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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40325 ***
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+   1. Page scan source:
+      http://books.google.com/books?id=pPYUAAAAQAAJ
+      (Oxford University)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            TRUE TO A TYPE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            TRUE TO A TYPE
+
+
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                              R. CLELAND
+
+
+
+
+                            IN TWO VOLUMES
+
+                               VOL. II.
+
+
+
+
+                      WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
+
+                         EDINBURGH AND LONDON
+
+                             MDCCCLXXXVII
+
+
+                        _All Rights reserved_
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                    CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
+
+     CHAP.
+
+       XX. PAUL AND VIRGINIA.
+
+      XXI. IS SHE HERE?
+
+     XXII. "WELL, PETER?"
+
+    XXIII. "POOR SUSAN!"
+
+     XXIV. "THEY MET, 'TWAS IN A CROWD."
+
+      XXV. ROSE AND THE RING.
+
+     XXVI. THE MOTHERS.
+
+    XXVII. AN OBDURATE DAUGHTER.
+
+   XXVIII. THEY HAVE IT OUT.
+
+     XXIX. "IT IS ALL A MESS!"
+
+      XXX. A CLOSE OBSERVER.
+
+     XXXI. THE LADY PRINCIPAL.
+
+    XXXII. "YOU MAY TRUST ME TO HOLD MY TONGUE!"
+
+   XXXIII. SUSAN IS EQUAL TO THE EMERGENCY.
+
+    XXXIV. MISS ROLPH IS SEVERE.
+
+     XXXV. MILLICENT.
+
+
+
+
+
+                           TRUE TO A TYPE.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XX.
+
+                          PAUL AND VIRGINIA.
+
+
+The storm exhausted itself at length. The thunder passed on westward,
+the rain abated and ceased, the clouds parted and rolled away, leaving
+the sky clear but paler for its agony of tears. It was now evening,
+and the air felt fresh even to chilliness, for the temperature had
+fallen a matter of fifteen degrees--from 90° to 70° or 75°. The party
+stood round the fire with something not greatly removed from a shiver,
+and warmed their hands. It was not actually cold, but the transition
+had been sudden and violent, which came to the same thing.
+
+"And now to get back?" said Wilkie, looking at his watch. "The gong at
+the beach is just going to sound for supper. I confess I feel peckish.
+Should we not be thinking of a move, Blount?"
+
+Blount coughed. "There are rather many of us for my small boat, in the
+present state of the weather. There is probably more wind, and
+certainly more swell, than you would suppose from looking at the
+landlocked channel down there. I fear we must postpone thoughts of
+supper for the present."
+
+"If we delay, no one can say when we may get in. I don't see why we
+should not make the attempt at once. We shall at least have daylight
+to lessen our difficulties if we attempt it now. What do you say?"
+
+"I fear it is impossible. What do _you_ say, Jake?"
+
+Jake caught a look from his "boss," and understood. "No, sir-ree! you
+won't reach Lippenstock to-night in that aar boat with a crew of six.
+It 'ud be more'n a man's life is worth, with the sea as is on in the
+bay now."
+
+"Suppose we go four, then. I could take charge of the young ladies."
+
+"We won't break up the party, neither Margaret nor I," said Rose. "You
+might try the voyage with Jake, however, by yourself. You could tell
+them at the beach to expect us for breakfast."
+
+Wilkie looked doubtfully to Jake; but Jake's eyes were averted. He had
+pulled out his plug of tobacco, and was intent upon judiciously
+whittling off the exact quantity for a chew. He had no idea of making
+the voyage twice for the accommodation of one man, that man not being
+the "boss," and one, besides, who did not seem over-likely to remember
+to tip. Jake's look afforded little encouragement to make a proposal,
+and that reminded Wilkie in time that the figure he himself would make
+would not be heroic if he arrived alone at the beach and said that the
+others were coming. He elevated his eyebrows into the British
+equivalent of a Frenchman's plaintive shrug, and sighed, and resigned
+himself to his fate. If he had even had some one to "spoon" with, it
+would not have been so bad; but after his experience in that hut
+during the hours of the thunderstorm, he realised that he was in the
+position of one who at the last moment goes to a place of amusement,
+and finds every desirable place ticketed "engaged."
+
+"Worse than Robinson Crusoe," he grumbled to himself, "for I've no man
+Friday."
+
+"Then you would make the rest of us stand for the savages," laughed
+Blount; "which is scarcely flattering. But keep up your heart, old
+man; it might be worse. It is warm in here, at any rate--thanks to our
+absent hosts the fishermen. We must not forget to leave something
+behind in payment for the use of their wood-heap."
+
+"Why didn't they leave provisions when they were about it? Even a
+ship-biscuit would be agreeable now."
+
+"And sugar and tea," laughed Margaret. "They might have left some
+tea--and cups and saucers."
+
+Wilkie objected to being chaffed. He looked severe. "I feel almost
+faint, I can tell you, Miss Naylor. Brain-workers, I suppose, are more
+susceptible to physical privation than the generality," and his eye
+rested on the other two gentlemen, as though they were instances in
+point. "The brain is a delicate organ, and easily thrown out of gear.
+It needs frequent nourishment at short intervals, to keep it in good
+working order."
+
+"You will have to give your brain a rest to-night, then, Mr Wilkie,
+and husband your fibre, as there is nothing here to renew it with--no
+larder, even, except the sea down there. I am glad that, being a
+woman, I have no brain to speak of. The exhaustion of its fibre won't
+be noticed."
+
+"You've hit it, Margaret!" cried Blount--"without even caring--as you
+so often do. Smart girl, and don't know it. The sea is our larder,
+full of fish, and Jake has lines in the boat's locker. Let's go
+fishing."
+
+"The boat will be wet after the rain," said Rose, "and I have had one
+wetting already. I shall not go fishing, thanks; but I do not mind
+looking among the rocks for limpets and mussels, and things. They tell
+me they are good to eat, when people are very hungry."
+
+"Not a bad thing to do. Whoever likes, can fish from the boat; I shall
+_shell_-fish on shore," chimed in Margaret.
+
+"To shell-fish is not wisely selfish," retorted Wilkie, with the air
+of a wag. "How much more comfortable to sit in the boat hauling up
+your fish, than go pottering and stumbling over slippery rocks with a
+lapful of rubbish you won't be able to cook after you have got it!
+while we could broil some fish nicely on the hot coals. Believe me,
+it's better to be wisely selfish than to bother about worthless
+shell-fish."
+
+"I don't think I am selfish; but you may end in becoming a punster if
+you are not warned in time; and to show you are not selfish, you had
+better go out with Jake, and we will all assist you to cook and eat
+whatever you may be lucky enough to catch."
+
+Wilkie looked to the other two men, but both were reaching down hats
+for the girls from lofty pegs where they had been hung. No one heeded
+him, and he deemed it best to follow Jake, who had already gone down
+to the boat and was preparing to launch it. If he was condemned to be
+a supernumerary, it was better to be a useful and independent one
+afloat, than merely in the way on shore; and he had his reward in a
+calm and tranquil evening on the water, his self-love unfretted by the
+view of less learned men preferred to himself, his hand bobbing
+peacefully with his line, and his head in a cloud of soothing tobacco.
+Occasionally he would get a bite, and hauled in his fish with the
+consoling thought that there were some creatures whom he could catch,
+and that the girls would not object to partake of his fish, however
+they might disregard himself.
+
+The four remaining in the hut stood by the door and watched the
+launching of the boat; then they likewise descended to the beach and
+began to look among the rocks for shell-fish. But either there were
+few to find, or the seekers were inattentive in their search, for they
+did not find many, and soon wearying, abandoned even the pretence of
+being useful.
+
+They wandered idly along in the purple light, now waning swiftly into
+bluish grey and shadowy indistinctness. Of the wild and lonely scene
+of half an hour ago, nothing was left but the dusky darkness of the
+land lifting its solid outline against the tinted sky, where wan
+transparent gleams of the departing day contended with the darkling
+blue of night, and the dim sea escaping from the shadows of the
+islands spread away to the horizon, to bound the low-down glimmer in
+the southern sky.
+
+The talk had split itself into two separate strands, and the talkers
+had drifted apart, each couple following the thread of its own
+discourse, and oblivious to its divergence from the other. Joseph and
+Rose were alone again. She was walking by his side, looking with level
+gaze straight out before, to the distant line where sea and sky,
+straining to meet each other, were yet parted where they touched, as
+two who could not be united. She was thinking--or more, perhaps, she
+was waiting--with head inclining forward and to her companion, while
+his eyes sought the ground. His footsteps sounded irregular as he
+walked, as though he were not at ease, but laboured with something to
+be said, for which the word was difficult to find. He looked up more
+than once as if about to speak, and then his eyes fell again without
+his having spoken. She did not observe. Her eyes were on the horizon
+and the light was dim.
+
+At length he clenched his hands, stopped short, and spoke abruptly.
+His voice was low, but there was an intensity in the utterance, which
+made her start although she had been expecting him to speak.
+
+"Rose! will you be my wife?... Why should I try to lead up easily to
+what I meant to say? I am too much in earnest to be able to coin
+phrases."
+
+She turned and looked at him. She did not look up shyly, but yet she
+was not bold. Doubt, if there had been light enough to see, or if his
+mind had been calm enough to observe, was the prevailing sentiment
+which her face betrayed. She looked, and her lips grew tense, and then
+she drew a heavy, deep, slow breath; and, like a sleep-walker obeying
+an impulse apart from common consciousness or volition, she held out
+her hand.
+
+He caught it in both of his, and raised it to his lips, and clasped it
+as if he never would let it go; and the boiling blood went tingling
+through his veins in a transport of tumultuous joy, which shook his
+frame and made it vain for him to try to raise his voice.
+
+She thought she heard him whisper, "Rose! My own!" and straight the
+tears began to gather in her eyes, and her breathing broke into a sob.
+She thought, she was about to give way, and covered her face with the
+other hand. And yet there was a stillness in her heart, as though it
+were some one else--a looker-on--a curious and yet an approving
+onlooker, but one who felt no joy at her being sought, no hope and no
+elation, though it bade her accept. And then a despairing pang shot
+through her. Was it impossible for her to love? But she would! She was
+resolved to love--to love this man. She had read in him that he loved
+her well. He was good and true; she more than liked or even respected
+him. She was resolved to love as fondly and as faithfully as ever
+woman had, if only to show----but she would not think of that--never
+again. The past was buried. Let it lie.
+
+Joseph, in his own tumultuous exaltation, felt the trembling of her
+hand. He heard her sob. He saw her cover her face as if to hide her
+tears, and caught her in his arms, folding her in, and pressing her to
+his heart in a tender transport. To dry those tears was now his
+rightful privilege; and very tenderly and softly did he whisper in her
+ear, bidding her calm herself and have no fear, for he loved and
+worshipped her, and would devote his life to shelter her from care or
+harm.
+
+And now the stars came out upon the night, looking down with friendly
+understanding eyes, like beings of a higher sphere, approving the
+troth-plight and bidding them be happy. They sat them down upon a
+broad flat rock; her hand was nestling in his palm, and her form drawn
+up against him within his encircling arm; and the silent peace of
+night, tranquil and still beneath the keeping of the kindly stars,
+wore in upon their agitated spirits, helping the fever in their blood
+to cool.
+
+To realise that there is some one in accord, and all our own, who
+shares desire and hope, our present and our future, to whom the inmost
+thought might be revealed, if that were possible, without the
+conventional disguises in which we hide while we converse with one
+another, is a sensation of the rarest joy, but seldom known, and never
+known for long. To Joseph, who had lived alone in heart, it was very
+new and inexpressibly delightful. There were no words to image forth a
+tithe of what he felt. Speech failed. He held her hand, and breathed
+the pure delicious night in gasps of satisfaction: and it was all so
+still and simple; only the outlined rocks against the sky, and
+glimmering faint reflections of the stars on the dim water; no
+troubling details or petty objects, no motion but the ceaseless
+current of the universe, the noiseless unseen marching of the host of
+heaven from east to west. He and his love were the only two in all the
+mighty vault. For them the night was still, the air so sweet, the
+stars so kind and friendly. They and the universe were in company and
+at one in some mysterious way, and the peace of the universe flowed in
+upon his soul.
+
+Rose sat in wonder at the intensity of the silence. How this man must
+love her! It was sweet to be so loved, but it was solemn. She felt
+small within his clasping arms. Her hand was laid in his, and nestled
+in the tender warmth of its grasp, so strong and so protecting. He had
+taken her for his very own, and she felt humble in the unworthiness of
+the self he set such store on. She felt ashamed at the inward
+stillness which could respond so coldly; but the feeling roused and
+warmed her somewhat, and she was glad of it. She had striven to win
+him. Honestly she had striven, if in a divided spirit, which made
+her blush now to think of the depth and tenderness of the love which
+she had won. But at least he should never have ground to suspect
+half-heartedness. She would compel herself to love him more; and if
+the reality fell short of what she felt she owed, at least the
+expression should not fall short in fulness. She crept closer, and
+strove to thaw away the numbing chill which hung about her heart, and
+was so stubborn to dispel. He responded with a tightening clasp
+against the strong warm throbbing of his breast, till she vibrated
+with the pulses of his perfect love. She looked out across the sea,
+and vowed to be more than he had hoped or dreamed, and felt still and
+strengthened by the peace spread out around her. And so they sat,
+together, and yet so far apart in feeling; and time went by without
+their taking heed.
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+At length--they knew not when or how the idea came into their minds,
+but probably it was because a star, appearing to have parted from the
+rest, came down, and seemed to be pursuing an independent course, and
+to outstrip its fellows, being only, when they looked a little later,
+the lantern hung out upon a passing ship--they started from their
+reverie and stood up.
+
+"The dew is falling; you will be chilled." It was Joseph who spoke.
+"Let me button my coat round your shoulders. It is not thick or warm,
+but at least it adds another fold of covering."
+
+"Thanks, but I am warm.... No; I do not want it. But you are kind to
+mean giving it. Only you should not think that I would strip you of
+your coat. Is it not time that we were turning back?"
+
+"Yes; we have strayed a long way from the hut. The ground is rough,
+and it is so dark one cannot see where one steps. You will stumble.
+Give me your hand, and let me lead."
+
+The unevenness of the ground, and the consequent stumbling among rocks
+and boulders in the uncertain dimness, soon brought them back to the
+level of everyday life; and when at length, after an hour of
+floundering and groping, they came in sight of the fire-glow streaming
+from the fishermen's shelter, they were completely themselves
+again--gayer even than their wont, in the reaction from the deeper
+feelings in which they had been lately steeped.
+
+They were the last of the party to come in. The others were already
+round the fire, assisting with their advice the experienced Jake, who
+was on his knees broiling fish upon the coals. They made a tolerable
+supper, without bread or salt, Jake assuring Wilkie that, coming from
+the sea, fish needed none, and that they would lie the lighter on his
+"stommick" for lack of fixings. And then the girls were left alone,
+and the men withdrew to the boat, under whose shelter they contrived
+to sleep till morning, when they sailed from the desert island, each
+with some memory or experience to mark it in his recollection for
+life.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXI.
+
+                             IS SHE HERE?
+
+
+The house was very quiet when Gilbert Roe met Maida and Mrs Denwiddie
+at breakfast on the morning after his arrival. Only an invalid, one or
+two old people, some dull ones who had no friends, and a few young
+children with nurses, were scattered here and there at the deserted
+tables. He adjusted his eyeglass and looked about. He saw as well as
+other people; but, like them, he found the glass useful as a
+demonstration on many occasions.
+
+"I thought," he said, "you told me the house was full. This is the
+poorest showing I have come on yet for a seaside resort in August. Not
+by any means a promising crowd to live in--and to-morrow is Sunday.
+One can't well get away before Monday morning."
+
+"There was not a vacant place yesterday at this hour," Maida answered,
+a little hurt. "That I can tell you. Can _you_ tell, Mrs Denwiddie,
+what has become of them all?"
+
+"Did you not hear the fuss an hour ago or more? It woke me out of my
+morning sleep. Such gabble and uproar I never did hear--slamming doors
+and scuttling feet, everybody speaking at once, enough to wake the
+dead. And when I got up and looked out, there they were, just starting
+away in buggies and 'buses and rockaways, the whole lot of boarders it
+seemed to me, and it just astonishes me to see so many left behind.
+Jest those that couldn't go, I guess, or didn't care to go, because
+there was nobody to mind them."
+
+"Where have they gone, then?" asked Maida. "As I went away, so to
+speak, yesterday, I was taking no interest in the plans; but I am real
+sorry for Gil----for Mr Roe's sake, that I did not know; and I wonder
+you did not go with the rest, Mrs Denwiddie."
+
+"So I would, perhaps, if it had not been for promising to breakfast
+along with you, under the circumstances;" and she looked most
+knowingly into the other's eyes with her head on one side. But seeing
+the humour was not appreciated, she went on--"though I don't know
+either. I don't much hold with boat-rides, and there'll be sech a
+crush! Jest think of a boat on the water in Lippenstock Bay a day like
+this! for it's there they're gone to, and Fessenden's Island, for a
+picnic. And won't they find they've had enough of their steamboat-ride
+afore they're done with it! I went last summer, and I know."
+
+"We must resign ourselves to a quiet day on the sands, then," said
+Maida, with a little sigh which expressed nothing but satisfaction.
+"Let's go at once, Gilbert, before the heat comes on. There's a nice
+grove down near the shore, about three miles along, and it'll be just
+splendid to rest there about noon."
+
+"Three miles, Maidy--and three back! And how am I to go that far in
+the heat?" exclaimed the widow.
+
+Maida opened her eyes, just a little. It was convenient to have her
+aged friend--for so she was now for the first time disposed to
+consider her--sit by her at table, and fend off curious remark; but to
+have her make a third in her intercourse with Gilbert was more than
+flesh and blood could be expected to bear. Her lips tightened, and
+there was a quiver of the nostril suggestive of a sniff; but she took
+care to make no emendation of her first proposal.
+
+"I think, now," said Mrs Denwiddie, "the best thing Mr Roe can do
+would be to give us a ride along the sands in one of the landlord's
+rockaways. He'd find it real smooth and pleasant for conversation."
+She was indeed loath to part from "these two interestin' young
+things," as she would have called them now, though twenty-four hours
+earlier she would certainly have spoken of Maida as a forlorn old
+maid; so completely will circumstances alter cases. The young man made
+the difference--the old, old story which is always new. She was too
+old herself for these sweet passages; but if she could no longer hope
+to woo or be wooed, it was pleasant to assist at the wooing of some
+one else. People do not cease to be hungry when they lose their teeth,
+and a Barmecide banquet is better than no feast at all. Is not this
+"the long-felt want," to quote the prospectus-writers, which finds
+readers for the shoal of love-tales published every week?
+
+"I'm going for a smoke," Gilbert observed, after an interval in which
+the play of knife and fork had absorbed their undivided attention; and
+marshalling his companions out of the dining-room, he withdrew to the
+male lounging-ground of the establishment. There he found the
+"proprietor" and his clerk, each with a newspaper and a toothpick,
+arranging themselves on three chairs apiece to ruminate on the
+breakfast they had eaten, and to anticipate the meal which was to come
+next. The day was _dies non_ with them, their customers being away at
+the picnic, and they were promising themselves a morning of complete
+repose. Gilbert's appearance was not particularly welcome; however,
+they both favoured him with an inclination of the head, the proprietor
+combining his with a flourish of his toothpick towards the regiment of
+empty chairs, by way of inviting him to take a few and make himself at
+home.
+
+He condescended to accept one of Gilbert's cigars; and finding
+it good, he relaxed so far as to vouchsafe a reference from the paper
+he was still reading, with regard to the state of politics in
+"Bhoston,"--to which Gilbert replied, alluding in passing to affairs
+in the West. Thereupon the proprietor woke up sufficiently to put one
+of his feet to the ground, and proceeded to interrogate him as to
+where was his home, what was his occupation, why was he travelling in
+the East, &c. Having received all the particulars which his guest
+seemed disposed to communicate, his interest subsided again, his leg
+resumed the horizontal position, his eyes returned to his paper, and
+his answers to Gilbert's efforts to converse became so brief and
+indifferent that the latter gave it up, and pored over his own
+newspaper in silence. The captain of a ship may be an important person
+on his own deck, but his grandeur is nothing to that of a hotel
+proprietor when his house is full. He is so accustomed to be spoken
+fair by guests desiring improved accommodation and eccentric
+et-ceteras, that he stiffens into an autocrat of the severest type.
+
+Gilbert smoked, and read till he grew tired of it, and then he got up
+and sauntered away. He was becoming a bore unto himself, and longed
+for other company. On the gallery near the entrance he espied Maida
+hatted and gloved, awaiting an invitation to walk. She was alone; he
+had only to signify his wish, and away they strolled along the sands.
+It was not unpleasant, he found, now that the restlessness of his
+spirit had been chastened by the proprietor's severe neglect, to be
+looked up to, made of, and courted. His weed became more fragrant in
+the freshness of the air and sunshine as they wandered along by the
+water's-edge. Maida's low eager tones mingled agreeably with the
+babble of the breakers coming on, curling and retreating respectfully
+within some inches of his feet, and made him realise once more that he
+was lord of the creation, and a very fine fellow indeed.
+
+Maida's flow of conversation trickled on without intermission. It was
+wonderful, indeed, how she found so much to say; but the well of happy
+feeling within yielded a steady flow of purling talk, not deep,
+perhaps, but clear and cheerful, with opportunities for him to answer
+if so it pleased him, yet able to babble along pleasantly if he said
+nothing. She did not talk about herself, which might have grown
+tedious, nor did she trouble him with questions about his own career.
+He must tell her of that, she thought, when he chose, though she
+longed to know. Her thoughts were back in the time when she used to
+know him, and her talk was reminiscences, touched with the ideal
+brightness which the days of our youth never assume till after they
+are fled.
+
+Gilbert listened, remembering enough to verify her words; but yet it
+seemed most different, as she described it, from what he had supposed.
+It was like being told about some one else, especially when she
+recalled their conversations in those ancient days. To think that he,
+a weather-beaten worldling, shrewd, clear-headed, and cool, could
+ever have been given up to fancies and enthusiasms such as she spoke
+of--such as she seemed to cling to still! There had been no changes of
+circumstance and position with her, to show things in new lights and
+under new aspects; and so she had continued to serve the old gods.
+They had flown away from him long ago, as birds escape from their
+nesting-places when the sun is up. He knew them no more, immersed as
+he was in the hurry of workaday life, and it seemed strange to have
+them brought before him now. They were pretty and curious, but oh, so
+narrow and mistaken! A moth may feel as he did, when, shown the
+chrysalis out of which it crept, it realises how impossible it would
+be for it to fold and compress itself again within the old limits.
+
+For one morning, the sensation of being made love to by Maida, and
+being courted under the form of his older self, was distinctly
+pleasurable, though mild. She thought all the world of him--that he
+could see--and he would be kind to her by way of making some small
+return, especially in the absence of any one else to amuse him. After
+their early dinner, the house being still in its deserted condition,
+he brought her into the billiard-room to teach her the game. It was
+her first lesson, and she was eager to learn; but she could not do so
+quickly enough to play with him that day, however many points he might
+give her--so he tired of that, and then, being still in a gracious
+mood, he remembered Mrs Denwiddie's suggestion of the morning, that he
+should give them a drive, and he fulfilled her desire. Both ladies
+enjoyed it immensely; and to crown their triumph, they found that the
+picnickers had returned only a minute before them, and had the
+gratification of alighting in state with their escort, in full view of
+the whole houseful of guests.
+
+The thunderstorm which had reached Fessenden's Island an hour before,
+came on shortly after; wherefore the remainder of the evening was
+spent within doors, in the usual way, save that the company were more
+disposed to sit still after their long day in the open air. Music,
+singing, and conversation were the occupations at first; but the
+quicksilver in Lucy Naylor and one or two more prevailed at last, and
+by the time it grew dark the dance was in full force as on other
+evenings.
+
+"Now!" said Maida to Gilbert. "Are there enough people for your idea
+of being sociable, now? You are always the same old man, as fond of
+company as ever. Do you remember the country-dances and cotillions at
+Deacon Benson's? How we used to keep it up! And the walking home
+afterwards in the early morning--with the grass running dew, and
+taking the starch out of my flounces! But you don't remember that, I
+guess. Ah, those parties! They were just too sweet to last. I have
+never been at any, since, I cared so much for.... Do you know the
+cotillion now as well as you used to? My! how you did know it! We
+girls were always wishing to have you call the figures. Nobody could
+ever guess what you were going to make us do next. It kept up the
+interest, and was real exciting. When we'd expect to have 'ladies'
+chain,' it would be 'set to partners,' or 'ladies in the centre,' or
+'first gentleman to the right,' or something quite unexpected. They
+don't dance cotillions here. I guess it's because they don't know how;
+though they pretend it's because they've gone out, and the upper
+circles don't dance them. It's all round-dancing here, except when
+it's lancers; and then they don't call the figures, so I never know
+what to do next."
+
+"Well, this is a round-dance. Come! No use sitting here the whole
+night."
+
+"I'll try," said Maida, delighted to be taken out, but with a
+misgiving. She did not dance often, and she felt doubtful whether she
+would acquit herself to the satisfaction of her hero. "Not too fast,
+please--not any faster than you can help. The waltz is apt to make me
+giddy," she ejaculated as they started off; but then she was in
+rapture, and said nothing more. Were not his arms around her? and was
+it not he whom she held and clung to as the room began to swim, and
+her sense of terra firma to grow vague and indistinct?
