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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41672 ***
+
+                       A CHANGED HEART
+
+                          A Novel.
+
+                    BY MAY AGNES FLEMING,
+
+    AUTHOR OF "GUY EARLSCOURT'S WIFE," "A TERRIBLE SECRET," "A WONDERFUL
+    WOMAN," "ONE NIGHT'S MYSTERY," "SILENT AND TRUE," "A MAD MARRIAGE,"
+    "LOST FOR A WOMAN," ETC., ETC.
+
+
+    "If Fortune, with a smiling face,
+     Strew roses on our way,
+    When shall we stoop to pick them up?
+     To-day, my love, to-day."
+
+
+    NEW YORK:
+    Copyright, 1881, by
+    _G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers_,
+    LONDON: S. LOW, SON & CO.
+    MDCCCLXXXIII.
+
+    Stereotyped by
+    SAMUEL STODDER,
+    ELECTROTYPER & STEREOTYPER,
+    90 ANN STREET, N. Y.
+
+
+    TROW
+    PRINTING AND BOOK-BINDING CO.
+    N. Y.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+    CHAPTER                                                       PAGE
+
+        I. Miss McGregor at home                                     7
+
+       II. Nathalie                                                 14
+
+      III. Miss Rose                                                25
+
+       IV. Val's office                                             36
+
+        V. Killing two birds with one stone                         46
+
+       VI. An evening at Miss Blake's                               59
+
+      VII. Too many irons in the fire                               67
+
+     VIII. Val turns mentor                                         82
+
+       IX. Wooed and won                                            95
+
+        X. Fast and loose                                          112
+
+       XI. How Captain Cavendish meant to marry Cherrie.           123
+
+      XII. In which the wedding comes off                          138
+
+     XIII. After the wedding                                       150
+
+      XIV. Mining the ground                                       157
+
+       XV. Springing the mine                                      167
+
+      XVI. A crime                                                 179
+
+     XVII. Found guilty                                            191
+
+    XVIII. The darkening sky                                       207
+
+      XIX. The flight                                              217
+
+       XX. "One more unfortunate"                                  227
+
+      XXI. Mrs. Butterby's lodgings                                236
+
+     XXII. The heiress of Redmon                                   247
+
+    XXIII. The heiress of Redmon enters society                    259
+
+     XXIV. The spell of the enchantress                            275
+
+      XXV. The double compact                                      283
+
+     XXVI. Mr. Paul Wyndham                                        299
+
+    XXVII. Mr. Wyndham's wooing                                    312
+
+   XXVIII. Mr. Wyndham's wedding                                   324
+
+     XXIX. Mr. Wyndham's mother                                    336
+
+      XXX. Very mysterious                                         349
+
+     XXXI. Val's discovery                                         366
+
+    XXXII. Cherrie tells the truth                                 377
+
+   XXXIII. Overtaken                                               391
+
+    XXXIV. The Vesper-Hymn                                         406
+
+     XXXV. "Quoth the Raven, 'Nevermore'"                          417
+
+    XXXVI. Drifting out                                            425
+
+   XXXVII. Dies Iræ, Dies Illa                                     430
+
+  XXXVIII. Out of the crooked ways                                 450
+
+    XXXIX. In Hope                                                 478
+
+
+
+
+A CHANGED HEART.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+MISS McGREGOR AT HOME.
+
+
+It was a foggy night in Speckport. There was nothing uncommon in its
+being foggy this close May evening; but it was rather provoking and
+ungallant of the clerk of the weather, seeing that Miss McGregor
+particularly desired it to be fine. Miss Jeannette (she had been
+christened plain Jane, but scorned to answer to anything so
+unromantic)--Miss Jeannette McGregor was at home to-night to all the
+élite of Speckport; and as a good many of the élite owned no other
+conveyance than that which Nature had given them, it was particularly
+desirable the weather should be fine. But it wasn't fine; it was nasty
+and drizzly, and sultry and foggy; and sky and sea were blotted out; and
+the gas-lamps sprinkled through the sloppy streets of Speckport blinked
+feebly through the gloom; and people buttoned up to the chin and wrapped
+in cloaks flitted by each other like phantoms, in the pale blank of wet
+and fog. And half the year round that is the sort of weather they enjoy
+in Speckport.
+
+You don't know Speckport! There I have the advantage of you; for I know
+its whole history, past, present, and--future, I was going to say,
+though I don't set up for a prophet; but the future of Speckport does
+not seem hard to foretell. The Union-jack floats over it, the State of
+Maine is its next-door neighbor, and fish and fog are its principal
+productions. It also had the honor of producing Miss McGregor, who was
+born one other foggy night, just two-and-twenty years previous to this
+"At Home," to which you and I are going presently, in a dirty little
+black street, which she scorns to know even by name now. Two-and-twenty
+years ago, Sandy McGregor worked as a day-laborer in a shipyard, at
+three and sixpence per day. Now, Mr. Alexander McGregor is a
+ship-builder, and has an income of ten thousand gold dollars per year.
+Not a millionaire, you know; but very well off, and very comfortable,
+and very contented; living in a nice house, nicely furnished, keeping
+horses and carriage, and very much looked up to, and very much respected
+in Speckport.
+
+Speckport has its Fifth Avenue as well as New York. Not that they call
+it Fifth Avenue, you understand; its name is Golden Row, and the abiders
+therein are made of the porcelain of human clay. Great people, magnates
+and aristocrats to their finger-tips, scorning the pigmies who move in
+second and third society and have only the happiness of walking through
+Golden Row, never of dwelling there. The houses were not brown-stone
+fronts. Oh, no! there were half-a-dozen brick buildings, some pretty,
+little Gothic cottages, with green vines, and beehives, and bird-houses,
+about them, and all the rest were great painted palaces of wood. Some
+had green shutters, and some had not; some were painted white, and some
+brown, and some stone-color and drab, and they all had a glittering air
+of spickspan-newness about them, as if their owners had them painted
+every other week. And in one of these palaces Mr. McGregor lived.
+
+You drove down Golden Row through the fog and drizzle, between the
+blinking lamps, and you stop at a stone-colored house with a brown
+hall-door, and steps going up to it. The hall is brilliant with gas, so
+is the drawing-room, so are the two parlors, so is the dining-room, so
+are the dressing rooms; and the élite of Speckport are bustling and
+jostling one another about, and making considerable noise, and up in the
+gallery the band is in full blast at the "Lancers"--for they know how
+to dance the Lancers in Speckport--and the young ladies dipping and
+bowing through the intricacies of the dance, wear their dresses just as
+low in the neck and as short in the sleeves as any Fifth avenue belle
+dare to do.
+
+Very pretty girls they are, floating about in all the colors of the
+rainbow. There are no diamonds, perhaps, except glass ones; but there
+are gold chains and crosses, and bracelets, and lockets and things; and
+some of the young ladies have rings right up to the middle joint of
+their fingers. The young gentlemen wear rings, too, and glittering
+shirt-studs and bosom-pins, and are good looking and gentlemanly. While
+the young folks dance, the old folks play wallflower or cards, or take
+snuff or punch, or talk politics. All the juvenile rag-tag and bobtail
+of Speckport are outside, gaping up with open-mouthed admiration at the
+blazing front of the McGregor mansion, and swallowing the music that
+floats through the open windows.
+
+Sailing along Golden Row, with an umbrella up to protect her bonnet from
+the fog, comes a tall lady, unprotected and alone, and "There's Miss Jo,
+hurrah!" yells a shrill voice; and the tall lady receives her ovation
+with a gratified face, and bows as she steps over the McGregor
+threshold. Ten minutes later, she enters the drawing-room, divested of
+her wrappings; and you see she is elderly and angular, and prim and
+precise, and withal good-natured. She is sharp at the joints and
+shoulder-blades, and her black silk dress is hooked up behind in the
+fashion of twenty years ago. She wears no crinoline, and looks about as
+graceful as a lamp-post; but she is fearfully and wonderfully fine, with
+a massive gold chain about her neck that would have made a ship's cable
+easily, and a cross and a locket clattering from it, and beating time to
+her movements on a cameo brooch the size of a dinner-plate. Eardrops, a
+finger-length long, dangle from her ears; cameo bracelets adorn her
+skinny wrists; and her hair, of which she has nothing to speak of, is
+worn in little corkscrew curls about her sallow face.
+
+Miss Joanna Blake is an old maid, and looks like it; she is also an
+exile of Erin, and the most inveterate gossip in Speckport.
+
+A tremendous uproar greets her as she enters the drawing-room, and she
+stops in considerable consternation.
+
+In a recess near the door was a card-table, round which four elderly
+ladies and four elderly gentlemen sat, with a laughing crowd looking on
+from behind. The card-party were in a violently agitated and excited
+state, all screaming out together at the top of the gamut.
+
+Miss Jo swept on in majestic silence, nodding right and left as she
+streamed down the apartment to where Mrs. McGregor stood, with a little
+knot of matrons around her--a lady as tall as Miss Jo herself, and ever
+so much stouter, her fat face hot and flushed, and wielding a fan
+ponderously, as if it were a ton weight. Mrs. McGregor, during forty
+years of her life, had been a good deal more familiar with
+scrubbing-brushes than fans; but you would not think so now, maybe, if
+you saw her in that purple-satin dress and gold watch, her fat hands
+flashing with rings, and that bewildering combination of white lace and
+ribbons on her head. Her voice was as loud as her style of dress, and
+she shook Miss Jo's hand as if it had been a pump-handle.
+
+"And how do you do, Miss Blake, and whatever on earth kept you till this
+hour? I was just saying to Jeannette, a while ago, I didn't believe you
+were going to come at all."
+
+"I could not help it," said Miss Jo. "Val didn't come home till late,
+and then I had to stop and find him his things. You know, my dear, what
+a trouble men are, and that Val beats them all. Has everybody come?"
+
+"I think so; everybody but your Val and the Marshes. Maybe my lady is in
+one of her tantrums, and won't let Natty come at all. Jeannette is all
+but distracted. Natty's got lots of parts in them things they're
+having--tablets--no; tableaux, that's the name, and they never can get
+on without her. Jeannette's gone to look for Sandy to send him up to
+Redmon to see."
+
+"I say, Miss Jo, how do you find yourself this evening?" exclaimed a
+spirited voice behind her; and Mrs. McGregor gave a little yelp of
+delight as she saw who it was--a young man, not more than twenty,
+perhaps, very good-looking, with bright gray eyes, fair hair, and a
+sunny smile. He was holding out a hand, small and fair as a lady's, to
+Miss Blake, who took it and shook it heartily.
+
+"Jo's very well, thank you, Mr. Charles. How is your mamma this
+evening?"
+
+"She was all right when I left home. Is Val here?"
+
+"Not yet. Have you just come?"
+
+The young gentleman nodded, and was turning away, but Mrs. McGregor
+recalled him.
+
+"Isn't your mother coming, Charley?"
+
+"No, she can't," said Charley. "The new teacher's come, and she's got to
+stay with her. She told me to bring her apologies."
+
+The ladies were all animation directly. The new teacher! What was she
+like? When did she come? Was she young? Was she pretty? Did she seem
+nice?
+
+"I didn't see her," said Charley, lounging against a sofa and flapping
+his gloves about.
+
+"Didn't see her! I thought you said she was in your house?" cried Mrs.
+McGregor.
+
+"So she is. I mean I didn't see her face. She had a thick vail on, and
+kept it down, and I left two or three minutes after she came."
+
+"She came to Speckport in this evening's boat, then?" said Miss Jo.
+"What did she wear?"
+
+Charley was bowing and smiling to a pretty girl passing on her partner's
+arm.
+
+Mrs. McGregor nodded, and Charley sauntered off. The two ladies looked
+after him.
+
+"What a nice young man that Charley Marsh is!" exclaimed Miss Jo,
+admiringly, "and so good-looking, and so steady, and so good to his
+mamma. You won't find many like him nowadays."
+
+Mrs. McGregor lowered her voice to a mysterious whisper.
+
+"Do you know, Miss Jo, they say he goes after that Cherrie Nettleby. Did
+you hear it?"
+
+"Fiddlestick!" said Miss Jo, politely. "Speckport's got that story out,
+has it? I don't believe a word of it!"
+
+"Here's Val!" cried Mrs. McGregor, off on a new tack; "and, my patience!
+what a swell he's got with him!"
+
+Miss Jo looked round. Coming down the long room together were two young
+men, whose appearance created a visible sensation--one of them,
+preposterously tall and thin, with uncommonly long legs and arms--a
+veritable Shanghai--was Mr. Valentine Blake, Miss Jo's brother and sole
+earthly relative. He looked seven-and-twenty, was carelessly dressed,
+his clothes hanging about him any way--not handsome, but with a droll
+look of good humor about his face, and a roguish twinkle in his eyes
+that would have redeemed a plainer countenance.
+
+His companion was a stranger, and it was he who created the sensation,
+not easy Val. Mrs. McGregor had called him a "swell," but Mrs. McGregor
+was not a very refined judge. He was dressed well, but not overdressed,
+as the slang term would imply, and he looked a thorough gentleman. A
+very handsome one, too, with dark curling hair, dark, bright, handsome
+eyes, a jetty mustache on his lip, and a flashing diamond ring on his
+finger. There was a certain air militaire about him that bespoke his
+profession, though he wore civilian's clothes, and he and Val looked
+about the same age. No wonder the apparition of so distinguished-looking
+a stranger in Mrs. McGregor's drawing-room should create a buzzing among
+the Speckport bon ton.
+
+"My goodness!" cried Mrs. McGregor, all in a flutter. "Whoever can he
+be? He looks like a soldier, don't he?"
+
+"There came a regiment from Halifax this morning," said Miss Jo. "Here's
+Val bringing him up."
+
+Mr. Val was presenting him even while she spoke. "Captain Cavendish,
+Mrs. McGregor, of the --th," and then the captain was bowing profoundly;
+and the lady of the mansion was returning it, in a violent trepidation
+and tremor, not knowing in the least what she was expected to say to so
+distinguished a visitor. But relief was at hand. Charley Marsh was
+beside them with a young lady on his arm--a young lady best described by
+that odious word "genteel." She was not pretty; she was sandy-haired
+and freckled, but she was the daughter of the house, and, as such,
+demanding attention. Val introduced the captain directly, and Mrs.
+McGregor breathed freely again.
+
+"Look here, Val!" she whispered, catching him by the button, "who is he,
+anyway?"
+
+Val lowered his voice and looked round him cautiously.
+
+"Did you ever hear of the Marquis of Carrabas, Mrs. McGregor?"
+
+"No--yes--I don't remember. Is he an English nobleman?"
+
+"A very great nobleman, Ma'am; famous in history as connected with the
+cat-trade, and Captain Cavendish is next heir to the title. Mrs. Marsh
+can tell you all about the Marquis; can't she, Charley?"
+
+Charley, who was ready to burst into a fit of laughter at
+Mrs. McGregor's open-mouthed awe, took hold of the arm of a
+feeble-minded-looking young gentleman, whose freckled features, sandy
+hair, and general resemblance to the family, proclaimed him to be Mr.
+Alexander McGregor, Junior, and walked him off.
+
+"And he came from Halifax this evening, Val?" Mrs. McGregor asked,
+gazing at the young Englishman in the same state of awe and delight.
+
+"Yes," said Val, "it was there I got acquainted with him first. I met
+him on my way here, and thought you would not be offended at the liberty
+I took in fetching him along."
+
+"Offended! My dear Val, you couldn't have pleased me better if you had
+been trying for a week. A Markis and a Captain in the Army! Why, it's
+the greatest honor, and I'm ever so much obliged to you. I am, indeed!"
+
+"All right," said Val. "Speckport will be envious enough, I dare say,
+for it's not every place he'll go to, and all will want him. You'll lose
+Jane if you're not careful, though--see how he's talking to her."
+
+Mrs. McGregor's eyes were dancing in her head. A dazzling vision rose
+before her--her daughter a Marchioness, living in a castle, dressed in
+satin and diamonds the year round! She could have hugged Val in her
+rapture; and Val reading some such idea in her beaming face, backed a
+little, in some alarm.
+
+"I say, though, wasn't there to be tableaux or something?" he inquired.
+"When are they coming off?"
+
+"As soon as Natty Marsh gets here; they can't get on without her."
+
+"What keeps her?" asked Val.
+
+"The new teacher's come to Mrs. Marsh's, Charley says, and Natty is
+stopping in to see her. There's the captain asking Jeannette to dance."
+
+So he was; and Miss Jeannette, with a gratified simper, was just laying
+her kidded fingers inside his coat-sleeve, when her brother came
+breathlessly up.
+
+"Look here, Janie! you'd better not go off dancing," was his cry, "if
+you mean to have those tableaux to-night. Natty's come!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+NATHALIE.
+
+
+Mrs. McGregor's drawing-room was empty. Everybody had flocked into the
+front parlor and arranged themselves on seats there to witness the
+performance; that is to say, everybody who had no part in the
+proceedings. Most of the young people of both sexes were behind the
+solemn green curtain, with its row of footlights, that separated the two
+rooms, dressing for their parts. The old people were as much interested
+in the proceedings as the young people, for their sons and daughters
+were the actors and actresses.
+
+Captain Cavendish and Mr. Val Blake occupied a front seat. Val had a
+part assigned him; but it did not come on for some time, so he was
+playing spectator now.
+
+"I saw you making up to little Jane, Cavendish," Val was saying, sotto
+voce, for Miss Janie's mamma sat near. "Was it a case of love at first
+sight?"
