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+Project Gutenberg's Etext of Frances Waldeaux, by Rebecca Davis
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+Frances Waldeaux, by Rebecca Harding Davis
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+September, 1995  [Etext #335]
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+
+FRANCES WALDEAUX
+
+A Novel
+
+BY
+
+REBECCA HARDING DAVIS
+AUTHOR OF "DOCTOR WARRICK'S DAUGHTER"
+
+
+
+
+A REMEMBRANCER
+OF
+BRITTANY
+FOR THE BEST FELLOW-TRAVELLER
+IN THE WORLD
+ 
+
+
+FRANCES WALDEAUX
+----
+CHAPTER I
+
+In another minute the Kaiser Wilhelm would push off
+from her pier in Hoboken.  The last bell had rung, the
+last uniformed officer and white-jacketed steward had
+scurried up the gangway.  The pier was massed with people
+who had come to bid their friends good-by.  They were all
+Germans, and there had been unlimited embracing and
+kissing and sobs of "Ach! mein lieber Sckatz!" and
+"Gott bewahre Dick!"
+
+Now they stood looking up to the crowded decks, shouting
+out last fond words.  A band playing "The Merry Maiden
+and the Tar" marched on board.
+
+The passengers pressed against the rails, looking down. 
+Almost every one held flowers which had been brought to
+them: not costly bouquets, but homely bunches of
+marigolds or pinks.  They carried, too, little German
+or American flags, which they waved frantically.
+
+The gangways fell, and the huge ship parted from the
+dock.  It was but an inch, but the whole ocean yawned in
+it between those who went and those who stayed.  There
+was a sudden silence; a thousand handkerchiefs fluttered
+white on the pier and the flags and flowers were waved on
+the ship, but there was not a cry nor a sound.
+
+James Perry, one of the dozen Americans on board, was
+leaning over the rail watching it all with an amused
+smile.  "Hello, Watts!" he called, as another young man
+joined him.  "Going over?  Quite dramatic, isn't it?  It
+might be a German ship going out of a German port.  The
+other liners set off in as commonplace a way as a Jersey
+City ferryboat, but these North German Lloyd ships always
+sail with a certain ceremony and solemnity.  I like it."
+
+"I always cross on them," said Dr. Watts.  "I have but a
+month's vacation--two weeks on board ship, two on land. 
+Now you, I suppose, don't have to count your days? 
+You cross every year.  I can't see, for my part, what
+business the assistant editor of a magazine has abroad."
+
+"Oh, we make a specialty of articles from notorieties
+over there; statesmen, scientific fellows, or people with
+titles.  I expect to capture a paper from Lorne and some
+sketches by the Princess Beatrice this time."
+
+"Lorne?  It throws you into contact with that sort of
+folk, eh?" said the doctor, looking at him enviously. 
+"How do they strike you, Jem?"
+
+"Well," said Perry importantly, "well-bred people are the
+same the world over.  I only see them in a business way,
+of course, but one can judge.  Their voices are better
+than ours, but as to looks--no!  It's queer, but American
+women--the wives and daughters of saddlers or farmers,
+perhaps--have more often the patrician look than English
+duchesses.  Now there, for example," warming to the
+subject, "that woman to whom you bowed just now, the
+middle-aged one in blue cloth.  Some Mrs. Smith or Pratt,
+probably.  A homely woman, but there is a distinction in
+her face, a certain surety of good breeding, which is
+lacking in the heavy-jawed English royalties."
+
+"Yes; that is a friend of mine," said Watts.
+
+She is a Mrs. Waldeaux from Wier, in Delaware.  You could
+hardly call her a typical American woman.  Old French
+emigre family.  Probably better blood than the Coburgs
+a few generations back.  That priggish young fellow is
+her son.  Going to be an Episcopalian minister."
+
+Mr. Perry surveyed his friend's friends good-humoredly. 
+"Brand new rugs and cushions," he said.  "First voyage. 
+Heavens!  I wish it were my first voyage, and that I had
+their appetite for Europe."
+
+"You might as well ask for your relish of the bread and
+butter of your youth," said Watts.
+
+The two men leaned lazily against the bulwark watching
+the other passengers who were squabbling about trunks.
+
+Mr. Perry suddenly stood upright as a group of women
+passed.
+
+"Do you know who that girl is?" he said eagerly.  "The
+one who looked back at us over her shoulder."
+
+"No.  They are only a lot of school-girls, personally
+conducted.  That is the teacher in front."
+"Of course, I see that.  But the short, dark one--surely
+I know that woman."
+
+The doctor looked after her.  "She looks like a dog
+turning into a human being," he said leisurely.  "One
+often sees such cases of arrested evolution.  D'ye see? 
+Thick lips, coarse curls, flat nostrils----"
+
+Perry laughed.  "The eyes, anyhow, are quite human," he
+said.  "They challenge the whole world of men.  I can't
+place her!" staring after her, perplexed.  "I really
+don't believe I ever saw her before.  Yet her face brings
+up some old story of a tragedy or crime to me."
+
+"Nonsense!  The girl is not twenty.  Very fetching with
+all her vulgarity, though.  Steward, send some coffee to
+my stateroom.  Let's go down, Jem.  The fog is too
+chilly."
+
+Frances Waldeaux did not find the fog chilly.  She had
+been thinking for thirty years of the day when she should
+start to Europe--ever since she could think at all.
+
+This was the day.  It was like no other, now that it
+had come.  The fog, the crowd, the greasy smells of the
+pier, all familiar enough yesterday, took on a certain
+remoteness and mystery.  It seemed to her that she was
+doing something which nobody had ever done before.  She
+was going to discover the Old World.
+
+The New was not more tremendous or unreal before the eyes
+of Columbus when he, too, stood on the poop of his ship.
+
+Her son was arguing with the deck steward about chairs.
+
+"Now, mother," he said at last, "it's all right.  They
+are under cover so that the glare will not strain your
+eyes, and we can keep dry while we watch the storms."
+
+"How did you know about it all?  One would think you had
+crossed a dozen times, George."
+
+"Oh, I've studied the whole thing up thoroughly," George
+said, with a satisfied little nod.  "I've had time
+enough!  Why, when I was in petticoats you used to tell
+me you would buy a ship and we would sail away together. 
+You used to spoil all my school maps with red lines,
+drawing our routes."
+
+"Yes.  And now we're going!" said Frances to herself.
+
+He sat down beside her and they watched the unending
+procession of passengers marching around the deck. 
+George called her attention by a wink to any picturesque
+or queer figure that passed.  He liked to watch her quiet
+brown eyes gleam with fun.  Nobody had such a keen sense
+of the ridiculous as his mother.  Sometimes, at the mere
+remembrance of some absurd idea, she would go off into
+soft silent paroxysms of laughter until the tears would
+stream down her cheeks.
+
+George was fond and proud of his childish little mother. 
+He had never known any body, he thought, so young or so
+transparent.  It was easily understood.  She had married
+at sixteen, and had been left a widow little more than a
+year afterward.  "And I," he used to think, "was born
+with an old head on my shoulders; so we have grown up
+together.  I suppose the dear soul never had a thought in
+her life which she has not told me."
+
+As they sat together a steward brought Mrs. Waldeaux a
+note, which she read, blushing and smiling.
+
+"The captain invites us to sit at his table," she said,
+when the man was gone.
+
+"Very proper in the captain," said George complacently. 
+"You see, Madam Waldeaux, even the men who go down in
+ships have heard of you and your family!"
+
+"I don't believe the captain ever heard of me," she said,
+after a grave consideration," nor of the Waldeaux.  It is
+much more likely that he has read your article in the
+Quarterly, George."
+
+"Nonsense!"  But he stiffened himself up consciously.
+
+He had sent a paper on some abstruse point of sociology
+to the Quarterly last spring, and it had aroused quite
+a little buzz of criticism.  His mother had regarded it
+very much as the Duchess of Kent did the crown when it
+was set upon her little girl's head.  She always had
+known that her child was born to reign, but it was
+satisfactory to see this visible sign of it.
+
+She whispered now, eagerly leaning over to him.  "There
+was something about that paper which I never told you. 
+I think I'll tell you now that the great day has come."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Why, you know--I never think of you as my son, or a man,
+or anything outside of me--not at all.  You are just
+ME, doing the things I should have done if I had not
+been a woman.  Well,"--she drew her breath
+quickly,--"when I was a girl it seemed as if there was
+something in me that I must say, so I tried to write
+poems.  No, I never told you before.  It had counted for
+so much to me I could not talk of it.  I always sent them
+to the paper anonymously, signed `Sidney.'  Oh, it was
+long--long ago!  I've been dumb, as you might say, for
+years.  But when I read your article, George--do you know
+if I had written it I should have used just the phrases
+you did?  And you signed it `Sidney'!"  She watched him
+breathlessly.  "That was more than a coincidence, don't
+you think? I AM dumb, but you speak for me now.  It is
+because we are just one.  Don't you think so, George?" 
+She held his arm tightly.
+
+Young Waldeaux burst into a loud laugh.  Then he took her
+hand in his, stroking it.  "You dear little woman!  What
+do you know of sociology?" he said, and then walked
+away to hide his amusement, muttering "Poems?  Great
+Heavens!"
+
+Frances looked after him steadily.  "Oh, well!" she said
+to herself presently.
+
+She forced her mind back to the Quarterly article.  It
+was a beginning of just the kind of triumph that she
+always had expected for him.  He would soon be recognized
+by scientific men all over the world as their confrere,
+especially after his year's study at Oxford.
+
+When George was in his cradle she had planned that he
+should be a clergyman, just as she had planned that he
+should be a well-bred man, and she had fitted him for
+both roles in life, and urged him into them by the same
+unceasing soft pats and pushes.  She would be delighted
+when she saw him in white robes serving at the altar.
+
+Not that Frances had ever taken her religion quite
+seriously.  It was like her gowns, or her education, a
+matter of course; a trustworthy, agreeable part of her. 
+She had never once in her life shuddered at a glimpse of
+any vice in herself, or cried to God in agony, even to
+grant her a wish.
+
+But she knew that Robert Waldeaux's son would be
+safer in the pulpit.  He could take rank with scholars
+there, too.
+
+She inspected him now anxiously, trying to see him with
+the eyes of these Oxford magnates.  Nobody would guess
+that he was only twenty-two.  The bald spot on his crown
+and the spectacles gave him a scholastic air, and the
+finely cut features and a cold aloofness in his manner
+spoke plainly, she thought, of his good descent and high
+pursuits.
+
+Frances herself had a drop of vagabond blood which found
+comrades for her among every class and color.  But there
+was not an atom of the tramp in her son's well-built and
+fashionably clothed body.  He never had had a single
+intimate friend even when he was a boy.  He will probably
+find his companions among the great English scholars,"
+she thought complacently.  Of course she would always be
+his only comrade, his chum.  She continually met and
+parted with thousands of people--they came and went. 
+"But George and I will be together for all time," she
+told herself.
+
+He came up presently and sat down beside her, with an
+anxious, apologetic air.  It hurt him to think that he
+had laughed at her.  "That dark haze is the Jersey
+shore," he said.  "How dim it grows!  Well, we are really
+out now in the big world!  It is so good to be alone
+there with you," he added, touching her arm
+affectionately.  "Those cynical old-men-boys at Harvard
+bored me."
+
+"I don't bore you, then, George?"
+
+"You!"  He was very anxious to make her forget his
+roughness.  "Apart from my affection for you, mother," he
+said judicially, "I LIKE you.  I approve of you as I
+never probably shall approve of another woman.  Your
+peculiarities--the way your brown hair ripples back into
+that knot "--surveying her critically.  "And the way you
+always look as if you had just come out of a bath, even
+on a grimy train; and your gowns, so simple--and rich. 
+I confess," he said gravely, "I can't always follow your
+unsteady little ideas when you talk.  They frisk about
+so.  It is the difference probably between the man's mind
+and the woman's.  Besides, we have been separated for so
+many years!  But I soon will understand you.  I know that
+while you keep yourself apart from all the world you open
+your heart to me."
+
+"Wrap the rug about my feet, George," she said
+hastily, and then sent him away upon an errand, looking
+after him uneasily.
+
+It was very pleasant to hear her boy thus formally sum up
+his opinion of her.  But when he found that it was based
+upon a lie?
+
+For Frances, candid enough to the world, had deceived her
+son ever since he was born.
+
+George had always believed that she had inherited a
+fortune from his father.  It gave solidity and comfort to
+his life to think of her in the stately old mansion on
+the shores of Delaware Bay, with nothing to do except to
+be beautiful and gracious, as befitted a well-born woman. 
+It pleased him, in a lofty, generous way, that his father
+(whom she had taught him to reverence as the most
+chivalric of gentlemen) had left him wholly dependent
+upon her.  It was a legal fiction, of course.  He was the
+heir--the crown prince.  He had always been liberally
+supplied with money at school and at Harvard.  Her income
+was large.  No doubt the dear soul mismanaged the estates
+fearfully, but now he would have leisure to take care of
+them.
+
+Now, the fact was that Colonel Waldeaux had been a
+drunken spendthrift who had left nothing.  The house and
+farm always had belonged to his wife.  She had supported
+George by her own work all of his life.  She could not
+save money, but she had the rarer faculty of making it. 
+She had raised fine fruit and flowers for the
+Philadelphia market; she had traded in high breeds of
+poultry and cattle, and had invested her earnings
+shrewdly.  With these successes she had been able to
+provide George with money to spend freely at college. 
+She lived scantily at home, never expecting any luxury or
+great pleasure to come into her own life.
+
+But two years ago a queer thing had happened to her.  In
+an idle hour she wrote a comical squib and sent it to a
+New York paper.  As everybody knows, fun, even vulgar
+fun, sells high in the market.  Her fun was not vulgar,
+but coarse and biting enough to tickle the ears of the
+common reader.  The editor offered her a salary equal to
+her whole income for a weekly column of such fooling.
+
+She had hoarded every penny of this money.  With it she
+meant to pay her expenses in Europe and to support George
+in his year at Oxford.  The work and the salary were
+to go on while she was gone.
+
+It was easy enough to hide all of these things from her
+son while he was in Cambridge and she in Delaware.  But
+now?  What if he should find out that his mother was the
+Quigg" of the New York ----, a paper which he declared to
+be unfit for a gentleman to read?
+
+She was looking out to sea and thinking of this when her
+cousin, Miss Vance, came up to her.  Miss Vance was a
+fashionable teacher in New York, who was going to spend
+a year abroad with two wealthy pupils.  She was a thin
+woman, quietly dressed; white hair and black brows, with
+gold eye-glasses bridging an aquiline nose, gave her a
+commanding, inquisitorial air.
+
+"Well, Frances!" she began briskly, "I have not had time
+before to attend to you.  Are your bags hung in your
+stateroom?"
+
+"I haven't been down yet," said Mrs. Waldeaux meekly. 
+"We were watching the fog in the sun."
+
+"Fog!  Mercy on me!  You know you may be ill any minute,
+and your room not ready!  Of course, you did not take
+the bromides that I sent you a week ago?
+
+"No, Clara."
+
+Miss Vance glanced at her.  "Well, just as you please. 
+I've done what I could.  Let me look at your itinerary. 
+You will be too ill for me to advise you about it later."
+
+"Oh, we made none!" said George gayly, coming up to his
+mother's aid.  "We are going to be vagabonds, and have no
+plans.  Mother's soul draws us to York Cathedral, and
+mine to the National Gallery.  That is all we know."
+
+"I thought you had given up that whim of being an
+artist?" said Miss Vance, sharply facing on him.
+
+Young Waldeaux reddened.  "Yes, I have given it up.  I
+know as well as you do that I have no talent.  I am going
+to study my profession at Oxford, and earn my bread by
+it."
+
+"Quite right.  You never would earn it by art," she said
+decisively.  "How long do you stay in York, Frances?"
+
+"Oh, a day, or a month--or--years, as we please," said
+Frances, lazily turning her head away.  She wanted to set
+Clara Vance down in her proper place.  Mrs. Waldeaux
+abhorred cousinly intimates--people who run into your
+back door to pry into the state of your larder or your
+income.  But Miss Vance, as Frances knew, unfortunately
+held a key to her back door.  She knew of George's
+wretched daubs, and his insane desire, when he was a boy,
+to study art.  He gave it up years ago.  Why should she
+nag him now about it?  By virtue of her relationship she
+knew, too, all of Mrs. Waldeaux's secrets.  It was most
+unfortunate that she should have chosen to sail on this
+vessel.
+
+"Well, mother," George said, uneasy to get away, "no
+doubt Miss Vance is right.  We should set things in
+order.  I am going now to give my letter of credit to the
+purser to lock up; shall I take yours?"
+
+Mrs. Waldeaux did not reply at once.  "No," she said at
+last.  "I like to carry my own purse."
+
+He smiled indulgently as on a child.  "Of course, dear. 
+It IS your own.  My father was wise in that.  But, on
+this journey, I can act as your paymaster, can't I?  I
+have studied foreign money----"
+
+"We shall see.  I can keep it as safe as any purser now,"
+she said, obstinately shaking her head.
+
+He laughed and walked away.
+
+"You have not told him, then?" demanded Clara.
+
+"No.  And I never will.  I will not hurt the boy by
+letting him know that his mother has supported him, and
+remember, Clara, that he can only hear it through you. 
+Nobody knows that I am `Quigg' but you."
+
+Miss Vance lifted her eyebrows.  "Nothing can need a
+lie," she quoted calmly.  Presently she said earnestly,
+"Frances, you are making a mistake.  Somebody ought to
+tell you the truth.  There is no reason why your whole
+being should be buried in that man.  He should stand on
+his own feet, now.  You can be all that he needs as a
+mother, and yet live out your own life.  It is broader
+than his will ever be.  At your age, and with your
+capabilities, you should marry again.  Think of the many
+long years that are before you."
+
+"I have thought of them," said Mrs. Waldeaux slowly.  "I
+have had lovers who came close to me as friends, but I
+never for a moment was tempted to marry one of them. 
+No, Clara.  When the devil drove my father to hand me
+over--innocent child as I was--to a man like Robert
+Waldeaux, he killed in me the capacity for that kind of
+love.  It is not in me."  She turned her strenuous face
+to the sea and was silent.  "It is not in me," she
+repeated after a while.  "I have but one feeling, and
+that is for my boy.  It is growing on me absurdly, too." 
+She laughed nervously.  "I used to be conscious of other
+people in the world, but now, if I see a boy or man, I
+see only what George was or will be at his age; if I read
+a book, it only suggests what George will say of it.  I
+am like one of those plants that have lost their own sap
+and color, and suck in their life from another.  It
+scares me sometimes."
+
+Miss Vance smiled with polite contempt.  No doubt Frances
+had a shrewd business faculty, but in other matters she
+was not ten years old.
+
+"And George will marry some time," she said curtly.
+
+"Oh, I hope so!  And soon.  Then I shall have a daughter. 
+I know just the kind of a wife George will choose,"
+she chattered on eagerly.  "I understand him so
+thoroughly that I can understand her.  But where could he
+find her?  He is so absurdly fastidious!"
+
+Miss Vance was silent and thoughtful a moment.  Then she
+came closer.  "I will tell you where to find her," she
+said, in a low voice.  "I have thought of it for a long
+time.  It seems to me that Providence actually made Lucy
+Dunbar for George."
+
+"Really?"  Mrs. Waldeaux drew her self up stiffly.
+
+"Wait, Frances.  Lucy has been with me for three years. 
+I know her.  She is a sincere, modest, happy little
+thing.  Not too clever.  She is an heiress, too.  And her
+family is good; and all underground, which is another
+advantage.  You can mould her as you choose.  She loves
+you already."
+
+"Or is it that she----?"
+
+"You have no right to ask that!" said Miss Vance quickly.
+
+"No, I am ashamed of myself."  Mrs. Waldeaux reddened.
+
+A group of girls came up the deck.  Both women scanned
+the foremost one critically.  "I like that wholesome,
+candid look of her," said Miss Vance.
+
+"Oh, she is well enough," said Frances.  "But I am sure
+George does not like yellow hair.  Nothing but an
+absolutely beautiful woman will attract him."
+
+"An artist," said Miss Vance hastily, "would tell you her
+features were perfect.  And her flesh tints----"
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Clara, don't dissect the child.  Who
+is that girl with the red cravat?  Your maid?"
+
+"It is not a cravat, it's an Indian scarf.  If it only
+were clean----"  Miss Vance looked uneasy and perplexed. 
+"She is not my maid.  She is Fraulein Arpent.  The Ewalts
+brought her as governess from Paris, don't you remember? 
+They sent the girls to Bryn Mawr last week and turned her
+adrift, almost penniless.  She wished to go back to
+France.  I engaged her as assistant chaperone for the
+season."
+
+Mrs. Waldeaux's eyebrows went up significantly.  She
+never commented in words on the affairs of others, but
+her face always was indiscreet.  George, who had come up
+in time to hear the last words, was not so
+scrupulous.  He surveyed the young woman through his
+spectacles as she passed again, with cold disapproval.
+
+"French or German?" he asked.
+
+"I really don't know.  She has a singular facility in
+tongues," said Miss Vance.
+
+"Well, that is not the companion _I_ should have chosen
+for those innocent little girls," he said
+authoritatively, glad to be disagreeable to his cousin. 
+"She looks like a hawk among doves."
+
+"The woman is harmless enough," said Miss Vance tartly. 
+"She speaks exquisite French."
+
+"But what does she say in it?" persisted George.  "She is
+vulgar from her red pompon to her boots.  She has the
+swagger of a soubrette and she has left a trail of
+perfume behind her--pah!  I confess I am surprised at
+you, Miss Vance.  You do not often slip in your
+judgment."
+
+"Don't make yourself unpleasant, George," said his mother
+gently.  Miss Vance smiled icily, and as the girls came
+near again, stopped them and stood talking to Mlle. 
+Arpent with an aggressive show of familiarity.
+
+"Why do you worry Clara?" said Mrs. Waldeaux.  "She
+knows she has made a mistake.  What do you think of that
+little blonde girl?" she asked presently, watching him
+anxiously.  "She has remarkable beauty, certainly; but
+there is something finical--precise----"
+
+"Take care.  She will hear you," said George.  "Beauty,
+eh?  Oh, I don't know," indifferently.  "She is passably
+pretty.  I have never seen a woman yet whose beauty
+satisfied ME."
+
+Mrs. Waldeaux leaned back with a comfortable little
+laugh.  "But you must not be so hard to please, my son. 
+You must bring me my daughter soon," she said.
+
+"Not very soon.  I have some thing else to think of than
+marriage for the next ten years."
+
+Just then Dr. Watts came up and asked leave to present
+his friend Perry.  The doctor, like all young men who
+knew Mrs. Waldeaux, had succumbed to her peculiar charm,
+which was only that of a woman past her youth who had
+strong personal magnetism and not a spark of coquetry. 
+George's friends all were sure that they would fall in
+love with a woman just like her--but not a man of
+them ever thought of falling in love with her.
+
+Young Perry, in twenty minutes, decided that she was the
+most brilliant and agreeable of companions.  He had
+talked, and she had spoken only with her listening,
+sympathetic eyes.  He was always apt to be voluble.  On
+this occasion he was too voluble.
+"You are from Weir, I think, in Delaware, Mrs. Waldeaux?"
+he asked.  "I must have seen the name of the town with
+yours on the list of passengers, for the story of a woman
+who once lived there has been haunting me all day.  I
+have not seen nor thought of her for years, and I could
+not account for my sudden remembrance of her."
+
+"Who was she?" asked George, trying to save his mother
+from Perry, who threatened to be a bore.
+
+"Her name was Pauline Felix.  You have heard her story,
+Mrs. Waldeaux?"
+
+"Yes" said Frances coldly.  "I have heard her story.  Can
+you find my shawl, George?"