+
+"Don't hang on quite so altogetherly, Maida. And if you could keep
+your feet to the ground, it would _look_ better, you know. You're more
+hefty, as we used to say, than when you were a baby," Gilbert
+observed, as they swung and revolved laboriously round the room; but
+at length he got out of breath, and they had to stop.
+
+"Oh!" sighed Maida, with closed eyes, clinging to her partner for
+support because she was giddy, and also, perhaps, because she liked to
+do it. "I am quite run out! But it was lovely."
+
+"Come and sit down then, and rest," said the matter-of-fact Gilbert,
+"and get back your breath;" which was not just the form of answer
+which Maida had looked for. However, the music was ending and it could
+not be helped.
+
+And now Gilbert, having done his duty by his old friend, thought it
+was time for her to be of some little service to him in return. He
+asked her to introduce him to some of the other young ladies whom he
+might ask to dance; and she could not but consent. It seemed a strange
+request to make, she thought, a strange desire to feel, when she was
+by--so soon after returning from so long an absence! It was a
+masculine caprice, she supposed. And those men! Who could understand
+them? She could take care, however, that the ladies she presented him
+to were not more than moderately endowed with beauty. And she did. One
+cannot be expected to court misfortune--to introduce rivals to even
+the most loyal of swains--to fetch a stick from the wood to break
+one's own back with. Perhaps she rather overdid it, in fact; at least
+Gilbert did not invite many of her beauties to dance, and when the
+introductions were over he could not help saying, "What a homely lot
+of friends you have, Maida! They must be awful good, if appearances
+are as deceitful as folks say. Now there's a little girl over yonder,
+a peart little filly, that it would be a real pleasure to dance with.
+What's her name? Can you not introduce me there?"
+
+"I don't know her. She's a stuck-up little thing; and if I'm any judge
+of girls, as I ought to be, there's not much in her. I hear them call
+her Fanny Payson, and she belongs to Senator Deane's party--Deane of
+Indiana, you know."
+
+"I knew Deane well; he lives part of the time in Chicago. Is his
+family with him?"
+
+"Oh yes; but they put on airs, no end of. We poor New Hampshire folks
+ain't good enough for them to know."
+
+Gilbert was not listening now. He had fallen into a brown study, and
+presently without any explanation he left her. He wandered up and down
+the rooms, wearing a look of impatient eagerness, and peering into
+faces as though in search of some one. At length he darted forward to
+the side of a lady standing up to dance. "Miss Deane," he whispered
+hoarsely, "is she here?"
+
+Lettice turned. "You, Mr Roe?" Then, recovering from her surprise, she
+assumed a manner of great coldness, and opening her eyes, as if in
+wonder at his audacious intrusion, she limited her answer to a clearly
+articulated "No."
+
+"Where is she? Pray tell! I----"
+
+He had stretched out his hand as if to lay hold on her skirt to detain
+her; but with a motion of her hand she swept it beyond his reach,
+saying severely, "I cannot tell you;" and then, in turning away, she
+added, "Do not expose yourself in this public place;" and giving her
+hand to her partner, she was whirled away among the dancers.
+
+Gilbert set his teeth, and a look of despairing woe passed across his
+features. He traversed the crowded rooms once more, and then, too
+miserable to remain, he went out upon the dripping galleries, where
+darkness and the cooled and moistened air yielded a kind of
+consolation. There he paced and smoked, till life grew bearable again,
+though still ungenial, and then he went to his room and turned in.
+
+Maida sat where he had left her on the brink of the dance, and grew
+very sad when he did not return to her side. What had she done to
+offend or weary him? But at least he was not dancing--that was
+something. Yet where could he be? A heaviness came over her spirits,
+and she felt depressed for the first time in the last four-and-twenty
+hours.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXII.
+
+                            "WELL, PETER?"
+
+
+Next day was Sunday. Compared with other days at Clam Beach, it was
+the same with a difference--leisure combined with fresh air, but
+partaken of in a different form. Church was the recognised occupation;
+but the churches were at Blue Fish Creek, four miles away, down the
+coast in the other direction from Lippenstock. Omnibuses were in use
+to convey the inmates, and everybody went, even the old people, the
+dull ones, the invalid, and the young children. It was the only outing
+which the dull people allowed themselves; there was nothing to pay for
+the carriage exercise, and they never missed it.
+
+Mrs Naylor and Mrs Wilkie remained at home. They had had enough of
+driving the day before, and found it agreeable now to sit still in the
+deserted gallery, and absorb sunshine and fresh air in peace. At least
+such was the state of Mrs Naylor's feelings. Not being a British
+mother, she had considerable confidence in her daughter's ability to
+take care of herself, so long, at least, as that pernicious young man
+Walter Blount was away, and she had no ground to suspect his presence
+on Fessenden's Island. Besides, she was aware now that the girl's
+uncle had also been left behind, therefore she was safe, not to
+mention Peter Wilkie, whose mother had been making herself ridiculous
+on the subject all the previous evening. There was nothing very
+compromising in the situation, so far as she could see; in fact, with
+her desire to suppress the girl's kindness for Blount, she could
+almost have wished there had been. It would have brought the other
+young man up to the point of committing himself, and, with a little
+maternal pressure, compelled her to accept him; and as she had quite
+made up her mind that Margaret was to marry in Toronto, that pressure
+would assuredly be forthcoming.
+
+Mrs Wilkie's motherly feelings were in a state of ebullition which
+would not let her sit still. She would get up from her chair and pace
+the gallery with irregular steps, puffing and sighing distractedly,
+get tired and plump down again, pressing her hands together, and
+sighing worse than before. Her boy was done for--bagged by a designing
+girl. Speculatively and in the abstract, she was wont to express a
+strong desire to see him married, whatever she may have felt; but the
+ideal spouse had never yet appeared--or rather, whenever there seemed
+a possibility of any fair one finding favour in his eyes, she began to
+see objections, even if she had herself recommended the girl and
+fancied that she would like him to marry her. Speculatively, she had
+held Margaret Naylor in the highest esteem; actually, she found
+herself detesting her with all her might. She had struck up quite a
+friendship with her mother, and the fellow-boarders had differed only
+as to which of the mothers was most desirous of being allied to the
+other. Now, alas! her son's fate seemed to be decided. She must resign
+the first place in his care, and had her supplanter been a seraph with
+wings come straight down from heaven, she could not have accepted her
+without a spasm of jealousy.
+
+"Cast upon a desert island," she muttered to herself, as she paced the
+gallery. "A second Robinson Crusoe, with his man Friday. But it's not
+a man Friday! It's worse; it's a girl Friday!--or rather, it's worse
+than any Friday at all--it's the parrot! A gabbin', chatterin',
+useless thing--all tongue and feathers, and not wan grain of sense in
+its head. An empty, feckless, dressed-up doll, with nothing but the
+face and the clothes to recommend her. How can men of intelleck be
+such fools? And after all, it isn't much of a face even. I've
+seen----" but here the soliloquy grew inaudible; only, judging by the
+toss of her head, which set the little grey curls on her temples
+a-dancing, it must have been what she had seen in her own mirror long
+ago which was so much more admirable.
+
+She dropped into a chair near her companion, panting, and fanned
+herself vehemently, complaining of the heat. It seemed to make her
+hotter still to sit beside Mrs Naylor, in her present frame of mind.
+
+"Try to sit still, dear Mrs Wilkie. You will find it the best way to
+get cool," Mrs Naylor said, very sweetly. "He will be sure to be home
+very soon. My brother-in-law is with them, you know; and between two
+gentlemen, they will be sure to contrive some means of getting away."
+
+Mrs Wilkie snorted, and fanned herself more vehemently than before,
+relapsing into her late mutterings about Robinson Crusoe and the
+desert island; but, disturbed as she was, she had presence of mind
+enough to suppress the parrot, and complained of the heat and her
+palpitations instead.
+
+Mrs Naylor grew positively nervous, and even began to feel an
+anticipatory pity for her daughter, in the prospect of so tumultuous a
+mother-in-law--when, quite unexpectedly, the truants drove up to the
+door.
+
+"Peter, you rascal!" his mother exclaimed, jumping up and running
+down-stairs to meet him. "You've nearly been the death of me;" and, to
+demonstrate how much she had suffered, so soon as she came within
+range of his supporting arms, she pressed both hands upon her
+"palpitation," crying, "Oh!" and made as if she would fall.
+
+Peter caught her as intended, and supported her up to her room, not
+soothing her, by any means, but scolding her roundly, in good set
+terms; but then he had known her for many years, and understood her
+idiosyncrasies. Doubtless his system was the right one. Soothing would
+only have encouraged her to rave and do the scolding herself, till her
+palpitations came on in earnest. He was an excellent son, whatever his
+shortcomings in other respects might be; and there are constitutions
+which require what their medical advisers might call "bracing
+treatment," just as others agree with bland and soothing remedies.
+
+"Well, Peter?" she asked, with impatient eagerness, so soon as they
+were closeted together, in complete forgetfulness of the scene which
+she had been enacting the minute before--forgetting her incipient
+faintness, and likewise the rough restoratives which had been applied.
+"Have ye done it?"
+
+"Done what, mother?"
+
+"You know very well what I mean. Have ye promised to marry that girl
+down-stairs?"
+
+"I have not."
+
+She heaved a great sigh of relief; but she went on with her catechism.
+"How's that? I never saw ye more taken up with anybody. Ye stuck to
+her like a burr the livelong day; and many were the envious glances I
+saw some others casting after you two, as ye went dandering over the
+hills like a pair of lovers. I was sure ye were nabbet--just grippet
+and done for like a wired rabbit; and, says I to myself, there's wan
+of the simple wans that love simplicity, and she's just inveigled him
+into makin' her an offer."
+
+"She doesn't want to inveigle me. She is provided already. She did not
+give me the chance to make a fool of myself, like your young friend in
+the Proverbs, whom you are so fond of talking about. She availed
+herself of my escort to bring her to a man she liked better than me;
+that was all."
+
+"The besom! She took her use out of ye, and let ye slide? Do ye mean
+to tell me that, Peter Wilkie? And are ye going to stand it? Have ye
+nothing more to say than just stand like a gowk and own til it? Have
+ye no spurrit left?"
+
+"Whisht, mother! and don't haver."
+
+"Whisht yourself! Do ye think I'm going to sit still and see a monkey
+like that scancing at my son? She'd have the assurance, would she, to
+take her use out of my boy, and throw him away when she was done, like
+a socket gooseberry! My certie, but she'll rue it yet!"
+
+"She did nothing, mother. The girl is engaged, though we did not know
+it. You would not have me cut in and break up an engagement?"
+
+"Ye might, if ye liked. Your poseetion would justifee you, and the
+girl would be the gainer."
+
+"But I wouldn't, mother, if she was fond of some one else."
+
+"And who's the young man?"
+
+"You don't know him. He is a Mr Blount, who was staying here last
+week, but he went away."
+
+"I never saw him, and ye know I have been a great deal with the girl's
+mother. I'm thinking the attachment has not gone far, or I would have
+seen him hanging about Mrs Naylor."
+
+"I do not think Mrs Naylor likes him, and that was why he came to the
+island to meet her quietly."
+
+"Illeecitly? It'll be an illeecit amoor!"
+
+"Whisht, mother! and don't speak French. You are taking away the
+girl's character without knowing it."
+
+"She deserves it, and more. To trifle with a Deputy Minister, and have
+a sweetheart without telling her mother! I never heard the like. Ye're
+well quit o' her, Peter."
+
+"I never had her. She would not look at me."
+
+"Set her up! But it will be my duty to say a quiet word to Mrs Naylor,
+and enlighten her about her daughter's ongoings. It'll be good for the
+hizzy, and a warning to her not to make use of gentlemen of poseetion
+to serve her underhand ends."
+
+"You won't, mother. It is no concern of yours. We know nothing about
+the Naylors' affairs. Let them settle their own hash."
+
+"I cannot but let a mother know about her daughter's ongoings. And oh,
+but she's fond of her! It will stab her to the heart. But it may be
+blessed to herself, for she's inclined to be rather high sometimes.
+It's time she was learning a little humeelity."
+
+"If you do, you'll disgrace me. People will say it was because she
+would not look at me that I went and betrayed the girl's meeting her
+lover, out of pure spite. Her uncle was there, besides, so it is no
+concern of ours. And again, I do not want her."
+
+"Of course not. But to think she would go walking away with you before
+everybody, and laughing at you in her sleeve, to keep tryst with
+another man! My blood just biles to think of it. I'd like to nip her
+ears for her. But see if I don't give her a bit of my mind ere all's
+done."
+
+"If you do, mother----"
+
+"Now, don't be clenchin' your fists at me, you unnatural boy. Just
+your father over again. And a dour, cantankerous, wrongheaded gowk he
+always was. He'd go out in the world and let them just trample on him,
+and then he'd come home to his poor sufferin' wife, and play the
+roaring lion. But he'd play another tune now, I warrant, if he could
+get me back again. He'd be glad enough to have me, now he has to do
+without me. And so with you, Peter, when you see me laid out stiff in
+my coffin, ye'll be wishin' ye had used me better. Ah, my bonny man,
+ye'll be wishin', when it's too late, ye had behaved different to your
+fond old mother!" which was pathetic, and caused the speaker to wipe
+her eyes. The effect on her son was different.
+
+"I wish you would let the old man alone," he said. "It would sound
+better. Nobody knows anything about him here, and need not, if you
+will but hold your tongue. Some day you will forget yourself; there
+will be a washing of our family linen held in public, and nobody will
+think the more of either you or me. As for the young lady, unless you
+will promise to say nothing either to her or her mother, we pack up
+everything tonight, and back we go to Canada to-morrow morning."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+                            "POOR SUSAN!"
+
+
+The subject of the foregoing discussion stole quickly and quietly up
+to her room, unconscious of the angry passions she had unwittingly
+aroused, intending to remain there till the people returned from
+church, when she would meet her mother surrounded by strangers, and so
+avoid the bad quarter of an hour which her conscience told her she
+ought to expect. She had scarcely removed her hat, however, when the
+door opened and her mother appeared, wearing a smile in which curious
+impatience mingled with complacent certainty. The worthy lady had very
+little doubt as to what she was going to be told, and was already
+congratulating herself on her good management and good luck combined.
+
+"Good morning, mamma. How anxious you must have been! Did you think I
+was lost? But, to be sure, uncle Joseph's being in the same
+predicament would keep your mind at ease."
+
+Margaret had run forward to embrace her mother effusively, and was
+speaking with unusual vivacity. There was so much to tell and so much
+to leave untold, without hesitancy, which might betray that aught was
+being kept back. She did not know how she was to manage, and like
+other timid things when they find there is no escape, she rushed at
+the danger as if she could encounter and overbear it. Anything seemed
+preferable to expectancy, cowering and waiting to be fallen upon and
+devoured.
+
+Her mother submitted to be kissed. It was the morning
+routine-observance between her and her girls, but she had not patience
+for prolonged embraces on the present occasion.
+
+"Tell me," she said, as soon as she could free herself from the
+importunate endearments; "has he proposed?"
+
+"I almost think he has, to judge from his manner; and he looks so
+happy."
+
+"You think? You do not know? Come, that is too ridiculous! What did he
+say?"
+
+"I do not know what he said."
+
+"You don't? And you call yourself a grown-up girl?... That I should be
+mother to such an _ingénue_!... You must be a fool!"
+
+"You do not imagine he would propose in open meeting, do you? I only
+infer from her affectionateness to me when we were alone together last
+night.... We slept in a fisherman's hut.... But she did not exactly
+tell me anything.... And then he was so awfully attentive to her this
+morning; ... and they seemed to understand each other so perfectly,
+although both were rather quiet, and not particularly good company for
+the rest of us."
+
+"Margaret Naylor! Am I to believe my ears? Do you mean to say you
+have let that Hillyard girl cut you out?... You grown-up baby! When I
+was your age, no girl should have done that to me--whether I wanted
+the man or not. It's a disgrace to your womanhood, and your
+upbringing--that means me--and your looks, and your spirit--if you had
+any; but you have none, or you would not have allowed it. The way that
+man stuck to you yesterday, and trotted away with you on that blessed
+island!... And you to let another woman cut in and take him away from
+you!... And people call you a clever girl! Hm!"
+
+"But what was I to do, mother? I could not go in for him myself. I
+could not make him propose to me."
+
+"Why not, pray? Is he not good enough for you? What do you expect? Is
+it a President of the United States you hope to captivate?"
+
+"I do not understand. He could not have been persuaded to do anything
+so dreadful. And you, I am sure, whatever the surprise of this may
+have stupefied you into saying, you would not have me want to be my
+own aunt?"
+
+"What do you mean? Whom are you talking about?"
+
+"Uncle Joseph, to be sure. Whom else?"
+
+"Joseph? You must be dreaming."
+
+"I really think, however, he has proposed to Rose Hillyard, and been
+accepted."
+
+"Impossible! Joseph marry! I never heard anything so preposterous."
+
+"Nevertheless, you will see now. I am sure he is in love I do not
+think he spoke twice to me all the time we were upon the island--only
+to Rose, and once or twice, when it was necessary, to Wa--W--to Mr
+Wilkie, I ought to say."
+
+Margaret started and grew pale as she spoke, but her mother was too
+intent upon the idea of Joseph's entanglement to observe the stumble.
+
+"My dear, he was blighted some years before you were born. There was a
+time when I would have laughed at the notion of a blighted man. It
+seemed one only fit to exist in a novel. Even the novels, some of
+them, used to make fun of a blighted being. There was 'Mr Toots,' I
+remember. But in the case of your uncle Joseph, the thing positively
+occurred. His affections got a wrench some time very long ago,--I
+never heard the particulars,--and he has never got over it to this
+day. He might have had any woman in the country for the asking, any
+time these twenty years--till lately, at least, when he began to grow
+stout and grey, and, one would have thought, had given up all idea of
+that sort of thing. There never was as good and soft-hearted a fellow
+as Joseph, I do believe. You don't catch many of his fellow-men
+playing such games of constancy, I promise you. His heart must have
+been shattered. So different from other men's hearts, my dear, as
+you'll find out! They seem generally to be made of india-rubber--able
+to swell or contract any quantity, but there's no break in them. You
+may jump on them, if they will let you; but you will not crush or
+bruise them. Joseph is the exception to a universal rule--the best
+brother-in-law and friend that ever lived. But you will not persuade
+me that he would ask any one to marry him, after the dozen or more
+fine women I have seen throw themselves at his head; and he never knew
+it, I do believe. The idea of Joseph becoming entangled! There's no
+constancy in man, if it turns out that _he_ has succumbed to a woman's
+wiles. If what men call their heart has begun to sprout again with
+him, it is an unbreakable article for sure.... But I will not believe
+it: it would spoil my ideal of a perfect love."
+
+"Have you not noticed, mamma, how much he and Rose have been
+together?"
+
+"Now you speak of it, he has certainly taken most unusual notice of
+her--for him, that is. But think of the disparity in age!"
+
+"She saved him from drowning, remember."
+
+"That is enough to account for their striking up a fast friendship.
+But _she_ is no forlorn damsel, and no pauper, evidently. She may
+choose where she likes. Why should she take up with a man old enough
+to be her father?"
+
+"I do not think anybody need look on Uncle Joseph as old. There are
+very few young fellows to compare with him for activity or strength,
+or niceness every way. And he is so well off, besides."
+
+"That maybe it. Poor Joseph! To be saved from the sea only to fall
+into the hands of a designing fortune-hunter! But I hope you are
+mistaken. It would be too sad; it would be dreadful! And you and Lucy,
+my poor children, what a difference it will make in your prospects!
+You will have to stand on your merits now, if this should chance to be
+true. No longer the heiresses of wealthy Joseph Naylor!"
+
+"That is no reason why Uncle Joseph should not marry. We have lived
+very comfortably on what papa left us."
+
+"You do not understand yet. Wait till you go to Ottawa or Toronto. You
+will recognise the difference then."
+
+"I do not want to stand on anybody's merits but my own. I think I
+shall be fond of Rose, after the first queerness of her being Uncle
+Joseph's wife wears off."
+
+"You think so because you do not know the world. I know it, and I can
+tell you you are wrong.... If once that woman is married to your
+uncle, there will be no standing her.... And I won't!" And Mrs Naylor,
+flushing an angry red, turned and left the room. The impending danger
+to her own consequence had driven every other idea from her mind, and
+she went without one word upon the subject she had come to discuss--to
+wit, Peter Wilkie's attentions to her daughter, and how they had been
+received.
+
+On the stair she met Joseph coming up as she went down. It required an
+effort to pull herself together and meet him as usual, but she
+succeeded; or perhaps he was too preoccupied to observe the constraint
+of her manner as she wished him good-morning and proceeded on her way.
+He turned in his course, and followed her into a parlour, empty like
+the other rooms at that hour, owing to the absence of every one at
+church.
+
+She sat down in a large chair before the open window, with the shady
+gallery outside, and the fanning breeze blowing in from off the sea.
+He drew up the nearest seat and placed himself beside her, looking at
+his nails the while, but saying nothing.
+
+She watched him from under her eyelids. It was true, then, she feared,
+what Margaret had been telling her, and it made her feel so angry and
+vindictive that she would not even help him out of the difficulty of
+breaking his news, by beginning the conversation. He sat, and she sat,
+but they did not speak. Those nails of his must have had uncommon
+attractions, or his thoughts had wandered away into pleasant fields,
+and he had forgotten that speech was expected of him.
+
+She shuffled her feet beneath her gown and waited, growing more and
+more impatient. The front of her dress was agitated by the drumming of
+her slipper-toes, which would not keep still, yet proved an inadequate
+vent for the impatience which devoured her. It grew intolerable, at
+last, to have him beaming there upon his own finger-tips, and saying
+never a word. A red spot came in either cheek; and steadying her voice
+with a little cough into an uncertain tone, ready alike to grow
+plaintive or indignant as occasion should arise, she spoke at last--
+
+"How did you contrive to be left behind yesterday?"
+
+He started. His thoughts came back from their wool-gathering with a
+leap. "Very simply. We stayed too long, I suppose, on the other side
+of the island. Then the storm came on, and we took shelter in a
+fisherman's hut. We sent a man to bid the steamer people wait. When he
+reached the landing the steamer was gone."
+
+"That must have been hours after we left. We got home before the storm
+overtook us."
+
+"You travelled faster than the storm, then. It was quite early, I
+should say, when it came on us; though I cannot name the hour, having
+forgot my watch."
+
+"Had nobody a watch? There were four of you."
+
+"I do not know. The fact is, I was interested in other things."
+
+"Such as--for instance----"
+
+"Well, I was---- But really, Susan, I cannot speak of it in this
+cold-blooded way. The truth is, I--I have asked Rose Hillyard to marry
+me."
+
+Mrs Naylor sat bolt-upright in her chair, and turned to look at him,
+with the red spot burning in either cheek. She lifted her hands, but
+whether she intended to clasp them or to do something else, was not
+apparent. His unabashed assurance seemed to petrify her, for though
+her lips were parted she did not speak.
+
+"And she has been so kind as to say yes.... Wish me joy, dear Susan,
+of my happiness. It is more than I can believe to be possible." Before
+she could protest, he had taken her hands in his and shaken them, and
+was imprinting a kiss upon the flushed place on her cheek.
+
+"Let go, Joseph! You will suffocate me. This is more than---- This is
+something---- You must be out of your senses."
+
+"Very nearly, Susan. I am the happiest man alive!"
+
+"She is not half your age."
+
+"She is twenty-five."
+
+"And you are forty-seven. May and December! How can you possibly get
+on together?"
+
+"Where love is, Susan, what else matters?"
+
+"At your age, Joseph, you should have more sense than yield to such
+raptures. You must know you are talking nonsense."
+
+"Come! you know better than that. It is your commonplace worldliness
+that is nonsense; and you know it. You were once a bride yourself."
+
+"I was young then, Joseph. We get sense--or we should--as we grow
+older."
+
+"Rose is young. Why may she not have fresh true feeling, just as you
+had yourself?"
+
+"But has she? Does she go into raptures as you do, I wonder?"
+
+"One would not like a girl to display her feelings too openly before
+marriage. You would call it boldness."
+
+"Has she any feeling to display? Can we expect her to have that kind
+of feeling for a man who might be her father?"
+
+"My dear Susan, time will show. I bring love to the union enough for
+both, and it will be strange if I do not make her happy. If you knew
+the story of my youth--which you do not, and it is not needful that
+you should--but you have known my later life; how I have been alone
+while others have been making themselves tender ties and households.
+Do you think it can be anything but dreary to feel that you have no
+one to call your own--that you can shelter your whole family under
+your hat-brim?"
+
+"What of your nieces? What of poor Caleb's children?"
+
+"You know I am fond of them, Susan. I do not think you will accuse me
+of being a neglectful uncle or brother-in-law."
+
+"And yet you are going to cast us off, and put this stranger in our
+places."
+
+"Not in your places. Why should it make any difference between us? The
+girls like her."
+
+"That only shows their innocence and ignorance of the world, poor
+things."
+
+"I do not see it, Susan. If it is their prospects you mean, they are
+independent already; but you may rest assured they will both come in
+for a slice, when my belongings come to be divided."