+
+"Miss McGregor is not very pretty," said Captain Cavendish, moderately.
+"Who was that young lady with the red cheeks and bright eyes I saw you
+speaking to, just before we came here?"
+
+"Red cheeks and bright eyes!" repeated Val, putting on his
+considering-cap, "that description applies to half the girls in
+Speckport. What had she on?"
+
+Captain Cavendish laughed.
+
+"Would any one in the world but Val Blake ask such a question? She had
+on a pink dress, and had pink and white flowers in her hair, and looked
+saucy."
+
+"Oh, I know now!" Val cried, with a flash of recollection; "that was
+Laura Blair, one of the nicest little girls that ever sported crinoline!
+Such a girl to laugh, you know!"
+
+"She looks it! Ah! up you go!"
+
+This apostrophe was addressed to the curtain, which was rising as he
+spoke. There was a general flutter, and settling in seats to look; the
+orchestra pealed forth and the first tableau was revealed.
+
+It was very pretty, but very common--"Rebecca and Rowena." Miss Laura
+Blair was Rowena, and a tall brunette, Rebecca. The audience
+applauded, as in duty bound, and the curtain fell. The second was
+"Patience"--"Patience on a monument smiling at Grief." On a high
+pedestal stood Miss Laura Blair, again, draped in a white sheet, like a
+ghost, her hair all loose about her, and an azure girdle all over
+spangles clasping her waist.
+
+At the foot of the pedestal crouched Grief, in a strange, distorted
+attitude of pain. The face of the performer was hidden in her hands; her
+black garments falling heavily around her, her hair unbound, too, her
+whole manner expressing despair, as fully as attitude could express it.
+The music seemed changing to a wail; the effect of the whole was
+perfect.
+
+"What do you think of that?" said Val.
+
+"Very good," said Captain Cavendish. "It goes considerably ahead of
+anything I had expected. Patience is very nice-looking girl."
+
+"And isn't she jolly? She's dying to shout out this minute! I should
+think the glare of these footlights would force her eyelids open."
+
+"Who is Grief?"
+
+"Miss Catty Clowrie--isn't there music in that name? She makes a very
+good Grief--looks as if she had supped sorrow in spoonfuls."
+
+"Is she pretty? She won't let us see her face."
+
+"Beauty's a matter of taste," said Val, "perhaps you'll think her
+pretty. If you do, you will be the only one who ever thought the like.
+She is a nice little girl though, is Catty--the double-distilled essence
+of good-nature. Down goes the curtain!"
+
+It rose next on a totally different scene, and to music solemn and sad.
+The stage was darkened, and made as much as possible to resemble a
+convent-cell. The walls were hung with religious pictures and statues, a
+coverless deal table held a crucifix, an open missal, and a candle which
+flared and guttered in the draft. On a prie-dieu before the table a
+figure knelt--a nun, eyes uplifted, the young face, quite colorless,
+raised, the hands holding her rosary, clasped in prayer. It was
+Evangeline--beautiful, broken-hearted Evangeline--the white face, the
+great dark lustrous eyes full of unspeakable woe. Fainter, sweeter and
+sadder the music wailed out; dimmer and dimmer paled the lights; all
+hushed their breathing to watch. The kneeling figure never moved, the
+face looked deadly pale by the flickering candle-gleam, and slowly the
+curtain began to descend. It was down; the tableau was over; the music
+closed, but for a second or two not a sound was to be heard. Then a
+tumult of applause broke out rapturously, and "Encore, encore!" twenty
+voices cried, in an ecstasy.
+
+Captain Cavendish turned to Val with an enthusiastic face.
+
+"By George, Blake! what a beautiful girl! Evangeline herself never was
+half so lovely. Who is she?"
+
+"That's Natty," said Val, with composure. "Charley Marsh's sister."
+
+"I never saw a lovelier face in all my life! Blake, you must give me an
+introduction as soon as these tableaux are over."
+
+"All right! But you needn't fall in love with her--it's of no use."
+
+"Why isn't it?"
+
+"Because the cantankerous old toad who owns her will never let her get
+married."
+
+"Do you mean her mother?"
+
+"No, I don't, she doesn't live with her mother. And, besides, she has no
+room in her heart for any one but Charley. She idolizes him!"
+
+"Happy fellow! That Evangeline was perfect. I never saw anything more
+exquisite."
+
+"I don't believe Longfellow's Evangeline was half as good-looking as
+Natty," said Val. "Oh! there she is again!"
+
+Val stopped talking. The curtain had arisen on an old scene--"Rebecca at
+the well." Evangeline had transformed herself into a Jewish maiden in an
+incredibly short space of time, and stood with her pitcher on her
+shoulder, looking down on Eleazer at her feet. Sandy McGregor was
+Eleazer, and a sorry Jew he made, but nobody except his mother looked at
+him. Like a young queen Rebecca stood, her eyes fixed on the bracelets
+and rings, her hair falling in a shower of golden bronze ripples over
+her bare white shoulders. One would have expected black hair with those
+luminous dark eyes, but no ebon tresses could have been half so
+magnificent as that waving mass of darkened gold.
+
+"Nice hair, isn't it?" whispered Val. "Natty's proud of her hair and her
+voice beyond anything. You ought to hear her sing!"
+
+"She sings well?" Captain Cavendish asked, his eyes fixed as if
+fascinated on the beautiful face.
+
+"Like another Jenny Lind! She leads the choir up there in the cathedral,
+and plays the organ besides."
+
+Captain Cavendish had a pretty pink half-blown rose in his button-hole.
+He took it out and flung it at her feet as the curtain was going down.
+He had time to see her bright dark eye turn upon it, then with a little
+pleased smile over the spectators in quest of the donor, and then that
+envious green curtain hid all again.
+
+"Very neat and appropriate," criticised Val. "You're not going to wait
+for the introduction to begin your love-passage, I see, Captain
+Cavendish."
+
+The captain laughed.
+
+"Nothing like taking time by the forelock, my dear fellow. I will never
+be able to thank you sufficiently for bringing me here to-night!"
+
+"You don't say so!" exclaimed Val, opening his eyes, "you never mean to
+say you're in love already, do you?"
+
+"It's something very like it, then. Where are you going?"
+
+"Behind the scenes. The next is 'Jack and the Beanstalk,' and they want
+me for the beanstalk," said Val, complacently, as his long legs strode
+over the carpet on his way to the back parlor.
+
+There were ever so many tableaux after that--Captain Cavendish,
+impatient and fidgety, wondered if they would ever end. Perhaps you
+don't believe in love at first sight, dear reader mine; perhaps I don't
+myself; but Captain Cavendish, of Her Most Gracious Majesty's --th
+Regiment of Artillery did, and had fallen in love at first sight at
+least a dozen times within quarter that number of years.
+
+Captain Cavendish had to exercise the virtue of patience for another
+half-hour, and then the end came.
+
+In flocked the performers, in laughing commotion, to find themselves
+surrounded by the rest, and showered with congratulations. Captain
+Cavendish stood apart, leaning against a fauteuil, stroking his mustache
+thoughtfully, and looking on. Looking on one face and form only of all
+the dozens before him; a form tall, taller than the average height,
+slender, graceful, and girlish as became its owner's eighteen years;
+and a face inexpressibly lovely in the garish gaslight. There was
+nobility as well as beauty in that classic profile, that broad brow;
+fire in those laughing blue eyes, so dark that you nearly mistook them
+for black; resolution in those molded lips, the sweetest that ever were
+kissed. The hair alone of Nathalie Marsh would have made a plain face
+pretty; it hung loose over her shoulders as it had done on the stage,
+reaching to her waist, a cloud of spun gold, half waves, half curls,
+half yellow ripples.
+
+Few could have worn this hair like that, but it was eminently becoming
+to Nathalie, whom everything became. Her dress was of rose color, of a
+tint just deeper than the rose color in her cheeks, thin and flouting,
+and she was entirely without ornament. A half-blown rose was fastened in
+the snowy lace of her corsage, a rose that had decked the buttonhole of
+Captain Cavendish half an hour before.
+
+Val espied him at last and came over. "Are you making a tableau of
+yourself," he asked, "for a certain pair of bright eyes to admire? I saw
+them wandering curiously this way two or three times since we came in."
+
+"Whose were they?"
+
+"Miss Nathalie Marsh's. Come and be introduced."
+
+"But she is surrounded."
+
+"Never mind, they'll make way for you. Stand out of the way, Sandy. Lo!
+the conquering hero comes! Miss Marsh, let me present Captain Cavendish,
+of the --th; Miss Marsh, Captain Cavendish."
+
+The music at that instant struck up a delicious waltz. Mr. Val Blake,
+without ceremony, laid hold of the nearest young lady he could grab.
+
+"Come, Catty! let's take a twist or two. That's it, Cavendish! follow in
+our wake!"
+
+For Captain Cavendish, having asked Miss Marsh to waltz, was leading her
+off, and received the encouraging nod of Val with an amused smile.
+
+"What a character he is!" he said, looking after Val, spinning around
+with considerable more energy than grace; "the most unceremonious and
+best-natured fellow in existence."
+
+The young lady laughed.
+
+"Oh, everybody likes Val! Have you known him long?"
+
+"About a year. I have seen him in Halifax frequently, and we are the
+greatest friends, I assure you. Damon and Pythias were nothing to us!"
+
+"It is something new for Mr. Blake to be so enthusiastic, then. Pythias
+is a new rôle for him. I hope he played it better than he did Robert
+Bruce in that horrid tableau awhile ago."
+
+They both laughed at the recollection. Natty scented her rose.
+
+"Some one threw me this. Gallant, wasn't it? I love roses."
+
+"Sweets to the sweet! I am only sorry I had not something more worthy
+'Evangeline,' than that poor little flower."
+
+"Then it was you. I thought so! Thank you for the rose and the
+compliment. One is as pretty as the other."
+
+She laughed saucily, her bright eyes flashing a dangerous glance at him.
+Next instant they were floating round, and round, and round; and Captain
+Cavendish began to think the world must be a great rose garden, and
+Speckport Eden, since in it he had found his Eve. Not quite his yet,
+though, for the moment the waltz concluded, a dashing and dangerously
+good-looking young fellow stepped coolly up and bore her off.
+
+Val having given his partner a finishing whirl into a seat, left her
+there, and came up, wiping his face.
+
+"By jingo, 'tis hard work, and Catty Clowrie goes the pace with a
+vengeance. How do you like Natty?"
+
+"'Like' is not the word. Who is that gentleman she is walking with?"
+
+"That--where are they? Oh, I see--that is Captain Locksley, of the
+merchant-service. The army and navy forever, eh! Where are you going?"
+
+"Out of this hot room a moment. I'll be back directly."
+
+Mrs. McGregor came up and asked Val to join a whist-party she was
+getting up. "And be my partner, Val," she enjoined, as she led him off,
+"because you're the best cheat I know of."
+
+Val was soon completely absorbed in the fascinations of whist, at a
+penny a game, but the announcement of supper soon broke up both
+card-playing and dancing; and as he rose from the table he caught sight
+of Captain Cavendish just entering. His long legs crossed the room in
+three strides.
+
+"You've got back, have you? What have you been about all this time?"
+
+"I was smoking a cigar out there on the steps, and getting a little
+fresh air--no, fog, for I'll take my oath it's thick enough to be cut
+with a knife. When I was in London, I thought I knew something of fog,
+but Speckport beats it all to nothing."
+
+"Yes," said Val, gravely, "it's one of the institutions of the country,
+and we're proud of it. Did you see Charley Marsh anywhere in your
+travels. I heard Natty just now asking for him."
+
+"Oh, yes, I've seen him," said Captain Cavendish, significantly.
+
+There was that in his tone which made Val look at him. "Where was he and
+what was he doing?" he inquired.
+
+"Making love, to your first question; sitting in a recess of the tall
+window, to your second. He did not see me, but I saw him."
+
+"Who was he with?"
+
+"Something very pretty--prettier than anything in this room, excepting
+Miss Natty. Black eyes, black curls, rosy cheeks, and the dearest little
+waist! Who is she?"
+
+Val gave a long, low whistle.
+
+"Do you know her?" persisted Captain Cavendish.
+
+"Oh, don't I though? Was she little, and was she laughing?"
+
+"Yes, to both questions. Now, who is she?"
+
+Val's answer was a shower of mysterious nods.
+
+"I heard the story before, but I didn't think the boy was such a fool.
+Speckport is such a place for gossip, you know; but it seems the gossips
+were right for once. What will Natty say, I wonder?"
+
+"Will you tell me who she is?" cried Captain Cavendish, impatiently.
+
+"Come to supper," was Val's answer; "I'm too hungry to talk now. I'll
+tell you about it by-and-by."
+
+Charley was before them at the table, helping all the young ladies right
+and left, and keeping up a running fire of jokes, old and new, stale and
+original, and setting the table in a roar. Everybody was talking and
+laughing at the top of their lungs; glass and china, and knives and
+forks, rattled and jingled until the uproar became deafening, and people
+shouted with laughter, without in the least knowing what they were
+laughing at. The mustached lip of Captain Cavendish curled with a little
+contemptuous smile at the whole thing, and Miss Jeannette McGregor, who
+had managed to get him beside her, saw it, and felt fit to die with
+mortification.
+
+"What a dreadful noise they do keep up. It makes my head ache to listen
+to them!" she said, resentfully.
+
+Captain Cavendish, who had been listening to her tattle-tittle for the
+last half-hour, answering yes and no at random, started into
+consciousness that she was talking again.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Miss McGregor. What was it you said? I am afraid I
+was not attending."
+
+"I am afraid you were not," said Miss McGregor, forcing a laugh, while
+biting her lips. "They are going back to the drawing-room--_Dieu merci!_
+It is like Babel being here."
+
+"Let us wait," said Captain Cavendish, eying the crowd, and beginning to
+be gallant. "I am not going to have you jostled to death. One would
+think it was for life or death they were pushing."
+
+It was fully ten minutes before the coast was clear, and then the
+captain drew Miss Jeannette's arm within his, and led her to the
+drawing-room. Mrs. McGregor, sitting there among her satellites, saw
+them, and the maternal bosom glowed with pride. It was the future
+Marquis and Marchioness of Carrabas!
+
+Some one was singing. A splendid soprano voice was ringing through the
+room, singing, "Hear me, Norma." It finished as they drew near, and the
+singer, Miss Natty Marsh, glancing over her shoulder, flashed one of her
+bright bewitching glances at them.
+
+She rose up from the piano, flirting out her gauze skirts, and laughing
+at the shower of entreaties to sing again.
+
+"I am going to see some engravings Alick has promised to show me," she
+said; "so spare your eloquence, Mesdames et Messieurs. I am inexorable."
+
+"I think I will go over and have a look at the engravings, too," said
+Captain Cavendish.
+
+She was sitting at a little stand, all her bright hair loose around her,
+and shading the pictures. Young McGregor was bending devoutly near her,
+but not talking, only too happy to be just there, and talking was not
+the young gentleman's forte.
+
+"Captain Cavendish," said the clear voice, as, without turning round,
+she held the engraving over her shoulder, "look at this--is it not
+pretty?"
+
+How had she seen him? Had she eyes in the back of her head? He took the
+engraving, wondering inwardly, and sat down beside her.
+
+It was a strange picture she had given him. A black and wrathful sky, a
+black and heaving sea, and a long strip of black and desolate coast. A
+full moon flickered ghastly through the scudding clouds, and wan in its
+light you saw a girl standing on a high rock, straining her eyes out to
+sea. Her hair and dress fluttered in the wind; her face was wild,
+spectral, and agonized. Captain Cavendish gazed on it as if fascinated.
+
+"What a story it tells!" Nathalie cried. "It makes one think of Charles
+Kingsley's weird song of the 'Three Fishers.' Well, Charley, what is
+it?"
+
+"It is the carryall from Redmon come for you," said Charley, who had
+sauntered up. "If you are done looking at the pictures you had better go
+home."
+
+Natty pushed the portfolio away pettishly, and rose, half-poutingly.
+
+"What a nuisance, to go so soon!"
+
+Then, catching Captain Cavendish's eye, she laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"What can't be cured--you know the proverb, Captain Cavendish. Charley,
+wait for me in the hall, I will be there directly."
+
+She crossed the room with the airy elegance peculiar to her light
+swinging tread, made her adieux quietly to the hostess, and sought her
+wrappings and the dressing-room.
+
+As she ran down into the hall in a large shawl, gracefully worn, and a
+white cloud round her pretty face, she found Captain Cavendish waiting
+with Charley. It was he who offered her his arm, and Charley ran down
+the steps before them. Through the wet fog they saw an old-fashioned
+two-seated buggy waiting, and the driver looking impatiently down.
+
+"I wish you would drive up with me, Charley," said Natty, settling
+herself in her seat.
+
+"Can't," said Charley. "I am going to see somebody else's sister home.
+I'll take a run up to-morrow evening."
+
+"Miss Marsh," Captain Cavendish lazily began, "if you will permit me
+to----" but Natty cut him short with a gay laugh.
+
+"And make all the young ladies in there miserable for the rest of the
+evening! No, thank you! I am not quite so heartless. Good night!"
+
+She leaned forward to say it, the next moment she was lost in the fog.
+He caught one glimpse of a white hand waved, of the half-saucy,
+half-wicked, wholly-bewitching smile, of the dancing blue eyes and
+golden hair, and then there was nothing but a pale blank of mist and
+wet, and Charley was speaking:
+
+"Hang the fog! it goes through one like a knife! Come along in, captain,
+they are going to dance."