+
+But Perry was conscious of no rebuff, and turned
+cheerfully to George.  "It was one of those dramas of
+real life, too unlikely to put into a novel.  She was
+the daughter of a poor clergyman in Weir, a devout, good
+man, I believe.  She had marvellous beauty and a devilish
+disposition.  She ran away, lived a wild life in Paris,
+and became the mistress of a Russian Grand Duke.  Her
+death----"
+
+He could not have told why he stopped.  Mrs. Waldeaux
+still watched him, attentive, but the sympathetic smile
+had frozen into icy civility.  She had the old-fashioned
+modesty of her generation.  What right had this young man
+to speak of "mistresses" to her?  Clara's girls within
+hearing too!  She rose when he paused, bowed, and hurried
+to them, like a hen fluttering to protect her chicks.
+
+"He was talking to me of a woman," she said excitedly to
+Clara, "who is never mentioned by decent people."
+
+"Yes, I heard him," said Miss Vance.  "Poor Pauline!  Her
+career was always a mystery to me. I was at school with
+her, and she was the most generous, lovable girl!  Yet
+she came to a wretched end," turning to her flock, her
+tone growing didactic. "One is never safe, you see.  One
+must always be on guard."
+
+"Oh, my dear!" cried Frances impatiently.  "You
+surely don't mean to class these girls and me with
+Pauline Felix!  Come, come!"
+
+"None of us is safe," repeated Clara stiffly.  "Somebody
+says there is a possible vice in the purest soul, and it
+may lie perdu there until old age.  But it will break out
+some day."
+
+Mrs. Waldeaux looked, laughing, at the eager, blushing
+faces around her.  "It is not likely to break out in us,
+girls, eh!  Really, Clara," she said, in a lower tone,
+"that seems to me like wasted morality.  Women of our
+class are in no more danger of temptation to commit great
+crimes than they are of finding tigers in their
+drawing-rooms.  Pauline Felix was born vicious.  No woman
+could fall as she did, who was not rotten to the core."
+
+A sudden shrill laugh burst from the French woman, who
+had been looking at Mrs. Waldeaux with insolent, bold
+eyes.  But as she laughed, her head fell forward and she
+swung from side to side.
+
+"It is nothing," she cried, "I am only a little faint. 
+I must go below."
+
+The ship was now crossing short, choppy waves.  The
+passengers scattered rapidly.  George took his mother to
+her stateroom, and there she stayed until land was
+sighted on the Irish coast.  Clara and her companions
+also were forced to keep to their berths.
+
+During the speechless misery of the first days Mrs.
+Waldeaux was conscious that George was hanging over her,
+tender as a mother with a baby.  She commanded him to
+stay on deck, for each day she saw that he, too, grew
+more haggard.  "Let me fight it out alone," she would beg
+of him.  "My worst trouble is that I cannot take care of
+you."
+
+He obeyed her at last, and would come down but once
+during the day, and then for only a few hurried minutes. 
+His mother was alarmed at the ghastliness of his face and
+the expression of anxious wretchedness new to it.  "His
+eye avoids mine craftily, like that of an insane man,"
+she told herself, and when the doctor came, she asked him
+whether sea-sickness affected the brain.
+
+On the last day of the voyage the breeze was from land,
+and with the first breath of it Frances found her vigor
+suddenly return.  She rose and dressed herself.  George
+had not been near her that day.  "He must be very ill,"
+she thought, and hurried out.  "Is Mr. Waldeaux in
+his stateroom?" she asked the steward.
+
+"No, madam.  He is on deck.  All the passengers are on
+deck," the man added, smiling.  Land is in sight."
+
+Land!  And George had not come to tell her!  He must be
+desperately ill!
+
+She groped up the steps, holding by the brass rail.  "I
+will give him a fine surprise!" she said to herself.  "I
+can take care of him, now.  To-night we shall be on shore
+and this misery all over.  And then the great joy will
+begin!"
+
+She came out on deck.  The sunshine and cold pure wind
+met her.  She looked along the crowded deck for her
+invalid.  Every-body was in holiday clothes, every-body
+was smiling and talking at once.  Ah! there he was!
+
+He was leaning over Frances' steamer chair, on which a
+woman lay indolently.  He was in rude health, laughing,
+his face flushed, his eyes sparkling.
+
+Looking up, he saw his mother and came hastily to meet
+her.  The laugh was gone.  "So you came up?" he said
+impatiently.  "I would have called you in time. 
+I----  Mother!"  He caught her by the arm.  "Wait, I must
+see you alone for a minute."  Urged by the amazed fright
+in her face, he went on desperately, "I have something to
+tell you.  I intended to break it to you.  I don't want
+to hurt you, God knows.  But I have not been idle in
+these days.  I have found your daughter.  She is here."
+
+He led her up to the chair.  The girl's head was wrapped
+in a veil and turned from her.
+
+Mrs. Waldeaux held out her hands.  "Lucy!  Lucy Dunbar!"
+she heard herself say.
+
+"Mais non!  Cest moi!" said a shrill voice, and Mlle. 
+Arpent, turning her head lazily, looked at her, smiling.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Clara Vance had her faults, but nobody could deny that,
+in this crisis, she acted with feeling and tact.  She
+ignored mademoiselle and her lover, whose bliss was in
+evidence on deck all day, and took possession of Mrs.
+Waldeaux, caring for her as tenderly as if she had been
+some poor wretch sentenced to death.  "She has no
+intellect left except her ideas about George," she told
+herself, "and if he turns his back on her for life in
+this way----  She never was too sane!" shaking her head
+ominously.
+
+She thought it best to talk frankly of the matter to
+little Lucy Dunbar, and was relieved to find her ready to
+joke and laugh at it.  "No bruise in that tender heart!"
+thought Clara, who was anxious as a mother for her girls.
+
+"We all worshipped Mr. George," said Lucy saucily.  "I,
+most of all.  He is so cold, so exalted and ah--h, so
+good-looking!  Like a Greek god.  But he never gave
+a look to poor little me!  The fraulein came on deck as
+soon as we all went down with sea-sickness, and bewitched
+him with her eyes.  It must have been her eyes; they are
+yellow--witch's eyes.  Or maybe that cheap smell about
+her is a love-philter!  Or was it just soul calling to
+soul?  I should have said the fraulein had the soul of a
+milliner.  She put great ideas into the hat that she
+altered for me," Lucy added, with an unsteady laugh.
+
+"I care nothing for them or their souls," said Miss Vance
+crossly.  "It is his mother that I think of."
+
+"But really," said Lucy, "mademoiselle is quite raw
+material.  No ideas--no manners whatever.  Mrs. Waldeaux
+may mould her into something good and fine."
+
+"She will not try.  She will never accept that creature
+as a daughter."
+
+"She seems to me to be indifferent," said Lucy.  "She
+does not see how terrible it is.  She was leaning over
+the bulwark just now, laughing at the queer gossoons
+selling their shillalahs."
+
+"Oh, she will laugh at Death himself when he comes to
+fetch her, and see something `queer'in him," said Clara.
+
+But her little confidence with Lucy had relieved her. 
+The child cared nothing for George, that was plain.
+
+Mademoiselle, watching Mrs. Waldeaux closely all day, was
+not deceived by her laugh.  "The old lady, your mother,"
+she said to George, "is what you men call `game.'  She
+has blood and breeding.  More than you, monsieur.  That
+keeps her up.  I did not count on that," said the young
+woman thoughtfully.
+
+George took off his glasses and rubbed them nervously as
+he talked.  "I don't understand my mother at all!  She
+has always been very considerate and kind.  I never
+thought that she would receive my wife, when I brought
+her to her, with calm civility.  Not a kiss nor a
+blessing!"
+
+"A kiss?  A blessing for me?"  Lisa laughed and nodded
+meaningly to the sea and world at large.  "She could
+hardly have blessed a woman lolling full length in her
+chair," she thought.  "It IS her  chair.  And I have
+unseated her for life curling herself up in the rugs.
+
+Yet she had a twinge of pity for the old lady.  Even the
+wild boar has its affections and moments of gentleness. 
+A week ago Lisa could have trampled the life out of this
+woman who had slandered her dead mother, with the fury of
+any wild beast.
+For she was Pauline Felix's daughter.  It was her
+mother's name that Mrs. Waldeaux had said could not be
+spoken by any decent woman.  Lisa had been but a child,
+but she had held her mother's head close to her stout
+little heart as she lay dying--that awful mysterious
+death of which the young man had tried to make a telling
+story.  The girl crossed herself now and closed her tired
+eyes as she thought of it.  She had been a wicked child
+and a wicked woman, but she knew certainly that the
+Virgin and her Son had come near to her that day, and had
+helped her.
+
+George, who was poring fondly on her face, exclaimed: 
+"Your eyes are wet.  You are in trouble!"
+
+"I was thinking of my mother," she said gently, holding
+out her hand to him.
+
+He took it and said presently, "Will you not talk to me
+about her, Lisa?  You have not told me any thing of
+your people, my darling.  Nor of yourself.  Why, I don't
+even know whether you are French or German."
+
+"Oh, you shall hear the whole story when we are married,"
+she replied softly, a wicked glitter in her eyes.  "Some
+of the noblest blood in Europe is in my veins.  I will
+give you my genealogical tree to hang up in that old
+homestead of yours.  It will interest the people of
+Weir--and please your mother."
+
+"It is good in you to think of her," he said, tenderly
+looking down at her.
+
+He was not blind.  He saw the muddy skin, the thick lips,
+the soiled, ragged lace.  They would have disgusted him
+in another woman.
+
+But this was--Lisa.  There was no more to be said.
+
+These outside trifles would fall off when she came into
+his life.  Even with them she was the breath and soul of
+it.
+
+She saw the difference between them more sharply than he
+did.  She had been cast for a low part in the play, and
+knew it.  Sometimes she had earned the food which kept
+her alive in ways of which this untempted young priest
+had never even heard.  There was something in this
+clean past of his, in his cold patrician face and
+luxurious habits new to her, and she had a greedy relish
+for it all.
+
+She had been loved before, caressed as men caress a dog,
+kicking it off when it becomes troublesome.  George's
+boyish shyness, his reverent awe of her, startled her.
+
+"He thinks Lisa Arpent a jeune fille--like these
+others.  A little white rose!" she thought, and laughed. 
+She would not tell him why she laughed, and muttered an
+oath when he stupidly insisted on knowing.
+
+He was the first lover who had ever believed in her.
+
+She had begun this affair simply to punish the "old
+woman"; the man in it had counted for nothing.  But now,
+as they crossed the gangway, she looked up at him with
+eyes that for the moment were honest and true as a
+child's, and her firm hand suddenly trembled in his.
+
+
+Three weeks later Mrs. Waldeaux came into Miss Vance's
+little parlor on Half Moon Street.  Her face was red from
+the wind, her eyes sparkled, and she hummed some gay air
+which an organ ground outside.  Clara laid down her
+pen.
+
+"Where have you been, Frances?  It is a week since I saw
+you."
+
+"Oh, everywhere!  George has been showing me London!"
+She sat down before the fire with a gurgle of comfort
+and dropped her bonnet and gloves on the floor beside
+her.  "Yesterday we spent at the Museum.  George
+explained the Elgin marbles to me.  I don't suppose any
+body in London has studied their history so thoroughly. 
+I did wish you could have heard him.  And the day before
+I was at the House--in the ladies' gallery.  I can't
+imagine how he got admission for me.  He IS so clever!"
+
+"We are going down to Canterbury for a couple of days,"
+said Clara.  "We start at noon.  Will you go with us?"
+
+"No, I think not.  George does not seem to care for
+cathedrals.  And he has plans for me, no doubt."
+
+Miss Vance brushed the bonnet and carefully rolled up the
+strings.  "Are you satisfied?  Is London the London you
+have been thinking of these twenty years?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, a thousand times more!  And George has been with me
+every day--every day!"
+
+Miss Vance picked up the gloves, looking impatiently at
+the poor lady's happy face.  "Now she has gone off into
+one of her silly transports of delight, and for no
+earthly reason!"
+
+"I noticed that George has seen very little of Lisa
+lately," she said tentatively.  "If he really means to
+marry her----"
+
+"Marry her!  Clara!  You surely never feared THAT?"
+
+"He certainly told us plainly enough that he would do
+it," said Miss Vance testily.
+
+"Oh, you don't understand him!  You have had so little to
+do with young men.  They are all liable to attacks like
+that--as to measles and scarlet fever.  But they pass
+off.  Now, George is not as susceptible as most of them. 
+But," lowering her voice, "he was madly in love with the
+butcher's Kate when he was ten, and five years afterward
+offered to marry the widow Potts.  I thought he had
+outgrown the disease.  There has been nothing of the kind
+since, until this fancy.  It is passing off.  Of course
+it is mortifying enough to think that such a poor
+creature as that could attract him for an hour."
+
+"I was to blame," Miss Vance said, with an effort.  "I
+brought her in his way.  But how was I to know that she
+was such a cat, and he such----  If he should marry
+her----"
+
+Mrs. Waldeaux laughed angrily.  "You are too absurd,
+Clara.  A flirtation with such a woman was degrading
+enough, but George is not quite mad.  He has not even
+spoken of her for days.  Oh, here he comes!  That is his
+step on the stairs."  She ran to the door.  "He found
+that I was out and has followed me.  He is the most
+ridiculous mother's boy!  Well, George, here I am!  Have
+you thought of some thing new for me to see?"  She
+glanced at Miss Vance, well pleased that she should see
+the lad's foolish fondness for her.
+
+George forced a smile.  He looked worn and jaded.  Miss
+Vance noticed that his usually neat cravat was awry and
+his hands were gloveless.  "Yes," he said.  "It is a lit-
+tle church.  The oldest in London.  I want to show it to
+you."
+
+Miss Vance tied on Mrs. Waldeaux's bonnet, smoothing her
+hair affectionately.  "There are too many gray hairs
+here for your age, Frances," she said.  "George, you
+should keep your mother from worry and work.  Don't let
+her hair grow gray so soon."
+
+George bowed.  "I hope I shall do my duty," he said, with
+dignity.  "Come, mother."
+
+As they drove down Piccadilly Mrs. Waldeaux chattered
+eagerly to her son.  She could not pour out her teeming
+fancies about this new world to any body else, but she
+could not talk fast enough to him.  Had they not both
+been waiting for a lifetime to see this London?
+
+"The thing," she said earnestly, as she settled herself
+beside him, "the thing that has impressed me most, I
+think, were those great Ninevite gods yesterday.  I sat
+for hours before them while you were gone.  There they
+sit, their hands on their knees, and stare out of their
+awful silence at the London fog, just as they stared at
+the desert before Christ was born.  I felt so miserably
+young and sham!"
+
+George adjusted his cravat impatiently.  "I'm afraid I
+don't quite follow you, mother.  These little flights of
+yours----  They belong to your generation, I suppose.  It
+was a more sentimental one than mine.  You are not
+very young.  And you certainly are not a sham.  The
+statues are interesting, but I fail to see why they
+should have had such an effect upon you."
+
+"Oh!" said Frances.  "But you did not stay alone with
+them as long as I did, or you would have felt it too. 
+Now I am sure that the debates in Parliament impressed
+you just as they did me?"
+
+George said nothing, but she went on eagerly.  It never
+occurred to her that he could be bored by her impressions
+in these greatest days of her life.  "To see a half-dozen
+well-groomed young men settle the affairs of India and
+Australia in a short, indifferent colloquy!  How shy and
+awkward they were, too!  They actually stuttered out
+their sentences in their fear of posing or seeming
+pretentious.  So English!  Don't you think it was very
+English, George?"
+
+"I really did not think about it at all.  I have had very
+different things to occupy me," said George, coldly
+superior to all mothers and Parliaments.  This is the
+church."
+
+The cab stopped before an iron door between two shops
+in the most thronged part of Bishopsgate Street.  He
+pushed it open, and they passed suddenly out of the
+hurrying crowd into the solemn silence of an ancient
+dingy building.  A dim light fell through a noble window
+of the thirteenth century upon cheap wooden pews.  The
+church was empty, and had that curious significance and
+half-spoken message of its own which belongs to a vacant
+house.
+
+"I remember," whispered Frances, awestruck.  "This was
+built by the first Christian convert, St. Ethelburga."
+
+"You believe every thing, mother!" said George irritably.
+She wandered about, looking at the sombre walls and
+inscriptions, and then back uneasily, to his moody face.
+
+Suddenly she came up to him as he stood leaning against
+a pillar.  "Something has happened!" she said.  "You did
+not bring me here to look at the church.  You have
+something to tell me."
+
+The young man looked at her and turned away.  "Yes, I
+have.  It isn't a death," he said, with a nervous laugh. 
+"You need not look in that way.  It is--something
+very different.  I--I was married in this church
+yesterday to Lisa Arpent."
+
+Frances did not at first comprehend the great disaster
+that bulked black across her whole life, but, woman-like,
+grasped at a fragment of it.
+
+"You were married and I was not there!  Yesterday!  My
+boy was married and he forgot me!"
+
+"Mother!  Don't look like that!  Here, sit down,"
+grabbing her helplessly by the arms.  "I didn't want to
+hurt you.  I brought you here to tell you quietly.  Cry! 
+Why don't you cry if you're worried!  Oh! I believe she's
+dying!" he shouted, staring around the empty church.
+
+She spoke at last.
+
+"You were married and I couldn't say God bless you!  You
+forgot me!  I never forgot you, George, for one minute
+since you were born."
+
+"Mother, what fool talk is that?  I only didn't want a
+scene.  I kept away from Lisa for weeks so as not to vex
+you.  Forget you!  I think I have been very considerate
+of you under the circumstances.  You have a dislike
+to Lisa, a most groundless dislike----"
+
+"Oh, what is Lisa? " said Frances haughtily.  "It is that
+you have turned away from me.  She has nothing to do with
+the relation between you and me.  How can any woman come
+between me and my son?"  She held up her hands.  "Why,
+you are my boy, Georgy.  You are all I have!"
+
+He looked at the face, curiously pinched and drawn as if
+by death, that was turned up to his, and shrugged his
+shoulders impatiently.  "Now this is exactly what I tried
+to escape yesterday.  Am I never to be a man, nor have
+the rights of a man?  You must accept the situation,
+mother.  Lisa is my wife, and dearer to me than all the
+world beside."
+
+He saw her lips move.  "Dearer?  Dearer than me!"
+She sat quite still after that, and did not seem to hear
+when he spoke.  Something in her silence frightened him. 
+She certainly had been a fond, indulgent mother, and he
+perhaps had been abrupt in cutting the tie between them. 
+It must be cut.  He had promised Lisa the whole matter
+should be settled to-day.  But his mother certainly
+was a weak woman, and he must be patient with her. 
+Secretly he approved the manliness of his patience.
+
+"The cab is waiting, dear," he said.  She rose and walked
+to the street, standing helpless there while the crowd
+jostled her.  Was she blind and deaf?  He put her into
+the cab and sat down opposite to her.  "Half Moon
+Street," he called to the driver.
+
+"Mother," touching her on the knee.
+
+"Yes, George."
+
+"I told him to drive to Half Moon Street.  I will take
+you to Clara Vance.  We may as well arrange things now,
+finally.  You do not like my wife.  That is clear.  For
+the present, therefore, it is better that we should
+separate.  I have consulted with Lisa, and she has
+suggested that you shall join Clara Vance's party while
+we go our own way."
+
+She stared at him.  "Do you mean that you and I are not
+to see London together?  Not to travel through Europe
+together?"
+
+He pitied her a little, and, leaning forward, kissed her
+clammy lips.  "The thing will seem clearer to you
+to-morrow, no doubt.  I must leave you now.  Go to Clara
+and her girls.  They all like to pet and make much of
+you.  I will bring Lisa in the morning, to talk business
+a little.  She has an uncommonly clear head for business. 
+Good-by, dear!"  He stopped the cab, jumped out, and
+walked briskly to the corner where his wife was waiting
+for him.
+
+"You have told her?" she asked breathlessly.
+
+"Yes.  It's over."
+
+"That we must separate?"
+
+"Yes, yes.  I told her you thought it best."
+
+"And she was not willing?"
+
+"Well, she did not approve very cordially," said George,
+evading her eye.
+
+"But she shall approve!" hanging upon his arm, her
+burning eyes close to his face.  "You are mine, George! 
+I love you.  I will share you with nobody!" She whistled
+shrilly, and a hansom stopped.
+
+"What are you going to do, darling?"
+
+"Follow her.  I will tell her something that will make
+her willing to separate.  Get in, get in! "
+
+
+ 
+CHAPTER III
+
+Frances, when in trouble, went out of doors among the
+trees as naturally as other women take to their beds. 
+Lisa's sharp eyes saw her sitting in the Green Park as
+they passed.  The mist, which was heavy as rain, hung in
+drops on the stretches of sward and filled the far aisles
+of trees with a soft gray vapor.  The park was deserted
+but for an old man who asked Mrs. Waldeaux for the
+penny's hire for her chair.  As he hobbled away, he
+looked back at her curiously.
+
+"She gave him a shilling!" exclaimed Lisa, as he passed
+them.  "I told you she was not fit to take care of
+money."
+
+"But why not wait until to-morrow to talk of business? 
+She is hurt and unnerved just now, and she--she does not
+like you, Lisa."
+
+"I am not afraid.  She will be civil.  She is like
+Chesterfield. `Even death cannot kill the courtesy in
+her.'  You don't seem to know the woman, George.  Come."
+
+But George hung back and loitered among the trees.  He
+was an honest fellow, though slow of wit; he loved his
+mother and was penetrated to the quick just now by a
+passionate fondness for his wife.  Two such good, clever
+women!  Why couldn't they hit it off together?
+
+"George?" said Frances, hearing his steps.
+
+Lisa came up to her.  She rose, and smiled to her son's
+wife, and after a moment held out her hand.
+
+But the courtesy which Lisa had expected suddenly enraged
+her.  "No!  There need be no pretence between us," she
+said.  "You are not glad to see me.  There is no pretence
+in me. I am honest.  I did not come here to make
+compliments, but to talk business."
+
+"George said to-morrow.  Can it not wait until
+to-morrow?"
+
+"No.  What is to do--do it!  That is my motto.  George,
+come here!  Tell your mother what we have decided.  Oh,
+very well, if you prefer that I should speak.  We go to
+Paris at once, Mrs. Waldeaux, and will take apartments
+there.  You will remain with Miss Vance."
+
+"Yes, I know.  I am to remain----"  Frances passed her
+hand once or twice over her mouth irresolutely.  "But
+Oxford, George?" she said.  "You forget your
+examinations?"
+
+George took off his spectacles and wiped them.
+
+"Speak!  Have you no mind of your own?" his wife
+whispered.  "I will tell you, then, madam.  He has done
+with that silly whim!  A priest, indeed!  I am Catholic,
+and priests do not marry.  He goes to Paris to study art. 
+I see a great future for him, in art."
+
+Frances stared at him, and then sat down, dully.  What
+did it matter?  Paris or Oxford?  She would not be there. 
+What did it matter?
+
+Lisa waited a moment for some comment, and then began
+sharply, "Now, we come to affaires!  Listen, if you
+please.  I am a woman of business.  Plain speaking is
+always best, to my idea."
+
+
+Mrs. Waldeaux drew herself together and turned her eyes
+on her with sudden apprehension, as she would on a
+snapping dog.  The woman's tones threatened attack.
+
+"To live in Paris, to work effectively, your son must
+have money.  I brought him no dot, alas!  Except"--with
+a burlesque courtesy--"my beauty and my blood.  I must
+know how much money we shall have before I design the
+menage."
+
+"George has his income," said his mother hastily.
+
+"Ah!  You are alarmed, madam!  You do not like plain
+words about the affaires?  George tells me that
+although he is long ago of age, he has as yet received no
+portion of his father's estates."
+
+"Lisa!  You do not understand!  Mother, I did not
+complain.  You have always given me my share of the
+income from the property.  I have no doubt it was a fair
+share--as much as if my father had left me my portion,
+according to custom."
+
+"Yes, it was a fair share," said Frances.
+
+"Ah! you smile, madam!" interrupted Lisa.  "I am told it
+is a vast property, a grand chateau--many securities!  M.
+Waldeaux pere made a will, on dit, incredibly
+foolish, with no mention of his son.  But now that this
+son comes to marry, to become the head of the house, if
+you were a French mother, if you were just, you
+would----  You appear to be amused, madam?"
+
+For Mrs. Waldeaux was laughing.  She could not speak for
+a moment.  The tears stood in her eyes.