+
+"There! It only wanted that!" cried the sister-in-law, seizing the
+opportunity to let off steam in a burst of indignation. "It only
+wanted insult to heap upon the injury. You must fling your
+testamentary intentions in my teeth, as if I were a mercenary person,
+in case I should not feel crushed and humbled sufficiently under your
+latest whim! Have I failed to keep up the family respectability and
+position as I should? I am growing too old, I suppose, to be the Mrs
+Naylor of Jones's Landing. Somebody younger must be found to lord it
+over the people, and turn their heads with follies and expensive
+notions they cannot afford; and I am to be the neglected dowager
+living in retirement with my fatherless girls.... But she shall never
+have it all her own way, Joseph Naylor, if _I_ can help it; and if she
+has, it will be still worse for _you!_" And so saying, Susan got up
+and flung out of the room, retiring to her chamber, where a full hour
+elapsed before her heat subsided, and she was able to see how foolish
+and unreasonable, not to say imprudent, she had been.
+
+Joseph, as was natural, saw it at once, but he was too happy to be
+easily annoyed. He rose as she did, stepped out on the gallery, and so
+away, merely whispering to himself, half aloud--
+
+"Poor Susan! It must be a disappointment, and hard to bear. But she is
+not half as bad and worldly as she pretends. She will be ashamed and
+sorry enough when next we meet. My cue is to forget this little
+tantrum altogether."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+                    "THEY MET, 'TWAS IN A CROWD."
+
+
+It was long before Gilbert Roe could go to sleep, and the occupants of
+adjoining chambers had abundant opportunity to sympathise with him. He
+could not rest peacefully in his bed, and was driven to get up and
+pace his room after his neighbours had retired. He thought he would
+smoke, but could not find a light, so groped his way down passages and
+staircases, where only a lamp was left burning here and there,
+stumbling over boots at bedroom-doors, and arousing echoes in the
+slumbering house, to ask for matches from the night-watchman.
+Returned to his room he could not sit and smoke, but must go out upon
+the gallery, marching up and down through the night-watches, till
+every sleeper lay awake counting his footfalls and wishing him a
+cripple. Towards morning he succeeded in growing drowsy, and turned
+in, and this time slept till it was late. Maida joined him at the
+breakfast-table, wishing him good morning with an easy intimacy of
+proprietorship, which provoked him for some reason which did not
+appear. However, her company was a relief after the weary solitude of
+his midnight vigil, and in spite of himself he relaxed and grew
+sociable.
+
+"Come to church, Gilbert?" she said, when breakfast was over; and he,
+having nothing better to do, consented. They walked leisurely along
+the sands, as did also a good many of the younger company, who
+objected to being mewed up in an omnibus.
+
+"Let us step out a little," said Gilbert, "and join those folks in
+front."
+
+"It is too warm for stepping out much," she answered. "We have a long
+walk before us. If we hurry we will be flushed and crumpled, and not
+fit to be seen, when we go into church. And it is a close little place
+at the best."
+
+"Never mind. We can stop outside when we get there; but let's be
+cheerful in the meantime. I see Miss Deane in that crowd on in front.
+Come, let's join them."
+
+"Oh yes! and that little Fanny Payson you were so set on dancing with
+last night," Maida answered, a little crossly. "You'll have to take to
+surf-bathing if you want to get in with that crowd. I think them real
+frivolous, myself, and mighty conceited and stuck-up. My father might
+have been a senator too, by now, if he had lived. He ran for Congress
+the year I was born; and if he did not get sent there, it was none of
+his fault."
+
+"Never mind, Maida; you may go to Congress yourself yet, when
+the woman's suffrage law passes. But you must take to wearing
+glasses"--she had dropped using her goggles, I must observe, since
+Gilbert's appearance--"to show that you have intellect. Intellect,
+short-sight, and high culture, all run together, like a three-abreast
+Russian team. If it wasn't for their short-sightedness they would drop
+the high culture altogether, for they would see it don't pay in this
+country. We have only a few professors and scientists all told, you
+see. Three or four dozen women could marry them all, and the rest of
+the men don't care to be kept humble all the time, by living with
+wives who know more than themselves. That's why so many spectacled
+women go lecturing. It's because nobody wants to marry them."
+
+"To hear you talk, Gilbert, one would say you were just dreadful. You
+do not really mean, I'm sure, that you believe a woman makes a better
+wife for being ignorant or a fool. What companionship can there be
+between an intelligent man and an empty-headed doll? And perhaps you
+are not aware, but it is a fact, that the most successful female
+lecturers are married women; and very poorly off their families and
+invalid husbands would be, if they could not earn money that way."
+
+"Maybe, Maida; I do not know from personal knowledge. I do not attend
+many lectures, and I never heard a female lecture in my life; but if
+you think the average man don't like what you call a doll--which, I
+suppose, means a nice, soft, pretty little thing, who believes she is
+not clever, and lets other women trample on her, as regards science
+and things--you never were more mistaken in your life. Lots of smart
+men find them the best company in the world; and--well--I know for a
+fact that a woman may be no end of smart, and the very best of
+company, though she don't read poetry, and knows nothing about the
+'ologies.'"
+
+"Natural intelligence, you mean, without any advantages of education.
+To be sure, you find that in many a farmhouse--the kind of woman who
+scrapes and saves to send all her sons to college, and sees one of
+them elected President of the United States, and has her likeness in
+all the illustrated papers. But if she had had culture, think what
+such a woman would have become!"
+
+"She would have become a female lecturer. The men would have been
+afraid of her. She would never have been married, never had a son, and
+never got her likeness into the magazines as mother of a President.
+When men marry, they hope, at least, to be boss at home: and few have
+the conceit to tackle a female steam-engine, expecting to be able to
+break her in to quiet paces."
+
+"But in cities you want culture to keep up your place in the
+community. A poorly educated woman must be a drag on her husband's
+social advancement."
+
+"Not a bit of it. Our first families in Chicago and elsewhere, in this
+country, and in every other, are noways remarkable for culture.
+Sometimes it's money raises them, sometimes it's because their fathers
+were of first families before them, or their friends. Culture may help
+now and then--it's a distinction in its way, just like beauty or
+talent; but there must be money, you bet! You country folks talk a
+heap of nonsense about the help culture is, to rising in the world; so
+do the newspapers, though they should know better. They think they
+have it themselves, you see, so they crack it up for their own sakes."
+
+"Oh, Gilbert! I am sorry to hear you speak like that. You used to
+think very differently."
+
+"Because I did not know any better, and I believed what I read in
+print. We're not a highly cultured lot in the cities, I can tell
+you--we successful folks, I mean. How could we be? It takes all we
+can do to keep ourselves ahead of our neighbours. If we were to divide
+ourselves between business and politics, or business and culture, we
+would have to take a back seat in the community. It is not so much
+special talent that is wanted, for getting on, as entireness. A man
+must pour his whole self into the one groove, if he is to make a hit.
+The whole of a very ordinary fellow is more, you see, and therefore
+surer to win, than part of one of your superior people dabbling in
+half-a-dozen different pursuits. Remember that, when you come to many,
+Maida; and if you want to stand high, choose a man of one idea, and
+that one his business."
+
+"I know better than that, Gilbert," Maida answered, looking up in his
+eyes with a fond but rather watery smile. She felt wounded by the
+advice, but she took comfort, in that he was by her side while he
+spoke, and could not mean it. It was only a man's thoughtless
+speech--his rough way of being playful. For had he not kept faithful
+through ten long years--long after she herself had ceased to expect or
+hope? Had he not come back to her? and was not his presence the
+strongest refutation of his worldly and cynical words?
+
+And now, having gained, unconsciously to Maida, upon the party whose
+appearance had started their discussion, she found they were abreast.
+Gilbert drew towards them, leaving her somewhat apart, as if he would
+join them.
+
+"Good morning, Miss Deane," he said to Lettice, who was next him.
+
+"Good morning, Mr Roe," she answered very coldly, passing behind
+Walter Petty immediately after, and becoming engrossed in conversation
+with Lucy Naylor, who walked on his other side.
+
+Gilbert bit his lip, and Maida could not forbear a smile, to see with
+the corner of her eye--for she would not turn her head--his chilling
+reception by those he had been so eager to overtake, as if in
+preference to her own company. They were all in close discussion now,
+and completely ignored his presence. The distance widened between him
+and them, while Maida walked straight forward; and not being minded to
+walk alone, he was compelled, with something of a crestfallen air, to
+return to her side.
+
+Maida was not ill-natured. She betrayed no sign of having perceived
+his discomfiture, and exerted herself to talk in a livelier way than
+her wont, till he should recover from his mortification. She felt that
+she was generous in doing this, and the neglect of the others seemed
+to bind him to her by a rivet the more; so that her spirits rose, and
+completely shook off the depression which his seeming weariness of her
+company had been bringing on. He felt grateful in his turn that she
+should so well cover his retreat, and enable him to bear up under the
+snub he had been subjected to; the consequence being that they reached
+Blue Fish Creek on terms of demonstrative good-fellowship, sang from
+one hymn-book in church, and walked home by the sands again in cordial
+intimacy.
+
+"Jest look at them two interestin' young things!" Mrs Denwiddie
+observed to her neighbour, as she pointed them out from the omnibus
+window. "Ain't they fond, now! It makes me feel better to look at
+them. It's kind of hard, you see, for us worldly-minded Americans,
+sometimes, to believe about Adam and Eve and their innocent ongoings
+mentioned in Scripter. There's nothing makes me so 'feared of turning
+into one of them sceptics the ministers are so down on, as that
+history; when I see the way young men and gals get on together, with
+never a thought but dollars and cents and sich. 'There ain't one of
+them as 'ud eat an apple as he knows'll disagree with him, jest to
+please his Betsy, nowadays,' I thought. But there!--you see an
+instance of what faithful love'll do. Jest look at them on the sands
+there, wanderin' along! They might be babies gatherin' shells, with
+their little spades in their hands."
+
+"Do you mean the Montpelier schoolma'am?" the friend replied. "'Pears
+to me always like as she was jest vinegar--with her blue glasses and
+her knitting. I see she has left the glasses at home to-day--guess
+it's to get a better look at her young man. Wonder what he thinks of
+her? His taste must be pecooliar."
+
+"They're true lovers, them two, believe me, Mrs Strange. If they
+ain't, there's none sich. It's more'n ten years since they were
+engaged, and he's been away all that time, to make his pile, and she's
+been a-waitin' and a-workin' till he could come back to her, and never
+a complaint. It's not a week yet, since she told me all about it, and
+not a man would she listen to, in all that time, out of pure
+faithfulness."
+
+"There's few would try to shake her constancy, I'm thinkin'," said Mrs
+Strange; but her companion was too busy talking to heed her, and
+continued--
+
+"Think of the young man keepin' her image before his mind's eye all
+them years! and the world so full of gals, and temptations of all
+kinds."
+
+Lettice Deane, returning home in the same omnibus, sat opposite. She
+raised her eyebrows, looking in the speaker's face, her nostrils
+quivered, and the corners of her mouth, and then she buried her face
+in her handkerchief and laughed silently; or, at least, so thought Mrs
+Denwiddie, who returned her look with one of blackest indignation,
+calling her, in her own mind, "A sassy brat, and that stuck-up as no
+self-respectin' woman would demean herself by taking account of."
+
+And the modern illustrations of Adam and Eve walked cheerfully
+homeward along the sands. It was indeed Eden to one of them--an Eden
+such as she had never hoped to enter, so bright that she could not
+think what she had done to earn it. As for the other, it did not
+appear exactly what were his thoughts, but he was cheerful, and
+perfectly kind and attentive to his companion.
+
+At dinner, Gilbert and Maida were early in their places. They had
+earned an appetite by their long walk, and were duly hungry. Gilbert's
+soup was before him, his spoon was lifted half-way to his mouth, when
+the voices of a party in high spirits entering the room reached his
+ear. The tone of a familiar voice among the others drew his attention,
+and he raised his eyes. Senator Deane and his wife headed their party,
+advancing up the room; behind came Lettice and Rose Hillyard. Gilbert
+started, and the spoon slipped from his fingers and fell back in the
+plate with a clatter which resounded through the room.
+
+Rose's eye was drawn in the direction, and she saw him. She grew pale
+to the lips and faltered, with a stop and a half-turn, as though she
+would leave the room; then her colour flooded back and mounted to her
+brow, her lips grew hard and set, and with a flash of the eye she
+turned away her head and walked proudly forward to her place; taking
+care that her back should be turned to the object which had disturbed
+her.
+
+Gilbert's blood had rushed into his face when their eyes met, but he
+grew pale when she turned away, and he did not very speedily recover
+himself. His soup was taken away untasted, and he refreshed himself
+with ice-water instead.
+
+Maida was filled with tender solicitude, and he would have been
+overwhelmed with her inquiries and suggestions, if he had been
+attending to what she said; but it scarcely seemed as if he were. "Was
+it a qualm? Was he faint? Did he feel better now? Perhaps his heart
+was weak, and he had over-exerted himself in the sun. She would never
+forgive herself for taking him so long a walk. Would he not try some
+wine?" which last was an ill-advised question, seeing they were then
+in the State of Maine, where strong drink is not partaken of in
+public. Not that an innkeeper's guests must go without--far from it;
+but they must imbibe their stimulants _sub rosâ_, though the
+concealment is merely of a conventional kind.
+
+Gilbert ate very little dinner, and poor Maida never taxed her skill
+to interest and enliven, with less success than during that meal.
+Her companion attempted to eat one thing and another, and he drank
+ice-water, but he had become deaf as the adder which refuses to hear
+the voice of the charmer. He parted from her at the dining-room door,
+saying he would go in search of brandy, as he really felt ill; and
+Maida ended the Sunday which had begun so brightly, in solicitude and
+wretchedness. She might have had as much sympathy as she pleased from
+her elderly friend, but the unending Denwiddie babble was more than
+she could endure. It was easier to be alone and nurse her anxiety.
+There was a foreboding on her spirit which she could not define, a
+clouding over of the future and its dawning hopes, which she felt but
+could not explain. Nothing had happened, so far as she knew, but she
+felt a frost in the air, which had been so warm and bland, and it was
+nipping the blossoms in her poor fool's paradise.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXV.
+
+                          ROSE AND THE RING.
+
+
+When Rose was left alone with Margaret in the fisherman's hut, she sat
+down upon a bench before the fire and gazed into the embers, falling
+into a reverie in which ideas not all pleasurable chased each other as
+fitfully as the leaping flames which licked the new-laid log, as if
+searching for a spot on which they might fasten and take hold. Her
+companion sat by and wondered at her silence. She had been so gay a
+little before, while the men were still with them, and now her lips
+were tightly closed, and there came an angry frown upon her brow. That
+changed into a look of triumph and disdain, which faded in its turn
+into one almost soft and pitiful; and that in time gave place to one
+of sadness, and she sighed, and her features fell into the desponding
+look of one who bids adieu to hope. She moved impatiently, as if to
+shake off brooding thoughts which were settling down to oppress and
+stifle her--as some stricken animal might struggle to beat back the
+greedy kites swooping down to tear their prey, ere death had prepared
+the feast. She roused herself with an effort, and turned to speak.
+
+"You have had a good time, Margaret, have you not?"
+
+"Perhaps I might say the same to you, Rose. You were very long of
+returning from your stroll. But I will not deny that I am glad we
+missed the boat."
+
+"You might tell a blind man that, my dear. The rest of us can see it.
+I admire your taste. He is a good fellow, I am sure, and handsome; and
+devoted too, if signs tell anything."
+
+"We have known each other all our lives--at least, since I was quite a
+little girl. It must be five years that we have known one another
+now."
+
+"A long time."
+
+"But you will promise me, Rose dear, not to say anything to anybody
+when we get back? Nobody knows that he came here. Still, Uncle Joseph
+is here too--my guardian as well as my uncle, you know--and you are
+here, another girl to keep me in countenance, so there is nothing Mrs
+Grundy can disapprove. If he and you had not joined us, I should not
+have missed the steamer, you may be sure; or if I had--but that is no
+matter.
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+"Mamma is very fond of him, you must know--or she used to be. But she
+is afraid of our becoming engaged, and she has been bothering, ever
+since we came to Clam Beach.... Uncle Joseph is safe, I am sure,
+though he will not acknowledge that he approves. I know he will not
+cause trouble. So it all rests with you, dear. Promise me. You will
+not make mischief? A careless word might do it, you see. But you will
+forget his being here? It is Jake's boat, you know, we are to go home
+in tomorrow morning.... He is a fisherman, you know, who fortunately
+was here when the storm overtook us."
+
+"I know, dear. We won't spoil sport, I promise you; and we will help
+you all we can--all _I_ can, I ought to say. What right have I to
+promise for your uncle? I am talking nonsense. What help can I--I
+declare my mind is astray--I must be growing sleepy. Let us see how we
+are to dispose ourselves for the night. They are to call us at
+daylight, you know, and it must be late."
+
+Margaret had shot an intelligent glance at Rose when that "we" slipped
+out unawares. Her lips parted in a smile at the endeavour to correct
+it. She understood it all. Rose changed colour, though she said
+nothing more; but both were unwontedly affectionate when they said
+good night, and composed themselves to sleep.
+
+The early morning saw the party afloat again on the bay, under all the
+sail their boat would carry, making straight for Lippenstock, and in
+the best of spirits. Even Peter Wilkie was gay; there was breakfast in
+prospect, and a bath, at Lippenstock. As for the others, the present
+was enough, and they did not waste thought upon the future: cutting
+smoothly through the glassy tide which babbled at their prow, fanned
+by cool airs, and seated where it was best to be, exchanging short
+sentences in undertones, with long and pleasant gaps of silence in
+between. If any brow betrayed a line of discontent, it was Blount's.
+Things had not ended altogether as he had hoped or wished. When he had
+hired Jake and his boat, he had thought that perhaps he should meet
+Margaret wandering by herself, that he might persuade her to an
+elopement, and sail away; and this was all which had come of it. They
+were sailing, indeed, but the "away" was only for Margaret, while he,
+"poor devil," as he told himself with deep compassion, must stay
+behind at Lippenstock. However, there would be other chances, more
+excursions and merrymakings at which he might surreptitiously assist,
+and some time win his point. She was worth it, as he told himself,
+lying gazing up in her face, while her eyes roved idly across the
+dancing water; and even if it should come to her mother's ears that he
+had been on the island that night, the news would aid his hopes,
+rather than hinder. It would incite her to worry the girl worse than
+ever, and Margaret was not of the kind to be worried for long. There
+was the look in her nostril of one who could take the bit in her teeth
+and bolt, if fretted too far by injudicious reining.
+
+Rose and Joseph sat behind the other two, Rose calmly, even
+impassively perhaps, accepting the assiduous little cares of which it
+seemed as if Joseph could not lavish enough. At last he took her hand,
+lying nerveless on her lap, and began to examine it.
+
+"Take off your glove, dearest," he whispered; "I want to measure your
+finger. How can I feel secure of this treasure I so little deserve,
+till I have fettered it with a link? When I see my ring upon your
+hand, I shall feel better assured that we are indeed engaged."
+
+There came a line of faint contraction between her eyebrows, which was
+scarcely a frown. It may have been mere impatience, or perhaps it was
+dread or remorse.
+
+"Not now," she said abruptly, withdrawing her hand and looking away to
+the harbour, which was wearing near. "My glove is tight; my hands feel
+hot and swollen this morning. Another time," and drew a quick short
+breath which seemed half a sob. Then turning round to him, as though
+she feared he might feel vexed, she added, with a doubtful smile,
+"There's time enough, you know. We shall be at the wharf before I
+could draw it on again;" and then, hurried and constrained, plunged
+into voluble expression of such commonplaces as occurred to her.
+
+Joseph felt chilled, though he told himself there was no ground for
+feeling so. It seemed as if the first thin cloud had come between him
+and the sun, the sun so lately risen, in whose beams he had been
+warming his poor starved heart. He had little to answer to the
+commonplaces; they ran themselves out ere long, and both were lapsing
+into silence when they reached the shore.
+
+The party of four which drove from Lippenstock was not a very
+talkative one; in fact, if the truth were told, all were more or less
+sleepy. The hour was still on the early side of noon; but when the day
+begins between three o'clock and four, for persons whose waking hour
+is seven--when those persons, instead of breaking their fast when they
+get up, spend hours in the keen morning air and on the water before
+breakfast, a heaviness supervenes, and the system of the individual
+makes it late in the day, however early be the time which the clock
+may indicate. Wilkie, as was not unnatural, began to feel the
+expedition something of a bore. He had not been admired so much by the
+ladies, or consulted by the men, as to compensate for irregular meals
+or hours, and indifferent repose on the open shore. Margaret had
+parted from Walter, and for her the pleasure was over--something to
+remember and think about, but all of the past. Rose was pensive and
+very still, though it did not appear from her behaviour of what nature
+were her thoughts. Joseph was yet under the influence of that chilling
+sensation which had fallen on him in the boat--a creeping melancholy
+which stole on him in spite of every consideration which good sense
+could suggest, the reaction perhaps from his transports of the night
+before. He found himself sinking into despondent broodings, from which
+every now and then he would awaken with a start, and tip up his horses
+with an unnecessary flick of the whip. How much these dumb servants
+have to bear from the wayward moods of their masters, and how many an
+unmerited cut descends upon their patient sides!
+
+Rose spent the remainder of the morning in her room, sitting listless
+and despondent where she had sunk on entering it. There was no eye
+present before whom she must hang out the veils and disguises of
+conventional life. Her head hung forward on her breast, her hands lay
+folded on her lap. The light had faded from her eyes, her features
+were drawn and set, and she looked as unlike a promised bride, a woman
+who, of her own free will, has accepted an offer of marriage, as it
+was possible to imagine.
+
+The man was all she could desire, she told herself. The disparity in
+their years did not once present itself to her mind. She felt very
+friendly to him, liked him, respected him; but she could not love.
+"Could she ever love any one?"--that was the miserable thought which
+rose before her mind; and she was no inexperienced maid whose heart
+still sleeps, to fool herself into the belief that such liking as hers
+was the mysterious visitant she had read about in books, and awaited
+to descend and stir the waters of her being. It was duty, not love,
+which she was taking to her breast. She knew it, and looked forward to
+her life in the greyness of the coming years with an overflowing sense
+of pity. But she did not falter or think of drawing back. No; she
+would go on with it, and do her duty, and no one should ever know. But
+it was pitiful, all the same; though it must be--for she would have it
+so. Here in her solitary chamber there needed no disguise; and she
+looked hopelessly around her, wondering if there could be any escape,
+or if this weary part she was undertaking to play would last for long.
+It might last for fifty years, she thought, looking down at her hands.
+How shapely and strong they looked--so firm, and with so full a tide
+of vigorous life tingling in every pulse! And the ring--she remembered
+the morning's episode in the boat. It was not there yet; the jeweller
+had not begun to make it. How it would scorch, that little hoop of
+gold and brilliants, and confine and shackle her! There was respite
+for the present, but it would not be for long--and she scarcely
+desired that it should be.
+
+The gong sounded sooner than she could have believed. She must go down
+and face the world again, and play her part; but there was consolation
+even in this. It showed how quickly time could wear away. The years,
+be they ever so grey, would run their course with the same even and
+imperceptible current, and there would be an end at last. She rose to
+resume the armour of conventional life. She bathed her temples,
+smoothed her hair before the glass, and arrayed herself as usual;
+and when the next gong sounded, she was once more her ordinary
+self--bright, proud, and confident, without a sign of care, or
+seemingly a wish left unfulfilled.
+
+The Deanes had heard of her return, and were awaiting her in the
+drawing-room to go down to dinner. Lettice and the rest bantered her
+on her escapade.
+
+"Staying out o' nights, Miss Rose," the Senator cried, jocosely. "And
+without a latch-key! What next?"
+
+The next, for her, was to meet Gilbert Roe's eyes looking straight
+into her own. It was like the sudden onslaught of an ambushed foe, on
+a band marching in careless order. They form square if they can, and
+stand to their arms. It was well for her she had so recently looked to
+her armour. The shock to her nerves was severe, but her spirit rose in
+defiance. She recovered, without betraying herself before the crowded
+room, and was more than usually gay all through dinner. It was a
+relief, however, when the repast was ended, and she could saunter with
+Lettice along the sands away from curious eyes, and feel at ease.
+
+"What a shock it must have been to you, Rose! I meant to have given
+you warning, but you came down so late, and the old folks were so
+hungry and impatient, that there was no chance.... However, you bore
+up splendidly--and now, it is over."
+
+"Yes, I am glad it is over; and glad I did not know beforehand."
+
+"If he is a gentleman, he will go first thing to-morrow morning."
+
+"It is no matter whether he goes or stays."
+
+"To think of his assurance! He came to me in the parlour, last night
+when I was dancing, to ask if you were here."
+
+"Yes?" and there was a tone of softening in Rose's voice as she said
+it.
+
+"But you may be sure I gave him no satisfaction."
+
+Rose sighed a little, but not audibly.
+
+"This morning, again, when we were walking to church, what does he do,
+do you think, but join me?--which, after the setting down I had given
+him last night, was really more than a girl could be expected to
+stand."
+
+Rose looked interested now and softened. "And? Well?" she said.
+
+"Well, I just treated him as he deserved; would have nothing to do
+with him; got round to the other side of my escort, and ignored him
+altogether."
+
+Rose's sigh was audible this time.