+
+Captain Cavendish went in, but not to dance. He had come from curiosity
+to see what the Speckportonians were like, not intending to remain over
+an hour or so. Now that Natty was gone, there was no inducement to stay.
+He sought out Mrs. McGregor, to say good-night.
+
+"What's your hurry?" said Val, following him out.
+
+"It is growing late, and I am ashamed to say I am sleepy. Will you be in
+the office to-morrow morning?"
+
+"From eight till two," said Val.
+
+"Then I'll drop in. Good night!"
+
+The cathedral clock struck three as he came out into the drizzly
+morning, and all the other clocks in the town took it up. The streets
+were empty, as he walked rapidly to his lodgings, with buttoned-up
+overcoat, and hat drawn over his eyes. But a "dancing shape, an image
+gay" were with him, flashing on him through the fog; hunting him all the
+way home, through the smur and mist of the dismal day-dawn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MISS ROSE.
+
+
+Eight was striking by every clock in the town, as down Queen Street--the
+Broadway of Speckport--a tall female streamed, with a step that rang and
+resounded on the wooden pavement. The tall female, nodding to her
+acquaintances right and left, and holding up her bombazine skirts out of
+the slop, was Miss Jo Blake, as bright as a new penny, though she had
+not had a wink of sleep the night before. Early as the hour was, Miss Jo
+was going to make a morning call, and strode on through the fog with her
+head up, and a nod for nearly every one she passed.
+
+Down Queen Street Miss Jo turned to the left, and kept straight on,
+facing the bay, all blurred and misty, so that you could hardly tell
+where the fog ended and the sun began. The business part of the town,
+with its noise and rattle and bustle, was left half a mile behind, and
+Miss Jo turned into a pretty and quiet street, right down on the
+sea-shore. It was called Cottage Street, very appropriately, too; for
+all the houses in it were cozy little cottages, a story and a half high,
+all as much alike as if turned out of a mold. They were all painted
+white, had a red door in the center, and two windows on either side of
+the door, decorated with green shutters. They had little grass-plots and
+flower-beds in front, with white palings, and white gate, and a little
+graveled path, and behind they had vegetable-yards sloping right down to
+the very water. If you leaned over the fences at the lower end of these
+gardens, on a stormy day, and at high tide, you could feel the salt
+spray dashing up in your face, from the waves below. At low water, there
+was a long, smooth, sandy beach, delightful to walk over on hot summer
+days.
+
+Before one of the cottages Miss Jo drew rein, and rapped. While waiting
+for the door to open, the flutter of a skirt in the back garden caught
+her eye; and, peering round the corner of the house, she had a full view
+of it and its wearer.
+
+And Miss Jo set herself to contemplate the view with keenest interest.
+To see the wearer of that fluttering skirt it was that had brought Miss
+Jo all the way from her own home so early in the morning, though she had
+never set eyes on her before.
+
+Uncommonly friendly, perhaps you are thinking. Not at all: Miss Jo was a
+woman, consequently curious; and curiosity, not kindness, had brought
+her out.
+
+The sight was very well worth looking at. You might have gazed for a
+week, steadily, and not grown tired of the prospect. A figure, slender
+and small, wearing a black dress, white linen cuffs at the wrists, a
+white linen collar, fastened with a knot of crape, a profusion of pretty
+brown hair, worn in braids, and low in the neck, hands like a child's,
+small and white. She was leaning against a tree, a gnarled old rowan
+tree, with her face turned sea-ward, watching the fishing-boats gliding
+in and out through the fog; but presently, at some noise in the street,
+she glanced around, and Miss Jo saw her face. A small, pale face, very
+pale, with pretty features, and lit with large, soft eyes. A face that
+was a history, could Miss Jo have read it; pale and patient, gentle and
+sweet, and in the brown eye a look of settled melancholy. This young
+lady in black had been learning the great lesson of life, that most of
+us poor mortals must learn, sooner or later, endurance--the lesson One
+too sublime to name came on earth to teach.
+
+Miss Jo dodged back, the door swung open, and a fat girl, bursting out
+of her hooks and eyes, and with a head like a tow mop, opened the door.
+Miss Jo strode in without ceremony.
+
+"Good morning, Betsy Ann! Is Mrs. Marsh at home this morning?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Jo," said Betsy Ann, opening a door to the left, for there
+was a door on either hand; that to the right, leading to the
+drawing-room of the cottage, and a staircase at the end leading to the
+sleeping-room above; the door to the left admitted you to the
+sitting-room and dining-room, for it was both in one--a pleasant little
+room enough, with a red and green ingrain carpet, cane-seated chairs,
+red moreen window-curtains on the two windows, one looking on the bay,
+the other on the street. There was a little upright piano in one corner,
+a lounge in another; pictures on the papered walls; a Dutch clock and
+some china cats and dogs and shepherdesses on the mantel-piece; a
+coal-fire in the Franklin, and a table laid for breakfast.
+
+The room had but one occupant, a faded and feeble-looking woman, who sat
+in a low rocking-chair, her feet crossed on the fender, a shawl around
+her, and a book in her hand. She looked up in her surprise at her early
+visitor.
+
+"Law! Miss Blake, is it you? Who'd have thought it? Betsy Ann, give Miss
+Blake a chair."
+
+"It's quite a piece from our house here, and I feel kind of tired," said
+Miss Jo, seating herself. "Your fire feels comfortable, Mrs. Marsh;
+these foggy days are chilly. Ain't you had breakfast yet?"
+
+"It's all Charley's fault; he hasn't come down stairs yet. How did you
+enjoy yourself at the party last night?"
+
+"First-rate. Never went home till six this morning, and then I had to
+turn to and make Val his breakfast. Charley left early."
+
+"Early!" retorted Mrs. Marsh; "I don't know what you call early. It was
+after six when he came here, Betsy Ann says."
+
+"Well, that's odd," said Miss Jo. "He left McGregor's about half past
+three, anyway. Did you hear they had an officer there last night?"
+
+"An officer! No. Who is it?"
+
+"His name is Captain Cavendish, and a beautiful man he is, with a
+diamond ring on his finger, my dear, and the look of a real gentleman.
+His folks are very great in England. His brother's the Marquis of
+Cabbage--Carraways--no, I forget it; but Val knows all about him."
+
+"Law!" exclaimed Mrs. Marsh, opening her light-blue eyes, "a Marquis!
+Who brought him?"
+
+"Val did. Val knows every one, I believe, and got acquainted with him in
+Halifax. You never saw any one so proud as Mr. McGregor. I didn't say
+anything, my dear; but I thought of the time when lords and marquises,
+and dukes and captains without end, used to be entertained at Castle
+Blake," said Miss Jo, sighing.
+
+"And what does he look like? Is he handsome?" asked Mrs. Marsh, with
+interest; for Castle Blake and its melancholy reminiscences were an old
+story to her.
+
+"Uncommon," said Miss Jo; "and I believe Mrs. McGregor thinks her Jane
+will get him. You never saw any one so tickled in your life. Why weren't
+you up?--I expected you."
+
+"I couldn't go. Miss Rose came just as I was getting ready, and of
+course I had to stay with her."
+
+"Oh, the new teacher! I saw a young woman in black standing in the
+background as I came in; was that her?" said Miss Jo, who did not always
+choose to be confined to the rules of severe grammar.
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Marsh; "and what do you think, Miss Blake, if she
+wasn't up this morning before six o'clock? Betsy Ann always rises at
+six, and when she was rolling up the blind Miss Rose came down-stairs
+already dressed, and has been out in the garden ever since. Betsy Ann
+says she was weeding the flowers most of the time."
+
+"She's a little thing, isn't she?" said Miss Jo; "and so
+delicate-looking! I don't believe she'll ever be able to manage them big
+rough girls in the school. What's her other name besides Miss Rose?"
+
+"I don't know. She looks as if she had seen trouble," said Mrs. Marsh,
+pensively.
+
+"Who is she in mourning for?"
+
+"I don't know. I didn't like to ask, and she doesn't talk much herself."
+
+"Where did she come from? Montreal, wasn't it?"
+
+"I forget. Natty knows. Natty was here last night before she went up to
+McGregor's. She said she would come back this morning, and go with Miss
+Rose to the school. Here's Charley at last." Miss Jo faced round, and
+confronted that young gentleman sauntering in.
+
+"Well, Sleeping Beauty, you've got up now, have you?" was her salute.
+"How do you feel after all you danced last night?"
+
+"Never better. You're out betimes this morning, Miss Jo."
+
+"Yes," said Miss Jo; "the sun don't catch me simmering in bed like it
+does some folks. Did it take you from half-past three till six to get
+home this morning, Mr. Charles?"
+
+"Who says it was six?" said Charley.
+
+"Betsy Ann does," replied his mother. "Where were you all the time?"
+
+"Betsy Ann's eyes were a couple of hours too fast. I say, mother, is the
+breakfast ready? It's nearly time I was off."
+
+"It's been ready this half-hour. Betsy Ann!"
+
+That maiden appeared.
+
+"Go and ask Miss Rose to please come in to breakfast, and then fetch the
+coffee."
+
+Betsy Ann fled off, and Charley glanced out of the window.
+
+"Miss Rose is taking a constitutional, is she? What is she like,
+mother--pretty? I didn't see her last night, you know."
+
+"What odds is it to you?" demanded Miss Jo; "she's not as pretty as
+Cherrie Nettleby, anyhow."
+
+Charley turned scarlet, and Miss Jo's eyes twinkled at the success of
+her random shaft. The door opened at that instant, and the small,
+slender black figure glided in. Glided was the word for that swift,
+light motion, so noiseless and fleet.
+
+"Good morning," said Mrs. Marsh, rising smiling to shake hands; "you are
+an early bird, I find. Miss Blake, Miss Rose--Miss Rose, my son
+Charles."
+
+My son Charles and Miss Blake both shook hands with the new teacher, and
+welcomed her to Speckport. A faint smile, a shy fluttering color coming
+and going in her delicate cheeks, and a few low-murmured words, and then
+Miss Rose sat down on the chair Charley had placed for her, her pretty
+eyes fixed on the coals, her small childlike hands fluttering still one
+over the other. Betsy Ann came in with the coffee-pot and rolls and
+eggs, and Mrs. Marsh invited Miss Jo to sit over and have some
+breakfast.
+
+"I don't care if I do," said Miss Jo, untying her bonnet promptly. "I
+didn't feel like taking anything when Val had his this morning, and your
+coffee smells good. Are you fond of coffee, Miss Rose?"
+
+Miss Rose smiled a little as they all took their places.
+
+"Yes, I like it very well."
+
+"Some folks like tea best," said Miss Jo, pensively, stirring in a third
+teaspoonful of sugar in her cup, "but I don't. What sort of a journey
+had you, Miss Rose?"
+
+"Very pleasant, indeed."
+
+"You arrived yesterday?"
+
+Miss Rose assented.
+
+"Was it from Halifax you came?"
+
+"No, ma'am; from Montreal."
+
+"Oh, from Montreal! You were born in Montreal, I suppose?"
+
+"No, I was born in New York."
+
+"Law!" cried Mrs. Marsh, "then, you're a Yankee, Miss Rose?"
+
+"Do your folks live in Montreal, Miss Rose?" recommenced the persevering
+Miss Jo.
+
+The faint, rosy light flickered and faded again in the face of Miss
+Rose.
+
+"I have no relatives," she said, without lifting her eyes.
+
+"None at all! Father, nor mother, nor brothers, nor sisters, nor
+nothing."
+
+"I have none at all."
+
+"Dear me, that's a pity! Who are you in black for?"
+
+There was a pause--then Miss Rose answered, still without looking up:
+
+"For my father."
+
+"Oh, for your father! Has he been long dead? Another cup, if you please.
+Betsy Ann knows how to make nice coffee."
+
+"He has been dead ten months," said Miss Rose, a flash of intolerable
+pain dyeing her pale cheeks at this questioning.
+
+"How do you think you'll like Speckport?" went on the dauntless Miss Jo.
+"It's not equal to Montreal or New York, they tell me, but the Bluenoses
+think there's no place like it. Poor things! if they once saw Dublin,
+it's little they'd think of such a place as this is."
+
+"Halte là!" cried Charley; "please to remember, Miss Jo, I am a native,
+to the manner born, an out-and-out Bluenose, and will stand no nonsense
+about Speckport! There's no place like it. See Speckport and die!
+Mother, I'll trouble you for some of that toast."
+
+"Won't you have some, Miss Rose?" said Mrs. Marsh. "You ain't eating
+anything."
+
+"Not any more, thank you. I like Speckport very much, Miss Blake; all I
+have seen of it."
+
+"That's right, Miss Rose!" exclaimed Charley; "say you like fog and all.
+Are you going to commence teaching to-day?"
+
+"I should prefer commencing at once. Miss Marsh said she was coming this
+morning, did she not?" Miss Rose asked, lifting her shy brown eyes to
+Mrs. Marsh.
+
+"Yes, dear. Charley, what time did Natty go home last night?"
+
+"She didn't go home last night; it was half-past two this morning."
+
+"Did she walk?"
+
+"No; the old lady sent that wheelbarrow of hers after her."
+
+"Wheelbarrow!" cried his mother, aghast. "Why, Charley, what do you
+mean?"
+
+"It's the same thing," said Charley. "I'd as soon go in a wheelbarrow as
+that carryall. Such a shabby old rattle-trap! It's like nothing but the
+old dame herself."
+
+"Charley, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Did you go with her?"
+
+"Not I! I was better engaged. Another gentleman offered his services,
+but she declined."
+
+"Who was it? Captain Locksley?"
+
+"No, another captain--Captain Cavendish."
+
+"Did he want to go home with Natty?" asked Miss Jo, with interest. "I
+thought he was more attentive to her than to Jane McGregor! Why wouldn't
+she have him?"
+
+"She would look fine having him--an utter stranger! If it had been
+Locksley, it would have been different. See here, Miss Rose," Charley
+cried, springing up in alarm, "what is the matter?"
+
+"She is going to faint!" exclaimed Miss Jo, in consternation. "Charley,
+run for a glass of water."
+
+Miss Rose had fallen suddenly back in her seat, her face growing so
+dreadfully white that they might well be startled. It was nothing for
+Miss Rose to look pale, only this was like the pallor of death. Charley
+made a rush for the water, and was back in a twinkling, holding it to
+her lips. She drank a portion, pushed it away, and sat up, trying to
+smile.
+
+"I am afraid I have startled you," she said, as if necessary to
+apologize, "but I am not very strong, and----"
+
+Her voice, faltering throughout, died entirely away; and, leaning her
+elbows on the table, she bowed her forehead on her hands. Miss Jo looked
+at her with compressed lips and prophetic eye.
+
+"You'll never stand that school, Miss Rose, and I thought so from the
+first. Them girls would try a constitution of iron, let alone yours."
+
+Miss Rose lifted her white face, and arose from the table.
+
+"It is nothing," she said, faintly. "I do not often get weak, like this.
+Thank you!"
+
+She had gone to the window, as if for air, and Charley had sprung
+forward and opened it.
+
+"Does the air revive you, or shall I fetch you some more water?"
+inquired Charley, with a face full of concern.
+
+"Oh, no! indeed, it is nothing. I am quite well now."
+
+"You don't look like it," said Miss Jo; "you are as white as a sheet
+yet. Don't you go near that school to-day, mind."
+
+Miss Rose essayed a smile.
+
+"The school will do me no harm, Miss Blake--thank you for your kindness
+all the same."
+
+Miss Jo shook her head.
+
+"You ain't fit for it, and that you'll find. Are you off, Charley?"
+
+"Very hard, isn't it, Miss Jo?" said Charley, drawing on his gloves.
+"But I must tear myself away. Old Pestle and Mortar will be fit to
+bastinado me for staying till this time of day."
+
+"Look here, then," said Miss Jo, "have you any engagement particular for
+this evening?"
+
+"Particular? no, not very. I promised Natty to spend the evening up at
+Redmon, that's all."
+
+"Oh, that's nothing, then. I want you and your mother, and Miss Rose, to
+come over to our house this evening, and take a cup of tea. I'll get
+Natty to come, too."
+
+"All right," said Charley, boyishly, taking his wide-awake. "I'll take
+two or three cups if you like. Good morning, all. Miss Rose, don't you
+go and use yourself up in that hot school-room to-day."
+
+Off went Charley, whistling "Cheer, boys, cheer!" and his hands rammed
+down in his coat-pockets; and Miss Jo got up and took her bonnet.
+
+"You'll be sure to come, Mrs. Marsh, you and Miss Rose, and come nice
+and early, so as we can have a chat."
+
+"Certainly," said Mrs. Marsh, "if Miss Rose has no objection."
+
+Miss Rose hesitated a little, and glanced at her mourning dress, and
+from it to Miss Jo, with her soft, wistful eyes.
+
+"I have not gone out at all since--since----"
+
+"Yes, dear, I know," said Miss Jo, kindly, interrupting. "But it isn't a
+party or anything, only just two or three friends to spend a few hours.
+Now, don't make any objection. I shall expect you both, without fail, so
+good-bye."
+
+With one of her familiar nods, Miss Jo strode out, and nearly ran
+against a young lady, who was opening the gate.
+
+"Is it you, Miss Jo? You nearly knocked me down! You must have been up
+with the birds this morning, to get here so soon."
