. It is only the way a loving heart
+takes to speak. There is no wicked shame in them;
+none, none."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, God!"</p>
+
+<p>Did the daughter hear that bitter exclamation?
+She did not appear to; for her voice was quite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>
+calm, though immeasurably loving, as she proceeded
+in these words:</p>
+
+<p>"I was always a mother-girl. From the first
+day I can remember, I have known nothing
+sweeter than to sit within reach of your fondling
+hand. You were always so tender with me,
+mamma, even when I must have grieved you or
+disappointed your hopes or your pride. If I were
+in the way I never saw it, nor can I remember, of
+all the looks which have sometimes puzzled me in
+your face, one that spoke of impatience or lack of
+sympathy with my pleasures or my griefs. With
+papa it was not always so. No; don't stop me.
+You must let me speak of him. Though he has
+never been unkind to me, he has a way of frowning
+at times that frightens me. Whether he is
+displeased or simply ill I cannot say, but I have
+always felt a dread of papa's presence which I
+never felt of yours; and yet you frown, too, at
+times, though never upon me, mamma, dear&mdash;never
+upon me."</p>
+
+<p>A pause that was filled in by a kiss, and then the
+tender voice went on:</p>
+
+<p>"You can imagine, then, what a turmoil was
+aroused in my breast when one day, while leaning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>
+from the window, I saw a face in the street below
+that awakened within me such strange feelings I
+could not communicate them even to my mother.
+I who had hitherto confessed to her every trivial
+emotion of my life, shrank in a moment, as it were,
+from revealing a secret no deeper than that I had
+looked for one half minute upon the form of a
+passing stranger, and in that minute learned more
+of my own heart and of the true meaning of life
+than in all the sixteen years I had hitherto lived.
+You have seen him since, and you know he possesses
+every grace that can render a man attractive;
+but to me that day he did not look like a
+man at all, or if I thought of him as such, I thought
+of him as one who set a pattern to his fellows,
+while retaining his own immeasurable superiority.
+He did not see me. I do not know that I wished
+him to. I was quite content to watch him from
+where I stood, and note his lordly walk and kindly
+mien, and dream&mdash;oh, what did I dream that
+day! The memory of your own girlhood must
+tell you, mamma. I did not know his name; I
+did not suspect his rank; but from his youth I
+judged him to be single, from his bearing I knew
+him to be noble, and from his look, which called<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>
+out a reflected brightness on every face he
+chanced to pass, I was assured that he was happy
+and that he was good. And what does a girl's
+fancy need more? Still a glimpse so short might
+not have had such deep consequences if it had not
+been followed by an event which rendered those
+first impressions indelible."</p>
+
+<p>"An event, Honora?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, mamma. You remember the day you
+sent me with Cecile to take my first lessons in
+tambour work of Madame Douay?"</p>
+
+<p>"Remember? Oh, my child, that awful day
+when you came near losing your life! When the
+house fell with you in it, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, mamma, and I came home looking
+so pale you thought I was hurt, and fainted away,
+and would have died yourself if I had not kissed
+you back to life. Well, mamma, dear, I was hurt,
+but not in my body. It was my heart that had
+received a wound&mdash;a wound from which I never
+shall recover, for it was made by the greatness,
+the goodness, the noble self-sacrifice of the marquis."</p>
+
+<p>"Honora! And you never mentioned his name&mdash;never!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I know, I know, mamma; but you have already
+forgiven me for that. You know it was
+from no unworthy motive. Think how you felt
+when you first saw papa. Think&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A hurried movement from the mother interrupted
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not keep me in suspense," she pleaded;
+"let me hear what you have to tell."</p>
+
+<p>"But you are cold; you shudder. Let me get
+a shawl."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, child, I am not cold, only impatient.
+Go on with your story&mdash;go on. How came you
+to meet the marquis in that place?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," cried the daughter, "it was a strange occurrence.
+It all came about through a mistake of
+Cecile's. Madame Douay, as we were told by the
+concierge, lived on the fourth floor, but Cecile
+made a miscount and we went up to the fifth, and
+as there was a Madame Douay there also, we did
+not detect our error, but went into her apartments
+and were seated in the small salon to await madame's
+presence. We had not told our errand, so
+we could not blame the maid who admitted us,
+nor, though madame failed to appear, did we ever
+remember to blame any one, for presently through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>
+the open window near which we sat there came
+the sound of voices from the room above, and a
+drama began of such startling interest that we
+could think of nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>"Two men were talking. Young men they
+seemed, and though I could not see them, I could
+tell from the fresh, fine voice of the one that he
+was a true man, and from the sneering, smothered
+tones of the other that he was not only a cynic,
+but of vicious tendencies. The first one was saying,
+'I never suspected this,' when my attention
+was first called to their words, and the answer
+which came was as follows: 'If you had, I should
+not have had the pleasure of seeing you here.
+Men are not apt to rush voluntarily upon their
+deaths, and that you are a dead man you already
+know; for I have sworn to kill you as the clock
+strikes three, and it is but ten minutes of that
+time, and you have not a weapon with which to
+defend yourself.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mamma, you can imagine my feelings at hearing
+these words, though they were uttered by a
+person I could not see, to another person equally
+unknown to me? I looked at Cecile and she looked
+at me, but we could neither of us move. Every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>
+faculty seemed paralyzed save that of hearing. We
+held our breaths and listened for the reply. It came
+instantly and without a thrill in its clear accents.</p>
+
+<p>"'You are a gentleman, and no common assassin.
+How can you reconcile such an act as this
+with your honor, or with what sophistries quiet the
+stings of your conscience when time shall have
+shown you the sin of so unprovoked an onslaught?'</p>
+
+<p>"'It is not unprovoked,' was the harsh and bitter
+reply. 'You promised to marry Mademoiselle
+de Fontaine, and yesterday, at three o'clock&mdash;ah,
+I was there!&mdash;you formally renounced your
+claims. This is an insult that calls for blood,
+and blood it shall have. Twenty-four hours have
+elapsed less ten minutes, since you cast this slur
+upon a noble lady's good name. When the hour
+is ripe, you will pay the penalty it requires with
+your life.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But,' urged his young companion, 'Mademoiselle
+de Fontaine had herself requested the
+breaking off of this contract. I am but following
+the lady's behests in withdrawing from a position
+forced upon us against our will, and in direct opposition
+to her happiness.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"'And by what right do you presume to follow
+the behests of a lady still under age? Has she
+not guardians to consult? Should not I&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'You?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Pardon me, I have not introduced myself, it
+seems. I am the Marquis de la Roche-Guyon.'"</p>
+
+<p>Honora paused; her mother's exclamation had
+stopped her:</p>
+
+<p>"The marquis! Oh! Honora, and you have always
+said he was so good!"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait, mamma; remember it is the cynical
+voice which is speaking, and the marquis's voice
+is not cynical. The words, however, are what I
+have told you; 'I am the Marquis de la Roche-Guyon.'</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, not knowing either party, nor this
+name, least of all realizing that it was the one by
+which the gentleman addressed was himself known,
+I did not understand why it should create so great
+an impression. But that it did was evident, not
+only from the momentary hush that followed, but
+from the violent exclamation that burst from the
+young man's lips. 'You scoundrel!' was his cry.
+But instantly he seemed to regret the word, for he
+said almost with the same breath: 'Your pardon,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>
+but there is but one man in the world besides myself
+who could, under any circumstances, have a
+right to that name.'</p>
+
+<p>"'And that man?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Is my cousin, the deceased marquis's son, long
+esteemed dead also, and now legally accepted as
+such.'</p>
+
+<p>"'And what assures you that I am not he? Your
+eyes? Well, I am changed, Louis, but not so
+changed that a good look should not satisfy you
+that I am the man I claim to be. Besides, you
+should know this mark on my forehead. You
+gave it to me&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Isidor!'</p>
+
+<p>"I could not comprehend it then, but I have
+learned since that the marquis&mdash;our marquis, I
+mean&mdash;had only just come into his title; that
+the son of the preceding Marquis de la Roche-Guyon
+had been so long missing that the courts had
+finally adjudged him dead, and given up his inheritance
+to his cousin; that the first act of the new
+marquis was to liberate the Demoiselle de Fontaine
+from an engagement that stood in the way
+of her marriage with one more desirable to her;
+and that the unexpected appearance of the real<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>
+heir in this sudden and mysterious manner was
+as great a surprise to him as any mortal circumstance
+could be. Yet to me, who waited with palpitating
+heart and anxious ears for what should
+be said next, there was no evidence of this in
+his tone. With the politeness we are accustomed
+to in Frenchmen he observed:</p>
+
+<p>"'You are welcome, Isidor;' and then, as if
+struck himself by the incongruity between this
+phrase and the look and manner of his companion,
+he added, in slow tones&mdash;'even if you do bring a
+sword with you.'</p>
+
+<p>"The other, the real marquis, as I suppose,
+seemed to hesitate at this, and I began to hope
+he was ashamed of his dreadful threats and would
+speedily beg the other's pardon. But I did not
+know the man, or realize the determination which
+lay at the bottom of his furious and uncompromising
+words. But he soon made it evident to us.</p>
+
+<p>"'Louis,' he exclaimed, 'you have always been
+my evil genius. From our childhood you have
+stood in my way with your superior strength,
+beauty, prowess and address. When I was young
+I simply shrank from you in shame and distaste,
+but as I grew older I learned to detest you; and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>
+now that I see you again, after five years of
+absence, handsome as ever, taller than ever, and
+radiant, notwithstanding your nearness to death,
+with memories such as I have never known, nor
+can know, and beliefs such as I have never cherished
+nor will cherish, I hate you so that I find it
+difficult to wait for the five minutes yet to elapse
+before my word will let me lift my pistol and fire
+upon you.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Then it is your hate of me, and not your
+fondness for your sister, that has led you to lay
+this trap for me?' exclaimed the other. 'I
+should think your hate would be satisfied by the
+change which your return will make in my prospects.
+From the marquisate of La Roche-Guyon
+to a simple captaincy in his majesty's guards is
+quite a step, Isidor. Will it not suffice to soothe
+an antagonism which I never shared?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Nothing can soothe it, not even your death!
+You have robbed me of too much. First, of the
+world's esteem, then of my mother's confidence,
+and, lastly, of my father's love. Yes; deny it if
+you will, my father loved you better than he did
+me. This was the reason he sent me from home;
+and when, shipwrecked and captured by savages,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>
+I found myself thrown into an Eastern dungeon,
+half my misery and all my rage were in the
+thought that he would not consider my loss a misfortune,
+but die in greater peace and hope from
+knowing that his family honors would devolve
+upon one more after his own heart than myself.
+Oh! I have had cause, and I have had time to
+nourish my hate. Five years in a dungeon affords
+one leisure, and on every square stone of that
+wall, and upon every inch of its relentless pavement,
+I have beaten out this determination with my
+bare hands and manacled feet, that if I ever did
+escape, and ever did return to the home of my
+fathers, I would have full pay for the suffering
+you have caused me, even if I had it in your blood.
+I have returned, and I find my father dead, and
+in his place yourself, happy, insolent, and triumphant.
+Can you blame me for remembering my
+vows, for resenting what will ever seem an insult
+to my sister, and for wishing to hurry the time
+that moves so slowly toward the fatal stroke of
+three?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I do not blame you, because you are a madman.
+I do not fear you, because, having no one
+in the world to love, I do not greatly dread a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>
+sudden release from it. But I pity you because
+you have suffered, and will defend myself because
+your sufferings will be increased rather than diminished
+by the success of your crazy intentions.'</p>
+
+<p>"The answer came, quick and furious:</p>
+
+<p>"'I do not want your pity, and I scorn any defense
+which you can make. Do you think I have
+not made my calculations well? There is nothing
+here which can give you hope. We are alone on
+the sixth story. Beneath us are only women, and
+if you call from the window, I can shoot you dead
+before your voice can reach the street. Perhaps,
+though, you do not think of saving yourself, but
+of ensnaring me. Bah! as if the sight of the headsman
+would stop me now. Besides, I am prepared
+for flight. Have you looked at this house? It is
+not like other houses; it is double, and the room
+in which we stand has other foundations and walls
+from this one behind me which I guard with my
+pistol. Let the deed be once done&mdash;and the clock,
+as you see, gives us but one minute more&mdash;and I
+leap into this other apartment, down another flight
+of stairs from those you came up, and so to another
+door that opens upon another street. Then shout,
+if you will; I am safe. As to your life, it is as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>
+much at my command as if my bullet were already
+in your heart.'</p>
+
+<p>"'We will see!' was the thundering reply, and
+with these words a rush was made that shook the
+floor above our heads, and scattered bits of plaster
+down upon us. Released by the action from the
+fearful spell which had benumbed my limbs, I felt
+that I could move at last, and, leaping to my feet,
+I uttered scream after scream. But they perished
+in my throat, smothered by a new fear; for at this
+moment my arm was caught by Cecile, and following,
+with horrified gaze, the pointing of her uplifted
+hand, I saw the straight line of the window-ledge
+before me dip and curve, and yielding to the force
+of her agonized strength, I let myself be dragged
+across the floor, while before us, beneath us,
+above us, all was one chaos of heaving and crashing
+timbers, which, in another instant, broke into
+a thunder of confused sounds, and we beheld beneath
+us a pit of darkness, death, and tumult,
+where, but an instant before, were all the
+appurtenances of a comfortable and luxurious
+home.</p>
+
+<p>"We were safe, for we had reached the flooring
+of the second house before that of the first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>
+had completely fallen, but I could not think of
+myself, narrow as my escape had been, and marvelous
+as was the warning which had revealed
+to Cecile the only path of safety. For in the
+clouded space above me, overhanging a gulf I
+dared not measure with my eyes or sound with
+my imagination, I saw clinging by one arm to a
+beam the awful figure of a man, while crouching
+near him on a portion of flooring that still clung
+intact to the wall, I beheld another in whose noble
+traits, distorted though they were by the emotions
+of the moment, I recognized him who, but a
+month before, had changed the world for me with
+his look.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! mamma, and a thousand deaths lay between
+us; and we could neither reach him nor give any
+alarm, for the space in which we found ourselves
+was small and shut from the outer world by a door
+which was locked. How it became locked I never
+knew, but I have thought that the maid in
+flying might have turned the key behind her,
+under some wild impression that by this means she
+would shut out destruction. However that may
+be, we were helpless and threatened by death.
+But our own situation did not alarm us, for theirs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span>
+was so much more terrible, especially that of the
+man whose straining arm clung so frantically to a
+support that threatened every moment to slip from
+his grasp. I could not look at him, and scarcely
+could I look at the other. But I did, for in his
+face there was such a high and noble resolve that
+it made me forget his danger, till suddenly I
+heard him speak high above the sounds that arose
+in a tempest from the street:</p>
+
+<p>"'Do not despair, Isidor. I think I can reach
+you and pull you up upon the beam. You shall
+not die a dog's death if I can help it. Hold on
+and I will come.' And he began to move and
+raise himself upon the narrow platform on which
+he stood, and I saw that he meant what he said, and
+involuntarily and with but little reason I cried:</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't do it! He is your enemy. Save yourself;
+he is but a murderer; let him go.'</p>
+
+<p>"I said that; I who never had a cruel thought
+before in my life. But he, without looking to
+see whence this voice came, answered boldly:</p>
+
+<p>"'It is because he is my enemy that I wish to
+save him. I could never enjoy a safety won at
+the expense of his death. Isidor, you must live!
+So hold on, my cousin.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/gs18.jpg" width="500" height="344" alt="&quot;You have conquered!&quot;" title="&quot;You have conquered!&quot;" />
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"And without saying anything further, this
+brave man set about a task that seemed to me at
+that moment not only superhuman but impossible.
+Gathering himself up, he prepared to make
+a spring, and in another instant would have
+launched himself toward that rocking beam, if
+Cecile, driven to extremity by the slow tottering
+of the floor upon which we stood, had not shrieked:</p>
+
+<p>"'And to save him you would leave us to perish?'</p>
+
+<p>"He paused and gave one look. 'Yes!' he cried.
+'God help you, but you look like innocent women,
+while he&mdash;' The leap was made. He lay clinging
+to the beam. His cousin, who had not fallen,
+cast one glance up; their eyes met, and Isidor, as
+he was called, gave one great sob. 'Oh, Louis!'
+he murmured, and was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"And then, mamma, there began a struggle for
+rescue such as I dare not even recall. I saw it
+because I could not look elsewhere, but I crushed
+its meaning from my consciousness, lest I should
+myself perish before I saw him safe. And all the
+while the figure hanging over us swayed with
+the rocking of the beam, and gave no help until<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>
+that last terrible moment when his cousin, reaching
+down, was able to sustain him under the arm
+till he could get his other hand up and clasp it
+around the beam. Then it all looked well, and we
+began to hope, when suddenly and without warning
+the nearly rescued man gave a great shriek,
+and crying, 'You have conquered!' unloosed his
+grasp, and fell headlong into the abyss.</p>
+
+<p>"Mamma, I did not faint. An unnatural strength
+seemed given to me. But I looked at the marquis,
+and for the first time he looked at me, and I
+saw the expression of horrified amaze with which
+he had beheld his cousin disappear gradually
+change to one of the softest and divinest
+looks that ever visited a noble visage, and knew
+that even out of that pit of death love had arisen
+for us two, and that henceforth we belonged to
+each other, whether our span of life should be cut
+short in a moment or extended into an eternity of
+years. His own heart seemed to assure him of the
+same sweet fact, for the next moment he was renewing
+his superhuman efforts, but this time for
+our rescue and his own. He worked himself along
+that beam; he gave another leap; he landed at
+our side, and tore a way for us through that closed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span>
+door. In another five minutes we were in the
+street, with half Paris surging about us, but before
+the crowd had quite seized upon me, he had
+found time to whisper in my ear:</p>
+
+<p>"'I am the Marquis de la Roche-Guyon. It will
+always be a matter of thankfulness to me that I was
+not left to sacrifice the fairest woman in the world
+to the rescue of a thankless coward.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mamma, do you blame me for giving such a
+man my heart, and do you wonder that what I
+have dedicated to this hero I can never yield to
+any other man?"</p>
+
+<p>The mother was silent&mdash;for a long time silent.
+Was she horror-stricken at the story of a danger
+she had never fully comprehended till now? Or
+were her thoughts busy with her own past, and its
+possible incommunicable secrets of blood and horror?
+The cry she gave at last betrayed anguish,
+but did not answer this question.</p>
+
+<p>"My child! my child! my child!" That was
+all, but it seemed torn from her heart, that bled
+after it.</p>
+
+<p>"He was not long in seeking me out, mamma,
+dear. With grace and consideration he paid me
+his court, and I was happy till I saw that you and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>
+papa frowned upon an alliance that to me seemed
+laden with promise. I could not understand it,
+nor could I understand our hurried departure
+from France, nor our secret journey here. All has
+been a mystery to me; but your will is my will,
+and I dare not complain."</p>
+
+<p>"Pure heart!" broke from the mother's lips.
+"Would to God&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What, dear mamma?"</p>
+
+<p>"That you had been moved by a lesser man
+than the Marquis de la Roche-Guyon."</p>
+
+<p>"A lesser man?"</p>
+
+<p>"With Armand Thierry, since he is the one you
+will have to marry."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall not marry him."</p>
+
+<p>"Shall not?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I cannot give my hand where my heart
+is, I remain unmarried. I dishonor no man with
+unmeaning marriage vows."</p>
+
+<p>"Honora!"</p>
+
+<p>"I may never be happy, but I will never be base.
+You yourself cannot wish me to be that. You,
+who married for love, must understand that a woman
+loses her title to respect when she utters
+vows to one man while her heart is with another."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You did marry for love, didn't you, sweet
+mamma? I like to think so. I like to think that
+papa never cared for any other woman in all the
+world but you, and that from the moment you
+first saw him, you knew him to be the one man
+capable of rousing every noble instinct within you.
+It is so sweet to enshrine you in such a pure romance,
+mamma. Though you have been married
+sixteen years&mdash;ah, how old I am!&mdash;I see you sit
+and look at papa sometimes, for a long, long time
+without speaking, and though you do not smile, I
+think, 'She is dreaming of the days when life
+was pure joy, because it was pure love,' and I long
+to ask you to tell me about those days, because I am
+sure, if you did, you would tell me the sweetest
+story of mutual love and devotion. Isn't it so,
+mamma mine?"</p>
+
+<p>Would that mother answer? Could she? I
+seemed to behold her figure pausing petrified in
+the darkness, drawing deep breaths, and scarcely
+knowing whether to curse or pray. I listened and
+listened, but it was long before the answer came.
+Then it was short and hurried, like the pants of
+one dying.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Honora, you hurt me." Another silence. "You
+make my task too hard. If I know what love
+is&mdash;" She found it hard to go on; but she did&mdash;"all
+the more anguish it must cost me to deny you
+what is so deeply desired. I&mdash;I would make you
+happy if I could. I will make you happy if it is
+in my power to do so, but I can hold out no hope&mdash;none,
+none."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor tell me why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nor tell you why."</p>
+
+<p>"Mamma, you suffer. I see it now, and somehow
+it makes it easier for me to bear my own suffering.
+You do not willfully deny me what is as
+much as my life to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Willfully! Honora! Listen." The mother
+had stopped in her walk, for I heard her restless
+tread no more. "You say that I suffer, child. I
+have never had one happy day. Whatever romance
+you have woven about me, I have never
+known, from the hour of my birth till now, one
+moment of such delight as you experienced when
+you saw the character of the marquis unfold before
+you so grandly. The nearest I have ever come to
+bliss was when you were first placed in my arms.
+Then, indeed, for one wild moment, I felt the bap<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>tism
+of true love. I looked at you, and my heart
+opened. Alas! it was to take in pain as well as
+joy. You had the face&mdash; Oh, Heaven! what am
+I saying? This darkness unnerves me, Honora.
+Let us have light, light, anything to keep my reason
+from faltering."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother, mother, you are ill!"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I am simply weak. I always am when I
+recall your birth and the first few days that followed
+it. I was so glad to have something I
+could really love; so glad to feel that my heart
+beat, and to know that it beat for one
+so innocent, so sweet, so helpless as yourself.
+What if I had pains and hours of darkness, did I
+not have your smile, also, and, later on, your love?
+Child, if there has been any good in my life&mdash;and
+sometimes I have thought there was a little&mdash;it
+came from you. So, never even question again if
+I could hurt you willfully. I not only could not
+do this and live, but to save you from pain I would
+dare&mdash; What would I not dare? Let man or
+angels say."</p>
+
+<p>Before such passion as this young Honora sank
+helpless.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mamma, mamma," she moaned, "forgive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>
+me. I did not know&mdash;how could I know? Don't
+sob, mamma, dear; let me hold you&mdash;so; now lay
+your cheek against mine and simply love me. I
+will lie quite still and ask no questions, and you
+will rest, too; and God will bless us, as he always
+blesses the loving and the true."</p>
+
+<p>But madame did not comply with this endearing
+request. Satisfying her daughter with a few
+kisses and some words that the paroxysm of her
+grief was past, she resumed her walk up and down
+the room, pausing every now and then as if to listen,
+and hastily resuming her walk as some slight
+exclamation from the bed assured her that mademoiselle
+was not yet asleep. As these pauses always
+took place when she was near the wall behind
+which I crouched, I frequently heard her breath,
+which came heavily, and once the rustle of her
+gown. But I did not stir. As long as her uneasy
+form flitted about the room, I clung to the partition,
+listening, determined that nothing should
+move me&mdash;not even my own terrors. And though
+night presently merged into midnight, and the
+silence and horror of the spot became frightful, I
+kept my post, for the stealthy tread continued,
+and so did the desultory scraps of conversation,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span>
+which proved that, if the mother was waiting for
+the daughter to sleep, the daughter was equally
+waiting for the mother to retire. And so daylight
+came, and with it exhaustion to more than one of
+us three watchers.</p>
+
+<p>And this is the record of the first night spent by
+me in the secret chamber.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A SURPRISE FOR HONORA.</h3>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">October</span> 22, 1791.<br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Letter E">
+<tr><td align='left' rowspan='2' valign='top'><img src="images/gs19a.png" width="134" height="556" alt="&quot;E&quot; left" title="&quot;E&quot; left" />
+</td><td align='left'><img src="images/gs19b.png" width="265" height="501" alt="&quot;E&quot; right" title="&quot;E&quot; right" />
+</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><div class='unindent'>VENTS crowd. This morning the
+one girl I have taken into my confidence came to my room with a strange tale. A stranger had
+arrived, an elegant young gentleman of foreign
+appearance, who had not yet given his name, but
+who must be a person of importance, if bearing and
+address go for anything. He came on horseback,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>
+attended by his valet, and his first word, after
+some directions in regard to his horse, was a request
+to see the landlady. When told she was
+ill, he asked for the clerk, and to him was about
+to put some question, when an exclamation from
+the doorway interrupted them. Turning, they
+saw madame standing there, her face petrified
+into an expression of terrified surprise.</div></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p>"Mrs.&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" sprang from the lady's lips before he
+could finish his exclamation; and advancing, she
+laid her hand on his arm, saying, in French,
+which, by the way, my clerk understands: "If you
+hope anything from us, do not speak the name
+that is faltering on your tongue. For reasons of
+our own, for reasons of a purely domestic nature,
+we are traveling incognito. Let me ask you as
+a gentleman to humor our whim, and to know
+us at present as Madame and Mademoiselle Letellier."</p>
+
+<p>He bowed, but flushed with embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>"And mademoiselle? She is well, I trust?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite well."</p>
+
+<p>"And yourself?"</p>
+
+<p>"Quite well, also. May I ask what has brought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>
+you into these parts, whom we thought in another
+and somewhat distant country?"</p>
+
+<p>"Need you ask?"</p>
+
+<p>They had drawn a little apart by this time, and
+the clerk heard no more; but their manner&mdash;the
+lady's especially&mdash;was so singular that he thought
+I ought to know that she was here under a false
+name, and so had sent Margery to me with the
+news. As for the gentleman and Madame Letellier,
+they were still conversing in the lowest
+tones together.</p>
+
+<p>Interested intensely in this new development
+in the drama hourly unfolding before my eyes, I
+dismissed Margery with an instruction or two,
+and passed into the hidden chamber, where I
+again laid my ear to the wall. The mother would
+have something to say when she returned, and I
+determined to hear what it was.</p>
+
+<p>I had to wait a long time, but was rewarded at
+last by the sound of voices and the distinct exclamation
+from the daughter's lips:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mamma! what has happened?"</p>
+
+<p>The mother's reply was delayed, but it came at
+last:</p>
+
+<p>"My face is becoming strangely communica<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>tive.
+You will read all my thoughts next. What
+makes you think anything has happened? Is this
+a place for occurrences?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mamma! you cannot deceive me. Your
+very limbs are trembling. See, you can hardly
+stand; and then, how you look at me! Oh,
+mamma, dear! is it good news or bad? for from
+your eyes it might be either. Has he&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He, he&mdash;always he!" the mother passionately
+interrupted. "You do not love your mother.
+You are thinking always of one whom you never
+saw till a year ago. My doubts, my fears, my
+sufferings are nothing to you. I might die&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! hush! Whenever did you speak like
+this before, mamma? Love you! Did ever a
+child love her mother more? But our affection is
+sure, while that of him you do not like me to mention
+is threatened, and its existence forbidden. I cannot
+help but think, mamma, and of him. If I could,
+I were a traitor to the noblest instincts that sway
+a woman's heart. I may not marry him&mdash;you say
+I never will&mdash;but think of him I must, and pray
+for him I will, till the last breath has left my lips.
+So, what is your news, dear mamma? Has papa
+written?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It is too early for the mail."</p>
+
+<p>"True, true. Some one has come, then; a messenger,
+perhaps, from New York. M. Dubois&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Dubois is a traitor. He has not kept the secret
+of our whereabouts. We have to settle with Monsieur
+and Madame Dubois, meanwhile&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Honora, can I trust you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Trust me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! who is trembling now?"</p>
+
+<p>"I! I! But how can I help it! You glance
+toward the door; you seem afraid some one will
+come. You&mdash;you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Tut! do not mind me! Answer what I ask.
+Could you see the marquis&mdash;talk to him, hear him
+urge his love and plead for yours, without forgetting
+that your obedience is mine, and that you are
+not to give him so much as the encouragement of
+a glance, till I either give you permission to do so
+or command from you his immediate and unqualified
+dismissal?"</p>
+
+<p>"See him?" It was all the poor girl had heard.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; see him. You have come from Paris&mdash;why
+not he? Since Dubois has proved himself a
+traitor&mdash;"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mamma!" came now in great sobs, "you
+are not playing with me. He has come; he is
+here; the horse I heard stop at the door&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Was that of the marquis," acknowledged the
+mother. "He is in the sitting room, child, but he
+does not expect you at present. This evening you
+shall see him if you will promise me what I have
+asked. Otherwise he must go. I will have no
+complications arising out of a secret betrothal. If
+you have not sufficient strength&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I have strength, mamma! I have strength.
+Only let me see him, and prove to myself that he
+is not worn by trouble and suspense, and I will do
+all you ask of me. Ah, how well I feel! What a
+beautiful&mdash;what a lovely day this is! Must I not
+go out till evening? May I not take one wee walk
+in the garden?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not one, my child. At nine o'clock you may
+go to the sitting room for a half hour. Till then,
+think over what I have said, and prepare your lips
+to be dumb and your eyes to remain downcast;
+for I am firm in my demands, and nothing will
+make me change them."</p>
+
+<p>"You may trust me." There was despair in the
+tones now.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As they talked but little after this, and as I was
+greatly interested in seeing the young man who
+had been heralded by such glowing descriptions,
+I stole back to my room, and, putting on a green
+shade, hastened to join my guests in the front part
+of the house. One glance from beneath my hurriedly
+uplifted shade was sufficient to assure me as
+to which of the gentlemen there assembled was
+the one I sought. So frank a face, so fine a form, so
+attractive a manner, were not often seen in my inn,
+and prepossessed at once in his favor, I advanced
+to the owner of all these graces, and, calling him
+by name, bade him welcome to my house.</p>
+
+<p>He must understand our language well, for he
+immediately turned with gentle urbanity, and
+discerning, perhaps, something in my face which
+assured him of my sympathy and respect, entered
+into a fluent conversation with me that at once increased
+my admiration and awakened my pity.
+For I saw that his nature was strong and his feelings
+deep, and as the future could have nothing
+but shame and misery, I instinctively felt oppressed
+by the fate which awaited him.</p>
+
+<p>He did not seem to feel any apprehension himself.
+His eyes were bright; his smile beaming;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>
+his bearing full of hope. Now and then his glance
+would steal toward the door or through the open
+windows, as if he longed to catch a glimpse of
+some passing face or form; and at last, swayed
+by that sympathy which we women all feel for
+true love in man or woman, I asked him to accompany
+me into the garden, promising him a
+view that would certainly delight him. As the
+garden was plainly visible from the oak parlor,
+you can readily understand to what view I alluded.
+But he had no suspicion of my meaning, and
+followed me with some reluctance.</p>
+
+<p>But his aspect changed materially when, in
+walking up and down the paths, I casually remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"This is the least inhabited side of the inn.
+Only one room is occupied, and that by two foreigners&mdash;Madame
+and Mademoiselle Letellier.
+Yet it has a pleasant outlook, as you yourself can
+see."</p>
+
+<p>"Is she&mdash;are they behind those windows?" he
+asked, with an impetuosity I could not but admire
+in a man with so much to recommend him to the
+consideration of others. "I beg your pardon,"
+he added, a moment later, after a stolen glance at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span>
+the house. "I know those ladies, and anything
+in connection with them is interesting to me."</p>
+
+<p>I believed it, and had hard work to hide my
+secret trouble. But his preoccupation assisted
+me, and at length I found courage to remark:</p>
+
+<p>"They are from Paris, I understand. A fine
+woman, Madame Letellier. Must be much admired
+in her own land?"</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to have no reason for resenting my
+curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"She is," was his quick reply. "She is not only
+admired, but respected. I have never heard her
+name mentioned but with honor. I am happy to
+be known as her friend."</p>
+
+<p>I gave him one quick look. Good God! What
+lay before this man! And he so unconscious! I
+felt like wishing the inn would fall to atoms before
+our eyes, crushing beneath it the sin of the past
+and his false hopes for the future. He saw nothing.
+He was smiling upon a rose which he had
+plucked and was holding in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"This inn is one of the antiquities," I now observed,
+anxious to know if any hint of its secrets had
+ever reached his ears. "They say it is one of
+the first structures reared on the river. Have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span>
+you ever heard any of the traditions connected
+with it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no," he smiled. "The Happy-Go-Lucky
+is quite a stranger to me. You cherish up all its
+legends, though, I have no doubt. Are there any
+tales of ghosts among them? I can easily imagine
+certain disembodied spirits wandering through its
+narrow halls and up and down its winding staircases."</p>
+
+<p>"What spirits?" I asked, convinced, however,
+by his manner that he was talking at random, with
+the probable aim of prolonging our walk within
+view of the window behind which his darling
+might stand concealed.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame must inform me. I have too little acquaintance
+with this country to venture among its
+traditions."</p>
+
+<p>"There is a story," I began; but here a finely
+modulated but piercing voice rang musically down
+the paths from the house, and we heard:</p>
+
+<p>"Your eyes will certainly suffer, Mrs. Truax, if
+you let the hot sun glare upon them so mercilessly."
+And, turning, we saw madame's smiling face
+looking from her casement with a meaning that
+struck us both dumb and led me to shorten our<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>
+walk lest my interest in the romance then going
+on should be suspected and my usefulness thus
+become abridged.</p>
+
+<p>Was it to forestall my suspicions, rid herself of
+my vigilance, or to insure herself against any forgetfulness
+on her daughter's part, that madame,
+some two hours later, sent me the following
+note:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Mrs. Truax</span>: I can imagine that after
+your walk in the blazing sunlight you do not feel
+very well this evening. I must nevertheless request
+of you a favor, my need being great and you
+being the only person who can assist me. The
+Marquis de la Roche-Guyon, with whom I saw
+you promenading, has come to this place with the
+express intention of paying court to my daughter.
+As I am not prepared to frown upon his suit, and
+equally unprepared to favor it, I do not feel at
+liberty to refuse him the pleasure of an interview
+with my daughter, and yet do not desire them to
+enjoy such an interview alone. As I am ill, quite
+ill, with a sudden and excruciating attack of pain
+in my right hip, may I ask if you will fulfill the
+office of chaperon for me, and, without embarrassment
+to either party, take such measures as will
+prevent an absolute confidence between them, till
+I have obtained the sanction of my husband to an
+intimacy which I myself dare not encourage?</p>
+
+<p>"Very truly your debtor, if you accomplish
+this, &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">Madame Letellier</span>."</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<img src="images/gs20.jpg" width="500" height="320" alt="The walk" title="The walk" />
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>IN THE SECRET CHAMBER.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Have only twenty-four hours elapsed? Is it but
+yesternight that all the terrible events took place,
+the memory of which are now making my frame
+tremble? So the clock says, and yet how hard it
+is to believe it. Madame Letellier&mdash; But I will
+preserve my old method. I will not anticipate
+events, but relate them as they occurred.</p>
+
+<p>To go back then to the note which I received
+from madame. I did not like it. I did not see its
+consistency, and I did not mean to be its dupe. If
+she intended remaining in the oak parlor, then
+over the oak parlor I would keep watch; for from
+her alone breathed whatever danger there might
+be for any of us, and to her alone did I look for the
+explanation of her mysterious presence in a spot
+that should have held a thousand repellent forces
+for her and hers. As for her sudden illness, that
+was nonsense. She was as well as I was myself.
+Had I not seen her standing at the window an
+hour or two before?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But here I made a mistake. Madame was really
+ill, as I presently had occasion to observe. For
+not only was a physician summoned, but word
+came that she wished to see me, also; and when I
+went to her room I found her in bed, her face pallid
+and distorted with pain, and her whole aspect
+betraying the greatest physical suffering.</p>
+
+<p>It was a rheumatic attack, affecting mainly her
+right limb, and made her so helpless that, for a
+moment, I stood aghast at what looked to me like
+a dispensation of Providence. But in another
+instant I began to doubt again; for though I knew
+it was beyond anybody's power to simulate the
+suffering under which she evidently labored, I
+was made to feel, by her penetrating and restless
+looks, that her mind retained its hold upon its purpose,
+whatever that purpose might be, and that
+for me to relax my vigilance now would be to
+give her an advantage that would be immediately
+seized upon.</p>
+
+<p>I therefore held my sympathies in check; and,
+while acting the part of the solicitous landlady,
+watched for that glance or word which should reveal
+her secret intentions. Her daughter, whose
+eyes were streaming with tears, stood over her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>
+like a pitying angel, and not till we had done all
+we could to relieve her mother, and subdue her
+pain, did she allow her longing eyes to turn toward
+the clock that beat out the passing moments
+with mechanical precision. It was just a quarter
+to nine.</p>
+
+<p>The mother saw that glance, and hid her face
+for a moment; then she took mademoiselle by the
+hand, and drawing her down to her, whispered
+audibly:</p>
+
+<p>"I expect you to keep your appointment. Mrs.
+Truax will send one of the girls to sit with me.
+Besides, I feel better, and as if I could sleep.
+Only remember your promise, dear. No look, no
+hint of your feelings."</p>
+
+<p>Mademoiselle flushed scarlet. Stealing a look
+at me, she drew back embarrassed, but oh! how
+joyous. I felt my old heart quiver as I surveyed
+her, and in spite of the dread form of the redoubtable
+woman stretched before me, in spite of the
+grewsome room and its more than grewsome secrets,
+something of the fairy light of love seemed
+to fall upon my spirit and lift the darkness from
+the place for one short and glowing moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Look in the glass," the mother now command<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span>ed.
+"You need to tie up your curls again and to
+put a fresh flower at your throat. I do not wish
+you to show weariness. Mrs. Truax"&mdash;these
+words to me in low tones, as her daughter withdrew
+to the other side of the room&mdash;"you received
+my note?"</p>
+
+<p>I nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"You will do what I ask?"</p>
+
+<p>I nodded again. Deliberate falsehood it was,
+but I showed no faltering.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I will excuse you now."</p>
+
+<p>I rose.</p>
+
+<p>"And do not send any one to me. I wish to
+sleep, and another's presence would disturb me.
+See, the pain is almost gone."</p>
+
+<p>She did look better.</p>
+
+<p>"Your wishes shall be regarded," I assured her.
+"If you do feel worse, ring this bell and Margery
+will notify me." And placing the bell rope near
+her hand, I drew back and presently quitted the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>Lingering in the hall just long enough to see the
+lovely Honora flit across the threshold of the sitting-room
+which I had purposely ordered vacant
+for her use, I hurried to my room.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It was dark, dark as the secret chamber into
+which I now stole with the lightest and wariest of
+steps. Horror, gloom, and apprehension were in
+the air, which brooded stiflingly in the narrow spot,
+and had it not been for the righteous purpose sustaining
+me, I should have fallen at this critical
+moment, crushed beneath the terrible weight of
+my own feelings.</p>
+
+<p>But one who has to listen, straining every faculty
+to catch the purport of what is going on
+behind an impenetrable wall, soon forgets himself
+and his own sensations. As I pressed my ear to
+the wall and caught the sound of a prolonged and
+painful stir within, I only thought of following the
+movements of madame, who, I was now sure, had
+left her bed and was dragging herself, with what
+difficulty and distress I could but faintly judge by
+the involuntary groans which now and then left
+her, across the floor toward the door, the key of
+which I presently heard turn.</p>
+
+<p>This done, a heavy silence followed, then the
+slow, dragging sound began again, interrupted
+now by weary pants and heavy sobs that at first
+chilled me and then shook me with such fear that
+it was with difficulty that I could retain my place<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>
+against the wall. She was crawling in my direction,
+and at each instant I heard the pants grow
+louder.</p>
+
+<p>I gradually withdrew, step by step, till I
+found myself pressed up against the wall in the
+remotest corner I could find. And here was I
+standing, enveloped in darkness and dread, when
+the sounds changed to that of a shuddering, rushing
+noise which I had heard once before in my life, and
+from a narrow gap through which the faint light
+in the room beyond dimly shone in a thread of
+lesser darkness, the aperture grew, till I could feel
+rather than see her form, crawling, not walking,
+through the opening, and hear, distinct enough,
+her horrible, gurgling tones as she murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to grope for what I want&mdash;touch
+it, feel it, for I cannot see. O God! O God!
+What horror! What punishment!"</p>
+
+<p>Nearer, nearer over the floor she came, dragging
+her useless limb behind her. Her outstretched
+arm groped, groped about the floor, while I
+stood trembling and agonized with horror till her
+hand touched the skirt of my dress, when, with a
+great shriek of suddenly liberated feeling, I pushed
+her from me, and crying out, "Murderess! do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>
+you seek the bones of your victim?" I flung open
+the door against which I stood and let the light
+from my own room stream in upon us two.</p>
+
+<p>Her face as I saw it at that moment has never
+left my memory. She had fallen in a heap at my
+first move, and now lay crushed before me, with
+only her wide-staring eyes and shaking lips to tell
+me that she lived.</p>
+
+<p>"You thought I did not know you," I burst
+forth. "You thought, because I had never seen
+your face, you could come back here, bringing
+your innocent daughter with you, and cast yourself
+into the very atmosphere of your crime without
+awakening the suspicion of the woman whose
+house you had made a sepulcher of for so many
+years. But crime was written too plainly on your
+brow. The spirit of Honora Urquhart, breaking
+the bounds of this room, has walked ever beside
+you, and I knew you from the first moment that
+you strayed down this hall."</p>
+
+<p>Broken sounds, unintelligible murmurings, were
+all that greeted me.</p>
+
+<p>"You are punished," I went on, "in the misery
+of your daughter. Nemesis has reached you.
+The blood of Honora Urquhart has called aloud<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>
+from these walls, and not yourself only, but the
+still viler being whose name you have so falsely
+shared, must answer to man and God for the life
+you so heartlessly sacrificed and the rights you so
+falsely usurped."</p>
+
+<p>"Mercy!" came in one quick gasp from the
+crushed heap of humanity before me.</p>
+
+<p>But I was inexorable. I remembered Honora
+Urquhart's sweet face, and at that moment could
+think of nothing else. So I went on.</p>
+
+<p>"You have had years of triumph. You have
+borne your victim's name, worn your victim's
+clothes, sported with your victim's money. And
+he, her husband, has looked on and smiled. Day
+after day, month after month, year after year, you
+have gone in and out before your friends, unmolested
+and unafraid; but God's vengeance, though
+it halts, is sure and keen. Across land and across
+water the memories of this room have drawn you,
+and not content with awakening suspicion, you
+must make suspicion certainty by moving a spring
+unknown even to myself, and entering this spot,
+from which the bones of your victim were taken
+only two months ago, Marah Leighton!"</p>
+
+<p>Moved by the name, she stood up. Tottering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>
+and agonized with pain, but firm once more and
+determined, she towered before me, her face turned
+toward the room she had left, her hand lifted,
+her whole attitude that of one listening.</p>
+
+<p>"Hark!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>It was a knock, a faint, low, trembling knock
+that we heard, then the word "Mamma" came in
+muffled accents from the hallway.</p>
+
+<p>A convulsion crossed the countenance of the
+miserable woman before me.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, God! my daughter, my daughter!" she
+cried. And falling at my feet, she groveled in
+anguish as she pleaded:</p>
+
+<p>"Will you kill her? She knows nothing, suspects
+nothing. The whole fifteen years of her life
+are pure. She is a flower. I love her&mdash;I love
+her, though she looks like the woman I hated
+and killed. She bears her name&mdash;why, I do not
+know&mdash;I could not call her anything else; she is
+my living reproach, and yet I love her. Do you
+not see it was for her I crossed the water, for her
+I plunged my living hand into this tomb to learn
+if our secret had ever been discovered, and if there
+was any hope that she might yet be made happy?
+Ah, woman, woman, you are not a wretch&mdash;a de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>mon!
+You will not sentence this innocent soul to
+disgrace and misery. Even if I must die&mdash;and I
+swear that I will die if you say so&mdash;leave to my
+child her hopes; keep secret my sin, and take the
+blessing of the most miserable being that crawls
+upon the earth, as a solace for your old age.
+Hear me; hear a wretched mother's plea&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It is too late," I broke in. "Even were I silent
+there are others upon your track. I doubt if
+your husband does not already know that the day
+of his prosperity is at an end."</p>
+
+<p>She gave a low cry, and tottered from the
+place. Entering her own room, she threw herself
+upon the bed. I followed, drawing the curtains
+about her. Then closing the door of communication
+between the oak parlor and the chamber
+beyond, I passed to the door behind which we
+could yet hear her daughter's soft voice calling,
+and, unlocking it, let the radiant creature in.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mamma!" she began, "I could not keep
+my word&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But here I held up my hand, and drawing her
+softly out, told her that her mother needed rest
+just now, and that if she would come to my room
+for a little while it would be best; and so prevail<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>ed
+upon her that she promised to do what I asked,
+though I saw her cast longing glances through the
+partly opened door toward the somber bed so like
+a tomb, and which at that moment was a tomb,
+had she known it&mdash;a tomb of hope, of joy, of
+peace for evermore.</p>
+
+<p>I was just going out, when a slight stir detained
+me. Looking back, I saw a hand thrust
+out from between the falling curtains. Just a
+hand, but how eloquent it was! Pointing it out
+to mademoiselle, I said:</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother's hand. Give it a kiss, mademoiselle,
+but do not part the curtains."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled and crossed to that ominous bed.
+Kneeling, she kissed the hand, which thereupon
+raised itself and rested on her head. In another
+instant it was drawn slowly away, and, with a
+startled look, the half-weeping daughter rose and
+glided again to my side.</p>
+
+<p>As I closed the door I thought of those words:
+"And the sins of the father shall be visited upon
+the children to the third and fourth generation."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MARQUIS.</h3>
+
+
+<p>But the events of the night are not over. As
+soon as I had seen mademoiselle comfortably ensconced
+in my old room up stairs, I returned to
+the sitting room, where the marquis still lingered.
+He was standing in the window when I entered,
+and turned with quite a bright face to greet me.
+But that brightness soon vanished as he met my
+glance, and it was with something like dismay that
+he commented upon my paleness, and asked if I
+were ill.</p>
+
+<p>I told him I was ill at ease; that events of a
+most serious nature were transpiring in the house;
+that he was concerned in them heavily, grievously;
+that I could not rest till I had taken him into
+my confidence, and shown him upon what a precipice
+he was standing.</p>
+
+<p>He evidently considered me demented, but as
+he looked at me longer, and noted my steady and
+unflinching gaze, he gradually turned pale, and
+uttered, in irrepressible anxiety, the one word&mdash;"Honora!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Miss Urquhart is well," I began, "and is as
+ignorant as yourself of the shadows that hover
+over her. She is all innocence and truth, sir.
+Honor, candor and purity dwell in her heart, and
+happiness in her eyes. Yet is that happiness
+threatened by the worst calamity that can befall a
+sensitive human being, and if you hold her in esteem&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ma foi!</i>" he broke in, with violent impetuosity.
+"I do not esteem her; I love her. What are these
+dreadful secrets? How is her happiness threatened?
+Tell me without hesitation, for I have
+entreated her to be my wife, and she&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She thinks it is a parent's whim, alone, which
+keeps her from responding fully to your wishes,"
+I finished. "But madame's objections have deeper
+ground than that. Miserable woman as she is,
+she has some idea of honor left. She knew her
+daughter could not safely marry into a high and
+noble family, and so&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What is this you say?" came again in the quick
+and hurried tones of despair. "Mrs. Urquhart&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait," I broke in. "You call her Mrs. Urquhart,
+but she has no claim to that title. She and
+Edwin Urquhart have never been married."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He recoiled sharply, with a gesture of complete
+disbelief.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know?" he demanded. "They
+are strangers to you. I have known them in their
+own home. All the world credits their marriage,
+and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"All the world does not know what transpired
+in this house sixteen years ago, when Edwin Urquhart
+stopped here with his bride on his way to
+France."</p>
+
+<p>He stared, seemed shaken, but presently hastened
+to remark:</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, madame, you acknowledge that she is his
+wife. You said bride. One does not call a woman
+by that name without acknowledging a marriage
+service."</p>
+
+<p>"The woman he brought here was his bride.