+
+"But you need not pity him, Rose, dear; or not much, at any rate. He
+is not inconsolable; and, what is better, he has a consoler. And such
+a one! You could not imagine an odder belle for the dashing Bertie Roe
+we can remember. He is no longer hypercritical as to good looks, I can
+tell you."
+
+"Who is it?"
+
+"Whom would you suppose? You know the washed-out little Yankee
+schoolma'am with the blue goggles? That's her!"
+
+"You must be mistaken."
+
+"So I was sure myself, at first. But no. I came home from church in
+the omnibus, and an old thing sat opposite me, who takes a most
+motherly interest in the pair--a friend of the schoolma'am. You should
+have heard her talk about them! It was just too altogether rich and
+comical. She says the sweet young things have been faithfully attached
+for the last ten years. To think of Bertie's constancy, you know! And
+they are going to be married. And in the meantime they spend their
+time gathering shells and grubbing in the sand together, for she
+mentioned their having little spades."
+
+"They are most welcome," cried Rose, impatiently. "Do not let us
+bother about them any more." There was an angry colour in her cheek,
+and fire in her eye, and the sound of her voice grated harshly.
+
+Lettice began to wonder if her story had been judicious, or
+well-timed. She was Rose's stanch friend and partisan, willing to do
+or think whatever Rose might like best. It was in espousing Rose's
+side that she felt hostile to Gilbert; but she began to doubt, now, if
+what she had been telling appeared to Rose as droll as to herself. And
+yet every one said that Rose had such a sense of humour!
+
+There was silence between the friends. They no longer sauntered, but
+stepped out quickly, Rose hurrying the pace with strides of varying
+length, till Lettice had difficulty in keeping up with her. Each fibre
+of her frame was strung into fierce activity. She even snatched the
+fan, hanging idly from her waist, as if its dangling were a
+provocation. She opened and closed it rudely once or twice, till some
+of the slender ribs gave way and got entangled; then, with an
+impatient gesture, caught it by both ends and broke the thing across,
+and flung it from her. And then she stopped, with the empty chain
+between her fingers, and turned to her companion with a short, dry
+laugh.
+
+"You will say I am in one of my tempers, Lettie, dear. You are good to
+bear with me.... You are out of breath, too. Come, let's walk slower.
+I have something to tell you."
+
+"Something nice, Rose? What is it, dearest?"
+
+"Pray, not that tender sympathetic tone, Lettice, 'an you love me,' as
+they say in the theatre, or you will drive me wild. What is there to
+condole about?... Nothing that I can see. If people who are strangers
+to me--whom I have said a hundred times I will have none of--want to
+marry, what is it to me?"
+
+"Nothing, dear, nothing," Lettice answered soothingly. "Nothing
+whatever to you."
+
+"It is less than nothing; for I am going to be married myself--at
+least I am engaged. Wish me joy, dear. You are the first to be told."
+
+"You are? I knew you would be, from the first. You liked him the first
+day you saw him. Indeed I wish you happiness. I am quite sure you will
+be happy, dear." And they embraced; or Lettice did, at least. Rose
+submitted rather than joined in the caress, and there was a look of
+deep self-pity in her face, as if she doubted about the happiness
+which her friend foretold. Her eyes moistened, and then, with a start
+which was half a sob, she recovered herself, and put her arm through
+her friend's, and turned homewards.
+
+"And how did it happen, dear? Tell me all about it."
+
+"The usual way, dear; though people do say these things are never done
+twice alike. You have some experience, yourself, about it, I fancy;
+though you are so good to the poor fellows, that you never betray
+them, or divulge their disappointment."
+
+"It is bad enough for them to be refused, without being laughed at
+into the bargain.... But tell me about the accepting, at least. I have
+no experience of that. Is it not hard to say yes, and not feel the
+least bit ashamed of one's self?"
+
+"One does not remember one's own part in the tragedy so well. One
+grows bewildered at such a time. I am not sure that one knows exactly
+what one says or does. But the gentleman seems to understand. That is
+the main point."
+
+"And what did _he_ say then?... I declare, Rose, you are telling me
+nothing!"
+
+"He said scarcely anything. I did not think a man could say so little,
+to mean so much. It was the way he did it--the way he was so
+still--the sound of his voice--his touch. He meant it all, Lettie, so
+deeply. It was in that he was so strong. One seemed to feel it in the
+air about him. It was overwhelming. And oh, dear, I feel so small and
+worthless beside the earnestness of that man's love! I feel humbled, I
+am so little worthy of love like his."
+
+"The proof that you are worthy, is his having given it to you.... I
+declare!" The last exclamation had escaped her involuntarily. Her
+roving eyes had alighted on the figures of Gilbert Roe and Maida
+Springer together upon the sands at a distance.
+
+Rose lifted her eyes from the ground, which they had sought while she
+was making her confidences, and turned them in the direction to which
+Lettice was looking. She saw, and the view communicated a shock, which
+thrilled through all her frame. Again her colour rose, and her teeth
+were set, and she grasped the arm of her friend. The pathetic drooping
+of her eyelids had vanished, and the lights beneath them flashed like
+living coals. She said nothing, but she quickened her steps--they had
+turned, some time before, when her mood had changed from fiery to
+pathetic--and now they were back within the shadow of the hotel,
+extending itself to the eastward and the south as day declined.
+
+Upon the gallery, along beyond the entrance, she saw Joseph Naylor,
+with his feet on the balusters and his chair tilted back, a newspaper
+before him and a cigar between his teeth, enjoying the tranquil
+afternoon. "I shall go in now, Lettice, dear; but do not let me drag
+you indoors so early. There is something I wanted to mention to Mr
+Naylor, and there he is, above and disengaged."
+
+Lettice strolled away and soon found other company. Rose hurried
+forward alone, her eyes still flashing and her cheek aflame. There was
+no one on the gallery but Naylor, no one on the ground below looking
+up or taking heed; the moment was as private as though they had been
+again on Fessenden's Island.
+
+"I fear I vexed you this morning in the boat," she said, coming upon
+him unexpectedly where he sat.
+
+He looked up from his paper, let it fall, and sprang to his feet,
+throwing his cigar away. "Impossible, my dearest, even if you were to
+try. You have made me the very happiest man alive."
+
+"But I was cross, though I did not mean it, and refused to take off my
+glove. It is off now. There!" and she held out her hand. "I have been
+looking for an opportunity to make it up. I was sleepy and out of
+sorts, I think."
+
+"No wonder, with no bed to sleep in last night. But do not dream of
+apologising. You shall be cross with me whenever it so shall please
+you, and not a word to be said in amends when you are minded to
+relent."
+
+"You will spoil me; it is not safe to be too worshipful with women.
+There is the finger you were good enough to want to measure."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+                             THE MOTHERS.
+
+
+Joseph was a happy man that evening. He was going to testify for the
+first time the pride and glory within him, by presenting a _cadeau_ to
+his promised bride. How should he contrive that it might be rich and
+rare enough to express his worship, and be worthy of the object? Could
+he have fetched down a star--one of those which last night had beamed
+so kindly on their espousal--that might perhaps have been enough; but
+less than a star out of heaven seemed all inadequate. The writing-room
+of the hotel was too open and profane a place for him to sit in, while
+he indited his order to Tiffany the jeweller, for such a purpose. He
+made them carry store of stationery to his room. And then about the
+post. Did no mail go out to-night? The clerk reminded him rebukingly
+that it was Sunday. They never sent to the Junction on Sunday nights,
+and no one in serious-minded New England would wish them to do it.
+"Ten dollars for a messenger to go at once," was Joseph's sole reply,
+as he followed the stationery to his room, to be overtaken before he
+had gone many steps by the porter and the bell-boy, both eager to
+break the Sabbath at the price he had named.
+
+Senator Deane, lounging by the clerk's desk, turned to Mr Sefton with
+a remarkably knowing look. "Canada Pacific. You bet! Something up.
+Telegraph clerk away for the day. Something important."
+
+Sapphires, diamonds, and precious stones danced before the mind's eye
+of Joseph Naylor. How pale and small and poor they seemed to him! How
+could enough of them to testify his love, be collected on so trivial
+an object as a finger-ring? "Spare no expense," he wrote, offering an
+unusual price, and expressing his willingness to double it if needful.
+"Only let it be the best." The ring from Cleopatra's finger would have
+been too poor. And so the order was sent, and Tiffany of New York,
+having assured himself of the writer's sufficiency, sent a clerk with
+designs to wait on so lavish-minded a client.
+
+The clerk arrived in due time, was closeted in long consultation, and
+on leaving could not but mention to the clerk of the house the
+princely order he had taken. The house-clerk listened with pride. It
+was a credit to Clam Beach; and in fancy he saw scores of fashionable
+damsels arriving with heaps of luggage, all hoping to be objects of a
+like munificence. He mentioned the circumstance, in confidence, to
+each male guest who came to him for cigar-lights; the males, as was to
+be expected, repeated it to the females, and soon there was not a soul
+in the house who had not heard the news. It was the common talk with
+every one but Joseph. He, good man, never doubted the closeness of his
+secret. He had not breathed a word, but to his sister-in-law, and she
+would not circulate the report. She had been behaving to him like an
+injured woman ever since his telling her; but she had not lost hope,
+he suspected, promising herself, on the contrary, that it would end in
+nothing; and therefore would not help to assure it by spreading the
+news.
+
+Those were happy days for Joseph. What plunging in the early bracing
+surf! What morning walks upon the sands! What shady lounges in the
+afternoon! And then the cheerful evenings in the parlours, or the
+quiet of the galleries on starlit nights! He was with her continually,
+drinking in sweet influence from her presence, and striving to attune
+himself to her changeful moods.
+
+Yes; her moods were certainly becoming very changeful--liable to
+abrupt transitions from a stillness which seemed almost despondent,
+and so different from anything he had seen in her before their
+engagement, to a gaiety which at times grew feverish and even forced.
+She had grown restless, too, of late, unable or unwilling to remain
+long in one place, or engaged in one pursuit. Suddenly, in the hottest
+of the afternoon, she would start up and rouse her drowsy intimates to
+play lawn-tennis; and ere the game was half played out, she would
+declare herself sick of it, and beg some bystander to take her place.
+
+Joseph looked on in tender sympathy. It was what was to be expected,
+he told himself, and would soon wear off. The free young life was
+chafing at first beneath the yoke she had herself assumed--the filly,
+unbroke to harness, was galled by the collar; but soon she would
+settle down to steady running. He must humour her for the present. And
+what delight there was in doing it! And she was always kind to him,
+and showed that she appreciated his thoughtfulness and forbearance by
+many a grateful look and little speech. He only wished that he had
+more to bear and to do for her sake; he was so richly rewarded when
+the humour changed, and her mood became remorseful. Then, as if she
+could not sufficiently express herself to him, she would relieve her
+feelings by caresses and endearments to his nieces. She was fast
+friends with them now, especially with Margaret, even to the length of
+exciting a little pique in Lettice Deane.
+
+And Margaret had need of sympathy and backing, and all the friendship
+she could secure. Her mother "was going on just dreadful," as she
+expressed it with more force than elegance to her sister Lucy, who,
+however, observed a judicious neutrality, agreeing so far with the
+maternal desire to settle Margaret in Toronto, as being a much jollier
+place for herself to live in than Jones's Landing.
+
+Mrs Naylor's perturbation of spirit on receiving her brother's
+intelligence lasted two full days, during which there seemed nothing
+else worth thinking about. The world itself seemed coming to an end,
+and what did anything matter? After that, it began to occur to her
+that there were other interests in life--her own, for instance. If
+Joseph was going to bring home a wife to Jones's Landing, the place
+would be insupportable. She must remove to Ottawa or Toronto; and that
+she might do her duty there in bringing out Lucy properly--so she
+phrased it to herself in summoning her moral forces to her
+assistance--it was indispensable that Margaret should have an
+established position. With that, it began to strike her that Wilkie no
+longer hovered near them, and that Ann Petty was become the recipient
+of the attentions which last week had been bestowed on Margaret. His
+mother, even, it almost seemed, had begun to hold aloof; and yet the
+supposition was too preposterous. That a half-bred old thing like
+that, should think to take up and lay down at pleasure, her--Mrs
+Naylor of Jones's Landing! What were things coming to? The creature
+must have heard of Joseph's fatuous engagement--the mercenary, horrid,
+vulgar old woman! And she was vulgar. Mrs Naylor saw it clearly enough
+now, though last week she had looked quite kindly on her social
+solecisms as being so racy and original. But at least she was not so
+crushed and humbled yet that "the Wilkie woman" might trample on her
+with impunity. The creature should have a lesson, if Mrs Naylor could
+give her one, and be taught her place. To think that a Naylor--a
+daughter of hers--should be trifled with and all but compromised by
+a--a what was she to call him?--a clerk in a public office--something
+not much better than a schoolmaster--merely because she, the mother,
+had kindly taken some notice of him! That nice quiet young Petty must
+be brought on, if only to show the futility of such an idea.
+Encouragement was all he wanted, and Margaret should give him that, or
+she would know why. She did not blame the girl now for being
+impervious to the other--indeed, his mother's impertinence had made
+her glad of it--but she would insist on her being civil to Petty.
+There must be no more nonsense. As for the old woman, she must have it
+out with her, and let her know her place.
+
+An opportunity arose in the heat of the afternoon, when some
+irrepressibles of the younger set played lawn-tennis, and such of the
+elders as were not asleep looked on. The shade at that hour was
+confined to a limited space, and thither the lady spectators carried
+their camp-stools, and pressed one another more closely than the state
+of the weather made quite agreeable. Mrs Wilkie was the last to place
+herself, and it happened that she took ground at Mrs Naylor's side,
+who had planned her place nicely, to be in shadow, and yet be the last
+of her row, so as to be free at least on one side.
+
+"Mrs Wilkie?" she said, turning in surprise and displeasure, which she
+made no attempt to conceal. "Would you not be more comfortable farther
+back? It is less crowded, and the shadow is broader."
+
+"I'll do," Mrs Wilkie answered determinedly, unfurling an umbrella,
+which interfered considerably with Mrs Naylor's view. "If people would
+sit closer, there would be room enough. I see no reason for leading
+people to sit behind, and those of no poseetion at all taking room for
+two."
+
+"But your umbrella intercepts any little air there is."
+
+"I need it to keep off the sun."
+
+"I declare I shall suffocate! Pray take it down."
+
+"I won't! Why should I? Sit behind there; or go round to the front of
+the house. You'll get it all to yourself."
+
+"Really--Mrs Wilkie--but what else can one expect?" and she sighed
+with contemptuous resignation.
+
+Mrs Wilkie bridled, with a little snort, moved her stool an inch or
+two nearer, and held the umbrella in provoking proximity to Mrs
+Naylor's eye.
+
+"These promiscuous gatherings are dreadful," moaned Mrs Naylor. "This
+is the reward one may expect for not taking care whom we allow to
+slide into our intimacy." Then, in a very superior tone, she added, "I
+must beg of you to put down that umbrella."
+
+"You may beg till you're tired, ma'am; my umbrelly is going to stay as
+it is. To hear some people, out of little, country, back-door
+settlements! Ye would not think that it was a shanty among the stumps,
+they lived in at home. The pint of an umbrelly needn't trouble them so
+much. Does she think people are to be put about by sich as she? Her
+and her daughter setting up to trifle with gentlemen of intelleck and
+poseetion, forsooth! Yes, ma'am, ye may look! and be as mad as ye
+like. It's shame ye should be thinking of yourself and your girls--two
+sassy, underhand, designing brats!"
+
+"My good woman, what can you possibly know about me and my daughters?
+Were you ever in your life under the same roof with gentlefolks,
+before you came to Clam Beach?"
+
+Mrs Wilkie grew hot with indignation to hear herself addressed as a
+"good woman." It is a mystery to the male mind why this should be so,
+but it is undeniable that when one lady is minded to put the last
+indignity upon another, she speaks of her as a "woman." The only
+analogous trait--and we commend it to those with a turn for natural
+history--appears in coloured circles, where, as the most crushing
+retort in a scolding-match, the disputants are wont to apostrophise
+each other as "you black nigger." But this is digression.
+
+Mrs Wilkie grew hot and indignant at being called a woman. It confused
+and silenced her. The thread of her ideas was broken, and she was not
+equal to a prompt rejoinder. But she was not going to give in on that
+account--being, indeed, more angry than before. It was to avenge a
+slight to her son that she had started on the war-path, and now the
+insult to herself added fuel to her wrath. She pressed her lips
+tightly together, and moved closer to Mrs Naylor, as the readiest way
+of being provoking.
+
+"Where are you crushing to?" cried the other. "Would you force me into
+Mrs Petty's lap?" and then, after a pause, "unmannerly woman!" This
+time the word failed of its effect. "Woman" used as a missile is no
+better than a bomb-shell or a torpedo. It goes off but once. It passed
+unheeded, and Mrs Wilkie rejoined--
+
+"You're great upon the manners to-day. Ye'll be making manners to Mrs
+Petty, as ye made them to me wance, to try if ye can inveigle her son
+into the clutches of your little-worth daughter?"
+
+"What do you mean?" cried the other, angrily.
+
+"Just what I say. But ye may save yourself the trouble. The girl's
+well able to fish on her own account. She has a beau of her own on the
+sly. What do ye think of that? I thought I'd make ye wince, for all
+your airs and pretensions! She had a young man waiting for her on the
+island. And never said a word to ye about it, I'm thinking? And then,
+to have the assurance to take Mr Wilkie away stravaiging with her,
+like a toy dog, before the eyes of all the company! Ye may well start
+and look affronted."
+
+Mrs Naylor did start, but the assault was so outrageous that she could
+not but show fight.
+
+"Your son was disappointed, I presume, that he could not have Miss
+Naylor's undivided attention; and so, when he comes home, he
+circulates idle tattles to her disadvantage. Is that conduct becoming
+a gentleman? I should say it was an act of the kind of person whom
+gentlemen call a cad."
+
+Peter Wilkie, who had heard his mother's voice wax louder, looked
+round to where they sat. The angry looks of both ladies told him all.
+He hastened towards them, and if anything more had been needed to
+incriminate his poor old mother, her guilty and frightened looks at
+his approach would have sufficed. She pressed her hand to her side and
+rolled her eyes.
+
+"Your palpitations, mother?" he said. "You have been exerting yourself
+in the heat. Come up-stairs to your room and lie down." He gave her
+his arm, and led her away looking like a bold child detected in a
+misdemeanour. She did not appear again in public till the cool of the
+evening, when she presented a penitent and crestfallen aspect, very
+different from her warlike demeanour on the tennis-ground.
+
+Mrs Naylor's spirit sank almost as rapidly as her foe's. Now that the
+stir of battle was at an end, she could sit and make up her list of
+killed and wounded. Whether the enemy had taken flight or been
+withdrawn from the contest, this was a grievous blow which she had
+dealt at parting. She had been pluming herself on her skilful
+management of Margaret's affairs; and it now appeared that she had
+managed nothing, and the objectionable attachment was like to be too
+much for her. But the girl should not have her way, if she could help
+it. She would keep a sharper eye on her than ever. It was that
+pernicious young Blount's going away which had thrown her off her
+guard. But her eyes were opened now, and she would watch; and
+meanwhile she would rate Margaret soundly, and bring her to a sense of
+the turpitude of her behaviour.
+
+She did so, and Margaret had to expiate in much weariness of spirit
+her happy little outbreak on Fessenden's Island.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+                        AN OBDURATE DAUGHTER.
+
+
+Margaret had a bad quarter of an hour that afternoon, when the
+lawn-tennis was over. She felt no misgiving as she went up-stairs. The
+danger had been got over, she thought, on Sunday morning, when her
+mother started off in full career upon the other scent. What a happy
+circumstance was Uncle Joseph's engagement! She positively loved Rosa
+now for having accepted him. And Rose herself was so dear a girl, the
+very nicest aunt whom Joseph could have found her; binding him closer
+to them, if that were possible, instead of estranging him as another
+might have done. It was therefore an altogether unexpected shock when
+her mother, following her into her room, closed and fastened the door,
+and in a voice which shook with anger, demanded of her what she meant.
+
+"Mean, mother dear? I do not understand you."
+
+"You know perfectly what I mean, you double, deceitful girl!"
+
+Margaret understood now. The tempest, delayed for a while, was upon
+her. She hung her head, and bent like a willow before the blast.
+
+"You may well cower," her mother cried, pacing up and down. Her spirit
+boiled, to think that she had been so duped--she, the wise one, the
+manager--and she could neither sit nor stand still, in her vehement
+indignation.
+
+"That I should be mother of a girl whose name can be mentioned
+as I have heard you spoken of this day! Shameless, deceitful,
+unwomanly--oh!" Words failed her as she stood with clenched hands and
+eyes of wrath, which might have turned the other to stone, had she
+dared look up and meet them.
+
+"Say that it is not true! Tell me that woman has lied!--that there was
+no man with you on the island but your uncle and her detestable son!
+
+"You do not answer me? Speak! Let me hear that there is not a word of
+truth in her horrid insinuations. I will even say that I am not sorry
+you would have none of such a woman's son;" and here her voice veered
+round into the minor key. "I shall not press you to think of _him_.
+His mother is no better than a common scold. Do you hear me, Margaret?
+
+"You will not speak? Is it that you cannot deny the scandalous things
+she has been saying?--that you could plan a surreptitious meeting,
+upon a lonely island, with a man?
+
+"What will people say? It could have been but a chance that your uncle
+was there to save appearances. Have you no thought for your character?
+Is every scurrilous beldame to bandy your name about?--and have the
+right to do it? Have you no womanly pride? and will you drag your
+innocent young sister in the mire with you?--and your too trusting
+mother? What have we done that you should expose us to public scorn?
+
+"Ah me! that I should have lived for this! How could you do it? To
+dig your mother's grave before her eyes! Say that you did not mean
+it!--that it was thoughtlessness!--that you listened to the voice of a
+tempter!--that you will not do it again! He is a serpent, Margaret.
+
+"You do not answer me? Ah! my poor heart! How it throbs!" and she
+pressed her side, and sank into a chair. "You will kill me, Margaret,
+with shame and grief. A mother cannot survive such undutifulness. My
+blood will cry at you from the ground! What peace can you ever hope to
+know, when you have killed your mother?" and here her handkerchief
+came into use. She covered her face and sobbed.
+
+Margaret was greatly moved. Her eyes were full. She durst not speak,
+even if she would; she must have broken down had she attempted it. She
+was distressed to see her mother shedding tears. To be threatened
+with her early death was terrible. She would do anything to calm
+her--anything else, at least, whatever it might cost herself. But she
+had given her promise to Walter--poor Walter! whom her mother used to
+be so fond of. How could she take it again? It was no longer hers. She
+could only stand in despair and shame, and see her mother weep herself
+back into composure.
+
+Mrs Naylor's composure returned all the sooner, that nothing seemed
+likely to come of her having yielded to her feelings. She pulled the
+handkerchief from her reddened eyes, and with a concluding sob which
+was partly a sniff of impatience, put it back in her pocket.
+
+"I declare, Margaret," she cried, "you are harder than flint! One
+might as well cry at a slate roof as you. It just runs off without
+softening you in the least. You are obdurate. You have no feeling, and
+no heart. The momentary indulgence of a headstrong whim is all you
+think of. Consequences to your family, or even yourself, you never
+dream of considering. But you shall not ruin yourself, however much
+you may desire it, even if I have to lock you up. You will please to
+understand that you are to remain by me from this time on, and not to
+leave me without permission. You have made me ill enough with your
+undutifulness to enable me to tell people quite honestly that I am
+poorly, and need your care. Now, understand! If you leave my side
+without my sending you, I shall follow and bring you back before the
+assembled company; and I fancy, although you are impervious to higher
+considerations, you will not wish to be the laughing-stock of the
+hotel. If you leave me, I shall come and fetch you back, and there
+will be a scene, I promise you.
+
+"Now do not stand there biting your lips in dumb rebellion; I am not
+done yet. I do not insist on your encouraging Mr Wilkie; in fact,
+after the setting down I have given his mother, I do not suppose he
+will venture to intrude on us. But mind what you are about with young
+Mr Petty. I will not have him repulsed or trifled with. It was pitiful
+to see how forlornly he crept about the steamboat on our return from
+the island, after your outrageous behaviour in leaving him all alone.
+If he should be willing to overlook the slight, I insist on your
+behaving properly to him for the future. With his talents and his
+interest, he will be Attorney-General one day; so mind what you are
+about."
+
+Margaret felt too well sat upon to venture a reply. She had dared say
+nothing while her mother held forth at large, and now that she had
+talked herself out of breath, she feared to tempt her to break out
+anew; but like others who have been silenced without being convinced,
+she only wanted time and opportunity to return to her old paths.
+Though sat upon, she was neither broken nor crushed. It is a state of
+things which in the present day is not unfrequent. Rulers having grown
+to take things easily, allow the subject to have his head, until he
+goes too far. Then they put on authority with a spurt, find it irksome
+to themselves, and take it off again too soon. It is only systematic
+repression which need hope to prevail, and the arm which applies that,
+must never grow weary or relax.
+
+Margaret sat disconsolately at her mother's elbow that evening, and
+felt like a martyr, while her fancies flew away in pursuit of Walter
+Blount. "Poor fellow! he was thinking of her, no doubt--walking the
+streets of Lippenstock, and feeling so lonely. How dreadful this
+separation must be to him! But she would be true. She could never love
+another. She would not try. She would never marry any one else,
+however they might try to force her. No; she would pine--she was sure
+she would--grow pale and thin; and nobody would mind her after that.