+
+The speaker was a young lady who had been at Mrs. McGregor's the
+previous night; a small, wiry damsel, with sallow face, thin lips, dull,
+yellow, lusterless hair, and light, faded-looking eyes. She was not
+pretty, but she looked pleasant--that is, if incessant smiles can make a
+face pleasant--and she had the softest and sweetest of voices--you could
+liken it to nothing but the purring of a cat; and her hands were limp
+and velvety, and catlike too.
+
+Miss Jo nodded her recognition.
+
+"How d'ye do, Catty? How do you feel after last night?"
+
+"Very well."
+
+"Well enough to spend this evening with me?"
+
+Miss Catty Clowrie laughed.
+
+"I am always well enough for that, Miss Jo! Are you going to eclipse
+Mrs. McGregor?"
+
+"Nonsense! Mrs. Marsh and Miss Rose are coming to take tea with me,
+that's all, and I want you to come up."
+
+"I shall be very happy to. Are Natty and--Charley coming?"
+
+Miss Jo nodded again, and without further parley walked away. As she
+turned the corner of Cottage Street into a more busy thoroughfare, known
+as Park Lane, she saw a lady and gentleman taking the sidewalk in
+dashing style. Everybody looked after them, and everybody might have
+gone a long way without finding anything better worth looking after. The
+young lady's tall, slight, willowy figure was set off by a close-fitting
+black cloth basque, and a little, coquettish, black velvet cap was
+placed above one of the most bewitching faces that ever turned a man's
+head. Roseate, smiling, sunshiny, the bright blue eyes flashing laughing
+light everywhere they fell. Her gloved hands daintily uplifting her
+skirts, and displaying the pretty high-heeled boots, as she sailed along
+with a very peculiar, jaunty, swinging gait.
+
+And quite as well worth looking at, in his way, was her cavalier,
+gallant and handsome, with an unmistakable military stride, and an
+unmistakable military air generally, although dressed in civilian's
+clothes. As they swept past Miss Jo, the young lady made a dashing bow;
+and the young gentleman lifted his hat. Miss Jo stood, with her mouth
+open, gazing after them.
+
+"A splendid couple, ain't they, Miss Blake?" said a man, passing. It was
+Mr. Clowrie, on his way to his office, and Miss Jo, just deigning to
+acknowledge him, walked on.
+
+"My patience!" was her mental ejaculation, "what a swell they cut! He's
+as handsome as a lord, that young man; and she's every bit as
+good-looking! I must go up to Redmon this afternoon, and ask her down.
+Wouldn't it be great now, if that should turn out to be a match!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+VAL'S OFFICE.
+
+
+Among the many tall, dingy brick buildings, fronting on that busy
+thoroughfare of Speckport, Queen Street, there stood one to the right as
+you went up, taller and dingier, if possible, than its neighbors, and
+bearing this legend along its grimy front, "Office of Speckport
+Spouter." There were a dozen newspapers, more or less, published in
+Speckport, weekly, semi-weekly, and daily; but the Spouter went ahead of
+them all, and distanced all competitors.
+
+At about half-past seven o'clock, this foggy spring morning, two
+individuals of the manly sex occupied the principal apartment of the
+printing establishment. A dirty, nasty, noisy place it generally was;
+and dirty and nasty, though not very noisy, it was this morning, for the
+only sound to be heard was the voice of one of its occupants, chattering
+incessantly, and the scratching of the other's pen, as he wrote, perched
+up on a high stool.
+
+The writer was foreman in the office, a sober-looking, middle-aged man,
+who wore spectacles, and wrote away as mechanically as if he was doing
+it by steam. The speaker was a lively youth of twelve, office-boy,
+printer's devil, and errand-runner, and gossiper-in-chief to the place.
+His name was in the baptismal register of Speckport cathedral, William
+Blair; but in every-day life he was Bill Blair, brother to pretty Laura,
+whom Val Blake had eulogized as "such a girl to laugh."
+
+Laughter seemed to be a weakness in the family, for Master Bill's mouth
+was generally stretched in a steady grin from one week's end to the
+other, and was, just at this present moment. He was perched up on
+another high stool, swinging his legs about, chewing gum, looking out of
+the window, and talking.
+
+"And there goes Old Leach in his gig, tearing along as if Old Nick was
+after him," went on Master Bill, criticising the passers-by. "Somebody's
+kicking the bucket in Speckport! And there's Sim Tod hobbling along on
+his stick! Now, I should admire to know how long that old codger's going
+to live; he must be as old as Methuselah's cat by this time. And there,
+I vow, if there ain't Miss Jo, streaking along as tall as a grenadier,
+and as spry as if she hadn't been up all night at that rout in Golden
+Row. What a frisky old girl it is!"
+
+"I tell you what, Bill Blair," said the foreman, Mr. Gilcase, "if you
+don't take yourself down out of that, and get to work, I'll report you
+to Mr. Blake as soon as he comes in!"
+
+"No, you won't!" said Bill, snapping his gum between his teeth like a
+pistol-shot. "There ain't nothing to do. I swept the office, and
+sprinkled this floor, and I want a rest now, I should think. I feel as
+if I should drop!"
+
+"The office looks as if it had been swept," said Mr. Gilcase,
+contemptuously; "there's the addresses to write on those wrappers; go
+and do that!"
+
+"That's time enough," said Bill; "Blake won't be here for an hour or two
+yet; he's snoozing, I'll bet you, after being up all night. Look here,
+Mr. Gilcase, did you know the new teacher was come?"
+
+"No," said the foreman, looking somewhat interested; "has she?"
+
+"Came last night," nodded Bill; "our Laury heard so last night at the
+party. Her name's Miss Rose. Did you know they had an officer last night
+at McGregor's?"
+
+"I didn't think the officers visited McGregor's?"
+
+"None of 'em ever did before; but one of them was there last night, a
+captain, by the same token; and, I expect, old McGregor's as proud as a
+pig with two tails. As for Jane, there'll be no standing her now, and
+she was stuck-up enough before. Oh, here's Clowrie, and about as
+pleasant-looking as a wild cat with the whooping-cough!"
+
+A heavy, lumbering foot was ascending the steep dark stairs, and the
+door opened presently to admit a young gentleman in a pea-jacket and
+glazed cap. A short and thick-set young gentleman, with a sulky face,
+who was never known to laugh, and whose life it was the delight of
+Master Bill Blair to torment and make a misery of. The young gentleman
+was Mr. Jacob Clowrie, eldest son and hope of Peter Clowrie, Esq.,
+attorney-at-law.
+
+"How are you, Jake?" began Mr. Blair, in a friendly tone, knocking his
+heels about on the stool. "You look kind of sour this morning. Was the
+milk at breakfast curdled, or didn't Catty get up to make you any
+breakfast at all?"
+
+Mr. Clowrie's reply to this was a growl, as he hung up his cap.
+
+"I say, Jake, you weren't at McGregor's tea-splash last night, were you?
+I know the old man and Catty were there. Scaly lot not to ask you and
+me!"
+
+Mr. Clowrie growled again, and sat down at a desk.
+
+"I say, Jake," resumed that young demon, Bill, grinning from ear to ear,
+"how's our Cherrie, eh?--seen her lately?"
+
+"What would you give to know?" snapped Mr. Clowrie, condescending to
+retort.
+
+"But I do know, though, without giving nothing! and I know your cake's
+dough, my boy! Lor, I think I see 'em now!" cried Bill, going off in a
+shout of laughter at some lively recollection.
+
+Mr. Clowrie glared at him over the top of his desk, with savage inquiry.
+
+"Oh, you're cut out, old fellow! you're dished, you are! Cherrie's got a
+new beau, and you're left in the lurch!"
+
+"What do you mean, you young imp?" inquired Mr. Clowrie, growing very
+red in the face. "I'll go over and twist your neck for you, if you don't
+look sharp!"
+
+Mr. Blair winked.
+
+"Don't you think you see yourself doing it, Jakey? I tell you it's as
+true as preaching! Cherrie's got a new fellow, and the chap's name is
+Charley Marsh."
+
+There was a pause. Bill looked triumphant, Mr. Clowrie black as a
+thunderbolt, and the foreman amused in spite of himself. Bill crunched
+his gum and waited for his announcement to have proper effect, and then
+resumed, in an explanatory tone:
+
+"You see, Jake, I had heard Charley was after her, but I didn't believe
+it till last night, when I see them with my own two blessed eyes. My
+governor and Laury were off to McGregor's, so I cut over to Jim Tod's,
+to see a lot of terrier-pups he's got--me and Tom Smith--and he promised
+us a pup apiece. Jim's folks were at the junketing, too; so we had the
+house to ourselves. And Jim, he stole in the pantry through the window
+and hooked a lot of pies and cakes, and raspberry wine, and Tom had a
+pack of cards in his trowsers pocket. And we went up to Jim's room, and,
+crackey! hadn't we a time! There was no hurry neither; for we knew the
+old folks wouldn't be home till all hours, so we staid till after three
+in the morning, and by this time Jim and me had lost three shillings in
+pennies each, and the three of us were about ready to burst with all we
+had eat and drank! It was foggy and misty coming home, and me and Tom
+cut across them fields and waste lots between Tod's and Park Lane, when
+just as we turned into Golden Row, who should we meet but Charley Marsh
+and Cherrie. There they were, coming along as large as life, linking
+together, and Charley's head down, listening to her, till their noses
+were nearly touching. Me and Tom laughed till we were fit to split!"
+
+Mr. Blair laughed again at the recollection, but Mr. Clowrie, scowling
+more darkly than ever, replied not save by scornful silence. Bill had
+his laugh out, and recommenced.
+
+"So you see, Jake, it's no go! You can't get the beautifulest mug that
+ever was looked at, and you haven't the shadow of a chance against such
+a fellow as Charley Marsh! O Lor!"
+
+With the last ejaculation of alarm, Bill sprang down from his perch in
+consternation, as the door opened and Mr. Val Blake entered. He had been
+so absorbed chaffing Mr. Clowrie that he had not heard Val coming
+up-stairs, and now made a desperate dash at the nearest desk. Val
+stretched out his long arm and pinned him.
+
+"You young vagabond! is this the way you spend your time in my absence?
+What's that about Charley Marsh?"
+
+"Nothing, sir," said Bill, grinning a malicious grin over at Mr.
+Clowrie. "I was only telling Jake how he was being cut out!"
+
+"Cut out! What do you mean?"
+
+"Why, with that Cherrie Nettleby! Charley Marsh's got her now!"
+
+"What!" said Val, shortly; "what are you talking about, you little
+rascal?"
+
+"I can't help it, sir," said Bill, with an injured look, "if I am a
+rascal. I saw him seeing her home this morning between three and four
+o'clock, and if that don't look like cutting Jake out, I don't know what
+does!"
+
+"And what were you doing out at three o'clock in the morning, Master
+Blair?"
+
+"I was over to Tod's spending the evening, me and a lot more fellows,
+and that was the time we were getting home. I don't see," said Bill,
+with a still more aggrieved air, "why we shouldn't stop out a while, if
+all the old codgers in the town set us the example!"
+
+Val released him, and strode on to an inner room.
+
+"See if you can attend to your business for one morning, sir, and give
+your tongue a holiday. Mr. Gilcase, was the postman here?"
+
+"Yes, sir. The letters and papers are on your table."
+
+Val disappeared, closing the door behind him, and Master Blair turned a
+somersault of delight and cut a pigeon-wing afterward.
+
+"Get to work, sir!" shouted Mr. Gilcase, "or I'll make Mr. Blake turn
+you out of the office!"
+
+"Mr. Blake knows better," retorted the incorrigible. "I rather think the
+Spouter would be nowhere if I left; Do you know, Mr. Gilcase, I think
+Blake has some notion of taking me into partnership shortly! He has to
+work like a horse now."
+
+Val had to work hard--no mistake about it, for he was sole editor and
+proprietor of the Sunday and Weekly Speckport Spouter. He is sitting in
+his room now--and a dusty, grimy, littered, disordered room it
+is--before a table heaped with papers, letters, books, and manuscript of
+all kinds, busily tearing the envelopes off sundry overgrown letters,
+and disgorging their contents.
+
+"What's this? a private note from Miss Incognita. 'Would I be so kind as
+to speak to the printers; they made such frightful mistakes in her last
+sketch, filled her heroine's eyes with tars, instead of tears, and in
+the battle-scene defeated Cromwell and his soldiers with wildest
+laughter, instead of slaughter!' Humph.
+
+"It's her own fault; why don't she write decently? Very well, Miss
+Laura, I'll stick you in; you think I don't know you, I suppose. Come
+in."
+
+Val looked up from his literary labors to answer a tap at the door. Mr.
+Gilcase put in his head.
+
+"There's a gentleman here wants to see you, sir. Captain Cavendish."
+
+Val got up and went out. Captain Cavendish, in a loose overcoat, and
+smoking a cigar, was lounging against a desk, and being stared at by
+Messrs. Clowrie and Blair, took out his cigar and extended his hand
+languidly to Val.
+
+"Good morning! Are you very busy? Am I an intruder? If so, I'll go away
+again."
+
+"I'm no busier than common," said Val. "Come in, this is my sanctum, and
+here's the editorial chair; sit down."
+
+"Is it any harm to smoke?" inquired the Captain, looking rather
+doubtful.
+
+"Not the least. I'll blow a cloud myself. How did you find your way here
+through the clouds of fog?"
+
+"Not very easily. Does the sun ever shine at all in Speckport?"
+
+"Occasionally--when it cannot help itself. But when did you take to
+early rising, pray? You used to be lounging over your breakfast about
+this hour when I knew you in Halifax."
+
+"Yes, I know--I'm a reformed character. Apropos, early rising seems to
+be the style here. I met two ladies of my acquaintance figuring through
+the streets ever so long ago."
+
+"Who were they?"
+
+"Your sister was one; Miss Marsh, the other."
+
+"Natty, eh? Oh, she always was an early bird. Were you speaking to her?"
+
+"I had the pleasure of escorting her to her mother's. By the way, she
+does not live with her mother, does she?"
+
+"No; she lives with old Lady Leroy, up at Redmon."
+
+"Where is Redmon?"
+
+"About a mile from Speckport. Natty walks it two or three times a day,
+and thinks it's only a hen's jump. Redmon's a fine place."
+
+"Indeed."
+
+"Not the house exactly--it's a great barn--but the property. It's worth
+eight thousand pounds."
+
+"So much?" said Captain Cavendish, looking interested. "And who is Lady
+Leroy?"
+
+"The wife--the widow of a dead Jew. Don't stare, she only gets the title
+as a nickname, for she's the greatest old oddity the sun ever shone on.
+She's a cousin of Natty's mother, and Natty is to be her heiress."
+
+Captain Cavendish's eyes lightened vividly.
+
+"Her heiress! Is she very rich, then?"
+
+"Immensely! Worth thirty thousand pounds or more, and the stingiest old
+skinflint that ever breathed. Natty has been with her over a year now,
+as a sort of companion, and a fine time she has with the old toad, I
+know."
+
+"And there is no doubt Miss Marsh is to be her heiress?"
+
+"None at all--the will is made and in the hands of Darcy, her lawyer.
+She has no children, and no relatives that ever I heard of nearer than
+Miss Marsh. She was old Leroy's servant when he married her--it happened
+in New York, where he made his money. This place, Redmon, was to be
+sold for debt; Leroy bid it in dirt cheap, and rented it, employing
+Darcy as his agent to collect rents, for there is quite a village
+attached to it. After the old fellow's death, a year and a half ago, his
+venerable relict came here, took up her abode at Redmon, with as great
+an oddity as herself for a servant. She took a great fancy to pretty
+Natty after awhile, and got her to go up there and reside as companion."
+
+"And those Marshes--what are they? like the rest of Speckport--begging
+your pardon!--nobody?"
+
+"Family, you mean? That question is so like an Englishman. The father
+was a gentleman. His profession was that of engineer, and his family, I
+have heard, was something extra in England; but he made a low marriage
+over here, and they would have nothing more to do with him. Mrs. Marsh
+was pretty, and as insipid as a mug of milk and water, caring for
+nothing in the world wide but sitting in a rocking-chair reading novels.
+He married her, though; and they lived quite in style until Charley was
+fourteen and Natty twelve years old. Then Mr. Marsh had a stroke of
+paralysis which left him altogether incapable of attending to his
+business, of doing anything, in fact, but teaching. He started a school,
+and got a salary for playing the organ in the cathedral, but he only
+lived two years after. Before he died they had to give up their fine
+house, dismiss their servants, auction their furniture, and rent the
+cottage they live in now. Miss Natty, sir, kept the school, gave
+music-lessons after hours, took the organ Sundays, and supported the
+family for the next three years; in point of fact, does to this day."
+
+"How is that?" said Captain Cavendish. "Mrs. Leroy pays her a salary as
+companion, I suppose?"
+
+"She does; but that's only a pittance, wouldn't pay her mother's bills
+in the circulating library. Natty refused to go to Redmon unless under
+certain conditions. She would retain the school, the organ, and her
+music pupils as usual, only she would engage another teacher for the
+school, coming there one hour a day to superintend. That would take
+about four hours a day, the rest was at the service of Lady Leroy. Her
+ladyship grumbled, but had to consent; so Natty went to live up at
+Redmon, and between all has her hands full."
+
+"She is indeed a brave girl! What are her duties at the old lady's?"