+Edwin Urquhart is no common criminal, Marquis
+de la Roche-Guyon."</p>
+
+<p>It was hard to make him understand. It was
+hard to undermine his trust, step by step, inch by
+inch, till he found no hope, no shred of doubt to
+cling to. But it had to be done. If only to avert
+worse calamities and more heart-rending scenes,
+he must know at once, and before he took another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>
+step in relation to Miss Urquhart, just what her
+position was, and to what shame and suffering he
+was subjecting himself by accepting her love and
+pledging his own.</p>
+
+<p>The task was not done till I had shown him this
+diary of mine, and related all that had just occurred
+in the room below. Then, indeed, he seemed
+to comprehend his position, and completely crushed
+and horror-stricken, subsided into a dreadful
+silence before me, the lines of years coming into
+his face as I watched him, till he became scarcely
+recognizable for the lordly and light-hearted cavalier
+whose dreams of love I had so fearfully interrupted
+some half hour or so before. From this
+lethargy of despair I did not seek to rouse him. I
+knew when he had anything to say he would speak,
+and till he had faced the situation and had made
+up his mind to his duty, I could wait his decision
+with perfect confidence in his fine nature
+and nice sense of honor.</p>
+
+<p>You may, therefore, imagine my feelings when,
+after a long delay&mdash;an hour at least&mdash;he suddenly
+remarked:</p>
+
+<p>"We have been a proud family. From time
+immemorial we have held ourselves aloof from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>
+whatever could be thought to stain our honor or
+impeach our good name. I cannot drag the unfathomable
+disgrace of all these crimes into a record
+so pure as that of the Roche-Guyon race.
+Though I had wished to bestow upon my wife a
+name and position of which she could be proud, I
+must content myself with merely giving her the
+comfort of a true heart and such support as can
+be provided by a loving but unaccustomed hand."</p>
+
+<p>"Marquis&mdash;" I commenced.</p>
+
+<p>But he cut my words short with a firm and determined
+gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"My name is Louis de Fontaine," he explained.
+"Henceforth my cousin will be known as the marquis.
+It is the least I can do for the old French
+honor."</p>
+
+<p>'Twas so simply, so determinedly done that I
+stood aghast as much at the serenity of his manner
+as the act which required such depth of sacrifice
+from one of his traditions and rearing.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you continue to consider yourself the
+suitor of Miss Urquhart," I stammered. "You
+will marry her, though her parents may be called
+upon to perish upon the scaffold in an ignominy
+as great as ever befell two guilty mortals?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The answer came brokenly, but with unwavering
+strength:</p>
+
+<p>"Did you not say that she was innocent? Is
+she to be crushed beneath the guilt of her parents?
+Am I to take the last prop from one so soon to
+be bereft of all the supports upon which she has
+leaned from infancy? If I cling to her, she may
+live through her horror and shame; but should
+I fail her&mdash;great heavens! would we not have
+another life to answer for before God? Besides,"
+he added, with the simplicity which marked his
+whole bearing, "I love her. I could not do
+otherwise if I would."</p>
+
+<p>To this final word I could make no rejoinder.
+With a reverence unmingled with the taint of compassion,
+I took my departure, and being anxious
+by this time to know how my young charge was
+bearing her seclusion, I went to the room where
+I had left her, and softly opened the door.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>MARK FELT.</h3>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/gs21.jpg" width="300" height="329" alt="S" title="S" />
+</div>
+<div class='unindent'>UBJECTED as I have been
+in the last three hours to
+distress and turmoil, I was
+delighted to find mademoiselle
+asleep, and to behold
+her peaceful face. Gazing
+at it, and noting the happy smile which unconsciously
+lingered on her lips, I could not but feel
+that, despite the hideous revelations which lay
+before her, her lot was an enviable one, allied as
+it promised to be with that of one of such high
+principles as the marquis. Though I am old now
+and have had my day, the love of the innocent
+and pure is sacred to me, and in this case it
+certainly has the charm of a spotless lily blooming
+in the jaws of hell.</div>
+
+<p>As it was late and I was almost exhausted, I
+began to think of rest. But my uneasiness in re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span>gard
+to madame would not let me sleep till I had
+made another visit to her room. So, leaving the
+gentle sleeper lapped in serenest dreams, I proceeded
+to descend once more. As I passed the
+great clock on the stairs, I noticed that it was
+almost midnight and began to hasten my steps,
+when I heard a loud knock at the front door.</p>
+
+<p>This is not an infrequent sound with us, but it
+greatly startled me this night. I even remember
+pausing and looking helplessly up and down the
+hall, as if it were a question whether I should
+obey the unwelcome summons. But such knocking
+as speedily followed could not be long
+ignored. So, subduing my impatience, I hastened
+to the door, and unlocking it, threw it open.
+A gust of rain and wind greeted me.</p>
+
+<p>This was my first surprise, for I had not even
+noticed that the weather was unpleasant, so completely
+had I been absorbed by what had been
+going on in the house. My next was the bearing
+and appearance of the stranger who demanded
+my hospitality. For though both face and form
+were unknown to me, there was that in his aspect
+which stirred recollections not out of keeping
+with the unhappy subject then occupying all my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span>
+thoughts. Yet I could not speak his name, or put
+into words the anticipations that vaguely agitated
+me, and led him through the hall and into the
+comfortable sitting room so lately vacated by the
+marquis, with no more distinct impression in my
+mind than that something was about to happen
+which would complete rather than interrupt the
+horrors of this eventful night.</p>
+
+<p>And when the light fell full upon him, and I could
+see his eager eyes, this feeling increased, and no
+sooner had his cloak fallen from his shoulders and
+his hat left his head, than I recognized the prominent
+jaw and earnest face, and putting no curb on
+my impetuosity, I exclaimed at once, and without
+a doubt:</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Felt!"</p>
+
+<p>The utterance of this name seemed to cause no
+surprise to my new guest.</p>
+
+<p>"The same," he replied; "and you are Mrs.
+Truax, of course. Mr. Tamworth has described
+you to me, also this inn, till I feel as if I knew its
+every stone. I did not wish to visit it, but I could
+not help myself. An unknown influence has been
+drawing me here for days, and though I resisted
+it with all my strength, it finally became so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span>
+powerful that I rose from my bed at night, saddled
+my horse, and started in this direction. I
+have been twenty hours on the road, but part of
+these I have spent in the thicket just over against
+you on the opposite side of the road. For the
+sight of the house awakened in my mind such a
+disturbance that I feared to show myself at the
+door. A voice out of the air seemed to cry, 'Not
+yet! not yet!' Nevertheless I could not go back
+nor leave the spot, which, once seen, possessed for
+me a fatal fascination."</p>
+
+<p>I was speechless. Good God! were the old
+psychological influences at work, and had they
+acted upon him at forty miles distance?</p>
+
+<p>"You come from Albany?" I at last stammered
+forth. "You must have had a wet time of it; it
+storms heavily, I see."</p>
+
+<p>"Storms?" he repeated, glancing at the cloak he
+had thrown off. "Great Heaven! my cloak is
+saturated, and I did not even know it rained. A
+touch of the old spell," he murmured. "Something
+is about to happen to me; something has
+drawn me with purpose to this house."</p>
+
+<p>I felt awe-struck. Would he guess next what
+that something was?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"At eleven o'clock," he went on, with the abstracted
+air of one recalling an experience, "I felt
+a pang shoot through my breast. I had been
+looking steadfastly at these walls, and somewhere
+about the building a light seemed to go out, for a
+pall of darkness suddenly settled upon it, simultaneously
+with the cessation of that imaginary cry
+which had hitherto detained me. Where was that
+light, Mrs. Truax, and what has happened here
+that I should feel myself called upon to cross this
+threshold to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>I did not answer at once, for I was trembling.
+Was I to be subjected to another such an ordeal as
+I had experienced earlier in the evening and be
+forced to prepare, by such means as lay in my
+power, a much abused man for a most dreadful
+revelation? It began to look so.</p>
+
+<p>"What has called me here?" he repeated. "Danger
+to her or death to him? They are thousands
+of miles away, and Tamworth could not have yet
+reached them, but peril of some deadly nature
+menaces them, I know. A stroke has gone home
+to him or her, and it is in this place I am to learn
+it; is it not so, Mrs. Truax?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," I tremblingly assented. "There is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>
+a gentleman here from France who may be able
+to tell you something of the man and the woman
+you mean. Would it affect you very much to
+hear disastrous news of them?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot say," he answered; "it should not.
+Mr. Tamworth tells me that he has acquainted
+you with the story of my life. Do you think I
+should feel overwhelmed at any retribution following
+a crime that was committed almost as much
+against me as against the pure and noble being
+who was the visible sufferer?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shrink from answering," I returned; "the
+human heart is a curious thing. If he alone were
+to suffer&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, he!" was the bitter ejaculation.</p>
+
+<p>"Or if she," I proceeded, "were bound by no
+ties appealing to the sympathies! But she is a
+mother&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Good God!"</p>
+
+<p>I had not thought it would affect him so, and
+stood appalled.</p>
+
+<p>"A mother!" he repeated; "she! she! the
+tigress, the heartless one, with no more soul than
+the naked dagger I should have plunged into
+her breast and did not! Great Heaven! and this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span>
+child has lived, I suppose; is grown up and&mdash;and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Is the sweetest, purest, most unworldly of beautiful
+women that these eyes have ever rested upon."</p>
+
+<p>I thought he would spring upon me, he leaned
+forward with so much impetuosity.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know?" he asked, and my heart
+stood still at the question.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I have seen her," I presently rejoined.
+"Because I have had opportunities for studying
+her heart. She is called Honora, and she is like
+Miss Dudleigh, only more beautiful and with more
+claims to what is called character."</p>
+
+<p>He did not seem to take in my words.</p>
+
+<p>"You have been to France?" he declared.</p>
+
+<p>"No," I corrected; "Miss Urquhart has been
+here."</p>
+
+<p>He fell back, then started forward again, opened
+his lips and stared wildly, half fearfully about the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"Here?" he repeated, evidently overcome at the
+idea. "Why did they send her here? I should
+as soon have expected them to send her into the
+murk of the bottomless pit. A girl, an innocent
+girl, you say, and sent here?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"They had reason; besides, she did not come
+alone."</p>
+
+<p>This time he understood me.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" he shrieked, "she in the house. I might
+have known it," he went on more calmly; "I did,
+only I would not believe it. Her crime has drawn
+her to the place of its perpetration. She could
+not resist the magnetic influence which all places
+of blood have upon the guilty. She has come
+back! And he?"</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head.</p>
+
+<p>"The man had less courage," I declared. "Perhaps
+because he was more guilty; perhaps because
+he had less love."</p>
+
+<p>"Love?"</p>
+
+<p>"It was love for the daughter which drew the
+mother here, not the spell of her crime or the
+accusing spirit of the dead. The woman who
+wronged you has some heart; she was willing
+to risk detection, and with it her reputation and
+life, to see if by any possibility she could venture
+to give happiness to the one being whom she really
+loves."</p>
+
+<p>"Explain; I do not understand. How could
+she hope to find happiness for her child here?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"By settling the question which evidently tortured
+her. By determining once for all whether
+the crime of sixteen years back had ever been
+discovered, and if she found it had not, to satisfy
+at once her own pride and her daughter's heart
+by giving that daughter to as noble a gentleman
+as ever carried a sword."</p>
+
+<p>"And they are here now?"</p>
+
+<p>"They are here."</p>
+
+<p>"And she has discovered&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The futility of all her hopes."</p>
+
+<p>He drew back, and his heavy breath echoed in
+deep pants through the room.</p>
+
+<p>"What an end for Marah Leighton!" he gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"What an end! And she is here!" he went on,
+after a moment of silent emotion&mdash;"under this
+roof! No wonder I felt myself called hither.
+And she knows her crime is detected? How came
+she to know this? Did you recognize her and tell
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I recognized her and told her. There was
+no other course. We met in the secret chamber,
+whither she had come to make her own terrible
+investigations; and the sight of her there, on the
+spot where she had left the innocent to die, was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span>
+too much for my sense of justice. I accused her
+to her face, and she crouched before me as under
+the lash. There was no possibility of denial after
+that, and she now lies&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait!" he cried, catching me painfully by the
+arm. "When was this day? To-day&mdash;to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not two hours ago."</p>
+
+<p>His brow took on a look of awe.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," he murmured, "she has power over
+me yet. When her hope broke, something snapped
+within me here. I abhor her, but I feel her
+grief. She was once all the world to me."</p>
+
+<p>I recognized his right to emotion, and did not
+profane it by any words of mine. Instead of that
+I sought to leave him, but he would not let me go
+till he had asked me another question.</p>
+
+<p>"And the daughter?" he urged. "Does she
+know of the opprobrium which must fall upon
+her head?"</p>
+
+<p>"She sleeps," I replied, "with a smile of the
+shyest delight upon her lips. Her lover has followed
+her to this place, and the last words she
+heard to-night were those of his devotion. Her
+suffering must come to-morrow; yet it will be
+mitigated, for he will not forsake her, whatever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span>
+shame may follow his loyalty. I have his word
+for that."</p>
+
+<p>"Then the earth holds two lovers," was Mark
+Felt's rejoinder. "I thought it held but one."
+And with a sigh he let go my arm and turned to
+the window, with its background of driving rain
+and pitiless flashes of lightning.</p>
+
+<p>I took the opportunity to excuse myself for
+a few minutes, and hurrying again into the hall,
+hastened, with nervous fear and an agitation
+greatly heightened by the unexpected interview
+I had just been through, to the now oft-opened
+door leading into the oak parlor.</p>
+
+<p>I found it closed but not locked, and pushing it
+open, listened for a moment, then took a glance
+within. All was quiet and ghostly. A single
+candle guttering on the table at one end of the
+room lent a partial light by which I could discern
+the funereal bed and the other heavy and desolate-looking
+articles of furniture with which the room
+was encumbered. Honora's flowers, withering
+on the window seat, spoke of tender hopes not
+yet vanished from her tender dreams, but elsewhere
+all was hard, all was dreary, all was inexorably
+forbidding and cold. I shuddered as I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span>
+looked, and shuddered still more as I approached
+the bed and paused firmly before it.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Letellier"&mdash;it was the only name by
+which I could bring myself to address her at that
+instant&mdash;"there is one gleam of brightness in your
+sky. The marquis knows the story of your guilt,
+yet consents to marry your daughter."</p>
+
+<p>I received no reply.</p>
+
+<p>Shaken by fresh doubts, and moved by an inexplicable
+terror, I stood still for a moment gathering
+up my strength, then I repeated my words,
+this time with sharp emphasis and scarcely concealed
+importunity.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame," said I, "the marquis knows your
+guilt, yet consents to marry your daughter."</p>
+
+<p>But the silence within remained unbroken, and
+not a movement displaced the somber falling curtains.</p>
+
+<p>Agitated beyond endurance, I stretched forth
+my hands and drew those curtains aside. An unexpected
+sight met my eyes. There was no madame
+there; the bed was empty.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>FOR THE LAST TIME.</h3>
+
+
+<p>My eyes turned immediately in the direction of
+the secret chamber. Its entrance was closed, but
+I knew she was hidden there as well as if the
+door had been open and I had seen her.</p>
+
+<p>What should I do? For a moment I hesitated,
+then I rushed from the room and hastened back
+to Mr. Felt. I found him standing with his face
+to the door, eagerly awaiting my return.</p>
+
+<p>"What has happened?" he asked, importunately.
+"Your face is as pale as death."</p>
+
+<p>"Because death is in the house. Madame&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!"</p>
+
+<p>"Lies not in her bed, nor is she to be found in
+her room. There is another place, however, in
+which instinct tells me we shall find her, and if
+we do, we shall find her dead!"</p>
+
+<p>"In her daughter's room? At her daughter's
+bedside?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; in the secret chamber."</p>
+
+<p>He gazed at me with wild and haggard aspect.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You are right," he hoarsely assented. "Let
+us go; let us seek her; it may not be too late."</p>
+
+<p>The entrance to this hidden room was closed,
+as I have said, and as I had never assisted at its
+opening, I did not know where to find the hidden
+spring by means of which the panel was moved.
+We had, therefore, to endure minutes of suspense
+while Mr. Felt fumbled at the wainscoting. The
+candle I held shook with my agitation, and though
+I had heard nothing of the storm before, it seemed
+now as if every gust which came swooping down
+upon the house tore its way through my shrinking
+consciousness with a force and menace that scattered
+the last remnant of self-possession. Not an
+instant in the whole terrible day had been more
+frightful to me, no, not the moment when I first
+heard the sliding of this very panel and the sound
+of her crawling form approaching me through
+the darkness. The vivid flashes of lightning that
+shot every now and then through the cracks of
+the closely shuttered window, making a skeleton
+of its framework, added not a little to its terror,
+there being no other light in the room save that
+and the flickering, almost dying flame, with which
+I strove to aid Mr. Felt's endeavors and only suc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span>ceeded
+in lighting up his anxious and heavily
+bedewed forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, oh!" was my moan; "this is terrible!
+Let us quit it or go around to my own room,
+where there is an open door."</p>
+
+<p>But he did not hear me. His efforts had become
+frantic, and he tore at the wainscoting as if
+he would force it open by main strength.</p>
+
+<p>"You cannot reach her that way," I declared.
+"Perhaps my hand may be more skillful. Let
+me try."</p>
+
+<p>But he only increased his efforts. "I am coming,
+Marah; I am coming!" he called, and at once,
+as if guided by some angel's touch, his fingers
+slipped upon the spring. Immediately it yielded,
+and the opening so eagerly sought for was made.</p>
+
+<p>"Go in," he gasped, "go in."</p>
+
+<p>And so it was that the fate which had forced
+me against my will, and in despite of such intense
+shrinking, to pass so frequently into that hideous
+spot, where death held its revel and Nemesis
+awaited her victim, drove me thither once again,
+and, as I now hope, for the last time. For, there
+upon the floor, and almost in the same spot where
+we had found lying the remains of innocent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span>
+Honora Urquhart, we saw, as my premonition had
+told me we should, the outstretched form of the
+unhappy being who had usurped her place in life,
+and now, in retribution of that act, had laid her
+head down upon the same couch in death. She
+was pulseless and quite cold. Upon her mouth
+her left hand lay pressed, as if, with her last breath,
+she sought to absorb the pure kiss which had been
+left there by the daughter she so much loved.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER XXVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A LAST WORD.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Did Marah Leighton will the coming of her old
+lover to my inn on that fatal night? That is the
+question I asked, when, with the first breaking of
+the morning light, I discovered lying on the table
+under an empty phial, a letter addressed, not to
+her husband, nor to her child, but to him, Mark
+Felt. It is a question that will never be answered,
+but I know that he comforts himself with the supposition,
+and allows the trembling hope to pass, at
+times, across his troubled spirit, that in the bitterness
+of those last hours some touch of the divine
+mercy may have moved her soul and made her
+fitter for his memory to dwell upon.</p>
+
+<p>The letter I afterward read. It was as follows:</p>
+
+
+<div class='center'><span class="smcap">To the Man Who Gave All, Bore All, and
+Reaped Nothing but Suffering:</span></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>I am not worthy to write you, even with the
+prospect of death before me. But an influence I
+do not care to combat drives me to make you, of
+all men, the confidant of my remorse.</p>
+
+<p>I did not perish sixteen years ago in the Hud<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span>son
+River. I lived to share in and profit by a
+crime that has left an indelible stain upon my life
+and an ineffaceable darkness within my soul. You
+know, or soon will know, what that crime was and
+how we prospered in it. Daring as it was dreadful,
+I heard its fearful details planned by his lips,
+without a shudder, because I was mad in those
+days, mad for wealth, mad for power, mad for adventure.
+The only madness I did not feel was
+love. This I say to comfort a pride that must
+have been sorely wounded in those days, as sorely
+wounded as your heart.</p>
+
+<p>Edwin Urquhart could make my eyes shine and
+my blood run swiftly, but not so swiftly as to make
+me break my troth with you, had he not sworn to
+me that through him I should gain what moved
+me more than any man's love. How he was to
+accomplish this I could not see in the beginning,
+and was so little credulous of his being able to
+keep his oaths that I let myself be drawn by you
+almost to the church door.</p>
+
+<p>But I got no further. There in the crowd he
+stood with a command in his eyes which forbade
+any further advance. Though I comprehended
+nothing then, I obeyed his look and went back, for
+my heart was not in any marriage, and it was in
+the hopes to which his looks seemed to point.
+Later he told me what those hopes were. He had
+been down to Long Island, and, while there, had
+chanced to hear in some tavern of the Happy-Go-Lucky
+Inn and its secret chamber, and he saw, or
+thought he saw, how he could make me his without
+losing the benefit of an alliance with Miss Dudleigh.
+And I thought I saw also, and entered into his plans,
+though they comprised crime and entailed horrors<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span>
+upon me from which woman naturally <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'shrink'">shrinks</ins>. I
+was hard as the nether millstone of which the
+Bible speaks, and went determinedly on in the
+path of dissimulation and crime which had been
+marked out for me, till we came to this inn. Then,
+owing, perhaps, to my long imprisonment in the
+dreadful box, I began to feel qualms of physical
+fear and such harrowing mental forebodings that
+more than once during that terrible evening I came
+near shouting for release.</p>
+
+<p>But I was held back by apprehensions as great
+as any from which a premature release from my
+place of hiding could have freed me. I dared not
+face Honora, and I dared not subject Edwin Urquhart
+to the consequences of a public recognition
+of our perfidy, and so I let my opportunity go by,
+and became the sharer, as I was already the instigator,
+of the unheard-of crime by which I became,
+in the eyes of the world, his wife.</p>
+
+<p>What I suffered during its perpetration no word
+of mine can convey. I cringed to her moans; I
+shook under the blow that stifled them. And
+when all was over, and the bolts which confined
+me were shot back, and I found myself once more
+on my feet and in the free air of this most horrible
+of rooms, I looked about, not for him, but her,
+and when I did not see her or any token of her
+death, I was seized by such an agony of revulsion
+that I uttered a great and irrepressible cry which
+filled the house, and brought more than one startled
+inquirer to our door.</p>
+
+<p>For retribution and remorse were already busy
+within me, and in the lurking shadows about the
+fireplace I thought I saw the long and narrow
+slit made by the half-closed panel standing open<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span>
+between me and the secret place of her entombment.
+And though it was but an optical delusion,
+the panel being really closed, it might as well
+have been the truth, for I have never been able
+to rid myself of the sight of that chimerical strip
+of darkness, with its suggestions of guilt and
+death. It haunted my vision; it ruined my life;
+it destroyed my peace. If I shut my eyes at night,
+it opened before me. If I arrayed myself in jewels
+and rich raiment, and paused to take but a
+passing look at myself in the glass, this horror
+immediately came between me and my own image,
+blotting the vision of wealth from my eyes;
+so that I went into the homes of the noble or the
+courts of the king a clouded, miserable thing,
+seeing nothing but that black and narrow slit closing
+upon youth and beauty and innocence forever
+and forever and forever.</p>
+
+<p>My child came. Ah! that I should have to
+mention her here! I do it in penance; I do it in
+despair; since with her my heart woke, and for
+her that heart is now broken, never to be healed
+again. Oh, if the knowledge of my misery wakens
+in you one thought that is not of revenge, cast a
+pitying eye upon this darling one, left in a hateful
+country without friends, without lover, without
+means. For friends and lover and means will all
+leave her with the revelations which the morning
+will bring, and unless Heaven is merciful to her
+innocence as it has been just to my guilt, she will
+have no other goal before her than that which has
+opened its refuge to me.</p>
+
+<p>As for her father, let Heaven deal with him.
+He gave me this darling child; so I may not curse
+him, even if I cannot bless.</p>
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">Marah.</span><br />
+</div>
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">October</span> 23, 1791.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I have seen one bright thing to-day, and that
+was the faint and almost unearthly gleam which
+shot for a moment from beneath Honora's falling
+lids as I told her what love was and how the marquis
+only awaited her permission to speak to assure
+her of his boundless affection and his undying
+purpose to be true to her even to the point
+of assuming her griefs and taking upon himself
+the protection of her innocence.</p>
+
+<p>If it had not been for this, I should have felt that
+the world was too dark to remain in, and life too
+horrible to be endured.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">November</span> 30, 1791.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I thought that when Honora Urquhart left my
+house to be married to M. De Fontaine, in the
+church below the hill, peace would return to us
+once more.</p>
+
+<p>But there is no peace. This morning another
+horrible tragedy defiled my doorstep.</p>
+
+<p>I was sitting in the open porch waiting for the
+mail coach, for it seemed to me that it was about
+time I received some word from Mr. Tamworth.
+It was yet some minutes before the time when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span>
+rumble of the coach is usually heard, and I was
+brooding, as was natural, over the more than terrible
+occurrences of the last few weeks, when I
+heard the clatter of horses' hoofs, and looking
+up and down the road, saw a small party of men
+approaching from the south. As they came nearer,
+I noticed that one of the riders was white-haired
+and presumably aged, and was interesting myself
+in him, when he came near enough for me to distinguish
+his features, and I perceived it was no
+other than Mr. Tamworth.</p>
+
+<p>Rising in perturbation, I glanced at the men behind
+and abreast of him, and saw that one of these
+rode with lowered head and oppressed mien, and
+was just about to give that person a name in my
+mind when the horse he bestrode suddenly reared,
+bolted, and dashed forward to where I sat, flinging
+his rider at the very threshold of my house,
+where he lay senseless as the stone upon which
+his head had fallen.</p>
+
+<p>For an instant both his companions and myself
+paused aghast at a sight so terrible and bewildering;
+then, amid cries from the road and one wild
+shriek from within, I rushed forward, and turning
+over the head, looked upon the face of the fallen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span>
+man. It was not a new one to me. Though
+changed and seamed and white now in death, I
+recognized it at once. It was that of Edwin Urquhart.</p>
+
+<div class='center'><big><b>.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; .</b></big></div>
+
+<p>This noon I took down the sign which has swung
+for twenty years over my front door. "Happy-Go-Lucky"
+is scarcely the name for an inn accursed
+by so many horrors.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">February</span> 3, 1792.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>This week I have fulfilled the threat of years
+ago. I have had the oak parlor and its hideous
+adjunct torn from my house.</p>
+
+<p>Now, perhaps, I can sleep.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">March</span> 16.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>News from Honora. The distant relative who
+succeeded to the estates and the title of the Marquis
+de la Roche-Guyon has fallen a victim to the
+guillotine. Would this have been the fate of
+Honora's husband had he forsaken her and returned
+home? There is reason to believe it. At
+all events, she finds herself greatly comforted by
+this news for the sacrifice which her husband<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span>
+made to his love, and no longer regrets the exile
+to which he has been forced to submit for her
+sake. Wonderful, wonderful Providence! I
+view its workings with renewed awe every day.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class='right'>
+<span class="smcap">September</span> 5, 1795.<br />
+</div>
+
+<p>I have been from home. I have been on a visit
+to New York. I have tasted of change, of brightness,
+of free and cheerful living, and I can settle
+down now in this old and fast-decaying inn with
+something else to think about than ruin and fearful
+retribution.</p>
+
+<p>I have been visiting Madame De Fontaine. She
+wished me to come, I think, that I might see how
+amply her married life had fulfilled the promise of
+her courtship days. Though she and her noble
+husband live in peaceful retirement, and without
+many of the appurtenances of wealth, they find
+such resources of delight in each other's companionship
+that it would be hard for the most exacting
+witness of their mutual felicity to wish them
+any different fate, or to desire for them any wider
+field of social influence.</p>
+
+<p>The marquis&mdash;I shall always call him thus&mdash;has
+found a friend in General Washington, and though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span>
+he is never seen at the President's receptions, or
+mingles his voice in the councils of his adopted
+country, there are evidences constantly appearing
+of the confidence reposed in him by this great
+man, which cannot but add to the exile's contentment
+and satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>Honora has developed into a grand beauty.
+The melancholy which her unhappy memories
+have necessarily infused into her countenance have
+given depth to her expression, which was always
+sweet, and frequently touching. She looks like a
+queen, but like a queen who has known not only
+grief, but love. There is nothing of despair in
+her glance, rather a lofty hope, and when her
+affections are touched, or her enthusiasm roused,
+she smiles with such a heavenly brightness in her
+countenance, that I think there is no fairer woman
+in the world, as I am assured there is none worthier.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband agrees with me in this opinion,
+and is so happy that she said to me one day:</p>
+
+<p>"I sometimes wonder how my heart succeeds
+in holding the joy which Heaven has seen fit to
+grant me. In it I read the forgiveness of God for
+the unutterable sins of my parents; and though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span>
+the shadows will come, and do come, whenever
+I think upon the past, or see a face which, like
+yours, recalls memories as bitter as ever overwhelmed
+an innocent girl in her first youth, I find
+that with every year of love and peaceful living
+the darkness grows less, as if, somewhere in the
+boundless heavens, the mercy of God was making
+itself felt in the heart of her who once called herself
+my mother."</p>
+
+<p>And hearing her speak thus, I felt my own breast
+lose something of the oppression which had hitherto
+weighed it down. And as the days passed,
+and I experienced more and more of the true
+peace that comes with perfect love and perfect
+trust, I found my tears turned to rejoicing and the
+story of my regrets into songs of hope.</p>
+
+<p>And so I have come back comforted and at rest.
+If there are yet ghosts haunting the old inn, I do
+not see them, and though its walls are dismantled,
+its custom gone, and its renown a thing of the past,
+I can still sit on its grass-grown doorstep and roam
+through its fast-decaying corridors without discovering
+any blacker shadow following in my
+wake than that of my own figure, bent now with
+age, and only held upright by the firmness of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span>
+little cane with which I strive to give aid to my
+tottering and uncertain steps.</p>
+
+<p>The grace of God has fallen at last upon the
+Happy-Go-Lucky Inn.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/gs22.jpg" width="300" height="259" alt="The Happy-Go-Lucky Inn" title="The Happy-Go-Lucky Inn" />
+</div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>FAMOUS COPYRIGHT BOOKS<br />
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
+
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+
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+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='hang1'>THE AFFAIR AT THE INN. By Kate Douglas Wiggin.
+With illustrations by Martin Justice.</div>
+
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+
+
+<div class='hang1'>ROSE O' THE RIVER. By Kate Douglas Wiggin. With
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+
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+
+
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+
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+
+
+<div class='hang1'>LADY ROSE'S DAUGHTER. By Mrs. Humphry Ward.
+With illustrations by Howard Chandler Christy.</div>
+
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+World.</i> "We touch regions and attain altitudes which it is not given
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+
+
+<div class='hang1'>THE BANKER AND THE BEAR. By Henry K. Webster.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"An exciting and absorbing story."&mdash;<i>New York Times.</i> "Intensely
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+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='hang1'>LAVENDER AND OLD LACE. By Myrtle Reed.</div>
+
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+
+
+<div class='hang1'>DOCTOR LUKE OF THE LABRADOR. By Norman
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+
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+
+
+<div class='hang1'>THE DAY'S WORK. By Rudyard Kipling. Illustrated.</div>
+
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+
+
+<div class='hang1'>ELEANOR LEE. By Margaret E. Sangster. With a frontispiece.</div>
+
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+
+
+<div class='hang1'>THE COLONEL OF THE RED HUZZARS. By John
+Reed Scott. Illustrated by Clarence F. Underwood.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Full of absorbing charm, sustained interest, and a wealth of
+thrilling and romantic situations. So naively fresh in its handling,
+so plausible through its naturalness, that it comes like a mountain
+breeze across the far-spreading desert of similar romances."&mdash;<i>Gazette-Times</i>,
+Pittsburg. "A slap-dashing day romance."&mdash;<i>New York Sun</i>.</p></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='hang1'>THE FAIR GOD; OR, THE LAST OF THE TZINS.
+By Lew Wallace. With illustrations by Eric Pape.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The story tells of the love of a native princess for Alvarado, and it
+is worked out with all of Wallace's skill * * * it gives a fine picture
+of the heroism of the Spanish conquerors and of the culture and
+nobility of the Aztecs."&mdash;<i>New York Commercial Advertiser</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ben Hur</i> sold enormously, but The Fair God was the best of the
+General's stories&mdash;a powerful and romantic treatment of the defeat of
+Montezuma by Cortes."&mdash;<i>Athen&aelig;um.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>THE CAPTAIN OF THE KANSAS. By Louis Tracy.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>A story of love and the salt sea&mdash;of a helpless ship whirled into the
+hands of cannibal Fuegians&mdash;of desperate fighting and tender romance,
+enhanced by the art of a master of story telling who describes with
+his wonted felicity and power of holding the reader's attention * * *
+filled with the swing of adventure.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>A MIDNIGHT GUEST. A Detective Story. By Fred M.
+White. With a frontispiece.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>The scene of the story centers in London and Italy. The book is
+skilfully written and makes one of the most baffling, mystifying, exciting
+detective stories ever written&mdash;cleverly keeping the suspense
+and mystery intact until the surprising discoveries which precede
+the end.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>THE HONOUR OF SAVELLI. A Romance. By S. Levett
+Yeats. With cover and wrapper in four colors.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>Those who enjoyed Stanley Weyman's <i>A Gentleman of France</i>
+will be engrossed and captivated by this delightful romance of Italian
+history. It is replete with exciting episodes, hair-<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'breath'">breadth</ins> escapes,
+magnificent sword-play, and deals with the agitating times in Italian
+history when Alexander II was Pope and the famous and infamous
+Borgias were tottering to their fall.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>SISTER CARRIE. By Theodore Drieser. With a frontispiece,
+and wrapper in color.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>In all fiction there is probably no more graphic and poignant study
+of the way in which man loses his grip on life, lets his pride, his courage,
+his self-respect slip from him, and, finally, even ceases to struggle
+in the mire that has engulfed him. * * * There is more tonic value
+in Sister Carrie than in a whole shelfful of sermons.</p></div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='unindent'><b>THE SHUTTLE, By Frances Hodgson Burnett</b></div>
+<div class='right'><b>With inlay cover in colors by Clarence F. Underwood.</b></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This great international romance relates the story of an American
+girl who, in rescuing her sister from the ruins of her marriage
+to an Englishman of title, displays splendid qualities of courage,
+tact and restraint. As a study of American womanhood of modern
+times, the character of Bettina Vanderpoel stands alone in literature.
+As a love story, the account of her experience is magnificent.
+The masterly handling, the glowing style of the book, give it a
+literary rank to which very few modern novels have attained.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><b>THE MAKING OF A MARCHIONESS,</b></div>
+<div class='right'><b>By Frances Hodgson Burnett</b></div>
+
+<p>Illustrated with half tone engravings by Charles D. Williams.
+With initial letters, tail-pieces, decorative borders. Beautifully
+printed, and daintily bound, and boxed.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>A delightful novel in the author's most charming vein. The
+scene is laid in an English country house, where an amiable English
+nobleman is the centre of matrimonial interest on the part of
+both the English and Americans present.</p>
+
+<p>Graceful, sprightly, almost delicious in its dialogue and action.
+It is a book about which one is tempted to write ecstatically.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class='unindent'><b>THE METHODS OF LADY WALDERHURST,</b></div>
+<div class='right'><b>By Francis Hodgson Burnett</b></div>
+
+<p>A Companion Volume to "The Making of a Marchioness."</p>
+
+<p>With illustrations by Charles D. Williams, and with initial
+letters, tail-pieces, and borders, by A. K. Womrath. Beautifully
+printed and daintily bound, and boxed.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The Methods of Lady Walderhurst" is a delightful story
+which combines the sweetness of "The Making of a Marchioness,"
+with the dramatic qualities of "A Lady of Quality." Lady Walderhurst
+is one of the most charming characters in modern fiction.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'><b>VAYENNE, By Percy Brebner</b><br />
+With illustrations by E. Fuhr.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>This romance like the author's <i>The Princess Maritza</i> is charged
+to the brim with adventure. Sword play, bloodshed, justice grown
+the multitude, sacrifice, and romance, mingle in dramatic episodes
+that are born, flourish, and pass away on every page.</p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span></p>
+<div class='hang1'>DARREL OF THE BLESSED ISLES. By Irving Bacheller.
+With illustrations by Arthur Keller.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Darrel, the clock tinker, is a wit, philosopher, and man of mystery.
+Learned, strong, kindly, dignified, he towers like a giant above the
+people among whom he lives. It is another tale of the North Country,
+full of the odor of wood and field. Wit, humor, pathos and high
+thinking are in this book."&mdash;<i>Boston Transcript.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>D'RI AND I: A Tale of Daring Deeds in the Second War
+with the British. Being the Memoirs of Colonel Ramon
+Bell, U. S. A. By Irving Bacheller. With illustrations by
+F. C. Yohn.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mr. Bacheller is admirable alike in his scenes of peace and war.
+D'ri, a mighty hunter, has the same dry humor as Uncle Eb. He
+fights magnificently on the 'Lawrence,' and was among the wounded
+when Perry went to the 'Niagara.' As a romance of early American
+history it is great for the enthusiasm it creates."&mdash;<i>New York Times.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>EBEN HOLDEN: A Tale of the North Country. By Irving
+Bacheller.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"As pure as water and as good as bread," says Mr. Howells. "Read
+'Eben Holden'" is the advice of Margaret Sangster. "It is a forest-scented,
+fresh-aired, bracing and wholly American story of country
+and town life. * * * If in the far future our successors wish to
+know what were the real life and atmosphere in which the country
+folk that saved this nation grew, loved, wrought and had their being,
+they must go back to such true and zestful and poetic tales of 'fiction'
+as 'Eben Holden,'" says Edmund Clarence Stedman.</p></div>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>SILAS STRONG: Emperor of the Woods. By Irving Bacheller.
+With a frontispiece.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"A modern <i>Leatherstocking</i>. Brings the city dweller the aroma of
+the pine and the music of the wind in its blanches&mdash;an epic poem
+* * * forest-scented, fresh-aired, and wholly American. A stronger
+character than Eben Holden."&mdash;<i>Chicago Record-Herald.</i></p></div>
+
+
+<div class='hang1'>VERGILIUS: A Tale of the Coming of Christ. By Irving
+Bacheller.</div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>A thrilling and beautiful story of two young Roman patricians whose
+great and perilous love in the reign of Augustus leads them through
+the momentous, exciting events that marked the year just preceding
+the birth of Christ.</p>
+
+<p>Splendid character studies of the Emperor Augustus, of Herod and
+his degenerate son, Antipater, and of his daughter "the incomparable"
+Salome. A great triumph in the art of historical portrait painting.</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h4>GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP, - NEW YORK</h4>
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+<div class='tnote'><h3>Transcriber's Notes:</h3>
+<p>Obvious punctuation errors repaired.</p>
+
+<p>Variations in page numbering are due to placement of illustrations and blank pages
+occurring in the original text.</p>
+<p>The original text had some printing errors resulting in repeated and missing text. The
+orginal text is preserved here:</p>
+<div class='unindent'><a href="#Page_139">Original text from page 139:</a></div>
+<div class='blockquot'>deceit where I had looked for honesty and
+gratitude.'<br />
+
+the result of a compact entered into with the despicable
+Urquhart, who, if he could not have her
+grasp at this wisp of hope and cling to it, though
+I knew it would never hold, and that her only
+chance for happiness was passing from her.</div>
+
+<div class='unindent'><a href="#Page_177">Original text from page 177:</a></div>
+<div class='blockquot'>almost overwhelmed it.<br />
+
+<p>"For to me her death--if she were dead--was</p>
+
+<p>"I was a coward, perhaps, but I did not try
+to dissuade her. Though she was fatherless and
+motherless, and loverless and friendless, I let her
+for himself, was willing she should go where no</p></div>
+
+
+<p>The remaining corrections made are indicated by dotted lines under the corrections. Scroll the mouse over the word and the original text will <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'apprear'">appear</ins>.</p></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Forsaken Inn, by Anna Katharine Green
+
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@@ -0,0 +1,7883 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Forsaken Inn, by Anna Katharine Green
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Forsaken Inn
+       A Novel
+
+Author: Anna Katharine Green
+
+Release Date: November 27, 2007 [EBook #23641]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FORSAKEN INN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, Emmy and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THE FORSAKEN INN
+
+A NOVEL
+
+BY
+
+ANNA KATHARINE GREEN
+
+Author of
+
+"The Leavenworth Case," "A Matter of Millions," "Behind Closed Doors,"
+etc.
+
+        GROSSET & DUNLAP
+        Publishers      New York
+
+
+        COPYRIGHT, 1889 and 1890
+        BY ROBERT BONNER'S SONS
+
+        COPYRIGHT, 1909
+        THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
+
+
+TO MY HUSBAND.
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS.
+
+
+        CHAPTER                          PAGE
+
+            I. THE OAK PARLOR               5
+
+           II. BURRITT                     25
+
+          III. A FEARFUL DISCOVERY         37
+
+           IV. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS       60
+
+            V. AN INTERIM OF SUSPENSE      71
+
+           VI. THE RECLUSE                 78
+
+          VII. TWO WOMEN                   91
+
+         VIII. A SUDDEN BETROTHAL         110
+
+           IX. MARAH                      116
+
+            X. AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS  130
+
+           XI. HONORA                     136
+
+          XII. EDWIN URQUHART             142
+
+         XIII. BEFORE THE WEDDING         148
+
+          XIV. A CASSANDRA AT THE GATE    160
+
+           XV. THE CATASTROPHE            171
+
+          XVI. A DREAM ENDED              185
+
+         XVII. STRANGE GUESTS             195
+
+        XVIII. MRS. TRUAX TALKS           204
+
+          XIX. IN THE HALLS AT MIDNIGHT   223
+
+           XX. THE STONE IN THE GARDEN    232
+
+          XXI. IN THE OAK PARLOR          247
+
+         XXII. A SURPRISE FOR HONORA      288
+
+        XXIII. IN THE SECRET CHAMBER      301
+
+         XXIV. THE MARQUIS                312
+
+          XXV. MARK FELT                  318
+
+         XXVI. FOR THE LAST TIME          330
+
+        XXVII. A LAST WORD                334
+
+
+
+
+THE FORSAKEN INN.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE OAK PARLOR.
+
+
+[Illustration: I]
+
+I was riding between Albany and Poughkeepsie. It was raining furiously,
+and my horse, already weary with long travel, gave unmistakable signs of
+discouragement. I was, therefore, greatly relieved when, in the most
+desolate part of the road, I espied rising before me the dim outlines of
+a house, and was correspondingly disappointed when, upon riding forward,
+I perceived that it was but a deserted ruin I was approaching, whose
+fallen chimneys and broken windows betrayed a dilapidation so great
+that I could scarcely hope to find so much as a temporary shelter
+therein.
+
+Nevertheless, I was so tired of the biting storm that I involuntarily
+stopped before the decayed and forbidding structure, and was, in truth,
+withdrawing my foot from the stirrup, when I heard an unexpected
+exclamation behind me, and turning, saw a chaise, from the open front of
+which leaned a gentleman of most attractive appearance.
+
+"What are you going to do?" he asked.
+
+"Hide my head from the storm," was my hurried rejoinder. "I am tired,
+and so is my horse, and the town, according to all appearances, must be
+at least two miles distant."
+
+"No matter if it is three miles! You must not take shelter in that
+charnel-house," he muttered; and moved along in his seat as if to show
+me there was room beside him.
+
+"Why," I exclaimed, struck with sudden curiosity, "is this one of the
+haunted houses we hear of? If so, I shall certainly enter, and be much
+obliged to the storm for driving me into so interesting a spot." I
+thought he looked embarrassed. At all events, I am sure he hesitated for
+a moment whether or not to ride on and leave me to my fate. But his
+better impulses seemed to prevail, for he suddenly cried: "Get in with
+me, and leave mysteries alone. If you want to come back here after you
+have learned the history of that house, you can do so; but first ride on
+to town and have a good meal. Your horse will follow easily enough after
+he is rid of your weight."
+
+It was too tempting an offer to be refused; so thankfully accepting his
+kindness, I alighted from my horse, and after tying him to the back of
+the chaise, got in with this genial stranger. As I did so I caught
+another view of the ruin I had been so near entering.
+
+"Good gracious!" I exclaimed, pointing to the structure that, with its
+projecting upper story and ghastly apertures, presented a most
+suggestive appearance, "if it does not look like a skull!"
+
+My companion shrugged his shoulders, but did not reply. The comparison
+was evidently not a new one to him.
+
+That evening, in a comfortable inn parlor, I read the following
+manuscript. It was placed in my hands by this kindly stranger, who in so
+doing explained that it had been written by the last occupant of the
+old inn I was so nearly on the point of investigating. She had been its
+former landlady, and had clung to the ancient house long after decay had
+settled upon its doorstep and desolation breathed from its gaping
+windows. She died in its north room, and from under her pillow the
+discolored leaves were taken, the words of which I now place before you.
+
+
+        JANUARY 28, 1775.
+
+I do not understand myself. I do not understand my doubts nor can I
+analyze my fears. When I saw the carriage drive off, followed by the
+wagon with its inexplicable big box, I thought I should certainly regain
+my former serenity. But I am more uneasy than ever. I cannot rest, and
+keep going over and over in my mind the few words that passed between us
+in their short stay under my roof. It is her face that haunts me. It
+must be that, for it had a strange look of trouble in it as well as
+sickness; but neither can I forget his, so fair, so merry, and yet so
+unpleasant, especially when he glanced at her and--as I could not help
+but think before they went away--when he glanced at me. I do not like
+him, and the chills creep over me whenever I remember his laugh, which
+was much too frequent to be decent, considering how poorly his young
+wife looked.
+
+They are gone, and their belongings with them; but I am as much afraid
+as if they were still here. Why? That is what I cannot tell. I sit in
+the room where they slept, and feel as strange and terrified as if I had
+encountered a ghost there. I dread to stay and dread to move and write,
+because I must relieve myself in some way--that is, if I am to have any
+sleep to-night. Am I ill, or was there something unexplained and
+mysterious in their actions? Let me go over the past and see.
+
+They came last evening about twilight. I was in the front of the house,
+and seeing such a good-looking couple in the carriage, and such a pile
+of baggage with them that they had to have an extra wagon to carry it, I
+ran out in all haste to welcome them. She had a veil drawn over her
+face, and it was so thick that I could not see her features, but her
+figure was slight and graceful, and I took a fancy to her at once,
+perhaps because she held her arms out when she saw me, as if she thought
+she beheld in me a friend. He did not please me so well, though there
+is no gainsaying that he is handsome enough, and speaks, when he wishes
+to, with a great deal of courtesy. But I thought he ought to give his
+attention to his young and ailing wife, instead of being so concerned
+about his baggage. Had that big box of his contained gold, he could not
+have looked at it more lovingly or been more anxious about its handling.
+He said it held books; but, pshaw! what is there in books, that a man
+should love them better than his wife, and watch over their welfare with
+the utmost concern, while allowing a stranger to help her out of the
+carriage and up the inn steps?
+
+But I will not dwell any longer upon this. Men are strange beings, and
+must not be judged by rules that apply to women. Let me see if I can
+remember when it was that I first saw her face. Ah, yes; it was in the
+parlor. She had taken a seat there while her husband looked through the
+house and decided which room to take. There were four empty, and two of
+them were the choicest and airiest in the inn, but he passed by these
+and insisted upon taking one that was stuffy with disuse, because it was
+on the ground floor, and so convenient for us to bring his great box
+into.
+
+His great box! I was so provoked at this everlasting concern about his
+great box, that I ran to the parlor, intending to ask the lady herself
+to interfere. But when I got to the threshold I paused, and did not
+speak, for the lady--or Mrs. Urquhart, as I presently found she called
+herself--had risen from her seat and was looking in the glass with an
+expression so sad and searching that I forgot my errand and only thought
+of comforting her. But the moment she heard my step she drew down the
+veil which she had tossed back, and coming quickly toward me, asked if
+her husband had chosen a room.
+
+I answered in the affirmative, and began to complain that it was not a
+very cheerful one. But she paid small attention to my words, and
+presently I found myself following her to the apartment designated. She
+entered, making a picture, as she crossed the threshold, which I shall
+not readily forget. For in her short, quick walk down the hall she had
+torn the bonnet from her head, and though she was not a strictly
+beautiful woman, she was sufficiently interesting to make her every
+movement attractive. But that is not all. For some reason the moment
+possessed an importance for her which I could not measure. I saw it in
+her posture, in the pallor of her cheeks and the uprightness of her
+carriage. The sudden halt she made at the threshold, the half-startled
+exclamation she gave as her eyes fell on the interior, all showed that
+she was laboring under some secret agitation. But what was the cause of
+that agitation I have not been able to determine. She went in, but as
+she did so, I heard her murmur:
+
+"Oak walls! Ah, my soul! it has come soon!"
+
+Not a very intelligible exclamation, you will allow, but as intelligible
+as her whole conduct. For in another moment every sign of emotion had
+left her, and she stood quite calm and cold in the center of the room.
+But her pallor remained, and I cannot make sure now whether this
+betokened weary resignation or some secret and but half recognized fear.
+
+Had I looked at him instead of at her, I might have understood the
+situation better. But, though I dimly perceived his form drawn up in the
+empty space at the left of the door, it was not until she had passed him
+and flung herself into a chair, that I thought to look in his direction.
+Then it was too late, for he had turned his face aside and was gazing
+with rather an obtrusive curiosity at the old-fashioned room, murmuring,
+as he did so, some such commonplaces to his wife as:
+
+"I hope you are not fatigued, my dear. Fine old house, this. Quite
+English in style, eh?"
+
+To all of which she answered with a nod or word, till suddenly, without
+look or warning, she slipped from her chair and lay perfectly insensible
+upon the dark boards of the worm-eaten floor.