+By-and-by she would grow old, and have poor health; and she would
+still be single, with nothing to think about but her own faithfulness,
+and how happy she might have been if her misguided friends would have
+allowed it. And then her mother would be sorry, when it was too late;
+but she would forgive her, and tend her declining years to the last.
+What a beautiful touching martyr life it would all make! but so
+terribly dull." She pictured to herself a desolate hearth, with not a
+creature to keep her company but a stupid cat upon a footstool
+blinking at the fire, and herself in spectacles and a cap, knitting or
+making clothes for the poor, beneficent to everybody, but sadly moped
+herself--and all for Walter! She grew consoled in thinking about it.
+It was as good as a play--at least a dull one. The others were
+beginning to dance, now; but she would not dance, though her mother
+had given her leave when Walter Petty came to ask her. She had a
+headache, she said; and now she knew she must refuse every one else
+that evening. What of that? It was making a sort of commencement of
+the life she saw in store for her in the future. Poor girl!
+
+A mood so doleful does not last, however, when we are young and
+healthy. It grew tantalising to Margaret to see the others enjoying
+themselves, and made her feel neglected; and she welcomed Rosa when
+Joseph brought her to sit beside his family, and accustom Mrs Naylor
+to the prospect of a sister-in-law. The jeweller's clerk having
+divulged that he had ordered a magnificent ring for a lady, it was
+useless to affect reserve. He accepted the people's congratulations
+calmly, as his due; and his sister-in-law, making a virtue of
+necessity, endeavoured to do so likewise. Mrs Deane was in the little
+knot by Mrs Naylor's sofa--good-natured people who did not believe in
+her ailments, but had no objection to humouring her, and found the
+fixed centre of an invalid's couch convenient in that fortuitous
+concourse of atoms. Mrs Naylor engrossed herself with Mrs Deane,
+Rose's chaperon, that her feeling towards Rose herself might be less
+apparent. It was oppressive to go on talking pleasantly to one whom
+she would have liked to address in quite other terms, had it been
+permissible. Wherefore Rose fell out of the conversation and turned to
+Margaret, with whom she had more in common.
+
+"How are you here, Margaret? You have neither sung, played, nor
+danced. What is the matter?"
+
+"Mamma is poorly. She needs some one by to fetch her smelling-bottle
+and keep her company when other people go away." She said it with much
+sobriety and demureness of manner, but the act of saying appeared to
+dissolve the little which remained of her self-restraint. She bent
+forward and took Rose's hand, adding in an undertone, "She knows. She
+has been told about the island. She is coming between us. Wants to
+break off everything. But she can't! I will not give him up. I will
+have nothing to say to any one else. Oh Rose! what am I to do? I
+cannot live if I do not see him sometimes. What shall I do?"
+
+Rose's eyes were roving far away, as were her thoughts; she was
+looking over Margaret's head, as Margaret leant forward and whispered.
+By a distant doorway stood a group of men, and her eyes turned
+dreamily and of themselves in that direction. The group parted to let
+two ladies enter, an elder and a younger one. The latter addressed a
+gentleman in passing, and carried him away between herself and her
+friend from his fellow-loungers. Rose coloured and started, then,
+meeting Margaret's look of surprise, she controlled herself--
+
+"Forgive me, Margaret. My thoughts were wool-gathering; I scarcely
+caught your words."
+
+Margaret repeated her words without surprise. She had observed how
+absent-minded Rose had grown, her varying moods, her starts and
+flushings, and sudden growings pale; but then she was engaged to Uncle
+Joseph, and doubtless these were symptoms of the delightful malady she
+laboured under herself, though she hoped that she concealed her own
+little tumults of the spirit more successfully.
+
+Rose was all attention and eager interest now--quite vehemently
+interested, it really seemed.
+
+"Your happiness for life is at stake, Margaret. I will not stand by
+and see you robbed of the man of your choice. And he is so nice!
+Joseph thinks all the world of him, I know. I see Joseph coming this
+way. We must devise something for you. My own idea is that you should
+get married at once. It will be easier to reconcile your mother
+afterwards. But here he is."
+
+Joseph sat down beside his affianced, and she was so eager to speak to
+him that he was delighted. He too had observed her fits of absence,
+and had attributed them to the same cause as Margaret; but he wondered
+that they did not begin to subside as the idea of her engagement grew
+familiar. She was eager enough now. How pleasant it was! And it was in
+Margaret she was interesting herself, which was "nice" in her.
+
+Mrs Naylor observed the eagerness, and was disgusted. It was
+positively indelicate, she thought, for a girl not yet married to make
+such open advances before a roomful of people. "Poor Joseph! What a
+fool he was! And how he would suffer for it by-and-by! A bold, forward
+girl!"
+
+Joseph and Rose went on talking, regardless of that same Susan and
+anything she might think. Joseph was averse to interfering; but Rose
+talked him over, which, as this was the first time she had asked him
+to do her a favour, was not difficult. And then, his views on many
+subjects were different now from what they had been not long before.
+True love had grown more precious in his eyes, and poor Susan's wisdom
+perhaps less so, since she had expressed her disapproval of his
+matrimonial scheme.
+
+"Well, Margaret," he said, sitting down between her and Rose, with a
+hand laid upon the hands of each, "we have made up our minds to help
+you if we can; but I think you should try and get away quietly, and
+avoid fuss. I will try and smooth matters with your mother after you
+are gone. So try and manage it quietly."
+
+
+
+
+                           CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+                          THEY HAVE IT OUT.
+
+
+The next three or four days produced nothing remarkable. Margaret
+remained in close attendance on her mother, who did her best to make
+her feel like a naughty child. Her only solace was Rose's sympathy;
+but notwithstanding it, she felt at times most dreadfully wicked, and
+always depressed and contrite. Only the thought of Walter's loneliness
+at Lippenstock kept her true; and she did contrive to send him little
+notes, and to receive through Rosa notes in return, notwithstanding
+the sharp eye which her mother kept upon her movements.
+
+Rose herself continued feverish and uncertain enough to occasion
+surprise to all her friends. She, so light-hearted and brave, so
+bright and clever--that she should appear in the character of
+tremulous and wistful maid, on the fulfilment of what had seemed her
+dearest wish! She was as kind and intimate with Joseph as ever; and he
+told himself that he had nothing to complain of, that he must remember
+their difference in age, and that with time they would grow nearer to
+one another. But still he felt a barrier between them--a reserve which
+all his ardour failed to surmount--an unresponsive silence when his
+raptures strove to fit themselves to words, which chilled him in spite
+of his assurances to himself that all was well. In desultory
+conversation she would be as bright as ever; but as he strove to lead
+up to converse more close, he found himself checked he knew not how;
+for she did not repulse, she only failed to respond. Her favourite
+topic to converse on was Margaret's attachment: on that she would warm
+even to enthusiasm, and run on at any length, till he almost felt it
+in his heart to grow jealous of his favourite niece.
+
+Lettice Deane was the only one who had a clue to Rose's strangeness.
+She felt sorry for her and greatly surprised, blaming Roe,
+notwithstanding her declaration that he was nothing to her; and vowed
+that his conduct in hanging on at the Beach, was ungentlemanlike, and
+altogether abominable.
+
+Roe himself seemed as feverish and ill at ease as the lady. He took
+little interest in the society of the other men, and seemed to submit
+to the company of Maida rather than court it. Maida felt that he was
+growing moody on her hands, and that their intimacy was not
+progressing. "Yet why did he stay on?" she asked herself. "There was
+no one else in the house for whom he seemed to care." She must learn
+to be more devoted and winning, she thought, and get over this
+constraint on his part, which she felt was growing up between them;
+but she did not see very clearly how she was to set about it. He
+detested forward women and bold women--he often said so--and was
+severely critical when they sat together on the galleries looking down
+on the young people upon the sands, who, after the manner of their
+kind, had a way of assorting themselves in couples as they took their
+evening strolls.
+
+It was arranged that on a certain day there should be a "clam-bake" on
+the sands at Blue Fish Creek. It was to be an affair on a gigantic
+scale. The keepers of half-a-dozen establishments along the coast had
+got it up. Bushels innumerable of clams were to be roasted around a
+huge bonfire; an ox was to be roasted whole; and the seaside visitors,
+cloyed with innkeepers' fare and indoor luxury, were for once to dine
+uncomfortably on the sands, upon slices of half-raw beef and platefuls
+of scorched shell-fish. As a slice of lemon gives savour to insipid
+veal, so a rough and indigestible banquet in the open air revives a
+relish in jaded guests for the daily superfluity of everything, which
+hotel dinners provide. There was to be a dance in the town hall
+afterwards, and the company would drive home in the dark. All Clam
+Beach was to go, as a matter of course; even the valetudinarian Mrs
+Naylor resolved to venture. Margaret took care that Walter should
+know, and--for why indulge in useless mystery?--they were to make
+their push for freedom on that return journey.
+
+The affair came off as designed. The weather was propitious, the
+guests hungry, in high spirits, and more numerous even than had been
+expected. They seated themselves in parties on the sands. The Naylors
+and Deanes naturally sat together, along with the Pettys and
+Wilkies--Ann Petty beside Peter Wilkie, and Walter Petty next
+Margaret; Ann feeling a little ashamed and altogether proud, at
+having, as she thought, taken away the other's young man; while
+Walter, poor lad, confronted Peter in triumph. His fortunes, he felt,
+were mending. The two mothers cast glances of wrathful scorn at each
+other between the legs of the black waiters running assiduously round
+within the ring. It was the only amusement open to them at their time
+of life, in the intervals between plying knife and fork.
+
+Margaret, looking over the people's heads, descried far away the manly
+form she most desired to see. Her plot was going to work, but
+meanwhile she must take care to lull suspicion in her mother's mind.
+The way to do that was being civil to her companion. She exerted
+herself and made the poor lad really happy--feeling ashamed and
+burdened the while, at her appalling treachery, and really sorry for
+the young fellow, who was so kind and nice, and who admired her so
+openly.
+
+At length the repast was ended. Everybody had eaten as many clams as
+seemed expedient. The company rose up and sauntered away, leaving the
+waiters free to clear off the relics of the feast. Joseph took Rose's
+arm and drifted apart from the rest as quietly as he could contrive.
+It was not to eat shell-fish in public that he had consented to dine
+uncomfortably on a sandheap. Rose would have been content to be less
+exclusively private, and looked round to see if she could not beckon
+Margaret to join them; but Margaret, between Walter Petty and her
+mother, was walking another way, so she accepted the inevitable with a
+good grace, and strove to interest herself in her companion. A few
+wind-bent trees maintained a struggling existence not far off upon a
+slope of sun-parched turf coming down upon the shore, with morsels of
+grateful shade; and thither they bent their steps.
+
+"I am glad _that_ part of the enjoyment is through," Joseph was
+saying. "It gives one cramps all over, that sitting on the ground all
+crumpled up, and eating things. But apparently there must be eating,
+if it is a party of pleasure."
+
+"Please, sir, there is a parcel for you at the kitchen tent--sent on
+as you ordered. The man says you must sign a receipt." It was a waiter
+who spoke, puffing and fanning his shining black face, and grinning
+with all his teeth, while he held his hand convenient for the expected
+tip.
+
+"Ha! Come, has it?" and Joseph smiled in return, slipping the dollars
+in the ready palm, and dismissing the messenger well pleased.
+
+"Let me settle you comfortably beneath yon tree, dearest; and then
+will you excuse me till I run after the fellow? I shall not be a
+minute gone. You will wait for me there, will you not?"
+
+"Go back at once; I can do that much for myself, and will wait there
+as you say."
+
+And so they parted, Joseph making all haste in one direction, while
+Rose walked leisurely forward in the other. She had almost reached the
+trees, her sunshade open before her, her eyes upon the sand.
+
+"At last!" and a figure stood between her and the light. "I have been
+waiting, Rose, for a chance like this."
+
+Rose started at the voice. A thrill ran through her, and the sunshade
+fell aside, as though the arm which held it were benumbed. Immediately
+in front of her stood Gilbert Roe. The flaming red and white chased
+one another across her face, but her eye looked steadily in his.
+
+"Sir!" she cried, with indignant emphasis; but she said no more, her
+lips closed tightly, and her eyebrows straightened in a frown.
+
+"They tell me you are going to be married, Rose? You must hear me this
+once. I am resolved to have it out with you."
+
+She threw back her head, and her nostrils quivered in pride. The angry
+blood suffused her temples now; there was no paleness and no sign of
+fear. "Allow me to pass," she answered, haughtily.
+
+"Not till you hear me, Rose. I mean to save you from yourself."
+
+"What right have you to interfere with me?"
+
+"The strongest; the right of one who loves you."
+
+"You have _no_ right! The law denies it. It gives me freedom. You
+shall not interfere."
+
+"Calm yourself, Rose. I cannot live without you. And more, you never
+will be happy but with me."
+
+"Bah! you are too long of finding it out. I am free, and I shall keep
+my liberty as far as you are concerned. I have tried you, and know you
+to my cost. It is over now. The law has cried quits between us."
+
+"It cannot, Rose! Think of the old time in Canada!--the evenings when
+we sang together, and talked in the porch--the walks between the
+corn-fields--the afternoons in the orchard--and the promises we made.
+Can you ever forget them?"
+
+"How dare you remind me of them? Have you no decent shame? You might
+wish the ground to open and let you through, rather than hear those
+old days named, and be reminded how you have outraged a trusting
+girl!"
+
+"I have been true to my vows, Rose. I make no merit of it; I could not
+have been otherwise. It was my glory and delight to fulfil them."
+
+"And you did it admirably! certainly. It was in fulfilment of them, I
+suppose, that you made fierce love to that silly Horatia Simpkins,
+under my very nose, and before the eyes of her own husband? If it had
+even been a handsome woman, or one not absolutely a fool, the slight
+might have been less unpardonable. But with her!"
+
+"What else could I have done?--the way you went on with her
+husband--that conceited ass Rupert. Would you have had me stand by,
+like a gawk, with my thumb in my mouth, assenting to your outrageous
+flirtation, which nearly drove his poor little silly wife out of her
+wits with jealousy? She is not as clever, perhaps, as you are, but at
+least she is fond of her husband!"
+
+Rose coughed impatiently and stamped her foot. The adversary must be
+admitted to have scored one by that thrust.
+
+"Is a woman to give up the amusements of social life--the little
+conventional pleasantnesses of society--because she happens to have
+lent a too trusting ear, and yielded to the man who wanted to marry
+her? Does she grow plain and old and stupid from the day she becomes a
+wife? Is she no more to find pleasure in being liked and admired? Life
+is not over when she comes back from church: she is still as human as
+she was before--wants a little of the diversions she has learnt to
+like, and needs a continuance of the devotion her suitor taught her
+to expect. You are hideously jealous, Gilbert. You should have been
+born a Turk, with a harem built out in the back-yard, beside the
+chicken-house, to lock up your wife in."
+
+It was the first time she had used his name. Gilbert noted it and took
+courage.
+
+"You know you wanted me to be jealous when you took up with that
+ninny--and you wanted to tease his wife. You succeeded. She thought
+you had stolen her husband's affection--or what represents it, in
+him--and she was not going to submit quietly to the robbery. She
+thought to make reprisals, and so laid siege to your husband in
+return. I am not sure but she got the revenge she wanted. You cannot
+deny that you were absurdly jealous."
+
+"Absurdly? Yes; laugh at me! I deserve it for allowing you to address
+me. You consider me a fool. You have said as much before, and you said
+other things as well, which were even worse. You insulted me with
+suspicion, and used expressions as if I were improper. You know you
+did! Bertie Roe!... You never loved me really, I do believe--not as
+you made me expect you would--not as a girl should be loved, who gives
+up her life and everything to be married to a man. You behaved like a
+barbarian! Deny it if you dare!"
+
+"I do deny it, Rose. Could I stand by and see you play the fool with a
+contemptible duffer, before the eyes of all Chicago?--see people in
+ball-rooms and theatres follow you with their eyes, nudge each other,
+and exchange glances, and shrug, as if to say, 'another young wife
+taking the turn downhill'?"
+
+"You are insulting!--but I might have expected it. 'Cruelty and
+desertion' were the words in the decree."
+
+"I dare you to lay your hand upon your heart and say that I was cruel.
+I merely remonstrated--and then you scolded.... You know you did,
+Rose. You made home unbearable. I had to leave the house."
+
+"You outraged my feelings. Was I to accept your insinuations of
+improper conduct as a polite compliment, or an everyday commonplace of
+domestic conversation?... You did not strike me, I admit--the man in
+you would restrain you from that; but you did worse!--the things you
+said."
+
+"Could I see people taking away your character by a shrug without
+giving you warning? Could I tell you about it, as something amusing
+and to your credit?"
+
+"It was yourself who goaded me on to do whatever I did. And then to
+insult and desert me!"
+
+"I did not desert you. I merely took rooms down town, leaving you in
+sole possession of the house until you should come to your senses....
+You did not believe that I had deserted you; but you wanted to make me
+beg pardon and come back as if I had been to blame."
+
+"And so you _were_ to blame! The Court has decided that, and granted
+me my divorce."
+
+"And has your divorce, then, made you happy? Would you have filed your
+petition, if you had expected to have it granted? You thought I would
+have come and prayed you to withdraw it. I let you take your course.
+Was I wrong?"
+
+"You knew you had no defence--had no case to plead--that I was right.
+You let judgment go by default."
+
+"Did you imagine that I would plead?--have all our little
+altercations, which would have sounded so pitiful in Court, raked out
+and exposed before a crew of newspaper reporters, to be read and
+chuckled over by the people going home in the tram-cars? Did you
+imagine that I would attempt to keep you bound, if you wanted to break
+loose from the marriage tie? I would not have you, if I could, against
+your will."
+
+"You are very magnanimous, and I--of course I am the
+opposite--everything bad, and frivolous, and foolish. I wonder you
+should have troubled yourself to address against her will so poor a
+creature."
+
+"I have been waiting here all these days, Rose, in hopes of getting
+speech of you. You are not bad, or frivolous, or foolish. You are the
+only woman I have ever cared for, or ever shall. We have been--not
+very wise, shall I call it?--headstrong and obstinate, and neither
+would give in; and both, if I may venture to say it, have been
+miserable in consequence. Forget and forgive, Rose. Let's try again,
+begin the game anew, and profit by sad experience. It is for that I
+have been waiting here--to prevent this marriage of yours, if the
+people say true, which will make both you and me miserable for ever."
+
+"You are kind; but do you not exaggerate? My marriage at least will
+not leave you inconsolable. You have secured the consoler already.
+I wish you joy of her. May she make you as happy as you deserve,
+and----" But here, to her own astonishment--for Rose had felt proud of
+her bravery and calmness throughout the interview--there came a spasm
+in her throat, which choked her utterance. The corners of her mouth
+began to droop, and her eyes sought the ground.
+
+"Do you mean Maida Springer? This is worse than Horatia Simpkins! I am
+sure I have not flirted with Maida. Come, if you like, and ask her;
+she is sitting under that tree. She is an acquaintance of very old
+standing; that is all. She taught my uncle's children long ago, when I
+was a lad. We saw each other constantly when I was home from Harvard
+at the vacation. But there is nothing between us--never was. Come, ask
+her yourself. She is sitting behind this nearest tree: she will be the
+first to wish us joy."
+
+He took Rose's hand to lead her to the spot, and Rose had moved a step
+or two before she had recovered self-command enough to resist. The
+tree was very close. Whoever sat behind it must have overheard the
+conversation, for both had been too intent to keep their voices low.
+Rose shrank from meeting the listener. She stopped short, and looked
+timidly where the eavesdropper was said to be.
+
+There seemed little which need make her feel uneasy. A woman's
+figure--or was it only a bundle of summer clothing? so limp and
+collapsed it seemed--lay crouched and huddled together against the
+bole. The hat was pushed aside, the head bowed between the knees, and
+two slender hands spread out before it to exclude the light. The hair
+had come unfastened, and fell in wisps down to the ground, swaying and
+quivering in the sobbing tremor which shook the woman's frame.
+
+Rose drew away her hand. "It is too late to talk, Bertie. We have
+chosen our roads in life, and we must keep them. But we will think
+more kindly of one another now. I am engaged, as you know. I did it
+freely, and I must keep my word. I will not spoil the life of
+another--of a man who is as fond of me as this one, and so good and
+true. We will forgive one another--will we not?--and learn from sad
+experience more forbearance in our future lots. There he is coming. I
+shall go and meet him. Goodbye. We must not meet again."
+
+She went, leaving Gilbert elated at his success, but dissatisfied with
+its incompleteness, and a little doubtful how he ought to return to
+Maida Springer. They had been reclining rather aimlessly behind the
+tree, when he looked up and saw Rose almost upon them, and alone. It
+seemed to be now or never, if he was to have speech with her. He
+bounded to his feet without a word to his companion, and her own ears
+must soon have told her why. It felt decidedly awkward to return to
+Maida; yet what was he to do? He could not follow Rose without
+imperilling such way as he had made back to her favour, by inducing
+perhaps an ugly scene with Naylor; and having brought Maida there, he
+must fetch her back to her friends. It was an uncomfortable task, but
+it had to be performed. He hardened his soul, expecting to hear
+something unpleasant, composed his features, and turned round to the
+tree.
+
+He might have spared his anxiety. The tree was deserted. No one was
+near. Far up the slope the flutter of a white gown and streaming blue
+veil might be discerned between the trees, in swift retreat, and
+Gilbert found that Maida had saved him the unpleasantness of an
+explanation.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+                         "IT IS ALL A MESS!"
+
+
+It fell hard upon Rose to have to meet Joseph again so immediately
+after the passage she had gone through with Gilbert Roe--to pass, with
+scarce a pause in which to brace herself together, from the lover of
+her youth into the presence of the man to whom she had chosen to
+transfer her regard. She had fooled herself in her pique into the
+belief that she had trodden down and stamped out the last spark of
+kindness for the husband who had been, as she told herself, so hard
+and cruel and insulting--the man who could let her untie their
+marriage bond, without showing a sign or offering a word of
+remonstrance. He was nothing to her now--she had been saying it within
+herself ever since their separation--or if anything, only her
+aversion. She had been persuading herself that she was an injured
+woman, and that it was righteous resentment which she had been nursing
+against the unfeeling tyrant who had blighted her early wifehood. She
+had resolved that she would never speak to him again, nor even name
+him; that she would pluck out the very memory of her first and foolish
+love--have done with him for ever, and begin anew. (As if our past,
+the foundation of our present, could ever be obliterated!)
+
+When he forced himself upon her so unexpectedly, the anger smouldering
+through her year of unmolested separation, the regret and
+disappointment grown sour in concealment and suppression, and turned
+by silence and defeated pride into what had seemed an inextinguishable
+hatred, had burst into a flame of fiercest indignation. It had burst
+into flame, but how pitifully soon it had burnt low! It had been but a
+fire of straw, blazing up for a moment and sinking as quickly as it
+rose; leaving nothing behind, nothing but the emptiness of separation.
+The grievances and wrongs and barriers piled up so high between them,
+where were they gone to? Vanished utterly away. There had been a
+leaping flame and a whirling puff of smoke, and the ground was clear
+between them--clear save for the ashes of happiness destroyed for
+ever! And there she stood, naked and exposed before her own eyes and
+his, stripped of her false pretexts, a vain and headstrong fool, who
+in very wantonness had made bonfire of their wedded happiness!
+
+And yet her indignation had seemed so just, her wrongs so deep and
+unforgivable! How speedily her wrath had oozed away before a few
+words! words not of contrition, scarce even of reproach, but only
+common-sense, and spoken by the old dear voice! Where were the bitter
+memories now? How could she be so false to herself? Where was her
+pride?--that stanch support against which she had been wont to set her
+back, ready to outface the world? It had bent and broken, like a
+worthless reed, before a few words of the man against whom she had
+invoked its aid. "Bertie!" She had resolved to obliterate the memory
+of that name; and yet it had passed her lips, and the old caressing
+sweetness of the sound was in her ears, and would not go away.
+
+It was not half an hour since the mere sight of him had hardened her
+with hate, and made her feel strong, if yet unhappy. Now, she was weak
+as water. If she had stayed, she would have given way and yielded--she
+could not tell to what--but to anything the old sweet strong influence
+in that voice had chosen to command her. But she had escaped, and she
+was still free, and she would keep her liberty, whatever it might cost
+her peace. At least she thought so.
+
+What would they say, those sympathising friends who had come to her in
+her conflict, with their well-meant phrases of support, and told her
+she had done so wisely, and shown so brave a spirit? What would they
+say to see her lower the lance and go back again to the bondage of her
+tyrant? How could she face their pity at her weakness? And then there
+were the others, who had disapproved of her conduct--had advised her
+to submit, yield something, and make it up; and when she would not,
+had turned away from knowing her. They would call her repentant, and
+perhaps would turn again to countenance her reformation! That would be
+more intolerable even than the pitying surprise of her stancher
+friends. No; she must follow out the road she had entered on. There
+could be no returning upon the lost steps. And she had so nearly
+yielded. It startled her to find she was so weak. She must build a
+barrier between the old life and the new, which could neither be
+surmounted nor thrown down.