+
+"No trifle! She reads to her, retails all the news of the town, writes
+her letters, keeps her accounts, receives the rents, makes out the
+receipts, oversees the household--does a thousand things besides. If she
+had as many hands as what's his name, the fellow in the
+mythology,--Briareus, wasn't it?--the old vixen would keep them all
+occupied. By the way, did you see Charley this morning when you were
+in?"
+
+"I wasn't in, I left Miss Natty at the door. I say, Val, you didn't tell
+me last night who that pretty girl was I saw him with in the window. She
+was not a guest, though I'll take my oath there wasn't a young lady
+present half so pretty, save the belle of Speckport herself. Who was
+she?"
+
+"Cherrie, otherwise Miss Charlotte Nettleby. A little flirting piece of
+conceit. She has had the young men of Speckport tagging after her. Rumor
+set Charley down lately as one of her killed or wounded; but Speckport
+is always gossiping, and I paid no attention to it. It seems it's true
+though, for that young scamp Blair in the next room saw him escorting
+her home this morning."
+
+"What was she doing at the house if not invited!"
+
+"How should I know? Cherrie is everywhere--she knows the servants, I
+suppose."
+
+"Oh, is that it? Then she is nobody."
+
+"I wish she heard you! If ever any one thought themselves somebody it's
+the same Miss Cherrie. She aspires to be a lady--bless your heart!--and
+that foolish boy is to be entrapped into marrying her."
+
+Val stopped to knock the ashes off his cigar.
+
+"Well; and what then?" asked the captain.
+
+"Why, Natty will go frantic, that is all. She thinks the Princess Royal
+not half good enough for Charley."
+
+"Is Miss Cherrie's position in life so low, then?"
+
+"It's not that. Her father is a gardener, a poor man, but honest and
+respectable enough. It's Cherrie herself; she's a shallow, vain, silly
+little beauty, as ever made fools of men, and her vanity, and her
+idleness, and her dress, and her flirtations are the scandal of the
+town. Not that anything worse can be said of little Cherrie, mind; but
+she is not the girl for Charley Marsh to marry."
+
+"Charley is a gentleman; perhaps he isn't going to marry her," suggested
+Captain Cavendish, with a light laugh, that told more of his character
+than folios could have done.
+
+"Being a gentleman," said Val, with emphasis, "he means to marry her if
+he means anything at all."
+
+And the young officer shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"_Chacun à son goût._ I must be going, I believe. Here I have been
+trespassing on your time these two hours."
+
+"The day's young yet," said Val; "have you any engagement for this
+evening?"
+
+"I believe not, except a dinner at the mess-room, which can be shirked."
+
+"Then come up to Redmon. If you are a student of character, Mrs. Leroy
+will amply repay the trouble."
+
+"I'm there! but not," said Captain Cavendish, laughing, "to see Mrs.
+Leroy."
+
+"I understand. Well, good morning."
+
+"Until then, _au revoir_."
+
+Mr. Bill Blair, perched on his high stool, his elbows spread out on the
+desk, stared at him as he went out.
+
+"Cracky, what a rum swell them officer chaps are? I say, Clowrie,
+wouldn't Cherrie like that cove for a beau? He would be safe to win if
+he tried it on, and Charley Marsh would be where you are now--nowhere."
+
+And little did Mr. William Blair or his hearers think he was uttering a
+prophecy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+KILLING TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE.
+
+
+Captain Cavendish, looking very handsome and distinguished in the
+admiring eyes of Speckport, lounged down Queen Street, and down half a
+dozen other streets, toward the sea-shore. The tide was ebbing as he
+descended to the beach, and the long, lazy swell breaking on the strand
+was singing the old everlasting song it has sung through all time. Its
+mysterious music was lost on Captain Cavendish; his thoughts were
+hundreds of miles away. Not very pleasant thoughts, either, judging by
+his contracted brow and compressed lips, as he leaned against a tall
+rock, his eyes looking out to sea. He started up after awhile, with a
+gesture of impatience.
+
+"Pshaw!" he said; "what's the use of thinking of it now? it's all past
+and gone. It is Fate, I suppose; and if Fate has ordained I must marry a
+rich wife or none, where is the good of my puny struggles? But poor
+little Winnie! I have been the greatest villain that ever was known to
+you."
+
+He walked along the beach, sending pebbles skimming over the waves as he
+went. Two fishermen in oilcloth trowsers, very scaly and rattling, were
+drawing up their boat, laden to the water's edge with gaspereaux, all
+alive and kicking. Captain Cavendish stopped and looked at them.
+
+"Your freight looks lively, my men. You have got a fine boatload there."
+
+The two young men looked at him. They were tall, strapping, sunburnt,
+black-eyed, good-looking fellows both, and the one hauling up the boat
+answered; the other, pulling the fish out of the nets, went on with his
+work in silence.
+
+"Yes, sir, we had a good haul last night. The freshet's been strong
+this spring, and has made the fishing good."
+
+"Were you out all night?"
+
+"Yes; we have to go when the tide suits."
+
+"You had a foggy night for it, then. Can you tell me which is the road
+to Redmon?"
+
+The young fisherman turned and pointed to a path going up the hillside
+from the shore.
+
+"Do you see that path? Well, follow it; cut across the field, and let
+down the bars t'other side. There's a road there; keep straight on and
+it will fetch you to Redmon. You can't miss the house when you get to
+it; it's a big brick building on a sort of hill, with lots of trees
+around it."
+
+"Thank you. I'll find it, I think."
+
+He sauntered lazily up the hillside-path, cut across the fields, and let
+down the bars as he had been directed, putting them conscientiously up
+again.
+
+The road was a very quiet one; green meadows on either hand, and clumps
+of cedar and spruce wood sparsely dotting it here and there. The breeze
+swept up cool and fresh from the sea; the town with its bustle and noise
+was out of sight and hearing.
+
+He was walking so slowly that it was nearly half an hour before Redmon
+came in sight--a large weather-beaten brick house on the summit of a
+hill, with bleak corners and reedy marshes, and dark trees all around
+it, the whole inclosed by a high wooden fence. The place took its name
+from these marshes or moors about it, sown in some time with crimson
+cranberries and pigeonberries, like fields of red stars. But Captain
+Cavendish only glanced once at Redmon; for the instant it had come in
+sight something else had come in sight, too, a thousand times better
+worth looking at. Just outside the extremity of the fence nearest him
+there stood a cottage--a little whitewashed affair, standing out in
+dazzling contrast to the black cedar woods beside it, hop-vines
+clustering round its door and windows, and a tall gate at one side
+opening into a well-cultivated vegetable garden.
+
+Swinging back and forward on this gate was a young girl, whom Captain
+Cavendish recognized in a moment. It was a face that few young men
+forgot easily, for its owner was a beauty born; the figure was petite
+and plump, delightfully rounded and ripe indeed, with no nasty sharp
+curves or harsh angles; the complexion dark and clear, the forehead low,
+with black, arching brows; the eyes like black beads; the cheeks like
+June roses; the lips as red, and ripe, and sweet as summer strawberries,
+the teeth they parted to disclose, literally like pearls, and they
+parted very often, indeed, to disclose them. The hair was black as hair
+can be, and all clustering in little short, shining rings and kinks
+about the forehead and neck. Captain Cavendish had seen that face for
+the first time last night, in the window with Charley Marsh, but he was
+a sufficiently good judge of physiognomy to know it was not necessary to
+be very ceremonious with Miss Cherrie Nettleby. He therefore advanced at
+once, with a neat little fiction at the top of his tongue.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said politely, "but I am very thirsty. Will you
+be kind enough to give me a drink?"
+
+Miss Cherrie, though but nineteen in years, was forty at least in
+penetration where handsome men were concerned, and saw through the ruse
+at once. She sprang down from the gate and held it open, with the
+prettiest affectation of timidity in the world.
+
+"Yes, sir. Will you please to walk in."
+
+"Thank you," said the captain, languidly, "I believe I will. My walk has
+completely used me up."
+
+Miss Cherrie led the way into the cottage. The front door opened
+directly into the parlor of the dwelling, a neat little room, the floor
+covered with mats; a table, with books and knicknacks in the center; a
+lounge and a rocking-chair, and some common colored prints on the walls.
+It had an occupant as they came in, a sallow, dark-eyed girl of sixteen,
+whose hands fairly flew as she sat at the window, netting on a
+fisherman's net, already some twenty fathoms long.
+
+"Ann," said Cherrie, placing a chair for their distinguished visitor,
+"go and fetch the gentleman a drink."
+
+The girl turned her sallow but somewhat sullen face, without rising.
+
+"There ain't no water in," she said, curtly.
+
+"Go for some now," said Cherrie. "I'll knit till you come back."
+
+"No, no!" hastily interposed Captain Cavendish. "I beg you will give
+yourself no such trouble. I am not so thirsty as I thought I was."
+
+"Oh, we'll want the water anyhow to get the boys' dinner," said Cherrie,
+throwing off her scarlet shawl. "Go, Ann, and make haste."
+
+Ann got up crossly, and strolled out of the room at a snail's pace, and
+Miss Cherrie took her place, and went to work industriously.
+
+"Is that your sister?" he asked, watching Cherrie's hand flying as
+swiftly in and out as Ann's had done.
+
+"Yes, that's our Ann," replied the young lady, as if every one should
+know Ann, as a matter of course.
+
+"And do you and Ann live here alone together?"
+
+Cherrie giggled at the idea.
+
+"Oh dear, no. There's father and the boys."
+
+"The boys, and are they----"
+
+"My brothers," said Cherrie. "Two of 'em, Rob and Eddie. They fish, you
+know, and Ann, she knits the nets."
+
+"Are those you are now making for them?"
+
+"Yes, these are shad-nets. I hate to knit, but the boys pay Ann for
+doing it, and she does them all. I guess you'll be pretty thirsty," said
+Cherrie, laughing as easily as if she had known him for the past ten
+years, "before Ann gets back with the water. She's horrid slow."
+
+"Never mind. The longer she is away, the better I shall like it, Miss
+Cherrie."
+
+Miss Cherrie dropped her needle and mesh-block, and opened her black
+eyes.
+
+"Why, how did you find out my name? You don't know me, do you?"
+
+"A little. I trust we shall be very well acquainted before long."
+
+Cherrie smiled graciously.
+
+"Everybody knows me, I think. How did you find out who I was?"
+
+"I saw you last night."
+
+"No! did you, though? What time? where was I?"
+
+"Sitting in a window, breaking a young gentleman's heart."
+
+Cherrie giggled again.
+
+"I'm sure I wasn't doing any such thing. That was only Charley Marsh."
+
+"Only Charley Marsh. Had you and he a pleasant walk home this morning?"
+
+"Now, I never. How did you know he saw me home?"
+
+"A little bird told me. I only wish it had been my good fortune."
+
+"Oh, what a story!" cried Cherrie, her wicked black eyes dancing in her
+head; "I wonder you ain't ashamed! Didn't I hear you wanting to ride
+home with Miss Natty. I was peeking out through the dining-room door,
+and I heard you as plain as could be."
+
+"Well, I wanted to be polite, you know. Not having the honor of your
+acquaintance, Cherrie, I knew there was no hope of escorting you; so I
+made the offer to Miss Marsh in sheer despair. Now, Cherrie, I don't
+want you to get too fond of that brother of hers."
+
+Cherrie tittered once more.
+
+"Now, how can you! I'm sure I don't care nothing about him; but I can't
+help his talking to me, and seeing me home, can I?"
+
+"I don't know. I wouldn't talk too much to him, if I were you; and as
+for seeing you home, I'd rather do it myself. There is no telling what
+nonsense he may get talking! Does he come here often?"
+
+"Pretty often; but all the young fellows come! Sandy McGregor, Jake
+Clowrie, Mr. Blake, Charley Marsh, and the whole lot of 'em!"
+
+"What time do they come?"
+
+"Evenings, mostly. Then, there's a whole lot of Bob and Eddie's friends
+come, too, and the house is full most every night!"
+
+"And what do you all do?"
+
+"Oh, ever so many things! Play cards, sing songs, and carry on, and
+dance, sometimes."
+
+"May I come, too, Cherrie?"
+
+"You may, if you like," said Cherrie, with coquettish indifference. "But
+the young ladies in Speckport won't like that!"
+
+"What do I care for the young ladies in Speckport! Oh, here's the
+water!"
+
+Ann came in with a glass, and the captain drank it without being the
+least thirsty.
+
+"Bob and Eddie's coming up the road," said Ann to her sister; "you knit
+while I peel the potatoes for dinner."
+
+"I am afraid I must go," said Captain Cavendish, rising, having no
+desire to make the acquaintance of the Messrs. Nettleby. "I have been
+here nearly half an hour."
+
+"That ain't long, I'm sure," said Cherrie; "what's your hurry?"
+
+"I have a call to make. May I come again, Miss Cherrie?"
+
+"Oh, of course!" said Miss Cherrie, with perfect coolness; "we always
+like to see our friends. Are you going to Redmon?"
+
+Captain Cavendish nodded, and took his hat. Pretty Cherrie got up to
+escort him to the gate.
+
+"Good-bye, Miss Cherrie," he said, making her a flourishing bow. "I will
+have the pleasure of calling on you to-morrow."
+
+Cherrie smiled most gracious consent.
+
+As he turned out of the gate he encountered the two young fishermen who
+had directed him to Redmon. They were Cherrie's brothers, then; and,
+laughing inwardly at the memory of the late interview with that young
+lady, he entered the grounds of Redmon.
+
+"She's a deuced pretty girl!" he said, slapping his boot with a rattan
+he carried; "and, faith, she's free and easy! No nonsensical prudery
+about Miss Cherrie. I only hope I may get on as well with the
+golden-haired heiress as I seem to have done with the black-eyed
+grisette!"
+
+He opened the wooden gate, and sauntered along a bleak avenue, the
+grounds on either hand overrun with rank weeds, and spruce, and
+tamarack, and fir trees, casting somber gloom around.
+
+The house, a great red barn, as Val had said, looked like a black, grimy
+jail; the shutters were closed on every window, the hall-door seemed
+hermetically sealed, and swallows flew about it, and built their nests
+in security on the eaves and down the chimneys. There was a great, grim
+iron knocker on the door, and the young man's knock reverberated with a
+hollow and ghostly echo through the weird house.
+
+"What a place for such a girl to live in!" he thought, looking up at it.
+"Her desire for wealth must be strong to tempt her to bury herself alive
+in such an old tomb. The riches of the Rothschilds would not induce me."
+
+A rusty key grated in a lock, the door swung open with a creaking sound,
+and the bright face of Nathalie Marsh looked out.
+
+She smiled when she saw who it was, and frankly held out her hand.
+
+"You have lost no time, Monsieur. Walk in, and please to excuse me a few
+moments. I must go back to Mrs. Leroy."
+
+They were in a long and dismal hall, flanked with doors, and with a
+great, wide, old-fashioned staircase sweeping up and losing itself
+somehow in the upper gloom. Natty opened one of the doors, ushered him
+into the reception parlor of the establishment, and then flew swiftly up
+the stairs and was gone.
+
+Captain Cavendish looked about him, that is, as well as he could for the
+gloom. The parlor of Redmon was furnished after the style of the cabin
+of a certain "fine ould Irish gintleman," immortalized in song, "with
+nothing at all for show." No carpet on the dreary Sahara of floor; no
+curtains on the gloomy windows; no pictures on the dead, blank waste of
+whitewashed walls; a few chairs, a black, old mahogany table, a dreary
+horsehair sofa, about as soft as if cushioned with bricks; and that was
+all. The silence of the place was something blood-chilling; not the
+squeak of a mouse relieved its deathlike quiet.
+
+Five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes passed, and the captain, getting
+desperate, was seriously thinking of making his escape, when a light
+step came tripping down the stairs, and Natty, all breathless and
+laughing, came breezily in.
+
+"Are you tired to death waiting?" she laughed gayly. "Mrs. Leroy is
+dreadfully tiresome over her toilet, and I am femme de chambre, if you
+please! It is over now, and she desires me to escort you to her
+presence, and be introduced. I hope you may make a favorable
+impression!"
+
+"But what am I to do?" said Captain Cavendish, with an appalled face.
+"How am I to insinuate myself into her good graces? Where is the key to
+her heart?"
+
+"The key was lost years ago, and her heart is now closed. Don't
+contradict her, whatever you do. Hush! here we are!"
+
+They had ascended to a hall like the one below; flanked, like it, by
+doors. Natty, with a glance of wicked delight at his dolorous face,
+opened the first door to the right, and ushered him at once into the
+presence of the awful Lady Leroy.
+
+Something--it certainly looked more like an Egyptian mummy than anything
+else--swathed in shawls and swaddling-clothes, was stuck up in a vast
+Sleepy Hollow open arm-chair, and had its face turned to the door. That
+face, and a very yellow, and seared, and wrinkled, and unlovely face it
+was, buried in the flapping obscurity of a deeply-frilled white cap, was
+lit by a pair of little, twinkling eyes, bright and keen as two
+stilettos.
+
+"Mrs. Leroy," said Natty, her tone demure, but her mischievous eyes
+dancing under their lashes, "this is Captain Cavendish."
+
+"How d'ye do, Captain Cavendish?" said Mrs. Leroy, in a shrill,
+squeaking voice, like a penny whistle out of tune; "sit down--do! Natty,
+can't you give the young man a cheer?"
+
+Natty did not cheer, but she placed a chair for him, whispering, as she
+did so, "Speak loud, or she won't hear you."
+
+"What's the weather like out o' doors?" inquired the old lady, scanning
+him from head to foot with her little piercing eyes; "be the sun
+a-shining, hey?"