+
+I uttered an exclamation, and so did he; but it was my arms that lifted
+her and laid her on the bed. He stood as if frozen to his place for a
+moment, then he mechanically lifted his foot and set it with an air of
+proprietorship on the box before which he had been standing.
+
+"Strange and inexplicable conduct," thought I, and looked the
+indignation I could not but feel. Instantly he left his position and
+hastened to my side, offering his assistance and advice with that
+heartless officiousness which is so unbearable when life and death are
+at stake.
+
+I accepted as little of his help as was possible, and when, after
+persistent effort on my part, I saw her lids fluttering and her breast
+heaving, I turned to him with as inoffensive an air as my mingled
+dislike and distrust would admit, and asked how long they had been
+married. He flushed violently, and with a sudden rage that at once
+robbed him of that gentlemanly appearance which, in him, was but the
+veneer to a coarse and brutal nature, he exclaimed:
+
+"---- you! and by what right do you ask that?"
+
+But before I could reply he recovered himself and was all false polish
+again, bowing with exaggerated politeness, as he exclaimed:
+
+"Excuse me; I have had much to disturb me lately. My wife's health has
+been very feeble for months, and I am worn out with anxiety and
+watching. We are now on our way to a warmer climate, where I hope she
+will be quite restored."
+
+And he smiled a very strange and peculiar smile, that went out like a
+suddenly extinguished candle, as he perceived her eyes suddenly open,
+and her gaze pass reluctantly around the room, as if forced to a
+curiosity against which she secretly rebelled.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"I think Mrs. Urquhart will do very well now," was his hurried remark at
+this sight. He evidently wished to be rid of me, and though I hated
+to leave her, I really found nothing to say in contradiction to his
+statement, for she certainly looked completely restored. I therefore
+turned away with a heavy heart toward the door, when the young wife,
+suddenly throwing out her arms, exclaimed:
+
+"Do not leave me in this horrible room alone! I am afraid of
+it--actually afraid! Couldn't you have found some spot in the house less
+gloomy, Edwin?"
+
+I came back.
+
+"There are plenty of rooms--" I began.
+
+But he interrupted me without any ceremony.
+
+"I chose this room, Honora, for its convenience. There is nothing
+horrible about it, and when the lamps are lit you will find it quite
+pleasant. Do not be foolish. We sleep here or nowhere, for I cannot
+consent to go upstairs."
+
+She answered nothing, but I saw her eyes go traveling once again around
+the walls, followed in a furtive way by his. Whereupon I looked about
+me, too, and tried to get a stranger's impression of the place. I was
+astonished at its effect upon my imagination. Though I had been in and
+out of the room fifty times before I had never noticed till now the
+extreme dismalness and desolation of its appearance.
+
+Once used as an auxiliary parlor, it had that air of uninhabitableness
+which clings to such rooms, together with a certain something else,
+equally unpleasant, to which at that moment I could give no name, and
+for which I could neither find then nor now any sufficient reason. It
+was paneled with oak far above our heads, and as the walls above had
+become gray with smoke, there was absolutely no color in the room, not
+even in the hangings of the gaunt four-poster that loomed dreary and
+repelling from one end of the room. For here, as elsewhere, time had
+been at work, and tints that were once bright enough had gradually been
+subdued by dust and smoke into one uniform dimness. The floor was black,
+the fireplace empty, the walls without a picture, and yet it was neither
+from this grayness nor from this barrenness that one recoiled. It was
+from something else--something that went deeper than the lack of charm
+or color--something that clung to the walls like a contagion and caught
+at the heart-strings where they are weakest, smothering hope and
+awakening horror, till in each faded chair a ghost seemed sitting,
+gazing at you with immovable eyes that could tell tales, but would not.
+
+There was but one window in the room, and that looked toward the west.
+But the light that should have entered there was frightened, also, and
+halted on the ledge without, balked by the thick curtains that heavily
+enshrouded it. A haunted chamber! or so it appeared at that moment to my
+somewhat excited fancy, and for the first time in my life, here, I felt
+a dread of my own house, and experienced the uncanny sensation of some
+one walking over my grave.
+
+But I soon recovered myself. Nothing of a disagreeable nature had ever
+happened in this room, nor had we had any special reason for shutting it
+up, except that it was in an out-of-the-way place, and not usually
+considered convenient, notwithstanding Mr. Urquhart's opinion to the
+contrary.
+
+"Never mind," said I, with a last effort to soothe the agitated woman.
+"We will let in a little light, and dissipate some of these shadows."
+And I attempted to throw back the curtains of the window, but they fell
+again immediately and I experienced a sensation as of something ghostly
+passing between us and the light.
+
+Provoked at my own weakness, I tore the curtains down and flung them
+into a corner. A straggling beam of sunset color came in, but it looked
+out of place and forlorn upon that black floor, like a stranger who
+meets with no welcome. The poor young wife seemed to hail it, however,
+for she moved instantly to where it lay and stood as if she longed for
+its warmth and comfort. I immediately glanced at the fireplace.
+
+"I will soon have a rousing fire for you," I declared. "These old
+fireplaces hold a large pile of wood."
+
+I thought, but I must be mistaken, that he made a gesture as if about to
+protest, but, if so, reason must have soon come to his aid, for he said
+nothing, though he looked uneasy, as I moved the andirons forward and
+made some other trivial arrangements for the fire which I had promised
+them.
+
+"He thinks I am never going," I muttered to myself, and took pleasure in
+lingering; for, anxious as I was to have the room heated up for her
+comfort, I knew that every moment I stayed there would be one less for
+her to spend with her surly husband alone.
+
+At last I had no further excuse for remaining, and so with the final
+remark that if the fire failed to give them cheer we had a sitting room
+into which they could come, I went out. But I knew, even while saying
+it, that he would not grant her the opportunity of enjoying the sitting
+room's coziness; that he would not let her out of his sight, if he did
+out of the room, and that for her to remain in his presence was to be in
+darkness, solitude and gloom, no matter what walls surrounded her or in
+what light she stood.
+
+My impressions were not far wrong. Mr. and Mrs. Urquhart came to supper,
+but that was all. Before the others had finished their roast they had
+eaten their pudding and gone; and though he had talked, and laughed, and
+shown his white teeth, the impression left behind them was a depressing
+one which even Hetty felt, and she has anything but a sensitive nature.
+
+I went to the room once again in the evening. I found them both seated,
+but in opposite parts of the room; he by his great box, and she in an
+easy chair which I had caused to be brought down from my own room for
+her especial use. I did not look at him, but I did at her, and was
+astonished to see, first, how dignified she was; and next how pretty.
+Had she been happy and at her ease, I should probably have been afraid
+of her, for the firelight, which now shone on her wan young cheek,
+brought out evidences of character and culture in her expression which
+proved her to be, by birth and training, of a position superior to what
+one would be led to expect from her husband's aspect and manner. But she
+was not happy nor at her ease, and wore, instead of the quiet and
+commanding look of the great lady, such an expression of secret dread
+that I almost forgot my position of landlady, and should certainly, if
+he had not been there, fallen at her side and taken her poor, forsaken
+head upon my breast. But that silent, immovable form, sitting
+statue-like beside his big box, smiling, for aught I knew, but if so,
+breathing out a chill that forbade all exhibition of natural feeling,
+held me in check, as it held her, so that I merely inquired whether
+there was anything I could do for her; and when she shook her head,
+starting a tear down her cheek as she did so, I dared do nothing more
+than give her one look of sympathetic understanding, and start for the
+door.
+
+A command from him stopped me.
+
+"My wife will need a slight supper before she goes to bed," said he.
+"Will you be good enough to see that one is brought?"
+
+She roused herself up with quite a startled look of wonder.
+
+"Why, Edwin," she began, "I never have been in the habit--"
+
+But he hushed her at once.
+
+"I know what is best for you," said he. "A small plate of luncheon, Mrs.
+Truax; and let it be nice and inviting."
+
+I courtesied, gave her another glance, and went out. Her countenance had
+not lost its look of wonder. Was he going to be considerate, after all?
+
+The lunch was prepared and taken to her.
+
+Not long after this the inn quieted down, and such guests as were in the
+house prepared for rest. Midnight came; all was dark in room and hall. I
+was sure of this, for I went through the whole building myself, contrary
+to my usual habit, which was to leave this task to my man-of-all-work,
+Burritt. All was dark, all was quiet, and I was just dropping off to
+sleep, when there shot up suddenly from below a shriek, which was
+quickly smothered, but not so quickly that I did not recognize in it
+that tone which is only given by hideous distress or mortal fear.
+
+"It is Mrs. Urquhart!" I cried in terror, to myself; and plunging into
+my clothes, I hurried down stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+BURRITT.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+All was quiet in the halls, but as I proceeded toward their room I
+perceived a figure standing near the doorway, which, in another moment,
+I saw to be that of Burritt. He was trembling like a leaf, and was bent
+forward, listening.
+
+"Hush!" he whispered; "they are talking. All seems to be right. I just
+heard him call her darling."
+
+I drew the man away and took his place. Yes; they were talking in
+subdued but not unkindly tones. I heard him bid her be composed, and
+caught, as I thought, a light reply that ought to have satisfied me that
+Mrs. Urquhart had simply suffered from some nightmare horror at which
+she was as ready to laugh now as he. But my nature is a contradictory
+one, and I was not satisfied. The echo of her cry was still ringing in
+my ears, and I felt as if I would give the world for a momentary peep
+into their room. Influenced by this idea, I boldly knocked, and in an
+instant--too soon for him not to have been standing near the door--I
+heard his breath through the keyhole and the words:
+
+"Who is there, and what do you want?"
+
+"We heard a cry," was my response, "and I feared Mrs. Urquhart was ill
+again."
+
+"Mrs. Urquhart is very well," came hastily, almost gayly, from within.
+"She had a dream, and was willing that every one should know it. Is not
+that all?" he said, seemingly addressing his wife.
+
+There was a murmur within, and then I heard her voice. "It was only a
+dream, dear Mrs. Truax," it said, and convinced against my will, I was
+about to return to my room, when I brushed against Burritt. He had not
+moved, and did not look as if he intended to.
+
+"Come," said I, "there is no use of our remaining here."
+
+"Can't help it," was his whispered reply. "In this hall I stay till
+morning. When I see a lamb in the care of a wolf, I find it hard to
+sleep. There is a door between us, but please God there shan't be
+anything more."
+
+And knowing Burritt, I did not try to argue, but went quietly and
+somewhat thoughtfully to my room, vaguely relieved that I left him
+behind, though convinced there would be no further need of his services.
+
+And so it was. No more sounds disturbed the house, and when I came down,
+with the first streak of daylight, I found Burritt gone about his work.
+
+Breakfast was served to the Urquharts in their own room. I had wished to
+carry it in myself, but I found this inconvenient, and so I sent Hetty.
+When she came back I asked her how Mrs. Urquhart looked.
+
+"Very well, ma'am," was the quick reply. "And see! I don't think she's
+as unhappy as we all thought last night, or she wouldn't be giving me a
+bright new crown."
+
+I glanced at the girl's palm. There was indeed a bright new crown in it.
+
+"Did she give you that?" I inquired.
+
+"Yes, ma'am; she herself. And she laughed when she did it, and said it
+was for the good breakfast I had brought her."
+
+I was busy at the time, and could not stop to give the girl's words much
+thought; but as soon as I had any leisure, I went to see for myself how
+Mrs. Urquhart looked when she laughed.
+
+I was five minutes too late. She had just donned her traveling bonnet
+and veil, and though I heard her laugh slightly once, I did not see her
+face.
+
+I saw his, however, and was surprised at the good nature in it. He was
+quite the gentleman, and if he had not been in such a hurry, would have
+doubtless made, or endeavored to make, himself very agreeable. But he
+was just watching his great box carried out to the wagon, and while he
+took pains to talk to me--was it to keep me from talking to her?--he was
+naturally a little absentminded. He was in haste, too, and insisted upon
+placing his wife in the carriage before all his baggage was taken from
+the room. And she seemed willing to go. I watched her on purpose to see,
+for I was not yet satisfied that she was not playing a part at his
+dictation, but I could discover no hint of reluctance in her manner, but
+rather a quiet alacrity, as if she felt glad to quit a room to which she
+had taken a dislike.
+
+When I saw this, and noted the light step of her feet, I said to myself
+that I had been a fool, and lost a little of the interest I had felt for
+her. Nor did I regain it till after they had driven away, though she
+showed a consideration for me at the last which I had not expected,
+leaning from the carriage to give me a good-by pressure of the hand, and
+even nodding again and again as they disappeared down the road. For the
+fear which could be dissipated in a night was not the fear with which I
+had credited her; and of ordinary excitements and commonplace natures I
+had seen enough in my long experience as landlady to make me unwilling
+to trouble myself with any more of them.
+
+But when the carriage and its accompanying wagon had quite disappeared,
+and Mr. and Mrs. Urquhart were virtually as far beyond my reach as if
+they were already in New York, I became conscious of a great uneasiness.
+This was the more strange in that there seemed to be no especial cause
+for it. They had left my house in apparently better spirits than they
+had entered it, and there was no longer any reason why I should concern
+myself about them. And yet I did concern myself, and came into the house
+and into the room they had just vacated, with feelings so unusual that I
+was astonished at myself, and not a little provoked. I had a vague
+feeling that the woman who had just left was somehow different from the
+one I had seen the night before.
+
+But I am a busy woman, and I do not think I should have let this trouble
+me long if it had not been for Burritt. But when he came into the room
+after me, and shut the door behind him and stood with his back against
+it, looking at me, I knew I was not the only one who felt uncomfortable
+about the Urquharts. Rising from the chair where I had been
+sitting, counting the cost of fitting up that room so as to make it look
+habitable, I went toward him and met his gaze pretty sharply.
+
+"Well, what is it?" I asked.
+
+"I don't know," was the somewhat sullen reply. "I don't feel right about
+those folks, and yet--" He stopped and scratched his head--"I don't know
+what I'm afraid of. Are you sure they left nothing behind them?"
+
+The last words were uttered in such a tone I did not know for a minute
+what to say.
+
+"Left anything behind them!" I replied. "They left their money, if that
+is what you mean. I don't know what else they could have left."
+
+Notwithstanding which assertion, I involuntarily glanced about the room
+as if half expecting to see some one of their many belongings protruding
+from a hitherto unsearched corner. His gaze followed mine, but presently
+returned, and we stood again looking at each other.
+
+"Nothing here," said I.
+
+"Where is it, then?" he asked.
+
+I frowned in displeasure.
+
+"Where is what?" I demanded. "You speak like a fool. Explain yourself."
+
+He took a step toward me and lowered his voice. Every one knows Burritt,
+so I need not describe him. You can all imagine how he looked when he
+said:
+
+"Did you see me handling of the big box, ma'am?"
+
+I nodded yes.
+
+"Saw how I was the one to help carry it in, and also how I was the one
+to first take hold on it when he wanted it carried out?" I again nodded
+yes.
+
+"Well, ma'am, that box was a heavy load to lift into the wagon, but,
+ma'am"--here his voice became quite sepulchral--"it wasn't as heavy as
+it was when we lifted it out, and it hadn't the same feel either. Now,
+what had happened to it, and where is the stuff he took out of it?"
+
+I own I had never in my life felt creepy before that minute. But with
+his eyes staring at me so impressively, and his voice sunk to a depth
+that made me lean forward to hear what he had to say, I do declare I
+felt as if an icy breath had been blown across the roots of my hair.
+
+"Burritt, you want to frighten me," I exclaimed, as soon as I could get
+my voice. "The box seemed heavier to you than it did just now. There
+was no change in it, there could not be, or we should find something
+here to account for it. Remember you did not sleep last night, and lack
+of rest makes one fanciful."
+
+"It does not make a man feel stronger, though, and I tell you the box
+was not near so heavy to-day as yesterday. Besides, as I said before, it
+acted differently under the handling. There was something loose in it
+to-day. Yesterday it was packed tight."
+
+I shook my head, and tried to throw off the oppression caused by his
+manner. But seeing his eyes travel to the window, I looked that way too.
+
+"He didn't carry anything out of the door," declared Burritt, at this
+moment, "because I watched it, and I know. But that window is only three
+feet from the ground, and I remember now that at the instant I first
+laid my ear to the keyhole, I heard a strange, grating sound just like
+that of a window being lowered by a very careful hand. Shall I look
+outside it, ma'am?"
+
+I replied by going quickly to the window myself, lifting it, which I did
+with very little trouble, and glancing out. The familiar garden, with
+its path to the river, lay before me; but though I allowed myself one
+quick look in its direction, it was to the ground immediately beneath
+the window that I turned my attention, and it was here that I instantly,
+and to the satisfaction of both Burritt and myself, discovered
+unmistakable signs of disturbance. Not only was there the impression of
+a finely booted foot imprinted in the loose earth, but there was a large
+stone lying against the house which we were both confident had not been
+there the day before.
+
+"He went roaming through the garden last night," cried Burritt, "and he
+brought back that stone. Why?"
+
+I shuddered instead of replying. Then remembering that I had seen the
+young wife well and happy only a few minutes before, felt confused and
+mystified beyond any power to express.
+
+"I will have a look at that stone," continued Burritt; and without
+waiting for my sanction, he vaulted out of the window and lifted the
+stone.
+
+After a moment's consideration of it he declared:
+
+"It came from the river bank; that is all I can make out of it."
+
+And dropping the stone from his hand, he suddenly darted down the path
+to the river.
+
+He was not gone long. When he came back, he looked still more doubtful
+than before.
+
+"If I know that bank," he declared, "there has been more than one stone
+taken from it, and some dirt. Suppose we examine the floor, ma'am."
+
+We did so, and just where the box had been placed we discovered some
+particles of sand that were not brought in from the road.
+
+"What does it mean?" I cried.
+
+Burritt did not answer. He was looking out toward the river. Suddenly he
+turned his eyes upon me and said in his former suppressed tone:
+
+"He filled the box with stone and earth, and these were what we carried
+out and put into the wagon. But it was full when it came, and very
+heavy. Now, what was it filled with, and what has become of the stuff?"
+
+It was the question then; it is the question now.
+
+Burritt hints at crime, and has gone so far as to spend all the
+afternoon searching the river banks. But he has discovered nothing, nor
+can he explain what it was he looked for or expected to find. Nor are
+my own thoughts and feelings any clearer. I remember that the times are
+unsettled, that the spirit of revolution is in the air, and try to be
+charitable enough to suppose that it was treasure the young husband
+brought with him, and that all the perturbation and distress which I
+imagine myself to have witnessed in his behavior and that of his wife
+were owing to the purpose that they had formed of burying, in this spot,
+the silver and plate which they were perhaps unwilling to risk to the
+chances of war. But when I try to stifle my graver fears with this
+surmise, I recall the fearful nature of the shriek which startled me
+from my sleep, and repeat, tremblingly, to myself:
+
+"Some one was in mortal agony at the moment I heard that cry. Was it the
+young wife, or was it--"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A FEARFUL DISCOVERY.
+
+
+        APRIL 3, 1791.
+
+[Illustration: I]
+
+It is sixteen years since I wrote the preceding chapters of this history
+of mystery and crime. When the pen dropped from my hand--why did it
+drop? Was it because of some noise I heard?
+
+I imagine so now, and tremble. I did not anticipate ever adding a line
+to the words I had written. The impulse which had led me to put upon
+paper my doubts concerning the two Urquharts soon passed, and as nothing
+ever occurred to recall this couple to my mind, I gradually allowed
+their name and memory to vanish from my thoughts, only remembering them
+when chance led me into the oak parlor. Then, indeed, I recollected
+their manner and my fears, and then I also felt repeated, though every
+time with fainter and fainter power, the old thrill of undefined terror
+which stopped my record of that day with the half-finished question as
+to who had uttered the shriek that had startled me the night before.
+To-day I again take up my pen. Why? Because to-day, and only since
+to-day, can I answer this question.
+
+Sixteen years ago! which makes me sixteen years older. My house, too,
+has aged, and the oak parlor--I never refurnished it--is darker,
+gloomier, and more forbidding than it was then, and in truth, why should
+it not be? When I remember what was revealed to me a week ago, I wonder
+that its walls did not drop fungi, and its chill strike death through
+the man or woman who was brave enough to enter it. Horrible, horrible
+room! You shall be torn from my house if the rest of the structure goes
+with you. Neither I nor another shall ever enter your fatal portal
+again.
+
+It was a week ago to-day that the coach from New York set down at my
+door a stranger of fine and quaint appearance, whose white hair
+betokened him to be aged, but whose alert and energetic movements
+showed that, if he had passed the line of fourscore, he had still enough
+of the fire of youth remaining to make his presence welcome in whatever
+place he chose to enter. As had happened sixteen years before, I was
+looking out of the window when the coach drove up, and, being at once
+attracted by the stranger's person and manner, I watched him closely
+while he was alighting, and was surprised to observe what intent and
+searching glances he cast at the house.
+
+"He could not be more interested if he were returning to the home of his
+fathers," I murmured involuntarily to myself, and hastened to the door
+in order to receive him.
+
+He came forward courteously. But after the first few words between us he
+turned again and gazed with marked curiosity up and down the road and
+again at the house.
+
+"You seem to be acquainted with these parts," I ventured. He smiled.
+
+"This is an old house," he answered, "and you are young." (I am
+fifty-five.) "There must have been owners of the place before you. Do
+you know their names?"
+
+"I bought the place of Dan Forsyth, and he of one Hammond. I don't know
+as I can go back any further than that. Originally the house was the
+property of an Englishman. There were strange stories about him, but it
+was so long ago that they are almost forgotten."
+
+The stranger smiled again, and followed me into the house. Here his
+interest seemed to redouble.
+
+Instantly a thought flashed through my brain.
+
+"He is its ancient owner, the Englishman. I am standing in the presence
+of--"
+
+"You wish to know my name," interrupted his genial voice. "It is
+Tamworth. I am a Virginian, and hope to stay at your inn one night. What
+kind of a room have you to offer me?"
+
+There was a twinkle in his eyes I did not understand. He was looking
+down the hall, and I thought his gaze rested on the corridor leading to
+the oak parlor.
+
+"I should like to sleep on the ground floor," he added.
+
+"I have but one room," I began.
+
+"And one is all I want," he smiled. Then, with a quick glance at my
+face: "I suppose you are a little particular whom you put into the oak
+parlor. It is not every one who can appreciate such romantic
+surroundings."
+
+I surveyed him, completely puzzled. Whereupon he looked at me with an
+expression of surprise and incredulity that added to the mystery of the
+moment.
+
+"The room is gloomy and uninviting," I declared; "but beyond that, I do
+not know of any especial claim it has upon our interest."
+
+"You astonish me," was his evidently sincere reply; and he walked on,
+very thoughtfully, straight to the room of which we were speaking. At
+the door he paused. "Don't you know the secret of this room," he asked,
+giving me a very bright and searching glance.
+
+"If you mean anything concerning the Urquharts," I began doubtfully.
+
+"Urquharts!" he carelessly repeated. "I do not know anything about them.
+I am speaking of an old tradition. I was told--let me see how long it is
+now--well, it must be sixteen years at least--that this house contained
+a hidden chamber communicating with a certain oak parlor in the west
+wing. I thought it was curious, and--Why, madam, I beg your pardon; I
+did not mean to distress you. Can it be possible that you were ignorant
+of this fact?--you, the owner of this house!"
+
+"Are you sure it is a fact?" I gasped. I was trembling in every limb,
+but managed to close the door behind us before I sank into a chair. "I
+have lived in this house twenty years. I know its rooms and halls as I
+do my own face, and never, never have I suspected that there was a nook
+or corner in it which was not open to the light of day. Yet--yet it is
+true that the rooms on this floor are smaller than those above, this one
+especially." And I cast a horrified glance about me, that reminded me,
+even against my will, of the searching and peculiar look I had seen cast
+in the same direction by Mr. Urquhart sixteen years before.
+
+"I see that I have stumbled upon a bit of knowledge that has been kept
+from the purchasers of this property," observed the old gentleman.
+"Well, that does not detract from the interest of the occasion. When I
+knew I was to pass this way, I said to myself I shall certainly stop at
+the old inn with the secret chamber in it, but I did not think I should
+be the first one to disclose its secret to the present generation. But
+my information seems to affect you strangely. Is it such a disturbing
+thing to find that one's house has held a disused spot within it, that
+might have been made useful if you had known of its existence?"
+
+I could not answer. I was enveloped in a strange horror, and was only
+conscious of the one wish--that Burritt had lived to help me through the
+dreadful hour I saw before me.
+
+"Let us see if my information has been correct," continued Mr. Tamworth.
+"Perhaps there has been some mistake. The secret chamber, if there is
+one, should be behind this chimney. Shall I hunt for an opening?"
+
+I managed to shake my head. I had not strength for the experiment yet. I
+wanted to prepare myself.
+
+"Tell me first how you heard about this room?" I entreated.
+
+He drew his chair nearer to mine with the greatest courtesy.
+
+"There is no reason why I should not tell you," replied he, "and as I
+see that you are in no mood for a long story, I shall make my words as
+few as possible. Some years ago I had occasion to spend a night in an
+inn not unlike this, on Long Island. I was alone, but there was a merry
+crowd in the tap room, and being fond of good company, I presently found
+myself joining in the conversation. The talk was of inns, and many a
+stirring story of adventure in out-of-the-way taverns did I listen to
+that night before the clock struck twelve. Each man present had some
+humorous or thrilling experience to relate, with the exception of a
+certain glum and dark-browed gentleman, who sat somewhat apart from the
+rest, and who said nothing. His reticence was in such marked contrast to
+the volubility about him that he finally attracted universal attention,
+and more than one of the merry-makers near him asked if he had not some
+anecdote to add to the rest. But though he replied with sufficient
+politeness, it was evident that he had no intention of dropping his
+reserve, and it was not till the party had broken up and the room was
+nearly cleared that he deigned to address any one. Then he turned to me,
+and with a very peculiar smile, remarked:
+
+"'A dull collection of tales, sir. Bah! if they had wanted to hear of
+an inn that was really romantic, I could have told them--'
+
+"'What?' I involuntarily ejaculated. 'You will not torture me by
+suggesting a mystery you will not explain.'
+
+"He looked very indifferent.
+
+"'It is nothing,' he declared, 'only I know of an inn--at least it is
+used for an inn now--which has in its interior a secret chamber so
+deftly hidden away in the very heart of the house that I doubt if even
+its present owner could find it without the minutest directions from the
+man who saw it built. I knew that man. He was an Englishman, and he had
+a fancy to make his fortune through the aid of smuggled goods. He did
+it; and though always suspected, was never convicted, owing to the fact
+that he kept all his goods in this hidden room. The place is sold now,
+but the room remains. I wonder if any forgotten treasures lie in it.
+Imagination could easily run riot over the supposition, do you not think
+so, sir?'
+
+"I certainly did, especially as I imagined myself to detect in every
+line of his able and crafty face that he bore a closer relation to the
+Englishman than he would have me believe. I did not betray my feelings,
+however, but urged him to tell me how in a modern house, a room, or even
+a closet, could be so concealed as not to awaken any one's suspicion. He
+answered by taking out pencil and paper, and showing me, by a few lines,
+the secret of its construction. Then seeing me deeply interested, he
+went on to say:
+
+"'We find what we have been told to search for; but here is a case where
+the secret has been so well kept that in all possibility the question of
+this room's existence has never arisen. It is just as well.'
+
+"Meantime I was studying the plan.
+
+"'The hidden chamber lies,' said I, 'between this room,' designating one
+with my forefinger, 'and these two others. From which is it entered?'
+
+"He pointed at the one I had first indicated.
+
+"'From this,' he affirmed. 'And a quaint, old-fashioned room it is, too,
+with a wainscoting of oak all around it as high as a man's head. It used
+to be called the oak parlor, and many a time has its floor rung to the
+tread of the king's soldiers, who, disappointed in their search for
+hidden goods, consented to take a drink at their host's expense, little
+recking that, but a few feet away, behind the carven chimneypiece upon
+which they doubtless set down their glasses, there lay heaps and heaps
+of the richest goods, only awaiting their own departure to be scattered
+through the length and breadth of the land.'
+
+"'And this house is now an inn?' I remarked.
+
+"'Yes.'
+
+"'Curious. I should like nothing better than to visit that inn.'
+
+"'You doubtless have.'
+
+"'It is not this one?' I suddenly cried, looking uneasily about me.
+
+"'Oh, no; it is on the Hudson River, not fifty miles this side of
+Albany. It is called the Happy-Go-Lucky, and is in a woman's hands at
+present; but it prospers, I believe. Perhaps because she has discovered
+the secret, and knows where to keep her stores.' And with a shrug of his
+shoulders he dismissed the subject, with the remark: 'I don't know why I
+told you of this. I never made it the subject of conversation before in
+my life.'
+
+"This was just before the outbreak in Lexington, sixteen years ago,
+ma'am, and this is the first time I have found myself in this region
+since that day. But I have never forgotten this story of a secret room,
+and when I took the coach this morning I made up my mind that I would
+spend the night here, and, if possible, see the famous oak parlor, with
+its mysterious adjunct; never dreaming that in all these years of your
+occupancy you would have remained as ignorant of its existence as he
+hinted and you have now declared."
+
+Mr. Tamworth paused, looking so benevolent that I summoned up my
+courage, and quietly informed him that he had not told me what kind of a
+looking man this stranger was.
+
+"Was he young?" I asked. "Had he a blond complexion?"
+
+"On the contrary," interrupted Mr. Tamworth, "he was very dark, and, in
+years, as old or nearly as old as myself."
+
+I was disappointed. I had expected a different reply. As he talked of
+the stranger, I had, rightfully or wrongfully, with reason or without
+reason, seen before me the face of Mr. Urquhart, and this description of
+a dark and well-nigh aged man completely disconcerted me.
+
+"Are you certain this man was not in disguise?" I asked.
+
+"Disguise?"
+
+"Are you certain that he was not young, and blond, and--"
+
+"Quite sure," was the dry interruption. "No disguise could transform a
+young blood into the man I saw that night. May I ask--"
+
+In my turn I interrupted him. "Pardon me," I entreated, "but an anxiety
+I will presently explain forces another question from me. Were you and
+this stranger alone in the room when you held this conversation? You say
+that it had been full a few minutes before. Were there none of the crowd
+remaining besides your two selves?"
+
+Mr. Tamworth looked thoughtful. "It is sixteen years ago," he replied,
+"but I have a dim remembrance of a man sitting at a table somewhat near
+us, with his face thrown forward on his arms. He seemed to be asleep; I
+did not notice him particularly."
+
+"Did you not see his face?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Was he young?"
+
+"I should say so."
+
+"And blond?"
+
+"That I cannot say."
+
+"And he remained in that attitude all the time you were talking?"
+
+"Yes, madam."
+
+"And continued so when you left the room?"
+
+"I think so."
+
+"Was he within earshot? Near enough to hear all you said?"
+
+"Most assuredly, if he listened."
+
+"Mr. Tamworth," I now entreated, "try, if possible, to remember one
+other fact. If each man present told a story that night, you must have
+had ample opportunity of noting each man's face and observing how he
+looked. Now, of all that sat in the room, was there not one of an age
+not exceeding thirty-five, of fair complexion and gentlemanly
+appearance, yet with a dangerous look in his small blue eye, and a
+something in his smile that took all the merriment out of it?"
+
+"A short but telling description," commented my guest. "Let me see. Was
+there such a man among them? Really, I cannot remember."
+
+"Think, think. Hair very thin above the temples, mustache heavy. When he
+spoke he invariably moved his hands; seemed to be nervous, and anxious
+to hide it."
+
+"I see him," was Mr. Tamworth's sudden remark. "That description of his
+hands recalls him to my mind. Yes; there was such a man in the room that
+night. I even recollect his story. It was coarse, but not without wit."
+
+I advanced and surveyed Mr. Tamworth very earnestly. "The man you
+thought asleep--the man who was near enough to hear all the Englishman
+said--was he or was he not the same we have just been talking about?"
+
+"I never thought of it before, but he did look something like him--his
+figure, I mean; I did not see his face."
+
+"It was he," I murmured, with intense conviction, "and the villain--"
+But how did I know he was a villain? I paused and pointed to the huge
+mantel guarding the fireplace. "If you know how to enter the secret
+room, do so. Only I should like to have a few witnesses present besides
+myself. Will you wait till I call one or two of my lodgers?"
+
+He bowed with great urbanity. "If you wish to make the discovery
+public," said he, "I, of course, have no objection."
+
+But I saw that he was disappointed.
+
+"I can never confront the secret of that room alone," I insisted. "I
+must have Dr. Kenyon here at least." And without waiting for my impulses
+to cool, I sent a message to the doctor's room, and was rewarded in a
+moment by the appearance at the door of that excellent man.
+
+It did not take many words for me to explain to him our intentions. We
+were going to search for a secret chamber which we had been told opened
+into the room in which we then found ourselves. As I did not wish to
+make any mystery of the affair, and as I naturally had my doubts as to
+what the room might disclose, I asked the support of his presence.
+
+He was gratified--the doctor always is gratified at any token of
+appreciation--and perceiving that I had no further reason for delay, I
+motioned to Mr. Tamworth to proceed.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+How he discovered the one movable panel in that old-fashioned
+wainscoting, I have never inquired. When I saw him turn toward the
+fireplace and lay his ear to the wall, I withdrew in haste to the
+window, feeling as if I could not bear to watch him, or be the first to
+catch a glimpse of the mysterious depths which in another moment must
+open before his touch. What I feared I cannot say. As far as I could
+reason on the subject, I had no cause to fear anything; and yet my
+shaking frame and unevenly throbbing heart were but the too sure tokens
+of an excessive and uncontrollable agitation. The view from the window
+increased it. Before me lay the river from whose banks sand and stone
+had been taken sixteen years before to replace--what? I knew no more
+this minute than I did then. I might know in the next. By the faint
+tapping that came to my ears I must--and it was this thought that sent a
+chill through me, and made it so difficult for me to stand. And yet why
+should it? Was not that old theory of ours, that the Urquharts had
+brought treasure in their great box, still a plausible one? Nay, more,
+was it not even a probable one, since we had discovered that the house
+held so excellent a hiding place, unknown to the world at large, but
+known to this man, as Mr. Tamworth's story so plainly showed? Yes; and
+yet I started with uncontrollable forebodings, when I heard an
+exclamation of satisfaction behind me, and hardly found courage to turn
+around, even when I knew that an opening had been effected, and that
+they were only waiting for my approach to enter it.
+
+And it took courage, both on my part and on theirs; for the air which
+rushed from the high and narrow slit of darkness before us was stifling
+and almost deadly. But in a few minutes, after one or two experiments
+with a lighted candle, Dr. Kenyon stepped through the opening, followed
+by Mr. Tamworth, and, in a long minute afterward, by myself.
+
+Shall I ever forget my emotions as I looked about me and saw, by the
+lamp which the doctor carried, nothing more startling than an old oak
+chest in one corner, a pile of faded clothing in another, and in a
+third--Heavens! what is it? We all stare, and then a shriek escapes my
+lips as piercing and terror-stricken as any that ever disturbed those
+fearful shadows; and I rush blindly from the spot, followed by Mr.
+Tamworth, whose face, as I turn to look at him, gives me another pang of
+fear, so white and sick it looks in the sudden glare of day.
+
+Worse than I had thought, worse than I had dreamed! I cannot speak, and
+fall into a chair, waiting in mortal terror for the doctor, who stayed
+some minutes behind. When his kindly but not undisturbed countenance
+showed itself again in the gap at the side of the fireplace, I could
+almost have thrown myself at his feet.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"What is it?" I gasped. "Tell me at once. Is it a man or a woman or--"
+
+"It is a woman. See! here is a lock of her hair. Beautiful, is it not?
+She must have been young."
+
+I stared at it like one demented. It was of a peculiar reddish-brown,
+with a strange little kink and curl in it. Where had I seen such hair
+before? Somewhere. I remembered perfectly how the whole bright head
+looked with the firelight playing over it. Oh, no, no, no, it was not
+that of Mrs. Urquhart. Mrs. Urquhart went away from this house well and
+happy. I am mad, or this strand of gleaming hair is a dream. It is not
+her head it recalls to me, and yet--my soul, it is!
+
+The doctor, knowing me well, did not try to break the silence of that
+first grewsome minute. But when he saw me ready to speak, he remarked:
+
+"It is an old crime, perpetrated, probably, before you came into the
+house. I would not make any more of it than you can help, Mrs. Truax."
+
+I scarcely heeded him.
+
+"Is there no bit of clothing or jewelry left upon her by which we might
+hope to identify her?" I asked, shuddering, as I caught Mr. Tamworth's
+eye, and realized the nature of the doubts I there beheld.
+
+"Here is a ring I found upon the wedding finger," he replied. "It was
+doubtless too small to be drawn off at the time of her death, but it
+came away easily enough now."
+
+And he held out a plain gold circlet which I eagerly took, looked at,
+and fell at their feet as senseless as a stone.
+
+On the inner surface I had discovered this legend:
+
+        E. U. to H. D. Jan. 27, 1775.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.
+
+
+Never have I felt such relief as when, upon my resuscitation, I
+remembered that I had put upon paper all the events and all the
+suspicions which had troubled me during that fatal night of January the
+28th, sixteen years before. With that in my possession, I could confront
+any suspicion which might arise, and it was this thought which lent to
+my bearing at this unhappy time a dignity and self-possession which
+evidently surprised the two gentlemen.
+
+"You seem more shocked than astonished," was Mr. Tamworth's first
+remark, as, mistress once more of myself, I led the way out of that
+horrible room into one breathing less of death and the charnel house.
+
+"You are right," said I. "Mysteries which have troubled me for years are
+now in the way of being explained by this discovery. I knew that
+something either fearful or precious had been left in the keeping of
+this house or grounds; but I did not know what this something was, and
+least of all did I suspect that its hiding place was between walls whose
+turns and limitations I thought I knew as well as I do the paths of my
+garden."
+
+"You speak riddles," Dr. Kenyon now declared. "You knew that something
+fearful or precious had been left in your house--"
+
+"Pardon me," I interrupted; "I said house or grounds. I thought it was
+in the grounds, for how could I think that the house could, without my
+knowledge, hold anything of the nature I have just suggested?"
+
+"You knew, then, that a person had been murdered?"
+
+"No," I persisted, with a strange calmness, considering how agitated I
+was, both by my memories and the fears I could not but entertain for the
+future; "I know nothing; nor can I, even with the knowledge of this
+discovery, understand or explain what took place in my house sixteen
+years ago."
+
+And in a few hurried words I related the story of the mysterious couple
+who had occupied that room on the night of January 27, 1775.
+
+They listened to me as if I were repeating a fairy tale, and as I noted
+the sympathizing air with which Dr. Kenyon tried to hide his natural
+incredulity, I again congratulated myself that I had been a weak enough
+woman to keep an account of the events which had so impressed me.
+
+"You think I am drawing upon my imagination," I quietly remarked, as
+silence fell upon my narration.
+
+"By no means," the doctor began, hurriedly; "but the details you give
+are so open to question, and the conclusions you expect us to draw from
+them are so serious, that I wish, for your own sake, we had heard
+something of the Urquharts, and your doubts and suspicions in their
+regard, before we had made the discovery which points to death and
+crime. You see I speak plainly, Mrs. Truax."
+
+"You cannot speak too plainly, Doctor Kenyon; and my opinion so entirely
+coincides with yours that I am going to furnish you with what you ask."
+And without heeding their looks of astonishment, I rang the bell for one
+of the girls, and sent her to a certain drawer in my desk for the folded
+paper which she would find there.
+
+"Here!" I exclaimed, as the paper was brought, "read this, and you will
+soon see how I felt about the Urquharts on the evening of the day they
+left us."
+
+And I put into their hands the record I had made of that day's
+experience.
+
+While they were reading it, I puzzled myself with questions. If this
+body which we had just found sepulchered in my house was, as the
+initials in the ring seemed to declare, that of Honora Urquhart, who was
+the woman who passed for her at the time of the departure of this
+accused couple from my doors? I was with them, and saw the lady, and
+supposed her to be the same I had entertained at my table the night
+before. But then I chiefly noted her dress and height, and did not see
+her face, which was hidden by her veil, and did not hear her voice
+beyond the short and somewhat embarrassed laugh she gave at some little
+incident which had occurred. But Hetty had seen her, and had even
+received money from her hand; and Hetty could not have been deceived,
+nor was Hetty a girl to be bribed. How was I, then, to understand the
+matter? And where, in case another woman had taken Mrs. Urquhart's
+place, had that woman come from?
+
+I thought of the low window, and the ease with which any one could climb
+into it; and then, with a flash of startled conviction, I thought of the
+huge box.
+
+"Great heavens!" I ejaculated, feeling the hair stir anew on my
+forehead. "Can it be that he brought her in that? That she was with them
+all the time, and that the almost hellish tragedy to which this ring
+points was the scheme of two vile and murderous lovers to suppress an
+unhappy wife that stood in the way of their desires?"
+
+I could not think it. I could not believe that any man could be so void
+of mercy, or any woman so lost to every instinct of decency, as to plan,
+and then coolly carry out to the end, a crime so unheard of in its
+atrocity. There must be some other explanation of the facts before us.
+Why, the date in the ring is enough. If that speaks true, the marriage
+between Edwin Urquhart and the gentle Honora was but a day old, and even
+the worst of men take time to weary of their wives before they take
+measures against them. Yet, the look and manner of the man! His
+affection for the box, and his manifest indifference for his wife! And,
+lastly, and most convincing of all, this awful token in the room
+beyond! What should I, what could I think!
+
+At this point in my surmises I grew so faint that I turned to Dr. Kenyon
+and Mr. Tamworth for relief. They had just finished my record of the
+past, and were looking at each other in surprise and horror.
+
+"It surpasses the most atrocious deeds of the middle ages," quoth Mr.
+Tamworth.
+
+"In a country deemed civilized," finished the doctor.
+
+"Then you think," I tremblingly began--
+
+"That you have harbored two demons under your roof, Mrs. Truax. There
+seems to be no doubt that the woman who went away with Mr. Urquhart was
+not the woman who came with him. She lies here, while the other--"
+
+He paused, and Mr. Tamworth took up the word.
+
+"It seems to have been a strangely triumphant piece of villainy. The
+woman who profited by it must have had great self-control and force of
+character. Don't you think so, doctor?"
+
+"Unquestionably," was the firm reply.
+
+"You do not say how you account for her presence here," I now
+reluctantly intimated.
+
+"I think she was hidden in the great box. It was large enough for that,
+was it not, Mrs. Truax?"
+
+I nodded, much agitated.
+
+"His care of it, his call for a supper, the change in its weight, and
+the fact that its contents were of a different character in going than
+coming, all point to the fact of its having been used for the purpose we
+intimated. It strikes one as most horrible, but history furnishes us
+with precedents of attempts equally daring, and if the box was well
+furnished with holes--did you notice any breathing places in it?"
+
+"No," I returned; "but I did not cast two glances at the box. I was
+jealous of it, for the young wife's sake, though, as God knows, I had
+little idea of what it contained, and merely noticed that it was big and
+clumsy, and capable of holding many books."
+
+"Yet you must have noticed, even in a cursory glance, whether its top or
+sides were broken by holes."
+
+"They were not, but--"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"I do remember, now, that he flung his traveling-cloak across it just as
+the men went to lift it from the wagon, and that the cloak remained
+upon it all the time it was in their hands, and until after we had all
+left the room. But it was taken away later, for when I went in the
+second time, I saw it lying across the chair."
+
+"And the box?"
+
+"Was hidden by the foot of the bed behind which he had dragged it."
+
+"And the cloak? Was it over the box when it went out?"
+
+"No; but I have thought since we have been talking, that the box might
+have been turned over after its occupant left it. The holes, if there
+were any, would thus be on the bottom, and would escape our detection."
+
+"Very possible, but the sand with which we supposed the box had been
+filled would have sifted through."
+
+"Not if a good firm piece of stuff was laid in first, and there were
+plenty of such in the secret chamber."
+
+"That is true. But Burritt, you write, was listening at the door, and
+yet you mention no remarks of his concerning any noises heard by him
+from within. And noise must have been made if this was done, as it must
+have had to be done after the tragedy."
+
+"I know I do not," was the hurried reply. "But Burritt probably did not
+remain at the door all the time. There is a window seat at the end of
+the corridor, and upon it he probably lolled during the few hours of his
+watch. Besides, you must remember that Burritt left his post some time
+before daylight. He had his duties to attend to, some of which
+necessitated his being in the stables by four o'clock, at least."
+
+"I see; and so the affair prospered, as most very daring deeds do, and
+they escaped without suspicion, or rather without suspicion pointed
+enough to lead to their being followed. I wonder where they escaped to,
+and if in all the years that have elapsed, they have for one moment
+imagined that they were happy."
+
+"Happy!" was my horrified exclamation. "Oh, if I could find them! If I
+could drag them both to this room and make them keep company with their
+victim for a week, I should feel it too slight a retribution for them."
+
+"Heaven has had its eye upon them. We have been through fearful crises
+since that day, and much unrighteous as well as righteous blood has
+been shed in this land. They may both be dead."
+
+"I do not believe it," I muttered. "Such wretches never die." Then, with
+a renewed remembrance of Hetty, I remarked: "Curses on the duties that
+kept me out of this room on that fatal morning. Had I seen the woman's
+face, this horrid crime would at least been spared its triumph. But I
+was obliged to send Hetty, and she saw nothing strange in the woman,
+though she received money from her hand, and--"
+
+"Where is Hetty?" interrupted the doctor.
+
+"She is married, and lives in the next town."
+
+"So, so. Well, we must hunt her up to-morrow, and see what she has to
+say about the matter now."
+
+But we soon found ourselves too impatient to wait till the morrow, so
+after we had eaten a good supper in a cheerful room, Dr. Kenyon mounted
+his horse, and rode away to the farm house where Hetty lived. While he
+was gone, Mr. Tamworth summoned up courage to re-enter that cave of
+horror, and bring out the contents of the oak chest we had seen there.
+These were mostly stuffs in a more or less good state of preservation,
+and all the assistance they lent to the understanding of the tragedy
+that mystified us was the fact that the chest contained nothing, nor the
+room itself, of sufficient substance to help the wicked Urquhart in
+giving weight to the box which he had emptied of its living freight.
+This is doubtless the reason he resorted to the garden for the sand and
+stone he found there.
+
+Dr. Kenyon returned about midnight, and was met at the door by Mr.
+Tamworth and myself.
+
+"Well?" I cried, in great excitement.
+
+"Just as I supposed," he returned. "She did not see the lady's face
+either. The latter was in bed, and the girl took it for granted that the
+arm and hand which reached her out a silver piece from between the bed
+curtains were those of Mrs. Urquhart."
+
+"My house is cursed!" was my sudden exclamation. "It has not only lent
+itself to the success of the most demoniacal scheme that ever entered
+into the heart of man, but it has kept its secret so long that all hope
+of explaining its details or reaching the guilty must be abandoned."
+
+"Not so," quoth Mr. Tamworth. "Though an old man, I dedicate myself to
+this task. You will hear again of the Urquharts."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+AN INTERIM OF SUSPENSE.
+
+
+        MAY 5, 1791.
+
+[Illustration: H]
+
+How fearful! To hear a spade in the night and know that this spade is
+digging a grave! I sit at my desk and listen to hear if any one in the
+house has been aroused or is suspicious, and then I turn to the window
+and try to pierce the gloom to see if anything can be discerned, from
+the house, of the grewsome act now being performed in the garden. For
+after much consultation and several conferences with the authorities, we
+have decided to preserve from public knowledge, not only the secret of
+the room hidden in my house, but of the discovery which has lately been
+made there. But while much harm would accrue to me by revelations which
+would throw a pall of horror over my inn, and make it no better than a
+place of morbid curiosity forever, the purposes of justice would be
+rather hindered than helped by a publicity which would give warning to
+the guilty couple, and prevent us from surprising them in the imagined
+security which the lapse of so many years must have brought them.
+
+And so a grave is being dug in the garden, where, at the darkest hour of
+night, the remains of the sweet and gentle bride are to be placed
+without tablet or mound.
+
+Meanwhile do there hide in any part of this wicked world two hearts
+which throb with unusual terrors this night? Or does there pass across
+the mirror of a guilty memory any unusual shapes of horror prognostic of
+detection and coming punishment? It would comfort my uneasy heart to
+know; for the spirit of vengeance has seized upon me, and my house will
+never seem washed of its stain, or my conscience be quite at rest as to
+the past, till that vile man and woman pay, in some way, the penalty of
+their crime.
+
+That we know nothing of them but their names lends an interest to their
+pursuit. The very difficulty before us, the hopelessness almost of the
+task we have set ourselves, have raised in me a wild and well-nigh
+superstitious reliance on Providence and the eternal justice, so that it
+seems natural for me to expect aid even from such sources as dreams and
+visions, and make the inquiry in which I have just indulged the
+reasonable expression of my belief in the mysterious forces of right and
+wrong, which will yet bring this long triumphant, but now secretly
+threatened, pair to justice.