+
+Joseph was close upon her now. He had not been very long away, but he
+did not seem in her eyes exactly as he had seemed before. It was not
+half an hour that he had been gone, yet he looked more ordinary than
+she had supposed him. The redundancy of waistcoat, or rather of waist,
+offended her sense of symmetry as it had not done before; and if he
+had been just a little taller! Bertie was six-feet-one, and gracefully
+slim, and chestnut-haired, while the other's locks were darkening, as
+the leaves grow dark before the autumn tints begin to light them up
+with the rustiness that comes before decay. It was the difference
+between thirty and forty-seven. What a fool she was to notice such
+things, and at such a time, when the very contrary was what she would
+have wished to notice! She told herself so with vehemence, and bit her
+lip, as if that would make her mind it better; but she went on
+noticing all the same. When the eye has been turned for a little on
+the sun, what a poor, dim, purblind thing does the light of a candle
+afterwards appear!
+
+Joseph came on with swinging elastic strides, impatient to be with
+her, irradiated with a joyful pride, and beaming on her with smiles of
+confidence irrepressible.
+
+"If he would only have been tranquil!" she thought. This exuberance
+seemed so utterly out of place. It was a discord in the bland and
+half-parental warmth which, she told herself, would have been correct
+in view of their disparity of age. "It was bad taste. There was even
+an element of ridicule in a venerable Cupid of forty-seven exerting
+himself to gambol before her like one of those boy Loves with wings
+the artists picture. She had not thought so half an hour ago, but we
+live and change so quickly at times. He was too solid for that sort of
+thing, and she felt sorry to see him attempt it, for she really
+respected and liked him."
+
+"You grew tired of waiting, Rose?"
+
+"Why would he call her by her name just then?" she asked herself,
+forgetting that he had been doing so habitually for a week past, and
+that she had encouraged him to do it.
+
+"And came to meet me? Forgive me, dearest. I could not help it. Your
+own disinclination to be kept waiting, must plead for my impatience to
+get my little parcel, that I might present it. I made the hotel people
+promise to send it after us, if it should arrive this forenoon. It has
+come, but the express man would not part with it till I had signed the
+receipt. Then the rascal went to refresh himself, and I had quite a
+hunt to find him. However, it is all right now. Shall we turn back and
+get under the shadow of the trees?"
+
+"As you like," Rose answered, a little dully.
+
+Joseph tore off the wrappings of his parcel as they walked along,
+laying bare the little ring-case. He opened it, and the merry little
+stones within, catching the sunbeams, cast them back in a dazzling
+gleam beyond his expectation.
+
+Rose saw and shuddered. The glancing ray seemed to pierce her with a
+cold sharp pang, like the thrust of steel. It was the token of her
+engagement; and that, of a sudden, and without her being aware of an
+alteration in her mind, had grown distasteful.
+
+"And now, my dearest, will you let me fit it in its place. It is not
+worthy your acceptance; but then, what is? Still it is pretty, is it
+not? And seeing that you were kind enough to accept myself, you will
+let me slip on my ring. It is an earnest of the other you have
+promised to let me give you."
+
+"Not now, Mr----dear Joseph, I mean." How unreadily his name came to
+her lips! and half an hour since she had used it freely--had even
+liked to use it in a very friendly way, as leading up to the more
+intimate connection which was to be established between them. What a
+rift between the now and then!
+
+"Do you not like it, dear?" Joseph asked, in a disappointed tone. "I
+said it was not worthy either of your acceptance or of my love; but
+still, I confess I thought it pretty, and I hoped you would have worn
+it."
+
+"Oh, as to that--yes, by all means. It is a lovely ring, the very
+handsomest I ever saw. Any one might feel proud to wear it on its own
+merits; but you know how whimsical we women are. It is a whim which I
+have taken, that I will not put on a ring to-day."
+
+"Let me persuade you out of it, dearest. Let me overbear the whim." He
+took her hand in his, drew off the glove, and reverently pressed his
+lips upon the fingers, while she stood looking listlessly and sadly in
+his face. He took the engagement-finger and attempted to slip on the
+ring without more ado; but at the touch of it Rose started and drew
+away her hand with a shrinking cry, while Joseph strove to retain it,
+and still attempted to slip on the ring.
+
+"It must not be, at least not yet a while, Joseph. I have something
+which I must tell you, that will make a difference between us. It
+would be unfair to you not to tell you in time, what may influence
+your feelings with regard to an engagement between us. And meanwhile,
+I give you back your promise, that you may be free to do as you will,
+after you have heard me."
+
+"You shall not give it back, Rose. I will not accept it. And more, I
+hold _you_ to your promise still. Nothing which you can tell me will
+induce me to give you back yours."
+
+"Not if you heard dreadful things against me?"
+
+"I would not believe them. I know you too well for that. What do you
+take me for?"
+
+"I take you for a noble-minded man. It is that which troubles me. I am
+not worth your caring for."
+
+"You are my own, a part of my very self."
+
+"You would not say so if you knew--that I have been married
+before!--if you were told that I am a divorced woman!"
+
+"I would not believe them."
+
+"But it is true."
+
+"What a villain the man must have been!--what a fool!--to cast away
+the flower he was unworthy to have worn! But, my poor darling, if this
+is so, you have the deeper need of my protecting care."
+
+"But it was I who divorced--him!"
+
+"You have been cruelly used, then. Ah, what you must have suffered! It
+shall be all the more my care to make you forget your unhappiness.
+Forget it you shall. Let's say no more about it."
+
+"But I must. You do not know how poor a thing you have anchored your
+heart to--how fickle and headstrong and vain a creature I have been! I
+petitioned for a divorce from my husband."
+
+"And you got it. Is not that a proof that you were in the right?--when
+the law granted your demand? What you must have come through! But it
+shall be mine to make you forget."
+
+"He--filed no rejoinder, as they call it He let the law take its
+course."
+
+"He did not, because he could not. The law has relieved you from an
+unworthy mate. Forget it, my poor darling. Forget _him_. We have the
+future before us. Forget all the past."
+
+"He refused to plead; but I am not so sure that he could not have
+pleaded successfully if he had chosen to do it. My petition was an
+outrage to him."
+
+"Do not think it. A woman is not driven to take such a step without
+sufficient grounds."
+
+"That is what the judge said; but--ah me!--I do not know."
+
+"What has called up these morbid fancies in your mind, Rose? You were
+cheerful an hour ago."
+
+"He--has spoken to me. When you were gone he came to me--and things
+seem different now. I am not so sure that I was right, as I used to
+be."
+
+"The sneaking villain! Who is he? Where is he? To come molesting the
+woman he has wronged, so soon as my back was turned! Kicking is too
+good for such a hound. Where is he?"
+
+"You must not ask. What would people say of me, if you and he were to
+meet?... But I am upset; my head is splitting. I do not know what I am
+saying, or what I do. I will go back to the village inn and lie down."
+
+"We can drive back to Clam Beach. No one will miss us. Come."
+
+"I want to be alone, and think. Do not come with me. Yonder is Lettice
+Deane; bring me to her, and then let me leave you."
+
+Lettice was following her own amusement in her own way. She was
+holding a kind of auction of her smiles as she walked upon the sands
+between Mr Sefton and Peter Wilkie, who vied with each other to
+engross her attention, flashing speeches across her, to her infinite
+diversion, in their efforts to extinguish one another. It was amusing,
+but she cared nothing for either, and was mischievously ready to
+disgust them both alike, by yielding to Rose's petition for her
+company back to the village.
+
+"Is your head _very_ bad, Rose, dear?" she asked, full of sympathy, as
+soon as they were alone. "It must be, to take you away from him so
+soon after his present. Or is it a sort of necessary discipline?--in
+case of his growing too confident on the head of it? Let me see it.
+Everybody knows that the express man was sent after you here. What!
+you have not put it on yet? I declare, I think you are rigorous. You
+owed him the satisfaction of seeing you wear it, I think, seeing how
+much it cost."
+
+"I have not got it. I could not accept it to-day. I have been trying
+to have an explanation and tell him everything. He--the other--dropped
+upon me suddenly when I was alone and not expecting him, and we
+talked--and, oh Lettice! I am in a maze. What am I to do? It seems to
+be I won't and I will with me, all the time. I can't do both, and I
+won't do either. I am distracted, Lettice. I must go to bed and try to
+think."
+
+"Who-o-o----!" Lettice could not whistle as some girls can; but that
+long-drawn masculine expression of--of everything at once--of the fat
+having fallen in the fire, with general loss, trouble, and confusion,
+seemed the only adequate and appropriate one for the occasion, and she
+framed her lips and voice to the nearest equivalent.
+
+"And what will you do, dear?" she said, after a considerable pause.
+
+"Don't bother me with questions, Lettie. I do not know in the very
+least. I shall go to bed, and try to sleep, and to forget everything.
+If one could only forget for always! How good it would be! I am in a
+mess. And all from having my way, and getting everything I thought I
+wanted. It is all a mess! an irretrievable muddle. Whatever I may do,
+it will be sure to be wrong. Oh Lettie! take warning in time; and
+don't let your little tempers run away with you, as mine have done
+with me."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXX.
+
+                          A CLOSE OBSERVER.
+
+
+When Rose and Lettice went their way, the three cavaliers found their
+occupation gone. They stood an instant looking after the retreating
+fair, then turned to face one another; but there was no satisfaction
+in view of the witnesses of their discomfiture--each felt small,
+rather, and perhaps a little ridiculous. The only plaster for their
+grazed self-love was absence from the witnesses; and accordingly each
+turned on his heel, going off in quest of some new interest, and
+diverging as widely from the other two as was possible.
+
+Joseph strolled despondently back toward the stunted grove, to which
+twice already he had bent his steps, but had not reached. He had borne
+up bravely enough under Rose's disclosure at the moment. In the thick
+of the fight one generally does bear up. The excitement of combat
+stirs the blood, and blows fall scarcely heeded on him who struggles
+hard to have his way. It is when the battle is over, that the wounds
+begin to smart, when the stricken have leisure to feel them. And
+Joseph was wounded sore. It crushed him to think that anything could
+be said in derogation of the peerless one whom he had found to fit
+into' the long-vacant shrine, where the beloved of his youth had sat,
+and whose memory, still hovering there, had made it a holy place.
+There seemed impiety in associating the new avatar of his love with
+the ribald vulgarities of the divorce court, in dragging the blossom
+of his worship through its noisome mire. Yet was she the less precious
+because her lines had fallen haplessly? Does a jewel lose worth for
+having fallen in the kennel? He told himself this, and repeated it
+over and over. He vowed that her need of sympathy and support, was a
+claim the more upon his honour, and that the claim should be
+satisfied; but still it was painful to think that the name of his wife
+to be, had been bandied from mouth to mouth as one of the motley crew
+who shock chaste ears with their clamour to be relieved from
+obligations which if was their own free choice to undertake. It dimmed
+the bright promise of that future in which he had been basking so
+unsuspiciously, but it should not appal him. He would steadfastly look
+forward to all being well; his own faith and hope would of themselves
+contribute to a happy consummation; and for Rose, how much she must
+have suffered!--how much she needed him!
+
+He had reached the grove at last. His feet were on the turf, and he
+was strolling upwards through the trees, buried in deep and not too
+sweet reflections.
+
+"Alone, Joseph?" There was much in the tone to irritate. It contained
+a suggestion of pity, combined with the "I thought as much," or "I
+told you so," with which intimate friends are wont to rub up our
+little sorenesses, and make them smart. It was his sister-in-law who
+spoke--Susan--who already had expressed her disapproval of his
+intended change in life, and who could not be expected to regret any
+little unsmoothness in the current of his love. She had risen from a
+corner of shade in which she had been encouraging the faltering
+advances of Walter Petty to closer intimacy with her girl Margaret.
+The two seemed fairly well tackled in conversation, now, and she felt
+free to devote a little attention to Joseph and his concerns. She took
+his arm, and accommodated her pace to his for a little turn, ignoring
+the sudden tightening of his features into an impatient frown.
+
+"'The course of true love,' &c.--you know the rest, Joseph. Where
+there is disparity, one must be prepared for little _contretemps_. One
+cannot expect young girls to accommodate themselves at once to the
+steady jog-trot of their seniors. They would not be so attractive, I
+daresay, if one could. She certainly----"
+
+"What are you talking about, Susan?"
+
+"You do not know, eh? Or rather you think I do not know? I have seen
+everything--more than you have yourself. I was sitting up here in the
+shade, when you were called away a while ago."
+
+"Yes, I was called away. It was annoying, I confess; but I got back
+when I had completed my little matter of business. I see nothing in
+that which calls for your condolence."
+
+"Of course not, dear Joseph. It was far too cleverly arranged for
+that. She certainly is clever--an accomplished actress. I only hope it
+may answer, and that you may not find her out to be too clever by
+half. A good many people have seen as well as me. It was very well
+done--quite dramatic, in fact; or rather, pantomimic--for they were
+far too judicious to raise their voices and be overheard."
+
+"Enough, Susan. I detest insinuations. Who are they whose private
+affairs you have been watching and prying into? Do you know that you
+have been accusing yourself of eavesdropping, mitigated only by your
+inability to hear what was said? It is scarcely the pursuit I should
+have expected a ladylike person to take up."
+
+"You are rude, Joseph; but I forgive you. One must not expect people
+to accept disenchantment with an equable mind."
+
+"You speak riddles. I am in no mood for guessing them."
+
+"Just what I say. You are upset, Joseph, and I am truly sorry."
+
+"I am not upset. I am perfectly well and happy, Susan. It is you who
+are absurd. You have your girls' hands to dispose of. It is occupation
+enough for any woman. See you do it wisely; and leave me to bestow my
+own in peace. I decline your interference."
+
+"You are blind, Joseph. There are a score of people in this wood.
+Every one of them must have seen. It is only you, the one who ought to
+know, who have not, and do not know. I insist on telling you. You may
+not like it, but it is my duty."
+
+"Always a duty--when a woman wants to be provoking."
+
+"I forgive the gibe. The young person you have chosen to devote
+yourself to, has a lover."
+
+"Certainly. The lady you stigmatise as a person has me; and I mean to
+marry her."
+
+"You and another. Ha! you did not know that! I can read it in your
+face. Your back was scarcely turned, when out there bounced from
+behind a tree--a man!--that tall slim young fellow you must have
+noticed at the Beach any time this last week. He has been devoting
+himself to that little spare woman with the blue veil whom nobody
+seems to mind. People said they were engaged, and wondered at one with
+his good looks bestowing himself so cheaply. Well, as I was saying,
+out he bounced upon Miss--what's her name?--Miss Hillyard; and I can
+tell you their interview was an animated one. How the colour of both
+came and went! There must a great deal have taken place between them.
+How he gesticulated! She was comparatively calm. He is an ardent
+fellow, I can tell you, Joseph. Better have an eye on him."
+
+Joseph did not know exactly what to say. He felt himself disloyal in
+listening; but still he was interested, and if he waited to hear more,
+he fancied he should be better able to defend Rose.
+
+"The lady he had left--her with the blue veil--seemed to take her
+squire's sudden desertion in very bad part. She started and looked
+shocked at his departure, then bent forward where she sat, and looked,
+and listened. They were within a few yards of her, and she must have
+heard all that passed. The disillusion must have been terrible. I saw
+her head bow lower and lower, as though all fortitude were deserting
+her; and soon she seemed utterly crushed. She buried her head in her
+lap, and clasped her hands above it--a most pitiable spectacle.
+
+"But that was not the worst. He certainly must be a man without pity
+or a spark of feeling. He actually had the cruelty to lead the other a
+little to one side, where she could have a view of the discarded
+rival. Was it not barbarous? This was too much for the other. It stung
+her into something like proper self-respect. As soon as the other
+turned away--and I will do the Hillyard girl the justice to say that
+she betrayed no sign of gratification at her rival's confusion--she
+jumped to her feet with a little cry, tied on her hat, and ran away up
+the hill, as if to hide herself among the trees. Then Miss Rose seemed
+suddenly to remember about you. She dismissed her admirer with the
+peremptory assurance of an old hand, who knows exactly what she means
+to do, and strolled calmly across the sands to meet you coming back to
+her. She must have managed very well. I saw her leaning on your arm as
+friendly as possible--a clever girl, but a sad handful, I should
+imagine, for the man whose doubtful fortune it may be to get her for a
+wife."
+
+"And now you have done, Susan, with your romance? Let me congratulate
+you on your talent for 'putting that and that together,' and producing
+a coherent fiction from true premisses, which might do credit to the
+author of the 'Arabian Nights.'"
+
+"And pray, if the premisses are true, and nothing of my own is added,
+how can you venture to suppose that my inferences are astray? You are
+infatuated, Joseph Naylor."
+
+"My good creature, the young lady has told me of this interview with
+the tall young man which you have described so graphically. It must
+indeed have been exciting and full of emotion, but you have entirely
+failed to catch its true import; and, as far as I can see, there is no
+reason why you should understand it, either you or any of the twenty
+other eavesdroppers you mention, who have been gratuitously
+interesting themselves in what does not concern them. Miss Hillyard is
+suffering from violent headache in consequence of what occurred, and
+has returned to the village to lie down. On second thoughts, I believe
+I shall follow her, and try if she will not let me drive her back to
+the Beach at once. That will be better than encountering the twenty
+pairs of curious eyes during the evening, who will want to watch her
+every movement, and piece a romance out of every time she looks at her
+watch. Goodbye, Susan. Accept thanks for kind intentions on my
+account; but do, pray, be more charitable in future. Good-bye,
+Margaret. I am going back at once, and shall be asleep when you get
+home. Kiss me good-night, child."
+
+Margaret rose to pay the dutiful salute. Joseph kissed her on the
+cheek, and finding his lips so conveniently near her ear, he
+whispered--
+
+"Walter's buggy will be the first in the line. He will be waiting. Get
+down before the others. Jump in; and God bless you!"
+
+Margaret changed colour violently. Her mother, looking on, was
+surprised to see an embrace from an old uncle, produce signs of
+emotion. "It must be because of the young man sitting by," she thought
+sapiently, and drew happy auguries from the circumstance. Those close
+observers are so often astray!
+
+When Joseph reached the inn at Blue Fish Creek, he sent up a little
+note to Rose, asking if she would not rather come home now in quiet,
+than wait through the racket of the evening, to be followed by a
+riotous journey after dark with the rest in their overflowing high
+spirits. Rose consented, and they drove home forthwith.
+
+How different were Joseph's feelings now, from what they had been in
+the morning! Then, everything was bathed in sunshine and hope. The
+bare supposition that aught could go amiss did not once cross his
+mind. Now, he could not say what had befallen him, but a cloud had
+come down and enveloped him, and blotted out the future, and every
+certainty from his view, chilling his hopes and even his desires as
+with an untimely frost. The ring lay forgotten in his pocket. It did
+not occur to him to offer it again. If he had, the probability is that
+it would have been accepted, though perhaps without the enthusiasm
+which would have made the acceptance of value in his eyes.
+
+Another phase of feeling had arisen in Rose's mind since her walk with
+Lettice. Her friend had betrayed a presentiment, that now Gilbert had
+had speech of her, he would win her back; and Rose revolted at the
+idea of figuring before her friends as a repentant naughty child. No;
+she had made her choice, and she would show that she could hold to it.
+She might not be happy in the future, but at least she could be
+steadfast. And truly, the man beside her as she drove, so truthful and
+so good, deserved all the duty and devotion she could devote to him.
+If she did not love as once she might have loved, at least he should
+never know it. She would be but the more dutiful on that account; she
+would even--what seemed the hardest thing of all to her headstrong
+nature--even obey him.
+
+She was very near to him then, if Joseph had but known; but he did
+not. The old doubleness between his wife of long ago, and this heir to
+her place in his regard, had arisen anew within him, and it was still
+the older god who held the shrine. He felt regretfully tender and
+considerate to his companion by his side, but the enthusiasm of the
+morning was wanting.
+
+They spoke little to one another as they travelled along. Rose was
+pale and had a splitting headache, and Joseph was consideration
+itself. He forbore to disturb her, assisted her to alight when they
+arrived at Clam Beach, and expressed a hope that she would be better
+in the morning, when they parted and she went up-stairs.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+                         THE LADY PRINCIPAL.
+
+
+The Principal of the Female College of Montpelier sat in her
+room--office, call it, or study--her seat of authority, absorbed in
+business. Her table was littered with papers; the waste-paper basket
+overflowed with them. There was ink before her, a pen in her hand. Her
+cap sat crooked on her head; her whitened hair was rumpled. The too
+active cerebration within had no doubt disturbed the external trimness
+of her dome of thought, as phrenologists used to tell us that it
+worked ridges and hollows in the bones of the skull. She was deep in
+thought. Her grey, intellectual features were tightened in the effort,
+and her eye roved vacantly in space in search of those choice forms
+which had long made her style the model of literary expression in
+Montpelier.
+
+She had spent the morning in compounding a syllabus, or a
+compendium--matters in the manufacture of which she was unrivalled.
+Now she was considering her address on female self-culture, shortly to
+be delivered before the Institute of Emancipated Woman, with a list of
+the hundred books which should form the inseparable companions of
+every female aspirant to Breadth of View. Her eye wandered to the
+terrestrial globe at her elbow--a symbol of her learned office, handed
+down from her predecessors in more simple-minded times; and she
+reviewed the distinguished literary reputations in remote places and
+times--the less vulgarly popular or comprehensible, the better for her
+purpose.
+
+Ha! there was the Nile--Egypt--Manetho! A most respectable name
+Manetho, and not too much said about him. The only difficulty was,
+were his works extant? She was not sure, and her encyclopædia was too
+old an edition to make it worth while looking up. Her eye moved
+eastward: India? _eureka!_ The Rig Veda,--Max Müller and the 'Asiatic
+Review'! She had read all about it in Littel's 'Living Age,' the
+pirate's treasure-house.
+
+The Rig Veda should head her list. She had not read it, to be sure;
+but neither had those whom she addressed, and they would not be able
+to read it, if they were to try--in the original, at least, and she
+intended to pour scorn upon the use of translations; but it looked
+well at the head of a list, showed comprehensiveness in the lecturer,
+and ensured respect from the omniscient critic of the 'Montpelier
+Review.'
+
+The 'Zend-Avesta' made a handsome second; but as she did not desire to
+smother her audience under the load of erudition, she considerately
+offered it as an alternative to the Rig Veda. "A Saga" came next--she
+did not specify which. Her familiarity with Scandinavian literature
+was not intimate enough to particularise; but as not one of her
+audience would know anything about it, that made little difference.
+Being minded that nothing she said should savour of the too familiar,
+she gave Klopstock the first place in her German list rather than
+Goethe; and for the same reason Marlowe led off her English
+dramatists, with Shakespeare far down among the ruck. Then there were
+Hegel and Haekel, with permission to add the 'Critique of Pure Reason'
+for those who relished intellectual nut-cracking. There was to have
+been a name or two from every tribe and tongue in Europe; but in her
+ignorance she could think of no Russian but Turguenief; and when she
+came to the Lapps, Finns, Liths, and Basques, they had no literary
+representative whom she had ever heard of. After that she took up a
+publisher's list and filled up the remaining sixty places at random.
+What did it matter? People would read what they liked or understood.
+If they did not understand, it could not influence them one way or
+other. She knew as well as you or I do, reader, that wheat is not
+grown on pure sand; that loams, clays, moulds, each produce a
+vegetation limited by their capacity; that everything will not grow
+everywhere, and that, if it could, it would not be worth much. But
+while the public laboured under the fad of comprehensiveness, she
+recognised that she, its servant, must be comprehensive too, or her
+employer would pay her off and get some one else who was up to its
+standard. No one person could read, or, if they could, would care to
+read, a tenth part of the literature upon her list; but that she
+considered the one useful element in what she was about. It introduced
+a moral influence. It would keep her audience humble--an end not
+always easy to achieve where that audience is feminine, and more
+richly endowed with aspiration than with solid learning--and show them
+how much there still was which they did not know, notwithstanding
+their acquirements.
+
+There came a timid knock at the door, and a second, which the
+Principal heard; and laying down her pen she sat bolt-upright and
+said, "Come in."
+
+It was Maida Springer who entered.
+
+At the sight of her subordinate looking crushed and wan, the
+Principal's aspect softened. Her impatience of interruption gave place
+to those motherly instincts which nestled sweet and fresh about her
+heart, though usually sheltered and concealed from an uncongenial
+world under the dry husk of her superior-woman-hood.
+
+"You--Maida?... I had almost given up hope of seeing you again. But
+have you been sick? You do not look much benefited by your stay at the
+shore--rather the other way."
+
+Maida looked down. "I am well, Miss Rolph. I arrived by the
+night-train. I suppose that accounts for my--for my want of looks,"
+and she sighed; but more for the want of looks, than for herself.
+
+"Did my letter miscarry? It is nearly a fortnight since I wrote."
+
+Maida coloured. "I got it, Miss Rolph, and I am come to thank you. I
+know I should have written at once; but--I meant to come instead.
+Indeed I started, but--when----" Her voice died away. She looked down
+more than she had done before, and her colour deepened.
+
+"What was it, my dear? What prevented your coming?"
+
+Maida lifted her head, drew a long breath, and raised her eyes to Miss
+Rolph's face. Then the impossibility of uttering what there was to
+tell arose before her. She bowed her head till the hat-brim and the
+wisp of blue veil came down between her eyes and those of the
+Principal. She strained down her arms before her, locked the fingers
+of both hands together, and was speechless.
+
+Miss Rolph was scarcely pleased that her kindly meant interest should
+be put aside; but she was not the woman to obtrude unwelcome sympathy.