+
+"No, Madam," said Captain Cavendish, in a loud key, "it is foggy."
+
+She had paid no attention to his reply; she had been staring at him all
+the time, until even he, cool as any man of the world could be, got a
+trifle disconcerted. Natty, sitting demurely near, was enjoying it all
+with silent but intense delight.
+
+"So you're the young English captain Natty was telling me about. You're
+not so handsome as she said you were; leastways, you ain't to my taste!"
+
+It was Natty's turn now to look disconcerted, which she did with a
+vengeance, as the dark, laughing eyes of the young officer turned upon
+her.
+
+"Miss Marsh does me too much honor to mention me at all," he said,
+speaking more at the young lady than to the old one.
+
+"Hey?" inquired Lady Leroy, shrilly. "What's that? What did you say?"
+
+"I was saying how remarkably well you were looking, ma'am," said the
+captain, raising his voice, "and that this Redmon is a very fine old
+place."
+
+"It's not!" screamed Lady Leroy, viciously; "it's the hatefulest,
+daftest, uncomfortablest hole ever anybody set foot in! Natty!"
+
+"Yes, ma'am!" said Natty. "What is it?"
+
+"Is old Nettleby planting them potatoes to-day?"
+
+"Yes, of course he is."
+
+"He'll plant Carters where he ought to plant Early Blues! I know he
+will!" cried the old lady in an ecstasy of alarm; "run out as fast as
+you can, Natty, and tell him not to plant any Carters in the
+three-cornered field. Run, run, run!"
+
+Natty knew Lady Leroy a great deal too well to expostulate. "I will be
+back directly," she said, in a low voice, the laughing light in her eyes
+still, as she passed her visitor; "do not get into trouble if you can
+help it, in my absence."
+
+She was gone, and Lady Leroy, with her eyes fixed on the opposite wall,
+seemed to have gone off into a fit of musing. Captain Cavendish tried to
+look about him, which he had not ventured to do before, under those
+basilisk eyes. It was a large square room, like all the rest in the
+house, and stiflingly close and warm. No wonder, for a small
+cooking-stove was burning away, and every window was closed and
+shuttered. A bed stood in one corner, an old-fashioned clock ticked in a
+loud hoarse voice on the mantel-piece, a small round table stood at the
+old lady's elbow, and the floor was covered with a carpet that had been
+Brussels once, but which was dirty, and colorless, and ragged now. There
+was an open cupboard with dishes, and a sort of pantry with a half glass
+door, through which he could see boxes and barrels, hams and dried beef,
+and other commissary stores. The chair matched the flinty sofa down
+stairs, and the only thing to attract attention in the room was a green
+cabinet of covered wood that stood beside the bed. While he was looking
+at it, the old-fashioned clock began striking twelve in a gruff and
+surly way, as if it did it against its better judgment. The sound woke
+the old lady up from her brown study--woke her up with a sharp jerk.
+
+"It's twelve o'clock!" she exclaimed shrilly, "and I want my dinner!
+Call Midge!"
+
+This was addressed to Captain Cavendish, and in so peremptory a tone
+that that gallant young officer looked alarmed and disconcerted.
+
+"Call Midge, I tell you! Call her quick!" yelped Lady Leroy in an
+excited way. "Call Midge, will you!"
+
+"Where is she? Where will I call her?" said the young man, in
+considerable consternation.
+
+"Open that door, stupid, and call Midge!" cried the old woman, violently
+excited; "call her quick, I tell you!"
+
+Thus ordered, Captain Cavendish opened the door and began calling loudly
+on the unknown lady bearing the name of Midge.
+
+Out of the gloom and dismalness below a hoarse voice shouted in reply,
+"I'm a coming;" and Captain Cavendish went back to his seat. The voice
+was that of a man, and of a man with a shocking bad cold, too; and the
+step lumbering up stairs was a man's step; but for all that, Midge
+wasn't a man, but a woman. Such a woman! the Egyptian mummy in the
+arm-chair was a Parisian belle compared to her. Between three and four
+feet high, and between four and five feet broad, Midge was just able to
+waddle under the weight of her own fair person, and no more. A shock of
+hair, very like a tar-mop, stood, bristling defiance at combs and
+brushes, up on end, like "quills upon the fretful porcupine." To say she
+had no forehead, and only two pinholes for eyes, and a little round lump
+of flesh in lieu of a decent nose, would be doing no sort of justice to
+the subject; for the face, with its fat, puffy cheeks, was altogether
+indescribable. The costume of the lady was scant, her dress displaying
+to the best advantage a pair of ankles some fifteen inches in
+circumference, and a pair of powerful arms, bare to the shoulders, were
+rolled up in a cotton apron. With the airy tread of an elephant inclined
+to embonpoint, this sylph-like being crossed the hall and stood in the
+doorway awaiting orders, while Captain Cavendish stared aghast, and
+backed a few paces with a feeble "By Jove!"
+
+"What do you want, ma'am?" inquired the damsel in the doorway, who might
+have been anywhere in the vale of years between twenty and fifty.
+
+"Get my dinner! It's after twelve! Don't I always tell you to come and
+get my dinner when you hear the clock strike twelve?"
+
+"And how do you suppose I can hear that there clock half a mile off,
+down in that kitchen!" retorted Midge, sharply. "I ain't jest got ears
+as sharp as lancets, I'd have you know. I'll take the key!"
+
+Mrs. Leroy produced a key from a pocket somewhere about her; and Midge,
+rather jerking it out of her hands than otherwise, unlocked the pantry,
+and began busying herself among the forage there. Mrs. Leroy's keen eyes
+followed every motion as a cat follows its prey, and Captain Cavendish
+gazed too, as if fascinated, on the fairy form of Miss Midge. In passing
+to and fro, Midge had more than once caught his eye, and at last her
+feelings got the better of her, and, pausing abruptly before him, with
+her arms akimbo, burst out, "Look here, sir! I don't know who you are,
+but if you're a doggertype-man, come to take my picter, I'd jest thank
+you to be quick about it, and not sit there gaping like----"
+
+"Midge!" called a ringing voice in the doorway. It was Nathalie, her
+face stern, her voice imperative. "Midge, how dare you speak so?"
+
+"Oh, never mind!" said Captain Cavendish, who, in the main, was a
+good-natured young officer. "I deserve it, I dare say. I have made an
+unpardonably long call, I believe. Mrs. Leroy, I wish you good morning."
+
+"Good morning!" said Mrs. Leroy, without looking at him, all her eyes
+being absorbed in the doings of Midge in the culinary department.
+"Natty, you let him out."
+
+Natty did so, and they both laughed when at a safe distance.
+
+"What did you do to Midge?" she inquired, "to tempt her to pour the
+vials of her wrath on your head, as she was doing when I came in."
+
+"Staring very hard, I am afraid! Where is Barnum, that he does not get
+hold of that domestic monstrosity?"
+
+"Oh, hush!" said Natty. But the warning came too late. Midge, descending
+the stairs, had heard the speech, and gave the speaker a look so baleful
+and vindictive, that, had he been troubled with those feminine miseries,
+nerves, might have haunted him many a day. He smiled at it then, but he
+remembered that look long after.
+
+"She is acutely sensitive, dull as she seems," said Natty, with a pained
+look. "I am sorry she heard you."
+
+"I am sincerely sorry for my thoughtless words, then, Miss Marsh, if
+they pain you."
+
+"She saved Charley's life once," said Natty, "when he was a little
+fellow. I have always liked Midge since, and I believe she loves me with
+the faithful and blind fidelity of--but no irreverence--a dog. A
+slighting word rankles in her memory long."
+
+"I shall fetch her a peace-offering the next time I come, which, by the
+way," he said, coolly, "is to be this evening, with your permission.
+Blake is to be my chaperon on the occasion."
+
+"I regret I shall not see either of you then; but," said Natty, with a
+funny look, "no doubt Mrs. Leroy will be delighted to entertain you till
+her bedtime comes, which is precisely nine o'clock."
+
+"Not see us? Are you----"
+
+"I have promised to spend the evening out. When I was with the gardener
+a few moments ago, Miss Blake came in and asked me to spend the evening
+with her. Mamma and Miss Rose, the new teacher, are to be there, and I
+could not refuse."
+
+"Then I shall postpone my call. Oh, there is a summons for you! How
+impatient your old lady is!"
+
+They shook hands, and parted. Captain Cavendish lit a cigar, and went
+smoking, meditatingly, down the dreary avenue, and out into the
+highroad. Standing near the gate was pretty Cherrie, and a refulgent
+smile greeted him from the rosy lips. He lifted his hat, and passed on;
+for standing in the doorway was the stalwart young fishermen of the
+beach.
+
+"Two very pretty girls!" he mused, over his Havana; "_belle blonde, et
+jolie brunette_. It's extremely convenient their living so near
+together; one journey does for both. I think I understand now what is
+meant by the old adage of killing two birds with one stone."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+AN EVENING AT MISS BLAKE'S.
+
+
+The establishment of Miss Joanna Blake was not on a scale of
+magnificence. Miss Jo's only parlor being about ten feet square, was not
+too grandly vast at any time, and not exactly adapted for the mirthful
+throng to disport themselves in. The style of furniture, too, was, some
+people might think, on a trifle too grand a scale for its dimensions.
+When Val, and his fourteen or fifteen friends aforesaid, lit their
+cigars, tilted back their chairs, elevated the heels of their boots on
+the piano or table, and all puffed away together, the parlor became
+rather obscure, and a stranger suddenly entering might have conceived
+the idea that the house was in flames; and that, perhaps, was the reason
+the parlor always smelt like a tobacconist's shop. Besides the parlor,
+Miss Jo had a dining-room and a kitchen, and two bedrooms, in the floor,
+though, and she did her own work.
+
+In the parlor of No. 16 Great St. Peter's Street, the lamp was lit, the
+drab moreen curtains let down, and the table set for tea. There was a
+snowy cloth on the mahogany which hid the marks of the bootheels and the
+stains of the punch-tumblers, and the china cups and saucers, and the
+glass preserve-plates and butter-dish, and spoon-holder, not to speak of
+the spoons themselves, which were of real silver, and had cost a dollar
+a piece, and had a big capital "B" engraven thereon, glittered and
+flashed in the light. There was buttered toast, and hot biscuit, and
+pound-cake, and fruit-cake, and mince-pie, and quince-jelly, and cold
+chicken, and coffee and tea--all the work of Miss Jo's own fair hands;
+and Miss Jo herself, rather flushed with the heat, but very imposing and
+stately to look at in a green poplin dress--real Irish poplin at
+that--and a worked collar a finger-length deep, presided at the
+tea-tray, and dispensed the hospitalities of the festive board. Val,
+sitting opposite, did his part, which consisted chiefly in attempting to
+pass the cake-plates, and spilling their contents, of upsetting
+everything he touched, and looking mildly but reproachfully at the
+refractory object afterward. Mrs. Marsh was there, placid, and insipid,
+and faded, and feeble, as usual; and Miss Rose was there, pale and
+pretty; and Miss Clowrie was there, smiling and soft of voice, and deft
+of touch, and purring more than ever; and Miss Blair was there, laughing
+at all the funny things, and rosy as Hebe herself; and Charley Marsh was
+there, making a martyr of himself in the attempt to be fascinating to
+three young ladies at once; and everybody had eaten and drank, forced
+thereto by Miss Blake, until they were, as Charley forcibly put it, "a
+misery to themselves." So a move was made to adjourn, which just
+consisted of pushing their chairs about five inches from the table, not
+being able to push them any further, and Miss Jo began rattling among
+the tea-things, which she called clearing them off. Miss Catty, always
+sweet and obliging, and that sort of a thing, insisted on helping her,
+and Charley opening the upright, clattered a "Fisher's Hornpipe" in
+spirited style.
+
+"Come and sing us a song, Laura--that's a good girl," he said, while
+Val, making an apology, slipped out. "Come and sing 'The Laird o'
+Cockpen.'"
+
+Miss Blair, all smiles, took her seat, and sung not only "The Laird o'
+Cockpen," but a dozen others of the same kidney.
+
+"What do you think of that?" inquired Miss Blair, triumphantly rising
+up, with a finishing bang. "Who says I can't sing? Now, Miss Rose, you
+sing, I know."
+
+"Of course she does," said Charley. "Miss Rose, permit me to lead you to
+the instrument."
+
+Miss Rose looked as though she were about to excuse herself, but that
+impulsive Laura Blair ran over and caught her by both hands.
+
+"Up with you! We won't take any excuses. Charley, the young lady is at
+your mercy, lead her off."
+
+Charley promptly did so. Miss Rose, smiling graciously, ran her white
+fingers over the yellow keys, and looked up at him.
+
+"What shall I sing, Monsieur?"
+
+"Anything you please, Mademoiselle. I am prepared to be delighted with
+'Old Dan Tucker,' if you chose it."
+
+The white fingers still ran idly over the keys, breaking into a
+plaintive prelude at last, and in a voice, "low and sweet" as Annie
+Laurie's own, the song began. The words were those of a gifted young
+American poetess; the melody, a low sweet air, in a melancholy minor
+key--Miss Rose's own, perhaps.
+
+The sweet voice faltered a little toward the close; but as a buzz of
+congratulation ran around the circle she arose hastily. Arose to find
+herself face to face with two gentlemen who had entered as she began her
+song, and who had stood silently listening with the rest. It was Captain
+Cavendish and Val; and the young officer's face wore a look no one in
+that room had ever seen it wear before--a pale and startled look of
+anxiety, almost of fear--and as she faced them he backed a few paces
+involuntarily. Miss Rose, evidently taken completely by surprise,
+started visibly, growing white and red by turns. But Val was introducing
+them, and only he and one other present saw the changing faces of the
+twain. That other was Miss Catty Clowrie, whose eyes were as keen as any
+other cat's, and who watched them furtively, with vividest interest.
+Miss Catty was enough of a mathematician to know there is no effect
+without a cause. What, then, was the cause of this? It was easily enough
+answered. Captain Cavendish and Miss Rose had met before, and had known
+each other well, though they were now bowing as perfect strangers. The
+elegant officer had recovered all his high-bred sangfroid, and was
+smooth and bland as sweet oil; but Miss Rose's face had settled into so
+deadly a pallor that Mrs. Marsh, albeit not the most eagle-sighted in
+the world, noticed it.
+
+"Dear me, Miss Rose, how pale you are! Aren't you well?"
+
+Miss Rose murmured something about the heat, and subsided into the most
+shadowy corner she could find; and Charley created a diversion by
+sitting down to the piano himself and rattling off a jingling symphony.
+
+In the midst of it carriage wheels rolled up to the door of No. 16, and
+the first-floor bell rang loudly a minute after.
+
+"That's Natty," said Charley.
+
+Miss Jo met her in the hall and escorted her to her bedroom, which was
+the dressing-room for the evening; and presently Miss Nathalie came in,
+dressed in black silk, trimmed with black lace, and all her beautiful
+golden hair falling in glittering ringlets over her shoulders, her
+cheeks glowing with the rapid ride through the night air. Brilliant she
+looked; and Captain Cavendish's heart, or whatever the thing is that
+does duty for a heart with men of the world, quickened its beating a
+little, as he shook hands. Nathalie kissed Miss Rose, sitting so very
+still in her quiet corner.
+
+"My pale little girl! Here you sit like a white shadow, all by yourself.
+Charley, what on earth are you shouting there?"
+
+"Now, Natty, it's your turn," said Miss Jo.
+
+"Here's the cards," said Charley, laying hold of a pack. "While Natty's
+singing we'll play 'Muggins.' Does anybody here know 'Muggins'?"
+
+Nobody did.
+
+"What a disgrace! Then I'll teach you. Miss Jo, I'll sit beside you.
+Come along, captain; here Laura, Catty, Val, mother; Miss Rose, won't
+you join us?"
+
+"Don't, Miss Rose," said Natty, who was playing a waltz. "They're
+nothing but a noisy set. Come here and sing with me."
+
+Natty sung everything--Italian arias, French chansonettes, German and
+Scotch ballads; her full, rich soprano voice filling the room with
+melody, as on Sundays it filled the long cathedral aisles. Natty's voice
+was superb--Miss Rose listened like one entranced. So did another,
+Captain Cavendish, who made all sorts of blunders in the game, and could
+not learn it at all, for watching the two black figures at the
+piano--the little pale girl with the modest brown braids, and the
+stately heiress with her shining yellow curls. Catty Clowrie watched
+them and the captain, and the game too, noting everything, and making no
+mistakes. A very noisy party they were, every one laughing,
+expostulating, and straining their voices together, and Charley winning
+everything right and left.
+
+"I say, Cavendish, old fellow! what are you thinking of?" cried Val.
+"This is the third time I've told you to play."
+
+Captain Cavendish started into recollection, and began playing with the
+wildest rapidity, utterly at random.
+
+"Look here, Natty," called Charley, as the card-party, more noisy than
+ever, broke up; "I say it's not fair of you to monopolize Miss Rose all
+the evening. Here's Captain Cavendish has lost all his spare change,
+because he couldn't watch the game for watching that piano."
+
+Miss Rose retreated hastily to her corner; Natty wheeled round on the
+piano-stool.
+
+"What noise you have been making. Have you finished your game?"
+
+Charley jingled a pocketful of pennies--Speckport pennies at that--as
+large as quoits.
+
+"Yes, we have finished, for the simple reason I have cleaned the whole
+party completely out, and I have won small change enough to keep me in
+cigars for the next two months. Who's this?"