+
+Dr. Kenyon, who is as practical as he is pious, smiles at my confidence;
+but Mr. Tamworth neither mocks nor frowns. He has shouldered the
+responsibility of finding this man, and has often observed, in his long
+life, that a woman's intuitions go as far as a man's reasoning.
+
+To-morrow he will start upon his travels.
+
+
+        JUNE 12, 1791.
+
+It is foolish to put every passing thought on paper, but these sheets
+have already served me so well that I cannot resist the temptation of
+making them the repositories of my secret fears and hopes. Mr. Tamworth
+has been gone a month, and I have heard nothing from him. This is all
+the more difficult to bear that Dr. Kenyon also has left me, thus
+taking from my house all in whom I can confide or to whom I can talk.
+For I will not place confidence in servants, and there are no guests
+here at present upon whose judgment I can rely concerning even a lesser
+matter than this which occupies all my thoughts.
+
+I must talk, then, to thee, unknown reader of these lines, and declare
+on paper what I have said a thousand times to myself--what a mystery
+this whole matter is, and how little probability there is of our ever
+understanding it! Why was it that Edwin Urquhart, if he loved one woman
+so well that he was willing to risk his life to gain her, would subject
+himself to the terrors which must follow any crime, no matter how
+secretly performed, by marrying a woman he must kill in twenty-four
+hours? Marriages are not compulsory in this country, and any one must
+acknowledge that it would be easier for a strong man--and he certainly
+was no weakling--to refuse a woman at the nuptial altar than to
+undertake and carry out a scheme so full of revolting details and
+involving so much risk as this which we have been forced to ascribe to
+him.
+
+Then the woman, the unknown and fearful creature who had allowed herself
+to be boxed up and carried, God knows, how many fearful miles, just for
+the purpose of assuming a position which she seemingly might have
+obtained in ways much less repulsive and dangerous! Was it in human
+nature to go through such an ordeal, and if it were, what could the
+circumstances have been that would drive even the most insensible nature
+into such an adventure! I question, and try to answer my own inquiries,
+but my imagination falters over the task, and I am no nearer to the
+satisfaction of my doubts than I was in the harrowing minute when the
+knowledge of this tragedy first flashed upon me.
+
+I must have patience. Mr. Tamworth must write to me soon.
+
+
+        AUGUST 10, 1791.
+
+News, news, and such news! How could I ever have dreamed of it! But let
+me transcribe Mr. Tamworth's letter:
+
+        To Mrs. Clarissa Truax,
+                 Mistress of the Happy-go-lucky Inn:
+
+        RESPECTED MADAM: After a lengthy delay,
+        occupied in researches, made doubly difficult
+        by the changes which have been wrought in the
+        country by the late conflict, I have just come
+        upon a fact that has the strongest bearing upon
+        the serious tragedy which we are both so
+        interested in investigating. It is this:
+
+        That every year the agent of a certain large
+        estate in Albany, N. Y., forwards to France a
+        large sum of money, for the use and behoof of
+        one Honora Quentin Urquhart, daughter of the
+        late Cyrus Dudleigh, of Albany, and wife of one
+        Edwin Urquhart, a gentleman of that same city,
+        to whom she was married in her father's house
+        on January 27, 1775, and with whom she at once
+        departed for France, where she and her husband
+        have been living ever since.
+
+        Thus by chance, almost, have I stumbled upon an
+        explanation of the tragedy we found so
+        inexplicable, and found that clew to the
+        whereabouts of the wretched pair which is so
+        essential to their apprehension and the proper
+        satisfaction of the claims of justice.
+
+        With great consideration I sign myself,
+
+        Your obedient servant,
+            ANTHONY TAMWORTH.
+
+
+        AUGUST 11, 8 o'clock.
+
+I was so overwhelmed by the above letter that I found it impossible at
+the time to comment upon it. To-day it is too late, for this morning a
+packet arrived from Mr. Tamworth containing another letter of such
+length that I am sure it must be one of complete explanation. I burn to
+read it, but I have merely had time to break the seal and glance at the
+first opening words. Will my guests be so kind as to leave me in peace
+to-night, so that I may satisfy a curiosity which has become almost
+insupportable?
+
+        MIDNIGHT.
+
+No time to-night; too tired almost to write this.
+
+
+        AUGUST 12.
+
+The packet is read. I am all of a tremble. What a tale! What a-- But why
+encumber these sheets with words of mine? I will insert the letter and
+let it tell its own portion of the strange and terrible history which
+time is slowly unrolling before us.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+AN OLD ALBANY ROMANCE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE RECLUSE.
+
+
+To Mrs. Clarissa Truax,
+      of the Happy-go-lucky Inn:
+
+RESPECTED MADAM: Appreciating your anxiety, I hasten to give you the
+particulars of an interview which I have just had with a person who knew
+Edwin Urquhart. They must be acceptable to you, and I shall make no
+excuse for the length of my communication, knowing that each detail in
+the lives of the three persons connected with this crime must be of
+interest to one who has brooded upon the subject as long as you have.
+
+The person to whom I allude is a certain Mark Felt, a most eccentric and
+unhappy being now living the life of a recluse amid the forests of the
+Catskills. I became acquainted with his name at the time of my first
+investigation into the history of the Dudleigh and Urquhart families,
+and it was to him I was referred when I asked for such particulars as
+mere neighbors and public officials found it impossible to give.
+
+I was told, however, at the same time, that I should find it hard to
+gain his confidence, as for sixteen years now he had avoided the
+companionship of men, by hiding in the caves and living upon such food
+as he could procure through the means of gun and net. A disappointment
+in love was said to be at the bottom of this, the lady he was engaged to
+having thrown herself into the river at about the time of the marriage
+of his friend.
+
+He was, notwithstanding, a good-hearted man, and if I could once break
+through the reserve he had maintained for so many years, they thought I
+would be able to surprise facts from him which I could never hope to
+reach in any other way.
+
+Interested by these insinuations, and somewhat excited, for an old man,
+at the prospect of bearding such a lion in his den, I at once made up my
+mind to seek this Felt; and accordingly one bright day last week
+crossed the river and entered the forest. I was not alone. I had taken a
+guide who knew the location of the cave which Felt was supposed to
+inhabit, and through his efforts my journey was made as little fatiguing
+as possible. Fallen brambles were removed from my path, limbs lifted,
+and where the road was too rough for the passage of such faltering feet
+as mine, I found myself lifted bodily, in arms as strong and steadfast
+as steel, and carried like a child to where it was smoother.
+
+Thus I was enabled to traverse paths that at first view appeared
+inaccessible, and finally reached a spot so far up the mountain side
+that I gazed behind me in terror lest I should never be able to return
+again the way I had come. My guide, seeing my alarm, assured me that our
+destination was not far off, and presently I perceived before me a huge
+overhanging cliff, from the upper ledges of which hung down a tangle of
+vines and branches that veiled, without wholly concealing, the yawning
+mouth of a cave.
+
+"That is where the man we are seeking lives, eats, and sleeps," quoth my
+guide, as we paused for a moment to regain our breath. And immediately
+upon his words, and as if called forth by them, we perceived an unkempt
+and disheveled head slowly uprear itself through the black gap before
+us, then hastily disappear again behind the vines it had for a moment
+disturbed.
+
+"I will encounter him alone," I thereupon declared; and leaving the
+guide behind me, I pushed forward to the cliff, and pausing before the
+entrance of the cave, I called aloud:
+
+"Mark Felt, do you want to hear news from your friend Urquhart?"
+
+For a moment all was still, and I began to fear that my somewhat daring
+attempt had failed in its effect. But this was only for an instant, for
+presently something between a growl and a cry issued from the darkness
+within, and the next moment the wild and disheveled head showed itself
+again, and I heard distinctly these words:
+
+"He is no friend of mine, your Edwin Urquhart."
+
+"Then," I returned, without a moment's hesitation, "do you want to hear
+news of your enemy?--for I have some, and of the rarest nature, too."
+
+The wild eyes flashed as if a flame of fire had shot from them, and the
+head that held them advanced till I could see the whole bearded
+countenance of the man.
+
+"Is he dead?" he asked, with an eagerness and underlying triumph in the
+voice that argued well for the presence of those passions upon the
+rousing of which I relied for the revelations I sought.
+
+"No," said I, "but death is looking his way. With a little more
+knowledge of his early life and a little more insight into his character
+at the time he married Honora Dudleigh, the law will have so firm a hold
+upon him that I can safely promise any one who longs to see him pay the
+penalty of his evil deeds a certain opportunity of doing so."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The vines trembled and suddenly parted their full length, and Mark Felt
+stepped out into the sunshine and confronted me. What he wore I cannot
+say, for his personality was so strong I received no impression of
+anything else. Not that he was tall or picturesque, or even rudely
+handsome. On the contrary, he was as plain a man as I had ever seen,
+with eyes to which some defect lent a strange, fixed glare, and a mouth
+whose under jaw protruded so markedly beyond the upper that his profile
+gave you a shock when any slight noise or stir drew his head to one
+side and thus revealed it to you. Yet, in spite of all this, in spite of
+tangled locks and a wide, rough beard, half brown, half white, his face
+held something that fixed the attention and fascinated the eye that
+encountered it. Did it lie in his eyes? How could it, with one looking
+like a fixed stone of agate and the other like a rolling ball of fire?
+Was it in his smile? How could it be when his smile had no joy in it,
+only a satisfaction that was not of good, but evil, and promised trouble
+rather than relief or sympathy? It must be in the general expression of
+his features, which seemed made only to mirror the emotions of a soul
+full of vitality and purpose--a soul which, if clouded by wrongs and
+embittered by heavy memories, possessed at least the characteristic of
+force and the charm of an unswerving purpose.
+
+He seemed to recognize the impression he had made, for his lips smiled
+with a sort of scornful triumph before he said:
+
+"These are peculiar words for a stranger. May I ask your name and whose
+interests you represent?"
+
+His speech was quick, and had an odd halt in it, such as might be
+expected from one who had not conferred with his fellows for years. But
+there was no rudeness in its tone, nor was there any mistaking the fact
+that he was, both by nature and education, a gentleman. I began to take
+an interest in him apart from my mission.
+
+"Mr. Felt," I replied, "my name is Tamworth. I am from Virginia, and
+only by chance have I become involved in a matter near to you and the
+man who, you tell me, is, or was, your enemy. As for the interests I
+represent, they are those of justice, and justice only; and it is in her
+behalf and for the triumph of law and righteousness that I now ask you
+for your confidence and such details concerning your early intercourse
+with Edwin Urquhart as will enable me to understand a past that will
+certainly yield us a clew to the present. Are you willing to give them?"
+
+"Will I give them?" he laughed. "Will I break the seal which guards the
+tablets of my youth, and let a stranger's eyes read lines to which I
+have shut my own for these many years! Do you not know that for me to
+tell you what I once knew of Edwin Urquhart is to bare my own breast to
+view, and subject to new sufferings a heart that it has taken fifteen
+years of solitude to render callous?"
+
+I gave no answer to this, only looked at him and stood waiting.
+
+"You have hunted me out, you have touched the last string that ceases to
+vibrate in a man's breast--that of a wild desire for vengeance--and now
+you ask me--"
+
+"To ease your memories of a burden. To drag into light the skeleton of
+old days, and by the light thus thrown upon it to see that it is only a
+skeleton, that, once beheld, should be buried and its old bones
+forgotten. You are too much of a man, Felt, to waste away in these
+wilds. Come! forget I am a stranger, and relieve yourself and me by
+opening these tablets you speak of, even if it does cost you a pang of
+the old sorrow. The talk we have had has already made a flutter in the
+long-closed leaves, and should I leave you this minute you could not
+smother the thoughts and memories to which our conversation has given
+rise. Then why not think to purpose and--"
+
+He raised one hand and stopped me. The gesture was full of fire, and so
+was the eye he now turned away from me to gaze up at the overhanging
+steeps above, with their great gorges and magnificent play of light and
+shadow; at the valley beneath, with its broad belt of shining water
+winding in and out through fertile banks and growing towns, and finally
+at the blue dome of the sky, across which great clouds went sailing in
+shapes so varied and of size so majestic that it was like a vision of
+floating palaces on a sea of translucent azure.
+
+Gasping in a strange mood between delight and despair, he flung up his
+arms.
+
+"Ah! I have loved these hills. Of all the longings and affections that
+one by one have perished from my heart, the solitary passion for nature
+has alone remained, unlessened and undisturbed. I love these trees with
+their countless boughs; these rocks, with their hidden pitfalls and
+sudden precipices. The sky that bends above me here is bluer than any
+other sky; and when it frowns and gathers its storms together, and hurls
+them above these ledges and upon my uncovered head, I throw up my arms
+as I do now and exult in the tumult, and become a part of it, till the
+hunger in my soul is appeased, and the blood in my veins runs mildly
+again. And now I must quit all this. I must give to men thoughts that
+have been closely wedded to Nature. I must tear her image from my heart,
+and in her pure place substitute interests in a life I thought forever
+sacrificed to her worship. It is a bitter task, but I will perform it.
+There are other calls than those which reverberate from yon peaks. I
+have just heard one, and my feet go down once more into the valleys."
+
+His arms fell with the last words, and his eyes returned again to my
+face.
+
+"Come into the cave," said he. "I cannot tell my story in the sight of
+these pure skies."
+
+I followed him without a word. He had affected me. The invocation in
+which he had indulged, and which, from another man, and other
+circumstances, would have struck me as a theatrical attempt upon my
+sympathy as forced as it was unnatural, was in him so appropriate, and
+in such keeping with the grandeur of the scene by which we were
+surrounded, that I was disarmed of criticism, and succumbed without
+resistance to his power.
+
+The cave, once entered, was light enough. On the ground were spread in
+profusion leaves and twigs of the sweet-smelling cedar, making a carpet
+as pleasing as it was warm and healthful. On one side I saw a mound of
+the same, making a couch, across which a great cloak was spread; while
+beyond, the half-defined forms of a rude seat and table appeared,
+lending an air of habitableness to the spot, which, from the exterior, I
+had hardly expected to find. A long slab of stone served as a hearth,
+and above it I perceived a hole in the rock, toward which a thin column
+of smoke was rising from a few smouldering embers that yet remained
+burning upon the great stone below. Altogether, it was a home I had
+entered; and awed a little at the remembrance that it had been the
+refuge of this solitary man through years pregnant with events forever
+memorable in the history of the world as those which gave birth to a new
+nation, I sank down upon the pile of cedar he pointed out to me, and
+waited in some impatience for him to begin his tale.
+
+This he seemed in no hurry to do. He waited so long with his chin sunk
+in his two hands and his eyes fixed upon vacancy, that I grew restless
+and was about to break the silence myself, when, without moving, he
+suddenly spoke.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+TWO WOMEN.
+
+
+"You want to hear about Edwin Urquhart. Well, you shall, but first I
+promise you that I shall talk much less of him than of another person.
+Why? because it is on account of this other person that I hate him, and
+solely because of this other person that I avenge myself, or seek to
+assist others in avenging the justice you say he has outraged.
+
+"We were friends from boyhood. Reared in the same town and under the
+same influences, there was a community of interests between us that
+threw us together and made us what is called friends. But I never liked
+him. That is, I never felt a confidence in him which is essential to a
+mutual understanding. And, though I accepted his companionship, and was
+much with him at the most critical time of my life, I always kept one
+side, and that the better side, of my nature closed to him.
+
+"He was a gentleman with no expectations; I the inheritor of a small
+fortune that made my friendship of temporary use to him, even if it did
+not offer him much to rely on in the future. We lived, he with an uncle
+who was ready to throw him off the moment he was assured that he would
+not marry one of his daughters, and I in my own house, which, if no
+manor, was at least my own, and for the present free from debt. I myself
+thought that Urquhart intended to marry one of the girls to whom I have
+just alluded. But it seems that he never meant to do this, and only
+encouraged his uncle to think so because he was not yet ready to give up
+the shelter he enjoyed with him. But of this, as I say, I was ignorant,
+and was consequently very much astonished when, one nightfall, in
+passing the great Dudleigh place, he remarked:
+
+"'How would you like to drink a glass with me in yonder? Better than in
+the Fairfax kitchen, eh?'
+
+"I thought he was joking. ''Tis a fine old house,' I observed. 'No doubt
+its wines are good. But it is no tavern, and I question if Miss Dudleigh
+would make either of us very welcome.'
+
+"'You do! Then you don't know Miss Dudleigh,' he vaunted, with a proud
+swelling of his person, and a lift of his head that almost took my
+breath away. For, though he was a handsome fellow--too handsome for a
+man no worthier than he--I should no more have presumed to have
+associated him in my thoughts with Miss Dudleigh than if he had been a
+worker in her fields. Not so much because she was rich--very rich for
+that day and place--or that her family was an old one, and his but a
+mushroom stock, as that she was a being of the gentlest instincts and
+the purest thoughts, while he was what you may have gathered from my
+words--vain, coarse, cowardly and mean; an abject cur beside her, who
+was, and is, one of the sweetest women the sun ever shone upon."
+
+At this expression of admiration on the part of the hermit, which proved
+him to be in entire ignorance of the crime which had been perpetrated
+against this woman, I found myself struck so aghast that I could not
+forbear showing it. But he was too engrossed in his reminiscences to
+notice my emotion, and presently continued his story by saying:
+
+"I probably betrayed my astonishment to Urquhart, for he gave a great
+laugh, and forced me about toward the gates.
+
+"'We will not be turned out,' he said. 'Let us go in and pay our
+respects.'
+
+"'But,' I stammered.
+
+"'Oh, it's all right,' he pursued. 'The fair lady is of age and has the
+privilege of choosing her future husband. I shall live in clover, eh?
+Well, it is time I lived in something. I have had a hard enough time of
+it so far, for a none too homely fellow.'
+
+"I was overwhelmed; more than that, I was sickened by these words, whose
+import I understood only too well. Not that I had any special interest
+in Miss Dudleigh; indeed, I hardly knew her; but any such woman inspires
+respect, and I could not think of her as allied to this man without a
+spasm of revolt that almost amounted to fear.
+
+"'You are going to marry her, this white rose!' I exclaimed. 'I should
+as soon have thought of your marrying a princess of the royal house. I
+hope you appreciate your unbounded good fortune.'
+
+"He pointed to the great chimneys and imposing facade of the fine
+structure before us. 'Do you think I am so blind as not to know the
+advantage of being the master in a house like that? You must not think
+me quite a fool if I am not as clever a fellow as you are. Remember that
+I am a poorer one and like my ease better.'
+
+"'But Miss Dudleigh?'
+
+"'Oh, she's a trifle peaked and dull, but she's fond and not too
+exacting.'
+
+"I was angry, but had no excuse for showing it. Righteous indignation he
+could never have understood, and to have provoked a quarrel without any
+definite end in view would have been folly. I remained silent,
+therefore, but my heart burned within me.
+
+"It had not lost its heat when we entered her house, and when my eyes
+fell upon her seated at her spinet in front of a latticed window that
+brought out her gentle figure in all its sweet simplicity, I felt like
+clutching, and flinging back over the threshold, which his desecrating
+foot should never have crossed, the hollow-hearted being at my side, who
+could neither see her beauty nor estimate the worth of her innocent
+affection.
+
+"There was an aunt or some such relative in the room with her, but this
+did not hinder the glad smile from rising to her lips as she saw us--or
+rather him, for she hardly seemed to notice my presence. I learned
+afterward that this aunt had been greatly instrumental in bringing these
+incongruous natures together; that for reasons of her own, which I have
+never attempted to fathom, she thought Edwin Urquhart the best husband
+that her niece could have, and not only introduced him into the house,
+but stood so much his friend during the first days of his courtship that
+she gradually imparted to her niece her own enthusiasm, till the poor
+girl saw--or thought she saw--the ideal of her dreams in the base and
+shallow being whom I called my friend.
+
+"However that may be, she certainly rose from her spinet that night in a
+pretty confusion that made her absolutely lovely, and advancing with the
+mingled dignity of the heiress and the tender bashfulness of the maiden
+in the presence of him she loved, she tendered us a courtesy whose grace
+put me out of ease with myself, so much it expressed the manners of
+people removed from the sphere in which it had hitherto been my lot to
+move.
+
+"But Urquhart showed no embarrassment. His fine figure--he had
+that--bent forward with the most courtly of bows, and after the
+introduction of my humble self to her notice, he entered into a
+conversation which, if shallow, was at least bright, and for the moment
+interesting. As I had no wish to talk, I gave myself up to watching her,
+and came away at last more fixed than ever in my belief of her extreme
+worthiness and of his extreme presumption in thinking of calling so
+perfect a creature his.
+
+"'Would to God she was as poor as Janet Fairfax,' I thought to myself.
+'Then she would never have attracted his attention, and might have known
+what happiness was with some man who could appreciate her. Now she is
+doomed, and being fatherless and motherless, will rush on to her fate,
+and no one can stop her.'
+
+"Thus I thought, and thus I continued to think as chance and Urquhart's
+stubborn will led me more and more to her house, and within the radius
+of her gentle influence. But my thoughts never went further. I never saw
+her, even in my dreams, fostered by me, or soothed of an old grief by my
+love and affection. For though she was a dainty and gracious being, with
+beauty enough to delight the eyes and warm the heart, she was not the
+one destined to move me, and awake the tumultuous passions that lay
+dormant in my own scarcely understood nature. Urquhart, therefore, was
+not acting unwisely in taking me there so often, though, if I could have
+foreseen what was likely to be the result of those visits, I should have
+leaped from my house's roof on to the stones below before I had passed
+again under those fatal portals.
+
+"And yet--would I? Do we fear suffering or apathy most? Is it from
+experience or the monotony of a commonplace existence that we quickest
+flee? A man with passions like mine must love; and if that love comes
+girt with flame and mysterious death, he still must embrace it, and rise
+and fall as the destinies will.
+
+"But I talk riddles. I have not yet told you of her; and yet speak of
+fire and death. I will try to be more coherent, if only to show that the
+years have brought me some mastery over myself. One day--it was a fall
+day and beautiful as limpid sunshine and a world of yellowing woods
+could make it--I went to Miss Dudleigh's house to apologize for my
+friend, who had wished to improve the gorgeous sunshine elsewhere.
+
+"I had by this time lost all fear of her, as well as of her rich and
+spacious surroundings, and passed through the hospitable door and along
+the wide halls to the especial room in which we were wont to find her,
+with that freedom engendered by an intimacy as cordial as it was
+sincere. It was the room where first I had seen her, the room with the
+wide latticed window at the back, and the spinet beneath it, and the old
+carven chair of oak in which her white-clad form had always looked so
+ethereal; and I entered it smiling, expecting to see her delicate figure
+rise from the window, and advance toward me with that look of surprise
+and possible disappointment which the absence of Urquhart would be apt
+to arouse in this too loving nature. But the room was empty and the
+spinet closed, and I was about turning to find a servant, when I felt an
+influence stealing over me so subtile and so peculiar that I stood
+petrified and enthralled, hardly knowing if it were music that held me
+spell-bound or some unknown and subduing perfume, that, filling my
+senses, worked upon my brain, and made me feel like a man transported at
+a breath from the land of reality into a land of dreams.
+
+"So potent the spell, so inexplicable its action, that minutes may have
+elapsed before I wrenched myself free from its power and looked to see
+what it was that so moved me. When I did, I found myself at a loss to
+explain it. Whether it was music or perfume, or just the emanation from
+an intense personality, I have never determined. I only know that when I
+turned, I saw standing before me, in an attitude of waiting, a woman of
+such marvelous attractions, and yet of an order of beauty so bizarre and
+out of keeping with the times and the place in which she stood, that I
+forgot to question everything but my own sanity and the reality of a
+vision so unprecedented in all my experience. I therefore simply stood
+like her, speechless and lost, and only came to myself when the figure
+before me suddenly melted from a statue into a woman, and, with a deep
+and graceful courtesy, almost daring in its abandonment, said:
+
+"'You must be Master Felt, I take it. Master Urquhart would never be so
+thrown off his balance by a simple girl like me.'
+
+"There are voices that pierce like arrows and sink deep into the heart,
+which closes over their sweetness forever. So it was with this voice.
+From its first sound to its last it held me enthralled, and had she
+shown but half the beauty she did, those accents of hers would have made
+me her slave. As it was, I was more than her slave. I instantly became
+all and everything to her. I breathed but as she breathed, and in the
+absorbing delight which from that moment took hold of me I lost all
+sense of the proprieties and conventionalities of social intercourse,
+and only thought of drinking in at one draught the strange and
+mysterious loveliness which I saw revealed before me.
+
+"She was not a tall woman, no taller than Miss Dudleigh. Nor was she of
+marked carriage or build. Her form, indeed, seemed only made to express
+suppleness and passion, and was as speaking in its slight proportions as
+if it had breathed forth the nobler attributes of majesty and strength.
+Her dress was dark, and clung to every curve with a loving persistence
+bewildering in its effect upon an eye like mine. Upon the bust, and just
+below the white throat, burned a mass of gorgeous flowers as ruddy as
+wine; and from one delicate hand a long vine trailed to the floor. But
+it was in her face that her power lay; in her eyes possibly, though I
+scarcely think so, for there were curves to her lips such as I have
+never seen in any other, and a delicate turn to her nostril that at
+times made me feel as if she were breathing fire. Her skin was pale, her
+forehead broad and low, her nose straight, and her lips of a brilliant
+vermilion. I, however, saw only her eyes, though I may have been
+influenced by the rest of her bewildering physiognomy; they were so
+large, so changeful, so full of alternating flames and languor, so
+indeterminate in color, and yet so persistent in their effect upon the
+eye and the feelings. Looking at them, I swore she was an anomaly.
+Gazing into them, I resolved that she was this only because she let
+herself be natural and sought to smother none of the fires which had
+been enkindled by a bountiful nature within her soul.
+
+"While I was reasoning thus, she made me another mock courtesy, and
+explaining her presence by saying she was a cousin of Miss Dudleigh's,
+ventured to remark that, if Master Felt would be kind enough to state
+his errand, she would be glad to carry it to Miss Dudleigh. I answered
+confusedly, but with a fervor she could not fail to understand, and
+following up this effort by another, led her into a conversation in
+which my responses gradually became such as she should expect from a
+gentleman and an equal.
+
+"For with her, notwithstanding her beauty, and the sense of splendor and
+luxury which breathed from her mysterious presence, I never felt that
+sense of personal inferiority I experienced at first with Miss Dudleigh.
+Whether I recognized then, as now, the lack of those high qualities
+which lift one mortal above another, I do not know. I am only certain
+that, while I regarded her as a woman to be obeyed, to be loved, to be
+followed through life, through death, into whatsoever regions of horror,
+danger, and pain she might lead me, I never looked upon her as a being
+out of my world or beyond my reach, except so far as her caprice might
+carry her.
+
+"It was therefore with the fixed determination to force from her some of
+the interest she had awakened in me, that I grasped at this first
+opportunity of conversation; and in spite of her unrest--she did not
+want to linger--held her to the spot till I had made her feel that a man
+had come into her life whose will meant something, and to whom, if she
+did not subdue the light of her glances, she must give account for every
+added throb she caused to beat in his proud heart.
+
+"This done I let her go, for Miss Dudleigh was not well and needed her,
+and the door closed behind her mysterious smile, and the sound of her
+steps died out in the hall, and in fancy only could I behold her supple,
+dark-clad form go up the broad staircase, projecting itself now against
+the golden daylight falling through one window, and now against the
+clustering vines that screened another, till she disappeared in regions
+of which I knew nothing and whither even my daring imagination presumed
+not to follow. And the vision never left my eyes nor her form my heart,
+and I went out in my turn, a burning, eager, determined man, where in a
+short half hour before I had entered cold and self-satisfied, without
+hope and without exaltation.
+
+"This was the beginning. In a week the earth and sky held nothing for me
+but that woman. Her name, which I had not learned at our first
+interview, was Marah Leighton--a fitting watch-word for a struggle that
+could terminate only with my life! For I had got to the pass that this
+woman must be mine. I would have her for my wife or see her dead; she
+should never leave the town with another. Yes; homely as I was, without
+recommendation of family, or more means than enough to keep a wife from
+want, I boldly entered upon this determination, and in the face of some
+dozen lovers, that at the first revelation of her beauty began to swarm
+about her steps, pressed my claims and pushed forward my suit till I
+finally gained a hearing, and after that a promise, which, if vague, was
+more than any of her other lovers could boast of, or why did they all
+gradually withdraw from the struggle, leaving me alone in my homage?
+
+"The uncertainties of her position (she was an orphan and dependent upon
+Miss Dudleigh for subsistence) had added greatly to my tenderness for
+her. It also added to my hope. For if I were poor, she was poorer, and
+ought to find in the managing of my humble home a satisfaction she could
+not experience in the enjoyment of a relative's bounty, even if that
+relative was a woman like Honora Dudleigh. And yet one doubts an
+exultant happiness; and as I grew to know her better, I realized that if
+I ever did succeed in making her mine, I must see to it that my
+fortunes bettered, as she would never be happy as a poor man's wife,
+even if that man brought her independence and love.
+
+"She loved splendor, she loved distinction, she loved the frivolities of
+life. Not with a childish pleasure or even a girlish enthusiasm, but
+with a woman's strong and determined spirit. I have seen her pace
+through and through those great halls just for the pleasure of realizing
+their spaciousness; and though the sight made my heart cringe, I have
+admired her step and the poise of her head as much as if she had been
+the queen of it all, and I her humblest vassal. Then her luxury! It
+showed as plainly in her poverty as it could have done in wealth. If it
+were flowers she handled, it was as a goddess would handle them. None
+were too beautiful, or too costly, or too rare for her restless fingers
+to pluck, or her dainty feet to tread on. Had she possessed jewels, she
+would have worn them like roses, and flung them away almost as freely if
+they had displeased her or she had grown weary of them. Love was to her
+a jewel, and she wore it just now because it suited her fancy to do so;
+but would not the day come when she would grow tired of it or demand
+another, and so fling it and me to the dogs?
+
+"I did not ask. I was permitted to walk at her side, and pay her my
+court, and now and then, when the humor took her, to press her hand or
+drop a kiss upon the rosy palm; and while I could do this, was it for me
+to question a future which seemed more likely to hold fewer pleasures
+than more?
+
+"But I grow diffuse; I must return to facts. Honora Dudleigh, who saw my
+devotion, encouraged it. I wondered at it sometimes, for she knew the
+smallness of my fortune, and must have known the nature of the woman I
+expected to share it. But as time passed I wondered less, for her
+woman's intuition must have told her, what observation had as yet failed
+to tell me, that there was trouble in the air, and that Marah needed a
+protector.
+
+"The day that I first recognized this fact made an era in my life. I had
+been so happy, so at ease with myself, so sure of her growing confidence
+and of my coming happiness. That I had cause for this, the conduct of
+her friends and the jealousy of her lovers seemed to prove. Though she
+gave no visible token of her regard, she clung to me as to a support,
+and allowed my passion the constant feast of her presence and the
+stimulation of her voice.
+
+"Her enchantments, and they were innumerable, were never spared me, nor
+did she stint herself of a smile that could allure, nor of a glance that
+could arouse or perplex.
+
+"I was happy, and questioned only the extent of my patience, which I
+felt fast giving way as the preparations for Miss Dudleigh's marriage
+proceeded without my seeing any immediate prospect of my own. You can
+realize, then, the maddening nature of the shock which I received when,
+coming quietly into the house as I did one day, I beheld her face
+disappearing through one of the doorways, with that look upon it which I
+had always felt was natural to it, but which no passion of mine had ever
+been able to evoke, and then perceived in the shadow from which she had
+just glided, Edwin Urquhart, pale as excessive feeling could make him,
+and so shaken by the first real emotion which had ever probably moved
+his selfish soul that he not only failed to see me when I advanced, but
+hastened by me, and away into the solitudes of the garden, without
+noticing my existence, or honoring with a reply the words of wrath and
+confusion which, in my misery and despair, I threw after him."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A SUDDEN BETROTHAL.
+
+
+"As for myself," continued Mark Felt, "I stood crushed, and after the
+first torrent of emotion had swept by, lifted my head like a drowning
+man and looked wildly about, as if, in the catastrophe which overwhelmed
+me, all nature must have changed, and I should find myself in a strange
+place. The sight of the door through which Marah Leighton had passed
+stung me into tortured existence again. With a roar of passion and hate
+I sprang toward it, burst it open, and passed in. Instantly silence and
+semi-darkness fell upon me, through which I felt her presence exhaling
+its wonted perfume, though I could see nothing but the dim shapes of
+unaccustomed articles of furniture grouped against a window that was
+almost completely closed from the light of day.
+
+"Advancing, I gazed upon chair after chair. They were all empty, and not
+till I reached the further corner did I find her, thrown at full length
+upon a couch, with her head buried in her arms, and motionless as any
+stone. Confused, appalled even, for I had never seen her otherwise than
+erect and mocking, I stumbled back, and would have fled, but that she
+suddenly arose, and flinging back her head, gave me one look, which I
+felt rather than saw, and bursting into a peal of laughter, called me to
+account for disturbing the first minute of rest she had known that day.
+
+"I was dumfounded. If she had consulted all her wiles, and sought for
+the one best way to silence me, she could not have chanced on one surer
+than this. I gazed at her quite helpless, and forgot--actually
+forgot--what had drawn me into her presence, and only asked to get a
+good glimpse of her face, which, in the dim light, was more like that of
+a spirit than of a woman--a mocking spirit, in whom no love could lodge,
+whatever my fancy might have pictured in the delirium of the moment that
+had just passed.
+
+"She seemed to comprehend my mood, for she flung back the curtain and
+drew herself up to her full height before me.
+
+"'Did you think I was playing the coquette?' she asked. 'Well, perhaps I
+was; women like me must have their amusements; but--'
+
+"Oh! the languishment in that _but_. I shut my eyes as I heard it. I
+could neither bear its sound, nor the sight of her face.
+
+"'You listened to him. He was making love to you--he, the promised
+husband of another; and you--'
+
+"She forced me to open my eyes.
+
+"'And I?' she repeated, with an indescribable emphasis that called up
+the blushes to my cheek.
+
+"'And you,' I went on, answering her demand without hesitation, 'the
+beloved of an honest man who would die to keep you true, and will die if
+you play him false!'
+
+"She sighed. Softness took the place of scorn; she involuntarily held
+out her hand.
+
+"I was amazed; she had never done so much before. I seized that hand, I
+pressed it wildly, hungrily, and with lingering fondness.
+
+"'Do you not know that you are everything to me?' I asked. 'That to win
+you I am ready to do everything, barter anything, suffer anything but
+shame! You are my fate, Marah; will you not let me be yours?'
+
+"She was silent; she had drawn her hand from mine and had locked it in
+its fellow, and now stood with them hanging down before her, fixed as a
+statue, in a reverie I could neither fathom nor break.
+
+"'You are beautiful,' I went on, 'too beautiful for me; but I love you.
+You are proud, also, and would grace the noblest palaces of the old
+world; but they are far away, and my home is near and eager to welcome
+you. You are dainty and have never taught your hands to toil, or your
+feet to walk our common earth; but there are affections that sweeten
+labor, and under my roof you will be so honored, so aided and so
+beloved, that you will soon learn there are pleasures of the fireside
+that can compensate for its cares, and triumphs of the affections that
+are beyond the dignities of outside life.'
+
+"Her lip curled and her hands parted. She lifted one rosy palm and
+looked at it, then she glanced at me.
+
+"'I shall never work,' she said.
+
+"My heart contracted, but I could not give her up. Madness as it was to
+put faith and life in the grasp of such a woman, I was too little of a
+man or too much of a one to turn my back upon a hope which, even in its
+realization, could bring me nothing but pain.
+
+"'You shall not work,' I declared. And I meant it. If I died she should
+not handle anything harsher than rose leaves in her new home.
+
+"'You want me?' She breathed it. I stood in a gasp of hope and fear.
+
+"'More than I want heaven! Or, rather, you are my heaven.'
+
+"'We will be married before Honora,' she murmured. And gliding from my
+side before I had recovered from the shock of a promise so unexpected, a
+bliss so unforeseen and immediate, she vanished from my sight, and
+nothing but the perfume which lingered behind her remained to tell me
+that it was not all a dream, and I the most presumptuous being alive.
+
+"And so the hour that opened in disaster ended in joy; and from the
+heart of what I deemed an irredeemable disaster rose a hope that for
+several days put wings to my feet. Then something began to tarnish my
+delight, an impalpable dread seized me, and though I worked with love
+and fury upon my house, which I had begun adorning for my bride, I began
+to question if she had played the coquette in smiling upon Edwin
+Urquhart, and whether in the mockery of the laugh with which she had
+dismissed my accusations there had not been some regret for a love she
+dared not entertain, but yet suffered to lose. The memory of the glow in
+her eyes, as she turned away from him at my step, returned with growing
+power, and I decided that if this were coquetry, it were sweeter than
+love, and longed to ask her to play the coquette with me. But she never
+did, and though she did not smile upon him again in my presence, I felt
+that her beauty was more bewildering, her voice more enchanting, when he
+was in the room with us than when chance or my purpose found us alone.
+To settle my doubts, I left watching her and began to watch him, and
+when I found that he betrayed nothing, I turned my attention from them
+both and bestowed it upon Miss Dudleigh."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+MARAH.
+
+
+"Great heaven! why had I not noticed Miss Dudleigh before! In her
+changed face, and in the wasting of her delicate form, I saw that my
+fears were not all vain, inasmuch as they were shared by her; and
+shocked at evidences so much beyond my expectations, I knew not whether
+to shed the bitter tears which rose to my eyes in pity for her or in
+rage for myself.
+
+"We were sitting all together, and I had a full opportunity to observe
+the mournful smile that now and then crossed her lips as Marah uttered
+some brighter sally than common or broke--as she often did--into song
+that rippled for a minute through the heavy air and then ceased as
+suddenly as it had begun. She looked much oftener at Marah than at
+Urquhart, and seemed to be asking in what lay the charm that subdued
+everybody, even herself. And when she seemed to receive no answer to her
+secret questioning, her eyes fell and a sigh stirred her lips, which, if
+unheard by the preoccupied man at her side, rang on in my ears long
+after I had bidden farewell to her and the siren whose smiles,
+intentionally or unintentionally, seemed destined to bring shipwreck
+into three lives.
+
+"It was not the last time I heard that sigh. As the weeks progressed it
+fluttered oftener and oftener from between those pale lips, and at last
+the change in Miss Dudleigh became so marked that people stopped in the
+midst of their talk about the stamp act to remark upon Miss Dudleigh's
+growing weakness, and venture assertions that she would never live to be
+a bride. And yet the preparations for her bridal and for mine went on,
+and the day set apart for the latter drew bewilderingly near.
+
+"Marah saw my perplexity and her cousin's grief, but did nothing to
+dispel the one or assuage the other. She seemed to be too busy. She was
+embroidering a famous stomacher for herself, and while a sprig of it
+remained unworked she had neither eyes nor attention for anything else,
+even for the bleeding hearts around her. She would smile--O yes, smile
+upon me, smile upon Honora, and not smile upon him; but she would not
+meet her cousin's true eyes, nor would she grant me one minute apart
+from the rest in which I could utter my fears or demand the breaking of
+that spell whose effects were so visible, even if its workings were
+secret and imperceptible. But at last the stomacher was finished, and as
+it dropped from her hands I threw myself at her feet, and from this
+position, looking into her eyes, I whispered:
+
+"'This is the last thing that shall ever flaunt itself between us. You
+are to be mine now, and in token of your truth come with me into the
+conservatory, for I have words to utter that will not be put off.'
+
+"'You are cruel,' she murmured, 'you are tyrannical. This is a time of
+revolt; shall I revolt, too?'
+
+"Maddened, for her eyes were not looking at me, but at him, I leaped to
+my feet, and, regardless of everything but my determination to end this
+uncertainty then and there, I lifted her and carried her out of the room
+into another, where I could have her alone, and without the humiliating
+sense of his presence.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"My bold act seemed to frighten her, for she stood very still where I
+had placed her, only trembling slightly when I looked at her and
+cried:
+
+"'Did you ask that question of me? Am I to understand you want to break
+your fetters?'
+
+"She plucked a rose from her breast and crumpled it to atoms between her
+hands.
+
+"'O why are they not golden ones!' she asked. 'I am miserable because we
+must be poor; because--because I want to ride in a carriage, because I
+want to wear jewels and own a dozen servants, and trample on the pride
+of women plainer than myself. I hate your humble home, I hate your stiff
+Dutch kitchen, I hate your sordid ways and the decent respectability
+that is all you can offer me. Were you beautiful as Adonis, it would
+make no difference. I was born to drink wine and not water, and I shall
+never forgive you for forcing me to take your crystal goblet in my
+hands, while, if I had waited--'
+
+"She stopped, panting. I let my whole pent-up jealousy out in a word.
+
+"'Edwin Urquhart has not even a crystal goblet to offer you. He is
+poorer than I am, and will remain so till he has actually married Miss
+Dudleigh.'
+
+"'Don't I know it!' she flashed out. 'If it had been otherwise do you
+think--'
+
+"She had the grace or the wisdom to falter. I regret it now. I regret
+that she did not go on and reveal her whole soul to me in one fell burst
+of feeling. As it was, I trembled with jealousy and passion, but I did
+not cast her from me.
+
+"'Then you acknowledge--' I cried.
+
+"But she would acknowledge nothing. 'I love no one,' she asserted, 'no
+one. I want what I want, but none of you can give it to me.'
+
+"Then blame me as you will, I took a great resolve. I determined to give
+her what she craved; convinced of her sordid nature, convinced of her
+heartlessness and the folly of ever thinking she could even understand,
+much less reciprocate my passion, I was so much under her sway at that
+moment that I would have flung at her feet kingdoms had I possessed
+them. Flushing, I seized her hand.
+
+"'You do not know what a man in love can do,' I cried. 'Trust me; give
+me yourself as you have promised, and sooner or later I will give you
+what you have asked. I am not a weak man or an incompetent one. Politics
+opens a vast field to an ambitious nature, and if war breaks out, as we
+all expect it will, you will see me rise to the front, if I have you for
+my wife and inspiration.'
+
+"The scorn in her eyes did not abate. 'O you men!' she cried. 'You think
+you give us everything with a promise. A war! What is the history of
+wars? Demolished homes, broken fortunes, rack, ruin and desolation. Is
+there gold, or honor, or ease in these? A war! It will not be a war. It
+will be a struggle in which men will fight barefoot and on empty
+stomachs for the privilege of calling themselves free. I have no
+sympathy with such a war. It robs us of comfort in the present and
+brings nothing worth waiting for in the future. Were I to have my will,
+I would take the arm of the first officer returning to England and
+remain there. I hate this country, so new, so crude, so democratic! I
+should like to live where I could ride over the necks of common people.'
+
+"A tory and an aristocrat! Another gulf between us. I looked at her in
+horror, but, alas! the horror was strangely mixed with admiration. She
+was such a burning embodiment of pride. Her peculiar beauty--the source
+of which I have never to this day been able to fathom--lent itself so
+readily to the expression of fury and disdain, that, recoil as I would
+from her principles, I could not shut my eyes to the fascination of her
+glance or the torturing charm that hid in the corners of her pouting
+lips. She was a queen. Oh, yes, but the queen of some strange realm in a
+distant oriental land, where right and wrong were only words, and the
+sole end of beauty was delight, without reference to God or one's
+fellows. I saw it all, I felt it all, yet I lingered. She was to be my
+wife in three days, and the intoxication of this prospect was in my
+blood and brain.
+
+"'You will do so and so,' were her next words. 'You will give me what I
+ask when you have won it. But I cannot wait for the winning; I want it
+now. Do you know what I would do to get the wealth I was born to? I
+would risk life! I would walk on burning plowshares! I would--'
+
+"She stopped, and I saw the lines come out in her forehead. She was
+thinking--thinking deeply. I felt the shadow of a great horror creeping
+over me. I caught her impetuously in my arms. I kissed her passionately
+to drive away the demons. I begged and implored her to forget her evil
+thoughts, and be the woman I could love and cherish; and finally I
+moved her. She shook herself free, but she also shook the shadow from
+her brow. She even found a smile to bestow upon me; and was it a tear?
+Could it have been a tear I saw for a moment glisten in her eye as she
+turned half petulantly, half imperiously away? I have never known, but
+the very suspicion filled my heart to overflowing, and the great sobs
+rose in my breast; and--fool that I was--I was about to beg her pardon,
+when she gave me one other look, and I merely faltered out:
+
+"'Where will you find another love like mine, Marah? If you got your
+gold, you would soon miss something which only comes with love. You
+would be unhappy, and curse the day you left my arms. I am your master,
+Marah; why not make me a happy one?'
+
+"'I expect,' she murmured, 'to marry you.'
+
+"'And then?' I could not help it; the words sprang to my lips
+involuntarily.
+
+"Her eyes opened wide; she literally flashed them upon me. I felt their
+lightnings play all about my doubtful nature, and scorch it.
+
+"'I will be your wife,' she uttered gravely.
+
+"I fell at her feet. I kissed the hem of her robe. In that moment I
+adored her. 'O best and fairest!' I cried, 'I will make you happy. I
+will fill your hopes to the full. You shall ride in a carriage, and your
+will shall be a law to those who smile in scorn upon you now, and you
+will be--'
+
+"'Mistress Felt, of most honorable degree,' she finished, with the half
+laughing disdain she could never keep long out of her words.
+
+"And thus I became again her slave, and lived in that sweet, if servile,
+condition till the hour of our nuptials came, and I went to conduct her
+to the church where, in sight of half the town, she was to be made my
+wife. Shall I ever forget that morning? It was a December day, but the
+heavens were blue and the earth white, and not a cloud bespoke a rising
+storm. As for me, I walked on air, all the more that I knew Urquhart was
+out of town and would not be present at the wedding. He had gone away on
+some behest of Miss Dudleigh's immediately after the last interview I
+have mentioned, and would not come back, or so I had been told, till
+after Miss Leighton had been Mistress Felt for a week. So there was
+nothing to mar my day or make my entrance into Miss Dudleigh's house
+anything but one of promise. I saw Miss Dudleigh first. She was
+standing in the vast colonial hall when I entered, and in her gala
+robes, and with the sunshine on her head, she looked almost happy. Yet
+she was greatly changed from her old self, and I felt much like pouring
+out my soul to her and bidding her to break a tie that would never bring
+her peace, or even honor. But I feared to shatter my own hopes. Selfish
+being that I was, I dreaded to have her made free, lest-- What? My
+thoughts did not interpret my fears, for at that moment a sunbeam struck
+down the stairs and through my heart, and, looking up, I saw Marah
+descending, and thought and reason flew to greet her.
+
+"She had been robed by her cousin's bounteous hand, and her dress of
+stiff yellow brocade burned in the morning light with almost as much
+brilliance as the sunshine itself. Folded across her bust was the
+wonderful stomacher, under whose making I had suffered so many emotions
+that each sprig of work upon it seemed to have its own tale of misery
+for my eyes, and fixed against this and her white throat were those
+masses of flowers without which her beauty never seemed quite complete.
+In her hair, which was piled high above her forehead, flashed a huge
+golden comb, and upon her arm gleamed two bracelets, whose exquisite
+workmanship was well known to me, for they had been an heirloom in my
+family for years. She was fair as a dream, proud as a queen, cold as a
+statue, but she was mine! Was not the minister waiting for us at the
+church? and were not the horses that were to take us there even now
+champing their bits before the door?
+
+"She rode with me. Four white horses had been attached to Miss
+Dudleigh's coach, and behind these we passed in state out through the
+noble park that separated this lordly house from the rest, into the
+closely packed streets, where hundreds waited to catch a glimpse of the
+most beautiful woman in Albany, going to be made a bride.
+
+"Miss Dudleigh rode behind us in another coach, and the murmur which
+greeted our appearance did not die out till after she had passed, for
+they knew she would soon be riding the same road with even greater
+state, if not with so much beauty; and the people of Albany loved Honora
+Dudleigh, for she was ever a beneficent spirit to them, and more than
+ever, since a shadow had fallen upon her happiness, and she had come to
+know what misery was.
+
+"And thus we passed on, Marah with a glowing flush of triumph burning on
+her cheek and I in one of those moods of happiness whose rapture was so
+unalloyed that I scarcely heard the half-laughing comments of those who
+saw with wonder how plain was the man who had succeeded in carrying off
+this well-known beauty. And the greater part of the way was traversed,
+and the bells of the old North Church became audible, and in a moment
+more we should have seen the belfry of the church itself rising before
+us, when, suddenly, the woman that I loved, the woman whose nuptials the
+minister was waiting to celebrate, gave a great start, and, turning
+quickly toward me, cried:
+
+"'Turn the horses' heads! I do not go to the church with you to-day. Not
+if you kill me, Mark Felt!'
+
+"You have heard of stray bullets coming singing from some unknown
+quarter and striking a person seated at a feast. Such a bullet struck me
+then. I looked at her in horror."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS.