+
+"The matter has somewhat of droll to you?"
+
+"It has its humorous side," said Frances.  "I quite
+understand, George, that you will need more money to
+support a wife.  I will double your allowance.  It shall
+be paid quarterly."
+
+"You would prefer to do that?" hesitated George.  "Rather
+than to make over a son's share of the property to me
+absolutely?  Some of the landed estate or securities?  I
+have probably a shrewder business talent than yours, and
+if I had control could make my property more profitable."
+
+"I should prefer to pay your income as before--yes," said
+Frances quietly.
+
+"Well, as you choose.  It is yours to give, of course." 
+George coughed and shuffled to conquer his
+disappointment.  Then he said, "Have it your own way." 
+He put his hand affectionately on her shoulder.  "And
+when you have had your little outing and go home to Weir,
+you will be glad to have us come to you, for a
+visit--won't you, mother?  You haven't said so."
+
+"Why should I say so?  It is your home, George, yours and
+your wife's."  She caught his hand and held it to her
+lips.
+
+But Lisa had not so easily conquered her disappointment. 
+This woman was coolly robbing George of his rights and
+was going instead to kill for him a miserable little
+fatted calf!  Bah!  This woman, who had maligned her dead
+mother!
+
+She should have her punishment now.  In one blow,
+straight from the shoulder.
+
+"But you should know, madam," she said gently, "who it is
+your son has married before you take her home.  I assure
+you that you can present me to the society in Weir with
+pride.  I have royal blood----"
+"Lisa!" George caught her arm.  "It is not necessary. 
+You forget----"
+
+"Oh, I forget nothing!  I said royal blood.  My father,
+madam, was the brother of the Czar, and my mother was
+Pauline Felix.  You don't seem to understand----" after
+a moment's pause.  " It was my mother whose name you
+said should not cross any decent woman's lips--my
+mother----"  She broke down into wild sobs.
+
+"When I said it I did not know that you----  I am sorry." 
+Frances suddenly walked away, pulling open her collar. 
+It seemed to her that there was no breath in the world. 
+George followed her.  "Did you know this?" she said at
+last, in a hoarse whisper.  "And you are--married to her? 
+There is no way of being rid of her?"
+
+"No, there is no way," said Waldeaux stoutly.  "And if
+there were, I should not look for it.  I am sorry that
+there is any smirch on Lisa's birth.  But even her
+mother, I fancy, was not altogether a bad lot.  Bygones
+must be bygones.  I love my wife, mother.  She's worth
+loving, as you'd find if you would take the trouble to
+know her.  Her dead mother shall not come between her and
+me."
+
+"She's like her, George!" said Mrs. Waldeaux, with white,
+trembling lips.  "I ought to have seen it at first. 
+Those luring, terrible eyes.  It is Pauline Felix's heart
+that is in her.  Rotten to the core--rotten----"
+
+"I don't care.  I'll stand by her."  But George's face,
+too, began to lose its color.  He shook himself
+uncomfortably.  "The thing's done now," he muttered.
+
+"Certainly, certainly," Frances repeated mechanically. 
+"Tell her that I am sorry I spoke of her mother before
+her.  It was rude--brutal.  I ask her pardon."
+
+"Oh, she'll soon forget that!  Lisa has a warm heart, if
+you take her right.  There's lots of hearty fun in her
+too.  You'll like that.  Are you going now?  Good-by,
+dear.  We will come and see you in the morning.  The
+thing will not seem half so bad when you have slept on
+it."
+
+He paused uncertainly, as she still stood motionless. 
+She was facing the grim walls of Stafford House, looming
+dimly through the mist, her eyes fixed as if she were
+studying the sky line.
+
+"George," she said. "You don't understand.  You will come
+to me always.  But that woman never shall cross my
+threshold."
+"Mother!  Do you mean what you say?"
+
+It was a man, not a shuffling boy that spoke now.  "Do
+you mean that we are not to go to you to-morrow?  Not to
+go home in October?  Never----"
+
+"Your home is open to you.  But Pauline Felix's child is
+no more to me than a wild beast--or a snake in the grass,
+and never can be."  She faced him steadily now.
+
+"There she is," said Frances, looking at the little black
+figure under the trees, "and here am I.  You can choose
+between us."
+
+"Those whom God hath joined together," muttered George. 
+"You know that."
+
+"You have known her for three weeks," cried Frances
+vehemently.  "I gave you life.  I have been your slave
+every hour since you were born.  I have lived but for
+you.  Which of us has God joined together?"
+
+"Mother, you're damnably unreasonable!  It is the course
+of nature for a man to leave his parents and cleave to
+his wife."
+
+"Yes , I know," she said slowly.  "You can keep that foul
+thing in your life, but it never shall come into mine."
+
+"Then neither will I.  I will stand by my wife."
+
+"That is the end, then?"
+
+She waited, her eyes on his.
+
+He did not speak.
+
+She turned and left him, disappearing slowly in the rain
+and mist.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Two days later Mr. Perry met Miss Vance in Canterbury and
+told her of the marriage.  She hurried back to London. 
+She could not hide her distress and dismay from the two
+girls.
+
+"How did she force him into it?  One is almost driven to
+believe in hypnotism," she cried.
+
+Lucy Dunbar had no joke to make about it to-day.  The
+merry little girl was silent, having, she said, a
+headache.
+
+"You've had too much cathedral!" said Miss Hassard.  "And
+the whole church is wretchedly out of drawing!"
+
+Jean Hassard had studied art at Pond City in Dakota, and
+her soul's hope had been to follow Marie Bashkirtseff's
+career in Paris.  But her father had morally handcuffed
+her and put her into Clara's custody for a year.  It was
+hard!  To be led about to old churches, respectable as
+her grandmother, when she might have been studying
+the nude in a mixed class!  She rattled her chains
+disagreeably at every step.
+
+"The mesalliance is on the other side," she told Lucy
+privately.  "A woman of the world who knew life, to marry
+that bloodless, finical priest!"
+
+"He was not bloodless.  He loved her."
+
+Mr. Perry came up with them from Canterbury, being
+secretly alarmed about Miss Dunbar's headache.  Nobody
+took proper care of that lovely child!  He had attached
+himself to Miss Vance's party in England; he dropped in
+every evening to tell of his interviews with Gladstone or
+Mrs. Oliphant or an artist or a duke.  It was delightful
+to the girls to come so close to these unknown great
+folks.  They felt quite like peris, just outside the
+court of heaven, with the gate a little bit ajar.  This
+evening Mr. Perry promised it should open for them.  He
+was going to bring a real prince, whom he familiarly
+dubbed "a jolly fellow," to call upon Miss Vance.
+
+"Who is the man?" said Clara irritably.  "Be careful, Mr.
+Perry.  I have had enough of foreign adventurers."
+
+"Oh, the Hof Kalender will post you as to Prince
+Wolfburgh.  I looked him up in it.  He is head of one of
+the great mediatized families.  Would have been reigning
+now if old Kaiser Wilhelm had not played Aaron's serpent
+and gobbled up all the little kings.  Wolfburgh has kept
+all his land and castles, however."
+
+"Very well.  Let us see what the man is like," Miss Vance
+said loftily.
+
+
+Mrs. Waldeaux was not in the house when they arrived. 
+Every day she went early in the morning to the Green
+Park, where she had seen George last, and wandered about
+until night fell.  She thought that he had gone to Paris,
+and that she was alone in London.  But somehow she came
+nearer to him there.
+
+When she found that Clara had arrived, she knew that she
+would be full of pity for her.  She came down to dinner
+in full dress, told some funny stories, and laughed
+incessantly.
+
+No.  She had not missed them.  The days had gone merry as
+a marriage bell with her even after her son and his wife
+had run away to Paris.
+
+Mr. Perry congratulated her warmly on the match. 
+"The lady is very fetching, indeed," he said.  "I
+remarked that the first day on ship-board.  Oh, yes, I
+know a diamond when I see it.  But your son picks it up. 
+Lucky fellow!  He picks it up!"  He told Miss Vance that
+there was a curious attraction about her friend, "who, by
+the way, should always wear brown velvet and lace."
+
+Miss Vance drew little Lucy aside after dinner.  "Do you
+see," she said, "the tears in her eyes?  It wrenches my
+heart.  She has become an old woman in a day.  I feel as
+if Frances were dead, and that was her ghost joking and
+laughing."
+
+Lucy said nothing, but she went to Frances and sat beside
+her all evening.  When the prince arrived and was
+presented, going on his triumphant way through the room,
+she nestled closer, whispering, "What do you think of
+him?"
+
+"He looks very like our little fat Dutch baker in
+Weir--he has the same air of patronage," said Frances
+coldly.  She was offended that Lucy should notice the man
+at all.  Was it not she whom George should have married? 
+How happy they would have been--her boy and this
+sweet, neat little girl!  And already Lucy was curious
+about so-called princes!
+
+When his Highness came back to them she rose hastily and
+went to her own room.
+
+Late that night Miss Vance found her there in the dark,
+sitting bolt upright in her chair, still robed in velvet
+and lace.  Clara regarded her sternly, feeling that it
+was time to take her in hand.
+
+"You have not forgiven George?" she said abruptly.
+
+Mrs. Waldeaux looked up, but said nothing.
+
+"Is he coming back soon?"
+
+"He never shall come back while that woman is with him."
+
+Miss Vance put her lamp on the table and sat down. 
+"Frances," she said deliberately, "I know what this is to
+you.  It would have been better for you that George had
+died."
+
+"Much better."
+
+"But he didn't die.  He married Lisa Arpent.  Now it is
+your duty to accept it.  Make the best of it."
+
+"If a lizard crawls into my house will you tell me to
+accept it?  Make the best of it?  Oh, my God!  The slimy
+vile creature!"
+
+"She is not vile!  I tell you there are lovable qualities
+in Lisa.  And even if she were as wicked as her mother,
+what right have you----  You, too, are a sinner before
+God."
+
+"No," said Mrs. Waldeaux gravely, "I am not.  I have
+lived a good Christian life.  I may have been tempted to
+commit sin, but I cannot remember that I ever did it."
+
+Miss Vance looked at her aghast.  "But surely your
+religion teaches you----  Why, you are sinning now, when
+you hate this girl!"
+
+"I do not hate her.  God made her as he made the lizard. 
+I simply will not allow her to cross my path.  What has
+religion to do with it?  I am clean and she is vile. 
+That is all there is to say."
+
+Both women were silent.  Mrs. Waldeaux got up at last and
+caught Clara by the arm.  She was trembling violently. 
+"No, I'm not ill.  I'm well enough.  But you don't under-
+stand!  That woman has killed George.  I spent twenty
+years in making him what he is.  I worked--there was
+nothing but him for me in the world.  I didn't spare
+myself.  To make him a gentleman--a Christian.  And
+in a month she turns him into a thing like herself.  He
+is following her vulgar courses.  I saw the difference
+after he had lived with her for one day.  He is tainted." 
+She stood staring into the dull lamp.  "She may not live
+long, though," she said.  "She doesn't look strong----"
+
+"Frances!  For God's sake!"
+
+"Well, what of it?  Why shouldn't I wish her gone?  The
+harm--the harm!  Do you remember that Swedish maid I
+had--a great fair woman?  One day she was stung by a
+green fly, and in a week she was dead, her whole body a
+mass of corruption!  Oh, God lets such things be done! 
+Nothing but a green fly----"  She shook off Clara's hold,
+drawing her breath with difficulty.  "That is Lisa.  It
+is George that is being poisoned, body and soul.  It's a
+pity to see my boy killed by a thing like that--it's a
+pity----"
+
+Miss Vance was too frightened to argue with her.  She
+brought her wrapper, loosened her hair, soothing her in
+little womanish ways.  But her burning curiosity drove
+her presently to ask one question.
+
+"How can they live?"
+
+"I have doubled his allowance."
+
+"Frances!  You will work harder to make money for Lisa
+Arpent?"
+
+"Oh, what is money!" cried Frances, pushing her away
+impatiently.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+Miss Vance persuaded Mrs. Waldeaux to go with her to
+Scotland.  During the weeks that followed Frances always
+found Lucy Dunbar at her side in the trains or on the
+coaches.
+
+"She is a very companionable child," she told Clara.  "I
+often forget that I am any older than she.  She never
+tires of hearing stories of George's scrapes or his queer
+sayings when he was a child.  Such stories, I think, are
+usually tedious, but George was a peculiar boy."
+
+Mr. Perry's search for notorieties took him also to
+Scotland, and, oddly enough, Prince Wolfburgh's search
+for amusement led him in the same direction.  They met
+him and his cousin, Captain Odo Wolfburgh, at Oban, and
+again on the ramparts of Stirling Castle, and the very
+day that they arrived in Edinburgh, there, in Holyrood,
+in Queen Mary's chamber, stood the pursy little man,
+curling his mustache before her mirror.
+
+Mr. Perry fell into the background with Miss Hassard. 
+"His Highness is becoming monotonous!" he grumbled. 
+"These foreigners never know when they are superfluous in
+society."
+
+"Is he superfluous?" Jean glanced to the corner where the
+prince and Lucy were eagerly searching for the blood of
+Rizzio upon the steps.
+
+"Decidedly," said Perry.  "I wished to show you and Miss
+Dunbar a live prince, and I did it.  That is done and
+over with.  He has been seen and heard.  There is no
+reason why he should pop up here and there all over Great
+Britain like a Jack-in-the-box.  He's becoming a bore."
+
+"You suspect him to be an impostor?" said Jean quickly.
+
+"No. He's genuine enough.  But we don't want any
+foreigners in our caravan," stroking his red beard
+complacently.
+
+"No.  What do you suppose is his object?" asked Jean,
+with one of her quick, furtive glances.
+
+Mr. Perry's jaws grew red as his beard.  "How can I
+tell?" he said gruffly.  He went on irritably, a moment
+later:  "Of course you see it.  The fellow has no
+delicacy.  He makes no more secret of his plans than if
+he were going to run down a rabbit.  Last night at
+Stirling, over his beer, he held forth upon the dimples
+on Miss Dunbar's pink elbows, and asked me if her hair
+were all her own.  I said, at last, that American men did
+not value women like sheep by their flesh and fleece and
+the money they were rated at in the market.  I hit him
+square that time, prince or no prince!"
+
+"Yes, you did, indeed," said Jean vaguely.  Her keen eyes
+followed Lucy and the prince, who were loitering through
+the gallery, pausing before the faded portraits.  "You
+think it is only her money that draws him after us?"
+
+"Why, of course!  A fellow like that could not appreciate
+Miss Dunbar's beauty and wit."
+
+"You think Lucy witty?" said Jean dryly.  "And you think
+she would not marry for a title?"
+
+
+"I don't believe any pure American girl would sell
+herself, like a sheep in the shambles!  And she is
+pure!  A lamb, a lily! cried Perry, growing incoherent in
+his heat.
+
+"She would not if her heart were preoccupied," said Jean
+thoughtfully.
+
+"And you think----" he said breathlessly.
+
+But Jean only laughed, and said no more.
+
+The guide had been paying profound deference to Prince
+Wolfburgh, keeping close to his heels.  Now he swung open
+a door.  "If your Highnesses will come this way?" he
+said, bowing profoundly to Lucy.
+
+The little girl started and hurried back to Miss Vance. 
+Her face was scarlet, and she laughed nervously.  Prince
+Wolfburgh also laughed, loudly and meaningly.  He swore
+at the old man and went out into the cloister where his
+cousin stood smoking.
+
+"Had enough of the old barracks?" said the captain.
+
+"I found I was making too fast running in there," said
+the prince uneasily; "I'll waken up and find that girl
+married to me some day."
+
+"Not so bad a dream," puffed his cousin.
+
+"I'll take a train somewhere," said the prince.  "But no
+matter where I go, I'll find an American old woman with
+a girl to marry.  They all carry the Hof Kalender
+in their pockets, and know every bachelor in Germany."
+
+The captain watched him attentively.  "I don't believe
+those women inside mean to drive any marriage bargain
+with you, Hugo," he said gruffly.  "I doubt whether the
+little mees would marry you if you asked her.  Her dot,
+I hear, is e-normous!" waving his hand upward as if to
+mountain heights.  "And as for beauty, she is a wild
+rose!"
+
+Now, there were reasons why the captain should rejoice
+when Hugo allied himself to the little mees.  On the day
+when he would take these hills of gold and wild rose to
+himself, the captain would become the head of the house
+of Wolfburgh.  It was, perhaps, a mean, ungilded throne,
+but by German law no nameless Yankee woman could sit upon
+it.
+
+The prince looked at Captain Odo.  "You cannot put me
+into a gallop when I choose to walk," he said.  "She's a
+pretty girl, and a good girl, and some time I may marry
+her, but not now."
+
+Odo laughed good-humoredly, and they sauntered down the
+path together.
+
+The prince had offered to dine with Miss Vance that
+evening, but sent a note to say that he was summoned to
+the Highlands unexpectedly.
+
+"It is adieu, not auf wiedersehen, I fear, with his
+Highness," Miss Vance said, folding the note pensively. 
+She had not meant to drive a marriage bargain, and
+yet--to have placed a pupil upon even such a bric-a-brac
+throne as that of Wolfburgh!  She looked thoughtfully at
+Lucy's chubby cheeks.  A princess?  The man was not
+objectionable in himself, either--a kindly, overgrown
+boy.
+"He told me," said Jean, "that he was going to a house
+party at Inverary Castle."
+
+"Whose house is that, Jean?" asked Lucy.
+
+"It is the ancestral seat of the Dukes of Argyll."
+
+"Oh!" Lucy gave a little sigh.  Prince Hugo was
+undeniably fat and very slow to catch a joke, but there
+was certainly a different flavor in this talk of dukes
+and ancestral seats to the gossip about the Whites and
+Greens at home.
+
+Indeed, the whole party, including even Mr. Perry,
+experienced a sensation of sudden vacancy and
+flatness when his Highness left them.  It was as though
+they had been sheltering a royal eagle that was used to
+dwelling in sunlit heights unknown to them, and now they
+were left on flat ground to consort with common poultry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Miss Vance led her party slowly through Scotland and down
+again to London.  Mrs. Waldeaux went with them.  The
+girls secretly laughed together at her fine indomitable
+politeness, and her violent passion for the Stuarts, and
+hate of the Roundheads.  But Mr. Perry was bored by her.
+
+"What is it to us," he said, "that Queen Mary paddled
+over this lake, or Cromwell's soldiers whitewashed that
+fresco?  Give me a clean, new American church, anyhow,
+before all of your mouldy, tomby cathedrals.  These
+things are so many cancelled cheques to me.  I have
+nothing to pay on them.  It is live issues that draw on
+my heart.  You American girls ought to be at home looking
+into the negro problem, or Tammany, or the Sugar Trust,
+instead of nosing into Rembrandts, or miracles at
+Lourdes, or palaces.  These are all back numbers.  Write
+n. g. on them and bury them.  So, by the way, is your
+Mrs. Waldeaux a back number.  My own opinion is that
+all men and women at fifty ought to go willingly and be
+shut up in the room where the world keeps its second-hand
+lumber!"
+
+"Yet nobody," said Lucy indignantly, "is more careful or
+tender with Mrs. Waldeaux than you!"
+
+"That is because Mr. Perry has the genuine American awe
+of people of good birth," said Jean slyly.  "It is the
+only trait which makes me suspect that he is a self-made
+man."
+Mr. Perry, for answer, only bowed gravely.  He long ago
+had ceased to hide his opinion that Miss Hassard was
+insufferable.
+
+Frances, for her part, was sure that the young people
+were glad to have her as a companion.  One day she
+decided to stay with them, and the next to go to New York
+on the first steamer.  She seemed to see life hazily, as
+one over whose mind a cataract was growing.  What had she
+to do in Europe, she reasoned?  George was gone.  Her one
+actual hold on the world had slipped from her.  That
+great mysterious thing called living was done and past
+for her.
+
+And yet--there was Kenilworth, and Scott's house? 
+Scott, who had been her friend and leader since she was
+eight years old!  And in that anthem at York minster
+there was a message, which she had been waiting all of
+her life to hear!  And here was Lucy beside her with her
+soft voice, and loving blue eyes--Lucy, who should have
+been George's wife!  In all of these things something
+high and good called to the poor lady, which she heard
+and understood as a child would the voice of its mother.
+
+One hour she resolved to leave her son with his wife, to
+go back to Weir at once and work with the poultry and
+Quigg's jokes for the rest of her life.  She was dead. 
+Let her give up and consent to be dead.
+
+The next, she would stay where she could see George
+sometimes, and try to forgive the woman who had him in
+her keeping.  Perhaps, after all, she was human, as Clara
+said.  If she could forgive Lisa, she could be happy with
+these young people and live--live in this wonderful old
+world, where all that was best of past ages was kept
+waiting for her.
+
+When they came to London, she went at once to
+Morgan's to make a deposit, for she had been hard at work
+on her jokes as she travelled, and had received her pay.
+
+"Your son, madam," said the clerk, "drew on his account
+to-day.  He said he expected remittances from you.  Is
+this to be put to his credit?"
+
+"My son was in London to-day?
+
+"He has just left the house."
+
+"Did he--he left a message for me?  A letter, perhaps?"
+
+"No, nothing, madam."
+
+"Put the money to his credit, of course."
+She went out into the narrow street and wandered along to
+the Bank of England, staring up at the huge buildings.
+
+He had been looking at them--he had walked on this very
+pavement a minute ago!  That might be the smoke of his
+cigar, yonder!
+
+She could easily find him.  Just to look at him once; to
+hold his hand!  He might be ill and need her; he never
+was well in foggy weather.
+
+Then she remembered that Lisa was with him.  She would
+nurse him.
+
+She called a cab, and, as she drove home, looked out at
+the crowd with a hard, smiling face.
+
+Henry Irving that night played "Shylock," and Mr. Perry
+secured a box for Miss Vance.  Frances went with the
+others.  Before the curtain rose there was a startled
+movement among them, a whisper, and then Clara turned to
+Mrs. Waldeaux.
+
+"Frances, Lisa is coming into the opposite box," she
+said.  "She is really a beautiful woman in that
+decollete gown, and her cheeks flushed, and her
+eyes----  I had no idea!  She is superb!"
+
+Two men in the dress of French officers entered the box
+with Lisa.  They seated her, bending over her with an
+empressement which, to Mrs. Waldeaux's heated fancy,
+was insulting.  George came last, carrying his wife's
+cloak, which he placed upon a chair.  One of the men
+tossed his cape to him, with a familiar nod, and George
+laid it aside and sat down at the back of the box.
+
+His mother leaned forward, watching.  That woman had put
+her son in the place of an inferior--an attendant.
+
+The great orchestra shook the house with a final crash,
+and the curtain rose upon the Venetian plaza.  Every face
+in the audience was turned attentive toward it.  But Mrs.
+Waldeaux saw only Lisa.
+
+A strange change came upon her as she watched her son's
+wife.  For months she had struggled feebly against her
+hate of Lisa.  Now she welcomed it; she let herself go.
+
+Is the old story true after all?  Is there some brutal
+passion hiding in every human soul, waiting its chance,
+even in old age?  It is certain that this woman, after
+her long harmless life, recognized the fury in her soul
+and freed it.
+
+"Frances," whispered Clara, "when this act is over, go
+and speak to them.  I will go with you.  It is your
+chance to put an end to this horrible separation.  They
+are your children."
+
+"No.  That woman is my enemy, Clara," said Mrs. Waldeaux
+quietly.  "I will make no terms with her."
+
+Miss Vance sighed and turned to the stage, but Frances
+still watched the opposite box.  It seemed as if the
+passion within her had cleared her eyes.  They never
+had seen George as they now saw him.
+
+Was that her son?  Was it that little priggish,
+insignificant fellow that she had made a god of?  He was
+dull, commonplace!  Satisfied to sit dumb in the
+background and take orders from those bourgeois French
+Jews!
+
+The play went on, but she saw nothing but George and his
+wife.
+
+There was the result of all her drudgery!  The hot
+summers of work in the filthy poultry yards; the grinding
+out of poor jokes; the coarse, cheap underclothes (she
+used to cry when she put them on, she hated them so). 