+
+"It's somebody for me," said Natty, starting up; "that's Rob Nettleby's
+knock."
+
+"Don't go yet, Natty," said Val, "it is too early."
+
+"It is half-past ten; I should have been off half an hour ago. Miss
+Blake, my things, please."
+
+Miss Jo produced a white cloud and large cloak, and Natty's move was a
+signal for all to depart. Catty, Laura, Miss Rose, and Mrs. Marsh's
+mufflings had to be got, and the little parlor was a scene of "confusion
+worse confounded."
+
+Val strolled over to where Captain Cavendish was making himself useful,
+helping Miss Marsh on with her cloak.
+
+"Natty, I'll go home with you, if you like," said polite Val; "it will
+be rather a dismal drive up there with no one but Rob Nettleby."
+
+"Mr. Blake is forestalled," said Captain Cavendish, coolly. "Miss Marsh
+has accorded the honor to me."
+
+"All right," said Val, "I'll go home with Laura Blair, then. Charley can
+take care of the other three, for Catty lives next door."
+
+Lady Leroy's carryall, with Cherrie Nettleby's elder brother for driver,
+was waiting at the door. Good-byes were said, Natty kissed her mamma,
+Laura and Miss Rose, but only shook hands with Miss Clowrie. Captain
+Cavendish noticed the omission as he seated himself beside her, and they
+drove off.
+
+"I don't like her," said Natty; "I never did, since I was a child. She
+was such a crafty, cunning little thing in those days--a sort of spy on
+the rest of us--a sort of female Uriah Heep."
+
+"Is she so still?"
+
+"Oh, no; she is well enough now; but old prejudices cling to one, you
+know. I don't like her, because I don't like her--an excellent female
+reason, you understand."
+
+"Does your brother share your prejudices, Miss Marsh?" asked the young
+officer, with a meaning smile.
+
+"Charley? I don't know. Why?"
+
+"Because I fancy the young lady is rather disposed to regard him with
+favor. I may be mistaken, though."
+
+Natty suddenly drew herself up.
+
+"I think you are mistaken, Captain Cavendish. Catty Clowrie has sense,
+whatever else she may lack, and never would dream of so preposterous a
+thing."
+
+"Pardon! it has been my mistake, then. You seem to be all old friends in
+this place."
+
+"Oh," said Natty, with her gay laugh, "every one knows every one else in
+Speckport, and a stranger is a marked being at once. Apropos of
+strangers, what a perfect darling that Miss Rose is."
+
+"How very young-ladylike! Miss Rose does not sound like a family name;
+has she no other cognomen?"
+
+"Her letter to me was signed W. Rose. I don't know what the 'W' is for.
+I think she has the sweetest face I ever saw."
+
+"What a lovely night it is?" was Captain Cavendish's somewhat irrelevant
+answer; and had the moon been shining, Natty might have seen the flush
+his face wore. Perhaps it was the sea-breeze, though; for it was blowing
+up fresh and bracing, and a host of stars spangled a sky of cloudless
+blue. The monotonous plash of the waves on the shore came dully booming
+over the rattle of their own carriage-wheels.
+
+"What are the wild waves saying? Miss Rose and I have a bond of sympathy
+between us: we both love the sea. I suppose," said Natty, going off into
+another subject, "Mrs. Leroy will read me a lecture for my long stay,
+when I get back."
+
+"Will she not be asleep?"
+
+"Asleep? No, indeed; I believe if I staid out for a week she would never
+close an eye until I got back."
+
+"Is she so very fond of you, then?"
+
+"It is not that; though I think she is as fond of me as it is in her
+nature to be of anything, except," with another laugh, "eating and
+money. It is fear that keeps her awake; she dreads being left alone."
+
+"Why? Not from an evil conscience, I trust."
+
+"For shame, sir. No, she always keeps a large sum of money in her
+chamber--you saw that queer cabinet--well, in that; and she is terribly
+scared of robbers, in spite of all our bolts and bars."
+
+"She should not keep it about her, then."
+
+"Very true; but she will. I sleep in the room next hers, and I presume
+she feels my presence there a sort of safeguard against burglars. In
+Midge she has no confidence whatever."
+
+"And yet I should consider Midge the greatest possible safeguard. The
+sight of her might scare away an army of robbers."
+
+"Now, now!" cried Natty. "I shall not have Midge abused. She is the most
+faithful and trustworthy creature that ever lived."
+
+"Perhaps so; but you will own that she is not the most lovely. When I
+was a boy at Eton, I used to read German legends of beautiful
+princesses guarded by malignant spirits, in uncouth human forms. I
+thought of the stories this morning when I was at Redmon."
+
+"That's a compliment, I suppose," said Natty, "but I don't relish
+compliments, I can tell you, at Midge's expense. Here we are at the
+cottage."
+
+"What cottage is it?" Captain Cavendish asked, forgetting suddenly that
+he had spent half an hour there that very morning.
+
+"The Nettlebys. The father is our gardener; the sons, the whole family,
+make themselves useful about the place, all but Cherrie, who is more for
+ornament than use. Here we are at Redmon, and there is the light burning
+in Mrs. Leroy's window."
+
+"Does it burn all night?" he asked, looking up at it.
+
+"No; it is a beacon for me. I must go to her room the first thing now,
+give an account of myself, and extinguish it. Good-night; I hope you
+will enjoy your solitary journey back."
+
+"I shall have pleasant thoughts of a lady fair to keep me company. Are
+you sure you can get in?"
+
+"Midge is opening the door now; once more, good-night."
+
+Waving her hand to him, she was gone while she spoke. Midge stood
+blinking in the doorway, holding a candle above her head, which tar-mop
+was now tied up in a red flannel petticoat.
+
+She shaded her eyes with her hand, peering out at the tall figure in the
+loose overcoat; and when she made sure of his identity, slamming the
+door to with a bang that left no doubt of her feelings toward him.
+
+"Midge, why did you do that?" Natty said, reprovingly.
+
+"Because I never want to see his wicked face here, Miss Natty; that's
+why!" cried Midge, shrilly; "and I don't want to see him with you, for
+he is a villain, and he will turn out one, if he was ten officers, ten
+times over."
+
+But Natty was flying up the polished stairs with a new happiness at her
+heart, singing as she went a snatch of "Love's Young Dream."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+TOO MANY IRONS IN THE FIRE.
+
+
+Mr. Val Blake was a young gentleman possessing a great many admirable
+virtues, among others the fearful one of always saying what he thought.
+Another, not quite so terrible to society, was that of early rising. The
+sun, whenever that luminary condescended to show its face in Speckport,
+which wasn't so very often, never found him in bed, either winter or
+summer. Val might be up until two o'clock in the office, as he sometimes
+was in busy seasons, such as election times, but that never prevented
+his rising at half-past four the next morning, as bright as a new penny.
+
+Val had escorted Miss Laura Blair home from his sister's little
+sociable--not only escorted her home, in fact, but had gone in with her.
+It was past eleven then, but Papa Blair had invited him to blow a
+friendly cloud, and Val had accepted the invitation. There they sat,
+smoking and talking politics until after one, and it was half-past when
+he got back to No. 16 Great St. Peter's Street; but for all that, here
+he was next morning at the hour of six, coming striding along the
+sea-shore, a pipe in his mouth, and a towel in his hand. Val had been
+taking a sea-bath, his invariable custom every fine morning, from the
+first of May to the last of October, to the alarming increase of his
+appetite for breakfast. There were few to be met on the sand, at that
+hour, except in the fishing seasons; and the fishermen not being in yet
+from the night's work, the shore was entirely deserted. The editor of
+the Speckport Gazette had not the shore all to himself after all; for,
+as he passed a jutting bowlder, he came in view of a fluttering figure
+walking slowly on before. The black dress waving in the breeze, the
+slender form in the long black mantle, the little straw hat, and the
+brown braid were familiar by this time.
+
+Miss Rose, the pretty little school-teacher, was taking an early
+constitutional as well as himself, with a book for her only companion.
+Val's long legs were beginning to measure off the sand in vast strides,
+to join her, when he was forestalled most unexpectedly. Starting up from
+behind a tall rock, in whose shadow on the warm sand he had been lying,
+his hat pulled over his eyes to protect him from the sun, a gentleman
+came forward, lifted his hat, and accosted her. Val knew the gentleman
+quite as well as he did the lady, and stopped. At the sound of his voice
+coming so suddenly, she had recoiled with a suppressed cry, but at sight
+of whom it was, she stood perfectly still, as if transfixed.
+
+There was a path up the hillside--the very path Captain Cavendish had
+been shown by the young Nettlebys the day before. Val turned up this,
+with his hands in his pockets, and his mind in a state of soliloquy.
+
+"I'm not wanted, I expect; so I'll keep clear! There's something queer
+about this--they were both taken aback last night, were they not? She's
+a pretty little thing, and he's been in Montreal, I know; was quartered
+there before he was ordered to Halifax. I suppose it's the old story--he
+always was a flirt, and his handsome face sets the girls loony wherever
+he goes. Miss Rose looks sensible, but I dare say she's as bad as the
+rest."
+
+Val's suspicions might have become certainty had he been listening to
+the conversation of the young officer and the little school-teacher; but
+there was no one to listen, except the waves and the wind, and the
+seagulls clanging over their heads.
+
+"Winnie!" Captain Cavendish was hurriedly saying, "I knew you would be
+here, and I have been waiting for the past half hour. No, do not go!
+Pray stay and hear me out."
+
+"I must go!" Miss Rose said, in a violent tremor and agitation. "You
+have nothing to say to me, Captain Cavendish. I cannot be seen here with
+you."
+
+"There is no one to see us--the shore is deserted! Winnie! you must
+stay."
+
+She had turned to go; but he caught her hand, his own face pale as hers
+had turned.
+
+"Let go my hand, sir!" she cried, in so peremptory a tone that he
+dropped it at once; "every word you speak to me is an insult! Let me
+go!"
+
+"Only one moment, Winnie."
+
+Again she interposed, her eyes quite flashing.
+
+"Have the goodness, Captain Cavendish, to be a little less familiar; to
+cease calling me Winnie."
+
+"What shall I call you, then?" he said, with a strange look, "Miss
+Rose?"
+
+She turned away, and made a little passionate gesture with her hand.
+
+"You have no right to call me anything--to speak to me at all! I do not
+know what evil fate has driven us together here; but if you have one
+feeling of honor, Captain Cavendish, you will leave me in peace--you
+will let me alone. My lot is not such a happy one that you should wish
+to destroy the little comfort I have left."
+
+Her voice choked and something fell on her book and wet it. The face of
+the English officer looked strangely moved for him.
+
+"Heaven knows, Winnie, I have no desire to disturb it; I have been a
+villain--we both know that--but destiny was against me. I am poor; I am
+in debt--I was then--what could I do?"
+
+"Will you let me go?" was her answer, without turning her averted face
+to him.
+
+"Am I, then, utterly hateful to you?" he asked, with some bitterness.
+"You have soon forgotten the past, but I deserve it! I do not ask what
+chain of circumstances brought you here; I only ask, being here, that
+you will not reveal the story of--of what is past and gone. Will you
+promise me this, Winnie?"
+
+"What right have you to ask any promise of me?" she demanded, her gentle
+voice full of indignation.
+
+"Very little, I know; but still, I want the promise, Winnie, for your
+own sake, as well as for me."
+
+"I am not likely to tell; the story of one's own folly is not too
+pleasant to repeat. And now, in return, Captain Cavendish, I want, I
+demand, a promise from you! We met last night as strangers, as strangers
+let us meet henceforth. Go your own way. I shall not molest you, never
+fear; and be generous enough to grant me the same favor. My life is to
+be one of hard work. I do not regret that. Let me find happiness in my
+own way, and do not disturb me any more."
+
+"And it has all come to this!" he said, moodily, looking out over the
+wide sea. "Well, Winnie, let it be as you wish, only I never thought you
+could be so unforgiving."
+
+"I have forgiven long ago; I want to try and forget as well!"
+
+She walked rapidly away. Only once had she looked at him all the
+time--after that first glance of recognition, her face had been averted.
+
+Captain Cavendish watched her out of sight, took two or three turns up
+and down the sand, and then strolled away to his lodgings. His rooms
+were in the Speckport House, fronting on Queen Street; and after
+disposing of his beefsteak and coffee with a very good appetite, he
+seated himself near an open window, to smoke no end of cigars and watch
+the passers-by.
+
+A great many passers-by there were, and nearly all strangers to him; but
+presently, two young men went strutting past, arm-in-arm, and, chancing
+to look at his window, lifted their hats in passing. A sudden thought
+seemed to flash through the officer's mind as he saw them, and, seizing
+his hat, he started out after them. It was young McGregor and Charley
+Marsh, and he speedily overtook them.
+
+"I have been sitting there for over half an hour," he said, taking
+Charley's other arm, familiarly, "watching society go by, and you two
+were the first I knew. Being tired of my own company, I thought I would
+join you. Have a cigar?"
+
+"You find Speckport rather slow, I suppose?" said Charley, lighting his
+weed. "I should myself, if I had nothing to do."
+
+"Oh, I am used to it; and," with a droll look, "I have discovered there
+is more than one pill to kill time, even in Speckport."
+
+"Already! where do you mean?"
+
+"Prince Street, for instance."
+
+Charley laughed, and young McGregor smiled.
+
+"You go there, do you? Well, I have lived all my life in Speckport, but
+I have never set foot over the threshold you mean, yet."
+
+"Nor I," said young McGregor. "By George, wouldn't the old man look
+half-a-dozen ways at once if he thought I would dare look at it twice."
+
+There was a smile on Captain Cavendish's face, half of amusement, half
+of contempt.
+
+"I am going there now, and was about asking you to accompany me for an
+hour's amusement. Come on, better late than never."
+
+Charley hesitated, coloring and laughing, but McGregor caught at the
+invitation at once.
+
+"I say, Marsh, let us go! I've always wanted to go there, but never had
+a chance without the governor finding it out, and kicking up the deuce
+of a row!"
+
+"I have the entree," said Captain Cavendish; "no one will be the wiser,
+and if they should, what matter? It is only to kill time, after all."
+
+But still Charley hesitated, half laughing, half tempted, half
+reluctant. "That is all very well from Captain Cavendish, nephew of a
+baronet, and with more money than he knows what to do with; but it's of
+no use going to that place with empty pockets, and medical students, it
+is proverbial, never have anything to spare. No, I think you must hold
+me excused."
+
+"Oh, confound it, Charley," exclaimed McGregor, impatiently, "I'll lend
+you whatever you want. Fetch him along, captain; what he says is only
+gammon."
+
+"Perhaps," said the captain, with a cynical smile, "Mr. Marsh has
+conscientious scruples--some people have, I am told. If so----"
+
+He did not finish the sentence, but the smile deepened. That mocking
+smile did more to overthrow Charley's resolution than any words could
+have done. He turned at once in the direction of Prince Street: "The
+only scruples I know anything about relate to weights and measures, and
+I believe these are in a dram. I have a couple of hours before dinner;
+so until then, I am at your service, captain."
+
+The trio turned into Prince Street--a quiet street, with staid rows of
+white houses, and only one of any pretension, at one of its quiet
+corners. Captain Cavendish ran up the steps, with the air of a man
+perfectly at home, opened the outer door and rang the bell. There were
+few people passing, but Charley and McGregor glanced uneasily about
+them, before going in, and closed the street door after them with some
+precipitation.
+
+Charley had told the captain he was at his service for two hours, but
+over four passed before the three issued forth again. Charley looked
+flushed, excited, and in high spirits, so did Alick McGregor; but
+Captain Cavendish, though laughing, was a trifle serious, too. "I had no
+idea you were such an adept, Mr. Marsh," he was saying, "but you must
+give me my revenge. Better luck next time."
+
+"All right," said Charley, in his boyish way, "whenever you like, now
+that the ice is broken. What do you say, Mac?"
+
+"I'm your man. The sooner the better, as I intend keeping on until I
+make a fortune on my own account. Would not the governor stare if he
+knew the pile I made this morning."
+
+As they passed into Queen Street, the town clock struck three. Charley
+looked aghast.
+
+"Three o'clock! I had no idea it was two. Won't they be wondering what
+has become of me at home. I feel as though I should like my dinner."
+
+"Dine with me," said the captain; "I ordered dinner at half-past three,
+and we will be in the nick of time."
+
+The two young Speckportians accepted the invitation, and the three went
+up crowded Queen Street together.
+
+Streaming down among the crowd came Miss Cherrie Nettleby. One
+kid-gloved hand uplifted her silken robe, and displayed an elaborately
+embroidered under-skirt to the admiring beholder; the other poised a
+blue parasol; and, gorgeous to behold, Miss Nettleby flashed like a
+meteor through Speckport. All the men spoke to her--all the women turned
+up their fair noses and sailed by in delicate disdain. Charley blushed
+vividly at sight of her.
+
+"Don't blush, Charley," drawled young McGregor, "it's too
+young-lady-like, but I suppose you can't help it any more than you can
+being in love with her. Good afternoon, Miss Cherrie."
+
+Miss Cherrie smiled graciously, made them a bow that ballooned her silk
+skirt over the whole sidewalk, and sailed on. Charley looked as if he
+should like to follow her, but that was next to impossible, so he walked
+on.
+
+"Cherrie comes out to show herself every afternoon," explained Alick;
+"you don't know her, Captain Cavendish, do you?"