+She stiffened back to business, and observed with manifest coldness of
+voice--
+
+"Your neglect may prove prejudicial to your interests, I fear; though
+perhaps not. It would have been great advancement for you, and quite a
+distinguished position, if you had been able to give the course on
+political economy and sociology. You would have been the first woman
+in this State to enter that important field. You would have made a
+name, and become a leader in our sex's emancipation. On the other
+hand, I admit that I felt a misgiving as to whether your character was
+yet sufficiently formed for the post. The long ages of woman's
+subordination have communicated a weakness of moral fibre to the
+individual of today, which it requires maturity of years, experience,
+and study, to overcome. I have feared at times that I detected some
+remains of the old-fashioned missishness in your character, not yet
+subdued. A year or two longer in your present duties may be
+advantageous. I have arranged with Dr Langenwoert from Boston to
+lecture three times a-week next term. After that--who knows?--but it
+depends on yourself. The Committee believes, as you are aware, that
+female education should be confided to women alone. You have been
+appointed a professorial assistant _pro tem_. to Dr Langenwoert. Avail
+yourself of your opportunities. Study his methods; and who knows but
+you may succeed him?"
+
+"Oh, Miss Rolph, how good you are! Forgive my seeming
+thanklessness,--but, indeed--oh, Miss Rolph!"
+
+Maida came forward and took the Principal's hand. Her voice was too
+tremulous to be trusted; her eyes were brimming full. She had entered
+that room feeling so lonely, desolate, and without a friend; and here,
+in her professional chief, with whom her intercourse had been limited
+to what related to her duties, was a woman who cared for her, bestowed
+consideration, and was kind. She could have kissed the hand--she would
+fain have kissed the lips which had spoken to her kindly; but Miss
+Rolph was so very superior a woman, so above and beyond female
+weakness!--and what was that which she had said just now about
+_missish?_
+
+Miss Rolph wheeled round on her pivoted chair, and looked with her
+clear, cool eyes in the other's face.
+
+"Maida Springer, you are in trouble! Tell me what it is. Am not I a
+woman? Confide in me. I know you have no mother. I would try to advise
+you as she might have done, though perhaps I am not quite old enough
+for that."
+
+She might have spared the last observation, being fifty-five, while
+Maida was but thirty; but, good lady, though undeniably superior, she
+was still a woman.
+
+Maida's eyes overflowed. This was kindness unexpected.
+
+"Take a chair, my dear. Draw up close to me, and tell me all." And
+when Maida drew close, she laid a hand upon her shoulder, and one
+soothingly upon the fingers wringing themselves into knots in
+perturbed irresolution.
+
+"I would--I would! But how? I cannot speak of it!"
+
+"When people have done no wrong, there is nothing they need fear to
+tell--to a friend. Injuries and mistakes often seem lessened when we
+can bring ourselves to speak about them. A burden shared presses with
+but half the weight it did before. Confide in me, Maida, Unburden your
+trouble."
+
+Maida's tears flowed freely. She made no effort to restrain them. They
+softened the dry crust of misery which encased her spirit. Her head
+inclined to her consoler. So did her heart in tender gratitude. She
+caressed the soothing hand, but still the pent-up words refused to
+come. Miss Rolph waited in silence, but found at length that she must
+assist if the explanation was to be made.
+
+"You said, Maida, that you intended to come instead of answering my
+letter--that you started?"
+
+"I did. I was at Narwhal Junction waiting for the train, when I met a
+very old friend on the platform--going to Clam Beach, just as I was
+coming away. I could not resist going back with my old friend, it was
+so long since we had met. And after that, the matter of the sociology
+class escaped my memory."
+
+"Very strange. Is Clam Beach a scene of such rackety dissipation that
+people forget their private affairs? I had inferred from your
+descriptions that it was quite retired--a place to rest in."
+
+"My friend and I had not met for years. The meeting engrossed me."
+
+Miss Rolph glanced in Maida's face, one sharp short glance, like an
+inquisitive bird, and with the flicker of a smile which did not spread
+beyond the corner of her mouth, inquired--
+
+"And did--she?--your friend, take as engrossing an interest in you, my
+dear? Such friendships are rare, as well as precious."
+
+"I did not say 'she,' Miss Rolph. It was a gentleman."
+
+"I imagined as much, my dear; but you were so hampered by your noun of
+epicene gender, that I thought it best to be rid of it."
+
+Maida blushed. "Oh, Miss Rolph! What will you think of me?--of my
+fitness as a pioneer in Woman's cause?"
+
+"Think, my dear? That you are a woman like the rest of us. This was a
+feature in your nature that seemed missing. The absence of a universal
+weakness does not necessarily argue strength. It may arise from
+insensibility, and merely show an incomplete nature. I think better of
+you, perhaps. Go on."
+
+"I had known him long ago. My first situation, when I began to teach,
+was in his uncle's house. He was a student at Harvard, but spent his
+vacations at home with us. His cousins were mere children; his uncle
+and aunt had their own affairs; I was his sole companion. He taught
+me much. It was a happy time. We were both young, fresh and hopeful,
+and--well---- He is the only young man I ever saw much of. He expected
+to make his fortune right away, and we---- But I cannot speak of
+it....
+
+"That was ten years ago. We corresponded--for the first year or so.
+After that we lost sight of one another. I came to Montpelier; he--was
+making his fortune. He recognised me on the platform at Narwhal
+Junction. I was so pleased to find that he remembered me. He asked if
+I was married, and he told me that he was not. He went back with me to
+Clam Beach--or so I thought. Perhaps I ought to put it the other way,
+and say that it was I who went with him; but at any rate we went
+together, and we were together there all the time. He knew nobody but
+myself, and he did not care to make acquaintances, it seemed; and he
+stayed on, though at first he had spoken of leaving in two days.
+And so it appeared to me--is there not some excuse for me, Miss
+Rolph?--that we were taking up our intimacy just where we had laid it
+down before."
+
+"Ah!" said Miss Rolph. The bird-like look of the philosophic
+investigator had left her features now, and she was listening with
+genuine interest. She had still a heart, away down deep below her
+theories and professional fads, and there was perennial interest for
+her in a kindness between man and woman; which may have been unworthy
+of her position, but was as salt to preserve her nature sound and
+wholesome.
+
+"What is his name, my dear? One follows a story so much better for
+knowing the names."
+
+"Roe--Gilbert Roe. Has it not a pleasant sound?"
+
+Miss Rolph's eyelids quivered in a momentary start. Then she looked
+down into her lap, compressing her lips, and making as if she would
+show no sign till all was told.
+
+"He stayed on more than a week. He is there now, I daresay. He was
+with me constantly--sat beside me at table. People said it was a sure
+case, and congratulated me; and I--well--what else could I think? I
+believed them. Looking back now, with my insight cleared by what came
+after, I am bound to own that he said nothing in all that time. When I
+tried to hark back to the community of feeling that had subsisted
+between us long ago, he disregarded and passed it by. I am not
+accusing him of behaving badly, remember. It is my own foolish
+credulity alone which I have to blame; and oh, Miss Rolph, what
+humiliation it has brought on me! It hunted me away home here. I dared
+not, for shame, go back to Clam Beach, even to bring away my things."
+
+"I do not follow."
+
+"We went one day--it was yesterday, but it seems like years since, for
+the gulf of misery I have waded across since then. There was a
+clam-bake at Blue Fish Creek, and we were there. Everybody was there.
+We were sitting apart in a shady place, waiting till the heat would
+temper down. He was smoking or reading the paper, I forget which. All
+of a sudden he jumped up and left me. I looked round. He was
+addressing a lady who seemed unwilling to hear him. She tried to pass
+on without noticing him. She had taken no notice of him at the Beach,
+though they had been living under the same roof for a week. He
+persisted in accosting her, and angry words passed between them. She
+said she was free of him. He would not admit it."
+
+"Who was the lady?"
+
+"A Miss Hillyard of Chicago or somewhere. I am not acquainted with
+her."
+
+"That is my niece! The Gilbert Roe you speak of must be her husband."
+
+"Husband? Ah! that may explain the cruelty of what he did next. And it
+was cruel and humiliating to me! And there need have been no occasion
+for it, if he had told me at the first that he was married. She
+taunted him with my friendship. I heard her. And he--was it manly of
+him?--he actually proposed to bring her to me, to ask if there was
+anything between us more than old acquaintanceship!" Maida's voice
+rose into a cry as she said it. She clenched her hands; and cheeks,
+brow, neck, grew scarlet, and then she buried her face in her
+handkerchief and sobbed.
+
+"It must be Rose, my niece, and her husband. I would believe anything
+that could be told me of them. There never were two such ill-regulated
+young things brought together, I do believe--so fond, so foolish, so
+obstinate and wayward. There never was such a fiasco as their married
+life has proved. Both handsome, both clever, both well off, and each,
+I believe, most truly attached to the other; yet neither would forbear
+to gratify a whim, neither would submit to be crossed in the smallest
+trifle by the other. They squabbled away for not much over a year, and
+then the Divorce Court came in and parted them. A pair of unruly
+children! It was whipped they should have been, and made promise to
+kiss and be friends. Instead of that, they are divorced and
+discredited for life, and nothing good need be expected ever to happen
+to either of them any more. These ill-considered changes in our
+customs are deplorable. It is good to rescue the downtrodden from
+oppression, but only evil can come of confounding liberty with
+licence."
+
+"Perhaps you may be mistaken," Maida answered, looking up and drying
+her eyes. It consoled her to hear her affronters soundly scolded, even
+in their absence. "Hillyard is no such uncommon name. This lady passed
+for unmarried at the hotel, and they say she is engaged to be married
+to a gentleman from Canada. Yes, by the by, it was to remonstrate
+about that, that Mr Roe spoke to her."
+
+"So the Divorce Court, even, does not end their squabbles! Whom was
+she said to be engaged to?"
+
+"A Mr Naylor--a real nice gentleman, and devoted to her. Every one was
+talking about the beautiful presents of jewellery he had ordered her
+from New York."
+
+"Naylor? What is he like?"
+
+"He is real nice, I should say, by his looks, and very rich. He has
+some nieces with him, well dressed and real aristocratic. Belong to
+the first families, I guess, and quite thick with all the first people
+at the Beach. No culture to speak of, but high-strung--very!"
+
+"How old is this Mr Naylor, should you suppose? and what is he like?
+Is he a tall man, now, for instance?"
+
+"He is not tall--no. Thick-set, almost stout; a heap shorter than
+Gil----Mr Roe. Middle-aged. His hair is beginning to turn. Not old,
+though certainly not young, but with a nice kindly face, and real
+cheerful. I hope she will stick to him. It would be real distressing
+if she were to jilt him, and I don't see what call a divorced husband
+can have to interfere. What were divorces made for, if not to keep bad
+husbands from bothering?"
+
+Miss Rolph had been moving uneasily in her chair. She stood up now,
+looking agitated but very firm.
+
+"I believe I know this Mr Naylor. The engagement must be broken off
+without an hour's delay. The idea is horrible!... I thought I had done
+with this awful girl. When she left her husband, and refused to listen
+to right principle and common decency, I washed my hands of her. But
+this---- It is an unimaginable horror! When does the next train leave
+for Clam Beach, I wonder? How do you go?"
+
+"You cannot go to-night You will not be able to connect," Maida
+answered in some disgust. The idea of Naylor's coming in and securing
+the lady, and leaving Roe forlorn, which she had begun to conjure up,
+was distinctly consoling. She did not like to think of the energetic
+Miss Rolph intervening to upset the pleasing possibility.
+
+Miss Rolph spread out a map. "There is Lippenstock, a station where
+all trains stop, close by. I can book for there, and drive over in the
+evening."
+
+Maida sighed. "If you go, Miss Rolph, would you kindly mention to Mrs
+Denwiddie that I am here? You know her, I daresay; you seem to know
+every one at the Beach. Say I got a telegram--say anything. She is
+sure to be thinking something dreadful about my going away so
+sudden-like--without a word, or taking away my things."
+
+Miss Rolph, in her agitation, looked round on Maida. She could not
+help smiling, notwithstanding her anxiety. The world is filled with
+such a tangle of conflicting interests, and each of us has room in his
+little brain only for the few which connect with himself.
+
+"I do not know the lady, my dear; but I shall mention at the office
+that you were suddenly called home. I will settle your bill, and bid
+them pack up and forward your things."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+                "YOU MAY TRUST ME TO HOLD MY TONGUE!"
+
+
+The dance at Blue Fish Creek was a success of its kind--the kind which
+might be expected. It was held in the "town hall," a sort of loft
+above the station of the village fire-engine, the one large room of
+the place; used on Sundays as a church by some sect which had not
+attained to a meeting-house of its own, as a singing-school on winter
+nights when the younger villagers grew tired of remaining at home, and
+as general place of gathering where the people met to discuss politics
+or to be entertained by itinerant players.
+
+The hall was crowded and very hot. Three fiddles supplied the
+squeaking music of catgut in agony, while the young and active
+disported themselves amid clouds of dust of their own raising. The
+dances were complicated and strange, being of the kind in which an
+earlier generation loved to take exercise; but the motley crowd was
+happy--poussetted, chassied, and performed feats which I can neither
+name nor spell, with a will.
+
+Margaret Naylor had had a great deal of young Petty's company, and was
+rather weary of him. From the moment when her uncle had bidden her
+farewell, her attention to the young man's conversation had begun to
+wander. Exert himself as he might, he failed to interest her, and he
+grew depressed himself in consequence. In the hall he persuaded her to
+dance once, but she refused point-blank when he ventured to ask her
+again. He felt dispirited, and soon withdrew from the festive throng,
+going out into the night, which had fallen dark and starless, and
+wandering round within hearing of the fiddles and the stamping feet,
+like a Peri shut out of Paradise--detesting the sounds of mirth in
+which he had no share, but unable to drag himself away. Even tobacco,
+that silent comforter of the miserable, failed to soothe him, and he
+hung around the entrance of the hall, to which he had no desire to
+return.
+
+It was growing late. The stablemen had put the horses to the vehicles
+for the home-going, and ranged them in double row to await the
+breaking up of the gathering; but still the fiddlers plied the cruel
+bow upon the screeching catgut, and still the steady tramp of the
+dancers went on as briskly as ever. Petty lighted a fresh cigar, and
+told himself that his time of waiting had nearly expired. As the
+thought formed itself, a figure passed him coming down from the hall.
+It was muffled, so far as the lightness of summer attire would admit.
+Something was drawn over the head which made it unrecognisable as it
+passed quickly from under the dim lamp on the stairs into the darkness
+without. It stood for an instant accustoming itself to the gloom. He
+could see it turn about as if looking for an expected object. There
+was an omnibus provided with a lantern in the line of vehicles, which
+weakly illumined a little circle around it, and lent a few feeble
+indications as to more distant objects. The figure looked around
+again, and then, in a tremulous voice raised little above a whisper,
+it uttered the one word "Walter!"
+
+Walter Petty's heart bounded into his throat, and beat tumultuously,
+like a startled bird, against his ribs. This was an altogether
+unexpected turn. She--there was no question as to who she was, when
+once that dear voice sounded--she called him by his name! It was her
+first time to do it, and he had not dared to hope she ever would. The
+cigar was tossed into the gutter in a twinkling, and he was at her
+side, too deeply moved to trust himself to speak.
+
+That was unnecessary. Her own excitement compelled her to take the
+word.
+
+"Oh quick, Walter! If mamma should miss me, and come out in search!
+What a commotion! Hurry! quick!... The buggy in front?--is it not?...
+You have everything ready of course? Oh hurry!"
+
+Petty was puzzled What was she up to? Yet it did not matter what. It
+was right, or she would not do it. And if there was danger, he would
+be at her side. She flew to the front of the line, he striding, almost
+running, beside her. She was in the buggy in an instant. He followed.
+The reins were in his hands. The stable-boy let go the horse's head.
+They were away.
+
+Away, but whither? Home, of course. Where else could she desire to go?
+Yet why so much mystery? such anxiety to escape, and steal away? It
+must be that detestable Wilkie, who had been so intrusive at
+Fessenden's Island. She had been staving him off for a week back, he
+thought he had observed. Now her mother was forcing him on her, and
+she had run away. What a fine spirited girl! Yet why did all the
+mothers run after that cad Wilkie? He was not a gentleman even, and
+yet Walter's own mother had been encouraging his attentions to his
+sister Ann. A pretty brother-in-law to bring into a family! And to
+think the fellow should presume to have two strings to his bow! And
+such strings! It made this jolly clatter of hoofs and wheels, this
+careering headlong through the night, even more delightful, if that
+were possible, to think of the other man left behind and biting his
+nails in disappointment.
+
+"Quicker, Walter! quicker! Are we safely away, do you think? Can they
+overtake us?" How close she nestled to his side! How strong and
+protecting he felt! How heroic, as he peered out in the darkness,
+between the ears of his horse, to see if all were clear! The horse
+could see the way and take the turns, Walter could not. His driving
+was an act of faith; he could but sit and peer, and feel the horse's
+mouth, and be alert against a stumble or anything which might befall.
+Not seeing, he could not guide. It was late, fortunately, and there
+were no other travellers on the road. The night air blew past them
+fresh and exhilarating, and the soft pressure of his companion
+nestling to his side was an unspeakable delight. She seemed
+agitated--unduly, as it appeared to him; but then a woman is a tender
+thing, he thought, and how tender and solicitous he would be of this
+one, if she gave him the right! He could feel her tremble, and she
+spoke short ejaculatory sentences from time to time; not as if she
+wanted him to answer--and what was there he could say?--but merely to
+relieve her high-wrought feelings.
+
+"I did not think I could have done it, Walter. Only for you I could
+have broke away. I feel quite wicked. But surely even mamma has no
+right to come in between you and me; and now she certainly must not."
+
+Walter Petty agreed with the conclusion, but was at a loss to divine
+the premisses through which it was arrived at. However, they were
+going down a steep hill, his faculties were on the stretch as they
+jolted down in the darkness, and he had to support the horse,
+momentarily in danger of a stumble or upset upon the loose stones
+which encumbered the way. He did not answer, and Margaret was growing
+accustomed to the situation and recovering her composure.
+
+They passed a wayside tavern whose windows still showed light,
+standing at a crossing where four ways met. Margaret recognised it,
+and the next moment observing that they turned to the right, she
+exclaimed--
+
+"Walter! That is Mollekin's; you should have turned to the left for
+Narwhal Junction. If you keep on as we are going, we shall be at Clam
+Beach in fifteen minutes."
+
+"Or ten, dear Margaret," Walter answered.
+
+Margaret bounded up in her seat and drew away. Had Walter not clutched
+at her gown in time, she must have fallen out.
+
+"Mr Petty! How come _you_ to be here? What trap--what trick is this?"
+
+"You brought me yourself, Miss Naylor. I have complied with your
+wishes as far as I have known how. You called me. You seemed to want
+my service. I was proud to be of use."
+
+"You? I was to have met---- I did not call you, Mr Petty. How could
+you suppose it? I am not intimate with you. We are common
+acquaintances. That is all. What right had you to intrude? You have
+done me an irreparable injury. I should not have expected this of
+you."
+
+"You came out of the hall in haste, Miss Naylor. You spoke to me. You
+said 'Walter.' I obeyed. I supposed you wanted to get home."
+
+"You----" Margaret did not finish the sentence. Why should she betray
+herself? she thought. He seemed to have no suspicion as to her
+intentions. Why should she enlighten him? As he had frustrated her
+design, her best course was to leave him in his delusion. It would
+prevent gossip in the hotel. She would acquiesce in his supposition,
+seeing that her scheme to get away was balked for the present. "I did
+not know you in the dark, Mr Petty; I thought you were some one else.
+But it is all right. I have been driven nearly crazy by those jarring
+fiddles, and the dust and heat. Thanks for your kind readiness to
+oblige. I am dizzy with headache. I shall go to my room at once, and
+be asleep before the rest get home."
+
+There was a clatter of hoofs behind them. Margaret drew her wraps over
+her head, and cowered low in her seat. Was she pursued? Was she
+overtaken? A little in front shone the lights of the hotel. How
+welcome they were now! A horseman dashed past at full gallop. He leapt
+down at the hotel door, and when the buggy drew up, Walter Blount was
+there to receive Margaret on alighting.
+
+"You took away my buggy, Mr Petty," he observed, when that gentleman's
+countenance came within the circle of light streaming from the hotel
+door. "However, you have brought it safely here. Accept my thanks. I
+will relieve you now." Then turning to Margaret, "Now, dearest! in
+again!" He followed her, and to Petty's astonishment, the pair were
+gone.
+
+Joseph Naylor, lounging on the gallery hard by, had seen the passage.
+He came forward and laid his hand on Petty's arm, as, standing
+stock-still in his bewilderment, he peered into the darkness after the
+vanished buggy.
+
+"A strange part you seem to have played in those young folk's
+comedy--a tantalising part, and laughable, if people knew about it.
+But we will not tell them, will we? They have been long engaged. Mamma
+was adverse, perhaps unreasonable. But she will come round. We won't
+interfere, to spoil sport. Will we, Petty?"
+
+Walter looked round rather ruefully. "You may trust to my holding my
+tongue, Mr Naylor. My own part in it has not been so distinguished
+that I need wish it known."
+
+The runaways were on the road to Lippenstock. Walter Blount had spent
+the evening in the hall ready to follow Margaret as she went out. He
+had missed her, and waited on, till the party broke up not long after.
+Then he had found that his buggy was gone, and not seeing the lady,
+surmised she might be in it--might have got in to await him, and
+allowed the horse to bolt. He had difficulty in procuring a horse to
+follow, but in the end succeeded in bribing the man to take a leader
+out of one of the omnibuses, under a storm of reproaches from the
+outraged passengers, and had galloped to the Beach in hopes of
+overtaking and reclaiming his missing "rig"; and he had succeeded,
+recovering both outfit and passenger.
+
+"Oh, Walter! what luck!" cried Margaret. "I thought that ridiculous Mr
+Petty had spoiled everything. His name is Walter, it seems; and when I
+called you, he answered. He should have known I would not call him by
+his name. We must hurry, though. Everybody will know, now, as soon as
+they get home. I see we are on the road to Lippenstock."
+
+"Yes. Why should we risk meeting them, even in the dark? But I do not
+think young Petty will say anything. He seems a decent fellow who
+would not do a shabby thing; and he is not likely to tell an adventure
+in which he plays so ridiculous a part. To carry away a lady for
+another man!"
+
+
+
+
+                           CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+                   SUSAN IS EQUAL TO THE EMERGENCY.
+
+
+Mrs Naylor was late of coming down-stairs next morning, but she took
+no special notice of Margaret's not having come to inquire for her,
+further than to prepare herself with a taunt at undutiful children
+against the moment when they should meet. Her empty chair at dinner,
+however, told that something was amiss; and Lucy could give no
+information, further than that Margaret had not slept at Clam Beach
+the previous night.
+
+"Not slept? What do you mean? Have you been keeping this from me all
+these hours? Why did you not tell me at once?"
+
+"Because you make such a fuss, mamma. It was as much as my peace for
+all day was worth to disturb you."
+
+"You take it coolly. You must know where she is?"
+
+"No indeed, mamma. She was under your own wing when I saw her last.
+You sat on one side of her, and Mr Petty on the other. If she has
+broken away at last from such close _surveillance_, it is not very
+surprising."
+
+"Has your sister run away, my dear?" asked Mrs Wilkie across the table
+of Lucy. Then, turning her eyes defiantly on the mother, with whom,
+since their last set-to, she could scarcely be said to be on speaking
+terms, she added, "I gave you warning, ma'am, about certain on-goings;
+and ye were scarcely ceevil to me on the head of it. Who's right now?
+I'd like to know."
+
+"Whist, mother!" said her son, pulling at her gown under the table.
+"Let people settle their own hash."
+
+"They would have mixed my son up in their hash, and done for him, if
+they could. I'll show them I see through them and their pretensions,
+now when they're fand out, and know what a little-worth crew they
+are."
+
+Joseph Naylor overheard, and could not restrain a smile, which excited
+the indignation of his sister-in-law almost beyond control.
+
+"I remember your polite expressions, ma'am," she said; "but there are
+distinctions which make a difference. The gentleman you then chose to
+speak of disrespectfully, coupling his name with Miss Naylor's in a
+most unwarrantable manner, is fifth son of a deputy-lieutenant and
+Custos Rotulorum in Memicombshire, England. You have not been used to
+meet gentlemen of his station, and had better not refer to them.
+Ignorance becomes ridiculous when it forces itself into notice."
+
+"The fifth son of a tirlie-wirlie, is he, ma'am? I think little of
+that. I'd have ye know that my son has a tirlie-wirlie of his own, if
+it's a cairidge ye mean. The fifth son of people with a cairidge isn't
+much. He'd have to ride outside on the dickie beside the driver, I'm
+thinking."
+
+Mrs Naylor was dumb. It is useless to retort on people who do not, or
+who will not, understand.
+
+At that moment a telegram was brought to Joseph. He tore it open, read
+it, and handed it to his sister-in-law.
+
+"This is from Margaret," he whispered. "Control yourself, and do not
+give the people room to snigger at your expense."
+
+The telegram was dated Gorham, New Hampshire. It ran: "Married at
+eleven this morning. Margaret Blount."