+Years and years of it all; and for that cold, selfish
+fop!
+
+His mother saw him leave the box, and knew that he was
+coming.
+
+"Oh, good-evening, George!" she said gayly, as he opened
+the door.  "A wonderful scene, wasn't it?  I have always
+wished to see Irving in `Hamlet.'"
+
+"This is `Shylock,'" he said gravely, and turned to speak
+to the others.  They welcomed him eagerly, and made room
+for him.  He had lost something of the cold, blase air
+which had ennobled him in the eyes of the young
+women.  He looked around presently, and said with a
+comfortable shrug:
+
+"It is so pleasant to talk English again!  My wife
+detests it.  We speak only French.  I feel like an alien
+and outcast among you!"  He laughed; his mother glanced
+at him curiously.  But Lucy turned her face away, afraid
+that he should see it.  As he talked, George noted the
+clear-cut American features of the girls, and their
+dainty gowns, with a keen pleasure; then he glanced
+quickly at the opposite box.
+
+"Ah!" said Jean to Mr. Perry.  "The soiled lace and musk
+are beginning to tell!  He is tired of Lisa already!"
+"I never liked the fellow," said Mr. Perry coldly.  "But
+he is hardly the cad that you suppose."
+
+He fell into a gloomy silence.  He had wasted two years'
+salary in following Lucy Dunbar about, in showering
+flowers on her, in posing before her in the last fashions
+of Conduit Street, and yet when this conceited fellow
+came into the box she was blind and deaf to all besides! 
+Her eyes filled with tears just now when he talked of
+his loneliness.  Lonely--with his wife!  A married man!
+
+George, when the curtain fell again, sat down by Frances.
+
+"Mother," he said.
+
+"Yes, George."  Her eyes were bright and attentive, but
+her countenance had fallen into hard lines new to him.
+
+"I went to Morgan's this afternoon.  You have been very
+liberal to us."
+
+"I will do what I can.  You may depend upon that amount,
+regularly."
+
+He rose and bade them good-night, and turned to her
+again.
+
+"We--we are coming to-morrow to thank you.  MOTHER?" 
+There was a hoarse sob in his throat.  He laid his hand
+on her arm.  She moved so that it dropped.  "We will come
+to-morrow," he said.  "Did you understand?  Lisa wishes
+to be friends with you.  She is ready to forgive," he
+groped on, blundering, like a man.
+
+"Oh, yes, I understand.  You and Lisa are coming to
+forgive me to-morrow," she said, smiling.
+
+He looked at her, perplexed and waiting.  But she said no
+more.
+
+"Well, I must go now.  Good-night."
+
+"Good-night, George!  "Her bright, smiling eyes followed
+him steadily, as he went out.
+
+
+Mrs. Waldeux tapped at Clara's door that evening after
+they reached home.
+
+"I came to tell you that I shall leave London early in
+the morning," she said.
+
+"You will not wait to see George and his wife?"
+
+"I hope I never shall see them again.  No!  Not a word! 
+I will hear no arguments!"  She came into the room and
+closed the door.  There was a certain novel air of
+decision and youth in her figure and movements.  "I am
+going to make a change, Clara," she said.  "I have worked
+for others long enough.  I am going away now, alone.  I
+will be free.  I will live my own life--at last."  Her
+eyes shone with exultation.
+
+"And----  Where are you going?" stammered Miss Vance,
+dismayed.
+
+"I don't know.  There is so much--it has all been waiting
+so long for me.  There are the cathedrals--and the
+mountains.  Or the Holy Land.  Perhaps I may try to write
+again.  There seems to be a dumb word or two in me. 
+Don't be angry with me, Clara," throwing her arms about
+her cousin, the tears rushing to her eyes.  "I may come
+back to you and little Lucy some time.  But just now I
+want to be alone and fancy myself young.  I never was
+young."
+
+When Lucy stole into her old friend's chamber the next
+morning as usual to drink her cup of coffee with her, she
+found the door open and the room in disorder, and she was
+told that Mrs. Waldeaux had left London at daybreak.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+During the year which followed, Mr. Perry was forced to
+return to the States, but he made two flying trips across
+"the pond," as he called it, in the interests of his
+magazine, always running down his prey of notorieties in
+that quarter of Europe in which Miss Vance and her
+charges chanced to be.
+
+When he came in July he found them in a humble little inn
+in Bozen.  He looked with contempt at the stone floors,
+the clean cell-like chambers, each with its narrow bed,
+and blue stone ewer perched on a wooden stool; and he
+sniffed with disgust when breakfast was served on a table
+set out in the Platz.
+
+"Don't know," he said, "whether I can digest food, eating
+out of doors.  Myself, I never give in to these foreign
+ways.  It's time they learned manners from us."
+
+"I have no doubt," said Miss Vance placidly, "that you
+can find one of the usual hotels built for rich Americans
+in the town.  We avoid them.  We search out the inns
+du pays to see as far behind the scenes as we can.  I
+don't care to go to those huge houses with mobs of
+Chicagoans and New Yorkers; and have the couriers and
+portiers turn the flashlights on Europe for me, as if it
+were a burlesque show."
+
+"Now, that's just what I like!" said Perry.  "I always go
+to the houses where the royalties put up.  I like to
+order better dishes and give bigger tips than they do. 
+They don't know Jem Perry from Adam, but it's my way of
+waving the American flag."
+
+"I am afraid we have no such patriotic motive," said
+Clara.  "My girls seem to care for nothing now but art. 
+We have made this little inn our headquarters in the
+Tyrol chiefly out of love for the old church yonder."
+
+Mr. Perry glanced contemptuously across the Platz at the
+frowning gray building, and sat down with his back to it.
+
+"Art, eh?  Well, I've no doubt I could soon catch on to
+Art, if I turned my mind that way.  It pays, too,--Art. 
+Not the fellows who paint, but the connoisseurs.  There's
+Miller from our town.  He was a drummer for a candy
+firm.  Had an eye for color.  Well, he buys pictures now
+for Americans who want galleries in their houses.  He
+bought his whole collection for Stout--the great dealer
+in hams.  Why, Miller can tell the money value within
+five dollars, at sight, of any picture in Europe.  He's
+safe, too.  Never invests in pictures that aren't sure to
+go up in price.  Getting rich!  And began as a candy
+drummer!  No, ma'am!  Art's no mystery.  I've never taken
+it up myself.  Europe is sheer pleasure to me.  I get the
+best out of it.  I know where to lodge well, and I can
+tell you where the famous plats are cooked, and I have my
+coats built by Toole.  The house pays me a salary which
+justifies me in humoring my little follies," stroking his
+red beard complacently.
+
+Lucy's chubby face and steady blue eyes were turned on
+him thoughtfully, and presently, when they sauntered down
+the windy street together, he talked and she still
+silently watched him.
+
+"Miss Precision is weighing him in the balance," said
+Jean, laughing, as she poured out more black coffee. 
+"With all of her soft ways Lucy is shrewd.  She knows
+quite well why he races across the Atlantic, and why
+Prince Wolfburgh has backed away from us and charged on
+us again all summer.  She is cool.  She is measuring poor
+Perry's qualifications for a husband now just as she
+would materials for a cake.  A neat little inventory.  So
+much energy, so much honest kindness--so much vulgarity. 
+I couldn't do that.  If ever a man wants to marry me,
+I'll fly to him or away from him, as quick as the steel
+needle does when the magnet touches it."
+Miss Vance listened to her attentively.  "Jean," she
+said, after a pause, "are you sure that it is Lucy whom
+the prince wishes to marry?"
+
+"It is not I," said Miss Hassard promptly.  "He has
+thought of me several times--he has weighed my
+qualifications.  But the man is in love with Lucy as
+honestly as a ploughman could be.  Don't you think I've
+tough luck?" she said, resting her elbow on the table and
+her chin on her palm, her keen gray eyes following Miss
+Dunbar and her lover as they loitered under the shadow of
+the church.  "I am as young as Lucy.  I have a better
+brain and as big a dot.  But her lovers make her
+life a burden, and I never have had one.  Just because
+our noses and chins are made up differently!"
+
+"Oh, my dear!" said Clara anxiously.  "I never thought
+you cared for that kind of success!"
+
+"I'm only human," Jean laughed.  "Of course I'm an
+artist.  I'm going to paint a great picture some day that
+all the world shall go mad about.  Of Eve.  I'll put all
+the power of all women into her.  But in the meantime I'd
+like to see one man turn pale and pant before me as the
+fat little prince does when Lucy snubs him."
+
+"Lucy is very hard to please," complained Miss Vance. 
+"She snubs Mr. Perry--naturally.  But the prince--why
+should she not marry the prince?"
+
+"Your generation," said Jean, smiling slyly, "used to
+think that an unreasonable whim called love was a good
+thing in marriage----"
+
+"But why should she not love the prince?  He is honorable
+and kind, and quite passable as to looks----  Can there
+be any one else?" turning suddenly to Jean.
+
+Miss Hassard looked at her a moment, hesitating.  "Your
+cousin George used to be Lucy's type of a hero----"
+
+"Why! the man is married!"  Miss Vance stood up, her lean
+face reddening.  "Jean!  You surprise me!  That kind of
+talk--it's indecent!  It is that loose American idea of
+marriage that ends in hideous divorce cases.  But for one
+of my girls----"
+
+"It is a very old idea," said Jean calmly.
+
+"David loved another man's wife.  Mind you, I don't accuse
+Lucy of loving any body, but when the needle has once
+touched the magnet it answers to its call ever after."
+
+Miss Vance vouchsafed no answer.  She walked away across
+the Platz, jerking her bonnet strings into a knot.  Jean
+was one of the New Women!  Her opinions stuck out on
+every side like Briareus' hundred elbows!  You could not
+come near her without being jabbed by them.  Such women
+were all opinions; there was no softness, no feeling, no
+delicacy about them.  Skeletons with no flesh!  As for
+Lucy, she had no fear.  If even the child had loved
+George, she would have cast out every thought of him
+on his wedding day, as a Christian girl should do!
+
+She passed Lucy at that moment.  She was leaning against
+one of the huge stone lions which crouch in front of the
+church, listening to Mr. Perry.  If ever a pure soul
+looked into the world it was through those limpid eyes!
+
+The Platz was nearly empty.  One or two men in blouses
+clattered across the cobblestones and going into the dark
+church dropped on their knees.  The wind was high, and
+now and then swept heavy clouds low across the sunlight
+space overhead.
+
+Lucy, as Jean had guessed, knew why the man beside her
+had crossed the Atlantic, and she had decided last night
+to end the matter at once.  The tears had stood in her
+eyes for pity at the thought of the pain she must give
+him.  Yet she had put on her new close-fitting coat and
+a becoming fur cap, and pulled out the loose hair which
+she knew at this moment was blowing about her pink cheeks
+in curly wisps in a way that was perfectly maddening. 
+Clara, seeing the mischief in her eyes as she listened
+shyly to Perry, went on satisfied.  There was no
+abyss of black loss in that girl's life!
+
+Lucy just now was concerned only for Perry.  How the poor
+man loved her!  Why not marry him after all, and put him
+out of his pain?  She was twenty-four.  Most women at
+twenty-four had gone through their little tragedy of
+love.  But she had had no tragedy.  She told herself
+firmly that there had been no story of love in her life. 
+There never could be, now.  She was too old.
+
+She was tired, too, and very lonely.  This man would seat
+her on a throne and worship her every day.  That would be
+pleasant enough.
+
+"I am ashamed of myself," he was saying, "to pursue you
+in this way.  You have given me no encouragement, I know. 
+But whenever I go to New York and bone down to work,
+something tells me to come back and try again."
+
+Lucy did not answer, and there was a brief silence.
+
+"Of course I'm a fool,"--prodding the ground with his
+stick.  "But if a man were in a jail cell and knew that
+the sun was shining just outside, he'd keep on
+beating at the wall."
+
+"Your life is not a jail cell.  It's very comfortable, I
+think."
+
+"It has been bare enough.  I have had a hard fight to
+live at all.  I told you that I began as a canal-boy."
+
+She looked at him with quick sympathy.  At once she
+fancied that she could read old marks of want on his
+face.  His knuckles were knobbed like a laborer's.  He
+had had a hard fight!  It certainly would be pleasant to
+rain down comfort and luxury on the good, plucky fellow!
+
+"Of course that was all long ago," said Perry.  "I'm not
+ashamed of it.  As Judge Baker remarked the other day,
+`The acknowledged aristocrats of America, to-day, are its
+self-made men.'  He ought to know.  The Bakers are the
+top of the heap in New York.  Very exclusive.  I've been
+intimate there for years.  No, Miss Dunbar, I may have
+begun as a mule-driver on a canal, but I am choice in my
+society.  My wife will not find a man or woman in my
+circle who is half-cut."
+
+Lucy drew a long breath.  To live all day and every day
+with this man!
+
+And yet--she was so tired!  There was a good deal of
+money to manage, and he could do that.  He would like a
+gay, hospitable house, and so would she, and they would
+be kind to the poor--and he was an Episcopalian, too. 
+There would be no hitch there.  Lucy was a zealous High
+Churchwoman.
+
+Why should she not do it?  The man was as good as gold at
+heart.  Jean called him a cad, but the caddishness was
+only skin deep.
+
+Mr. Perry watched her, reading her thoughts more keenly
+than she guessed.
+
+"One thing I will say in justice to myself," he said. 
+"You are a rich woman.  If you marry me, YOU will know,
+if nobody else does, that I am no fortune-hunter.  I
+shall always be independent of my wife.  Every dollar she
+owns shall be settled on her before I go with her to the
+altar."
+
+"Oh, I'm not thinking of the money," said Lucy
+impatiently.
+
+"Then you are thinking of me!"  He leaned over her.  She
+felt as if she had been suddenly dragged too close to
+a big unpleasant fire.  "I know you don't love me," he
+panted, "you cold little angel, you!  But you do like me? 
+Eh? just a little bit, Lucy?  Marry me.  Give me a
+chance.  I'll bring you to me.  If there is a single
+spark of love in your heart for me, I'll blow it into a
+flame!  I can do it, I tell you!"  He caught her fiercely
+by the shoulder.
+
+Lucy drew back and threw out her hands.  "Let me have
+time to think!"
+
+"Time?  You've had a year!"
+
+"One more day.  Come again this evening----"
+
+"This evening?  I've come so often!" staring breathlessly
+into her face.  "It will be no use, I can see that. 
+Well, as you please.  I'll come once more."
+
+The young fellow in his jaunty new clothes shook as if he
+had the ague.  He had touched her.  For one minute she
+had been his!
+
+He turned and walked quickly across the Platz.
+
+Lucy, left alone, was full of remorse.  She looked down
+into her heart; she had forgotten to do it before.  No,
+not a spark for him to blow into a flame; not a
+single warm thought of him!
+
+The girl was ashamed of herself.  He might be a cad, but
+he was real; his honest love possessed him body and soul. 
+It was a matter of expediency to her; a thing to debate
+with herself, to dally over, with paltry pros and cons.
+
+Miss Vance came hurriedly up the street, an open letter
+in her hand.  Lucy ran to meet her.
+
+"What is it?  You have heard bad news?"
+
+"I suppose we ought not to call it that.  It is from
+George Waldeaux.  They have a son, two months old.  He
+tells it as a matter for rejoicing."
+
+"Oh, yes," said Lucy feebly.
+
+"They are at Vannes--in Brittany.  He has a cough.  He
+seems to know nobody--to have no friends, and, I suspect,
+not much money.  He is terribly depressed."  Clara folded
+the letter thoughtfully.  "He asks me to tell his mother
+that the baby has come."
+
+"Where is his mother?"
+
+"In Switzerland."
+
+"Why is she not with him?" demanded Lucy angrily. 
+"Wandering about gathering edelweiss, while he is alone
+and wretched!"
+
+"He has his wife.  You probably do not understand the
+case fully," said Clara coldly.  "I am going to wire to
+his mother now."  She turned away and Lucy stood
+irresolute, her hand clutching the shaggy head of the
+stone beast beside her.
+
+"I can give him money.  I'll go to him.  He needs me!"
+she said aloud.  Then her whole body burned with shame. 
+She--Lucy Dunbar, good proper Lucy, whose conscience hurt
+her if she laid her handkerchiefs away awry in her
+drawer, nursing a criminal passion for a married man!
+
+She went slowly back to the inn.  "He has his wife," she
+told herself.  "I am nothing to him.  I doubt if he would
+know me if he met me on the street."  She tried to go
+back to her easy-going mannerly little thoughts, but
+there was something strange and fierce behind them that
+would not down.
+
+Jean came presently to the salle.  "I have had a letter
+too," she said.  "The girl who writes came from Pond
+City.  She was in the same atelier in Paris with
+George.  She says:  `Your friends the Waldeaux have
+come to grief by a short cut.  They flung money about for
+a few months as if they were backed by the Barings.  The
+Barings might have given their suppers.  As for their
+studio--there was no untidier jumble of old armor and
+brasses and Spanish leather in Paris; and Mme. George
+posing in the middle in soiled tea-gowns!  But the
+suppers suddenly stopped, and the leather and Persian
+hangings went to the Jews.  I met Lisa one day coming out
+of the Vendome, where she had been trying to peddle a
+roll of George's sketches to the rich Americans.  I asked
+her what was wrong, and she laughed and said, "We were
+trying to make thirty francs do the work of thirty
+thousand.  And we have made up our minds that we know no
+more of art than house painters.  We are in a blind
+alley!"  Soon after that the baby was born.  They went
+down to Brittany.  I hear that Lisa, since the child
+came, has been ill.  I tell all this dreary stuff to you
+thinking that you may pass it on to their folks. 
+Somebody ought to go to their relief.'"
+
+"Relief!" exclaimed Miss Vance.  "And the money that they
+were flinging into the gutter was earned day by day
+by his old mother!  Every dollar of it!  I know that
+during the last year she has done without proper clothes
+and food to send their allowance to them."
+"You forget," said Lucy, "that George Waldeaux was doing
+noble work in the world.  It was a small thing for his
+mother to help him."
+
+"Noble work?  His pictures or his sermons, Lucy?"
+demanded Miss Vance, with a contemptuous shrug.
+
+Lucy without reply walked out to the inn garden and
+seated herself in a shady corner.  There Mr. Perry found
+her just as the first stroke of the angelus sounded on
+the air.  Her book lay unopened on her lap.
+
+He walked slowly up to her and stopped, breathing hard,
+as if he had been running.  "It is evening now.  I have
+come for my answer, Miss Dunbar," he said, forcing a
+smile.
+
+"Answer?"  Lucy looked up bewildered.
+
+"You have forgotten!"
+
+The blood rushed to her face.  She held out her hands. 
+"Oh, forgive me!  I heard bad news.  I have been so
+troubled----"
+
+"You forgot that I had asked you to be my wife!"
+
+"Mr.  Perry----"
+
+"No, don't say another word, Miss Dunbar.  I have had my
+answer.  I knew you didn't love me, but I did not think
+I was so paltry that you would forget that I had offered
+to marry you."
+
+Lucy pressed her hands together, looking up at him
+miserably without a word.  He walked down the path and
+leaned on the wall with his back to her.  His very back
+was indignant.
+
+Presently he turned.  "I will bid you goodby," he said,
+with an effort at lofty courtesy, "and I will leave my
+adieux for your friends with you."
+
+"Are you going--back to the States?" stammered Lucy.
+
+"Yes, I am going back to the States," he replied sternly. 
+"A man of merit there has his place, regardless of rank. 
+Jem Perry can hold his head there as high as any beggarly
+prince.  Farewell, Miss Dunbar."
+
+He strode down the path and disappeared.  Lucy shook her
+head and cried from sheer wretchedness.  She felt
+that she had been beaten to-day with many stripes.
+
+Suddenly the bushes beside her rustled.  "Forgive me," he
+said hoarsely.   She looked up and saw his red honest
+eyes.  "I behaved like a brute.  Good-by, Lucy!  I never
+loved any woman but you, and I never will."
+
+"Stay, stay!" she cried.
+
+He heard her, but he did not come back.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Lucy was silent and dejected for a day or two, being
+filled with pity for Mr. Perry's ruined life.  But when
+she saw his name in a list of outgoing passengers on the
+Paris her heart gave a bound of relief.  Nothing more
+could now be done.  That chapter was closed.  There had
+been no other chapter of moment in her life, she told
+herself sternly.  Now, all the clouds had cleared away. 
+It was a new day.  She would begin again.
+
+So she put on new clothes, none of which she had ever
+worn before, and tied back her curly hair with a fresh
+white ribbon, and came down to breakfast singing gayly.
+
+Miss Vance gave her her roll and milk in silence, and
+frowning importantly, drew out a letter.
+
+"Lucy, I have just received a communication from Prince
+Wolfburgh.  He is in Bozen."
+
+"Here!" Lucy started up, glancing around like a chased
+hare.
+
+Then she sat down again and waited.  There was no other
+chapter, and the book was so blank!
+
+"His coming is very opportune," she said presently,
+gently.
+
+"Oh! do YOU think so, my dear?  Really!  Well, I always
+have liked the young man.  So simple.  So secure of his
+social position.  The Wolfburghs, I find, go back to the
+eleventh century.  Mr. Perry had noble traits, but one
+never felt quite safe as to his nails or his grammar."
+
+"But the prince--the prince?" cried Jean.
+
+"Oh, yes.  Well, he writes--most deferentially.  He begs
+for the honor of an interview with me this afternoon upon
+a subject of the most vital importance.  He says,
+`regarding you, as I do, in loco parentis to the
+hochgeboren Fraulein Dunbar.'"
+"Hochgeboren!" said Lucy.  "My grandfather was a
+saddler.  Tell him so, Miss Vance.  Tell him the exact
+facts.  I want no disclosures after----"
+
+"After marriage?" said Jean, rising suddenly.  "Then you
+have decided?"
+
+"I have not said that I had decided," replied Lucy
+calmly.
+
+Jean laughed.  "He will not be scared by the saddler. 
+Europeans of his order take no account of our American
+class distinctions.  They look upon us as low-born
+parvenues, all alike.  They weigh and value us by other
+standards than birth."
+
+"I have money, if you mean that, Jean," said Lucy
+cheerfully.
+
+"I think you had better go away, girls, if you have
+finished your dejeuner.  He may be here at any moment
+now," said Clara, looking anxiously at her watch.
+
+Lucy went to her little chamber and sat down to work at
+a monstrous caricature which she was painting of the
+church.  Jean paced up and down the stone corridor,
+looking out of the window into the Platz.
+
+"He has come," she said excitedly, appearing at Lucy's
+door.  "He went into the church first, to say an ave for
+help, poor little man!  His fat face is quite pale and
+stern.  It is a matter of life and death to him.  And
+it's no more to you than the choosing of a new coat."
+
+Lucy smiled and sketched in a priest on the church
+steps.  Her hand shook, but Jean could not see that.  She
+went to the window again with something like an inward
+oath at the dolts of commonplace women who had all the
+best chances, but was back in a moment, laughing
+nervously.
+
+"Do you know he has on that old brown suit?"  She leaned
+against the jamb of the door.  "If I were a prince, and
+came a-wooing, I would have troops of my Jagers, and
+trumpets and banners with the arms of my House, and I'd
+wear all my decorations.  Of course we Americans are
+bound to say that rank and royalty are dead things.  But
+if I had them, I'd galvanize the corpses!  If they are
+useful as shows, I'd make the show worth seeing.  I'd
+cover myself with jewels like the old Romanoffs.  You
+would never see Queen Jean in a slouchy alpaca and
+pork-pie hat like Victoria."  While her tongue chattered,
+her eyes watched Lucy keenly.  "You don't hear me!  You
+are deciding what to do.  Why on earth should you
+hesitate?  He is a gentleman--he loves you!" and then to
+Lucy's relief she suddenly threw on her hat and rushed
+off for a walk.
+
+Miss Dunbar painted the priest's robe yellow, in her
+agitation.  But the agitation was not deep.  There really
+seemed no reason why she should hesitate.  He would be
+kind; he was well-bred and agreeable.  A princess?  She
+had a vague idea of a glorified region of ancestral
+castles and palaces in which dukes and royalties dwelt
+apart and discoursed of high matters.  She would be one
+of them.