+
+
+"'You think I am playing with you,' she murmured. 'I am not. I have
+sickened of these nuptials and am going back. If you want to, you may
+kill me where I sit. You carry a dagger, I know; one more red blossom
+will not show on my breast. Give it to me if you will, but turn the
+horses.'
+
+"She meant it, however much my lost heart might cry out for its
+happiness and honor. Leaning forward, I told the pompous driver that
+Miss Leighton had been taken very ill, and bade him drive back; and then
+with the calmness born of utter despair and loss, I said to her:
+
+"'In pity for my pride drop your head upon my shoulder. I have said you
+were sick, and sick you must be. It is the least you can do for me now.'
+
+"She obeyed me. That head on which in fancy I had set the crowns of
+empires, for whose every hair my heart had given a throb, sank coldly
+down till it rested upon the heart she had broken; and while I steadied
+my nerves to meet the changed faces of the crowd, the carriage gave a
+sudden turn, and amid murmurings that fell almost unheeded on my
+benumbed senses, we wheeled about and faced again the gates through
+which we had so lately issued.
+
+"'She is ill,' I shouted to Miss Dudleigh, as we passed her carriage.
+But she gave me no reply. She was gazing over the heads of the crowd at
+some distant object that enthralled her every look and sense; and moved
+by her expression as I thought never to be moved by anything again, I
+followed her glance, and there, on the outskirts of the crowd, crouching
+amid branches that yet refused to hide him, I saw Edwin Urquhart; and
+the miserable truth smote home to my heart that it was he who had
+stopped my marriage--he, whom I had thought far distant, but who had now
+come to hinder, by some secret gesture or glance, my bride on her path
+to the altar.
+
+"A dagger was hidden in my breast, and I still wonder that I did not
+leap from the carriage, burst through the crowd, and slay him where he
+crouched in cowardly ambush. But I let the moment go by, perhaps because
+I dreaded to bring the shadow of another woe into Miss Dudleigh's white
+face, and almost immediately the throng had surged in thickly between
+us, and Miss Dudleigh's carriage had turned after ours, and there was
+nothing further to do but to ride back, with the false face pressed in
+seeming insensibility to my breast, and that false heart beating out its
+cold throbs of triumph upon mine.
+
+"I bore it, glancing down but once upon her. Had the ride before me been
+one of miles I should have gone on in the same mechanical way, for my
+very being was petrified. Rage, fear, sorrow and despair, all seemed
+like dreams to me. I wondered that I had ever felt anything, and stared
+on and on at the blue sky before me, conscious of but one haunting
+thought that repeated itself again and again in my brain--that her power
+lay not in her eyes, as I had always been assured, but in those strange
+curves about her mouth. For her eyes were closed now, and yet I was
+coldly conscious of the fact that she had never looked more beautiful or
+more fitted to move a man, if a man had any heart left to be moved.
+
+"The stopping of the carriage before the great door of Miss Dudleigh's
+house roused me to the necessity for action.
+
+"'I must carry you in,' I whispered. 'I beg your pardon for it, but it
+is necessary to the farce.' And following up my words by action, I
+lifted her from the seat, cold and unresponsive as a stone, and carried
+her into the house and set her down before the astonished eyes of such
+servants as had remained to guard the house in our absence.
+
+"'Miss Leighton has not been married,' I cried. 'She was taken ill on
+the way to church, and I have brought her back. She needs no
+attendance.' And I waved them all back, for their startled, gaping
+countenances infuriated me, and threatened to shatter the dreadful
+calmness which was my only strength.
+
+"As they disappeared, murmuring and peering, Miss Dudleigh entered. I
+gave her one glance and dropped my eyes. She and I could not bear each
+other's looks yet. Meantime Marah stood erect in the center of the hall,
+her face pale, her lips set, her eyes fixed upon vacancy. Not a word
+passed our three mouths. At last a petulant murmur broke the dreadful
+silence, and Marah, tossing her head in disdain, turned away before our
+eyes and began to mount the stairs.
+
+"I felt my blood, which for many minutes had seemed at a standstill,
+pour with a rush through vein and artery, and darting to her side, I
+caught her by the hand and held her to her place.
+
+"'You shall not go up,' I cried, 'till you and I have understood each
+other. You have refused to marry me to-day. Was it some caprice that
+moved you, or--' I paused and looked behind me; Miss Dudleigh had shrunk
+from sight into one of the rooms--'or because you saw Edwin Urquhart in
+the crowd and followed his commanding gesture?'
+
+"The hand which I held grew cold as ice. She drew it away and looked at
+me haughtily, but I saw that I had frightened her.
+
+"'Edwin Urquhart is nothing to me,' came in low but emphatic tones from
+her lips. 'I did not want to marry any one, and I said so. It would be
+better if more brides hesitated on the threshold of matrimony instead of
+crossing it to their ruin.'
+
+"I could have killed her, but I subdued myself. I knew that I had lost
+her; that in another moment she would be gone, never to enter my
+presence again as my promised wife; but I uttered no word, honored her
+with no glance; merely made her a low bow and stepped back, as I
+thought, master of myself again.
+
+"But in that final instant one last arrow entered my breast, and darting
+back to her side, I whispered, in what must have been a terrible voice:
+
+"'Go, falsest of the false! I have done with you! But if you have lied
+to me--if you think to trip up Edwin Urquhart in his duty, and break
+Honora Dudleigh's noble heart, and shame my honor--I will kill you as I
+would a snake in the grass! You shall never approach the altar with
+another as nearly as you have this day with me!'
+
+"And with the last mockery of a look, in which every detail of her
+beauty flashed with almost an unbearable insistence upon my eyes, I
+turned my back upon her and strode toward the outer door."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+HONORA.
+
+
+"But I did not pass it. A sound struck my ear. It was that of a
+smothered sob, and it came from the room where I had first seen Miss
+Dudleigh. Instantly a vision of that sweet form bowed in misery struck
+upon my still palpitating heart; and moved at a grief I knew to be well
+nigh as bitter as my own, I stopped before the half-closed door, and
+gently pushed it open.
+
+"Miss Dudleigh at once advanced to meet me. Tears were on her cheeks,
+but she walked very firmly, and took my hand with an inquiry in her soft
+eyes that almost drove me distracted.
+
+"'What shall I do?' I cried to myself. 'Tell this woman to beware, or
+leave her to fight her battles alone?' No answer came from my inmost
+soul. I was appalled by her weakness and my own selfishness, and bowed
+my head and said nothing.
+
+"'A strange ending to the hopes of this day,' were the words that
+thereupon fell from her lips. 'Is--is--Marah ill, or did one of her
+strange moods overtake her?'
+
+"'I do not understand Miss Leighton,' I replied. 'The time I have spent
+in the study of her character has been wasted. I shall never undertake
+to open the book again.'
+
+"'Then,' she faltered, and an absolute terror grew in her eyes, 'you are
+going to leave her. She is going to be free, and--' The white cheeks
+grew scarlet. She evidently feared that she had shown me her heart.
+
+"Affected, but irresolute still, I took her hand and carried it to my
+lips.
+
+"'Let me thank you,' said I, 'for glimpses into a nature so noble and
+womanly that I am saved in this hour from cursing all womankind.'
+
+"Ah, how she sighed.
+
+"'You are good,' she murmured. 'You have deserved a better fate. But it
+is the lot of goodness and truth ever to meet with misappreciation and
+disdain. Here, here, only,' and she struck her breast with her clenched
+right hand, 'lie the rewards for honesty, long-suffering, and
+tenderness. In the world without there is nothing.'
+
+"Tears, which I could not restrain, welled up to my eyes. I could never
+have wept for my own suffering, but for hers it seemed both natural and
+real. Ah, why had she thrown the treasures of her heart away upon a
+fool? Why had she given the trust of her heart to a villain? I opened my
+lips to speak; she saw his name faltering on my tongue, and stopped me.
+
+"'Don't!' she breathed. 'I know what you would say and I cannot bear it.
+I was motherless, fatherless, almost friendless, and I relied upon the
+wisdom of an aunt, whose judgment was, perhaps, not all that it should
+have been. But it is too late now for regrets. I have launched my boat,
+and it must sail on; only--you are an honest man and will respect my
+confidence--was it Mr. Urquhart I saw on the outskirts of the crowd
+to-day?'
+
+"I bowed. I knew she had not asked because she had any doubts as to the
+fact of his being there, but because she wanted to see if I had
+recognized him and owed any of my misery to that fact.
+
+"'It was he,' said I, and said no more.
+
+"The mask fell from her countenance. She clasped her hands together till
+they showed white as marble.
+
+"'Oh! we are four miserable ones!' she cried. 'He--'
+
+"It was my turn to stop her.
+
+"'I would rather you did not say it,' I exclaimed. 'I can bear much, but
+not to hear another person utter words that will force me to think of
+the dagger I carry always in my breast. Besides, we may be mistaken.' I
+did not believe it, but I forced myself to say it. 'She declares he is
+nothing to her, and if that is so, you might wish to have kept silent.'
+
+"'She says! Ah! can you believe her? do you?'
+
+"'I must--or go mad.'
+
+"'Then I will believe her, too. I am so slightly tied to this world that
+has deceived me, that I will trust on a little while longer, even if my
+trust lands me in my grave. I had rather die than discover deceit where
+I had looked for honesty and gratitude.'
+
+"I was a coward, perhaps, but I did not try to dissuade her. Though she
+was fatherless and motherless, and loverless and friendless, I let her
+grasp at this wisp of hope and cling to it, though I knew it would never
+hold, and that her only chance for happiness was passing from her.
+
+"'If he were not poor,' she now breathed rather than whispered, 'I would
+find it easier to rend myself free. But he has nothing but what lies in
+my future, and if I should make a mistake and do injustice to a man that
+is merely suffering under a temporary intoxication, I should rob him of
+his only hope, without adding one chance to my own.'
+
+"I bowed, and made a movement toward the door. I could not stand much
+more of this strain.
+
+"'You are going?' she cried. 'Well, I cannot keep you. But that dagger!
+You will promise me to throw it away? You do not need it in defense, and
+you do not want to kill me before my time.'
+
+"No, no; I did not want to kill her. Grief was doing that fast enough;
+so I thought at that time. Shuddering, but resolute, I drew the tiny
+steel from my breast and laid it in her hand.
+
+"'It is all I can give you to show you my appreciation of your
+goodness.' And not trusting myself to linger longer lest I should take
+it again from her hand, I went out and walked hastily from the house.
+
+"If you asked me what road I took, or through what streets I passed, or
+whose eye I encountered in my next hour's walking through the town, I
+could not tell you. If jeers followed me, I heard them not; if I was the
+recipient of sympathizing looks and wondering conjectures, they were all
+lost upon eyes that were blind and ears that were deaf. I did not even
+feel; and did not realize till night that I had been wandering for hours
+without my cloak, which I had left in the carriage and forgotten to take
+again when I went out. The first knowledge I had of my surroundings was
+when I found an obstruction in my path, and looking up, saw myself in
+front of my own door, and not two feet from me, Edwin Urquhart."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+EDWIN URQUHART.
+
+
+[Illustration: I]
+
+In that moment Mark Felt paused and cast a glance toward the Hudson far
+below us. Then he resumed his narrative.
+
+"I drew back," he said, "and clenched my hands to keep myself from
+strangling Urquhart. Then I broke into hurried pants, that subsided
+gradually into words of perplexity and amazement as I met his eye, and
+realized that it contained nothing but a rude sort of sympathy and good
+fellowship.
+
+"'How? Why? What do you mean by coming back?' I cried. 'You said you
+would be gone a week. You swore--'
+
+"A gay laugh interrupted me.
+
+"'And must a man keep every oath he makes, especially when it separates
+him from a charming betrothed, and a friend who swore that he would make
+this day his wedding one?'
+
+"'Urquhart!'
+
+"'Felt!'
+
+"'Are you a monster or are you--'
+
+"'A self-possessed man who is going to take in charge a crazy one. Come
+into the house, Mark, a dozen eyes can see us here.'
+
+"He took me in charge; he piloted me into my own dwelling--he whose
+whole body I had always esteemed weaker than my little finger; my enemy
+too, or so I considered him; the cause of half my grief, of all my
+shame, the beginning and end of my hatreds.
+
+"When we were closeted, as we soon were in the room I had expended so
+much upon to make worthy of my bride, he came and stood before me and
+uttered these unexpected words:
+
+"'Felt, I like you. You are the only friend I have, and I am indebted to
+you. Now, what have you against me?'
+
+"I was astonished. His whole look and bearing were so different from
+what I had expected, so different from anything I had ever seen in him
+before. I began to question my doubts, and dropped my eyes as he
+pursued:
+
+"'You have been disappointed in your marriage, I hear; but that need not
+make you as downcast as this. A woman as capricious as Miss Leighton
+might easily imagine she was too ill to go through the ceremony to-day.
+But she must have repented of her folly by this time, and in a week will
+reward you as your patience deserves. But what have I got to do with it?
+For incredible as it appears, your every look and tone assures me that
+you blame me for this mishap.'
+
+"Was he daring me? If so, he should find me his equal. I raised my eyes
+and surveyed him.
+
+"'Shall I tell you why this is so--why I associate Miss Leighton's
+caprice with your return, and regard both with suspicion? Because I have
+seen you look on her with love; because I have surprised the passion in
+your face and beheld her--'
+
+"'Well?'
+
+"The tone was indescribable. It was as if a hand had taken me by the
+throat and choked me. I drew off and was silent.
+
+"He seized the word at once.
+
+"'You have seen nothing. If you think you have, then have you deceived
+yourself. Marah Leighton has beauty, but it is not a kind that moves
+me--'
+
+"He paled. Was it horror of the lie he was uttering? I have never known,
+never shall know.
+
+"'The woman I am going to marry is Honora Dudleigh.'
+
+"I gazed at him, determined to find the truth if it were in him. He bore
+my look unflinchingly, though his color did not return, and his hands
+trembled nervously.
+
+"'You love her?' I asked.
+
+"'I love her,' he returned.
+
+"'And your wedding day--'
+
+"'Is set.'
+
+"'May it have no interruptions,' I remarked.
+
+"He laughed--an uneasy laugh, I thought--but jealousy was not yet dead
+within me.
+
+"'And yours?' he inquired.
+
+"'I have had mine,' I returned. 'I shall never have another.'
+
+"He shook his head and looked at me inquisitively. I repeated my
+assertion.
+
+"'I shall never approach the altar again with a woman. I am done with
+such things, and done with love.'
+
+"He finished his laugh.
+
+"'Wait till you see Marah Leighton smile again,' he cried; and with the
+first reappearance of his old manner that I had seen in him since the
+beginning of this interview, he caught up a wine glass off the table,
+and filling it with wine, exclaimed jovially: 'Here's to our future
+wives! May they be all that love paints them!'
+
+"I thought his mirth indecent, his manner out of keeping with the
+occasion, and the whole situation atrocious. But I saw he was about to
+leave, and said nothing; but I did not drink his toast. When he was
+gone, I broke his glass by flinging it at my own reflection, in a glass
+I had bought to mirror her beauty; and before the day was spent, I had
+destroyed every destructible article in the house whose value or whose
+prettiness spoke of the attempt I had made to alter my home from a
+bachelor's abode to the nest I had thought in keeping with the dove I
+had failed to place there. As I did it I filled the house with mocking
+laughter; that I should have thought that this or that would please her,
+who would have found a palace open to criticism, and the splendors of a
+throne room scarce grand enough for her taste! I was but suffering the
+stings of a lifetime compressed into a day, and was miserable because I
+could see no prospect but further addition to my suffering."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+BEFORE THE WEDDING.
+
+
+"Two weeks after this I was sitting beside my solitary hearth, musing
+upon my misery and longing for the blessed relief of sleep. There was no
+one with me in the house. I had dismissed every servant; for I would
+have no spies about me, prying into my misery; and though I could not
+keep the world of men and women from my doors, I could at least refuse
+to admit them; and this I did--living the life of a recluse almost as
+much as I do here, but with less ease, because the wind would bring
+whispers, and the walls were not thick enough to shut out from my fancy
+the curious glances I felt to be cast upon them by every passer-by that
+wandered through the street.
+
+"On this night I had been thinking of Miss Dudleigh, of whose visibly
+failing health various murmurs had reached me, and I felt,
+notwithstanding my determination to hold myself aloof from every one and
+everything that could in any way reopen my still smarting wound, I
+could more easily find the sleep I longed for if some word from the
+great house would relieve the suspense in which my ignorance kept me.
+But I would not go there if I died of my anxiety, nor would I stoop to
+question any of the market men or women, who were the only persons
+admitted now within my doors.
+
+"The clock was striking, and the strange sense of desolation which is
+inseparable from this sound to a solitary man (you see I have no clock
+here) was stealing over me, when I heard a tap on one of the windows
+overlooking my small garden, and a voice came through the lattice,
+crying:
+
+"'Massa--Massa Felt.'
+
+"I knew the voice at once. It was that of one of Miss Dudleigh's
+servants, an honest black, who had always been devoted to me from the
+day he did me some trifling service with Miss Leighton. Hearing it now,
+and after such thoughts, I was so moved by the promise it gave of news
+from the one quarter I desired, that I stumbled as I rose, and found
+difficulty in answering him. Nor did I recover my self-possession for
+hours; for the story he had to tell--after numerous apologies for his
+presumption in disturbing me--was so significant of coming evil that my
+mind was thrown again into turmoil, and the passions which I had tried
+to smother were roused again into action.
+
+"It was simply this: That one evening after Mr. Urquhart's departure,
+and the extinguishing of all the lights in the house, he had occasion to
+cross the garden. That in doing this he had heard voices, and, stepping
+cautiously forward, perceived, lying upon the snow-covered ground, near
+a certain belt of evergreens, the shadows of two persons, whose forms
+were hidden from his sight. Being both curious and concerned, he halted
+before coming too close and, listening, heard Mr. Urquhart's voice, and
+presently that of Miss Leighton, both speaking very earnestly.
+
+"'Will you undertake it? Can you go through with it without shrinking?'
+was what the former had said.
+
+"'I will undertake it, and I can go through with it,' was what the
+latter had replied.
+
+"Frightened at a discovery which might mean nothing and which might mean
+misery to a mistress the day of whose marriage was scarcely a month
+away, the negro held his breath, determined to hear more. He was
+immediately rewarded by catching the words: 'You are a brave girl and
+my queen!' and then something like a prayer for a kiss, or some such
+favor, as a seal to their compact. But to this she returned a vigorous
+'No,' followed by the mysterious sentence: 'I shall give you nothing
+till I am dead, and then I will give you everything.'
+
+"After which they made a move as if to separate, which action so alarmed
+the now deeply disconcerted negro that he drew back in haste, hiding
+behind some neighboring bushes till they had passed him and disappeared,
+he out of the gate, and she through the small side entrance into the
+house. This was the previous night, and for nearly twenty-four hours the
+poor negro had tortured himself as to what he should do with the
+information thus surreptitiously gained. He lacked the courage to tell
+his mistress, and finally he had thought of me, who was her best friend,
+and who must have known there was something amiss with Miss Leighton, or
+why had I not married her when everything was ready and the minister
+waiting with his book in his hand?
+
+"Not answering this insinuation, I put to him one or two of the many
+questions that were burning in my brain. Had he told any of the other
+servants what he had seen? And did Miss Dudleigh look as if she
+suspected there was anything wrong?
+
+"He answered that he had not dared to speak a word of it even to his
+wife; and as for Miss Dudleigh, she was ill so much of the time that it
+was hard to tell whether she had any other cause for uneasiness or not.
+He only knew that she was greatly changed since this miserable deceiver
+came into the house.
+
+"I believed him, and amid all my struggle and wrath tried to fix my mind
+upon her alone. I succeeded only partially, but enough to enable me to
+write this line, which I entreated him to carry to her:
+
+        'HONORED MISS DUDLEIGH--You will forgive me if
+        I overstep the bounds of friendship in yielding
+        to the inner voice which compels me to say that
+        if before or on your marriage day you need
+        advice or protection, you may command both from
+
+        Your respectful servant,
+                   'MARK FELT.'
+
+"I did not expect a reply to this note, and I did not receive any. I
+thought I went as far as my position toward her allowed, but I have
+questioned it since--questioned if I should not have told her what the
+negro had heard and seen, and let her own judgment decide her fate. But
+I was not in my right mind in those days. I was too much a part of all
+this misery to be a fair judge of my own duty; and then the mysterious
+nature of Miss Leighton's remark, the incomprehensibility of the
+words--'I shall give you nothing till I am dead, and then I shall give
+you everything'--added such unreality to the scene, and awakened such
+curious conjectures, that I did not know where any of us stood, or to
+what especial misery the future pointed.
+
+"'Till she was dead!' What could she, what did she mean? She would then
+give him everything! Ah! ah!--when she was dead! Well, so be it.
+Meanwhile, there was no prospect of death for any one, unless it was for
+Miss Dudleigh, whom rumor acknowledged to be still fading, though
+everything was being done for her comfort, and physician after physician
+employed.
+
+"I saw Caesar once again in these days. I met him in the street,
+seemingly greatly to his delight, for he smiled till his teeth shone
+from ear to ear, and made haste to remark, in quite a jovial voice:
+
+"'I specs it's all right, massa. Massa Urquhart never looks at Miss
+Leighton now, but always doin' his best for missus, making her smile
+quite happy when she isn't coughing that dreadful cough. We will have a
+gay wedding yet. Yes; Miss Leighton seems to spect that; for she all de
+time making pretty things and trying them on missus, and laughing and
+cheering her up, just as if she didn't spect any one to die.'
+
+"Yes, but this change of manner frightened me. I grew feverishly
+anxious, and spent night and day in asking myself unanswerable
+questions. Nor did these in any way abate when one day I was startled by
+the tidings that all preparations for refitting the great house had
+stopped; that the doctors had decided that Miss Dudleigh must remove to
+a warmer climate, and that accordingly upon her marriage she and her
+husband would set sail for the Bermudas, there to take up their abode
+till her health was quite restored. I doubted my ears; I doubted the
+facts; I doubted Urquhart, and I doubted one other most of all whose
+name I find it hard to mention even to myself.
+
+"Yet I should not have doubted her; I should have remembered the flame
+that was always burning in the depths of her eyes, and had confidence
+in that, if in nothing else. What if she had always been cold to me; she
+was not cold to him, and I should have known this and prepared myself.
+But I did not. I knew neither the extent of his villainy nor that of her
+despair. Had I done so, I might not have been crouching here a
+disappointed and hopeless man, while she--
+
+"But I am running beyond my tale. After the news I had just imparted, I
+heard nothing more till the very week of the wedding. Then one of Miss
+Dudleigh's servants came to me with a note, the result of which was,
+that I walked out in the afternoon, and that she passed me in her
+carriage, and seeing me, stopped the horses and took me in, and that we
+rode on a short distance together.
+
+"'I wish to talk to you,' she said. 'I wish to proffer you a request; to
+beg of you a favor. I want you,' she stammered and her eyes filled with
+tears, 'to see me married.'
+
+"I opened my eyes with a quick denial, but I closed them again without
+speaking. After all, why not please her? Could I suffer more at this
+wedding than in thinking over it in my dungeon of a room at home? She
+would be there, of course, but I need not look at her; and if he or she
+meditated any treachery, where ought I to be but in the one place where
+my presence would be most useful? I decided to gratify Miss Dudleigh,
+almost before the inquiry in her eyes had changed to a look of suspense.
+'Yes, I will come,' said I.
+
+"She drew a deep breath, and smiled with tender sweetness.
+
+"'I thank you,' she rejoined. 'I thank you most deeply and most truly. I
+do not know why I desired it so much. Possibly because I feel something
+like a sister to you, possibly because I feel afraid--'
+
+"She stopped, blushing. 'I do not mean afraid. Why should I feel afraid?
+Edwin is very good to me; very good. I did not know he could be so
+attentive.' And she sighed.
+
+"I felt that sigh go through and through me. Looking at her I took a
+sudden resolution.
+
+"'Honora,' I said (I had never called her by her first name before), 'do
+not give your happiness into Edwin Urquhart's keeping. You have yet
+three days before you for reconsideration. Break your bonds, and,
+unhampered by uncongenial ties, seek in another climate for that peace
+of mind you will never enjoy here or elsewhere as his wife.'
+
+"She stared at me for a moment with wide-open and appealing eyes; then
+she shook her head, and answered quietly:
+
+"'One broken-off wedding in the family is enough. I cannot shock society
+with another. But, oh, Mark! why did you not warn me at first? I think I
+would have listened; I think so.'
+
+"'Forgive me,' I entreated. 'You know it would have been presumptuous in
+me at first; afterward she stood in the way.'
+
+"'I know,' she answered, and turned away her head.
+
+"I saw she did not wish me to leave her yet; so I said:
+
+"'You are going away; you are going to leave Albany.'
+
+"'I must, or so Edwin thinks. He says I will never recover in this
+climate.'
+
+"'Do you wish to go?'
+
+"'Yes; I think I do. I can never be happy here, and perhaps when we are
+far away, and have only each other to think of, the love and confidence
+of which I have dreamed may come. At all events, I comfort myself with
+that hope.'
+
+"'But it is a long, long sea voyage. Have you strength enough to carry
+you through?'
+
+"'If I have not,' she intimated, with a mournful smile, 'he will be
+free, and I released without scandal from a marriage that fills you with
+apprehension.'
+
+"'Oh,' I cried, 'would I were your brother indeed! This should never go
+on.' Then impelled by what I thought to be my duty, I inquired: 'And
+your money, Honora?'
+
+"She flushed, but answered in the same spirit in which I had spoken.
+
+"'As little of it as may be will remain with him. That much my old
+guardian insisted upon. Do not ask me any more questions, Mark.'
+
+"'None of a nature so personal,' I promised. 'But there is one
+thing--can you not guess what it is?--which I ought to know. It is about
+Marah.'
+
+"The words came with effort, and hurt her as much as me. But she
+answered bravely:
+
+"'She returns to Schenectady the same day that we depart. I hoped she
+would not linger to the wedding, but she seems to have a strange desire
+to face again the people who have talked about her so freely these last
+few weeks. So what can I say to dissuade her?'
+
+"'Let her stay,' I muttered; 'but let her beware how she behaves on that
+day, for there will be two eyes watching her, prompt to see any
+treachery, and prompt, too, to avenge it.'
+
+"'You will have nothing to avenge,' murmured Honora; 'that is all in the
+past.'
+
+"I prayed to Heaven she might be right, and ere long bowed in adieu and
+left her. I saw neither herself nor any one else again till I entered
+the Dudleigh mansion three days later to witness her nuptials."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+A CASSANDRA AT THE GATE.
+
+
+"Miss Dudleigh, moved, perhaps, by the unpleasant _eclat_ which had
+followed the broken-off marriage of her cousin, chose to celebrate her
+own wedding in her own house, and with as little ceremony as possible.
+Only her most intimate friends, therefore, were invited, but these were
+numerous enough to fill the halls and most of the lower rooms.
+
+"When I entered there was a sudden cessation of conversation; but this I
+had expected. If anything could add to the interest of the occasion,
+certainly it was my presence; and, feeling this, I made them all a
+profound obeisance, and, neither shirking their glances nor inviting
+them, I took my place in the spot I had chosen for myself, and waited,
+with a face as impassive as a mask, but with a heart burning with fury
+and love, not for the coming of the bride, but of her who in this hour
+ought to have been standing at my side as my wife.
+
+"But I miscalculated if I thought she would enter with them. Even her
+bold and arrogant spirit shrank from a position so conspicuous, and it
+was not till they had presented themselves and taken their places in
+front of the latticed window so associated with my past, that I felt
+that peculiar sensation which always followed the entrance of Marah into
+the same room with myself, and, yielding to the force that constrained
+me, I searched the throng with eager looks, and there, where the crowd
+was thickest, and the shadow deepest, I saw her. She was gazing straight
+at me, and there was in her great eyes a look which I did not then
+understand, and about which I have since tortured myself by asking again
+and again if it were remorse, entreaty, farewell, or despair that spoke
+through it. Sometimes I have thought it was fear. Sometimes-- But why
+conjecture? It was an unreadable expression to me then, and even in
+remembrance it is no clearer. Whatever it betokened, my pride bent
+before it, and a flood of the old feeling rushed over my heart, making
+me quite weak for a moment.
+
+"But I conquered myself, as far as all betrayal of my feelings was
+concerned, and turning from the spot that so enthralled me, I fixed my
+gaze upon the bride.
+
+"She was looking beautiful; more beautiful than any one had seen her
+look for weeks. A bright color suffused her delicate cheeks, and in her
+eyes burned a strange excitement, which did the work of happiness in
+lighting up her face. But it was a transient glow which faded
+imperceptibly but surely, as the ceremony proceeded, and passed
+completely away as the last inexorable words were uttered which made her
+the wife of the false being at her side.
+
+"He, on the contrary, was pale up to that same critical moment--very
+pale, when one remembers his naturally florid complexion; but as her
+color went, his rose, and when the minister withdrew, and friends began
+to crowd around them, he grew so jovial and so noisy that more than one
+person glanced at him with suspicion, and cast pitying looks at the now
+quiet and immobile young wife.
+
+"Meantime I sought with eager anxiety to catch one more glimpse of
+Marah. But she had shrunk from sight, and was not to be found. And the
+gayety ran high and the wine was poured freely, and the bridegroom
+drank with ever-increasing excitement, toasting his bride, but never
+looking at her, though her eyes turned more than once upon him with an
+appeal that affected painfully more than one person in the crowd. At
+last she rose, and, at this signal, he put down his glass, and, with a
+low bow to the company, prepared to follow her from the room. They
+passed close to the place where I stood, and I caught one glance from
+his eyes. It was a laughing one, but there was uneasiness in it. There
+might have been something more, but I had not time to search for it, for
+at that moment I felt her dress brush against my sleeve, and turned to
+give her the smile which I knew her friendly heart demanded.
+
+"'You will wait till we go?' fell in a whisper from her lips; and I
+nodded with another smile, and they went on and I stood where they had
+left me, in one of those moods which made me, as far as all human
+intercourse is concerned, as much of an isolated being as I am in these
+mountains. I did not wake again from this abstraction till that same
+premonitory feeling, of which I have so often spoken, told me that
+something in which I was deeply interested was about to happen. Looking
+up, I found myself in the room alone. During the hour of my abstraction
+the guests had gone out, and I had neither noticed their departure nor
+the gradual cessation of the noise which at one time had filled my ears
+with hubbub. But the bride had not gone. She was at that moment coming
+down the stairs, and it was this fact which had pierced to my inner
+consciousness, and aroused once more in me a vivid sense of my
+surroundings. He was with her, and behind them, gliding like a wraith
+from landing to landing, came Marah, clad like the bride in a traveling
+dress, but without the bonnet which betokened an instant departure.
+
+"Not anticipating her presence so near, I felt my courage fail, and
+pushing forward, joined the group of servants at the door. They, seeing
+in this departure of their mistress a possibly endless separation, were
+weeping and uttering exclamations that not only showed their devotion,
+but their fears. Shocked lest these words should reach her ears, I
+quieted them; and then seeing that the carriage which stood outside had
+a stranger for a driver, and that there was no accompanying wagon filled
+with their body servants and baggage, I asked the friendly Caesar, who
+had pressed close to my side, if Mrs. Urquhart was not going to take a
+maid with her.
+
+"The negro at once growled out an injured 'No!' and when I expressed my
+astonishment, he explained that 'There was no one here good enough to
+please Massa Urquhart. That he was going to pick up with some one in New
+York. That, though missus was sick, he would not even let her have her
+own gal go wid her as far as the city; said he would do everything for
+her hisself--as if any man could do for missus like her own Sally, who
+had been wid her ever since 'fore she was born!'
+
+"'And the baggage?' I asked, troubled more than I can say by what
+certainly augured anything but favorably for her future.
+
+"'Oh, massa send dat round to his house. He got books, an' a lot o'
+things to add to it. Dere's enough o' dat; an' den more went down de
+ribber on a sloop a week an' more ago.'
+
+"'So! so! And they are going to ride?'
+
+"'Yes, sah. You see, dey want to catch de ship w'at set sail for
+Bermudas, an' got to hurry; so massa says.'
+
+"By this time Urquhart and his bride had reached the door. He was still
+gay and she was still quiet. But in her eye glistened a tear, while in
+his there gleamed nothing softer than that vague spark of triumph which
+one might expect to see in a man who had just married the richest
+heiress in Albany.
+
+"'Good-by! good-by! good-by!' came in soft tones from her lips; and she
+was just stepping over the threshold, when there suddenly appeared at
+the foot of the steps an old crone, so seamed and bowed with age, so
+weird and threatening of aspect, that we all started back appalled, and
+were about to draw Mrs. Urquhart out of her path, when the unknown
+creature raised her voice, and pointing with one skinny hand straight
+into the bride's face, shrieked:
+
+"'Beware of oak walls! Beware of oak walls! They are more dangerous to
+you than fire and water! Beware of oak walls!'
+
+"A shriek interrupted her. It came, not from the bride, but from the
+interior of the well-nigh forsaken hall behind us.
+
+"Instantly the old crone drew herself up into an attitude more
+threatening and more terrible than before.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"'And you,' she cried, pointing now beyond us toward a figure which I
+could feel shrinking in inexplicable terror against the wall. 'And you
+cannot trust them either! There is death within oak walls. Beware!
+beware!'
+
+"A curse, a rush, and Edwin Urquhart had flung himself at the old
+witch's throat. But he fell to the pavement without touching her. With
+the utterance of her last word, she had slipped from before our eyes and
+melted into the crowd which curiosity and interest had drawn within the
+gates, to watch this young couple's departure.
+
+"'Who was that creature? Let me have her! Give her up, I say!' leaped
+from the infuriated bridegroom's lips, as he rushed up and down before
+the crowd with threatening arms and flashing eyes.
+
+"But there was no response from the surging throng; while from his
+frightened wife such an appealing cry rung out that he returned from the
+vain pursuit, and regaining his place at Honora's side, put her into the
+carriage. But as he did so he could not refrain from casting a stealthy
+look behind him, which betrayed to me, if to no one else, that his anger
+was more on account of the words uttered to Marah than to the tender
+being clinging to his arm. And a jealous fury took hold of me also, and
+I should not have been sorry if I had seen him fall then and there, the
+victim of a thunderbolt more certain, if not more terrible, than that
+which had just overwhelmed the two women nearest to our hearts.
+
+"'Good-by! good-by! good-by!' came again from the bride's pale lips; and
+this time I felt that the words were for me, and I waved my hand in
+response, but could not speak. And so they rode away, followed by the
+lamentations of the servants, from whom the old crone's ominous outburst
+had torn the last semblance of self-control.
+
+"'Another carriage for Miss Leighton!' I now heard uttered somewhere
+like a command. And startled at the pang it caused me, I darted back
+into the house, determined to have one parting word with my lost love.
+
+"She was not there, nor could she be found by any searching."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE CATASTROPHE.
+
+
+[Illustration: I]
+
+"I have but little more to tell," Mark Felt continued, "but that little
+is everything to me.
+
+"When we became positively assured that Miss Leighton had disappeared
+from the house and would not be on hand to take the stage to
+Schenectady, the excitement, which had been increasing on all sides
+since the ceremony, culminated, and the whole town was set agog to find
+her, if only to solve the mystery of a nature whose actions had now
+become inexplicable.
+
+"I was the first to start the pursuit. Haunted by her last look, and
+thrilled to every extremity by the terror of the shriek she had uttered,
+I did not wait for the alarm to become public, but rushed immediately up
+stairs at the first intimation of her disappearance.
+
+"Though I had never pierced those regions before, my good or evil fate
+took me at once to a room which I saw at one glance to be hers. The
+boxes waiting to be carried down, the tags and ends of ribbons that I
+recognized, the nameless something which speaks of one particular
+personality and no other, all were there to assure me that I stood in
+the chamber which for six months or more had palpitated with the breath
+of the one being I loved.
+
+"But of that I dared not think; it was no time for dreams; and only
+stopping to see that her bonnet had been taken, but her gloves left, I
+hurried down again and out of the house.
+
+"An impulse which I cannot understand took me to Edwin Urquhart's house,
+or, rather, to that portion of a house which he had hired for his use
+since he had been looking forward to his marriage with Miss Dudleigh.
+Why I should go there I cannot say, unless jealousy whispered that only
+in this place could she hope for one final word with him, as he and his
+bride stopped at the door for his portion of the baggage. Be this as it
+may, I turned neither to right nor left till I came to his house, and
+when I had reached it I found that, with all my haste, I was too late,
+for not a soul was in its empty rooms, while far down the street which
+leads to the bridge I saw a carriage disappearing, which, from the wagon
+following it so closely, I knew to be the one containing Urquhart and
+his bride.
+
+"'She has not been here,' thought I, 'or I should have met her,
+unless--' and my eye stole with a certain shrinking terror toward the
+river which skirted along the garden at the back--'unless'-- But even my
+thoughts stopped here. I would not, could not, think of what, if it were
+true, would end all things for me.
+
+"Leaving this place, I wandered aimlessly through the streets, studying
+each face that I met for intimations which should guide me in my search.
+If not a madman, I was near enough to one to make the memory of that
+hour hideous to me; and when at last, worn out as much by my emotions as
+by the countless steps I had taken, I returned to my house for a bite
+and sup, something in the sight of its desolation overpowered me, and
+yielding to a despair which assured me that I should never again see her
+in this world, I sank on the floor inert and powerless, and continued
+thus till morning, without movement and almost without consciousness.
+
+"Fatal repose! And yet I do not know if I should call it so. It only
+robbed me of a few hours less of conscious misery. For when I roused,
+when I became again myself, and looked about my house, there on the
+floor, underneath a curtain window which had been left unlatched, I saw
+a letter containing these words:
+
+        'HONORED AND MUCH ABUSED FRIEND:--When you read
+        this, Marah will be no more. After all that has
+        passed--after our broken marriage and the
+        departure of my cousin--life has become
+        insupportable; and, believing that you would
+        rather know me dead than miserable, I ventured
+        to write you these words, and ask you to
+        forgive me, now that I am gone.
+
+        'I loved him: let that explain everything.
+
+        'Despairingly yours,
+                 'MARAH LEIGHTON.'
+
+"With shrieks I tore from the house. Marah dying! Marah dead! I would
+see about that. Racing down to the gate, I paused. Some one was leaning
+on it. It was Caesar, and at the first glimpse I had of his face I knew I
+was too late--that all was over, and that the whole town knew it.
+
+"'Oh, massa, I wanted to go in, but I was frightened. I's been waiting
+here an hour, sah; when dey told me dat dey had found her bonnet
+floating on de ribber, I know'd how you'd feel, sah, and so I come here
+and--'
+
+"I found words to ask him a question. 'When was this found, and where?'
+
+"'This morning, sah, at daybreak. It was caught by one of the strings to
+that old log, sah, that lies out in the ribber back of--' he
+hesitated--'Massa Urquhart's house, sah.'
+
+"I knew; and I had glanced that way just as her bright head was perhaps
+sinking under the water. I threw up my arms in anguish and stumbled back
+into the house.
+
+"'Then every one knows--' I managed to say on the threshold.
+
+"'Dat she cared for him? Yes, sah; I fear so. How could dey help it,
+sah? Mor'n one person saw her run down de street and go into massa's old
+house just before de carriage stopped thar, and as she didn't come out
+again, I 'specs it was from dat big log at the foot of the garden she
+jumped into de ribber. All de folks pities you very much, sah--'
+
+"I choked him off with a look.
+
+"'Who has been sent after Mr. and Mrs. Urquhart to inform them of what
+has happened?'
+
+"'No one yet, sah. But Massa Hatton--'
+
+"'Mr. Hatton is an old man. We must have a young one for this business.
+Go saddle me the quickest horse in your stables. I will ride after them,
+and overtake them, too, before they can reach Poughkeepsie. He shall
+know--'
+
+"A glance from the negro's eye warned me to be careful. I smothered my
+impatience and let only my earnestness appear.
+
+"'Mrs. Urquhart ought to know that her cousin is dead,' I declared.
+
+"'I'll tell Massa Hatton,' said the black.
+
+"But my caution was now too much aroused for me to make Mr. Hatton the
+medium of my request--he was Mrs. Urquhart's old guardian and future
+agent; and subduing the extreme fury of my feelings, I obtained his
+permission to act as his messenger. Had he known of the letter which had
+been thrown into my window, he might not have given his consent so
+freely; but I had told no man of that, and he and others saw me ride
+away without a seeming suspicion of the murderous thoughts that
+struggled with my grief, and almost overwhelmed it.
+
+"For to me her death--if she were dead--was the result of a compact
+entered into with the despicable Urquhart, who, if he could not have her
+for himself, was willing she should go where no other man could have
+her. Though the idea seemed quixotic, though it be an anomaly in human
+experience, for a woman thus to sacrifice herself, I could not ascribe
+any other motive to her deed; for the memory of that interview she had
+held with her cousin's future husband in the garden was still fresh in
+my mind. Do you remember the words as told me by the negro who overheard
+them? First, the question from his lips: 'Will you undertake it? Can
+you go through with it without shrinking and without fear?' And the
+reply from hers: 'I will undertake it, and I can go through with it,'
+followed by that assurance which struck me as being so inexplicable at
+the time, and which, with all the light that this late horrible event
+has thrown upon it, still preserves its mystery for me. 'I shall give
+you nothing till I am dead, and then I will give you everything.' If the
+conclusions I drew seemed wild, were they not warranted by these words?
+Did she not speak of death, and did he not encourage her?
+
+"If she were not dead--and sometimes this thought would cross my burning
+brain--then she was with him, forced into the company of his unwilling
+wife in that last interview which they must have held in his cottage. In
+either case he was a villain and a coward, deserving of death; and death
+he should have, and from the hand of him whom he had doubly outraged.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"But as I rode out of town and came in sight of the river, I found
+myself seized by terrifying thoughts. Should I have to ride by the place
+where I could see them stooping with boat hooks and bending with
+peering eyes over some snag they had brought up from the river bottom?
+Could I endure to face this picture, then to pass it, then to ride on,
+feeling it ever at my back, blackening the morning, destroying the
+noontide, making more horrible the night? Could I go from this place
+till I knew whether or not the sullen waters would yield up their
+beautiful prey, and would my body proceed while my heart was on this
+river bank, and my jealousy divided between the wretch who had urged her
+on to death and these other men who might yet touch her unconscious form
+and gaze upon her disfigured beauty? And the answer which welled up from
+within me was, yes, I could go; I could pass that picture; I could feel
+it glooming ever and ever upon me from behind my back, and never turn my
+head;--such an impetus of hate was upon me, driving me forward after the
+wretch fleeing in self-complacency and triumph into a future of wealth
+and social consideration.
+
+"But when I had done all this, when my too fleet horse had carried me
+beyond sight of the city, and nature, with its irresistible beauty, had
+begun to influence my understanding, other thoughts came trooping in
+upon me, and a vision of Honora Dudleigh's face as she took the dagger
+from my hands and an implied promise from my lips, rose before me till I
+could see nothing else. Honora, Honora, Honora who trusted me! who had
+suffered everything but the sight of blood! who was a bride, and whom it
+would be base ingratitude for me to plunge into the depths of dishonor
+and despair! And the struggle was so fierce, and the torture of it so
+keen, that ere long my brain succumbed to the strain, and from the
+height of anguished feeling I sank into apathy, and from apathy into
+unconsciousness, till I no longer knew where I was or possessed power to
+guide my horse. In this condition I was found wandering in a field and
+thence carried to a farm house, where I remained a prey to fever. When I
+returned to consciousness, three weeks had elapsed.
+
+"As soon as I could be moved, I went back to Albany. I found the
+community there settled in the belief that I had joined in death the
+woman I so much loved, and was shown a letter which had been sent me,
+and which had been opened by the authorities after all hope had been
+given up of my return. It was from Mrs. Urquhart, and related how they
+had changed their plans upon reaching New York. Having found a ship on
+the point of sailing for France, they had determined to go there instead
+of to the Bermudas, and, consequently, requested me to inform Mr. Hatton
+of the fact, and also assure him that he would hear from them personally
+as soon as a letter could reach him from the other side. As she was in
+haste--in truth, was writing this in the post office on the way to the
+ship--she would only add that her health had been improved by her long
+journey down the river, and that when I heard from her again, she was
+sure she would be able to write that all her fondest hopes had been
+fully realized.
+
+"And so Marah was in the river, and Urquhart on the seas. I had been
+robbed of everything, even vengeance, and life had nothing for me, and I
+was determined to leave it, not in the vulgar way of suicide, but by
+cloistering myself in the great forests. As no one said me nay, I at
+once carried out this scheme; and to show you how dead I had become to
+the world, I will tell you that as I turned the lock of my door and took
+my first step forward on the road which led to this spot, a great shout
+broke out in the market place:
+
+"'The farmers of Lexington have fired upon the king's troops!'
+
+"And I did not even turn my head!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A DREAM ENDED.
+
+
+There was silence in the cave. Mark Felt's story was at an end.
+
+For a moment I sat and watched him; then, as I realized all that I must
+yet gather from his lips, I broke the stillness by saying, in my lowest
+and most suggestive tone, these two words:
+
+"And Marah?"
+
+The name did not seem unwelcome. Striking his breast, he cried:
+
+"She lies here! Though she despised me, deceived me, broke my heart in
+life, and in death betrayed a devotion for another that was at once my
+dishonor and the downfall of my every hope, I have never been able to
+cast her out of my heart. I love her, and shall ever love her, and so I
+am never lonely. For in my dreams I imagine that death has changed her.
+That she can see now where truth and beauty lie; that she would fain
+come back to them and me; and that she does, walking with softened steps
+through the forest, beaming upon me in the moon rays and smiling upon
+me in the sunshine till--"
+
+Great sobs broke from the man's surcharged breast. He flung himself down
+on the floor of the cave and hid his face in his hands. He had forgotten
+that I had come on an errand of vengeance. He had forgotten the object
+of that vengeance; he had forgotten everything but her.
+
+I saw the mistake I had made, and for the moment I quailed before the
+prospect of rectifying it. He had shown me his heart. I had peered into
+its depths, and it seemed an impossible thing to tear the last hope from
+his broken life; to show her in her true light to his horrified eyes; to
+tell him she was not dead; that it was Honora Urquhart who was dead; and
+that the woman he mourned and beheld in his visions as a sanctified
+spirit was not only living upon the fruits of a crime, but triumphing in
+them; that, in short, he had thrown away communion with men to brood
+upon a demon.
+
+My feelings were so strong, my shrinking so manifest, that he noticed
+them at last. Rising up, he surveyed me with a growing apprehension.
+
+"How you look at me!" he cried. "It is not only pity for the past I see
+in your eyes, but fear for the future. What is it? What can threaten me
+now of importance enough to call up such an expression to your face?
+Since Marah is dead--"
+
+"Wait!" I cried. "First let me ask if Marah is dead." His face, which
+was turned toward me, grew so pale I felt my own heart contract.
+
+"If--Marah--is--dead!" he gasped, growing huskier with each intonation
+till the last word was almost unintelligible.
+
+"Yes," I continued, ignoring his glance and talking very rapidly; "her
+body was never found. You have no proof that she perished. The letter
+that she wrote you may have been a blind. Such things have happened. Try
+and remember that such things have happened."
+
+He did not seem to hear me. Turning away, he looked about him with
+wide-open and questioning eyes, like a child lost in a wood.
+
+"I cannot follow you," he murmured. "Marah living?" His own words seemed
+to give him life. He turned upon me again. "Do you know that she is
+living?" he asked. "Is it this you have come to tell me? If so, speak,
+speak! I can bear the news. I have not lost all firmness. I--I--"
+
+He stopped and looked at me piteously. I saw I must speak, and summoned
+up my courage.
+
+"Marah may not be living," I said, "but she did not perish in the river.
+It would have been better for you, though, and infinitely better for her
+if she had. She only lived to do evil, Mr. Felt. In bemoaning her you
+have wasted a noble manhood."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+The cry came suddenly, and rang through the cavern like a knell. I could
+not bear it, and hurried forward my revelation.
+
+"You tell me that you received a letter from Mrs. Urquhart before she
+set sail for France. Was it the only letter which she has ever sent you?
+Have you never heard from her since?"
+
+"Never!" He looked at me almost in anger. "I did not want to. I bade the
+postmaster to destroy any letters which came for me. I had cut myself
+loose from the world."
+
+"Have you that letter? Did you keep it?"
+
+"No; I gave it back to the men who opened it. What was it to me?"
+
+"Mark Felt," I now asked, "did you know Honora Dudleigh's writing?"
+
+"Of course. Why should you question it? Why--"
+
+"And was this letter in her writing? written by her hand?"
+
+"Of course--of course; wasn't it signed with her name?"
+
+"But the handwriting? Couldn't it have been an imitation? Wasn't it one?
+Was it not written by Marah, and not Honora? She was a clever woman,
+and--"
+
+"Written by Marah? By Marah? Great heavens, did she go with them, then?
+Were my secret doubts right? Is she lost to me in eternity as well as
+here? Is she living with him?"
+
+"She was living with him, and there is good reason to believe she is
+doing so still. There is a Mr. Urquhart in Paris, and a Mrs. Urquhart.