+
+Mrs Naylor read, and but for the sudden flushing of her features,
+controlled herself from any outward betrayal of displeasure. It is the
+one unmixed good which comes of living in public, that people are
+compelled to suppress their manifestations of feeling; and, driven by
+stress of circumstances to seem calm, the more speedily become so
+really. Reason, unimpeded by emotion, which is nourished on its own
+manifestations, comes sooner to the rescue, and shows how few
+miscarriages are worth the distress we are apt to give ourselves over
+them. In pretending before observers to make light of a
+disappointment, we involuntarily give heed to our own words, and come
+to think less of it than otherwise we should have done. Mrs Naylor's
+mind, instead of dwelling on her provocation, was forced to conceal
+the wound from the impertinently curious, and thereby dividing itself
+upon two views of the subject--the grievance and its concealment--was
+less disturbed by either.
+
+The first idea which came distinct to the surface, through her mental
+perturbation, was an appreciation of her own good sense; and her good
+fortune, in having boasted, immediately before having received this
+news, of her son-in-law's high connections. Now that the young man was
+indissolubly knotted to her family, and she must make the most of him,
+the Custos Rotulorum, with his ancestral hall in Memicombshire, was
+the sheet-anchor of his claim to consequence. If it was an ideal
+claim, instead of the grossly real one she had desired for her
+daughter's husband, it was infinitely finer in kind; and she prepared
+to take it up, and brandish it vigorously, to cow and overpower
+impressible minds, and suppress colonial pretension.
+
+She began to feel quite imperial, after a little trying, and when
+dinner was over, had come to feel that a Custos Rotulorum made an
+infinitely finer father-in-law for her girl than all the judges in the
+Dominion rolled into one could have done. When the ladies gathered
+up-stairs, therefore, she played her best card, under the
+circumstances, with quite a good heart; she showed them her telegram,
+and claimed their congratulations. She talked effusively of "an old
+attachment"--"two romantic children, who could not bring themselves to
+profane the interchange of their holy vows, with the garish
+vulgarities of orange-blossoms and Brussels lace, bride's-maids,
+breakfast, and speechifying, but had resolved to go away by themselves
+and be married in peace." "She had been persuaded to keep their secret
+and say nothing." "They were away on their wedding tour, now; but she
+was still under promise to reveal no more." "They might have gone to
+California or to visit the Custos Rotulorum," she would not say which,
+but she let it be inferred that it was England and the ancestral hall,
+to which their happy steps were bent.
+
+The ladies thus unexpectedly called on for congratulations paid them
+at once--they could not help themselves; but they paid them perhaps a
+little grudgingly, feeling injured at having been balked of the
+preliminary tattle. Had it been sympathy and condolence which Mrs
+Naylor claimed, they could have opened their hearts much more freely.
+They could have mingled a tear or two quite comfortably with hers, and
+felt deeply interested in the new sensation; but that two young people
+should go away and get married, without telling anybody, and then that
+it should turn out a right, proper, and desirable union, was treating
+them very badly, in the dearth just then of pleasurable excitement.
+
+Joseph Naylor was the only person who fully enjoyed the scene, as he
+walked upon the gallery with Rose, and looked in through the open
+windows. What a remarkable woman was this sister-in-law of his, to be
+sure! and how little he had been aware of those reserves of strength
+and quickness which she was now displaying to such good purpose!
+Accustomed in the family circle to have her way, and to overbear
+opposition with petulance, peevishness, indignation, or convenient ill
+health, as best suited, it had not occurred to him that for once she
+could act like a sensible woman and bravely accept the inevitable. He
+had dreaded an explosion, a scene, perhaps a fainting-fit and general
+commotion, when in helpless trepidation he had handed her that
+telegram; and here she was, with a smiling face, claiming felicitation
+on the overthrow of her plans and wishes, and actually taking credit
+for a result which had worked itself out in defiance of her
+opposition.
+
+"There is not an acrobat in Barnum's circus," he said, "who could have
+turned a somersault as neatly. I could not have believed our Susan
+capable of so sudden a change of front. A woman of her talent and
+resource is hid away and completely lost in a small place like Jones's
+Landing."
+
+Rose agreed with him, and was vastly interested in the whole affair.
+She dwelt on it, recurred to the different points and stages,
+discussed, analysed, and combed out every detail separately to its
+greatest length. It gratified Joseph that she should concern herself
+so warmly in his family affairs, but he would have been glad if her
+interest had been sooner satisfied. She contrived that the
+conversation should not progress, as it naturally would have done,
+from Margaret's love-passages to their own. Even the night on
+Fessenden's Island was not able, as Joseph had felt confident that it
+would be, to withdraw her thoughts from the runaways to their own
+tender affairs. When he endeavoured to transfer the interest, she
+returned with renewed curiosity to ask where Margaret and Blount first
+met, and from that digressed still further, to demand full particulars
+of his circumstances, birth, and parentage. She was as charmingly
+companionable as she always had been; Joseph loved and adored as he
+always did; but he could not draw her on to the closer and more
+personal topic on which he yearned to hold converse.
+
+That topic--their engagement--was one to which this afternoon she had
+an insuperable, and, as she told herself, an unreasonable repugnance
+to reopen at the present moment. Come it must, eventually, and she
+would welcome it; but not to-day. A shadow was upon her, the shadow of
+Bertie Roe, an influence to which she was resolved that she would not
+yield, but which yet had power to cast an unattractiveness and dimness
+over all beside. She had broken with that man for ever, had she not?
+but she had spoken with him, in dismissing him, and the converse of
+all the world beside had lost its relish. She felt, but would not own
+it. Had she not announced openly her new engagement? and was she, like
+some poor-spirited slave, to break it off and go back, because her old
+tyrant had chosen to lift his finger? What would her friends, the
+world, the free-thinking and strong-minded who had applauded her
+spirit, say to see her go back to bondage and resume her chains? She
+chafed to think of it, and tried to lash herself into new anger
+against her husband. And she had felt so strong in her resolve, all
+through the bygone week! To think that a few words, and a little
+pleading, should have weakened her like this! She was growing unworthy
+of her former self. How dim and indistinct her wrongs had grown since
+yesterday, when that sweet insidious voice had taken on itself to
+explain them away! Why had she listened?... And until yesterday, the
+sight of the woman he was always walking with had made her strong; but
+that crouching figure under the tree, seen yesterday, who could fear
+that? How feel jealous of aught so forlorn? There was a little triumph
+in it, that Bertie should have been brought so low; but she missed the
+tonic and strengthening influence which had been thus dispelled. She
+was resolved to resist, to have done with Bertie Roe; but there was a
+strange diffidence of the strength within her, which she would not
+acknowledge to herself, but still was aware of, foreboding general
+collapse.
+
+Trying to keep up this waning strength, she worked hard at being
+interested in Joseph and his family, especially in the family; that
+was the easier subject of the two, and it avoided comparisons,
+dangerous at this moment--comparison of years, of stature and physical
+endowment, which told against him.
+
+And so Joseph and Rose worked out this day in ostensible amity and
+intimacy, but with an inward doubt burrowing and working like hidden
+currents in spring beneath the ice, eating it away, and honeycombing
+the solid mass, which still looks huge and immovable as ever; and will
+continue so to seem, till comes the end, and with a crash the massive
+structure crumbles and melts and disappears.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+                        MISS ROLPH IS SEVERE.
+
+
+It was growing late at night. The proprietor and his clerk had
+concluded the labours of the day, and were arranging with the
+house-steward the bill of fare for the morrow. The male guests were
+up-stairs in the parlours with the ladies, or else had secluded
+themselves to play poker in private rooms, in accordance with the
+rigorous house-rule against gambling. Gilbert Roe alone paced the
+lower corridor, smoking cigar after cigar, which failed to soothe
+him--restless and woebegone, waiting on for he knew not what, unable
+to tear himself from the dreariest quarters in which he had ever
+sojourned.
+
+He was not popular with the men. He took no interest in their
+amusements, having other cares at this time, and they voted him
+unsociable and of no account. Since Maida's disappearance, the few
+lady guests with whom he was acquainted had asked him where she was;
+and on his declaring that he did not know, they had turned away with a
+frightened and suspicious glance, as though they suspected him of
+having made away with her. He wandered about the house like another
+Cain, suspected, dreaded, and shunned, as though there were a mark of
+warning and of evil on his brow; but he would not go away while Rose
+remained an inmate of the house. He had an impression that there was
+an influence within her doing battle on his behalf--he had detected
+her furtive glances more than once wandering towards him, and averted
+again ere he could meet them, and he would not go away; but the
+waiting was inexpressibly dreary in the meantime.
+
+The rumble of wheels was heard outside; a vehicle stopped before the
+door. The porter, drowsing in his corner, started to his feet and ran
+down to carry in baggage, and the landlord followed to inspect the
+untimely arrival. It was a tall spare lady, dressed in black, who
+walked straight to the desk and registered herself, "Principal Rolph,
+Female College, Montpelier;" then asked to have Miss Springer's bill
+made out, that she might settle it, and desired that lady's effects to
+be packed up and forwarded.
+
+Having finished her business with the clerk, she turned to follow the
+bell-boy to her appointed chamber, and met Roe straight in the eye, as
+he wearily paced the tiles, counting the minutes in their lagging
+flight, till his hour should arrive for turning in.
+
+"Bertie Roe! Ha! you may well look guilty and ashamed to face me. You
+did not expect to see me here, I reckon."
+
+He held out his hand to her, though his look on meeting was scarcely
+one of welcome.
+
+"We will dispense with hand-shaking, all things considered. We can
+neither of us be very pleased to see the other; but you need not pass
+on. I mean to speak my mind to you before I let you go."
+
+"Speak on, Miss Rolph. It is natural you should feel strongly against
+me. I will not even tell you that it was not my fault. That would seem
+like casting reflections where I promised and still wish to defend."
+
+"That sounds proper enough; but I have more against you than you
+think--another instance of your misconduct. What possesses you, Bertie
+Roe, to go prowling and ravening about the world like this?--blighting
+the lives and devastating the affections of trusting women? Why do you
+do it? What pleasure can you feel in crushing a girl's self-respect,
+and making her feel shameless and a fool?"
+
+"She does not feel one bit like a fool, Miss Rolph; and her
+self-respect is not crushed at all. Far from wishing to crush her, I
+am ready to humble myself, and take the blame of what I did not bring
+about, and, heaven knows, had no wish should happen."
+
+"Then you did not wish Maida Springer to run away as she did? If she
+had stayed, would you have proposed to marry her? You took a curious
+way to show your intentions."
+
+"Maida Springer! What have I to do with _her?_ And what have _you_ to
+do with Maida Springer?"
+
+"She is a particular friend of mine. I have a high opinion of Maida
+Springer, and I think you have behaved to her like a ruffian."
+
+"We are old friends. I have always wished her well, and she wishes me
+well, I am sure. An unkind word has never passed between us, and we
+have been constantly together for--let me see--all the time I have
+been staying here."
+
+"I know that; and when a single man devotes himself in that open way
+to an unmarried woman, what does it mean, if not marriage? Was it
+honourable of you, Bertie Roe, to behave like that?"
+
+"I do not consider myself a single man, Miss Rolph. I never
+shall--unless--unless--which God forbid!"
+
+"Did you tell her you did not consider yourself single?"
+
+"How could I, Miss Rolph? Do you think a man is made of wood and
+leather?"
+
+"Then you left her to believe that you were single, Bertie Roe; and
+you should be ashamed of yourself. You told her--I have it from
+herself--that you were not married."
+
+"Neither am I, Miss Rolph. The Divorce Court has annulled my
+marriage."
+
+"You have behaved dishonourably, Bertie; and with callous cruelty
+besides, from what she told me, in betraying her weakness as you did,
+to the other. It was not a manly act, let me tell you. I expected
+better things of you."
+
+"How could I know, or even suspect? Do you take me for so conceited an
+ass that I must needs suppose every woman I converse with is in love
+with me?"
+
+"That will not do, Bertie. You are not such a stripling as not to know
+that girls expect to marry, that society forbids them to make the
+advance, and that if a man pays them undivided and conspicuous
+attention, they are entitled to believe that he means something."
+
+"I never thought of that, Miss Rolph. If you will believe me, there is
+but one woman in the world I can ever feel towards in that way."
+
+"And a pretty way you took to show your love!--deserted her--judgment
+by default--'cruelty and desertion'!"
+
+"What could I do? She would not listen to reason. I could not let her
+name be dragged through the law reports in company with those of all
+the worst people in the State. No; you must acknowledge, Miss Rolph,
+that I showed forbearance and consideration there, at least. What
+would the charming little tempers we both remember have looked like,
+after being carded out and hackled by a pair of foul-mouthed lawyers?
+They would have made her a laughing-stock to the whole country. I know
+I was right in letting judgment go by default, though it went sorely
+against my grain to do it."
+
+"And now you see the consequence. She is engaged to marry another
+man."
+
+"But you will not let her, Miss Rolph? You will insist on her giving
+me another chance. I am confident she will never be fond of any one
+else as she was fond of me, and still is in her heart, if she would
+listen to its promptings."
+
+"That you may bicker together incessantly, and quarrel anew?--like a
+pair of spoilt children, to be a scandal to decent people?"
+
+"Ah! that is over, you may rely, Miss Rolph. I venture to assert that
+we have both suffered too deeply in our separation ever to let the
+bond, if it should be renewed, fret us again. Such patience as we
+shall have with one another, will be a sight to see. You will help us
+to make it up, Miss Rolph? Your advice goes a long way with her."
+
+"I fear not. I have tried ere now, and had my interference declined
+with thanks. I cannot attempt to make it up between you and her. In
+fact I had resolved to wash my hands of her altogether; but for other
+reasons, this new engagement of hers must be broken off, though I
+shall not approach _her_ on the subject--in the first instance, at
+least. I shall go to the gentleman."
+
+"Only break it off, dear Miss Rolph, and you have my lifelong
+gratitude--and hers too, though it seems a bold assertion; but I have
+seen signs of relenting, and I believe it is pride, and the fear of
+being laughed at, which chiefly keep up the estrangement."
+
+"We shall see, Bertie; but you do not deserve it," said Miss Rolph,
+attempting to keep up the rigour of her first words, though the
+friendliness of her nod and smile at parting belied the pretence.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+                              MILLICENT.
+
+
+Next morning, Joseph Naylor was disturbed in the act of shaving by the
+intelligence that a lady desired to see him, and that she was waiting
+his coming down-stairs in one of the parlours.
+
+"A lady? Who is it? What does she want?" he inquired of the black boy
+who brought the message.
+
+"Principal of the Female College at Montpelier, sah."
+
+"Never heard of the institution. Some one drumming up for pupils, I
+suppose. My nieces are rather old to put to school. They would not go
+if I tried to put them. Why does she not apply to their mother? Susan
+never did allow me to interfere about the schools--or anything else,
+for that matter, when she could manage without me."
+
+He finished his dressing quickly, however, and hastened down-stairs.
+
+In the parlour stood a tall, grey woman, clad in black, awaiting him.
+He advanced with a low bow and a look of inquiry. The lady looked
+earnestly in his face, coming forward to meet him with extended hand.
+
+"You do not know me, Joseph?"
+
+Joseph stared in surprise at so intimate a form of address; yet there
+was a tone in the voice which seemed not unfamiliar, though he could
+not connect it in his memory with any particular time, place, or
+person.
+
+"I am changed, of course,"--it was still the lady who spoke,--"but so
+are you. Try if you cannot recall. It is five-and-twenty years since
+we last met."
+
+"You have the advantage, ma'am."
+
+"My name is Millicent Rolph. You know me now?"
+
+"You? Do you mean that you are Lina's sister?"
+
+"I am, Joseph--your sister-in-law. You cannot have forgotten our last
+meeting at the old home in New Orleans?"
+
+"I can never forget the last time I met Millicent Rolph; but I trace
+no resemblance between you and her. She was a woman of thirty,
+dark-haired, large, handsome; you--do not resemble her."
+
+"She was thirty twenty-five years ago, and you were twenty-two. The
+years have left their mark upon us both. I cannot but be changed. I
+have come through the troubles of a lifetime. There was the war, and
+mother's death, and the ruin of our affairs in New Orleans; and there
+have been trials and much hard work since then, to change me into the
+spare, elderly, white-haired woman you see now. You are changed too,
+though life has dealt less harshly, I should judge. Yet I recognised
+you at once, though I had prayed that I might not--that you might
+prove to be another man, bearing by accident the name of my
+brother-in-law.... We were such friends once, Joseph, in the long ago.
+Sitting under the shade of the magnolias in the dear old garden, with
+Lina between us----"
+
+"Have done, Millicent! I confess now that it is you. I recognise your
+voice. But do not stir up old memories. They haunted me like ghosts
+for more than twenty years. It is only recently that I have been able
+to lay them.... Let them lie. You weighed me down with misery enough
+when last we met. Do not refer to it. I had rather we had not met now.
+It is like reopening a grave, even to hear you speak. It brings back
+all I would forget--all I have been cheating myself into believing
+that I had buried and got rid of at last."
+
+"I can understand the feeling."
+
+"What can I do to serve you? Tell me; but let us part at once. I will
+do anything, but I cannot stand here listening. Your voice is heavy
+with memories like forebodings; my heart sinks at the very sound.
+Speak, and let me leave you. What do you want?"
+
+"I want nothing, Joseph--nothing for myself. It is for your own sake I
+am come, and it tears my heart to say the things I have to tell you."
+
+"You said something like that when you acted so cruelly before, you
+and your mother; but you did not spare me."
+
+"I am come to warn you, Joseph, against this marriage you propose to
+make."
+
+"You are? Have you not injured me enough in my affections already? Are
+five-and-twenty years of widowhood not enough to have inflicted on one
+who never knowingly offended you? What wrong have I done you, that you
+should persecute me like this?"
+
+"Joseph, I always loved you like a sister. It crushes me to be made
+the herald of your disappointments; but I have no choice."
+
+"I will not listen to you. You shall not put me from Rose as you did
+from Lina. Let me pass."
+
+"You cannot marry Rose. You must stop and hear me;" and she planted
+herself between him and the door.
+
+"Then I must escape by the window; and there she is, standing at the
+farther end of the gallery. How spirited and sweet she looks--how like
+our Lina!... Millicent, you will pity, and not come in between? Look,
+she sees us! She starts. She is coming to us with that pretty shyness
+which seems half defiance. One would think she knew you well,
+Millicent?"
+
+"She does, Joseph. Listen to her when we meet; it will save a world of
+painful explanation."
+
+Rose came forward, not very quickly, though pride forbade her
+faltering. She held her head erect, and her colour was heightened; but
+her eyes were far from steady, and for all her endeavours to outface
+the situation, betrayed an inclination to seek the ground.
+
+"You here, Aunt Millicent? I did not know that you and Mr Naylor were
+acquainted."
+
+"_Aunt_ Millicent? Are you two related, then?" gasped Joseph, his
+nether jaw falling.
+
+"She is your own daughter, Joseph Naylor! It was to tell you so that I
+sought you out--to preserve you from the hideous mistake you were
+about to make. But oh! it breaks my heart that I should be your
+messenger of evil tidings again."
+
+Joseph leant against the window-jamb, looking very pale, and uttering
+a sigh so deep that it sounded like a moan.
+
+"Do you mean that she is Lina's child?" he said, after a pause.
+
+"Yes; and yours."
+
+"I never was told that I had a child. You might have told me that,
+when you told the rest."
+
+"Would it have been easier, think you, to bear the loss of Lina, if
+you had been told that we were keeping you from your child? If we had
+told you of her birth, perhaps you might have claimed her. Lina must
+have learnt everything. She would have died of shame and remorse."
+
+"When was the child born?"
+
+"The day the news reached us of her father's loss at sea; her birth
+was hastened by the news. The mother nearly died. She fell out of one
+fainting-fit into another, till exhausted nature could endure no more.
+For days her life hung trembling in the balance, and then the sight of
+the baby turned the scale. There was something to live for--something
+that seemed part of you. We took them North. The baby throve, and for
+her sake poor Lina took heart and tried to live."
+
+"And you deprived the child even of its father's name?"
+
+"Hillyard adopted her. Lina had no other family. She lived five years
+only after that marriage."
+
+"Why did you not restore her to me when her mother died?"
+
+"We could not, Joseph: the world is so big. Where were we to look for
+you? You came no more to New Orleans. By-and-by the war drove us
+North, and reduced us to poverty. Mother died. I went to live with
+Hillyard and bring up the child. He was devoted to her. They were
+everything to one another. It would have been cruelty to interfere."
+
+"You seem to have had pity for every one but me, Millicent. Could this
+Hillyard's rights in the child compare with mine?"
+
+"You had gone out of our lives, Joseph. We knew--that is, I
+knew--little about your family, except that they lived somewhere up in
+Canada. That was too far away for us, living in New Orleans, to take
+much interest in. Afterwards, when I lived with Hillyard in Canada,
+near Sarnia, I did not remember, or know how to set about inquiring."
+
+"You might have been more considerate, Millicent. You have had a care
+for every one but me. I do not deny that you do your duty in
+interfering to prevent me from marrying my own daughter; but you
+should have begun sooner. To find an intended wife changed into a
+daughter is--is--is a shock!"
+
+"You will bear it, Joseph, like the man you are. In any case, you
+could not have married this headstrong girl: she is another man's
+wife."
+
+Rose flushed, but said nothing. She and her Aunt Millicent had been
+accustomed to each other's contradictious speeches all through life.
+It was Joseph who came to the rescue of his new-found daughter.
+
+"You should not speak so, Millicent, of your sister's child. You may
+not hold with divorces in general, but you should keep quiet in this
+case. If the law of her country declares her single, there is no
+gainsaying it."
+
+"That is just where the impediment stands, Joseph; for I have taken a
+lawyer's advice. She is a single woman in the United States, and a
+married one in British territory. She was married at Sarnia in Canada.
+She is Bertie Roe's wife wherever British law prevails, seeing that
+she was granted her divorce on grounds which a British court will not
+allow. See the scrape your daughter is in! and use a father's
+authority to send her back to her husband."
+
+Rose tried to grow angry. She turned upon her aunt with a frown, to
+repudiate the proposal and declare she would never go back. But the
+words failed her; a strange, sweet weakness stole through every limb.
+She felt conquered without knowing how, or desiring to know why. She
+covered her face and burst into tears.
+
+Millicent saw her opportunity. While father and daughter were still
+struggling with themselves to regain composure, she sent for Roe,
+presented him to his father-in-law, and explained the legal position
+of his relation to his wife.
+
+The wife kept her face concealed in her handkerchief, but she relented
+so far as to let Bertie take her hand. To all expostulation she
+declared that she could not do more. "Was she to make herself the
+laughing-stock of the house? She was on American ground, where
+Millicent herself acknowledged she was free; and she would remain so,
+or go right away from everybody, if they teased her any more."
+
+It was concluded at length that they should return to Canada that very
+day. Roe, Mrs Naylor, Lucy, and Millicent, accompanied Rose and her
+father; and Blount and Margaret were telegraphed to meet them at
+Jones's Landing. There, away from the curious eyes of fellow-guests
+who had been witnesses, if unconscious ones, of their little comedy,
+the party at once fell into their readjusted relations with one
+another. Joseph, with a grown-up and married daughter, naturally took
+the position of benevolent patriarch and head of the family. He
+associated Blount in his business, thereby securing that his niece
+should not be carried away into the wilds, and contenting his
+sister-in-law Susan, who thereafter maintained in private to Lucy that
+she had carried her point after all, notwithstanding the seeming
+defeat; as, but for the stand which she had made against Margaret's
+living in the woods, it never would have occurred to Joseph to provide
+for Blount, and settle the pair beside her at Jones's Landing.
+
+From the moment Rose got into the railway at Narwhal Junction, she
+slid contentedly back into Mrs Roe. No one ever again alluded to an
+estrangement between the married pair, and Jones's Landing was left in
+total ignorance that their married life had ever been other than the
+even, trustful, and happy existence which it had now become. The two
+seemed never apart, never weary of each other's society, yet never in
+each other's way in fulfilling the duties of social life. The only
+separation which took place between them was when Gilbert returned to
+Chicago to wind up his affairs there, preparatory to settling in
+Canada beside his father-in-law. Rose shrank from meeting again the
+aiders and abettors who had encouraged her matrimonial escapades, of
+which she was now thoroughly ashamed, as well as the friends who had
+disapproved of her conduct. Having sealed a peace with her husband,
+she was fain to forget that they had ever been divided. Scenes and
+persons associated with the estrangement had become alike detestable
+to her; she wished never to see or hear of them again. The only
+occasion on which she has ever recurred to that miserable year of her
+life was when, about twelve months after their establishment at
+Jones's Landing, she came unexpectedly upon Bertie writing a letter,
+with a case containing jewellery lying open on the desk beside him.
+
+"What a lovely bracelet, Bertie!"
+
+He looked up, colouring and confused, and drew the blotting-paper
+across his letter.
+
+"And you are writing! To whom, pray? Sending valuable presents to
+ladies, and not a word to your wife. There was a time--when,--but
+never mind. Who is it you are writing to?"
+
+"It is--but you never heard the name--Mrs Langenwoert."
+
+"No. Where did you know her?"
+
+"Do you remember the little schoolma'am at Clam Beach?--the last
+lady you did me the honour to be jealous of? She is to be married
+to-morrow."
+
+
+
+                               THE END.
+
+
+
+                PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's True to a Type, Vol. II (of 2), by Robert Cleland
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40325 ***