+
+The other day there seemed to be no reason why she should
+not marry Mr. Perry.  In marriage then one must only
+consider the suitability of the man?  There was nothing
+else to consider----
+
+
+With a queer, hunted look in her soft eyes she worked on,
+daubing on paint liberally.
+
+Meanwhile, in the little salle below, Miss Vance sat
+stiffly erect, while the prince talked in his shrill
+falsetto.  Although he set forth his affection for the
+engelreine Madchen as simply as the little German baker
+in Weir (whom he certainly did resemble) might have done,
+she could find, in her agitation, no fitting words in
+which to answer him.  That she, Clara Vance, should be
+the arbiter in a princely alliance!  At last she managed
+to ask whether Miss Dunbar had given him any
+encouragement on which to found his claim.
+
+"Ah, Fraulein Vance!" he cried, laughing.  "The hare does
+not call to the hounds!  But I have no fear.  She speaks
+to me in other ways than by words.
+
+
+  "`Mein Herz und seine Augen
+   Verstehen sich gar so gut!'
+
+
+You know the old song.  Ah, ja!  I understand what she
+would say--here!" touching his heart.
+
+He paced up and down, smiling to himself.  Suddenly he
+drew up before her, tossing his hands out as if to throw
+away some pleasant dream.  "I have come to you, gracious
+lady, as I would to the mother of Miss Dunbar.  I show to
+you the heart!  But before I address her it is necessary
+that I shall consult her guardian with regard to
+business."
+
+It was precisely, Clara said afterward, as if the baker
+from Weir had stopped singing, and presented his bill.
+
+"Business?" she gasped.  "Oh, I see!  Settlements.  We
+don't have such things in the States.  But I quite
+understand all those European social traits.  I have
+lived abroad for years.  I----"
+
+"Who is Miss Dunbar's guardian?" the prince demanded
+alertly.  He sat down by the table and took out a
+notebook and papers.
+
+"But--settlements?  Is not that a little premature?" she
+ventured.  "She has not accepted you."
+
+"HE may not accept my financial proposals.  It is
+business, you see.  The gentle ladies, even die
+Amerikaner, do not comprehend business.  It is not, you
+perceive, dear lady, the same when the head of the House
+of Wolfburgh allies himself with a hochgeboren
+Fraulein as when the tailors marry----"
+
+"Nor bakers.  I see," stammered Clara.
+
+"Miss Dunbar's properties are valuable.  Her estate in
+Del-aware," glancing at his notebook, "is larger than
+some of our German kingdoms.  Her investments in railway
+and mining securities, if put on the market, should be
+worth a million of florins.  These are solid matters, and
+must be dealt with carefully."
+
+"But, good gracious, Prince Wolfburgh! cried Miss Vance,
+"how did you find out about Lucy's investments?"
+
+He looked at her in amazement.  "Meine gnadigste
+Fraulein!  It is not possible that you supposed that in
+such a matter as this men leap into the dark--the men of
+rank, princes, counts, English barons, who marry the
+American mees?  That they do not know for what they
+exchange their--all that they give?  I will tell you,"
+with a condescending smile.  "There are agents in the
+States--in New York--in Chicago--in--how do you name it? 
+St. Sanata.  They furnish exact information as to the
+dot of the lady who will, perhaps, marry here.  Oh, no! 
+We do not leap into the dark!"
+
+"So I perceive," said Clara dryly.  "And may I inquire,
+your Highness, what financial arrangement you propose, in
+case she becomes your wife?"
+
+"Assuredly."  He hastily unfolded a large paper.  "This
+must be accepted by her guardian before the betrothal can
+take place.  I will translate, in brief.  The whole
+estate passes to me, and is secured to me in case of my
+wife's death without issue.  I inserted that clause," he
+said, looking up, smiling, for approval, "because
+American Frauleins are so fragile--not like our
+women.  I will, of course, if we have issue, try to
+preserve the real estate for my heir, and the remaining
+property for my other children."
+
+"It seems to me that a good deal is taken for granted
+there," said Clara, whose cheeks were very hot.  "And
+where does Miss Dunbar come into this arrangement?  Is
+she not to have any money at all?"
+
+"My widow, should I die first, will be paid an annuity
+from my estate.  But while Mees Lucy is my wife, _I_ will
+buy all that she needs.  I will delight to dress her, to
+feed her well.  With discretion, of course.  For there
+are many channels into which my income must flow. 
+But I will not be a niggardly husband to her!  No, no!"
+cried the little man in a glow.
+
+"That is very kind of you.  But she will not have any of
+her own money to spend?  In her own purse?  To fling into
+the gutter if she chooses?"
+
+The prince laughed gayly.  "How American you are,
+gracious lady!  A German wife does not ask for her `own
+purse.'  My wife will cease to be American; she will be
+German," patting his soft hands ecstatically.  "But
+you have not told me the name of her guardian?"
+
+"Lucy," said Miss Vance reluctantly, "is of age.  She has
+full control of her property.  A Trust Company manages it
+for her, but they have no authority to stop her if she
+chooses to--throw it into the gutter."
+
+The prince looked up sharply.  Could this be a trick? 
+But if it were, the agent would find out for him.  He
+rose.
+
+
+"To have the sole disposal of her own hand and of her
+fortune?  That seems strange to us," he said, smiling. 
+"But I have your consent, most dear lady, to win both, if
+I can?"
+
+"Oh, yes, prince.  If you can."
+
+He took her hand and bowed profoundly over it, but no
+courtly grace nor words could bring back Clara's awe of
+him.  She had a vague impression that the Weir baker had
+been wrangling with her about his bill.
+
+"Your Highness has asked a good many questions," she
+said.  "May I put one to you?  Did you inquire concerning
+Miss Hassard's dot, also?"
+"Ah, certainly!  Why not?  It is very large.  I have
+spoken of it to my cousin Count Odo.  But the
+drawback--her father still lives.  He may marry again. 
+Her dot depends upon his good pleasure.  Whereas Miss
+Dunbar is an orphan; and besides that, she is so dear to
+me!" clasping his hands, his face red with fervor.  "So
+truly dear!"
+
+And she knew that he honestly meant it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+When Miss Vance came into the corridor after she had
+reported this interview to Lucy, Jean swept her into her
+room and dragged the whole story from her.  In fact the
+poor anxious lady was glad to submit it to the girl's
+shrewd hard sense.
+
+"You told him that she was the uncontrolled mistress of
+her money!"
+
+"It is the truth.  I had to tell him the truth, my dear."
+
+"Yes, I suppose so, for he would have found it out
+anyhow."
+
+"I do feel," panted Clara, "as if I had put a dove into
+the claws of a vulture."
+
+"Not at all," said Jean promptly.  "The little man has a
+heart, but an empty pocket.  Was Lucy interested most in
+his love or his bargaining?"
+
+"In neither, I think.  She just went on painting, and
+said nothing."
+
+Oh, she will decide the matter in time!  She will
+bring her little intellect to bear on it as if it were a
+picnic for her Sunday-school class!"  Jean stood silent
+a while.  "Miss Vance," she said suddenly, "let me
+engineer this affair for a few days.  I can help you."
+
+"What do you propose to do, Jean?"
+
+"To leave Bozen to-morrow.  For Munich."
+
+"But the Wolfburghs have a palace or--something in
+Munich.  Is it quite delicate for us----"
+
+"It is quite rational.  Let us see what the something is. 
+So far in our dealings with principalities and powers, we
+have had a stout little man--with no background."
+The prince was startled when he was told of this sudden
+journey, but declared that he would follow them
+to-morrow.
+
+Lucy, as usual, asked no questions, but calmly packed her
+satchel.
+
+As the little train, the next day, lumbered through the
+valley of the Eisach, she sat in her corner, reading a
+newspaper.  Miss Vance dozed, or woke with a start to
+lecture on points of historic interest.
+
+"Why don't you look, Lucy?  That monastery was a Roman
+fortress in the third century.  And you are missing
+the color effects of the vineyards."
+
+"I can look now.  I have finished my paper."  Lucy folded
+it neatly and replaced it in her bag.  "I have read the
+Delaware State Sun," she said triumphantly, "regularly,
+every week since we left home.  When I go back I shall be
+only seven days behind with the Wilmington news."
+
+Jean glanced at her contemptuously.  "Look at that great
+castle on yonder mountain," she said.  "You could lodge
+a village inside of the ramparts.  Do you think Wolfburgh
+Schloss is like that?  The prince told us last night,"
+turning to Miss Vance, "the old legends about his castle. 
+The first Wolfburgh was a Titan about the time of Noah,
+and married a human wife, and with his hands tore open
+the mountain for rocks to lay the foundation of his
+house.  According to his story there were no end of
+giants and trolls and kings concerned in the building of
+it," she went on, furtively watching the deepening pink
+in Lucy's cheek.  "The Wolfburgh of Charlemagne's day was
+besieged by him, and another entertained St. Louis and
+all his crusaders within the walls."  Jean's voice rose shrilly
+and her eyes glowed.  She leaned forward, looking eagerly
+across the fields.  "The prince told us that the Schloss
+of his race had for centuries been one of the great
+fortresses of Christendom.  And here it is!  Now we shall
+see--we shall see!"
+
+The car stopped.  The guard opened the door and Miss
+Vance and Lucy suddenly found themselves swept by Jean on
+to the platform, while the little train rumbled on down
+the valley.  Miss Vance cried out in dismay.
+
+"Never mind.  There will be another train in a half
+hour," said Jean.  "Here is the Schloss," pointing to a
+pepper-box tower neatly whitewashed, which rose out of a
+huge mass of broken stone.  "And here, I suppose, is the
+capital of the kingdom over which the Wolfburghs now
+reign feudal lords?"
+
+Clara found herself against her will looking curiously at
+the forge, the dirty shop, the tiny bier-halle, and a
+half a dozen huts, out of which swarmed a few old women
+and children.
+
+"Where are the men of this village?" Jean demanded of the
+station master, a stout old man with a pipe in his mouth.
+
+"Gone to America, for the most part," he said, with a
+shrug.
+
+Lucy came up hastily, an angry glitter in her soft eyes. 
+"You have no right to make me play the spy in this way!"
+she said haughtily, and going into the little station sat
+down with her back to the door.
+
+"You?  It is I--I----" muttered Jean breathlessly.  "And
+who lives in the tower, my good man?  It is not big
+enough for a dozen hens."  She slipped a florin into his
+hand.
+
+"Four of the noble ladies live there.  The princesses. 
+The gracious sisters of Furst Hugo.  There come two of
+them now."
+
+A couple of lean, wrinkled women dressed in soiled merino
+gowns and huge black aprons, their hair bristling in curl
+papers, crossed the road, peering curiously at the
+strangers.
+
+"They came to look at you, Fraulein," said the man,
+chuckling.  "Strangers do not stop at Wolfburgh twice in
+the year."
+
+"And what do the noble ladies do all the year?"
+
+"Jean, Jean!" remonstrated Clara.
+
+"Oh, Miss Vance!  This is life and death to some of us! 
+What do they do?"
+
+"Do?" said the man, staring.  "What shall any gracious
+lady do?  They cook and brew, and crochet lace and----"
+
+"Are there any more princesses--sisters of Furst Hugo?"
+
+"Two more.  They live in Munich.  No, none of them are
+married.  Because," he added zealously, "there are no men
+as high-born as our gracious ladies, so they cannot
+marry."
+
+"No doubt that accounts for it," said Jean.  "Six.  These
+are `the channels into which the income will flow,' hey?" 
+She gave him more money, and marching into the station
+caught Lucy by the shoulder, shaking her passionately. 
+"Do you think any American girl could stand that?  How
+would YOU like to be caged up in that ridiculous tower
+to cook and crochet and brew beer and watch the train go
+by for recreation?  The year round--the year round?"
+
+Lucy rose quietly.  "The train is coming now," she said. 
+"Calm yourself, Jean.  YOU will not have to live in the
+tower."
+
+Jean laughed.  When they were seated in the car
+again, she looked wistfully out at the heaps of ruins.
+
+"It must have been a mighty fortress once," she said. 
+"Those stones were hewed before Charlemagne's time.  And
+a great castle could easily be built with them now," she
+added thoughtfully.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+The travellers entered Munich at noon.  The great
+generous city lay tranquil and smiling in the frosty
+sunlight.
+
+"I have secured apartments," said Miss Vance, "used
+hitherto by royalties or American millionaires.  My girl
+must be properly framed when a prince comes a-wooing."
+
+Lucy smiled.  But her usual warm color faded as they
+drove through the streets.  Jean, however, was gay and
+eager.
+
+"Ah, the dear splendid town!" she cried.  "It always
+seems to give us a royal welcome.  Nothing is changed! 
+There is the music in the Kellers, and there go the
+same Bavarian officers with their swagger and saucy blue
+eyes.  They  are the handsomest men in Europe!  And here
+is the Munchen-kindl laughing at us, and the same
+crowds are going to the Pinakothek!  What do you want
+more?  Beer and splendor and fun and art!  What a home it
+will be for you, Lucy!"
+
+Lucy's cold silence did not check Jean's affectionate
+zeal.  She anxiously searched among the stately old
+buildings, which they passed, for the Wolfburgh palace. 
+"It will not be in these commonplace Haussmannized
+streets," she said.  "It is in some old corner; it has a
+vast, mysterious, feudal air, I fancy.  You will hold a
+little court in it, and sometimes let a poor American
+artist from Pond City in to hang on the edge of the crowd
+and stare at the haute noblesse."
+
+"Don't be absurd, Jean," said Miss Vance.
+
+"I am quite serious.  I think an American girl like Lucy,
+with her beauty and her money, will be welcomed by these
+German nobles as a white swan among ducks.  She ought to
+take her place and hold it."  Jean's black eyes snapped
+and the blood flamed up her cheeks.  "If I were she I'd
+make my money tell!  I'd buy poor King Ludwig's residence
+at Binderhof, with the cascades and jewelled peacocks and
+fairy grottos, for my country seat.  The Bavarian
+nobility are a beggarly lot.  If they knew that Lucy and
+her millions were coming to town in this cab, they'd blow
+their trumpets for joy.  `Wave, Munich, all thy
+banners wave!'"  Lucy's impatient shrug silenced
+her, but she was preoccupied and excited throughout the
+day.  Miss Vance watched her curiously.  Could it be that
+she had heard of the prince's plan of marrying her to his
+cousin, and that she was building these air castles for
+herself?
+
+
+A day or two sufficed to make Miss Vance's cheery
+apartments the rendezvous of troops of Americans of all
+kinds: from the rich lounger, bored by the sight of
+pictures, which he did not understand, and courts which
+he could not enter, to the half-starved, eager-eyed art
+students, who smoked, and drank beer, and chattered in
+gutturals, hoping to pass for Germans.
+
+There were plenty of idle young New Yorkers and
+Bostonians too, hovering round Lucy and Jean,
+overweighted by their faultless London coats and trousers
+and fluent French.  But they deceived nobody; they all
+had that nimble brain, and that unconscious swagger of
+importance and success which stamps the American in every
+country.  Prince Hugo, in his old brown suit, came and
+went quietly among them.
+
+"The genuine article!" Jean declared loudly.  "There
+is something royal in his hospitality!  He lays all
+Munich at Lucy's feet, as if it were his own estate, and
+the museums and palaces were the furniture of his house. 
+That homely simplicity of his is tremendously fine, if
+she could understand it!"
+
+The homely genuineness had its effect even upon Lucy. 
+The carriage which he brought to drive them to Isar-anen
+was scaly with age, but the crest upon it was the noblest
+in Bavaria; in the cabinet of portraits of ancient
+beauties in the royal palace he showed her indifferently
+two or three of his aunts and grandmothers, and in the
+historical picture of the anointing of the great
+Charlemagne, one of his ancestors, stout and good-humored
+as Hugo himself, supported the emperor.
+"The pudgy little man," said Jean one day, somehow
+belongs to the old world of knights and
+crusaders--Sintram and his companions.  He will make it
+all real to Lucy when she marries him.  He is like Ali
+Baba, standing at the shut door of the cave full of
+jewels and treasures with the key in his hand."
+
+"Those Arabian Night stories are simply silly," said Lucy
+severely.  "I am astonished that any woman in this
+age of the world should read that kind of trash."
+
+"But the prince's cave?" persisted Jean.  "When are we to
+look into it?  I want to be sure of the treasures inside. 
+When are we to go to his palace?  When will his sisters
+ask us to dinner?"
+
+Miss Vance looked anxious.  "That is a question of great
+importance," she said.  "The princesses have invited me
+through their brother to call.  It is of course etiquette
+here for the stranger to call first, but I don't wish to
+compromise Lucy by making advances."
+
+There was a moment's silence, then Lucy said, blushing
+and faltering a little, "It would be better perhaps to
+call, and not prejudice them, by any discourtesy, against
+us.  The prince is very kind."
+
+"So!  The wind is in that quarter?" Jean said, with a
+harsh laugh.
+
+She jumped up and went to her own room.  She was in a
+rage at herself.  Why had she not run away to Paris
+months ago and begun her great picture of the World's
+mother,  Eve?  There was a career for her!  And
+thinking--perhaps of Eve--she cried hot salt tears.
+
+
+ 
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A week passed, but the question of the first call was not
+yet settled.  It required as much diplomacy as an
+international difficulty.  Furst Hugo represented the
+princesses as "burning with impatience to behold the
+engelreine Madchen whom they hoped to embrace as a
+sister," but no visible sign of their ardor reached Miss
+Vance.
+
+On Monday Jean went to spend the day with some of her
+artist friends, but at noon she dashed into the room
+where Clara and Lucy sat sewing, her dark face blotched
+red, and her voice stuttering with excitement.
+
+"I have seen into the cave!" she shouted.  I have got at
+the truth!  It's a rather stagy throne, the Wolfburghs! 
+Plated, cheap!"
+
+"What is the matter with you?" said Miss Vance.
+
+"Nothing is the matter with ME.  It is Lucy's tragedy. 
+I've seen the magnificent ancient palace of the
+Wolfburghs.  It is a flat!  In the very house where
+I went to-day.  The third story flat just under the
+attics where the poor Joneses daub portraits.  I passed
+the open doors and I saw the shabby old tables and chairs
+and the princesses--two fat old women in frowzy wrappers,
+and their hair in papers, eating that soup of pork and
+cabbages and raisins--the air was thick with the smell! 
+And that is not the worst!"
+
+"Take breath, Jean," said Lucy calmly.
+
+"The prince himself--the Joneses told me, there can be no
+doubt--the prince makes soap for a living!  No wonder you
+turn pale, Miss Vance.  Soap!  He is the silent partner
+in the firm of Woertz und Zimmer, and it is not a paying
+business either."
+
+Jean did not wait for an answer, but walked up and down
+the room, laughing angrily to herself.  "Yes, soap!  He
+cannot sneer at Lucy's ancestral saddles, now.  Nor my
+father's saws!  His rank is the only thing he has to give
+for Lucy's millions, and now she knows what it is worth!"
+
+Lucy rose and, picking up her work basket, walked quietly
+out of the room.  Jean flashed an indignant glance after
+her.
+
+"She might have told me that he gave himself!  Surely the
+man counts for something!  Anyhow, rank like his is not
+smirched by poverty or trade.  Bismarck himself brews
+beer."
+
+"Your temper is contradictory to-day," said Clara coldly. 
+"Did you know," she said presently, "that the princesses
+will be at the Countess von Amte's to-morrow?"
+
+"Then we shall meet them!" cried Jean.  "Then something
+will be settled."
+
+Lucy locked the door of her chamber after her.
+She found much comfort in the tiny bare room with its
+white walls and blue stove, and the table where lay her
+worn Bible and a picture of her old home.  The room
+seemed a warm home to her now.  Above the wall she had
+hung photographs of the great Madonnas, and lately she
+had placed one of Frances Waldeaux among them.  That was
+the face on which she looked last at night.  When Clara
+had noticed it, Lucy had said, "I am as fond of the dear
+lady as if she were my own mother."
+
+She sat down before it now, and taking out her sewing
+began to work, glancing up at it, half smiling as to
+a friend who talked to her.  She thought of Furst Hugo
+boiling soap, with a gentle pity, and of Jean with hot
+disdain.  What had Jean to do with it?  The prince was
+her own lover, as her gloves were her own.
+
+But indeed, the prince and love were but shadows on the
+far sky line to the little girl; the real things were her
+work and her Bible, and George's mother talking to her. 
+She often traced remembered expressions on Mrs.
+Waldeaux's face; the gayety, the sympathy, a strange
+foreboding in the eyes.  Finer meanings, surely, than any
+in the features of these immortal insipid Madonnas!
+
+Sometimes Lucy could not decide whether she had seen
+these meanings on Frances Waldeaux's face, or on her
+son's.
+
+She sewed until late in the afternoon.  There came a tap
+at the door.  She opened it, and there stood Mrs.
+Waldeaux, wrapped in a heavy cloak.  Lucy jumped at her,
+trembling, and hugged her.
+
+"Oh, come in!  Come in!" she cried shrilly.  "I have just
+been thinking of you and talking to you!"
+
+Frances laughed, bewildered.  "Oh, it is Miss
+Dunbar?  The man sent me here by mistake to wait.  Miss
+Vance is out, he said."
+
+"Yes, I suppose so.  But I--I am here."  Lucy threw her
+arms around her again, laying her head down on her
+shoulder.  She felt as if something that she had waited
+for a long time was coming to her.  "Sit by the stove. 
+Your hands are like ice," she said.
+
+"Yes, I am usually cold now; I don't know why."
+
+Lucy then saw a curious change in her face.  The fine
+meanings were not in it now.  It was fatter--coarser; the
+hair was dead, the eyes moved sluggishly, like the glass
+eyes of a doll.
+
+"You are always cold?  Your blood is thin, perhaps.  You
+are overtired, dear.  Have you travelled much?"
+
+"Oh, yes! all of the time.  I have seen whole tracts of
+pictures, and no end of palaces and
+hotels--hotels--hotels!" Frances said, awakening to the
+necessity of being talkative and vivacious with the young
+girl.  She threw off her cloak.  There was a rip in the
+fur, and the dirty lining hung out.  Lucy shuddered. 
+Mrs. Waldeaux's blood must have turned to water, or she
+would never have permitted that!
+
+"You must rest now.  I will take care of you," she said,
+with a little nod of authority.  Frances looked at her
+perplexed.  Why should this pretty creature mother her
+with such tenderness?
+
+Oh!  It was the girl that George should have married!
+
+She glanced at the white room with its dainty bibelots,
+the Bible, the Madonnas, watching, benign.  Poor little
+nun, waiting for the love that never could come to her!
+
+"I am glad you are here, my child.  You can tell me what
+I want to know.  I have not an hour to spare.  I am going
+to my son--to George.  Do you know where he is?"
+
+"At Vannes, in Brittany."
+
+"Brittany--that is a long way."  Frances rose
+uncertainly.  "I hoped he was near.  I was in a Russian
+village, and Clara's letter was long in finding me.  When
+I got it, I travelled night and day.  I somehow thought
+I should meet him on the way.  I fancied he would come to
+meet me."
+
+Lucy's blue eyes watched her keenly a moment.  Then she
+rang the bell.
+
+"You must eat, first of all," she said.
+
+"No, I am not hungry.  Vannes, you said?  I must go now. 
+I haven't an hour."
+
+"You have two, exactly.  You'll take the express at
+eight.  Oh, I'm never mistaken about a train.  Here is
+the coffee.  Now, I'll make you a nice sandwich."
+
+Frances was faint with hunger.  As she ate, she watched
+the pretty matter-of-fact little girl, and laughed with
+delight.  When had she found any thing so wholesome?  It
+was a year, too, since she had seen any one who knew
+George.  Naturally, she began to empty her heart, which
+was full of him, to Lucy.
+
+"I have not spoken English for months," she said, smiling
+over her coffee.  "It is a relief!  And you are a friend
+of my son's, too?"
+
+"No.  A mere acquaintance," said Lucy, with reserve.
+
+"No one could even see George and not understand how
+different he is from other men."