+As Marah is the woman he loved, she must be this latter."
+
+"Must be? I do not see why you should say must be! Is Honora dead? Is--"
+
+"Honora is dead--has been dead for sixteen years. The woman who sailed
+with Mr. Urquhart called herself Honora, but she was not Honora. She who
+rightfully bore this name was dead and hidden away. It is of crime that
+I am speaking. Edwin Urquhart is a murderer, and his victim was--"
+
+It was not necessary to say more. In the suddenly outstretched hand,
+with its open palm; in the white face so drawn that his mother would not
+have known it; in the gradual sinking and collapsing of the whole body,
+I saw that I had driven the truth home at last, and that silence now was
+the only mercy left to show him.
+
+I was silent, therefore, and waited as we wait beside a death bed for
+the final sigh of a departing spirit. But life, and not death, was in
+the soul of this man before me. Ere long he faintly stirred, then a
+smothered moan left his lips, followed by one word, and that word was
+the echo of my own:
+
+"Murder."
+
+The sound it made seemed to awake whatever energy of horror lay dormant
+within him. Bestirring himself, he lifted his head and repeated again
+that fearsome word:
+
+"Murder!"
+
+Then he leaped to his feet, and his aspect grew terrible as he looked up
+and shouted, as it were, into the heavens that same dread word:
+
+"Murder!"
+
+Filled with horror, I endeavored to take him by the arm, but he shook me
+off, and cried in a terrible voice:
+
+"A fiend, a demon, a creature of the darkest hell! I have worshiped her,
+pardoned her, dreamed of her for fifteen years in solitudes dedicated to
+God! O Creator of all good! What sacrilege I have committed! How shall I
+ever atone for a manhood wasted on a dream, and for thoughts that must
+have made the angels of Heaven veil their faces in wonder and pity.
+
+"You must have a story to tell," he now said, turning toward me, with
+the first look of natural human curiosity which I had seen in his face
+since I came.
+
+"Yes," said I, "I have; but it will not serve to lessen your horror; it
+will only add to it."
+
+"Nothing can add to it," was his low reply. "And yet I thank you for the
+warning."
+
+Encouraged by his manner, which had become strangely self-possessed, I
+immediately began, and told him of the visit of this bridal party at
+your inn; then as I saw that he had judged himself correctly, and that
+he was duly prepared for all I could reveal, I added first your
+suspicions, and then a full account of our fatal discovery in the secret
+chamber.
+
+He bore it like a man upon whom emotion has spent all its force; only,
+when I had finished, he gave one groan, and then, as if he feared I
+would mistake the meaning of this evidence of suffering, he made haste
+to exclaim:
+
+"Poor Honora! My heart owes her one cry of pity, one tear of grief. I
+shall never weep for any one else; though, if I could, it would be for
+myself and the wasted years with which I have mocked God's providence."
+
+Relieved to find him in this mood, I rose and shook his hand cordially.
+
+"You will come back to Albany with me?" I entreated. "We have need of
+you, and this spot will never be a home to you again."
+
+"Never!"
+
+The echo was unexpected, but welcome. I led the way out of the cave.
+
+"See! it is late," I urged.
+
+He shook his head and cast one prolonged look around him.
+
+"What do I not leave behind me here? Love, grief, dreams. And to what
+do I go forward? Can you tell me? Has the future in it anything for a
+man like me?"
+
+"It has vengeance!"
+
+He gave a short cry.
+
+"In which she is involved. Talk to me not of that! And yet," he
+presently added, "what it is my duty to do, I shall do. It is all that
+is left to me now. But I will do nothing for vengeance. That would be to
+make a slave of myself again."
+
+I had no answer for this, and therefore gave none. Instead I shouted to
+my guide, and after receiving from him such refreshments as my weary
+condition demanded, I gave notice that I was ready to descend, and asked
+the recluse if he was ready to accompany me.
+
+He signified an instant acquiescence, and before the sun had quite
+finished its course in the west we found ourselves at the foot of the
+mountains. As civilization broke upon us Mr. Felt drew himself up, and
+began to question me about the changes which the revolution had made in
+our noble country.
+
+. . . . .
+
+I will not weary you, my dear Mrs. Truax, with the formalities which
+followed upon our return to Albany. I will merely add that you may
+expect a duly authorized person to come to you presently for such
+testimony in this matter as it may be in your power to give; after which
+a suitable person will proceed to France with such papers as may lead to
+the delivering up of these guilty persons to the United States
+authorities; in which case justice must follow, and your inn will be
+avenged for the most hideous crime which has ever been perpetrated
+within our borders.
+
+        Most respectfully,
+               ANTHONY TAMWORTH.
+
+
+
+
+PART III.
+
+RETRIBUTION.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+STRANGE GUESTS.
+
+
+        SEPTEMBER 29, 1791.
+
+Two excitements to-day. First, the appearance at my doors of the person
+of whose coming I was advised by Mr. Tamworth. He came in his own
+carriage, and is a meager, hatchet-faced man, whose eye makes me
+restless, but has not succeeded in making me lose my self-possession. He
+stayed three hours, all of which he made me spend with him in the oak
+parlor, and when he had finished with me and got my signature to a long
+and complicated affidavit, I felt that I would rather sell my house and
+flee the place than go through such another experience. Happily it is
+likely to be a long time before I shall be called upon to do so. A
+voyage to France and back is no light matter; and what with
+complications and delays, a year or more is likely to elapse before the
+subject need be opened again in my hearing. I thank God for this. For
+not only shall I thus have the opportunity of regaining my equanimity,
+which has been sorely shaken by these late events, but I shall have the
+chance of adding a few more dollars to my store, against the time when
+scandal will be busy with this spot, and public reprobation ruin its
+excellent character and custom.
+
+The oak parlor I have shut and locked. It will not be soon entered again
+by me.
+
+The other excitement to which I referred was the coming of two new
+guests from New York, elegant ladies, whose appearance and manners quite
+overpowered me in the few minutes of conversation I held with them when
+they first entered my house.
+
+. . . . .
+
+Good God! what is that? I thought I felt something brush my sleeve. Yet
+there is no one near me, and nothing astir in the room! And why should
+such a sudden vision of the old oak parlor rise before my eyes? And why,
+if I must see it, should it be the room as it looked to me on that
+night when the two Urquharts sat within it, and not the room as I saw it
+to-day!
+
+Positively I must throw away the key of that room; its very presence in
+my desk makes me the victim of visions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        OCTOBER 5, 1791.
+
+Why is it that we promise ourselves certain things, even swear that we
+will perform such and such acts, and yet never keep our promises or hold
+to our oaths? Sixteen years ago I expressed a determination to refit the
+oak parlor and make it look more attractive to the eye; I never did it.
+A year since I declared in language as strong as I knew how to employ,
+not that I would refit the oak parlor, but that I would tear it from the
+house, even at the cost of demolishing the whole structure.
+
+And now, only a week since, I promised myself, as my diary will testify,
+that I would throw away the key of this place, if only to rid myself of
+unpleasant reminders. But the key is still with me, and the room intact.
+I have neither the power nor the inclination to touch it. The ghost of
+the woman who perished there restrains me. Why? Because we are not done
+with that room. The end of its story is not yet. This I feel; and I feel
+something further; I feel that it will be entered soon, and that the
+person who is to enter it is already in my house.
+
+I have spoken of two ladies--God knows with but little realization of
+the fatal interest they would soon possess for me. They came without
+servants some four days ago, and saying they wished to remain for a
+short time in this beautiful spot, at once accepted the cheerful south
+room which I reserve for such guests as these. As they are very handsome
+and distinguished-looking, I felt highly gratified at their patronage,
+and was settling down to a state of complacency over the prospects of a
+profitable week, when something, I cannot tell what, roused in me a
+spirit of suspicion, and I began to notice that the elder lady was of a
+very uneasy disposition, exhibiting a proneness to wander about the
+house and glide through its passages, especially those on the ground
+floor, which at first made me question her sanity, and then led me to
+wonder if through some means unknown to me she had not received a hint
+as to our secret chamber. I watch, but cannot yet make out. Meanwhile a
+description of these women may not come amiss.
+
+They are both beautiful, the younger especially. When I first saw them
+seated in my humble parlor, I thought them the wife and daughter of one
+of our great generals, they looked so handsome and carried themselves so
+proudly. But I was presently undeceived, for the name they gave was a
+foreign one, which my English tongue finds it very hard even yet to
+pronounce. It is written Letellier, with a simple Madame before it for
+the mother, and Mademoiselle for the daughter, but how to speak
+it--well, that is a small matter. I do speak it and they never smile,
+though the daughter's eye lights up at times with a spark of what I
+should call mirth, if her lips were not so grave and her brow so
+troubled.
+
+Yes; troubled is the word, though she is so young. I find it difficult
+to regard her in any other light than that of a child. Though she
+endeavors to appear indifferent and has a way of carrying herself that
+is almost noble, there is certainly grief in her eye and care on her
+brow. I see it when she is alone, or rather before she becomes aware of
+another's presence; I see it when she is with her mother; but when
+strangers come in or she assembles with the rest of the household in the
+parlor or at the table, then it vanishes, and a sweet charm comes that
+reminds me--
+
+But this is folly, sheer folly. How could she look like Mrs. Urquhart?
+Imagination carries me too far. Equal innocence and a like gentle temper
+have produced a like result in sweetening the expression. That is all,
+and yet I remember the one woman when I look at the other, and shudder;
+for the woman who calls this child daughter has her eye on the oak
+parlor, and may meditate evil--must, if she knows its secret and yet
+wishes to enter it. But my imagination is carrying me too far again.
+This woman, whatever her faults, loves her daughter, and where love is
+there cannot be danger. Yet I shudder.
+
+Madame Letellier merits the description of an abler pen than mine. I
+like her, and I hate her. I admire her, and I fear her. I obey her, and
+yet hold myself in readiness for rebellion, if only to prove to myself
+that I will be strong when the time comes; that no influence, however
+exerted, or however hidden under winning smiles or quietly controlling
+glances, shall have power to move me from what I may consider my duty,
+or from the exercise of such vigilance as my secret fears seem to
+demand. I hate her; let me remember that. And I distrust her. She is
+here for evil, and her eye is on the oak parlor. Though it is locked and
+the key hidden on my person, she will find means to possess herself of
+that key and open that door. How? We will see. Meantime all this is not
+a description of Madame Letellier.
+
+She is finely formed; she is graceful; she is youthful. She dresses with
+a taste that must always make her conspicuous wherever she may be. You
+could not enter a room in which she was without seeing her, for her
+glance has a strange power that irresistibly draws your glance to it,
+though her eyes are lambent rather than brilliant, and if large, rarely
+opened to their full extent. Her complexion is dark; that is, in
+comparison with her daughter's, which is of a marble-like purity. But it
+has strange flushes in it, and at times seems almost to sparkle. Her
+hair is brown, and worn high, with a great comb in it, setting off the
+contour of her face, which is almost perfect. But it is in the
+expression of her mouth that her fascination lies. Without sweetness,
+except when it smiles upon her daughter, without mirth, without any
+expression speaking of good-will or tenderness, there is yet a turn to
+the lips that moves the gazer peculiarly, making it dangerous to watch
+her long unless you are hardened by doubts, as I am. Her hands are
+exquisite, and her form beauty itself.
+
+The daughter is statuesque; not in the sense of coldness or immobility,
+but in the regularity of her features and the absence of any coloring in
+her cheeks. She is lovely, and there breathes through every trait a
+gentle soul that robs my admiration of all awe and makes my old and
+empty heart long to serve her. Her eyes are gray and her hair a reddish
+brown, with kinks and curls in it like-- But, pshaw! there comes that
+dream again! Was Honora Urquhart's hair so very unique that a head of
+wavy brown hair should bring her up so startlingly to my mind?
+
+They are stopping here on their way to Albany--so the elder lady says.
+They came from New York. So they did, but if my intuitions are not
+greatly at fault, the place they started from was France. The fact that
+the marks and labels have all been effaced from their baggage is
+suspicious in itself. Can they be friends of the two miserable wretches
+who dishonored my house with a ghastly crime? Is it from them that
+madame's knowledge comes, if she has any knowledge? The thought awakens
+my profoundest distrust. Would that Mr. Tamworth were within reach! I
+think I will write him. But what could I write that would not look
+foolish on paper? I had better wait a while till I see something or hear
+something more definite.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+MRS. TRUAX TALKS.
+
+
+        OCTOBER 7, 1791.
+
+[Illustration: T]
+
+This morning I was exceedingly startled by one of my guests suddenly
+asking me before several of the others, if my inn had a ghost.
+
+"A ghost!" I cried, for the moment quite aghast.
+
+"Yes," was the reply; "it has the look of a house which could boast of
+such a luxury. Don't you think so, Mr. Westgate?"
+
+This is a newcomer who had just been introduced.
+
+"Well," observed the latter, "as I have seen only this room, and as this
+room is anything but ghostlike at the present moment, I hardly consider
+myself competent to judge."
+
+"But the exterior! Surely you noticed the exterior. Such a rambling old
+structure; such a beetling top to it, as if it had settled down here to
+brood over a mysterious past. I never see it, especially at twilight,
+that I don't wonder what lies so heavily upon its conscience. Is it a
+crime? There would be nothing strange about it if it was. Such old
+houses rarely have a clean past."
+
+It was nonchalantly said, but it sank deep into my heart. Not that I
+felt that he had any motive in saying it--I knew the young scapegrace
+too well--but that I was conscious from his first word of two eyes
+burning on my face, which robbed me of all self-possession, though I
+think I sat without movement, and only paled the slightest in the world.
+
+"A house that dates back to a time when the white men and the red fought
+every inch of the territory on which it stands would be an anomaly if it
+did not have some drops of blood upon it," I ventured to say, as soon as
+I could command my emotions.
+
+"True," broke in a low, slow voice--that of Madame Letellier. "Do you
+know of any especial tragedy that makes the house memorable?"
+
+I turned and gave her a look before replying. She was seated in the
+shadows of a remote corner, and had so withdrawn herself behind her
+daughter that I could see nothing of her face. But her hands were
+visible, and from the force with which she held them clasped in her lap
+I perceived that the subject we were discussing possessed a greater
+interest for her than for any one else in the room. "She has heard
+something of the tragedy connected with this house," was my inward
+comment, as I prepared to answer her.
+
+"There is one," I began, and paused. Something of the instinct of the
+cat with the mouse had entered into me. I felt like playing with her
+suspense, cruel as it may seem.
+
+"Oh, tell us!" broke in the daughter, a sudden flush of interest
+suffusing for a moment her white cheek. "That is, if it is not too
+horrible. I never like horrible stories; they frighten me. And as for a
+ghost--if I thought you kept such a creature about your house, I should
+leave it at once."
+
+"We have no ghosts," I answered, with a gravity that struck even myself
+unpleasantly, it was in such contrast to her mellow and playful tones.
+"Ghosts are commonplace. We countenance nothing commonplace here."
+
+"Good!" broke in a voice from the crowd of young men. "The house is
+above such follies. It must have some wonderful secret, then. What is
+it, Mrs. Truax? Do you own a banshee? Have you a--"
+
+"Mamma, you hurt me!"
+
+The cry was involuntary. Madame had caught her daughter by the hand and
+was probably unaware what passion she had put into her clasp.
+Mademoiselle Letellier blushed again at the sound of her own voice, and
+prayed her mother's pardon with the most engaging of smiles. As she did
+so, I caught a glimpse of that mother's face. It was white as death.
+"Decidedly, she knows more than she ought to," thought I. "And yet she
+wants to know more. Why?"
+
+"The Happy-Go-Lucky Inn," I observed, as soon as the flutter caused by
+this incident had subsided, "is no more haunted by a banshee than by a
+ghost. But that is not saying it should not be. It is old enough, it is
+respectable enough; it has traditions enough. I could tell you tales of
+its owners, and incidents connected with the coming and going of the
+innumerable guests who have frequented it both before and during the
+revolution, that would keep you here till morning. But the one story I
+will tell must suffice. We should lose our character of mystery if I
+told you all. Besides, how could I tell all? Who could ever tell the
+complete story of such a house as this?"
+
+"Hear! hear!" cried another young man.
+
+"Years ago--" I stopped again, wickedly stopped. "Madame, will you not
+come forward where it is lighter?"
+
+"I thank you," Madame Letellier responded.
+
+She rose deliberately and came forward, tall, mute and commanding. She
+sat down in the light; she looked me in the face; she robbed me even of
+my doubts. I felt my heart turn over in my breast and wondered.
+
+"You do not proceed," she murmured.
+
+"Pardon me," said I; and assuming a nonchalance I was far from feeling,
+I commenced again. I had played with her fears. I would play with them
+further. I would see how much she could bear. I resumed:
+
+"Years ago, when I was younger and had been mistress of this place but a
+short time, there entered this place one evening, at nightfall, a young
+couple. Did you speak, madame? Excuse me, it was your daughter, then?"
+
+"Yes," chimed in the latter, coming forward and taking her stand by the
+mother, greatly to the delight of the young gentlemen present, who asked
+for nothing better than an opportunity to gaze upon her modest but
+exquisite face. "Yes; it was I. I am interested, that is all."
+
+I began to hate my role, but went on stolidly.
+
+"They were a handsome pair, and I felt an interest in them at once. But
+this interest immeasurably heightened when the young man, almost before
+the door had closed upon them, drew me apart and said: 'Madame, we are
+an unhappy couple. We have been married just four hours.'"
+
+Here I paused for breath, and to take a good look at madame.
+
+She was fixed as a stone, but her eyes were burning. Evidently she
+expected the relation of a story which she knew. I would disappoint her.
+I would cause in her first a shock of relief, and then I would reawaken
+her fears and probe her very soul. Slowly, and as if it were a matter of
+course, I proceeded to say:
+
+"It was a run-away match, and as the young husband remarked, 'a great
+disappointment to my wife's father, who is an English general and a
+great man. My wife loves me, and will never allow herself to be torn
+from me; but she is not of age, and her father is but a few minutes'
+ride behind us. Will you let us come in? We dare not risk the encounter
+on the road; he would shoot me down like a dog, and that would kill my
+young wife. If we see him here, he may take pity on our love, and--'
+
+"He needed to say no more. My own compassion had been excited, as much
+by her countenance as by his words, and I threw open the doors of this
+very room.
+
+"'Go in,' said I, 'I have a woman's heart, and cannot bear to see young
+people in distress. When the general comes--'
+
+"'We shall hear him,' cried the girl; 'he has half a dozen horsemen with
+him. We saw them when we were on the brow of the hill.'
+
+"'Take comfort, then,' I cried, as I closed the door, and went to see
+after the solitary horse which had brought them to this place.
+
+"But before I could provide the meal with which I meant to strengthen
+them for the scene that must presently ensue, I heard the anticipated
+clattering of hoofs, and simultaneously with it, the unclosing of this
+door and the cry of the young wife to her husband:
+
+"'I cannot bear it. At his first words I should fall in a faint; and how
+could I resist him then? No; let me fly; let me hide myself; and when he
+comes in, swear that you are here alone; that you brought no bride; that
+she left you at the altar--anything to baffle his rage and give us
+time.' And the young thing sprang out before me, and lifting her hands,
+prayed with great wide-open eyes that I would assist the lie, and swear
+to her father, when he came in, that her husband had ridden up alone.
+
+"I was not as old then as I am now, I say, and I was very tender toward
+youthful lovers. Though I thought the scheme a wild one and totally
+impracticable, she so governed me by her looks and tones that I promised
+to do what she asked, saying, however, that if she hid herself she must
+do it well, for if she were found my reputation for reliability would be
+ruined. And standing there where you see that jog in the wall, she
+promised, and giving just one look of love to her companion, who stood
+white but firm on the threshold, she sped from our sight down the hall.
+
+"A moment later the general's foot was where hers had been, and the
+general's voice was filling the house, asking for his daughter.
+
+"'She is not here,' came from the young man in firm and stern accents.
+'You have been pleased to think she was with me all these miles, but you
+will not find her. You can search if you please. I have nothing to say
+against that. But it will be time wasted.'
+
+"'We will see about that. The girl is here, is she not?' the father
+asked, turning to me.
+
+"'No,' was my firm reply; 'she is not.'
+
+"I do not know how I managed the lie, but I did. Something in the young
+man's aspect had nerved me. I began to think she would not be found,
+though I could see no good reason for this conclusion.
+
+"'Scatter!' he now shouted to his followers. 'Search the house well. Do
+not leave a nook or cranny unpenetrated. I am not General B---- for
+nothing.' And turning to me, he added: 'You have brought this on
+yourself by a lie. I saw my daughter in this fellow's arms as they
+passed over the ridge of the hill. She is here, and in half an hour
+will be in my hands.'
+
+"But the clock on the staircase struck not only the half hour, but the
+hour, and yet, though every room and corridor, the cellar and the
+garret, were searched, no token was found of the young wife's presence.
+Meanwhile the husband stood like a statue on the threshold, waiting with
+what seemed to me a strange certitude for the return of the father from
+his fruitless search.
+
+"'Has she escaped from one of the windows?' I asked, moved myself to a
+strange curiosity.
+
+"He looked at me, but made no reply.
+
+"'It is dark; it is late. If the general chooses to remain here
+to-night--'
+
+"'He will not find her,' was the reply.
+
+"I was frightened--I know not why, but I was frightened. The young man
+had a supernatural air. I began to think of demon lovers, and was glad
+when the general finally appeared, storming and raving.
+
+"'It is a conspiracy!' was his cry. 'You are all in league to deceive
+me. Where is my daughter, Mrs. Truax? I ask you because you have a
+character to lose.'
+
+"'It is impossible for me to tell you,' was my reply. 'If she was to be
+found in my house, you must have found her. As you have not, there is
+but one conclusion to draw. She is not within these walls.'
+
+"'She is not outside of them. I set a watch in the beginning, at the
+four corners of the house. None of my men have seen so much as a flutter
+of her dress. She is here, I say, and I ask you to give her up.'
+
+"'This I am perfectly willing to do,' I rejoined, 'but I do not know
+where to find her. Let that but once be done, and I shall not stand in
+the way of your rights.'
+
+"'Very well,' he cried. 'I will not search further to-night; but
+to-morrow--' A meaning gesture finished his sentence; he turned to the
+young man. 'As for you,' he cried, 'you will remain here. Unpleasant as
+it may be for us both, we will keep each other's company till morning. I
+do not insist upon conversation.' And without waiting for a reply, the
+sturdy old soldier took up his station in the doorway, by which action
+he not only shut the young man in, but gave himself a position of
+vantage from which he could survey the main hall and the most prominent
+passages.
+
+"The rest were under charge of his followers, whom he had stationed all
+through the house, just as if it were in a state of siege. One guarded
+the east door and another the west, and on each landing of the staircase
+a sentinel stood, silent but alert, like a pair of living statues.
+
+"I did not sleep that night; the mystery of the whole affair would have
+kept me awake even if my indignation had let me rest. I sat in the
+kitchen with my girls, and when the morning came, I joined the general
+again with offers of a breakfast.
+
+"But he would eat nothing till he had gone through the house again; nor
+would he, in fact, eat here at all; for his second search ended as
+vainly as his first, and he was by this time so wroth, not only at the
+failure to recover his child, but at the loss which his dignity had
+suffered by this failure, that he had no sooner reached this spot, and
+found the young husband still standing where he had left him, than with
+a smothered execration, leveled not only at him, but the whole house, he
+strode out through the doorway, and finding his horse ready saddled in
+front, mounted and rode away, followed by all his troop.
+
+"And now comes the strangest part of the tale.
+
+"He was no sooner gone, and the dust from his horse's hoofs lost in the
+distance, than I turned to the young husband, and cried:
+
+"'And now where is she? Let us have her here at once. She must be
+hungry, and she must be cold. Bring her, my good sir.'
+
+"'I do not know where she is. We must be patient. She will return
+herself as soon as she thinks it safe.'
+
+"I could not believe my ears.
+
+"'You do not know where she is?' I repeated. 'How could you be so
+self-possessed through all these hours and all this maddened searching
+if you did not know she was safe?'
+
+"'I did know she was safe. She swore to me before she set foot on your
+doorstep that she could so hide herself in these walls that no one could
+ever find her till she chose to reveal herself; and I believed her, and
+felt secure.'
+
+"I did not know what to say.
+
+"'But she is a stranger,' I murmured. 'What does she know about my
+house?'
+
+"'She is a stranger to you,' he retorted, 'but she may not be a stranger
+to the house. How long have you lived here?'
+
+"I could not say long. It was at the most but a year; so I merely shook
+my head, but I felt strangely nonplussed.
+
+"This feeling, however, soon gave way to one much more serious as the
+moments fled by and presently the hours, and she did not come. We tried
+to curb our impatience, tried to believe that her delay was only owing
+to extra caution; but as morning waxed to noon, alarm took the place of
+satisfaction in our breasts, and we began to search the house ourselves,
+calling her name up and down the halls and through the empty rooms, till
+it seemed as if the very walls must open and reveal us the being so
+frantically desired.
+
+"'She is not in the house,' I now asserted to the almost frenzied
+bridegroom. 'Our lies have come back upon our heads, and it is in the
+river we must look for her.'
+
+"But he would not agree with me in this, and repeated again and again:
+'She said she would hide here. She would not deceive me, nor would she
+have sought death alone. Leave me to look for her another hour. I must,
+I can, I will find her yet!'
+
+"But he never did. After that last fond look with which she turned down
+that very hall you see before you, we saw her no more; and if my house
+owns no ghost and never echoes to the sound of a banshee's warning, it
+is not because it does not own a mystery which is certainly thrilling
+enough to give us either."
+
+"Oh!" cried out several voices, as I ceased, "is that all? And what
+became of the poor bridegroom? And did the father ever come back? And
+haven't you ever really found out where the poor thing went to? And do
+you think she died?"
+
+For reply I rose. I had never taken my eye off madame, and the strain
+upon us both had been terrible; but I let my glance wander now, and
+smiling genially into the eager faces which had crowded around me, I
+remarked:
+
+"I never spoil a good story by too many explanations. You have heard all
+you will from me to-night. So do not question me further. Am I not
+right, madame?"
+
+"Perfectly," came in her even tones. "And I am sure we are all very much
+obliged to you."
+
+I bowed and slipped away into the background. I was worn out.
+
+An hour later I was passing through the hall above on my way to my own
+room. As I passed madame's door, I saw it open, and before I had taken
+three steps away I felt her soft hand on my arm.
+
+"Your pardon, Mrs. Truax," were her words; "but my daughter has been
+peculiarly affected by the story you related to us below. She says it is
+worse than any ghost story, and that she cannot rid herself of the
+picture of the young wife flitting out of sight down the hall. I am
+really afraid it has produced a very bad effect upon her, and that she
+will not sleep. Is it--was it a true story, Mrs. Truax, or were you
+merely weaving fancies out of a too fertile brain?"
+
+I smiled, for she was smiling, and shook my head, looking directly into
+her eyes.
+
+"Your daughter need not lose her sleep," I said, "on account of any
+story of mine. I saw they wanted something blood-curdling, so I made up
+a tale to please them. It was all imagination, madame; all imagination.
+I should not have told it if it had been otherwise. I think too much of
+my house."
+
+"And you had nothing to found it upon? Just drew upon your fancy?"
+
+I smiled. Her light tone did not deceive me as to the anxiety underlying
+all this; but it was not in my plan to betray my powers of penetration.
+I preferred that she should think me her dupe.
+
+"Oh," I returned, as ingenuously as if I had never had a suspicious
+thought, "I do not find it difficult to weave a tale. Of course such a
+story could not be true. Why, I should be afraid to stay in the inn
+myself if it were. I could never abide anything mysterious. Everything
+with me must be as open as the day."
+
+"And with me," she laughed; but there was a false note in her mirth,
+though I did not appear to notice it. "I did not suppose the story was
+real, but I thought you must have some old tradition to found it upon;
+some old wife's tale or some secret history which is a part and parcel
+of the house, and came to you with it."
+
+But I shook my head, still smiling, and answered, quite at my ease:
+
+"No old wife's tale that I have ever heard amounts to much. I can make
+up a better story any day than those which come down with a house like
+this. It was all the work of my imagination, I assure you. I tried to
+please them, and I hope I did it."
+
+Her face changed at once. It was as if a black veil had been drawn away
+from it.
+
+"My daughter will be so relieved," she affirmed. "I don't mind such
+lugubrious tales myself, but she is young and sensitive, and so
+tender-hearted. I am sure I thank you, Mrs. Truax, for your
+consideration, and beg leave to wish you a good-night."
+
+I returned her civility, and we passed into our several rooms. Would I
+could know with what thoughts, for my own were as much a mystery to me
+as were hers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        OCTOBER 9, 1791.
+
+Madame never addresses her daughter by her first name. Consequently we
+do not know it. This is a matter of surprise to the whole house, and
+many are the conjectures uttered by the young men as to what it can be.
+I have no especial curiosity about it--I would much rather know the
+mother's, and yet I frequently wonder; for it seems unnatural for a
+mother always to address her child as mademoiselle. Is she her mother?
+I sometimes think she is not. If the interest in the oak parlor is what
+I think it is, then she cannot be, for what mother would wish to bring
+peril to her child? And peril lies at the bottom of all interest there;
+peril to the helpless, the trusting and the ignorant. But is she as
+interested there as I thought her? I have observed nothing lately to
+assure me of it. Perhaps, after all, I have been mistaken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+IN THE HALLS AT MIDNIGHT.
+
+
+        OCTOBER 10, 1791.
+
+I was not mistaken. Madame is not only interested in, but has serious
+designs upon the oak parlor. Not content with roaming up and down the
+hallway leading to it, she was detected yesterday morning trying to open
+its door, and when politely questioned as to whom she was seeking,
+answered that she was looking for the sitting room, which, by the way,
+is on the other side of the house. And this is not all. As I lay in my
+bed last night resting as only a weary woman can rest, I heard a light
+tap at my door. Rising, I opened it, and was astonished to see standing
+before me the light figure of mademoiselle.
+
+"Excuse me for troubling you," said she, in her pure English--they both
+speak good English, though with a foreign accent--"I am sorry to wake
+you, but I am so anxious about my mother. She went to bed with me, and
+we fell asleep; but when I woke a little while ago she was missing, and
+though I have waited for her a long time, she does not return. I am not
+well, and easily frightened! Oh, how cold it is."
+
+I drew her in, wrapped a shawl about her, and led her back to her room.
+
+"Your mother will return speedily," I promised. "Doubtless she felt
+restless, and is taking a turn or two up and down the hall."
+
+"Perhaps; for her dressing gown and slippers are gone. But she never did
+anything like this before, and in a strange house--"
+
+A slight trembling stopped the young lady from continuing.
+
+Urging her to get into bed, I spoke one or two further words of a
+comforting nature, at which the lovely girl seemed to forget her pride,
+for she threw her arms about my neck with a low sigh, and then, pushing
+me softly from her, observed:
+
+"You are a kind woman; you make me feel happier whenever you speak to
+me."
+
+Touched, I made some loving reply, and withdrew. I longed to linger,
+longed to tell her how truly I was her friend; but I feared the mother's
+return--feared to miss the knowledge of madame's whereabouts, which my
+secret suspicion made important; so I subdued my feelings and hastened
+quickly to my room, where I wrapped myself in a long, dark cloak. Thus
+equipped, I stole back again to the hall, and gliding with as noiseless
+a step as possible, found my way to the back stairs, down which I crept,
+holding my breath, and listening intently.
+
+To many who read these words the situation of those back stairs is well
+known; but there may be others who will not understand that they lead
+directly, after a couple of turns, to that hall upon which opens the oak
+parlor. Five steps from the lower floor there is a landing, and upon
+this landing there is a tall Dutch clock, so placed as to offer a very
+good hiding place behind it to any one anxious to gaze unobserved down
+the hall. But to reach the clock one has to pass a window, and as this
+looks south, and was upon this night open to the moonlight, I felt that
+the situation demanded circumspection.
+
+I, therefore, paused when I reached the last step above the platform,
+and listened intently before proceeding further. There was no noise; all
+was quiet, as a respectable house should be at two o'clock in the
+morning. Yet from the hall below came an undefinable something which
+made me feel that she was there; a breathing influence that woke every
+nervous sensibility within me, and made my heart-beats so irregular that
+I tried to stop them lest my own presence should be betrayed. She was
+there, a creeping, baleful figure, blotting the moonshine with her tall
+shadow, as she passed, panther-like, to and fro before that closed door,
+or crouched against the wall in the same attitude of listening which I
+myself assumed. Or so I pictured her as I clung to the balustrade above,
+asking myself how I could cross that strip of moonlight separating me
+from that vantage-point I longed to gain. For that I knew her to be
+there was not enough. I must see her, and learn, if possible, what the
+attraction was which drew her to this fatal door. But how, how, how? If
+she were watching, as secrecy ever watches, I could not take a step upon
+that platform without being discerned. Not even if a friendly cloud came
+to obscure the brightness of the moon, could I hope to project my dark
+figure into that belt of light without discovery. I must see what was to
+be seen from the step where I stood, and to do this I knew but one way.
+Taking up the end of my long cloak, I advanced it the merest trifle
+beyond the edge of the partition that separated me from the hall below.
+Then I listened again. No sound, no stir. I breathed deeply and thrust
+my arm still further, the long cloak hanging from it dark and
+impenetrable to the floor below. Then I waited. The moonlight was not
+quite as bright as it had been; surely that was a cloud I saw careering
+over the face of the sky above me, and in another moment, if I could
+wait for it, the hall would be almost dark. I let my arm advance an inch
+or so further, and satisfied now that I had got the slit which answers
+for an arm-hole into a position that would afford me full opportunity of
+looking through the black wall I had thus improvised, I watched the
+cloud for the moment of comparative darkness which I so confidently
+expected. It came, and with it a sound--the first I had heard. It was
+from far down the hall, and was, as near as I could judge, of a jingling
+nature, which for an instant I found it hard to understand. Then the
+quick suspicion came as to what it was, and unable to restrain myself
+longer I separated the slit I have spoken of with the fingers of my
+right hand, and looked through.
+
+There she was, standing before the door of the oak parlor, fitting keys.
+I knew it at my first glimpse, both from her attitude and the slight
+noise which the keys made. Taken aback, for I had not expected this, I
+sank out of sight, cloak and all, asking myself what I should do. I
+finally decided to do nothing. I would listen, and if the least
+intimation came to prove that she had succeeded in her endeavor, I would
+then spring down the steps that separated us and hold her back by the
+hair of her head. Meanwhile I congratulated myself that the lock of that
+room was a peculiar one, and that the only key I knew of that would
+unlock it was under the pillow of the bed I had just left.
+
+She worked several minutes; then the moon came out. Instantly all was
+still. I knew whither she had gone. Near the door she was tampering with
+is a short passageway leading to another window. Into this she had
+slipped, and I could look out now with impunity, sure that she would not
+see me.
+
+But I remained immovable. There was another cloud rushing up from the
+south, and in another moment I was confident that I should hear again
+the slight clatter of the key against the lock. And I did, and not only
+once, but several times, which fact assured me that she had not only
+brought a handful of keys with her, but that these keys must have come
+from some more distant quarter than the town; that indeed she had come
+provided to the Happy-Go-Lucky for this nocturnal visit, and that any
+doubts I might cherish were likely to have a better foundation in fact
+than is usual with women circumstanced like myself.
+
+She did not succeed in her efforts. Had she brought burglar's tools I
+hardly think she would have been able to open that lock; as it was,
+there was no hope for her, and presently she seemed to comprehend this,
+for the slight sounds ceased and, presently, I heard a step, and peering
+recklessly from my corner, I perceived her gliding away toward the front
+stairs. I smiled, but it could not have been in a way she would have
+enjoyed seeing, and crept noiselessly to my own room, and our doors
+closed simultaneously.
+
+This morning I watched with some anxiety for her first look. It was
+slightly inquiring. Summoning up my best smile, I gave her a cheerful
+good-morning, and then observed:
+
+"I am glad to see you look so well this morning! Your daughter seemed to
+be concerned about you in the night because you had left your bed. But I
+told her I was sure all was right, that you were feeling nervous, and
+only wanted a breath of the fresh air you would find in the halls." And
+my glance did not flinch, nor my mouth lose its smile, though she
+surveyed me keenly with eyes whose look might penetrate a stone.
+
+"You understand your own sex," was her light reply, after this short
+study of my face. "Yes; I was very nervous. I have cares on my mind,
+and, though my daughter does not realize it, I often lie awake at her
+side, longing for space to breathe in and freedom to move as freely as
+my uneasiness demands. Last night my feelings were too much for my
+self-control, and I arose. I hope I did not seriously disturb you, or
+awaken anybody, with my restless pacing up and down the hall."
+
+I assured her that it took more than this to disturb me, and that after
+quieting her daughter I had immediately fallen asleep; all of which she
+may have believed or may not; I had no means of reading her mind, as she
+had no means of reading mine.
+
+But whether she was deceived or whether she was not, she certainly
+looked relieved, and after some short remarks about the weather, turned
+from me with the most cheerful air in the world, to greet her daughter.
+
+As for me, I have made up my mind to change my room. I shall not say
+anything about it or make any fuss on the subject, but to-night, and for
+some nights to come, I intend to take up my abode in a certain small
+room in the west wing, not very far removed from the dreadful oak
+parlor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE STONE IN THE GARDEN.
+
+
+        OCTOBER 11, 1791.
+
+This morning the post brought two letters for my strange guests. Being
+anxious to see how they would be received, I carried them up to Madame
+Letellier's room myself.
+
+The ladies were sitting together, the daughter embroidering. At the
+sight of the letters in my hand they both rose, the daughter reaching me
+first.
+
+"Let me have them!" she cried, a glad, bright color showing for a moment
+on her cheek.
+
+"From your father?" asked the mother, in a tone of nonchalance that did
+not deceive me.
+
+The girl shook her head. A smile as exquisite as it was sad made her
+mouth beautiful. "From--" she began, but stopped, whether from an
+instinct of maidenly shame or some secret signal from her mother, I
+cannot say.
+
+"Well, never mind," the mother exclaimed, and turned away toward the
+window in a manner that gave me my dismissal.
+
+So I went out, having learned nothing, save the fact that mademoiselle
+had a lover, and that her lips could smile.
+
+They did not smile again, however. Next day she looked whiter than ever,
+and languid as a broken blossom.
+
+"She is ill," declared madame. "The stairs she has to climb are too much
+for her."
+
+"Ah, ha!" thought I to myself. "That is the first move," and waited for
+the next development.
+
+It has not come as soon as I expected. Two days have passed, and though
+Mademoiselle Letellier grows paler and thinner, nothing more has been
+said about the stairs. But the time has not passed without its incident,
+and a serious enough one, too, if these women are, as I fear, in the
+secret of the hidden chamber.
+
+It is this: In the garden is a white stone. It is plain-finished but
+unlettered. It marks the resting-place of Honora Urquhart. For reasons
+which we all thought good, we have taken no uninterested person into the
+secret of this grave, any more than we have into that of the hidden
+chamber.
+
+Consequently no one in the house but myself could answer Madame
+Letellier, when, stopping in her short walk up and down the garden path,
+she asked what the white stone meant and what it marked. I would not
+answer her. I had seen from the window where I stood the quick surprise
+with which she had come to a standstill at the sight of this stone, and
+I had caught the tremble in her usually steady voice as she made the
+inquiry I have mentioned above. I therefore hastened down and joined her
+before she had left the spot.
+
+"You are wondering what this stone means," I observed, with an
+indifferent tone calculated to set her at her ease. Then suddenly, and
+with a changed voice and a secret look into her face, I added: "It is a
+headstone; a dead body lies here."
+
+She quivered, and her lids fell. For all her self-possession--and she is
+the most self-possessed person I ever saw in my life--she showed a
+change that gave me new thoughts and made me summon up all the strength
+I am mistress of, in order to preserve the composure which her agitation
+had so deeply shaken.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"You shock me," were her first words, uttered very slowly, and with a
+transparent show of indifference. "It is not usual to find a garden
+used for a burial place. May I ask whose body lies here? That of some
+faithful black or of a favorite horse?"
+
+"It is not that of a horse," I returned, calmly. And greatly pleased to
+find that I had placed her in a position where she would be obliged to
+press the question if she would learn anything more, I walked slowly on,
+convinced that she would follow me.
+
+She did, giving me short side glances, which I bore with an equanimity
+that much belied the tempest of doubt, repugnance and horror that were
+struggling blindly in my breast. But she did not renew the subject of
+the grave. Instead of that, she opened one of her most fascinating
+conversations, endeavoring by her wiles and graces to get at my
+confidence and insure my good will.
+
+And I was hypocrite enough to deceive her into thinking she had done so.
+Though I showed her no great warmth, I carefully restrained myself from
+betraying my real feelings, allowing her to talk on, and giving her now
+and then an encouraging word or an inviting smile.
+
+For I felt that she was a serpent and must be met as such. If she were
+the woman I thought her, I should gain nothing and lose all by betraying
+my distrust, while if she felt me to be her dupe I might yet light upon
+the secret of her interest in the oak parlor.
+
+Her daughter was waiting for us in the doorway when we reached the
+house. At the sight of her pure face, with its tender gray eyes and
+faultless features, a strong revulsion seized me, and I found it
+difficult not to raise my arms in protest between her beauty and winning
+womanliness and the subtile and treacherous-hearted being who glided so
+smoothly toward her. But the movement, had I made it, would have been in
+vain. At the sight of each other's faces a lovely smile arose on the
+daughter's lips, while on the mother's flashed a look of love which
+would be unmistakable even on the countenance of a tiger, and which was
+at this moment so vivid and so real that I never doubted again, if I had
+ever doubted before, that mademoiselle was her own child--flesh of her
+flesh, and bone of her bone.
+
+"Ah, mamma," cried one soft voice, "I have been so lonesome!"
+
+"Darling," returned the other, in tones as true and caressing, "I will
+not leave you again, even for a walk, till you are quite well." And
+taking her by the waist, she led her down the hall toward the stairs,
+looking back at me as she did so, and saying: "I cannot take her to
+Albany until she is better. You must think what we can do to make her
+strong again, Mrs. Truax." And she sighed as she looked up the short
+flight of stairs her daughter had to climb.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        OCTOBER 15, 1791.
+
+That stone in the garden seems to possess a magnetic attraction for
+madame. She is over it or near it half the time. If I go out in the
+early morning to gather grapes for dinner, there she is before me,
+pacing up and down the paths converging to that spot, and gazing with
+eager eyes at that simple stone, as if by the force of her will she
+would extract its secret and make it tell her what she evidently burns
+to know. If I want flowers for the parlor mantel, and hurry into the
+garden during the heat of the day, there is madame with a huge hat on
+her head, plucking asters or pulling down apples from the low-hanging
+branches of the trees. It is the same at nightfall. Suspicious, always
+suspicious now, I frequently stop, in passing through the upper western
+hall, to take a peep from the one window that overlooks this part of the
+garden. I invariably see her there; and remembering that her daughter is
+ill, remembering that in my hearing she promised that daughter that she
+would not leave her again, I feel impelled at times to remind her of the
+fact, and see what reply will follow. But I know. She will say that she
+is not well herself; that the breeze from the river does her good; that
+she loves nature, and sleeps better after a ramble under the stars. I
+cannot disconcert her--not for long--and I cannot compete with her in
+volubility and conversational address, so I will continue to play a
+discreet part and wait.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        OCTOBER 17, 1791.
+
+Madame has become bolder, or her curiosity more impatient. Hitherto she
+has been content with haunting the garden, and walking over and about
+that one place in it which possesses peculiar interest for her and me.
+But this evening, when she thought no one was looking, when after a
+hurried survey of the house and grounds she failed to detect my sharp
+eyes behind the curtain of the upper window, she threw aside discretion,
+knelt down on the sod of that grave, and pushed aside the grass that
+grows about the stone, doubtless to see if there was any marks or
+inscription upon it. There are none, but I determined she should not be
+sure of this, so before she could satisfy herself, I threw up the window
+behind which I stood, making so much noise that it alarmed her, and she
+hastily rose.
+
+I met her hasty look with a smile which it was too dark for her to see,
+and a cheerful good evening which I presume fell with anything but a
+cheerful sound upon her ears.
+
+"It is a lovely evening," I cried. "Have you been admiring the sunset?"
+
+"Ah, so much!" was her quick reply, and she began to saunter in slowly.
+But I knew she left her thoughts out there with that mysterious grave.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        12 M.
+
+Another midnight adventure! Late as it is, I must put it down, for I
+cannot sleep, and to-morrow will bring its own story.
+
+I had gone to bed, but not to sleep. The anxieties under which I now
+labor, the sense of mystery which pervades the whole house, and the
+secret but ever-present apprehension of some impending catastrophe,
+which has followed me ever since these women came into the house, lay
+heavily on my mind, and prevented all rest. The change of room may also
+have added to my disturbance. I am wedded to old things, old ways, and
+habitual surroundings. I was not at home in this small and stuffy
+apartment, with its one narrow window and wretched accommodations. Nor
+could I forget near what it lay, nor rid myself of the horror which its
+walls gave me whenever I realized, as I invariably did at night, that
+only a slight partition separated me from the secret chamber, with its
+ghastly memories and ever to be remembered horrors.
+
+I was lying, then, awake, when some impulse--was it a magnetic
+one?--caused me to rise and look out of the window. I did not see
+anything unusual--not at first--and I drew back. But the impulse
+returned, and I looked again, and this time perceived among the shadows
+of the trees something stirring in the garden, though what I could not
+tell, for the night was unusually dark, and my window very poorly
+situated for seeing.
+
+But that there was something there was enough, and after another vain
+attempt to satisfy myself as to its character, I dressed and went out
+into the hall, determined to ascertain if any outlet to the house was
+open.
+
+I did not take a light, for I know the corridors as I do my own hand.
+But I almost wished I had as I sped from door to door and window to
+window; for the events which had blotted my house with mystery were
+beginning to work upon my mind, and I felt afraid, not of my shadow, for
+I could not see it, but of my step, and the great gulfs of darkness that
+were continually opening before my eyes.
+
+However, I did not draw back, and I did not delay. I tried the front
+door, and found it locked; then the south door, and finally the one in
+the kitchen. This last was ajar. I knew then what had happened. Madame
+has had more than one talk with Chloe lately, and the good negress has
+not been proof against her wiles, and has taught her the secret of the
+kitchen lock. I shall talk to Chloe to-morrow. But, meantime, I must
+follow madame.
+
+But should I? I know what she is doing in the garden. She is wandering
+round and round that grave. If I saw her I could not be any surer of the
+fact, and I would but reveal my own suspicions to her by showing myself
+as a spy. No; I will remain here in the shadows of the kitchen, and wait
+for her to return. The watch may be weird, but no weirder than that of a
+previous night. Besides, it will not be a long one; the air is too
+chilly outside for her to risk a lengthy stay in it. I shall soon
+perceive her dark figure glide in through the doorway.
+
+And I did. Almost before I had withdrawn into my corner I heard the
+faint fall of feet on the stone without, then the subdued but
+unmistakable sound of the opening door, and lastly the locking of it and
+the hasty tread of footsteps as she glided across the brick flagging and
+disappeared into the hall beyond.
+
+"She has laid the ghost of her unrest for to-night," thought I.
+"To-morrow it will rise again." And I felt my first movement of pity for
+her.
+
+Alas! does that unrest spring from premeditated or already accomplished
+guilt? Whichever it may be--and I am ready to believe in either or
+both--she is a burdened creature, and the weight of her fears or her
+intentions lies heavily upon her. But she hides the fact with consummate
+address, and when under the eyes of people smiles so brightly and
+conducts herself with such a charming grace that half the guests that
+come and go consider her as lovely and more captivating than her
+daughter. What would they think if they could see her as I do rising in
+the night to roam about a grave, the unmarked head-stone of which
+baffles her scrutiny?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        OCTOBER 18, 1791.
+
+This morning I rose at daybreak, and going into the garden, surveyed the
+spot which I had imagined traversed by Madame Letellier the night
+before. I found it slightly trampled, but what interested me a great
+deal more than this was the fact that, on a certain portion of the
+surface of the stone I have so often mentioned, there were to be seen
+small particles of a white substance, which I soon discovered to be wax.
+
+Thus the mystery of her midnight visit is solved. She has been taking an
+impression of what, in her one short glimpse of yesterday evening, she
+had thought to be an inscription. What a wonderful woman she is! What
+skill she shows; what secrecy and what purpose. If she cannot compass
+her end in one way, she will in another; and I begin to have,
+notwithstanding my repugnance and fear, a wholesome respect for her
+ability and the relentless determination which she shows in every action
+she performs.
+
+When she finds that her wax shows her nothing but the natural
+excrescences and roughnesses of an unhewn stone, will she persist in her
+visits to the garden? I think not.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        OCTOBER 19, 1791.
+
+My last surmise was a true one. Madame has not spent a half hour all
+told in the garden since that night. She has turned her attention again
+to the oak parlor, and soon we shall see her make some decided move in
+regard to it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+IN THE OAK PARLOR.