+
+"Oh! altogether different!" said Lucy.  "Yes, you
+understand.  And there was that future before
+him--when his trouble came.  Oh, I've thought of it, and
+thought of it, until my head is tired!  He fell under
+that woman's influence, you see.  It was like mesmerism,
+or the voodoo curse that the negroes talk of.  It came on
+me too.  Why, there was a time when I despised him. 
+George!"  Her eyes grew full of horror.  "I left him, to
+live my own life.  He has staggered under his burden
+alone, and I could have rid him of it.  Now there are two
+of them."
+
+"Two of them? " said Lucy curiously.
+
+"There is a baby--Pauline Felix's grandson.  I beg your
+pardon, my child, I ought not to have named her.  She is
+not a person whom you should ever hear of.  He has them
+both,--George.  He has that weight to carry."  She stood
+up.  "That is why I am going to him.  It must be taken
+from him."
+
+"You mean--a divorce?"
+
+"I don't know--I can't think clearly.  But God does such
+queer things!  There are millions of men in the world,
+and this curse falls on--George!"
+
+Lucy put her hands on the older woman's arms and seated
+her.  "Mrs. Waldeaux," she said, with decision, "you
+need sleep, or you would not talk in that way.  Lisa is
+not a curse.  Nor a voodoo witch. She came to your son
+instead of to any other man--because he chose her out
+from all other women.  He had seen them."  She held her
+curly head erect.  "As he did choose her, he should make
+the best of her."
+
+Frances looked at her as one awakened out of a dream. 
+"You talk sensibly, child.  Perhaps you are right.  But
+I must go.  Ring for a cab, please.  No, I will wait in
+the station.  Clara would argue and lecture.  I could not
+stand that to-night," with her old comical shrug.
+
+Lucy's entreaties were vain.
+
+But as the train rushed through the valley of the Isar
+that night, Frances looked forward into the darkness with
+a nameless terror.  "That child was so healthy and sane,"
+she said, "I wish I had stayed with her longer."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Prince Hugo had made no secret of his intentions with
+regard to Miss Dunbar, so that when it was known that his
+sisters and the rich American Mees would at last meet at
+the Countess von Amte's there was a flutter of curiosity
+in the exclusive circle of Munich.  The countess herself
+called twice on Clara that day, so great was her triumph
+that this social event would occur at her house.
+
+She asked boldly "Which of Miss Dunbar's marvellous
+Parisian confections will she wear?  It is so important
+for her future happiness that the princesses should be
+favorably impressed!  Aber, lieber Gott!" she shrieked,
+"don't let her speak French!  Not a word!  That would be
+ruin!  They are all patriotism!"  She hurried away, and
+ran back to say that the sun was shining as it had not
+done for days.
+
+"She thinks nature itself is agog to see how the
+princesses receive Lucy," said Miss Vance
+indignantly.  "One would suppose that the child was on
+trial."
+
+"So she is.  Me, too," said Jean, wistfully regarding the
+bebe waist of the gown which Doucet had just sent her. 
+"I must go as an ingenue.  I don't play the part well!"
+
+"No, you do not," said Clara.
+
+Miss Vance tapped at Lucy's door as she went down, and
+found her working at her embroidery.  "You must lie down
+for an hour, my dear," she said, "and be fresh and rosy
+for this evening."
+
+"I am not going.  I must finish these pinks.  I have just
+sent a note of apology to the countess."
+
+"Not going!" Clara gasped, dismayed.  Then she laughed
+with triumph.  "The princesses and all the Herrschaft of
+Munich will be there to pass judgment on the bride, and
+the bride will be sitting at home finishing her pinks! 
+Good!"
+
+"I am no bride!" Lucy rose, stuck her needle carefully in
+its place, and came closer to Miss Vance.  "I have made
+up my mind," she said earnestly.  "I shall never marry. 
+My life now is quiet and clean.  I'm not at all sure
+that it would be either if I were the Princess
+Wolfburgh."
+
+Clara stroked her hair fondly.  "Your decision is sudden,
+my dear," she faltered, at last.
+
+"Yes.  There was something last night.  It showed me what
+I was doing.  To marry a man just because he is good and
+kind, that is--vile!"  The tears rushed to her eyes. 
+There was a short silence.
+
+"Don't look so aghast, dear Miss Vance," said Lucy
+cheerfully.  "Go now and dress to meet the Herrschaft."
+
+"And what will you do, child?"
+
+"I really must finish these pinks to-night."  She took up
+her work.  Her chin trembled a little.  "We won't speak
+of this again, please," she said.  "I never shall be a
+bride or a wife or mother.  I will have a quiet,
+independent life--like yours."
+
+The sunshine fell on the girl's grave, uplifted face, on
+the white walls, the blue stove, and the calm, watching
+Madonnas.  Clara, as Mrs. Waldeaux had done, thought of
+a nun in her cell to whom love could only be a sacred
+dream.
+
+She smiled back at Lucy, bade her goodnight, and closed
+the door.
+
+"Like mine?" she said, as she went down the corridor. 
+"Well, it is a comfortable, quiet life.  But empty----" 
+And she laid her hand suddenly across her thin breast.
+
+
+Jean listened in silence when Clara told her briefly that
+Lucy was not going.
+
+"She is very shrewd," she said presently.  "She means to
+treat them de haut en bas from the outset.  It is
+capital policy."
+
+Jean, when she entered the countess's salon, with
+downcast eyes, draped in filmy lace without a jewel or
+flower, was shy innocence in person.  Furst Hugo stood
+near the hostess, with two stout women in shabby gowns
+and magnificent jewels.
+
+"The frocks they made themselves, and the emeralds are
+heirlooms," Jean muttered to Clara, without lifting her
+timid eyes.
+
+"Miss Dunbar is not coming?" exclaimed the prince.
+
+"No," said Miss Vance.
+
+"The Fraulein is ill?" demanded one of his sisters.
+
+"No," Clara said, again smiling.
+"WE expected to meet her," the younger princess said. 
+"It is most singular----"
+
+"She has sent her apology to the countess," said Clara
+gently, and passed on.
+
+But her little triumph was short lived.
+
+A famous professional soprano appeared in a
+white-ribboned enclosure at the end of the salon, and
+the guests were rapidly arranged according to their rank
+to listen.  Clara and Jean stood until every man and
+woman were comfortably seated, when they were placed in
+the back row.
+
+When the music was over supper was announced, and the
+same ceremony was observed.  The Highnessess, the
+hochwohlgeboren privy councillors, the hochgeboren
+secretaries, even the untitled Herren who held some petty
+office, were ushered with profound deference to their
+seats at the long table, while Clara stood waiting. 
+Jean's eyes still drooped meekly, but even her lips were
+pale.
+
+"How can you look so placid?" she whispered.  "It is a
+deliberate insult to your gray hairs."
+
+"No. It is the custom of the country.  It does not hurt
+me."
+
+They were led at the moment to the lowest seats.  Jean
+shot one vindictive glance around the table.
+
+"You have more wit and breeding than any of them!" she
+said.  "And as for me, this lace I wear would buy any of
+their rickety old palaces."
+
+"They have something which we cannot buy," said Miss
+Vance gravely.  "I never understood before how actual a
+thing rank is here."
+
+
+"Cannot it be bought?  I am going to look into that when
+this huge feed is over," Miss Hassard said to herself.
+
+Late in the evening she danced with Count Odo, and
+prattled to him in a childish, frank fashion which he
+found very charming.
+
+"Your rules of precedence are very disagreeable!" she
+pouted.  "Especially when one sits at the foot of the
+table and is served last."
+
+"They must seem queer to you," he said, laughing, "but
+they are inflexible as iron."
+
+"But they will bend for Miss Dunbar, if she makes up her
+mind to marry your cousin?"she asked, looking up
+into his face like an innocent child.
+
+"No.  Hugo makes a serious sacrifice in marrying a woman
+of no birth," he said.  "He must give up his place and
+title as head of the family.  She will not be received at
+court nor in certain houses; she must always remain out-
+side of much of his social life."
+
+He led her back to Miss Vance.  She seemed to be struck
+dumb, and even forgot to smile when he bowed low and
+thanked her for the dance.
+
+"Let us go home," she whispered to Clara.  "The American
+girl is a fool who marries one of these men!"
+
+When Miss Vance's carriage reached her hotel, she found
+Prince Hugo's coupe before the door.
+
+"He has come to see Lucy, alone!" she said indignantly,
+as she hurried up the steps.  "He has no right to annoy
+her!"
+
+She met him coming out of the long salle.  The little
+man walked nervously, fingering his sword hilt.  He could
+not control his voice when he tried to speak naturally.
+
+"Yes, gracious lady, I am guilty.  It was
+unpardonable to come when I knew the chaperone was gone. 
+But--ach!  I could not wait!" throwing out both hands
+to her.  "I have waited so long!  I knew when she did not
+come to meet my sisters to-night she had resolved against
+me, but I could not sleep uncertain.  So I break all the
+laws, and come!"
+
+"You have seen her, then?  She has told you?"
+
+He nodded without speaking.  His round face was red, and
+something like tears stood in his eyes.
+
+He waited irresolute a moment, and then threw up his
+head.
+
+"Soh!  It is over!  I shall not whine!  You have been
+very good to me," he said earnestly, taking Clara's hand. 
+"This is the first great trouble in my life.  I have
+loved her very dearly.  I decided to make great
+sacrifices for her.  But I am not to have her--never."
+
+"I am so sorry for you, prince." Clara squeezed his hand
+energetically.
+"Nor her dot.  That would have been so comfortable for
+me," he said simply.
+
+Clara hid a smile, and bade him an affectionate
+good-night.
+
+As he passed into the outer salle a childish figure in
+creamy lace rose before him, and a soft hand was held
+out.  "I know what has happened!" she whispered
+passionately.  "She has treated you scandalously!  She
+cannot appreciate YOU!"
+
+Prince Hugo stuttered and coughed and almost kissed the
+little hand which lay so trustingly in his.  He found
+himself safely outside at last, and drove away, wretched
+to the soul.
+
+But below his wretchedness something whispered:  "SHE
+appreciates me, and her dot is quite as large."
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+George Waldeaux hummed a tune gayly as he climbed the
+winding maze of streets in Vannes, one cloudy afternoon,
+with Lisa.
+
+"It is impertinent to be modern Americans in this old
+town," he said.  "We might play that we were jongleurs,
+and that it was still mediaeval times.  I am sure the
+gray walls yonder and the fortress houses in this street
+have not changed in ages."
+
+"Neither have the smells, apparently," said Lisa grimly. 
+"Wrap this scarf about your throat, George.  You coughed
+last night."
+
+George tied up his throat.  "Coughed, did I?" he said
+anxiously.  He had had a cold last winter, and his wife
+with her poultices and fright had convinced him that he
+was a confirmed invalid.  The coming of her baby had
+given to the woman a motherly feeling toward all of the
+world, even to her husband.
+
+"Look at these women," he said, going on with his fancy
+presently.  "I am sure that they were here wearing
+these black gowns and huge red aprons in the twelfth
+century.  What is this?" he said, stopping abruptly, to
+a boy of six who was digging mud at the foot of an
+ancient ivy-covered tower.
+
+"C'est le tour du Connetable," the child lisped.  "Et
+v'la, monsieur!" pointing to a filthy pen with a gate of
+black oak; "v'la le donjon de Clisson!"
+"Who was Clisson?" said Lisa impatiently.
+
+"A live man to Froissart--and to this boy," said George,
+laughing.  "I told you that we had gone back seven
+centuries.  This fog comes in from the Morbihan sea where
+Arthur and his knights went sailing to find the Holy
+Greal.  They have not come back.  And south yonder is the
+country of the Druids.  I will take you to-morrow and
+show you twenty thousand of their menhirs, and then we
+will sail away to an island where there is an altar that
+the serpent worshippers built ages before Christ."
+
+
+Lisa laughed.  He was not often in this playful mood. 
+She panted as she toiled up the dark little street, a
+step behind him, but he did not think of giving her his
+arm.  He had grown accustomed to regard himself as
+the invalid now, and the one who needed care.
+
+"I am going for letters," he called back, diving into a
+dingy alley.  The baby and its bonne were near Lisa. 
+The child never was out of her sight for, a moment.  She
+waited, standing a little apart from Colette to watch
+whether the passers-by would notice the baby.  When one
+or two of the gloomy and stolid women who hurried past in
+their wooden sabots clicked their fingers to it, she
+could not help smiling gayly and bidding them good-day.
+
+The fog was stifling.  As she waited she gave a tired
+gasp.  Colette ran to her. "Madame is going to be ill!"
+
+"No, no!  Don't frighten monsieur."
+
+George came out of the gate at the moment.
+
+"Going to faint again, Lisa?" he said, with an annoyed
+glance around the street.  "Your attacks do choose the
+most malapropos times----"
+
+"Oh, dear no, George!  I am quite well quite."  She
+walked beside him with an airy step, laughing gayly
+now and then, but George's frown deepened.
+
+"I don't understand these seizures at all," he said. 
+"You seem to be in sound physical condition."
+
+"Oh, all women have queer turns, George."
+
+"Did you consult D'Abri, as I told you to do, in Paris?"
+
+"Yes, yes!  Now let us talk no more about it.  I have had
+these--symptoms since I was a child."
+
+"You never told me of them before we were married," he
+muttered.
+
+Lisa scowled darkly at him, but she glanced at the baby
+and her mouth closed.  Little Jacques should never hear
+her rage nor swear.
+
+From an overhanging gable at the street corner looked
+down a roughly hewn stone Madonna.  The arms of the Holy
+Child were outstretched to bless.  Lisa paused before it,
+crossing herself.  A strange joy filled her heart.
+
+"I too am a mother!  I too!" she said.  She hurried after
+George and clung to his arm as they went home.
+
+"Was there any letter?" she asked.
+
+"Only one from Munich--Miss Vance.  I haven't opened it."
+
+"I thought your mother would write.  She must have heard
+about the boy!"
+
+George's face grew dark.  "No, she'll not write.  Nor
+come."
+
+"You wish for her every day, George?"  She looked at him
+wistfully.
+
+"Yes, I do.  She and I were comrades to a queer degree. 
+I long for something hearty and homelike again.  See
+here, Lisa.  I'm going home before my boy begins to talk. 
+I mean he shall grow up under wholesome American
+influences--not foreign."
+
+"Not foreign," she repeated gravely.  She was silent a
+while.  "I have thought much of it all lately," she said
+at last.  "It will be wholesome for Jacques on your farm. 
+Horses--dogs----  Your mother will love him.  She can't
+help it.  She--I acted like a beast to that woman,
+George.  I'll say that.  She hit me hard.  But she has
+good traits.  She is not unlike my own mother."
+
+George said nothing.  God forbid that he should tell her,
+even by a look, that she and her mother were of a caste
+different from his own.
+
+But he was bored to the soul by the difference; he was
+tired of her ignorances, which she showed every minute,
+of her ghastly, unclean knowledges--which she never
+showed.
+
+They came into the courtyard of the Chateau de la Motte,
+the ancient castle of the Breton dukes, which is now an
+inn.  The red sunset flamed up behind the sad little town
+and its gray old houses and spires massed on the hill,
+and the black river creeping by.  George's eyes kindled
+at the sombre picture.
+
+"In this very court," he said, "Constance stood when she
+summoned the States of Brittany to save her boy Arthur
+from King John."
+
+"Oh, yes, you have read of it to me in your Shakespeare. 
+It is one of his unpleasant stories.  Come, Bebe.  It
+grows damp."
+
+As she climbed the stone stairway with the child, Colette
+lingered to gossip with the portier.  "Poor lady!  You
+will adore her!  She is one of us.  But she makes of that
+bete Anglais and the ugly child, saints and gods!"
+
+When George presently came up to their bare little room,
+Lisa was singing softly, as she rocked Jacques to sleep.
+
+"Can't you sing the boy something a bit more
+cheerful?" he said.  "You used to know some jolly catches
+from the music halls."
+
+"Catches for HIM?" with a frightened look at the
+child's shut eyes.
+
+"The `Adeste Fideles' is moral, but it is not a merry
+air.  You sing it morning, noon, and night," he grumbled.
+
+"Yes," she whispered, laying the child in its crib.  "One
+never knows how much HE understands, and he may
+remember, I thought.  Some day when he is a great boy, he
+may hear it and he'll think, `My mother sang that hymn. 
+She must have been a good woman!'"
+
+"Nonsense, Lisa," said George kindly.  "You'll teach him
+every day, while he is growing to be a great boy, that
+you are a good woman."
+
+She said nothing, but stood on the other side of the crib
+looking at him.
+
+"Well, what is it?" said George uneasily. "You look at me
+as if somebody were dragging you away from me."
+
+She laughed.  "What ridiculous fancies you have!"  She
+came behind him and, drawing his head back, kissed him on
+the forehead.  "Oh, you poor, foolish boy!" she said.
+
+Lisa sat down to her work, which was the making of
+garments for Jacques out of her own gowns.  She was an
+expert needlewoman, and had already a pile of fantastic
+kilts of cloth and velvet.
+
+"Enough to last until he is ten years old," George said
+contemptuously.  "And you will not leave a gown for
+yourself."
+
+"There will be all I shall need," she said.
+
+He turned up the lamp and opened Clara's letter.
+
+Lisa's needle flew through the red and yellow silk.  It
+was pleasant work; she was doing it skilfully.  The fire
+warmed her thin blood.  She could hear the baby's
+regular, soft breathing as it slept.  A pleasure that was
+almost like health stole through her lean body.  She
+leaned back in her chair looking at Jacques.  In three
+years he could wear the velvet suit with the cap and
+pompon.  His hair would be yellow and curly, like his
+father's.  But his eyes would be like her mother's.  She
+pressed her hands together, laughing, the hot tears
+rushing to her eyes.  "Ah, maman!" she said.  "Do you 
+know that your little girl has a baby?  Can you see him?"
+
+What a superb "great boy" he would be!  He should go to
+a military school.  Yes!  She lay back in her chair,
+watching him.
+
+George suddenly started up with a cry of amazement.
+
+"What is it?" she said indifferently.
+
+He did not answer, but turned the letter and read it over
+again.  Then he folded it with shaking fingers.
+
+"I have news here.  Miss Vance thinks it time that I was
+told, and I agree with her.  It appears that I am a
+pauper, and always have been.  My father died penniless."
+
+"Then Jacques will be poor?"
+
+"Jacques!  You think of nothing but that mewling,
+senseless thing!  It is mother--she always has supported
+me.  We are living now on the money that she earns from
+week to week, while I play that I am an artist!"
+
+Lisa listened attentively.  "It does not seem strange
+that a mother should work for her son," she said slowly. 
+"But she has never told us!  That is fine!  I like that! 
+I told you she had very good traits."
+
+George stared at her. "But--me!  Don't you see what a cad
+I am?"
+
+He paced up and down, muttering, and then throwing on his
+hat went out into the night to be alone.
+
+Lisa sank back again and watched Jacques.  At military
+school, yes; and after he had left school he would be a
+soldier, perhaps.  Such a gallant young fellow!
+
+She leaned over the cradle, holding out her hands.  Ah,
+God! if she could but live to see it!  Surely it might
+be?  There was no pain now.  Doctors were not
+infallible--even D'Abri might be mistaken, after all.
+
+George, coming in an hour later, found her sitting with
+her hands covering her face.
+
+"Are you asleep, Lisa?"
+
+"No."
+
+"There is a telegram from Clara.  My mother has left
+Munich for Vannes.  She will be here in two days."
+
+She rose with an effort.  "I am glad for you, George."
+
+"You are ill, Lisa!"
+
+"A little tired, only.  Colette will give me my powder,
+and I shall be quite well in the morning.  Will you send
+her to me now?"
+
+After George was gone the rumbling of a diligence
+was heard in the courtyard, and presently a woman was
+brought up to the opposite chamber.
+
+The hall was dark.  Looking across it, Frances Waldeaux
+saw in the lighted room Lisa and her child.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+Before we come to the dark story of that night in the
+inn, it is but fair to Frances to say that she came there
+with no definite evil purpose.  She had been cheerful on
+her journey from Munich.  There was one clear fact in her
+brain:  She was on her way to George.
+
+The countless toy farms of southern France, trimmed
+neatly by the inch, swept past her.  In Brittany came
+melancholy stretches of brown heath and rain-beaten
+hills; or great affluent estates, the Manor houses
+covered with thatch, stagnant pools close to the doors,
+the cattle breaking through the slovenly wattled walls. 
+   Frances, being a farmer, felt a vague amusement at
+these things, but they were all dim to her as a faded
+landscape hanging on the wall.
+
+She was going to George.
+
+Sometimes she seemed to be in Lucy's room again, with the
+sweet, clean air of youth about her.  All of that
+purity and love might have gone into George's
+life--before it fell into the slough.
+
+But she was going now to take it out of the slough.
+
+There was a merchant and his wife from Geneva in the
+carriage with their little boy, a pretty child of five. 
+Frances played and joked with him.
+
+"Has madam also a son?" his mother asked civilly.
+
+She said yes, and presently added, "My son has now a
+great trouble, but I am going to relieve him of it."
+
+The woman, startled, stared at her.
+
+"Is it not right for me to rid him of it?" she demanded
+loudly.
+
+"Mais oui, certainement" said the Swiss.  She watched
+Frances after that furtively.  Her eyes, she thought,
+were quite sane.  But how eccentric all of these
+Americans were!
+
+Mrs. Waldeaux reached Vannes at nightfall.  At last! 
+Here was the place in this great empty world where he
+was.
+
+When the diligence entered the courtyard, George was so
+near to the gate that the smoke of his cigar was
+blown into her face, but he did not see her.  He was lean
+and pale, and his eyes told his misery.  When she saw
+them his mother grew sick from head to foot with a sudden
+nausea.  This was his wife's doing.  She was killing him! 
+Frances hurried into the inn, her legs giving way under
+her.  She could not speak to him.  She must think what to
+do.
+
+She was taken to her room.  It was dark, and across the
+corridor she saw Lisa in her lighted chamber.  This was
+good luck!  God had put the creature at once into her
+hands to deal with!
+
+She was conscious of a strange exaltation, as if from
+wine--as if she would never need to sleep nor eat again. 
+Her thoughts came and went like flashes of fire.  She
+watched Lisa as she would a vampire, a creeping deadly
+beast.  Pauline Felix--all that was adulterous and vile
+in women--there it was!
+
+Her mind too, as never before, was full of a haughty
+complacency in herself.  She felt like the member of some
+petty sect who is sure that God communes with him inside
+of his altar rails, while the man is outside whom he
+believes that God made only to be damned.
+
+Lisa began to undress.  Frances quickly turned away,
+ashamed of peeping into her chamber.  But the one fact
+burned on into her brain:
+
+The woman was killing George.
+
+If God would rid the world of her!  If a storm should
+rise now, and the lightning strike the house, and these
+stone walls should fall on her, now--now!
+
+But the walls stood firm and the moonlight shone
+tranquilly on the world outside.
+
+She told herself to be calm--to be just.  But there was
+no justice while this woman went on with her work! God
+saw.  He meant her to be stopped.  Frances prayed to him
+frantically that Lisa might soon be put off of the earth. 
+Just as the Catholic used to pray before he massacred the
+Huguenot, or the Protestant, when he tied his Catholic
+brother to the stake.  If this woman was mad for blood,
+it was a madness that many sincere people have shared.
+
+Colette was busy with her mistress for a long time.  She
+was very gentle and tender, being fond of Lisa, as people
+of her class always were.  She raised her voice as she
+made ready to leave the room.
+
+"If the pain returns, here is the powder of morphia,
+mixed, within madame's reach," she said.
+
+Frances came close to the door.
+
+"And if it continues?" asked Lisa.
+
+"Let monsieur call me.  I would not trust him to measure
+a powder," Colette said, laughing.  "It is too dangerous. 
+He is not used to it--like me."
+
+Mrs. Waldeaux saw her lay a paper package on a shelf.
+
+"I will pray that the pain will not return," the girl
+said.  "But if it does, let monsieur knock at my door. 
+Here is the tisane when you are thirsty."  She placed a
+goblet of milky liquid near the bed.
+
+What more she said Frances did not hear.
+
+It was to be!  There was the morphia, and yonder the
+night drink within her reach.  It was God's will.
+
+Colette turned out the lamp, hesitated, and sat down by
+the fire.  Presently she rose softly, bent over her
+mistress, and, finding her asleep, left the room
+noiselessly.  Her door closed far down the corridor.
+
+Mrs. Waldeaux was quite alone, now.
+
+It was but a step across the hall.  So easy to do--easy. 
+It must be done at once.
+
+But her feet were like lead, she could not move; her
+tongue lay icy cold in her mouth.  Her soul was willing,
+but her body rebelled.
+
+What folly was this?  It was the work of a moment. 
+George would be free.  She would have freed him.
+
+In God's name then----
+
+She crossed the hall softly.  Into the hell of her
+thoughts flashed a little womanish shame, that she,
+Frances Waldeaux, should be walking on tiptoe, like a
+thief.
+
+She took down the package, and leaning over the table at
+the side of the bed, shook the white powder into the
+glass.  Then she went back to her room and shut the door.
+
+The casement was open and the moonlight was white
+outside.  She was conscious that the glare hurt her eyes,
+and that there was a strange stricture about her jaws and
+the base of her brain, like an iron hand.
+
+It seemed to her but a minute that she stood there, but
+the dawn was breaking when there was a sudden confusion
+in the opposite room.  She heard Colette's voice,
+and then George's, calling Lisa.
+
+There was no answer.
+
+Frances stood up, to listen.  "Will she not speak?" she
+cried.  "Make her speak!"
+
+But in reality she said nothing.  Even her breath had
+stopped to listen.
+
+There was no answer.
+
+Frances was awake now, for the rest of her life.  She
+knew what she had done.
+
+"Why, George," she said, "she cannot speak.  She is dead. 
+I did it."
+
+She stood in the room a minute, looking from side to
+side, and then went with measured steps out of it, down
+the corridor and into the street.
+
+"I did it," she said to herself again and again, as she
+walked slowly on.
+
+The old cathedral is opposite to the inn.  Her eyes, as
+she passed, rested on the gargoyles, and she thought how
+fine they were.  One was a ridiculous head with lolling
+tongue.
+
+A priest's voice inside was chanting mass.  A dozen
+Breton women in their huge white winged caps and wooden
+shoes hurried up to the door, through the gray fog.  They
+met Mrs. Waldeaux and saw her face.  They huddled to
+one side, crossing themselves, and when she passed, stood
+still, forgetting the mass and looking, frightened, up
+the steep street behind her to find what horror had
+pursued her.
+
+"They know what I have done," she said aloud.
+
+Once when she was a child she had accidentally seen a
+bloated wretch, a murderer, on his way to the gallows.
+
+"I am he," she thought.  "I--_I_, Frances."
+
+Then the gargoyle came into her mind again.  What a
+capital headpiece it would make for "Quigg's" next
+column!  It was time this week's jokes were sent.
+
+But at last these ghosts of yesterday's life faded out,
+and she saw the fact.
+
+She had hated her son's wife and had killed her!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+When the sun was well up the women who had been at mass
+gathered down by the little river which runs through the
+old city, to wash their clothes.  They knelt on the broad
+stones by the edge of the water, chattering and singing,
+tossing the soap from one to another.
+
+There was a sudden silence.  "Here she is again," they
+whispered, as a slight, delicate woman crossed the bridge
+with steady steps.
+
+"She is blind and deaf," said old Barbe.  "I met her an
+hour ago and asked her whom she sought.  She did not see
+nor hear me, but walked straight on."
+
+Oliver Bauzy was lounging near, as usual, watching his
+wife work.
+
+"She is English.  What does she know of your Breton talk? 
+I speak English and French--I!" he bragged,  and walking
+up to Mrs. Waldeaux, he flourished his ragged hat,
+smiling.  "Is madame ill?  She has walked far," he said
+kindly.
+
+The English words seemed to waken her.  "It is always the
+town," looking around bewildered.  "The people--houses. 
+I think I am not well.  If I could find the woods----"
+
+Bauzy had but a hazy idea of her meaning, but he nodded
+gravely.  "She is a tourist.  She wants to go out of
+Vannes--to see the chateaux, the dolmens.  I'm her man. 
+I'll drive her to Larmor Baden," he said to his wife.  "I
+have to go there to-day, and I may as well make a franc
+or two.  Keep her until I bring the voiture."
+
+But Frances stood motionless until the old wagon rattled
+up to the water's edge.
+
+"She has a dear old face," Bauzy's wife whispered.
+
+"She is blind and deaf, I tell you," old Barbe grumbled,
+peering up at her.  "Make her pay, Oliver, before you
+go."
+
+Bauzy nodded, and when Frances was seated held out his
+hand.
+
+"Twenty francs," he said.
+
+She opened her bag and gave them to him.
+
+"She must be folle!" he said uneasily.  "I feel like a
+thief.  Away with you, Babette!" as a pretty baby ran up
+to him.  "You want to ride?  That is impossible. 
+Unless, indeed, madame desires it?" lifting the child to
+place her on the seat.  Babette laughed and held out her
+hands.
+
+But Mrs. Waldeaux shrank back, shuddering.  "Take her
+away," she whispered.  "She must not touch me!"
+
+The mother seized the child, and the women all talked
+vehemently at once.  Oliver climbed into the voiture
+and drove off in silence.  When he looked around
+presently he saw that the woman's face was bloodless, and
+a cold sweat stood on it.
+He considered a while.  "You want food," he said, and
+brought out some hard bread and a jug of Normandy cider.
+
+Frances shook her head.  She only spoke once during the
+morning, and then told him something about a woman "whom
+no child could touch.  No man or woman could touch her as
+long as she lived.  Not even her son."
+
+As Bauzy could make nothing of this, he could only nod
+and laugh civilly.  But presently he, too, grew silent,
+glancing at her uncomfortably from time to time.
+
+They drove through great red fields of sarasson,
+hedged by long banks of earth, which were masses of
+golden gorse and bronzed and crimson ferns.  The sun
+shone, the clover-scented air was full of the joyous
+buzzing of bees and chirp of birds.
+
+"It is a gay, blessed day!" Bauzy said, thanks to the
+good God!  "He waited anxiously for her reply, but she
+stared into the sunshine and said nothing.
+
+Larmor Baden is a lonely little cluster of gray stone
+huts on the shore of the Morbihan sea.  Some of Bauzy's
+friends lounged smiling up to welcome him, waving their
+wide black hats with velvet streamers, and bowing low to
+the lady.  Oliver alighted with decision.  One thing he
+knew:  He would not drive back with her.  Something was
+amiss.  He would wash his hands of her.
+
+"Here, madame, is Vincent Selo, paysageur," he said
+rapidly in French.  "He has a good boat.  He will take
+you where you desire.  Sail with her to Gavr' Inis," he
+said to Selo, "and bring her back at her pleasure. 
+Somebody can drive her back to Vannes, and don't
+overcharge her, you robbers!"
+
+"Gavr' Inis?" Frances repeated.
+
+"It is an island in the sea yonder, madame.  A quiet
+place of trees.  When there was not a man in the world,
+evil spirits built there an altar for the worship of the
+devil.  No men could have built it.  There are huge
+stones carried there from the mountains far inland, that
+no engine could lift.  It is a great mystery."
+
+"It is the one place in the world, people say,"
+interrupted Selo, lowering his voice, "where God never
+has been.  A dreadful place, madame!"
+
+Frances laughed.  "That is the place for me," she said to
+Selo.  "Take me there."
+
+The old man looked at her with shrewd, friendly eyes, and
+then beckoned Bauzy aside.
+
+"Who is she?  She has the bearing of a great lady, but
+her face hurts me.  What harm has come to her?"
+
+"How do I know?" said Bauzy.  "Go for your boat.  The sea
+is rising."
+
+
+Late in the afternoon M. Selo landed his strange
+passenger upon the pebbly beach of the accursed island. 
+He led her up on the rocks, talking, and pointing across
+the sea.
+
+"Beyond is the Atlantic, and on yonder headland are the
+great menhirs of Carnac--thirty thousand of them, brought
+there before Christ was born.  But the Evil One loves
+this island best of all places.  It has in it the mystery
+of the world.  Come," he said, in an awed voice.  "It is
+here."
+
+He crossed to the hill, stooped, and entered a dark cave
+about forty feet long, which was wholly lined with huge
+flat rocks carved with countless writhing serpents.  As
+Frances passed they seemed to stir and breathe beside
+her, at her feet, overhead.  The cave opened into a
+sacrificial chamber.  The reptiles grew gigantic here,
+and crowded closer.  Through some rift a beam of
+melancholy light crept in; a smell of death hung in the
+thick, unclean air.
+
+Selo pointed to a stone altar.  "It was there they killed
+their victims," he whispered, and began to pray
+anxiously, half-aloud.  When he had finished, he hurried
+back, beckoning to her to come out.
+
+"Go," she said.  "I will stay here."
+
+"Then I will wait outside.  This is no place for
+Christian souls.  But we must return soon, madame. 
+My little girl will be watching now for me."
+
+When he was gone she stood by the altar.  This island of
+Gavr' Inis was one of the places to which she and George
+had long ago planned to come.  She remembered the very
+day on which they had read the legend that on this altar
+men before the Flood had sacrificed to the god of Murder.
+
+"I am the murderer now, and George knows it," she said
+quietly.  But she was cold and faint, and presently began
+to tremble weakly.
+
+She went out of the cave and stood on the beach.  "I want
+to go home, George," she said aloud.  "I want to be
+Frances Waldeaux again.  I'm sure I didn't know it was in
+me to do that thing."
+
+There was no answer.  She was alone in the great space of
+sky and sea.  The world was so big and empty, and she
+alone and degraded in it!
+
+"I never shall see George again.  He will think of me
+only as the woman who killed his wife," she thought.
+
+She went on blindly toward the water, and stood there a
+long time.
+
+Then, in the strait of her agony, there came to Frances
+Waldeaux, for the first time in her life, a perception
+that there was help for her in the world, outside of her
+own strength.  Her poor tortured wits discerned One, more
+real than her crime, or George, or the woman that she had
+killed.  It was an old, hackneyed story, that He knew
+every man and woman in the world, that He could help
+them.  She had heard it often.
+
+Was there any thing in it?  Could He help her?
+
+Slowly, the nervous twitching of her body quieted, her
+dulled eyes cleared as if a new power of sight were
+coming to them.
+
+After a long time she heard steps, and Selo calling.  She
+rose.
+
+The murder was known.  They were coming to arrest her.
+
+What did it matter?  She had found help.
+
+Selo came up excitedly.
+
+"It is another boat, English folk also, that comes to
+arrive."
+
+She turned and waited.
+
+And then, coming up the hill, she saw George, and
+with him--Lisa!  Lisa, smiling as she talked.
+
+They ran to meet her with cries of amazement.  She
+staggered back on the rock.
+
+"You are not dead?  Lisa----"
+
+"Dead?  Poor lady!" catching her in her arms.  "Some
+water, George!  It is her head.  She has been too much
+alone."
+
+When Frances opened her eyes she was lying on the grass,
+her children kneeling beside her.  She caught Lisa's arm
+in both hands and felt it: then she sat up.
+
+"I must tell you what I did--before you speak to me."
+
+"Not now," said Lisa.  "You are not well.  I am going to
+be your nurse.  The baby has made me a very good nurse,"
+and she stooped again over Frances, with kind, smiling
+eyes.
+
+Selo came to wile George up to the mysterious cave, but
+Lisa impatiently hurried them to the beach.  "Caves and
+serpent worshippers truly!" she cried.  "Why, she has not
+seen Jacques!" and when, in the boat, George, who was
+greatly alarmed, tried to rouse his mother from her
+silent stupor, Lisa said gayly, "She will be herself
+again as soon as she sees HIM."
+
+When they reached Larmor Baden, she despatched George in
+search of Colette and the child, and she went into the
+church.  It was late, and the village women sat on the
+steps gossipping in the slanting sunlight.  There is
+nothing in their lives but work and the church; and when,
+each day, they have finished with one they go to the
+other.
+
+Frances followed her.  The sombre little church was
+vacant.  She touched Lisa on the shoulder.
+
+"There is something I must tell you," she said.  "You
+would not let me touch the child, if you knew it."
+
+She stooped and spoke a few sentences in a vehement
+whisper, and then leaned back, exhausted, against the
+wall.
+
+Lisa drew back.  Her lips were white with sudden fright,
+but she scanned Mrs. Waldeaux's face keenly.
+
+"You were in Vannes last night?  You tried----  My God,
+I remember!  The tisane tasted queerly, and I threw it
+out."  She walked away for a moment, and then turning,
+said, "You called my mother a vile woman once.  But SHE
+would not have done that thing!
+
+"No," said Frances, not raising her head.  "No."
+
+Lisa stood looking at her as she crouched against the
+wall.  The fierce scorn slowly died out of her eyes.  She
+was a coarse, but a good-natured, woman.  An awful
+presence, too, walked with her always now, step by step,
+and in that dread shadow she saw the things of life more
+justly than we do.
+She took Frances by the hand at last.  "You were not
+quite yourself, I think," she said quietly.  "I have
+pushed you too hard.  George has told me so much about
+you!  If we could be together for a while, perhaps we
+should love each other a little.  But there is no time
+now----"  She turned hastily, and threw herself down
+before a crucifix.
+
+After a long time she went out to the vestibule, where
+she found Frances, and said, with an effort to be
+cheerful and matter-of-fact, "Come, now, let us talk like
+reasonable people.  A thing is coming to me which comes
+to every-body.  I'm not one to whine.  But it's the
+child--I don't think any baby ever was as much to a woman
+as Jacques is to me.  I suppose God does not think I am
+fit to bring him up.  Sit down and let me tell you
+all about it."
+
+They sat on the steps, talking in a low tone.  Frances
+cried, but Lisa's eyes were quite dry and bright.  She
+rose at last.
+
+"You see, there will be no woman to care for him, if you
+do not.  There he is with Colette."  She ran down, took
+the baby from the bonne, and laid him in Frances's
+arms.
+
+Mrs. Waldeaux looked down at him.  "George's son," she
+whispered, "George's boy!"
+
+"He is very like George and you," Lisa answered.  "He is
+a Waldeaux."
+
+"Yes, I see."
+
+She held him close to her breast as they drove back to
+Vannes.  George whistled and sang on the box.  He was
+very light of heart to have her with him again.
+
+He looked impatiently at an ancient village through which
+they passed, with its towers, and peasants in strange
+garbs, like the pictures in some crusading tale.
+
+"Now that we have mother, Lisa," he said, "we'll go
+straight back home.  I am tired of mediaeval times. 
+I must get to work for this youngster."
+
+Lisa did not speak for a moment.  "I should like to stay
+in Vannes a little longer," she said.  "I did not tell
+you, but--my mother is buried there.  That was why I
+came; I should like to be with her."
+
+"Why, of course, dear.  As long as you like," he said
+affectionately.
+"I will not detain you long.  Perhaps only a week or
+two," she said.
+
+He nodded, and began to whistle cheerfully again. 
+Frances looked at Lisa, and her eyes filled with tears. 
+It was a pitiful tragedy!
+
+But the poor girl was quite right not to worry George
+until the last moment.  She was blocking his way--ruining
+his life, and God was taking her away so that she could
+no longer harm him.
+
+And yet--poor Lisa!
+
+They drove on.  The sun warmed the crimson fields, and
+the birds chirped, and this was George's child creeping
+close to her breast.  It stirred there a keen pang of
+joy.
+
+Surely He had forgiven her.
+
+A month later a group of passengers in deep mourning
+stood apart on the deck of the Paris as she left the
+dock at Liverpool.  It was George Waldeaux, his mother,
+and little Jacques with his nurse.  Mrs. Waldeaux was
+looking at Clara and her girls, who were watching her
+from the dock.  They had come to Vannes when Lisa died,
+and had taken care of her and the baby until now. 
+Frances had cried at leaving them, but George stood with
+his back to them moodily, looking down into the black
+water.
+
+"It seems but a few days since we sailed from New York on
+the Kaiser Wilhelm," he said, "and yet I have lived out
+all my life in that time."
+
+"All?  Is there nothing left, George?" his mother said
+gently.
+
+"Oh, of course, you are always a good companion, and
+there is the child----"  He paused.  The fierce passions,
+the storms of delight and pain of his life with Lisa
+rushed back on him.  "I will work for others, and wear
+out the days as I can," he said.  "But life is over for
+me.  The story is told.  There are only blank pages now
+to the end."
+
+He turned his dim eyes toward the French coast.  She knew
+that they saw the little bare grave on the hill in
+Vannes.  "I wish I could have seen something green
+growing on it before I left her there alone!" he
+muttered.
+
+"Her mother's grave was covered with roses----" Frances
+answered quickly.  "They will creep over to her.
+She is not alone, George.  I am glad she was laid by her
+mother.  She loved her dearly."
+
+"Yes.  Better than any thing on earth," he responded
+gloomily.
+
+A few moments later the ship swung heavily around.
+
+"We are going!  Mrs. Waldeaux cried, waving her hand. 
+"Won't you look at Clara and Lucy, George?  They have been
+so good to us.  If Lucy had been my own child, she could
+not have been kinder to me."
+
+Mr. Waldeaux turned and raised his crepe-bound hat,
+looking at Lucy in her soft gray gown vaguely, as he
+might at a white gull dropped on the shore.
+
+"I suppose I never shall see her again," said his mother. 
+"Clara tells me she is besieged by lovers.  She is
+going to marry a German prince, probably."
+
+"That would be a pity," George said, with a startled
+glance back at the girl.
+
+"Good-by, my dear!" Mrs. Waldeaux leaned over the
+bulwark.  "She is beautiful as an angel!  Good-by, Lucy! 
+God bless you! she sobbed, kissing her hand.
+
+Mr. Waldeaux looked steadily at Lucy.  "How clean she
+is!" he said.
+
+When the shore was gone he walked down the deck,
+conscious of a sudden change in himself.  He was wakening
+out of an ugly dream.  The sight of the healthy little
+girl, with her dewy freshness and blue eyes, full of
+affection and common sense, cheered and heartened him. 
+He did not know what was doing it, but he threw up his
+head and walked vigorously.  The sun shone and the cold
+wind swept him out into a dim future to begin a new life.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+George Waldeaux took his mother and boy back to the old
+homestead in Delaware.  They arrived at night, and early
+the next morning he rowed away in his bateau to some of
+his old haunts in the woods on the bay, and was seen no
+more that day.
+
+"He is inconsolable!" his mother told some of her old
+neighbors who crowded to welcome her.  "His heart is in
+that grave in Vannes."
+The women listened in surprise, for Frances was not in
+the habit of exploiting her emotions in words.
+
+"We understood," said one of them, with a sympathetic
+shake of the head, "that it was a pure love match.  Mrs.
+George Waldeaux, we heard, was a French artist of
+remarkable beauty?"
+
+Frances moved uneasily.  "I never thought her--but I
+can't discuss Lisa!"  She was silent a moment.  "But as
+for her social position"--she drew herself up
+stiffly, fixing cold defiant eyes on her questioner--"as
+for her social position," she went on resolutely, "she
+was descended on one side from an excellent American
+family, and on the other from one of the noblest houses
+in Europe."
+
+When they were gone she hugged little Jacques
+passionately as he lay on her lap.  "That is settled for
+you!" she said.
+
+When George came back in the evening, he found her
+walking with the boy in her arms on the broad piazzas.
+
+"I really think he knows that he has come home, George!"
+she exclaimed.  "See how he laughs!  And he liked the
+dogs and horses just as Lisa thought he would.  I am glad
+it is such a beautiful home for him.  Look at that slope
+to the bay!  There is no nobler park in England!  And the
+house is as big as most of their palaces, and much more
+comfortable!"
+
+"Give the child to Colette, mother, and listen to me. 
+Now that I have settled you and him here, I must go and
+earn your living."
+
+"Yes."
+
+She followed him into the hall.
+
+"I leave you to-morrow.  There is no time to be lost."
+
+"You are going back to art, George?"
+
+"No!  Never!"
+
+Frances grew pale.  She thought she had torn open his
+gaping wound.
+
+"I did not mean to remind you of--of----"
+
+"No, it isn't that!"
+
+He scowled at the fire.  Art meant for him his own
+countless daubs, and the sickening smell of oily paints
+and musk, and soiled silk tea gowns, and the whole
+slovenly, disreputable scramble of Bohemian life in
+Paris.
+
+"I loathe art!" he said, with a furious blow at the
+smouldering log in the fireplace, as if he struck these
+things all down into the ashes with it.
+
+"Will you go back into the Church, dear?" his mother
+ventured timidly.
+
+"Most certainly, no!" he said vehemently. "Of all mean 
+frauds the perfunctory priest is the meanest.  If I 
+could be like one of the old holy gospellers--then indeed!"
+
+He was silent a moment, and then began to stride up and
+down the long hall, his head thrown back, his chest
+inflated.
+
+"I have a message for the world, mother."
+
+"I am sure of it," she interrupted eagerly.
+
+"But I must deliver it in my own way.  I have lost two
+years.  I am going to put in big strokes of work now.  In
+the next two years I intend to take my proper place in my
+own country.  I will find standing room for George
+Waldeaux," with a complacent smile.  "And in the
+meantime, of course, I must make money enough to support
+you and the boy handsomely.  So you see, mother," he
+ended, laughing, "I have no time to lose."
+
+"No, George!"  It was the proudest moment of her life. 
+How heroic and generous he was!
+
+She filled his pocket-book the next day, when he went to
+New York to take the world by the throat.  It was really
+not George Waldeaux's fault that she filled it.
+
+Nor was it his fault that during the next two years the
+world was in no hurry to run to his feet, either to learn
+of him, or to bring him its bags of gold.  The little man
+did his best; he put his "message," as he called it, into
+poems, into essays, into a novel.  Publishers thanked him
+effusively for the pleasure of reading them,
+and--sent them back.  The only word of his which reached
+the public was a review of the work of a successful
+author.  It was so personal, so malignant, that George,
+when he read it, writhed with shame and humiliation.  He
+tore the paper into fragments.
+
+"Am I so envious and small as that!  Before God, no words
+of mine shall ever go into print again!" he said, and he
+kept his word.
+
+He came down every month or two to his mother.
+
+"Why not try teaching, George?" she said anxiously.   
+"These great scholars and scientific men have places and
+reputations which even you need not despise."
+
+He laughed bitterly.  "I tried for a place as tutor in a
+third-class school, and could not pass the examinations. 
+I know nothing accurately.  Nothing."
+
+It occurred to him to  go into politics and help reform
+the world by routing a certain Irish boss.  He made a
+speech at a ward meeting, and broke down in the middle of
+it before the storm of gibes and hootings.
+
+"What was the matter?" he asked a friend, whose face was
+red with laughter.
+
+"My dear fellow, you shouldn't lecture them!  You're not
+the parson.  They resent your air of enormous
+superiority.  For Heaven's sake, don't speak again--in
+this campaign."
+
+It is a wretched story.  There is no need of going into
+the details.  There was no room for him.  He tried in
+desperation to get some foothold in business.  The times
+were hard that winter, which of course was against him. 
+Besides, his critical, haughty air naturally did not
+prepossess employers in his favor when he came to ask for
+a job.
+
+At the end of the second year the man broke down.
+
+"The work of the world," he told Frances, "belongs to
+specialists.  Even a bootblack knows his trade.  I know
+nothing.  I can do nothing.  I am a mass of flabby
+pretences."
+
+Every month she filled his pocket-book.  She found at
+last that he did not touch the money.  He sold his
+clothes and his jewelry to keep himself alive while he
+tramped  the streets of New York looking for work.  He
+starved himself to make this money last.  His flesh was
+lead-colored from want of proper food, and he
+staggered from weakness.  "`He that will not work neither
+let him eat,'" he said grimly.
+
+It was about this time that Miss Vance came home.  Mrs.
+Waldeaux in a moment of weakness gave her a hint of his
+defeat.
+
+"Is the world blind," she cried, "to deny work to a man
+of George's capacity?  What does it mean?"