+
+
+        OCTOBER 20, 1791.
+
+[Illustration: T]
+
+The long expected move has been made. This morning madame asked me if I
+had not some room on the ground floor which I could give to her daughter
+and her in exchange for the one they now occupy. Her daughter had been
+accustomed to living on one floor, and felt the stairs keenly.
+
+I answered at first--"No." Then I appeared to bethink me, and told her,
+with seeming reluctance, that there was one room below which I
+sometimes opened to guests, but that just now it was in such a state of
+dilapidation I had shut it up till I could find the opportunity of
+repairing it.
+
+"Oh!" she replied, subduing her eagerness to the proper point, "you need
+not wait for that. We are not particular persons. Only let me see the
+roses come back to my daughter's cheeks, and I can bear any amount of
+discomfort. Where is this room?"
+
+I pretended not to hear her.
+
+"It would take two days to get it into any sort of condition fit for
+sleeping in," I murmured reflectively. "The floor is so loose in places
+that you cannot walk across it without danger of falling through. Then
+there is the chimney--"
+
+She was standing near me and I heard her draw her breath quickly, but
+she gave no other sign of emotion, not even in the sound of her voice as
+she interrupted me with the words:
+
+"Oh! if you have got to make the room all over, we might as well not
+consider the subject. But I am sure it is not necessary. Do let me see
+it, and I can soon tell you whether we can be comfortable there or not."
+
+I had sworn to myself never to enter that room again, but such oaths
+are easily broken. Leaving her for a moment, I procured my key, and
+taking her with me down the west hall, I unlocked the fatal door and
+bade her enter.
+
+She hesitated for an instant, but only for an instant. Then she walked
+coolly in, and stood waiting while I crossed the floor to the window and
+threw it open. Her first glance flashed to the mantel and its adjacent
+wainscoting; then, finding everything satisfactory in that direction, it
+flew over the desolate walls and stiff, high-backed chairs, till it
+rested on the bare four-poster, denuded of its curtains and coverlets.
+
+"A gloomy place!" she declared; "but you can easily make it look
+inviting with fresh curtains and a cheerful fire. I am sure that, dismal
+as it is, it will be more welcome to my daughter than the sunny room up
+stairs. Besides, the window looks out on the river, and that is always
+interesting. You will let us come here, will you not? I am sure, if we
+are willing, you ought to be."
+
+I gasped inwardly, and agreed with her. Yet I made a few more
+objections. But as I intended that she should sleep in this room, I
+finally cleared my brow, and announced that the room should be ready
+for her occupancy on Friday; and with this she had to be content.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        OCTOBER 21.
+
+Bless God that I am mistress in my own house! I can order, I can have
+performed whatever I choose, without fuss, without noise, and without
+gossip. This is very fortunate just now, for while I am openly having
+the floor mended in the oak parlor, I am secretly having another piece
+of work done, which, if once known, would arouse suspicions and awaken
+conjectures that would destroy all my plans concerning the mysterious
+guests who insist upon inhabiting the accursed oak parlor.
+
+What this work is can be best understood by a glance at the accompanying
+diagram, which is a copy of the one drawn up by the Englishman for Mr.
+Tamworth.
+
+                     +-----------------------+
+                     |                       |
+                     |          C            |
+                     |                       |
+            +--------+----+--------+---------+
+            |        |-   |        |
+            |    B   |6   |        |
+            |     D  |=|= |        |
+            |    | | |=|= |        |
+            |--------|=|  |        |
+            | 1   _  |    |        |
+            |----|2|-|    |        |
+           -|       3|    |        |
+           4|        |    |        |
+           -|        |    |        |
+            |        |-   |        |
+            |   A    |5   |        |
+            |        |-   |        |
+            +--------+    +--------+
+
+            +--------+    +--------+
+            |        |    |        |
+
+
+[Illustration: A--Oak parlor. B--Bedroom. C--Kitchen, etc. D--Passage I
+have had made.
+
+1--Secret chamber. 2--Fire-place. 3--Secret spring. 4--Garden window.
+5--Door to oak parlor. 6--Clock on stairs to second story. Entrance to
+room B under stairway.]
+
+Here you see that the secret chamber lies between the rooms A and B. A
+is the parlor and B is the small room in which I had put up my bed after
+the nocturnal adventure of October 10. It has always been used as a
+store room until now, and as no one handles the keys of this house but
+myself, the fact of my using it for any other purpose is known only to
+Margery and a certain quiet and reticent workman from Cruger's shop, to
+whom I have intrusted the task of opening a passage at D through the
+wall. For I must have proper means of communication with this room
+before I can allow Madame Letellier and her daughter to take up their
+abode in it. Though the former's plans are a mystery to me; though I
+feel that she loves her daughter, and, therefore, cannot meditate evil
+against her, still my doubts of her are so great that I must know her
+intentions, if possible, and to do this I contemplate keeping a watch
+over that den of wicked memories which will be at once both unsuspected
+and vigilant.
+
+The flooring of the parlor is nearly completed, and to-night will see
+the door of communication between my room and the secret chamber hung
+and ready for use.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        OCTOBER 22.
+
+A month ago, if any one had told me that I would not only walk of my own
+free will into the secret chamber, but take up my abode in it, eat in it
+and sleep in it, I would have said that person was mad. And yet this is
+just what I have done.
+
+The result of my first vigil was unexpected. I had looked for--well, I
+hardly know what I did look for. My anticipations were vague, but they
+did not lead me in the right direction. But let me tell the story. After
+I had installed my guests in their new apartment, I informed them that
+I would have to say good-by for a season, as I had an affection of the
+eyes--which was true enough--which at times compelled me to shut myself
+up in a dark room and forego all company. That I felt one of these
+spells coming on--which was not true--and that by a speedy resort to
+darkness and quiet, I hoped to prevent the attack from reaching its
+usual point of distress. Mademoiselle Letellier looked disappointed, but
+madame ill disguised her relief and satisfaction. Convinced now beyond
+all doubt that she had some plan in mind which made her dread my
+watchfulness, I made such final arrangements as were necessary, and
+betook myself at once to my new room. Once there, I moved immediately
+into the dark chamber, and walking with the utmost circumspection,
+crossed to the wall adjoining the oak parlor, and laying my ear against
+the opening into that room, I listened.
+
+At first I heard nothing, probably because its inmates were still. Then
+I caught an exclamation of weariness, and soon some words of desultory
+conversation. Relieved beyond expression, not only because I could hear,
+but because they talked in English, I withdrew again into my own room.
+The most difficult problem in the world was solved. I had found the
+means by which I could insinuate myself, unseen and unsuspected, into
+the secret confidences of two women, at moments when they felt
+themselves alone and at the mercy of no judgment but that of God. Should
+I learn enough to pay me for the humiliation of my position? I did not
+weary myself by questioning. I knew my motive was pure, and fixed my
+mind upon that.
+
+Several times before the day was over did I return to the secret chamber
+and bend my ear to the wall. But in no instance did I linger long, for
+if the two ladies spoke at all it was on trivial subjects, and in such
+tones as indicated that neither their passions nor any particular
+interests were engaged. For such talk I had no ear.
+
+"It will not be always so," I thought to myself. "When night comes and
+the heart opens, they will speak of what lies upon their minds."
+
+And so it happened. As the inn grew quiet and the lights began to
+disappear from the windows, I crept again to my station against the
+partition, and in a darkness and atmosphere that at any other time in my
+life would have completely unnerved me, hearkened to the conversation
+within.
+
+"Oh, mamma," were the first words I heard, uttered in English, as all
+their talk was when they were moved or excited, "if you would only
+explain! If you would only tell me why you do not wish me to receive
+letters from him! But this silence--this love and this silence are
+killing me. I cannot bear it. I feel like a lost child who hears its
+mother's voice in the darkness, but does not know how to follow that
+voice to the refuge it bespeaks."
+
+"Time was when daughters found it sufficient to know that their parents
+disapproved of an act, without inquiring into their reasons for it. Your
+father has told you that the marquis is not eligible as a husband for
+you, and he expects this to content you. Have I the right to say more
+than he?"
+
+"Not the right, perhaps, mamma. I do not appeal to your sense of right,
+but to your love. I am very unhappy. My whole life's peace is trembling
+in the balance. You ought to see it--you do see it--yet you let me
+suffer without giving me one reason why I should do so."
+
+The mother's voice was still.
+
+"You see!" the daughter went on again, after what seemed like a moment
+of helpless waiting. "Though my arms are about you, and my cheek
+pressed close to yours, you will not speak. Do you wonder that I am
+heart-broken--that I feel like turning my face to the wall and never
+looking up again?"
+
+"I wonder at nothing."
+
+Was that madame's voice? What boundless misery! what unfathomable
+passion! what hopeless despair!
+
+"If he were unworthy!" her daughter here exclaimed.
+
+"It you could point to anything he lacks. But he has wealth, a noble
+name, a face so handsome that I have seen both you and papa look at him
+in admiration; and as for his mind and attainments, are they not
+superior to those of all the young men who have ever visited us? Mamma,
+mamma, you are so good that you require perfection in a son-in-law. But
+is he not as near it as a man may be? Tell me, darling, for in my dreams
+he always seems so."
+
+I heard the answer, though it came slowly and with apparent effort.
+
+"The marquis is an admirable young man, but we have another suitor in
+mind whose cause we more favor. We wish you to marry Armand Thierry."
+
+"A shop-keeper and a revolutionist! Oh, mamma!"
+
+"That is why we brought you away. That is why you are here--that you
+might have opportunity to bethink yourself, and learn that the parents'
+views in these matters are the truest ones, and that where we make
+choice, there you must plight your troth. I assure you that our reasons
+are good ones, if we do not give them. It is not from tyranny--"
+
+Here the set, strained voice stopped, and a sudden movement in the room
+beyond showed that the mother had risen. In fact, I presently heard her
+steps pacing up and down the floor.
+
+"I know it is not tyranny," the daughter finished, in the soft tones
+that were so great a contrast to her mother's. "Tyranny I could have
+understood; but it is mystery, and that is not so easily comprehended.
+Why should you and papa be mysterious? What is there in our simple life
+to create secrecy between persons who love each other so dearly? I see
+nothing, know nothing; and yet--"
+
+"Honora!"
+
+The word struck me like a blow. "Honora!" Great heaven! was that the
+name of this young girl?
+
+"You are giving too free range to your imagination. You--"
+
+I did not hear the rest. I was thinking of the name I had just heard,
+and wondering if my suspicions were at fault. They would never have
+called their child Honora. Who were these women, then? Friends of the
+Dudleighs? Avengers of the dead? I glued my ear still closer to the
+wall.
+
+"We have cherished you." The mother was still speaking. "We have given
+you all you craved, and more than you asked. From the moment you were
+born we have both lavished all the tenderness of our hearts upon you.
+And all we ask in return is trust." The hard voice, hard because of
+emotion, I truly believe, quavered a little over that word, but spoke it
+and went on. "What we do for you now, as always, is for your best good.
+Will you not believe it, Honora?"
+
+The last appeal was uttered in a passionate tone. It seemed to move the
+daughter, for her voice had a sob in it as she replied:
+
+"Yes, yes; but why not enlighten me as to your reasons for a course so
+remarkable? Most parents desire their daughters to do well, but you, on
+the contrary, not only wish, but urge me to do ill. A noble lover sues
+for my hand, and his cause is slighted; an ignoble one requests the same
+favor, and you run to grant it. Is there love in this? Is there
+consideration? Perhaps; but if so, you should be able to show where it
+lies. I am not a child, young as I am; I will understand any reasons you
+may advance. Then let me have your confidence; it is all I ask, and
+surely it is not much, when you see how I suffer from my
+disappointment."
+
+The restless steps ceased. I heard a groan close to my ear; the mother
+was evidently suffering frightfully.
+
+"Papa is prosperous," the daughter pleadingly continued. "I know your
+decision cannot be the result of financial difficulties. And then, if it
+were, the marquis is rich, and--"
+
+"Honora!"--the mother had turned. I heard her advance toward her
+daughter--"do you really love the marquis? You have seen him but a few
+times, have held hardly any intercourse with him, and at your age fancy
+often takes the place of love. You do not love him, Honora, my child;
+you cannot; you will forget--"
+
+"Oh, mamma! Oh, mamma! Oh, mamma!"
+
+The tone was enough. Silence reigned, broken at last by Mademoiselle
+Letellier saying: "It is not necessary to see such a man as he is very
+many times in order to adjudge him to be the best and noblest that the
+world contains. But, mamma, you are not correct in saying that I
+scarcely know him. Though you will not be frank with me, I am going to
+be frank with you and tell you something that I have hitherto kept
+closely buried in my breast. I did not think I should ever speak of it
+to any one, not even to you. Some dreams are so sweet to brood upon
+alone. But the shadow which your silence has caused to fall between us
+has taught me the value of openness and truth. I shall never hide
+anything from you again; so listen, sweet mamma, while I open to you my
+heart, and learn, as you can only learn from me, how your Honora first
+came to know and appreciate the Marquis de la Roche-Guyon."
+
+"Was it not," interrupted the mother, "at the great ball where he was
+formally introduced to us?"
+
+"No, mamma."
+
+Madame sighed.
+
+"Girls are all alike," she cried. "You think you know them, and lo!
+there comes a day when you find that it is in a stranger's hand you must
+look for a key to their natures."
+
+"And is not this what God wills?" suggested the child. "Indeed, indeed,
+you must blame nature and not me. I did not want to deceive you. I only
+found it impossible to speak. Besides, if you had looked at me closely
+enough, you would have seen yourself that I had met the marquis before.
+Such blushes do not come with a first introduction. I remember their
+burning heat yet. Are my cheeks warm now? I feel as if they ought to be.
+But there is nothing to grieve you in these blushes. It is only the way
+a loving heart takes to speak. There is no wicked shame in them; none,
+none."
+
+"Oh, God!"
+
+Did the daughter hear that bitter exclamation? She did not appear to;
+for her voice was quite calm, though immeasurably loving, as she
+proceeded in these words:
+
+"I was always a mother-girl. From the first day I can remember, I have
+known nothing sweeter than to sit within reach of your fondling hand.
+You were always so tender with me, mamma, even when I must have grieved
+you or disappointed your hopes or your pride. If I were in the way I
+never saw it, nor can I remember, of all the looks which have sometimes
+puzzled me in your face, one that spoke of impatience or lack of
+sympathy with my pleasures or my griefs. With papa it was not always so.
+No; don't stop me. You must let me speak of him. Though he has never
+been unkind to me, he has a way of frowning at times that frightens me.
+Whether he is displeased or simply ill I cannot say, but I have always
+felt a dread of papa's presence which I never felt of yours; and yet you
+frown, too, at times, though never upon me, mamma, dear--never upon me."
+
+A pause that was filled in by a kiss, and then the tender voice went on:
+
+"You can imagine, then, what a turmoil was aroused in my breast when one
+day, while leaning from the window, I saw a face in the street below
+that awakened within me such strange feelings I could not communicate
+them even to my mother. I who had hitherto confessed to her every
+trivial emotion of my life, shrank in a moment, as it were, from
+revealing a secret no deeper than that I had looked for one half minute
+upon the form of a passing stranger, and in that minute learned more of
+my own heart and of the true meaning of life than in all the sixteen
+years I had hitherto lived. You have seen him since, and you know he
+possesses every grace that can render a man attractive; but to me that
+day he did not look like a man at all, or if I thought of him as such, I
+thought of him as one who set a pattern to his fellows, while retaining
+his own immeasurable superiority. He did not see me. I do not know that
+I wished him to. I was quite content to watch him from where I stood,
+and note his lordly walk and kindly mien, and dream--oh, what did I
+dream that day! The memory of your own girlhood must tell you, mamma. I
+did not know his name; I did not suspect his rank; but from his youth I
+judged him to be single, from his bearing I knew him to be noble, and
+from his look, which called out a reflected brightness on every face he
+chanced to pass, I was assured that he was happy and that he was good.
+And what does a girl's fancy need more? Still a glimpse so short might
+not have had such deep consequences if it had not been followed by an
+event which rendered those first impressions indelible."
+
+"An event, Honora?"
+
+"Yes, mamma. You remember the day you sent me with Cecile to take my
+first lessons in tambour work of Madame Douay?"
+
+"Remember? Oh, my child, that awful day when you came near losing your
+life! When the house fell with you in it, and--"
+
+"Yes, yes, mamma, and I came home looking so pale you thought I was
+hurt, and fainted away, and would have died yourself if I had not kissed
+you back to life. Well, mamma, dear, I was hurt, but not in my body. It
+was my heart that had received a wound--a wound from which I never shall
+recover, for it was made by the greatness, the goodness, the noble
+self-sacrifice of the marquis."
+
+"Honora! And you never mentioned his name--never!"
+
+"I know, I know, mamma; but you have already forgiven me for that. You
+know it was from no unworthy motive. Think how you felt when you first
+saw papa. Think--"
+
+A hurried movement from the mother interrupted her.
+
+"Do not keep me in suspense," she pleaded; "let me hear what you have to
+tell."
+
+"But you are cold; you shudder. Let me get a shawl."
+
+"No, no, child, I am not cold, only impatient. Go on with your story--go
+on. How came you to meet the marquis in that place?"
+
+"Ah," cried the daughter, "it was a strange occurrence. It all came
+about through a mistake of Cecile's. Madame Douay, as we were told by
+the concierge, lived on the fourth floor, but Cecile made a miscount and
+we went up to the fifth, and as there was a Madame Douay there also, we
+did not detect our error, but went into her apartments and were seated
+in the small salon to await madame's presence. We had not told our
+errand, so we could not blame the maid who admitted us, nor, though
+madame failed to appear, did we ever remember to blame any one, for
+presently through the open window near which we sat there came the
+sound of voices from the room above, and a drama began of such startling
+interest that we could think of nothing else.
+
+"Two men were talking. Young men they seemed, and though I could not see
+them, I could tell from the fresh, fine voice of the one that he was a
+true man, and from the sneering, smothered tones of the other that he
+was not only a cynic, but of vicious tendencies. The first one was
+saying, 'I never suspected this,' when my attention was first called to
+their words, and the answer which came was as follows: 'If you had, I
+should not have had the pleasure of seeing you here. Men are not apt to
+rush voluntarily upon their deaths, and that you are a dead man you
+already know; for I have sworn to kill you as the clock strikes three,
+and it is but ten minutes of that time, and you have not a weapon with
+which to defend yourself.'
+
+"Mamma, you can imagine my feelings at hearing these words, though they
+were uttered by a person I could not see, to another person equally
+unknown to me? I looked at Cecile and she looked at me, but we could
+neither of us move. Every faculty seemed paralyzed save that of
+hearing. We held our breaths and listened for the reply. It came
+instantly and without a thrill in its clear accents.
+
+"'You are a gentleman, and no common assassin. How can you reconcile
+such an act as this with your honor, or with what sophistries quiet the
+stings of your conscience when time shall have shown you the sin of so
+unprovoked an onslaught?'
+
+"'It is not unprovoked,' was the harsh and bitter reply. 'You promised
+to marry Mademoiselle de Fontaine, and yesterday, at three o'clock--ah,
+I was there!--you formally renounced your claims. This is an insult that
+calls for blood, and blood it shall have. Twenty-four hours have elapsed
+less ten minutes, since you cast this slur upon a noble lady's good
+name. When the hour is ripe, you will pay the penalty it requires with
+your life.'
+
+"'But,' urged his young companion, 'Mademoiselle de Fontaine had herself
+requested the breaking off of this contract. I am but following the
+lady's behests in withdrawing from a position forced upon us against our
+will, and in direct opposition to her happiness.'
+
+"'And by what right do you presume to follow the behests of a lady still
+under age? Has she not guardians to consult? Should not I--'
+
+"'You?'
+
+"'Pardon me, I have not introduced myself, it seems. I am the Marquis de
+la Roche-Guyon.'"
+
+Honora paused; her mother's exclamation had stopped her:
+
+"The marquis! Oh! Honora, and you have always said he was so good!"
+
+"Wait, mamma; remember it is the cynical voice which is speaking, and
+the marquis's voice is not cynical. The words, however, are what I have
+told you; 'I am the Marquis de la Roche-Guyon.'
+
+"Of course, not knowing either party, nor this name, least of all
+realizing that it was the one by which the gentleman addressed was
+himself known, I did not understand why it should create so great an
+impression. But that it did was evident, not only from the momentary
+hush that followed, but from the violent exclamation that burst from the
+young man's lips. 'You scoundrel!' was his cry. But instantly he seemed
+to regret the word, for he said almost with the same breath: 'Your
+pardon, but there is but one man in the world besides myself who could,
+under any circumstances, have a right to that name.'
+
+"'And that man?'
+
+"'Is my cousin, the deceased marquis's son, long esteemed dead also, and
+now legally accepted as such.'
+
+"'And what assures you that I am not he? Your eyes? Well, I am changed,
+Louis, but not so changed that a good look should not satisfy you that I
+am the man I claim to be. Besides, you should know this mark on my
+forehead. You gave it to me--'
+
+"'Isidor!'
+
+"I could not comprehend it then, but I have learned since that the
+marquis--our marquis, I mean--had only just come into his title; that
+the son of the preceding Marquis de la Roche-Guyon had been so long
+missing that the courts had finally adjudged him dead, and given up his
+inheritance to his cousin; that the first act of the new marquis was to
+liberate the Demoiselle de Fontaine from an engagement that stood in the
+way of her marriage with one more desirable to her; and that the
+unexpected appearance of the real heir in this sudden and mysterious
+manner was as great a surprise to him as any mortal circumstance could
+be. Yet to me, who waited with palpitating heart and anxious ears for
+what should be said next, there was no evidence of this in his tone.
+With the politeness we are accustomed to in Frenchmen he observed:
+
+"'You are welcome, Isidor;' and then, as if struck himself by the
+incongruity between this phrase and the look and manner of his
+companion, he added, in slow tones--'even if you do bring a sword with
+you.'
+
+"The other, the real marquis, as I suppose, seemed to hesitate at this,
+and I began to hope he was ashamed of his dreadful threats and would
+speedily beg the other's pardon. But I did not know the man, or realize
+the determination which lay at the bottom of his furious and
+uncompromising words. But he soon made it evident to us.
+
+"'Louis,' he exclaimed, 'you have always been my evil genius. From our
+childhood you have stood in my way with your superior strength, beauty,
+prowess and address. When I was young I simply shrank from you in shame
+and distaste, but as I grew older I learned to detest you; and now that
+I see you again, after five years of absence, handsome as ever, taller
+than ever, and radiant, notwithstanding your nearness to death, with
+memories such as I have never known, nor can know, and beliefs such as I
+have never cherished nor will cherish, I hate you so that I find it
+difficult to wait for the five minutes yet to elapse before my word will
+let me lift my pistol and fire upon you.'
+
+"'Then it is your hate of me, and not your fondness for your sister,
+that has led you to lay this trap for me?' exclaimed the other. 'I
+should think your hate would be satisfied by the change which your
+return will make in my prospects. From the marquisate of La Roche-Guyon
+to a simple captaincy in his majesty's guards is quite a step, Isidor.
+Will it not suffice to soothe an antagonism which I never shared?'
+
+"'Nothing can soothe it, not even your death! You have robbed me of too
+much. First, of the world's esteem, then of my mother's confidence, and,
+lastly, of my father's love. Yes; deny it if you will, my father loved
+you better than he did me. This was the reason he sent me from home; and
+when, shipwrecked and captured by savages, I found myself thrown into
+an Eastern dungeon, half my misery and all my rage were in the thought
+that he would not consider my loss a misfortune, but die in greater
+peace and hope from knowing that his family honors would devolve upon
+one more after his own heart than myself. Oh! I have had cause, and I
+have had time to nourish my hate. Five years in a dungeon affords one
+leisure, and on every square stone of that wall, and upon every inch of
+its relentless pavement, I have beaten out this determination with my
+bare hands and manacled feet, that if I ever did escape, and ever did
+return to the home of my fathers, I would have full pay for the
+suffering you have caused me, even if I had it in your blood. I have
+returned, and I find my father dead, and in his place yourself, happy,
+insolent, and triumphant. Can you blame me for remembering my vows, for
+resenting what will ever seem an insult to my sister, and for wishing to
+hurry the time that moves so slowly toward the fatal stroke of three?'
+
+"'I do not blame you, because you are a madman. I do not fear you,
+because, having no one in the world to love, I do not greatly dread a
+sudden release from it. But I pity you because you have suffered, and
+will defend myself because your sufferings will be increased rather than
+diminished by the success of your crazy intentions.'
+
+"The answer came, quick and furious:
+
+"'I do not want your pity, and I scorn any defense which you can make.
+Do you think I have not made my calculations well? There is nothing here
+which can give you hope. We are alone on the sixth story. Beneath us are
+only women, and if you call from the window, I can shoot you dead before
+your voice can reach the street. Perhaps, though, you do not think of
+saving yourself, but of ensnaring me. Bah! as if the sight of the
+headsman would stop me now. Besides, I am prepared for flight. Have you
+looked at this house? It is not like other houses; it is double, and the
+room in which we stand has other foundations and walls from this one
+behind me which I guard with my pistol. Let the deed be once done--and
+the clock, as you see, gives us but one minute more--and I leap into
+this other apartment, down another flight of stairs from those you came
+up, and so to another door that opens upon another street. Then shout,
+if you will; I am safe. As to your life, it is as much at my command as
+if my bullet were already in your heart.'
+
+"'We will see!' was the thundering reply, and with these words a rush
+was made that shook the floor above our heads, and scattered bits of
+plaster down upon us. Released by the action from the fearful spell
+which had benumbed my limbs, I felt that I could move at last, and,
+leaping to my feet, I uttered scream after scream. But they perished in
+my throat, smothered by a new fear; for at this moment my arm was caught
+by Cecile, and following, with horrified gaze, the pointing of her
+uplifted hand, I saw the straight line of the window-ledge before me dip
+and curve, and yielding to the force of her agonized strength, I let
+myself be dragged across the floor, while before us, beneath us, above
+us, all was one chaos of heaving and crashing timbers, which, in another
+instant, broke into a thunder of confused sounds, and we beheld beneath
+us a pit of darkness, death, and tumult, where, but an instant before,
+were all the appurtenances of a comfortable and luxurious home.
+
+"We were safe, for we had reached the flooring of the second house
+before that of the first had completely fallen, but I could not think
+of myself, narrow as my escape had been, and marvelous as was the
+warning which had revealed to Cecile the only path of safety. For in the
+clouded space above me, overhanging a gulf I dared not measure with my
+eyes or sound with my imagination, I saw clinging by one arm to a beam
+the awful figure of a man, while crouching near him on a portion of
+flooring that still clung intact to the wall, I beheld another in whose
+noble traits, distorted though they were by the emotions of the moment,
+I recognized him who, but a month before, had changed the world for me
+with his look.
+
+"Ah! mamma, and a thousand deaths lay between us; and we could neither
+reach him nor give any alarm, for the space in which we found ourselves
+was small and shut from the outer world by a door which was locked. How
+it became locked I never knew, but I have thought that the maid in
+flying might have turned the key behind her, under some wild impression
+that by this means she would shut out destruction. However that may be,
+we were helpless and threatened by death. But our own situation did not
+alarm us, for theirs was so much more terrible, especially that of the
+man whose straining arm clung so frantically to a support that
+threatened every moment to slip from his grasp. I could not look at him,
+and scarcely could I look at the other. But I did, for in his face there
+was such a high and noble resolve that it made me forget his danger,
+till suddenly I heard him speak high above the sounds that arose in a
+tempest from the street:
+
+"'Do not despair, Isidor. I think I can reach you and pull you up upon
+the beam. You shall not die a dog's death if I can help it. Hold on and
+I will come.' And he began to move and raise himself upon the narrow
+platform on which he stood, and I saw that he meant what he said, and
+involuntarily and with but little reason I cried:
+
+"'Don't do it! He is your enemy. Save yourself; he is but a murderer;
+let him go.'
+
+"I said that; I who never had a cruel thought before in my life. But he,
+without looking to see whence this voice came, answered boldly:
+
+"'It is because he is my enemy that I wish to save him. I could never
+enjoy a safety won at the expense of his death. Isidor, you must live!
+So hold on, my cousin.'
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"And without saying anything further, this brave man set about a task
+that seemed to me at that moment not only superhuman but impossible.
+Gathering himself up, he prepared to make a spring, and in another
+instant would have launched himself toward that rocking beam, if Cecile,
+driven to extremity by the slow tottering of the floor upon which we
+stood, had not shrieked:
+
+"'And to save him you would leave us to perish?'
+
+"He paused and gave one look. 'Yes!' he cried. 'God help you, but you
+look like innocent women, while he--' The leap was made. He lay clinging
+to the beam. His cousin, who had not fallen, cast one glance up; their
+eyes met, and Isidor, as he was called, gave one great sob. 'Oh, Louis!'
+he murmured, and was silent.
+
+"And then, mamma, there began a struggle for rescue such as I dare not
+even recall. I saw it because I could not look elsewhere, but I crushed
+its meaning from my consciousness, lest I should myself perish before I
+saw him safe. And all the while the figure hanging over us swayed with
+the rocking of the beam, and gave no help until that last terrible
+moment when his cousin, reaching down, was able to sustain him under the
+arm till he could get his other hand up and clasp it around the beam.
+Then it all looked well, and we began to hope, when suddenly and without
+warning the nearly rescued man gave a great shriek, and crying, 'You
+have conquered!' unloosed his grasp, and fell headlong into the abyss.
+
+"Mamma, I did not faint. An unnatural strength seemed given to me. But I
+looked at the marquis, and for the first time he looked at me, and I saw
+the expression of horrified amaze with which he had beheld his cousin
+disappear gradually change to one of the softest and divinest looks that
+ever visited a noble visage, and knew that even out of that pit of death
+love had arisen for us two, and that henceforth we belonged to each
+other, whether our span of life should be cut short in a moment or
+extended into an eternity of years. His own heart seemed to assure him
+of the same sweet fact, for the next moment he was renewing his
+superhuman efforts, but this time for our rescue and his own. He worked
+himself along that beam; he gave another leap; he landed at our side,
+and tore a way for us through that closed door. In another five minutes
+we were in the street, with half Paris surging about us, but before the
+crowd had quite seized upon me, he had found time to whisper in my ear:
+
+"'I am the Marquis de la Roche-Guyon. It will always be a matter of
+thankfulness to me that I was not left to sacrifice the fairest woman in
+the world to the rescue of a thankless coward.'
+
+"Mamma, do you blame me for giving such a man my heart, and do you
+wonder that what I have dedicated to this hero I can never yield to any
+other man?"
+
+The mother was silent--for a long time silent. Was she horror-stricken
+at the story of a danger she had never fully comprehended till now? Or
+were her thoughts busy with her own past, and its possible
+incommunicable secrets of blood and horror? The cry she gave at last
+betrayed anguish, but did not answer this question.
+
+"My child! my child! my child!" That was all, but it seemed torn from
+her heart, that bled after it.
+
+"He was not long in seeking me out, mamma, dear. With grace and
+consideration he paid me his court, and I was happy till I saw that you
+and papa frowned upon an alliance that to me seemed laden with promise.
+I could not understand it, nor could I understand our hurried departure
+from France, nor our secret journey here. All has been a mystery to me;
+but your will is my will, and I dare not complain."
+
+"Pure heart!" broke from the mother's lips. "Would to God--"
+
+"What, dear mamma?"
+
+"That you had been moved by a lesser man than the Marquis de la
+Roche-Guyon."
+
+"A lesser man?"
+
+"With Armand Thierry, since he is the one you will have to marry."
+
+"I shall not marry him."
+
+"Shall not?"
+
+"If I cannot give my hand where my heart is, I remain unmarried. I
+dishonor no man with unmeaning marriage vows."
+
+"Honora!"
+
+"I may never be happy, but I will never be base. You yourself cannot
+wish me to be that. You, who married for love, must understand that a
+woman loses her title to respect when she utters vows to one man while
+her heart is with another."
+
+"But--"
+
+"You did marry for love, didn't you, sweet mamma? I like to think so. I
+like to think that papa never cared for any other woman in all the world
+but you, and that from the moment you first saw him, you knew him to be
+the one man capable of rousing every noble instinct within you. It is so
+sweet to enshrine you in such a pure romance, mamma. Though you have
+been married sixteen years--ah, how old I am!--I see you sit and look at
+papa sometimes, for a long, long time without speaking, and though you
+do not smile, I think, 'She is dreaming of the days when life was pure
+joy, because it was pure love,' and I long to ask you to tell me about
+those days, because I am sure, if you did, you would tell me the
+sweetest story of mutual love and devotion. Isn't it so, mamma mine?"
+
+Would that mother answer? Could she? I seemed to behold her figure
+pausing petrified in the darkness, drawing deep breaths, and scarcely
+knowing whether to curse or pray. I listened and listened, but it was
+long before the answer came. Then it was short and hurried, like the
+pants of one dying.
+
+"Honora, you hurt me." Another silence. "You make my task too hard. If I
+know what love is--" She found it hard to go on; but she did--"all the
+more anguish it must cost me to deny you what is so deeply desired. I--I
+would make you happy if I could. I will make you happy if it is in my
+power to do so, but I can hold out no hope--none, none."
+
+"Nor tell me why?"
+
+"Nor tell you why."
+
+"Mamma, you suffer. I see it now, and somehow it makes it easier for me
+to bear my own suffering. You do not willfully deny me what is as much
+as my life to me."
+
+"Willfully! Honora! Listen." The mother had stopped in her walk, for I
+heard her restless tread no more. "You say that I suffer, child. I have
+never had one happy day. Whatever romance you have woven about me, I
+have never known, from the hour of my birth till now, one moment of such
+delight as you experienced when you saw the character of the marquis
+unfold before you so grandly. The nearest I have ever come to bliss was
+when you were first placed in my arms. Then, indeed, for one wild
+moment, I felt the baptism of true love. I looked at you, and my heart
+opened. Alas! it was to take in pain as well as joy. You had the face--
+Oh, Heaven! what am I saying? This darkness unnerves me, Honora. Let us
+have light, light, anything to keep my reason from faltering."
+
+"Mother, mother, you are ill!"
+
+"No. I am simply weak. I always am when I recall your birth and the
+first few days that followed it. I was so glad to have something I could
+really love; so glad to feel that my heart beat, and to know that it
+beat for one so innocent, so sweet, so helpless as yourself. What if I
+had pains and hours of darkness, did I not have your smile, also, and,
+later on, your love? Child, if there has been any good in my life--and
+sometimes I have thought there was a little--it came from you. So, never
+even question again if I could hurt you willfully. I not only could not
+do this and live, but to save you from pain I would dare-- What would I
+not dare? Let man or angels say."
+
+Before such passion as this young Honora sank helpless.
+
+"Oh, mamma, mamma," she moaned, "forgive me. I did not know--how could
+I know? Don't sob, mamma, dear; let me hold you--so; now lay your cheek
+against mine and simply love me. I will lie quite still and ask no
+questions, and you will rest, too; and God will bless us, as he always
+blesses the loving and the true."
+
+But madame did not comply with this endearing request. Satisfying her
+daughter with a few kisses and some words that the paroxysm of her grief
+was past, she resumed her walk up and down the room, pausing every now
+and then as if to listen, and hastily resuming her walk as some slight
+exclamation from the bed assured her that mademoiselle was not yet
+asleep. As these pauses always took place when she was near the wall
+behind which I crouched, I frequently heard her breath, which came
+heavily, and once the rustle of her gown. But I did not stir. As long as
+her uneasy form flitted about the room, I clung to the partition,
+listening, determined that nothing should move me--not even my own
+terrors. And though night presently merged into midnight, and the
+silence and horror of the spot became frightful, I kept my post, for the
+stealthy tread continued, and so did the desultory scraps of
+conversation, which proved that, if the mother was waiting for the
+daughter to sleep, the daughter was equally waiting for the mother to
+retire. And so daylight came, and with it exhaustion to more than one of
+us three watchers.
+
+And this is the record of the first night spent by me in the secret
+chamber.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+A SURPRISE FOR HONORA.
+
+
+OCTOBER 22, 1791.
+
+[Illustration: E]
+
+Events crowd. This morning the one girl I have taken into my confidence
+came to my room with a strange tale. A stranger had arrived, an elegant
+young gentleman of foreign appearance, who had not yet given his name,
+but who must be a person of importance, if bearing and address go for
+anything. He came on horseback, attended by his valet, and his first
+word, after some directions in regard to his horse, was a request to see
+the landlady. When told she was ill, he asked for the clerk, and to him
+was about to put some question, when an exclamation from the doorway
+interrupted them. Turning, they saw madame standing there, her face
+petrified into an expression of terrified surprise.
+
+"Mrs.--"
+
+"Hush!" sprang from the lady's lips before he could finish his
+exclamation; and advancing, she laid her hand on his arm, saying, in
+French, which, by the way, my clerk understands: "If you hope anything
+from us, do not speak the name that is faltering on your tongue. For
+reasons of our own, for reasons of a purely domestic nature, we are
+traveling incognito. Let me ask you as a gentleman to humor our whim,
+and to know us at present as Madame and Mademoiselle Letellier."
+
+He bowed, but flushed with embarrassment.
+
+"And mademoiselle? She is well, I trust?"
+
+"Quite well."
+
+"And yourself?"
+
+"Quite well, also. May I ask what has brought you into these parts,
+whom we thought in another and somewhat distant country?"
+
+"Need you ask?"
+
+They had drawn a little apart by this time, and the clerk heard no more;
+but their manner--the lady's especially--was so singular that he thought
+I ought to know that she was here under a false name, and so had sent
+Margery to me with the news. As for the gentleman and Madame Letellier,
+they were still conversing in the lowest tones together.
+
+Interested intensely in this new development in the drama hourly
+unfolding before my eyes, I dismissed Margery with an instruction or
+two, and passed into the hidden chamber, where I again laid my ear to
+the wall. The mother would have something to say when she returned, and
+I determined to hear what it was.
+
+I had to wait a long time, but was rewarded at last by the sound of
+voices and the distinct exclamation from the daughter's lips:
+
+"Oh, mamma! what has happened?"
+
+The mother's reply was delayed, but it came at last:
+
+"My face is becoming strangely communicative. You will read all my
+thoughts next. What makes you think anything has happened? Is this a
+place for occurrences?"
+
+"Oh, mamma! you cannot deceive me. Your very limbs are trembling. See,
+you can hardly stand; and then, how you look at me! Oh, mamma, dear! is
+it good news or bad? for from your eyes it might be either. Has he--"
+
+"He, he--always he!" the mother passionately interrupted. "You do not
+love your mother. You are thinking always of one whom you never saw till
+a year ago. My doubts, my fears, my sufferings are nothing to you. I
+might die--"
+
+"Hush! hush! Whenever did you speak like this before, mamma? Love you!
+Did ever a child love her mother more? But our affection is sure, while
+that of him you do not like me to mention is threatened, and its
+existence forbidden. I cannot help but think, mamma, and of him. If I
+could, I were a traitor to the noblest instincts that sway a woman's
+heart. I may not marry him--you say I never will--but think of him I
+must, and pray for him I will, till the last breath has left my lips.
+So, what is your news, dear mamma? Has papa written?"
+
+"It is too early for the mail."
+
+"True, true. Some one has come, then; a messenger, perhaps, from New
+York. M. Dubois--"
+
+"Dubois is a traitor. He has not kept the secret of our whereabouts. We
+have to settle with Monsieur and Madame Dubois, meanwhile--"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Honora, can I trust you?"
+
+"Trust me?"
+
+"Ah! who is trembling now?"
+
+"I! I! But how can I help it! You glance toward the door; you seem
+afraid some one will come. You--you--"
+
+"Tut! do not mind me! Answer what I ask. Could you see the marquis--talk
+to him, hear him urge his love and plead for yours, without forgetting
+that your obedience is mine, and that you are not to give him so much as
+the encouragement of a glance, till I either give you permission to do
+so or command from you his immediate and unqualified dismissal?"
+
+"See him?" It was all the poor girl had heard.
+
+"Yes; see him. You have come from Paris--why not he? Since Dubois has
+proved himself a traitor--"
+
+"Oh, mamma!" came now in great sobs, "you are not playing with me. He
+has come; he is here; the horse I heard stop at the door--"
+
+"Was that of the marquis," acknowledged the mother. "He is in the
+sitting room, child, but he does not expect you at present. This evening
+you shall see him if you will promise me what I have asked. Otherwise he
+must go. I will have no complications arising out of a secret betrothal.
+If you have not sufficient strength--"
+
+"Oh, I have strength, mamma! I have strength. Only let me see him, and
+prove to myself that he is not worn by trouble and suspense, and I will
+do all you ask of me. Ah, how well I feel! What a beautiful--what a
+lovely day this is! Must I not go out till evening? May I not take one
+wee walk in the garden?"
+
+"Not one, my child. At nine o'clock you may go to the sitting room for a
+half hour. Till then, think over what I have said, and prepare your lips
+to be dumb and your eyes to remain downcast; for I am firm in my
+demands, and nothing will make me change them."
+
+"You may trust me." There was despair in the tones now....
+
+As they talked but little after this, and as I was greatly interested in
+seeing the young man who had been heralded by such glowing descriptions,
+I stole back to my room, and, putting on a green shade, hastened to join
+my guests in the front part of the house. One glance from beneath my
+hurriedly uplifted shade was sufficient to assure me as to which of the
+gentlemen there assembled was the one I sought. So frank a face, so fine
+a form, so attractive a manner, were not often seen in my inn, and
+prepossessed at once in his favor, I advanced to the owner of all these
+graces, and, calling him by name, bade him welcome to my house.
+
+He must understand our language well, for he immediately turned with
+gentle urbanity, and discerning, perhaps, something in my face which
+assured him of my sympathy and respect, entered into a fluent
+conversation with me that at once increased my admiration and awakened
+my pity. For I saw that his nature was strong and his feelings deep, and
+as the future could have nothing but shame and misery, I instinctively
+felt oppressed by the fate which awaited him.
+
+He did not seem to feel any apprehension himself. His eyes were bright;
+his smile beaming; his bearing full of hope. Now and then his glance
+would steal toward the door or through the open windows, as if he longed
+to catch a glimpse of some passing face or form; and at last, swayed by
+that sympathy which we women all feel for true love in man or woman, I
+asked him to accompany me into the garden, promising him a view that
+would certainly delight him. As the garden was plainly visible from the
+oak parlor, you can readily understand to what view I alluded. But he
+had no suspicion of my meaning, and followed me with some reluctance.
+
+But his aspect changed materially when, in walking up and down the
+paths, I casually remarked:
+
+"This is the least inhabited side of the inn. Only one room is occupied,
+and that by two foreigners--Madame and Mademoiselle Letellier. Yet it
+has a pleasant outlook, as you yourself can see."
+
+"Is she--are they behind those windows?" he asked, with an impetuosity I
+could not but admire in a man with so much to recommend him to the
+consideration of others. "I beg your pardon," he added, a moment later,
+after a stolen glance at the house. "I know those ladies, and anything
+in connection with them is interesting to me."
+
+I believed it, and had hard work to hide my secret trouble. But his
+preoccupation assisted me, and at length I found courage to remark:
+
+"They are from Paris, I understand. A fine woman, Madame Letellier. Must
+be much admired in her own land?"
+
+He seemed to have no reason for resenting my curiosity.
+
+"She is," was his quick reply. "She is not only admired, but respected.
+I have never heard her name mentioned but with honor. I am happy to be
+known as her friend."
+
+I gave him one quick look. Good God! What lay before this man! And he so
+unconscious! I felt like wishing the inn would fall to atoms before our
+eyes, crushing beneath it the sin of the past and his false hopes for
+the future. He saw nothing. He was smiling upon a rose which he had
+plucked and was holding in his hand.
+
+"This inn is one of the antiquities," I now observed, anxious to know if
+any hint of its secrets had ever reached his ears. "They say it is one
+of the first structures reared on the river. Have you ever heard any of
+the traditions connected with it?"
+
+"Oh, no," he smiled. "The Happy-Go-Lucky is quite a stranger to me. You
+cherish up all its legends, though, I have no doubt. Are there any tales
+of ghosts among them? I can easily imagine certain disembodied spirits
+wandering through its narrow halls and up and down its winding
+staircases."
+
+"What spirits?" I asked, convinced, however, by his manner that he was
+talking at random, with the probable aim of prolonging our walk within
+view of the window behind which his darling might stand concealed.
+
+"Madame must inform me. I have too little acquaintance with this country
+to venture among its traditions."
+
+"There is a story," I began; but here a finely modulated but piercing
+voice rang musically down the paths from the house, and we heard:
+
+"Your eyes will certainly suffer, Mrs. Truax, if you let the hot sun
+glare upon them so mercilessly." And, turning, we saw madame's smiling
+face looking from her casement with a meaning that struck us both dumb
+and led me to shorten our walk lest my interest in the romance then
+going on should be suspected and my usefulness thus become abridged.
+
+Was it to forestall my suspicions, rid herself of my vigilance, or to
+insure herself against any forgetfulness on her daughter's part, that
+madame, some two hours later, sent me the following note:
+
+        "DEAR MRS. TRUAX: I can imagine that after your
+        walk in the blazing sunlight you do not feel
+        very well this evening. I must nevertheless
+        request of you a favor, my need being great and
+        you being the only person who can assist me.
+        The Marquis de la Roche-Guyon, with whom I saw
+        you promenading, has come to this place with
+        the express intention of paying court to my
+        daughter. As I am not prepared to frown upon
+        his suit, and equally unprepared to favor it, I
+        do not feel at liberty to refuse him the
+        pleasure of an interview with my daughter, and
+        yet do not desire them to enjoy such an
+        interview alone. As I am ill, quite ill, with a
+        sudden and excruciating attack of pain in my
+        right hip, may I ask if you will fulfill the
+        office of chaperon for me, and, without
+        embarrassment to either party, take such
+        measures as will prevent an absolute confidence
+        between them, till I have obtained the sanction
+        of my husband to an intimacy which I myself
+        dare not encourage?
+
+        "Very truly your debtor, if you accomplish
+        this, MADAME LETELLIER."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+IN THE SECRET CHAMBER.
+
+
+Have only twenty-four hours elapsed? Is it but yesternight that all the
+terrible events took place, the memory of which are now making my frame
+tremble? So the clock says, and yet how hard it is to believe it. Madame
+Letellier-- But I will preserve my old method. I will not anticipate
+events, but relate them as they occurred.
+
+To go back then to the note which I received from madame. I did not like
+it. I did not see its consistency, and I did not mean to be its dupe. If
+she intended remaining in the oak parlor, then over the oak parlor I
+would keep watch; for from her alone breathed whatever danger there
+might be for any of us, and to her alone did I look for the explanation
+of her mysterious presence in a spot that should have held a thousand
+repellent forces for her and hers. As for her sudden illness, that was
+nonsense. She was as well as I was myself. Had I not seen her standing
+at the window an hour or two before?
+
+But here I made a mistake. Madame was really ill, as I presently had
+occasion to observe. For not only was a physician summoned, but word
+came that she wished to see me, also; and when I went to her room I
+found her in bed, her face pallid and distorted with pain, and her whole
+aspect betraying the greatest physical suffering.
+
+It was a rheumatic attack, affecting mainly her right limb, and made her
+so helpless that, for a moment, I stood aghast at what looked to me like
+a dispensation of Providence. But in another instant I began to doubt
+again; for though I knew it was beyond anybody's power to simulate the
+suffering under which she evidently labored, I was made to feel, by her
+penetrating and restless looks, that her mind retained its hold upon its
+purpose, whatever that purpose might be, and that for me to relax my
+vigilance now would be to give her an advantage that would be
+immediately seized upon.
+
+I therefore held my sympathies in check; and, while acting the part of
+the solicitous landlady, watched for that glance or word which should
+reveal her secret intentions. Her daughter, whose eyes were streaming
+with tears, stood over her like a pitying angel, and not till we had
+done all we could to relieve her mother, and subdue her pain, did she
+allow her longing eyes to turn toward the clock that beat out the
+passing moments with mechanical precision. It was just a quarter to
+nine.
+
+The mother saw that glance, and hid her face for a moment; then she took
+mademoiselle by the hand, and drawing her down to her, whispered
+audibly:
+
+"I expect you to keep your appointment. Mrs. Truax will send one of the
+girls to sit with me. Besides, I feel better, and as if I could sleep.
+Only remember your promise, dear. No look, no hint of your feelings."
+
+Mademoiselle flushed scarlet. Stealing a look at me, she drew back
+embarrassed, but oh! how joyous. I felt my old heart quiver as I
+surveyed her, and in spite of the dread form of the redoubtable woman
+stretched before me, in spite of the grewsome room and its more than
+grewsome secrets, something of the fairy light of love seemed to fall
+upon my spirit and lift the darkness from the place for one short and
+glowing moment.