+
+Clara heard of George's sufferings with equanimity.  "The
+truth is," she said, when she told the story to Miss
+Dunbar, "Frances brought that boy up to believe that he
+was a Grand Llama among men.  There is no work for Grand
+Llamas in this country, and when he understands that he
+is made of very ordinary clay indeed, he will probably be
+of some use in the world."
+
+Lucy was watering her roses.  "It is a matter of
+indifference to me," she said, "what the people of New
+York think of Mr. Waldeaux."
+
+Clara looked at her quickly.  "I do not quite catch your
+meaning?" she said.
+
+But Lucy filled her can, and forgot to answer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+Clara had brought Miss Dunbar back and established her in
+her own house near Weir, under the care of a deaf widowed
+aunt.  Dunbar Place was a stately colonial house, set in
+a large demesne, and all Kent County waited breathless to
+know what revelations the heiress would make to it, in
+the way of equi-pages, marqueterie furniture, or Paris
+gowns.
+
+Mrs. Waldeaux found Lucy one day, a month after her
+arrival, seated at her sewing on the broad, rose-covered
+piazza, looking as if she never had left it.
+
+"Have you come to stay now, my dear," she said, "or will
+Prince Wolfburgh----"
+
+"Oh, that is an old story," interrupted Clara.  "Lucy
+handed the little prince over to Jean Hassard, who
+married him after he had a long fight with her father
+about her dot.  He won the dot, but Count Odo is now
+the head of the house.  Jean, I hear, is in Munich
+fighting her way up among the Herrschaft."
+
+"Jean has good fighting qualities," Lucy said.  "She will
+win."
+
+"I had a letter from her to-day," said Miss Vance.
+"Here it is.  She says, `I mean to rebuild the Schloss,
+and I have put a stop to the soap-boiling business.  I
+will have no fumes of scorching fat in our ancestral
+halls.  Four of the princesses live with us here in the
+flat.  Gussy Carson from Pond City is staying with me
+now.  We have an American tea every Wednesday.  Gus
+receives with me.'"
+
+"Poor princesses!" said Lucy.
+
+Miss Vance folded the letter with a complacent nod.  "I
+am glad that Jean is settled so satisfactorily," she
+said.  "As for Lucy----"
+
+No one answered.  Lucy threaded her needle.
+
+"I start next week to Chicago, did you know, Frances? 
+The Bixbys--two orphan heiresses--wish me to take them to
+Australia, coming back by India.  And I suppose," she
+said, rising impatiently, "if I were to stay away forty
+years I should find Lucy when I came back, with white
+hair maybe, but sitting calmly sewing, not caring whether
+there was a man in the world or not!"
+
+Lucy laughed, but did not even blush.
+
+Mrs. Waldeaux presently said good-by, and Clara went home
+with her to spend the night.  Lucy was left alone upon
+the piazza.  It was there that George Waldeaux saw her
+again.
+
+
+This had been the hardest day of his life.  He rose that
+morning telling himself with an oath that he would earn
+the money to buy his own food or never eat again.  His
+mother had sent him a cheque by post.  He tore it up and
+went out of his cheap lodging-house without breakfast. 
+There was a queer change in him--a sudden lofty
+independence--a sudden loathing of himself.  He knew now
+that it was not in him to do good work in the world, but
+at least he would pay his own way.  He had been a mass of
+vanity and now he was so mean in his own eyes that he
+shrank from the passers-by.  Perhaps the long strain had
+damaged the gray matter of the brain, or some nervous
+centre--I do not know what change a physician would have
+found in him, but the man was changed.
+
+A clerk was needed in a provision shop on Green
+Street.  George placed himself in the line of dirty,
+squalid applicants.  The day was hot, the air of the shop
+was foul with the smells of rotting meat and vegetables. 
+He felt himself stagger against a stall.  He seemed to be
+asleep, but he heard the butchers laughing.  They called
+him a drunken tramp, and then he was hurled out on the
+muddy pavement.
+
+"Too much whiskey for this time o' day!" a policeman
+said, hauling him to his feet.
+
+"Move along, young man!"
+
+Whiskey?  That was what he wanted.  He turned into a shop
+and bought a dram with his last pennies.  It made him
+comfortable for a few hours, then he began to cry and
+swear.  George Waldeaux had never been drunk in his life. 
+The ascetic, stainless priest in him stood off and looked
+at this dog of the gutter with his obscene talk, and then
+came defeat of soul and body.
+
+"I give up!" he said quietly.  "I'll never try again."
+
+He wandered unconsciously to the ferry and, having his
+yearly book of tickets in his pocket, took the train for
+home from force of habit.  He left the cars at a
+station several miles from Weir, and wandered across the
+country.  Just at sundown, covered with mud and weak from
+hunger and drunkenness, he crossed the lawn before Lucy's
+house and, looking up, saw her.
+
+He had stumbled into a world of peace and purity!  A soft
+splendor filled the sky and the bay and the green slopes,
+with their clumps of mighty forest trees.  The air was
+full of the scents of flowers and the good-night song of
+happy birds.  And in the midst of it all, lady of the
+great domain, under her climbing rose vines, sat the
+young, fair woman, clad in some fleecy white garments,
+her head bent, her blue eyes fixed on the
+distance--waiting.
+
+George stopped, sobered by a sudden wrench of his heart. 
+There was the world to which he belonged--there!  His
+keen eye noted every delicate detail of her beauty and of
+her dress.  He was of her sort, her kind--he, kicked into
+the gutter from that foul shop as a tramp!
+
+This is what I have lost! his soul cried to him.
+
+He had not as yet recognized Lucy.  But now she saw him,
+and with a little inarticulate cry like that of a
+bird, she flew down the steps.  "Ah!  It is you!" she
+said.  "I thought you would come to welcome me some
+time!"
+
+Her voice was like a soft breath; her airy draperies blew
+against him.  It was as if a wonderful, beautiful dream
+were folding him in--and in.
+
+He drew back.  "I am not fit, Miss Dunbar.  I did not
+know you were here.  Why--look at me!"
+
+"Oh!  You are ill!  You have had an accident!" she cried. 
+She had laid her little white fingers on his hand and
+now, feeling it burn and tremble at her touch, she caught
+it in both of her own and drew him into the house.
+
+"Mr.  Waldeaux," she said to a servant who appeared,
+"has had a fall.  Bring him water and towels.  Take care
+of him, Stephen."  She spoke quietly, but her voice
+trembled with fright.
+
+The man led George to an inner room.
+
+"Were you thrown, sir?" he asked sympathetically.
+
+George hesitated.  "Yes, I was thrown," he said grimly.
+
+He made himself clean in angry haste, taking the
+whisk from the man and brushing off the dry mud with a
+vicious fury.
+
+Lucy came to meet him, with a pale, anxious smile.  "You
+must not go without a cup of hot coffee," she said,
+leading him to a lounge in the hall.  It was very sweet
+to be treated like a sick man!
+
+"And God knows I am sick, body and soul!" he thought,
+sinking down.
+
+Beside the lounge was a little table with one cover.  He
+noted with keen pleasure the delicate napery, the silver
+candlesticks, the bowl of roses, with which the
+substantial meal was set out.  Lucy waited on him with
+the quick intelligence of a trained nurse.  She scarcely
+spoke, yet her every motion, as she served him, seemed a
+caress.  When he had finished he began to stammer out his
+thanks.
+
+"No," she said, rising decisively.  "You are too weak to
+talk to me to-night, Mr. Waldeaux.  The coupe is at the
+door.  John will drive you home.  You need sleep now."
+
+As he sank down into the luxurious cushions and drove
+away through the twilight, he saw the little white figure
+in the door, and the grave wistful face looking after
+him.
+
+"Did she suspect!" he suddenly cried, starting up.
+
+But George Waldeaux never knew how much Lucy suspected
+that night.
+
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Waldeaux's mare had jogged on leisurely,
+dragging her mistress and Miss Vance home through the
+shady country lanes.
+
+"Phebe is old," apologized Frances.  "She really is a
+retired car horse."
+
+"You used to take pride in your horses, Frances?"
+
+"Yes."  Mrs. Waldeaux added after a pause.  "My income is
+small.  Of course George soon will be coining money, but
+just now----  The peach crop failed this year too.  And
+I save every dollar for Jack's education."
+
+"But what of the jokes for the New York paper?  They were
+profitable."
+
+"Oh, I gave them up long ago." She glanced around
+cautiously.  "Never speak of that, Clara.  I would not
+have George know for the world; I never would hold up my
+head if he knew that I was `Quigg.'"
+
+Miss Vance gave a contemptuous sniff, but Mrs. Waldeaux
+went on eagerly, "I have a plan!  You know that
+swampy tract of ours near Lewes?  When I have enough
+money I'll drain it and lay out a summer
+resort--hotels--cottages.  I'll develop it as I sell the
+lots.  Oh, Jack shall have his millions yet to do great
+work in the world!" her eyes sparkling.  "Though perhaps
+he may choose to strip himself of everything to give to
+the poor, like Francis d'Assisi!  That would be best of
+all.  It's not unlikely.  He is the most generous boy!"
+
+"Stuff!" said Miss Vance.  "St. Francis, indeed!  I
+observe, by the way, that he crosses himself after his
+meals.  Are you making a Romanist of the child?  And you
+speak French to him, too?"
+
+Mrs. Waldeaux's color rose.  "His mother was French and
+Catholic," she said.  "I will not have Lisa forgotten."
+
+They went on in silence.  Miss Vance was lost in thought. 
+Was George Waldeaux equally eager to keep his wife's
+memory alive?  Now that the conceit had been beaten out
+of him, he would not make a bad husband.  And her child
+Lucy had always--esteemed him highly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+The next day was Sunday.  George jumped out of bed with
+the dawn.  He whistled and sang scraps of songs as he
+took his bath.  The sun shone.  What a full, happy world
+it was, anyhow!  And he had given up the game last night? 
+Why, life was just beginning for him!  He was nothing but
+a boy--not yet thirty.  He would make a big success soon,
+and then try to win--to win----  He stopped, breathless,
+looking into the distance, and his eyes slowly grew wet
+with passion and longing.
+
+He left the house and struck across the country through
+the woodland and farms.  He did not know why he went--he
+had to go.  When he reached the Dunbar woods, he stood in
+the thicket for hours, watching the house.  She came out
+at last and sat down on the steps to play with the dog. 
+Last night in her white, delicate beauty she had not
+seemed real--she was far off, like an angel coming down
+into his depths of misery.
+
+But to-day she sat on the steps in her pretty blue gown,
+and laughed and rolled Tramp over, and sung snatches of
+songs, and was nothing but a foolish girl.  For so many
+years he had been thinking of work and money-making and
+bosses.  All of that mean drudgery fell out of sight now. 
+He was a man, young, alone, on fire with hope and
+passion.  His share of life had been mean and pinched;
+yonder was youth and gladness and tranquillity.  The
+world was empty, save for themselves.  He was here, and
+there was the one woman in it--the one woman.
+
+He looked at his tanned, rough fingers.  Last night she
+had folded them in her two soft little hands, and drawn
+him on--on into home!
+
+He would go up to her now and tell her----
+
+George pushed aside the bushes, but at that moment Lucy
+rose and went into the house.  After a moment he crossed
+the lawn and sat down on the piazza, calling the dog to
+him.  She would come back soon.  Tramp's head rested on
+his knee as he stroked it.  It was here her hand had
+touched it--and here----
+
+The scent of roses was heavy in the sunshine, the bees
+hummed; he sat there in a hazy dream, waiting for
+the door to open and the joy of his life to begin.
+
+He was dragged roughly enough out of his dream.
+
+Miss Dunbar's landau drove to the door to take her to
+church.  George looked up, carelessly noting how quiet
+and perfectly appointed it was, from the brown liveries
+of the negro coachman and footman to the trappings on the
+black ponies.  There were no horses of such high breed in
+Delaware.  He stood up suddenly, his jaws pale as if he
+had been struck.  What money there was in it!  He had
+forgotten.  She was a great heiress.
+
+She came out at the moment.  He scanned her fiercely, the
+plain, costly gown, the ruby blazing on her ungloved
+hand.  Then he glanced down at his own shabby Sunday
+suit.  She was the richest woman in Delaware, and he had
+not a dollar in his pocket, and no way to earn one.
+
+He went up to her, courteously took her hand when she
+held it out, blushing and dimpling, bowed to her aunt,
+saying that he had merely walked over to put her into her
+carriage, and, having shut the door, looked after
+them, hat in hand, smiling when she glanced shyly back at
+him.
+
+Then he laughed loudly.  If he had the salary that she
+paid her negro driver he would be lucky!  And he had
+meant to marry her.  He laughed again and took his way
+homeward.
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+His mother was waiting to give George his breakfast. 
+Whether he chose to lie in bed until noon or to walk
+twenty miles at dawn, she smiled a joyful approval.  But
+neither the crisp toast, nor the fried chicken, nor any
+of her funny stories, would penetrate the blackness of
+his gloom.
+
+"Oh, by the way!" she said; "here is a letter that came
+by last night's mail.  I forgot to give it to you."
+
+He glanced at the envelope.  "Great Heavens!  It is life
+and death to me, and you forget it to tell Jack's pert
+sayings!"  He read the letter and threw it down.
+
+"What is it, George?" she asked humbly.
+
+"Burnett & Hoyle offer me a place in their house."
+
+"Mr. Hoyle is an old friend of mine.  I wrote to him. 
+What is the salary, George?"
+
+"Forty dollars a week.  I could earn more as a
+coachman--for some rich heiress."
+
+"But George dear----  It would be a beginning.  They are
+brokers, and there are so many short cuts to fortune in
+that business!  Do try it, my son."
+
+"Of course I'll try it.  Do you think I'm a fool?  It
+will keep me from starving.  But I want something else in
+life than to be kept from starving, mother."
+
+He stretched out his arms with a groan, and walked to the
+window.  She followed him with wretched, comprehending
+eyes.  Why did not Lucy give him her fortune?  Any woman
+would be honored who could give George her fortune.
+
+"I always have heard that brokers know the short cuts to
+wealth," she said calmly.  "You go on the Street some
+day, and come back a millionaire."
+
+"That is a woman's idea of business.  Instead, I will sit
+on a high stool and drudge all day, and on Saturday get
+my wages, and after three or four years I'll make a fight
+for ten dollars more a week, and thank God if I get it. 
+`A short cut to fortune!'"
+
+Mrs. Waldeaux carefully averted her eyes from him. "You
+may marry," she said, "and it may happen that your
+wife also will have some little income----"
+
+"Mother!  Look at me!" he interrupted her sternly.  "I
+will never be dependent on my wife, so help me God! "
+
+"No, George, no!  Of course not.  Don't speak so loud. 
+Only, I thought if she had a small sum of her own, she
+would feel more comfortable, that's all."
+
+
+In spite of his ill temper George threw himself into his
+work with zeal.  After a couple of months he came home
+for a day.  He was dressed with the quiet elegance which
+once had been so important in his eyes.
+
+His mother noted it shrewdly.  "A man has more courage to
+face life, decently clothed," she said to herself.
+
+He did not come again until winter.  Lucy happened to be
+spending the day with Mrs. Waldeaux.  There were no
+liveried servants, no priceless rings, no Worth gown in
+sight.  She was just the shy, foolish girl whom he had
+once for an hour looked upon as his wife.  George talked
+about Wall Street to her, being now wise as to stocks;
+took her out sleighing, and when in the evening she
+took Jack in her arms and sang him to sleep, sat
+listening with his head buried in his hands.  Mrs.
+Waldeaux carried the boy up to bed, and Lucy and George
+were left alone.  They talked long and earnestly.
+
+"She consulted me about her affairs," he said, after she
+was gone, his eyes shining.
+
+"I am afraid she does not understand business!" Mrs.
+Waldeaux replied anxiously.
+
+"Oh, like a woman!  That is, not at all.  Her whole
+property is in the hands of The Consolidated Good Faith
+Companies.  I reminded her of the old adage, `Never put
+all of your eggs into one basket.'"
+
+"But that is so sound a basket, George!"
+"Yes.  It is thought so," with a shrug.
+
+"Poor child!  She needs a guardian to advise her."
+
+Waldeaux's countenance grew black.  "She should employ an
+attorney.  It certainly will never be my duty to advise
+Miss Dunbar," he retorted irritably.
+
+
+George showed himself shrewd and able in his work.  Mr.
+Hoyle was a powerful backer.  Before spring his
+salary was doubled.  But what was that?  The gulf between
+him and the great heiress gaped, impassable.
+
+Lucy spent much time with her old friend, and Frances at
+last broke the silence concerning him.
+
+"The boy never before knew what love was.  And it is you
+that he loves, child."
+
+"He has not told me so," said Lucy coldly.
+
+"No.  And never will.  It is your wealth that makes him
+dumb.  I wish it was gone," said Frances earnestly. 
+"Gone.  You would be so happy.  What is money compared to
+being----"
+
+"George's wife?" Lucy laughed.
+
+"Yes.  George's wife.  I know what he is worth," his
+mother said boldly.  "You might give it away?" looking
+eagerly in the girl's face.  "In charity."
+
+"I might do so," said Miss Dunbar tranquilly.
+
+
+One morning in April Mrs. Waldeaux saw George coming up
+from the station.  She ran to meet him.
+
+He was pale and breathless with excitement.  "What is it? 
+What has happened?" she cried.
+
+"Hush--h!  Come in.  Shut the door.  No one must hear. 
+The Consolidated Companies have failed.  They have robbed
+their depositors."
+
+"Well, George?  What have we---- Oh, Lucy!"
+
+"Yes, Lucy!  She is ruined!  She has nothing.  It was all
+there."  He paced up and down, hoarse with agitation and
+triumph.  "She mustn't know it, mother, until she is safe
+in another home."
+
+"Another home?"
+"Oh, surely you understand!  Here--if she will come. 
+Poor little girl!  She has not a dollar!  I am getting a
+big salary.  I can work for you all.  My God!  I will
+have her at last!  Unless----   Perhaps she won't come! 
+Mother, do you think she will come?"  He caught her arm,
+his jaws twitched, the tears stood in his eyes, as when
+he used to come to her with his boyish troubles.
+
+"How can I tell?" said Frances.  "Go and ask her."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+In July Miss Vance returned unexpectedly.  Her charges
+had tired of travel, and turned their backs upon India. 
+She dropped them in Chicago, and came to Weir for rest. 
+The evening of her arrival she strolled with Frances
+through the park, listening to the story of George's
+sudden wooing, and the quiet, hurried wedding.
+
+"It had to be quiet and hurried," said Mrs. Waldeaux, "in
+order to keep her ignorant of her change of fortune.  He
+took her to the Virginia mountains, so that no newspapers
+could reach her.  They are coming to-morrow.  It won't
+trouble her to hear that her money is gone when she is
+here with us all, at home.  As for me," she went on
+excitedly, "I am beginning to advertise the summer
+resort.  I must put my hand to the plough.  I don't mean
+that she shall miss any comfort or luxury as George's
+wife."
+
+Miss Vance looked at her.  "Frances, give up your
+planning and working.  Let George work for you and his
+wife," she said curtly. "It is time for you to stop and
+rest."
+
+"And why should I stop and rest, Clara?" said Frances,
+amazed.
+
+"Surely you know, dear.  You are not as young as you once
+were.  Your eyes are weak, and your hearing is a little
+dulled, and----"
+
+Frances threw out her hand eagerly.  "You think I am
+growing old!  It is only my eyes and ears that are
+wearing out.  _I_ am not deaf nor blind," she said
+earnestly.  "_I_ am not old.  I find more fun and flavor
+in life now than I did at sixteen.  If I live to be
+seventy, or a hundred, I shall be the same Frances Wal-
+deaux still."
+
+Clara gave an annoyed shrug.  "But really, _I_ make the
+thought of death my constant companion.  And you are
+older than I."
+
+
+  "`After the busy day
+  Comes the calm sleep of night,'"
+
+
+she quoted, with a sententious sigh.
+
+"Calm and sleep do not appear to me to be the highest
+conditions of life.  No!  I will not be set aside, even
+when I am dead, like a burned-out candle!"  The
+indignant tears stood in her eyes.  "Why, even in that
+other world I shall not be a barren stock, thank God!  I
+have given a family to mankind.  To watch a long line of
+your descendants at work, to see in them your own
+thoughts and your own soul reaching out, live powers
+through all eternity--I often think of it.  That will
+be--not calm nor sleep."
+
+Miss Vance touched Mrs. Waldeaux's arm affectionately. 
+"What a queer idea, Frances.  Well, I never argue, you
+know.  Drop in the harness, if you choose.  Let us go in
+now.  It is chilly."
+
+The older woman looked after her, and smiled
+good-humoredly.  After a moment she raised her hand,
+examining it attentively.  Her hand had been very
+beautiful in shape, white and dimpled, and she had been
+vain enough to wear fine rings.  Now it was yellow and
+wrinkled.  The great emerald looked like a bit of glass
+upon it.
+
+"Yes, I see," she said, with a miserable little laugh,
+and then stood looking out into the far distance.  "But
+_I_ am not growing old."  She spoke aloud, as if to one
+who stood apart with her and could understand. 
+"Even out in that other world I shall not be only a
+mother.  I shall be me.  ME!" touching her breast. 
+"After a million of years--it will still be me."
+
+There stirred within the lean body and rheumatic limbs
+depths of unused power, of thought, of love and passion,
+and, deeper than all, awful possibilities of change.
+
+"I have it in me still to be worse than a
+murderer," she thought, with whitening face.
+
+She stood a long time, alone.  A strange content and
+light came slowly into her face.  "Come what will, I
+shall never be left to myself again," she said at last,
+speaking to a Friend whom she had found long ago.
+
+Then she went in search of the boy.  "Come, Jack," she
+said cheerfully, "there are busy days before us."
+
+
+George and Lucy that evening reached Dover, prettiest of
+American towns.  They strolled down the shaded street out
+into a quiet country lane.  Lucy sat down upon a fallen
+tree, and George threw himself upon the grass beside her.
+
+"To-morrow we shall be at home," she said, pushing his
+hair back.  "Do you know that your profile is absolutely
+Greek?"  Her eyes half closed critically.  "Yes, we shall
+be at home about eleven o'clock.  I wrote to Stephen to
+order all the dishes that you like for luncheon.  Your
+mother and Jack are coming.  It will be such a gay, happy
+day!"
+
+He took her hand.  He would tell her now.  It would not
+distress her.  The money weighed for nothing in her life. 
+He was her world; he knew that.
+
+"Lucy!" he said.
+
+She turned, startled at his grave tone.  The color rose
+in her delicate little face, and there was a keen flash
+of intelligence in her blue eyes.  It vanished, and they
+were only blue and innocent.
+
+"Lucy, would you be willing to come to my house?  To take
+it for home?  To be a poor man's wife, there?  God knows
+I'll try to make you happy in it."
+
+"No," she said gently.  "That is your mother's home.  She
+has made it.  It is not fair to bring young queen bees
+into the old queen's hive.  We will live at your
+house, Dunbar Place, George."
+
+"It is not mine nor yours!" George broke out.  "Oh, my
+darling, I have hidden something from you.  It is all
+gone.  Your property, income, every thing!  The Consolidated
+Consolidated Companies failed.  Their depositors are ruined."
+
+"Yes, I know," said Lucy, brushing a fallen leaf from her
+gown.  "But they had no control over my affairs.  I
+withdrew them from their management in February."
+
+George started up.  "Then you--you are a great heiress still?"
+
+"No."  She rose, holding out her hands, laughing.  "My
+husband, I believe, is a rich man, and I shall have what
+he gives me."
+
+But he did not hear her.  He walked away down the road,
+shaken by a dumb fury.  He had been tricked!  Who had
+tricked him?
+
+Then he heard a miserable sob and turned.  Great God! 
+Was any thing on earth so dear as that little woman
+standing there?  She was crying!  Had he struck her?  He
+was a brute.  What had he done?
+
+He ran to her, and taking her outstretched hands, kissed
+them passionately.
+
+"They are mine--mine!" he whispered, and knew nothing beyond.
+
+
+They walked together like two happy children down the
+shady lane toward the golden sunset.  The money was forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Etext of Frances Waldeaux
+