+
+"Look in the glass," the mother now commanded. "You need to tie up your
+curls again and to put a fresh flower at your throat. I do not wish you
+to show weariness. Mrs. Truax"--these words to me in low tones, as her
+daughter withdrew to the other side of the room--"you received my note?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"You will do what I ask?"
+
+I nodded again. Deliberate falsehood it was, but I showed no faltering.
+
+"Then I will excuse you now."
+
+I rose.
+
+"And do not send any one to me. I wish to sleep, and another's presence
+would disturb me. See, the pain is almost gone."
+
+She did look better.
+
+"Your wishes shall be regarded," I assured her. "If you do feel worse,
+ring this bell and Margery will notify me." And placing the bell rope
+near her hand, I drew back and presently quitted the room.
+
+Lingering in the hall just long enough to see the lovely Honora flit
+across the threshold of the sitting-room which I had purposely ordered
+vacant for her use, I hurried to my room.
+
+It was dark, dark as the secret chamber into which I now stole with the
+lightest and wariest of steps. Horror, gloom, and apprehension were in
+the air, which brooded stiflingly in the narrow spot, and had it not
+been for the righteous purpose sustaining me, I should have fallen at
+this critical moment, crushed beneath the terrible weight of my own
+feelings.
+
+But one who has to listen, straining every faculty to catch the purport
+of what is going on behind an impenetrable wall, soon forgets himself
+and his own sensations. As I pressed my ear to the wall and caught the
+sound of a prolonged and painful stir within, I only thought of
+following the movements of madame, who, I was now sure, had left her bed
+and was dragging herself, with what difficulty and distress I could but
+faintly judge by the involuntary groans which now and then left her,
+across the floor toward the door, the key of which I presently heard
+turn.
+
+This done, a heavy silence followed, then the slow, dragging sound began
+again, interrupted now by weary pants and heavy sobs that at first
+chilled me and then shook me with such fear that it was with difficulty
+that I could retain my place against the wall. She was crawling in my
+direction, and at each instant I heard the pants grow louder.
+
+I gradually withdrew, step by step, till I found myself pressed up
+against the wall in the remotest corner I could find. And here was I
+standing, enveloped in darkness and dread, when the sounds changed to
+that of a shuddering, rushing noise which I had heard once before in my
+life, and from a narrow gap through which the faint light in the room
+beyond dimly shone in a thread of lesser darkness, the aperture grew,
+till I could feel rather than see her form, crawling, not walking,
+through the opening, and hear, distinct enough, her horrible, gurgling
+tones as she murmured:
+
+"I shall have to grope for what I want--touch it, feel it, for I cannot
+see. O God! O God! What horror! What punishment!"
+
+Nearer, nearer over the floor she came, dragging her useless limb behind
+her. Her outstretched arm groped, groped about the floor, while I stood
+trembling and agonized with horror till her hand touched the skirt of my
+dress, when, with a great shriek of suddenly liberated feeling, I pushed
+her from me, and crying out, "Murderess! do you seek the bones of your
+victim?" I flung open the door against which I stood and let the light
+from my own room stream in upon us two.
+
+Her face as I saw it at that moment has never left my memory. She had
+fallen in a heap at my first move, and now lay crushed before me, with
+only her wide-staring eyes and shaking lips to tell me that she lived.
+
+"You thought I did not know you," I burst forth. "You thought, because I
+had never seen your face, you could come back here, bringing your
+innocent daughter with you, and cast yourself into the very atmosphere
+of your crime without awakening the suspicion of the woman whose house
+you had made a sepulcher of for so many years. But crime was written too
+plainly on your brow. The spirit of Honora Urquhart, breaking the bounds
+of this room, has walked ever beside you, and I knew you from the first
+moment that you strayed down this hall."
+
+Broken sounds, unintelligible murmurings, were all that greeted me.
+
+"You are punished," I went on, "in the misery of your daughter. Nemesis
+has reached you. The blood of Honora Urquhart has called aloud from
+these walls, and not yourself only, but the still viler being whose name
+you have so falsely shared, must answer to man and God for the life you
+so heartlessly sacrificed and the rights you so falsely usurped."
+
+"Mercy!" came in one quick gasp from the crushed heap of humanity before
+me.
+
+But I was inexorable. I remembered Honora Urquhart's sweet face, and at
+that moment could think of nothing else. So I went on.
+
+"You have had years of triumph. You have borne your victim's name, worn
+your victim's clothes, sported with your victim's money. And he, her
+husband, has looked on and smiled. Day after day, month after month,
+year after year, you have gone in and out before your friends,
+unmolested and unafraid; but God's vengeance, though it halts, is sure
+and keen. Across land and across water the memories of this room have
+drawn you, and not content with awakening suspicion, you must make
+suspicion certainty by moving a spring unknown even to myself, and
+entering this spot, from which the bones of your victim were taken only
+two months ago, Marah Leighton!"
+
+Moved by the name, she stood up. Tottering and agonized with pain, but
+firm once more and determined, she towered before me, her face turned
+toward the room she had left, her hand lifted, her whole attitude that
+of one listening.
+
+"Hark!" she cried.
+
+It was a knock, a faint, low, trembling knock that we heard, then the
+word "Mamma" came in muffled accents from the hallway.
+
+A convulsion crossed the countenance of the miserable woman before me.
+
+"Oh, God! my daughter, my daughter!" she cried. And falling at my feet,
+she groveled in anguish as she pleaded:
+
+"Will you kill her? She knows nothing, suspects nothing. The whole
+fifteen years of her life are pure. She is a flower. I love her--I love
+her, though she looks like the woman I hated and killed. She bears her
+name--why, I do not know--I could not call her anything else; she is my
+living reproach, and yet I love her. Do you not see it was for her I
+crossed the water, for her I plunged my living hand into this tomb to
+learn if our secret had ever been discovered, and if there was any hope
+that she might yet be made happy? Ah, woman, woman, you are not a
+wretch--a demon! You will not sentence this innocent soul to disgrace
+and misery. Even if I must die--and I swear that I will die if you say
+so--leave to my child her hopes; keep secret my sin, and take the
+blessing of the most miserable being that crawls upon the earth, as a
+solace for your old age. Hear me; hear a wretched mother's plea--"
+
+"It is too late," I broke in. "Even were I silent there are others upon
+your track. I doubt if your husband does not already know that the day
+of his prosperity is at an end."
+
+She gave a low cry, and tottered from the place. Entering her own room,
+she threw herself upon the bed. I followed, drawing the curtains about
+her. Then closing the door of communication between the oak parlor and
+the chamber beyond, I passed to the door behind which we could yet hear
+her daughter's soft voice calling, and, unlocking it, let the radiant
+creature in.
+
+"Oh, mamma!" she began, "I could not keep my word--"
+
+But here I held up my hand, and drawing her softly out, told her that
+her mother needed rest just now, and that if she would come to my room
+for a little while it would be best; and so prevailed upon her that she
+promised to do what I asked, though I saw her cast longing glances
+through the partly opened door toward the somber bed so like a tomb, and
+which at that moment was a tomb, had she known it--a tomb of hope, of
+joy, of peace for evermore.
+
+I was just going out, when a slight stir detained me. Looking back, I
+saw a hand thrust out from between the falling curtains. Just a hand,
+but how eloquent it was! Pointing it out to mademoiselle, I said:
+
+"Your mother's hand. Give it a kiss, mademoiselle, but do not part the
+curtains."
+
+She smiled and crossed to that ominous bed. Kneeling, she kissed the
+hand, which thereupon raised itself and rested on her head. In another
+instant it was drawn slowly away, and, with a startled look, the
+half-weeping daughter rose and glided again to my side.
+
+As I closed the door I thought of those words: "And the sins of the
+father shall be visited upon the children to the third and fourth
+generation."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+THE MARQUIS.
+
+
+But the events of the night are not over. As soon as I had seen
+mademoiselle comfortably ensconced in my old room up stairs, I returned
+to the sitting room, where the marquis still lingered. He was standing
+in the window when I entered, and turned with quite a bright face to
+greet me. But that brightness soon vanished as he met my glance, and it
+was with something like dismay that he commented upon my paleness, and
+asked if I were ill.
+
+I told him I was ill at ease; that events of a most serious nature were
+transpiring in the house; that he was concerned in them heavily,
+grievously; that I could not rest till I had taken him into my
+confidence, and shown him upon what a precipice he was standing.
+
+He evidently considered me demented, but as he looked at me longer, and
+noted my steady and unflinching gaze, he gradually turned pale, and
+uttered, in irrepressible anxiety, the one word--"Honora!"
+
+"Miss Urquhart is well," I began, "and is as ignorant as yourself of the
+shadows that hover over her. She is all innocence and truth, sir. Honor,
+candor and purity dwell in her heart, and happiness in her eyes. Yet is
+that happiness threatened by the worst calamity that can befall a
+sensitive human being, and if you hold her in esteem--"
+
+"_Ma foi!_" he broke in, with violent impetuosity. "I do not esteem her;
+I love her. What are these dreadful secrets? How is her happiness
+threatened? Tell me without hesitation, for I have entreated her to be
+my wife, and she--"
+
+"She thinks it is a parent's whim, alone, which keeps her from
+responding fully to your wishes," I finished. "But madame's objections
+have deeper ground than that. Miserable woman as she is, she has some
+idea of honor left. She knew her daughter could not safely marry into a
+high and noble family, and so--"
+
+"What is this you say?" came again in the quick and hurried tones of
+despair. "Mrs. Urquhart--"
+
+"Wait," I broke in. "You call her Mrs. Urquhart, but she has no claim to
+that title. She and Edwin Urquhart have never been married."
+
+He recoiled sharply, with a gesture of complete disbelief.
+
+"How do you know?" he demanded. "They are strangers to you. I have known
+them in their own home. All the world credits their marriage, and--"
+
+"All the world does not know what transpired in this house sixteen years
+ago, when Edwin Urquhart stopped here with his bride on his way to
+France."
+
+He stared, seemed shaken, but presently hastened to remark:
+
+"Ah, madame, you acknowledge that she is his wife. You said bride. One
+does not call a woman by that name without acknowledging a marriage
+service."
+
+"The woman he brought here was his bride. Edwin Urquhart is no common
+criminal, Marquis de la Roche-Guyon."
+
+It was hard to make him understand. It was hard to undermine his trust,
+step by step, inch by inch, till he found no hope, no shred of doubt to
+cling to. But it had to be done. If only to avert worse calamities and
+more heart-rending scenes, he must know at once, and before he took
+another step in relation to Miss Urquhart, just what her position was,
+and to what shame and suffering he was subjecting himself by accepting
+her love and pledging his own.
+
+The task was not done till I had shown him this diary of mine, and
+related all that had just occurred in the room below. Then, indeed, he
+seemed to comprehend his position, and completely crushed and
+horror-stricken, subsided into a dreadful silence before me, the lines
+of years coming into his face as I watched him, till he became scarcely
+recognizable for the lordly and light-hearted cavalier whose dreams of
+love I had so fearfully interrupted some half hour or so before. From
+this lethargy of despair I did not seek to rouse him. I knew when he had
+anything to say he would speak, and till he had faced the situation and
+had made up his mind to his duty, I could wait his decision with perfect
+confidence in his fine nature and nice sense of honor.
+
+You may, therefore, imagine my feelings when, after a long delay--an
+hour at least--he suddenly remarked:
+
+"We have been a proud family. From time immemorial we have held
+ourselves aloof from whatever could be thought to stain our honor or
+impeach our good name. I cannot drag the unfathomable disgrace of all
+these crimes into a record so pure as that of the Roche-Guyon race.
+Though I had wished to bestow upon my wife a name and position of which
+she could be proud, I must content myself with merely giving her the
+comfort of a true heart and such support as can be provided by a loving
+but unaccustomed hand."
+
+"Marquis--" I commenced.
+
+But he cut my words short with a firm and determined gesture.
+
+"My name is Louis de Fontaine," he explained. "Henceforth my cousin will
+be known as the marquis. It is the least I can do for the old French
+honor."
+
+'Twas so simply, so determinedly done that I stood aghast as much at the
+serenity of his manner as the act which required such depth of sacrifice
+from one of his traditions and rearing.
+
+"Then you continue to consider yourself the suitor of Miss Urquhart," I
+stammered. "You will marry her, though her parents may be called upon to
+perish upon the scaffold in an ignominy as great as ever befell two
+guilty mortals?"
+
+The answer came brokenly, but with unwavering strength:
+
+"Did you not say that she was innocent? Is she to be crushed beneath the
+guilt of her parents? Am I to take the last prop from one so soon to be
+bereft of all the supports upon which she has leaned from infancy? If I
+cling to her, she may live through her horror and shame; but should I
+fail her--great heavens! would we not have another life to answer for
+before God? Besides," he added, with the simplicity which marked his
+whole bearing, "I love her. I could not do otherwise if I would."
+
+To this final word I could make no rejoinder. With a reverence unmingled
+with the taint of compassion, I took my departure, and being anxious by
+this time to know how my young charge was bearing her seclusion, I went
+to the room where I had left her, and softly opened the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+MARK FELT.
+
+
+[Illustration: S]
+
+Subjected as I have been in the last three hours to distress and
+turmoil, I was delighted to find mademoiselle asleep, and to behold her
+peaceful face. Gazing at it, and noting the happy smile which
+unconsciously lingered on her lips, I could not but feel that, despite
+the hideous revelations which lay before her, her lot was an enviable
+one, allied as it promised to be with that of one of such high
+principles as the marquis. Though I am old now and have had my day, the
+love of the innocent and pure is sacred to me, and in this case it
+certainly has the charm of a spotless lily blooming in the jaws of hell.
+
+As it was late and I was almost exhausted, I began to think of rest. But
+my uneasiness in regard to madame would not let me sleep till I had
+made another visit to her room. So, leaving the gentle sleeper lapped in
+serenest dreams, I proceeded to descend once more. As I passed the great
+clock on the stairs, I noticed that it was almost midnight and began to
+hasten my steps, when I heard a loud knock at the front door.
+
+This is not an infrequent sound with us, but it greatly startled me this
+night. I even remember pausing and looking helplessly up and down the
+hall, as if it were a question whether I should obey the unwelcome
+summons. But such knocking as speedily followed could not be long
+ignored. So, subduing my impatience, I hastened to the door, and
+unlocking it, threw it open. A gust of rain and wind greeted me.
+
+This was my first surprise, for I had not even noticed that the weather
+was unpleasant, so completely had I been absorbed by what had been going
+on in the house. My next was the bearing and appearance of the stranger
+who demanded my hospitality. For though both face and form were unknown
+to me, there was that in his aspect which stirred recollections not out
+of keeping with the unhappy subject then occupying all my thoughts. Yet
+I could not speak his name, or put into words the anticipations that
+vaguely agitated me, and led him through the hall and into the
+comfortable sitting room so lately vacated by the marquis, with no more
+distinct impression in my mind than that something was about to happen
+which would complete rather than interrupt the horrors of this eventful
+night.
+
+And when the light fell full upon him, and I could see his eager eyes,
+this feeling increased, and no sooner had his cloak fallen from his
+shoulders and his hat left his head, than I recognized the prominent jaw
+and earnest face, and putting no curb on my impetuosity, I exclaimed at
+once, and without a doubt:
+
+"Mr. Felt!"
+
+The utterance of this name seemed to cause no surprise to my new guest.
+
+"The same," he replied; "and you are Mrs. Truax, of course. Mr. Tamworth
+has described you to me, also this inn, till I feel as if I knew its
+every stone. I did not wish to visit it, but I could not help myself. An
+unknown influence has been drawing me here for days, and though I
+resisted it with all my strength, it finally became so powerful that I
+rose from my bed at night, saddled my horse, and started in this
+direction. I have been twenty hours on the road, but part of these I
+have spent in the thicket just over against you on the opposite side of
+the road. For the sight of the house awakened in my mind such a
+disturbance that I feared to show myself at the door. A voice out of the
+air seemed to cry, 'Not yet! not yet!' Nevertheless I could not go back
+nor leave the spot, which, once seen, possessed for me a fatal
+fascination."
+
+I was speechless. Good God! were the old psychological influences at
+work, and had they acted upon him at forty miles distance?
+
+"You come from Albany?" I at last stammered forth. "You must have had a
+wet time of it; it storms heavily, I see."
+
+"Storms?" he repeated, glancing at the cloak he had thrown off. "Great
+Heaven! my cloak is saturated, and I did not even know it rained. A
+touch of the old spell," he murmured. "Something is about to happen to
+me; something has drawn me with purpose to this house."
+
+I felt awe-struck. Would he guess next what that something was?
+
+"At eleven o'clock," he went on, with the abstracted air of one
+recalling an experience, "I felt a pang shoot through my breast. I had
+been looking steadfastly at these walls, and somewhere about the
+building a light seemed to go out, for a pall of darkness suddenly
+settled upon it, simultaneously with the cessation of that imaginary cry
+which had hitherto detained me. Where was that light, Mrs. Truax, and
+what has happened here that I should feel myself called upon to cross
+this threshold to-night?"
+
+I did not answer at once, for I was trembling. Was I to be subjected to
+another such an ordeal as I had experienced earlier in the evening and
+be forced to prepare, by such means as lay in my power, a much abused
+man for a most dreadful revelation? It began to look so.
+
+"What has called me here?" he repeated. "Danger to her or death to him?
+They are thousands of miles away, and Tamworth could not have yet
+reached them, but peril of some deadly nature menaces them, I know. A
+stroke has gone home to him or her, and it is in this place I am to
+learn it; is it not so, Mrs. Truax?"
+
+"Perhaps," I tremblingly assented. "There is a gentleman here from
+France who may be able to tell you something of the man and the woman
+you mean. Would it affect you very much to hear disastrous news of
+them?"
+
+"I cannot say," he answered; "it should not. Mr. Tamworth tells me that
+he has acquainted you with the story of my life. Do you think I should
+feel overwhelmed at any retribution following a crime that was committed
+almost as much against me as against the pure and noble being who was
+the visible sufferer?"
+
+"I shrink from answering," I returned; "the human heart is a curious
+thing. If he alone were to suffer--"
+
+"Ah, he!" was the bitter ejaculation.
+
+"Or if she," I proceeded, "were bound by no ties appealing to the
+sympathies! But she is a mother--"
+
+"Good God!"
+
+I had not thought it would affect him so, and stood appalled.
+
+"A mother!" he repeated; "she! she! the tigress, the heartless one, with
+no more soul than the naked dagger I should have plunged into her breast
+and did not! Great Heaven! and this child has lived, I suppose; is
+grown up and--and--"
+
+"Is the sweetest, purest, most unworldly of beautiful women that these
+eyes have ever rested upon."
+
+I thought he would spring upon me, he leaned forward with so much
+impetuosity.
+
+"How do you know?" he asked, and my heart stood still at the question.
+
+"Because I have seen her," I presently rejoined. "Because I have had
+opportunities for studying her heart. She is called Honora, and she is
+like Miss Dudleigh, only more beautiful and with more claims to what is
+called character."
+
+He did not seem to take in my words.
+
+"You have been to France?" he declared.
+
+"No," I corrected; "Miss Urquhart has been here."
+
+He fell back, then started forward again, opened his lips and stared
+wildly, half fearfully about the room.
+
+"Here?" he repeated, evidently overcome at the idea. "Why did they send
+her here? I should as soon have expected them to send her into the murk
+of the bottomless pit. A girl, an innocent girl, you say, and sent
+here?"
+
+"They had reason; besides, she did not come alone."
+
+This time he understood me.
+
+"Oh!" he shrieked, "she in the house. I might have known it," he went on
+more calmly; "I did, only I would not believe it. Her crime has drawn
+her to the place of its perpetration. She could not resist the magnetic
+influence which all places of blood have upon the guilty. She has come
+back! And he?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"The man had less courage," I declared. "Perhaps because he was more
+guilty; perhaps because he had less love."
+
+"Love?"
+
+"It was love for the daughter which drew the mother here, not the spell
+of her crime or the accusing spirit of the dead. The woman who wronged
+you has some heart; she was willing to risk detection, and with it her
+reputation and life, to see if by any possibility she could venture to
+give happiness to the one being whom she really loves."
+
+"Explain; I do not understand. How could she hope to find happiness for
+her child here?"
+
+"By settling the question which evidently tortured her. By determining
+once for all whether the crime of sixteen years back had ever been
+discovered, and if she found it had not, to satisfy at once her own
+pride and her daughter's heart by giving that daughter to as noble a
+gentleman as ever carried a sword."
+
+"And they are here now?"
+
+"They are here."
+
+"And she has discovered--"
+
+"The futility of all her hopes."
+
+He drew back, and his heavy breath echoed in deep pants through the
+room.
+
+"What an end for Marah Leighton!" he gasped.
+
+"What an end! And she is here!" he went on, after a moment of silent
+emotion--"under this roof! No wonder I felt myself called hither. And
+she knows her crime is detected? How came she to know this? Did you
+recognize her and tell her?"
+
+"I recognized her and told her. There was no other course. We met in the
+secret chamber, whither she had come to make her own terrible
+investigations; and the sight of her there, on the spot where she had
+left the innocent to die, was too much for my sense of justice. I
+accused her to her face, and she crouched before me as under the lash.
+There was no possibility of denial after that, and she now lies--"
+
+"Wait!" he cried, catching me painfully by the arm. "When was this day?
+To-day--to-night?"
+
+"Not two hours ago."
+
+His brow took on a look of awe.
+
+"You see," he murmured, "she has power over me yet. When her hope broke,
+something snapped within me here. I abhor her, but I feel her grief. She
+was once all the world to me."
+
+I recognized his right to emotion, and did not profane it by any words
+of mine. Instead of that I sought to leave him, but he would not let me
+go till he had asked me another question.
+
+"And the daughter?" he urged. "Does she know of the opprobrium which
+must fall upon her head?"
+
+"She sleeps," I replied, "with a smile of the shyest delight upon her
+lips. Her lover has followed her to this place, and the last words she
+heard to-night were those of his devotion. Her suffering must come
+to-morrow; yet it will be mitigated, for he will not forsake her,
+whatever shame may follow his loyalty. I have his word for that."
+
+"Then the earth holds two lovers," was Mark Felt's rejoinder. "I thought
+it held but one." And with a sigh he let go my arm and turned to the
+window, with its background of driving rain and pitiless flashes of
+lightning.
+
+I took the opportunity to excuse myself for a few minutes, and hurrying
+again into the hall, hastened, with nervous fear and an agitation
+greatly heightened by the unexpected interview I had just been through,
+to the now oft-opened door leading into the oak parlor.
+
+I found it closed but not locked, and pushing it open, listened for a
+moment, then took a glance within. All was quiet and ghostly. A single
+candle guttering on the table at one end of the room lent a partial
+light by which I could discern the funereal bed and the other heavy and
+desolate-looking articles of furniture with which the room was
+encumbered. Honora's flowers, withering on the window seat, spoke of
+tender hopes not yet vanished from her tender dreams, but elsewhere all
+was hard, all was dreary, all was inexorably forbidding and cold. I
+shuddered as I looked, and shuddered still more as I approached the bed
+and paused firmly before it.
+
+"Madame Letellier"--it was the only name by which I could bring myself
+to address her at that instant--"there is one gleam of brightness in
+your sky. The marquis knows the story of your guilt, yet consents to
+marry your daughter."
+
+I received no reply.
+
+Shaken by fresh doubts, and moved by an inexplicable terror, I stood
+still for a moment gathering up my strength, then I repeated my words,
+this time with sharp emphasis and scarcely concealed importunity.
+
+"Madame," said I, "the marquis knows your guilt, yet consents to marry
+your daughter."
+
+But the silence within remained unbroken, and not a movement displaced
+the somber falling curtains.
+
+Agitated beyond endurance, I stretched forth my hands and drew those
+curtains aside. An unexpected sight met my eyes. There was no madame
+there; the bed was empty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+FOR THE LAST TIME.
+
+
+My eyes turned immediately in the direction of the secret chamber. Its
+entrance was closed, but I knew she was hidden there as well as if the
+door had been open and I had seen her.
+
+What should I do? For a moment I hesitated, then I rushed from the room
+and hastened back to Mr. Felt. I found him standing with his face to the
+door, eagerly awaiting my return.
+
+"What has happened?" he asked, importunately. "Your face is as pale as
+death."
+
+"Because death is in the house. Madame--"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Lies not in her bed, nor is she to be found in her room. There is
+another place, however, in which instinct tells me we shall find her,
+and if we do, we shall find her dead!"
+
+"In her daughter's room? At her daughter's bedside?"
+
+"No; in the secret chamber."
+
+He gazed at me with wild and haggard aspect.
+
+"You are right," he hoarsely assented. "Let us go; let us seek her; it
+may not be too late."
+
+The entrance to this hidden room was closed, as I have said, and as I
+had never assisted at its opening, I did not know where to find the
+hidden spring by means of which the panel was moved. We had, therefore,
+to endure minutes of suspense while Mr. Felt fumbled at the wainscoting.
+The candle I held shook with my agitation, and though I had heard
+nothing of the storm before, it seemed now as if every gust which came
+swooping down upon the house tore its way through my shrinking
+consciousness with a force and menace that scattered the last remnant of
+self-possession. Not an instant in the whole terrible day had been more
+frightful to me, no, not the moment when I first heard the sliding of
+this very panel and the sound of her crawling form approaching me
+through the darkness. The vivid flashes of lightning that shot every now
+and then through the cracks of the closely shuttered window, making a
+skeleton of its framework, added not a little to its terror, there being
+no other light in the room save that and the flickering, almost dying
+flame, with which I strove to aid Mr. Felt's endeavors and only
+succeeded in lighting up his anxious and heavily bedewed forehead.
+
+"Oh, oh!" was my moan; "this is terrible! Let us quit it or go around to
+my own room, where there is an open door."
+
+But he did not hear me. His efforts had become frantic, and he tore at
+the wainscoting as if he would force it open by main strength.
+
+"You cannot reach her that way," I declared. "Perhaps my hand may be
+more skillful. Let me try."
+
+But he only increased his efforts. "I am coming, Marah; I am coming!" he
+called, and at once, as if guided by some angel's touch, his fingers
+slipped upon the spring. Immediately it yielded, and the opening so
+eagerly sought for was made.
+
+"Go in," he gasped, "go in."
+
+And so it was that the fate which had forced me against my will, and in
+despite of such intense shrinking, to pass so frequently into that
+hideous spot, where death held its revel and Nemesis awaited her victim,
+drove me thither once again, and, as I now hope, for the last time. For,
+there upon the floor, and almost in the same spot where we had found
+lying the remains of innocent Honora Urquhart, we saw, as my
+premonition had told me we should, the outstretched form of the unhappy
+being who had usurped her place in life, and now, in retribution of that
+act, had laid her head down upon the same couch in death. She was
+pulseless and quite cold. Upon her mouth her left hand lay pressed, as
+if, with her last breath, she sought to absorb the pure kiss which had
+been left there by the daughter she so much loved.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+A LAST WORD.
+
+
+Did Marah Leighton will the coming of her old lover to my inn on that
+fatal night? That is the question I asked, when, with the first breaking
+of the morning light, I discovered lying on the table under an empty
+phial, a letter addressed, not to her husband, nor to her child, but to
+him, Mark Felt. It is a question that will never be answered, but I know
+that he comforts himself with the supposition, and allows the trembling
+hope to pass, at times, across his troubled spirit, that in the
+bitterness of those last hours some touch of the divine mercy may have
+moved her soul and made her fitter for his memory to dwell upon.
+
+The letter I afterward read. It was as follows:
+
+
+TO THE MAN WHO GAVE ALL, BORE ALL, AND REAPED NOTHING BUT SUFFERING:
+
+        I am not worthy to write you, even with the
+        prospect of death before me. But an influence I
+        do not care to combat drives me to make you, of
+        all men, the confidant of my remorse.
+
+        I did not perish sixteen years ago in the
+        Hudson River. I lived to share in and profit
+        by a crime that has left an indelible stain
+        upon my life and an ineffaceable darkness
+        within my soul. You know, or soon will know,
+        what that crime was and how we prospered in it.
+        Daring as it was dreadful, I heard its fearful
+        details planned by his lips, without a shudder,
+        because I was mad in those days, mad for
+        wealth, mad for power, mad for adventure. The
+        only madness I did not feel was love. This I
+        say to comfort a pride that must have been
+        sorely wounded in those days, as sorely wounded
+        as your heart.
+
+        Edwin Urquhart could make my eyes shine and my
+        blood run swiftly, but not so swiftly as to
+        make me break my troth with you, had he not
+        sworn to me that through him I should gain what
+        moved me more than any man's love. How he was
+        to accomplish this I could not see in the
+        beginning, and was so little credulous of his
+        being able to keep his oaths that I let myself
+        be drawn by you almost to the church door.
+
+        But I got no further. There in the crowd he
+        stood with a command in his eyes which forbade
+        any further advance. Though I comprehended
+        nothing then, I obeyed his look and went back,
+        for my heart was not in any marriage, and it
+        was in the hopes to which his looks seemed to
+        point. Later he told me what those hopes were.
+        He had been down to Long Island, and, while
+        there, had chanced to hear in some tavern of
+        the Happy-Go-Lucky Inn and its secret chamber,
+        and he saw, or thought he saw, how he could
+        make me his without losing the benefit of an
+        alliance with Miss Dudleigh. And I thought I
+        saw also, and entered into his plans, though
+        they comprised crime and entailed horrors upon
+        me from which woman naturally shrinks. I was
+        hard as the nether millstone of which the Bible
+        speaks, and went determinedly on in the path of
+        dissimulation and crime which had been marked
+        out for me, till we came to this inn. Then,
+        owing, perhaps, to my long imprisonment in the
+        dreadful box, I began to feel qualms of
+        physical fear and such harrowing mental
+        forebodings that more than once during that
+        terrible evening I came near shouting for
+        release.
+
+        But I was held back by apprehensions as great
+        as any from which a premature release from my
+        place of hiding could have freed me. I dared
+        not face Honora, and I dared not subject Edwin
+        Urquhart to the consequences of a public
+        recognition of our perfidy, and so I let my
+        opportunity go by, and became the sharer, as I
+        was already the instigator, of the unheard-of
+        crime by which I became, in the eyes of the
+        world, his wife.
+
+        What I suffered during its perpetration no word
+        of mine can convey. I cringed to her moans; I
+        shook under the blow that stifled them. And
+        when all was over, and the bolts which confined
+        me were shot back, and I found myself once more
+        on my feet and in the free air of this most
+        horrible of rooms, I looked about, not for him,
+        but her, and when I did not see her or any
+        token of her death, I was seized by such an
+        agony of revulsion that I uttered a great and
+        irrepressible cry which filled the house, and
+        brought more than one startled inquirer to our
+        door.
+
+        For retribution and remorse were already busy
+        within me, and in the lurking shadows about the
+        fireplace I thought I saw the long and narrow
+        slit made by the half-closed panel standing
+        open between me and the secret place of her
+        entombment. And though it was but an optical
+        delusion, the panel being really closed, it
+        might as well have been the truth, for I have
+        never been able to rid myself of the sight of
+        that chimerical strip of darkness, with its
+        suggestions of guilt and death. It haunted my
+        vision; it ruined my life; it destroyed my
+        peace. If I shut my eyes at night, it opened
+        before me. If I arrayed myself in jewels and
+        rich raiment, and paused to take but a passing
+        look at myself in the glass, this horror
+        immediately came between me and my own image,
+        blotting the vision of wealth from my eyes; so
+        that I went into the homes of the noble or the
+        courts of the king a clouded, miserable thing,
+        seeing nothing but that black and narrow slit
+        closing upon youth and beauty and innocence
+        forever and forever and forever.
+
+        My child came. Ah! that I should have to
+        mention her here! I do it in penance; I do it
+        in despair; since with her my heart woke, and
+        for her that heart is now broken, never to be
+        healed again. Oh, if the knowledge of my misery
+        wakens in you one thought that is not of
+        revenge, cast a pitying eye upon this darling
+        one, left in a hateful country without friends,
+        without lover, without means. For friends and
+        lover and means will all leave her with the
+        revelations which the morning will bring, and
+        unless Heaven is merciful to her innocence as
+        it has been just to my guilt, she will have no
+        other goal before her than that which has
+        opened its refuge to me.
+
+        As for her father, let Heaven deal with him. He
+        gave me this darling child; so I may not curse
+        him, even if I cannot bless.
+
+        MARAH.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        OCTOBER 23, 1791.
+
+I have seen one bright thing to-day, and that was the faint and almost
+unearthly gleam which shot for a moment from beneath Honora's falling
+lids as I told her what love was and how the marquis only awaited her
+permission to speak to assure her of his boundless affection and his
+undying purpose to be true to her even to the point of assuming her
+griefs and taking upon himself the protection of her innocence.
+
+If it had not been for this, I should have felt that the world was too
+dark to remain in, and life too horrible to be endured.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        NOVEMBER 30, 1791.
+
+I thought that when Honora Urquhart left my house to be married to M. De
+Fontaine, in the church below the hill, peace would return to us once
+more.
+
+But there is no peace. This morning another horrible tragedy defiled my
+doorstep.
+
+I was sitting in the open porch waiting for the mail coach, for it
+seemed to me that it was about time I received some word from Mr.
+Tamworth. It was yet some minutes before the time when the rumble of
+the coach is usually heard, and I was brooding, as was natural, over the
+more than terrible occurrences of the last few weeks, when I heard the
+clatter of horses' hoofs, and looking up and down the road, saw a small
+party of men approaching from the south. As they came nearer, I noticed
+that one of the riders was white-haired and presumably aged, and was
+interesting myself in him, when he came near enough for me to
+distinguish his features, and I perceived it was no other than Mr.
+Tamworth.
+
+Rising in perturbation, I glanced at the men behind and abreast of him,
+and saw that one of these rode with lowered head and oppressed mien, and
+was just about to give that person a name in my mind when the horse he
+bestrode suddenly reared, bolted, and dashed forward to where I sat,
+flinging his rider at the very threshold of my house, where he lay
+senseless as the stone upon which his head had fallen.
+
+For an instant both his companions and myself paused aghast at a sight
+so terrible and bewildering; then, amid cries from the road and one wild
+shriek from within, I rushed forward, and turning over the head, looked
+upon the face of the fallen man. It was not a new one to me. Though
+changed and seamed and white now in death, I recognized it at once. It
+was that of Edwin Urquhart.
+
+. . . . .
+
+This noon I took down the sign which has swung for twenty years over my
+front door. "Happy-Go-Lucky" is scarcely the name for an inn accursed by
+so many horrors.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        FEBRUARY 3, 1792.
+
+This week I have fulfilled the threat of years ago. I have had the oak
+parlor and its hideous adjunct torn from my house.
+
+Now, perhaps, I can sleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        MARCH 16.
+
+News from Honora. The distant relative who succeeded to the estates and
+the title of the Marquis de la Roche-Guyon has fallen a victim to the
+guillotine. Would this have been the fate of Honora's husband had he
+forsaken her and returned home? There is reason to believe it. At all
+events, she finds herself greatly comforted by this news for the
+sacrifice which her husband made to his love, and no longer regrets the
+exile to which he has been forced to submit for her sake. Wonderful,
+wonderful Providence! I view its workings with renewed awe every day.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+        SEPTEMBER 5, 1795.
+
+I have been from home. I have been on a visit to New York. I have tasted
+of change, of brightness, of free and cheerful living, and I can settle
+down now in this old and fast-decaying inn with something else to think
+about than ruin and fearful retribution.
+
+I have been visiting Madame De Fontaine. She wished me to come, I think,
+that I might see how amply her married life had fulfilled the promise of
+her courtship days. Though she and her noble husband live in peaceful
+retirement, and without many of the appurtenances of wealth, they find
+such resources of delight in each other's companionship that it would be
+hard for the most exacting witness of their mutual felicity to wish them
+any different fate, or to desire for them any wider field of social
+influence.
+
+The marquis--I shall always call him thus--has found a friend in General
+Washington, and though he is never seen at the President's receptions,
+or mingles his voice in the councils of his adopted country, there are
+evidences constantly appearing of the confidence reposed in him by this
+great man, which cannot but add to the exile's contentment and
+satisfaction.
+
+Honora has developed into a grand beauty. The melancholy which her
+unhappy memories have necessarily infused into her countenance have
+given depth to her expression, which was always sweet, and frequently
+touching. She looks like a queen, but like a queen who has known not
+only grief, but love. There is nothing of despair in her glance, rather
+a lofty hope, and when her affections are touched, or her enthusiasm
+roused, she smiles with such a heavenly brightness in her countenance,
+that I think there is no fairer woman in the world, as I am assured
+there is none worthier.
+
+Her husband agrees with me in this opinion, and is so happy that she
+said to me one day:
+
+"I sometimes wonder how my heart succeeds in holding the joy which
+Heaven has seen fit to grant me. In it I read the forgiveness of God for
+the unutterable sins of my parents; and though the shadows will come,
+and do come, whenever I think upon the past, or see a face which, like
+yours, recalls memories as bitter as ever overwhelmed an innocent girl
+in her first youth, I find that with every year of love and peaceful
+living the darkness grows less, as if, somewhere in the boundless
+heavens, the mercy of God was making itself felt in the heart of her who
+once called herself my mother."
+
+And hearing her speak thus, I felt my own breast lose something of the
+oppression which had hitherto weighed it down. And as the days passed,
+and I experienced more and more of the true peace that comes with
+perfect love and perfect trust, I found my tears turned to rejoicing and
+the story of my regrets into songs of hope.
+
+And so I have come back comforted and at rest. If there are yet ghosts
+haunting the old inn, I do not see them, and though its walls are
+dismantled, its custom gone, and its renown a thing of the past, I can
+still sit on its grass-grown doorstep and roam through its fast-decaying
+corridors without discovering any blacker shadow following in my wake
+than that of my own figure, bent now with age, and only held upright by
+the firmness of the little cane with which I strive to give aid to my
+tottering and uncertain steps.
+
+The grace of God has fallen at last upon the Happy-Go-Lucky Inn.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
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+        unusually good story all through. There is a
+        love affair of real charm and most novel
+        surroundings, there is a run on the bank which
+        is almost worth a year's growth, and there is
+        all manner of exhilarating men and deeds which
+        should bring the book into high and permanent
+        favor."--_Chicago Evening Post._
+
+
+LAVENDER AND OLD LACE. By Myrtle Reed.
+
+        A charming story of a quaint corner of New
+        England where bygone romance finds a modern
+        parallel. One of the prettiest, sweetest, and
+        quaintest of old-fashioned love stories * * * A
+        rare book, exquisite in spirit and conception,
+        full of delicate fancy, of tenderness, of
+        delightful humor and spontaneity. A dainty
+        volume, especially suitable for a gift.
+
+
+DOCTOR LUKE OF THE LABRADOR. By Norman Duncan. With a frontispiece and
+inlay cover.
+
+        How the doctor came to the bleak Labrador coast
+        and there in saving life made expiation. In
+        dignity, simplicity, humor, in sympathetic
+        etching of a sturdy fisher people, and above
+        all in the echoes of the sea, _Doctor Luke_ is
+        worthy of great praise. Character, humor,
+        poignant pathos, and the sad grotesque
+        conjunctions of old and new civilizations are
+        expressed through the medium of a style that
+        has distinction and strikes a note of rare
+        personality.
+
+
+THE DAY'S WORK. By Rudyard Kipling. Illustrated.
+
+        The _London Morning Post_ says: "It would be
+        hard to find better reading * * * the book is
+        so varied, so full of color and life from end
+        to end, that few who read the first two or
+        three stories will lay it down till they have
+        read the last--and the last is a veritable gem
+        * * * contains some of the best of his highly
+        vivid work * * * Kipling is a born story-teller
+        and a man of humor into the bargain.
+
+
+ELEANOR LEE. By Margaret E. Sangster. With a frontispiece.
+
+        A story of married life, and attractive picture
+        of wedded bliss * * * an entertaining story of
+        a man's redemption through a woman's love * * *
+        no one who knows anything of marriage or
+        parenthood can read this story with eyes that
+        are always dry * * * goes straight to the heart
+        of every one who knows the meaning of "love"
+        and "home."
+
+
+THE COLONEL OF THE RED HUZZARS. By John Reed Scott. Illustrated by
+Clarence F. Underwood.
+
+        "Full of absorbing charm, sustained interest,
+        and a wealth of thrilling and romantic
+        situations. So naively fresh in its handling,
+        so plausible through its naturalness, that it
+        comes like a mountain breeze across the
+        far-spreading desert of similar
+        romances."--_Gazette-Times_, Pittsburg. "A
+        slap-dashing day romance."--_New York Sun._
+
+
+THE FAIR GOD; OR, THE LAST OF THE TZINS. By Lew Wallace. With
+illustrations by Eric Pape.
+
+        "The story tells of the love of a native
+        princess for Alvarado, and it is worked out
+        with all of Wallace's skill * * * it gives a
+        fine picture of the heroism of the Spanish
+        conquerors and of the culture and nobility of
+        the Aztecs."--_New York Commercial Advertiser._
+
+        "_Ben Hur_ sold enormously, but The Fair God
+        was the best of the General's stories--a
+        powerful and romantic treatment of the defeat
+        of Montezuma by Cortes."--_Athenaeum._
+
+
+THE CAPTAIN OF THE KANSAS. By Louis Tracy.
+
+        A story of love and the salt sea--of a helpless
+        ship whirled into the hands of cannibal
+        Fuegians--of desperate fighting and tender
+        romance, enhanced by the art of a master of
+        story telling who describes with his wonted
+        felicity and power of holding the reader's
+        attention * * * filled with the swing of
+        adventure.
+
+
+A MIDNIGHT GUEST. A Detective Story. By Fred M. White. With a
+frontispiece.
+
+        The scene of the story centers in London and
+        Italy. The book is skilfully written and makes
+        one of the most baffling, mystifying, exciting
+        detective stories ever written--cleverly
+        keeping the suspense and mystery intact until
+        the surprising discoveries which precede the
+        end.
+
+
+THE HONOUR OF SAVELLI. A Romance. By S. Levett Yeats. With cover and
+wrapper in four colors.
+
+        Those who enjoyed Stanley Weyman's _A Gentleman
+        of France_ will be engrossed and captivated by
+        this delightful romance of Italian history. It
+        is replete with exciting episodes, hair-breadth
+        escapes, magnificent sword-play, and deals with
+        the agitating times in Italian history when
+        Alexander II was Pope and the famous and
+        infamous Borgias were tottering to their fall.
+
+
+SISTER CARRIE. By Theodore Drieser. With a frontispiece, and wrapper in
+color.
+
+        In all fiction there is probably no more
+        graphic and poignant study of the way in which
+        man loses his grip on life, lets his pride, his
+        courage, his self-respect slip from him, and,
+        finally, even ceases to struggle in the mire
+        that has engulfed him. * * * There is more
+        tonic value in Sister Carrie than in a whole
+        shelfful of sermons.
+
+
+THE SHUTTLE, By Frances Hodgson Burnett With inlay cover in colors by
+Clarence F. Underwood.
+
+        This great international romance relates the
+        story of an American girl who, in rescuing her
+        sister from the ruins of her marriage to an
+        Englishman of title, displays splendid
+        qualities of courage, tact and restraint. As a
+        study of American womanhood of modern times,
+        the character of Bettina Vanderpoel stands
+        alone in literature. As a love story, the
+        account of her experience is magnificent. The
+        masterly handling, the glowing style of the
+        book, give it a literary rank to which very few
+        modern novels have attained.
+
+
+THE MAKING OF A MARCHIONESS, By Frances Hodgson Burnett
+
+Illustrated with half tone engravings by Charles D. Williams. With
+initial letters, tail-pieces, decorative borders. Beautifully printed,
+and daintily bound, and boxed.
+
+        A delightful novel in the author's most
+        charming vein. The scene is laid in an English
+        country house, where an amiable English
+        nobleman is the centre of matrimonial interest
+        on the part of both the English and Americans
+        present.
+
+        Graceful, sprightly, almost delicious in its
+        dialogue and action. It is a book about which
+        one is tempted to write ecstatically.
+
+
+THE METHODS OF LADY WALDERHURST, By Francis Hodgson Burnett
+
+A Companion Volume to "The Making of a Marchioness."
+
+With illustrations by Charles D. Williams, and with initial letters,
+tail-pieces, and borders, by A. K. Womrath. Beautifully printed and
+daintily bound, and boxed.
+
+        "The Methods of Lady Walderhurst" is a
+        delightful story which combines the sweetness
+        of "The Making of a Marchioness," with the
+        dramatic qualities of "A Lady of Quality." Lady
+        Walderhurst is one of the most charming
+        characters in modern fiction.
+
+
+VAYENNE, By Percy Brebner With illustrations by E. Fuhr.
+
+        This romance like the author's _The Princess
+        Maritza_ is charged to the brim with adventure.
+        Sword play, bloodshed, justice grown the
+        multitude, sacrifice, and romance, mingle in
+        dramatic episodes that are born, flourish, and
+        pass away on every page.
+
+
+DARREL OF THE BLESSED ISLES. By Irving Bacheller. With illustrations by
+Arthur Keller.
+
+        "Darrel, the clock tinker, is a wit,
+        philosopher, and man of mystery. Learned,
+        strong, kindly, dignified, he towers like a
+        giant above the people among whom he lives. It
+        is another tale of the North Country, full of
+        the odor of wood and field. Wit, humor, pathos
+        and high thinking are in this book."--_Boston
+        Transcript._
+
+
+D'RI AND I: A Tale of Daring Deeds in the Second War with the British.
+Being the Memoirs of Colonel Ramon Bell, U. S. A. By Irving Bacheller.
+With illustrations by F. C. Yohn.
+
+        "Mr. Bacheller is admirable alike in his scenes
+        of peace and war. D'ri, a mighty hunter, has
+        the same dry humor as Uncle Eb. He fights
+        magnificently on the 'Lawrence,' and was among
+        the wounded when Perry went to the 'Niagara.'
+        As a romance of early American history it is
+        great for the enthusiasm it creates."--_New
+        York Times._
+
+
+EBEN HOLDEN: A Tale of the North Country. By Irving Bacheller.
+
+        "As pure as water and as good as bread," says
+        Mr. Howells. "Read 'Eben Holden'" is the advice
+        of Margaret Sangster. "It is a forest-scented,
+        fresh-aired, bracing and wholly American story
+        of country and town life. * * * If in the far
+        future our successors wish to know what were
+        the real life and atmosphere in which the
+        country folk that saved this nation grew,
+        loved, wrought and had their being, they must
+        go back to such true and zestful and poetic
+        tales of 'fiction' as 'Eben Holden,'" says
+        Edmund Clarence Stedman.
+
+
+SILAS STRONG: Emperor of the Woods. By Irving Bacheller. With a
+frontispiece.
+
+        "A modern _Leatherstocking_. Brings the city
+        dweller the aroma of the pine and the music of
+        the wind in its blanches--an epic poem * * *
+        forest-scented, fresh-aired, and wholly
+        American. A stronger character than Eben
+        Holden."--_Chicago Record-Herald._
+
+
+VERGILIUS: A Tale of the Coming of Christ. By Irving Bacheller.
+
+        A thrilling and beautiful story of two young
+        Roman patricians whose great and perilous love
+        in the reign of Augustus leads them through the
+        momentous, exciting events that marked the year
+        just preceding the birth of Christ.
+
+        Splendid character studies of the Emperor
+        Augustus, of Herod and his degenerate son,
+        Antipater, and of his daughter "the
+        incomparable" Salome. A great triumph in the
+        art of historical portrait painting.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+GROSSET & DUNLAP, - NEW YORK
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 336, "shrink" changed to "shrinks" (woman naturally shrinks)
+
+Page 345, "personalties" changed to "personalities" (of dominant
+personalities)
+
+Page 347, "or" changed to "of" (story of a)
+
+Page 348, "breath" changed to "breadth" (hair-breadth escapes)
+
+There were some typesetting errors in the original text resulting in
+misplaced lines on pages 139 and 177.
+
+Original text page 139:
+
+deceit where I had looked for honesty and gratitude.'
+
+the result of a compact entered into with the despicable Urquhart, who,
+if he could not have her grasp at this wisp of hope and cling to it,
+though I knew it would never hold, and that her only chance for
+happiness was passing from her.
+
+Original page 177 text:
+
+almost overwhelmed it.
+
+"For to me her death--if she were dead--was
+
+"I was a coward, perhaps, but I did not try to dissuade her. Though she
+was fatherless and motherless, and loverless and friendless, I let her
+for himself, was willing she should go where no
+
+This was changed to:
+
+Page 139:
+
+deceit where I had looked for honesty and gratitude.'
+
+"I was a coward, perhaps, but I did not try to dissuade her. Though she
+was fatherless and motherless, and loverless and friendless, I let her
+grasp at this wisp of hope and cling to it, though I knew it would never
+hold, and that her only chance for happiness was passing from her.
+
+and Page 177:
+
+almost overwhelmed it.
+
+"For to me her death--if she were dead--was the result of a compact
+entered into with the despicable Urquhart, who, if he could not have her
+for himself, was willing she should go where no
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Forsaken Inn, by Anna Katharine Green
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FORSAKEN INN ***
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