+
+"I have seen her before, I think. A very pretty girl."
+
+"Charley thinks so--don't you, old fellow? Half the young men in the
+town are looney about her."
+
+"I must make her acquaintance, then," said Captain Cavendish, running up
+the hotel steps. "The girl that all are praising is just the girl for
+me. This way, gentlemen."
+
+While the triad sat over their dinner and dessert, Miss Nettleby did her
+shopping--that is, she chatted with the good-looking clerks over the
+counter, and swept past the old and ugly ones in silent contempt.
+Cherrie was in no hurry; she had made up her mind before starting to go
+through every drygoods store in Speckport, and kept her word. It was
+growing dusk when the dress was finally bought, cut off, and paid for--a
+bright pink ground, with a brighter pink sprig running through it.
+
+"Shall we send it, Miss Nettleby?" insinuated the gentlemanly clerk,
+tying it up with his most fascinating smile.
+
+"Of course," said Cherrie, shaking out her skirts with an air; "Mr.
+Nettleby's, Redmon Road. Good evening, Mr. Johnston."
+
+Cherrie was soliloquizing as she gained the street.
+
+"Now, I do wonder if he'll be home. They have tea at six, I know, and
+it's only a quarter to six, now. I can say I want a book, and he'll be
+sure to come home with me. I must see that new teacher."
+
+Walking very fast Cherrie reached Cottage Street as the clocks of
+Speckport were chiming six, and the laborers' bells ringing their
+dismissal. Catty Clowrie was standing in her own doorway, but Cherrie
+did not stop to speak, only nodded, and knocked at Mrs. Marsh's door.
+Betsy Ann opened it and Cherrie walked into the sitting-room, where a
+fire burned, warm as the afternoon had been, and Mrs. Marsh, with a
+shawl about her and a novel in her hand, swayed to and fro in her
+rocking-chair. Miss Rose in the parlor was trying her new piano, which
+Natty had ordered that morning, and which had just come home.
+
+"Dear me!" said Mrs. Marsh, looking up from the book and holding out her
+hand, "is it you, Cherrie? How do you do? Sit down."
+
+Cherrie did so.
+
+"I've been out all the afternoon shopping for Miss Natty, and I thought
+I would call here before I went home to ask you for another book. That
+last one was real nice."
+
+"Of course. What were you buying for Natty?"
+
+"Oh, it was only a calico dress for Midge; it's being sent up. Mrs.
+Marsh, who's that playing the piano?"
+
+"That's Miss Rose, Natty's teacher. Have you seen her yet?"
+
+"No. How nice she plays. Don't she?"
+
+"She plays very well. And so you liked that last book--what's this it
+was--'Regina,' wasn't it?"
+
+"Yes," said Cherrie; "and oh, it was lovely. That earl was so nice, and
+I liked Regina, too. What's that you're reading?"
+
+"This is 'Queechy'--a very good story. Did you ever read 'The
+Lamplighter?' I'll lend you that."
+
+"Thank you, ma'am," said Cherrie. "It's getting late. I suppose I must
+go."
+
+"Stay for tea," said Mrs. Marsh, who liked Cherrie; "it's all ready,
+and we are only waiting for Charley. I don't see where he's gone too; he
+wasn't home to dinner, either."
+
+"I saw him this afternoon," said Cherrie; "him and young McGregor and
+Captain Cavendish were going up Queen Street."
+
+"Was he? Perhaps they had dinner together there. How did you know
+Captain Cavendish, Cherrie?"
+
+"I saw him at Redmon. He was up all yesterday forenoon. I guess he is
+after Miss Natty."
+
+Mrs. Marsh smiled and settled her cap.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. Take off your things, Cherrie, and stay for tea. It's
+of no use waiting for Charley. Betsy Ann, bring us the teapot, and call
+Miss Rose."
+
+Cherrie laid aside her turban and lace, and was duly made acquainted
+with Miss Rose. Cherrie had heard the new teacher was pretty, but she
+had hoped she was not so very pretty as this, and a pang of jealousy
+went through her vain little heart. She had stayed for tea, hoping
+Charley would partake of that repast with them, and afterward escort her
+home; but it commenced and was over, but that young gentleman did not
+appear.
+
+Miss Rose played after tea, and Cherrie lingered and lingered, under
+pretense of being charmed; but it got dark, and still that provoking
+Charley did not come. Cherrie could wait no longer, and a little cross
+and a good deal disappointed, she arose to go.
+
+"You will perish in that lace mantle," said Miss Rose, kindly. "You had
+better wear my shawl; these spring nights are chilly."
+
+Cherrie accepted the offer, rolled her lace up in a copy of the
+"Speckport Spouter," and started on her homeward journey. The street
+lamps were lit, the shop windows ablaze with illumination, and the cold,
+keen stars were cleaving sharp and chill through the blue concave above.
+A pale young crescent moon shone serene in their midst, but it might
+have been an old oil-lamp for all Miss Nettleby cared, in her present
+irate and vexed frame of mind. But there was balm in Gilead; a step was
+behind her, a man's step, firm and quick; a tall form was making rapid
+head-way in her direction. Cherrie looked behind, half frightened, but
+there was no mistaking that commanding presence, that military stride,
+in the handsome face with the thick black mustache, looking down upon
+her. Cherrie's heart was bounding, but how was he to know that.
+
+"I knew it was you, Cherrie," he said, familiarly. "Are you not afraid
+to take so long and lonely a walk at this hour?"
+
+"I couldn't help it," said Cherrie, all her good humor returning. "There
+was no one to come with me. I was down at Mrs. Marsh's, and Charley
+wasn't home."
+
+"I don't want you to go to Mrs. Marsh's, and I am glad Charley wasn't
+home."
+
+"I didn't go to see Charley," said Cherrie, coquettishly. "I wanted a
+book, and I wanted to see Miss Rose. Do you know where Charley is?"
+
+"He is up at Redmon."
+
+"And you are going there, too, I suppose."
+
+"I am going to see you home, just now. Let me carry that parcel,
+Cherrie, and don't walk so fast. There's no hurry, now that I am with
+you. Cherrie, you looked like an angel this afternoon, in Queen Street."
+
+As we do not generally picture angelic beings in shot silks and blue
+parasols, not to speak of turban hats, it is to be presumed Captain
+Cavendish's ideas on the subject must have been somewhat vague. Cherrie
+obeyed his injunction not to hurry, and it was an hour before they
+reached the cottage.
+
+Captain Cavendish declined going in, but stood in the shadow of the
+trees, opposite the house, tattling to her for another half hour, then
+shook hands, and went to Lady Leroy's, where he and Charley and Mr.
+Blake were to spend the evening.
+
+Val and Charley were there before him, the former having but just
+entered. The captain had not seen Val, but Val had seen the captain, and
+watched him now with a comical look, playing the devoted to Nathalie.
+
+In Mrs. Leroy's mansion there was no lack of rooms--Natty had two to
+herself--sleeping-room adjoining the old lady's, and a parlor adjoining
+that. It was in this parlor Natty received her own friends and
+visitors, and there the three gentlemen were now. Natty's rooms were the
+only light and cheerful ones in the vast, gloomy old house, and Natty
+had fitted them up at her own expense. Delicate paper on the walls;
+pretty drawings and landscapes, in water-colors, the work of her own
+artistic fingers, hung around; a lounge, cushioned in chintz; an
+arm-chair, cushioned in the same; attractive trifles of all sorts,
+books, a work-table, and an old piano--made the apartment quite pleasant
+and home-like. The only thing it wanted was a fire; for it was
+essentially a bleak house, full of draughts--but a fire in any room save
+her own was a piece of extravagance Lady Leroy would not hear of. So the
+gentlemen sat in their overcoats; and Lady Leroy, who had been wheeled
+in, in her arm-chair, looked more like an Egyptian mummy than ever.
+
+Midge sat behind her, on her hunkers, if you know what that is; her
+elbows on her knees, her chin between her hands, glaring balefully on
+Captain Cavendish, making himself fascinating to her young mistress. If
+that gallant young officer had ever heard the legend of the Evil Eye, he
+might have thought of it then, with Midge's malignant regards upon him.
+
+Lady Leroy, who dearly loved gossip, was chattering like a superannuated
+magpie to Val and Charley. Mr. Blake was giving her what he knew of the
+captain's history.
+
+"His uncle," said Val, "is a baronet--a Yorkshire baronet at that--and
+Captain Cavendish is next heir to the title. Meantime, he has nothing
+but his pay, which would be enough for any reasonable man, but isn't a
+tithe to him."
+
+"And he wants a rich wife," said Lady Leroy, with a spiteful glance over
+at him. "Ah! I see what he's coming after. Natty!"
+
+"Ma'am!" said Natty, looking up, and still laughing at some anecdote
+Captain Cavendish had been relating.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" she said, sharply.
+
+"Only at a story I have been listening to! Do you want anything?"
+
+"Yes. Go into my room and see what time it is."
+
+"We bring Time with us," said Mr. Blake, producing a watch as big as a
+small football; "it's five minutes to nine."
+
+"Then it's my bedtime! Natty, go and make me my punch. Midge, wheel me
+in, and warm the bed. Young men, it's time for you to go."
+
+Captain Cavendish and Val exchanged an amused glance and arose. Charley
+stepped forward and laid his hand on the arm-chair.
+
+"I'll wheel you in, Mrs. Leroy. Stand clear, Midge, or the train will
+run into you. Go ahead, fellows, I'll be after you."
+
+"You must not mind Mrs. Leroy's eccentricities, you know," said Natty,
+shaking hands shyly and wistfully at the front door with the captain.
+"Mr. Blake is quite used to it, and thinks nothing of it."
+
+"Think better of me, Miss Marsh. I do not mind her brusqueness any more
+than he does; in proof whereof I shall speedily pay my respects at
+Redmon again. Good night!"
+
+"Tell Charley to overtake us. Good night, Natty!" called Val, striding
+down the moon-lit avenue, and out into the road.
+
+Captain Cavendish lit a cigar, handed another to his companion, took his
+arm and walked along, thinking. The Nettleby cottage was in a state of
+illumination, as they passed it; and the shrieks of an accordion,
+atrociously played, and somebody singing a totally different air, and
+shouts of laughter, mingling together, came noisily to their listening
+ears. Val nodded toward it.
+
+"Cherrie holds a levee every night--the house is full now. Will you come
+in? 'All the more the merrier,' is the motto there."
+
+"No," said the captain, shrinking fastidiously; "I have no fancy for
+making one in Miss Cherrie's menagerie."
+
+"Does the objection extend to Miss Cherrie herself?" asked Mr. Blake,
+puffing energetically.
+
+"What do I know of Miss Cherrie?"
+
+"Can't say, only I should suppose you found out something while seeing
+her home an hour ago, and standing making love to her under the trees
+afterward."
+
+Captain Cavendish took out his cigar and looked at him.
+
+"Where were you?"
+
+"Coming through the rye--I mean the fields. The next time you try it on,
+take a more secluded spot, my dear fellow, than the queen's highroad!"
+
+"Oh, hang it!" exclaimed the young officer, impatiently; "it seems to
+me, Blake, you see more than you have any business to do. Suppose I did
+talk to the little girl. I met her on the road alone. Could I do less
+than escort her home?"
+
+"Look here," said Val, "there is an old saying, 'If you have too many
+irons in the fire, some of them must cool.' Now, that's your case
+exactly. You have too many irons in the fire."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"Don't you? Here it is, then! This morning, bright and early, I saw you
+promenading the shore with Miss Rose. This evening, I saw you making up
+to Cherrie Nettleby; and, ten minutes ago, you were as sweet as
+sugar-candy on Natty Marsh. No man can be in love with three women at
+once, without getting into trouble. Therefore, take a friend's advice,
+and drop two of them."
+
+"Which two?"
+
+"That's your affair. Please yourself."
+
+"Precisely what I mean to do; and now, Val, old boy, keep your own
+counsel; there's no harm done, and there will be none. A man cannot help
+being polite to a pretty girl--it's nature, you know; and, dear old
+fellow, don't see so much, if you can help it. It is rather annoying,
+and will do neither of us any good."
+
+Perhaps Captain Cavendish would have been still more annoyed had he
+known Val was not the only witness of that little flirtation with
+Cherrie. As that young lady, when he left her, after watching him out
+of sight, was about crossing the road to go into the house, a voice
+suddenly called, "Hallo, Cherrie! How are you?"
+
+Cherrie looked up greatly astonished, for the voice came from above her
+head. Was it the voice of a spirit?--if so, the spirit must have a
+shocking bad cold in the head, and inclined to over-familiarity at that.
+The voice came again, and still from above.
+
+"I say, Cherrie! You put in a pretty long stretch of courting that time!
+I like to see you cutting out the rest of the Speckport girls, and
+getting that military swell all to yourself."
+
+Cherrie beheld the speaker at last; and a very substantial spirit he
+was, perched up on a very high branch of a tree, his legs dangling about
+in the atmosphere, and his hands stuck in his trowsers.
+
+"Lor!" cried Miss Nettleby, quite startled, "if it ain't that Bill
+Blair! I declare I took it for a ghost!"
+
+Bill kicked his heels about in an ecstasy.
+
+"Oh, crickey! Wasn't it prime! I ain't heard anything like it this month
+of Sundays. Can't he keep company stunning, Cherrie? I say, Charley's
+dished, ain't he, Cherrie?"
+
+"How long have you been up there, you young imp?" asked Cherrie, her
+wrath rising.
+
+"Long enough to hear every word of it! Don't be mad, Cherrie--Oh, no, I
+never mentions it, its name is never heard--honor bright, you know."
+
+"Oh, if I had you here," cried Miss Nettleby, looking viciously up at
+him, "wouldn't I box your ears for you!"
+
+"Oh, no, you wouldn't!" said Bill, swinging about. "How was I to know
+when I roosted up here that you were going to take a whack at courting
+over there. I was going over to Jim Tod's, and, feeling tired, I got up
+here to rest. I say, Cherrie? would you like to hear a secret?"
+
+Cherrie would like nothing better, only before he told it, she would
+rather he got down. It gave her the fidgets to look at him up there.
+Bill got lazily down accordingly.
+
+"Now, what's the secret?" asked the young lady.
+
+"It's this," replied the young gentleman. "Do you know who Captain
+Cavendish happens to be?"
+
+"I know he's an Englishman," said Cherrie; "all the officers are that."
+
+"Yes; but you don't know who his folks are, I bet."
+
+"No. Who are they? Very rich, I suppose?"
+
+"Rich!" exclaimed Mr. Blair, contemptuously. "I say, Cherrie, you won't
+tell, will you? It's a secret."
+
+"Of course not, stupid. Go on."
+
+"Say, 'pon your word and honor."
+
+"'Pon my word! Now go on."
+
+"Well, then," said Bill, in a mysterious whisper, "he's--Queen
+Victoria's--eldest--son!"
+
+"What!"
+
+"I told you it was a secret, and it is. I heard him telling my
+boss--Blake, you know, and they didn't think I was listening. Queen
+Victoria, when she was a young woman, was married secretly to a duke,
+the Duke of Cavendish, and had one son. When her folks found it
+out--jimminy! wasn't there a row, and the Duke was beheaded for high
+treason, and she was married to Prince Albert. Now, you'll never tell,
+will you, Cherrie?"
+
+"Never!" answered Cherrie, breathlessly. "Well?"
+
+"Well, Captain Cavendish was brought up private, and is the right heir
+to the throne; and he expects his mother to leave it to him in her will
+when she dies, instead of the Prince of Wales. Now, if he marries you,
+Cherrie, and I am pretty sure he will before long--then you are Queen of
+England at once."
+
+"Now, Billy Blair," said Cherrie, puzzled whether to believe his solemn
+face or not, "I do believe you're telling lies."
+
+"It's true as preaching, I tell you. Didn't I hear 'em with my own ears.
+That chap's sure to be King of England some day, and when you're queen,
+Cherrie, send for Bill Blair to be your prime-minister. And now I must
+go--good night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+VAL TURNS MENTOR.
+
+
+Miss Nathalie Marsh was not the only person in existence who took a
+violent fancy to the pretty, pale little school-mistress, Miss Rose.
+Before the end of the month, Speckport pronounced her perfection;
+though, to do Speckport justice, it was not greatly given to overpraise.
+Indeed, it was a common saying with the inhabitants that Speckport would
+find fault with an archangel, did one of these celestial spirits think
+fit to alight there, and the very person most vehement in this assertion
+would have been the first in the backbiting. Yet Speckport praised Miss
+Rose, and said their Johnnys and Marys had never get on so fast in their
+A B abs, before, and the little ones themselves chanted her praises with
+all their hearts. If she appeared in the streets, they rushed headlong
+to meet her, sure of a smile for their pains. They brought her flowers
+every morning, and a reproachful look was the severest punishment known
+in the schoolroom. The old women dropped their courtesies; the old men
+pronounced her the nicest young woman they had seen for many a day, and
+the young men--poor things! fell in love.
+
+There was some one else winning golden opinions, but not from all sorts
+of people. Only from young ladies, who were ready to tear each other's
+dear little eyes out, if it could have helped the matter: and the man
+was Captain George Cavendish. Speckport was proud to have him at its
+parties; for was he not to be a baronet some day? and was his family in
+England, their Alma Mater, not as old as the hills, and older? But he
+was an expensive luxury. Their daughters fell in love with him, and
+their sons spent their money frightfully fast with him; and all sons or
+daughters got in return were fascinating smiles, courtly bows, and
+gallant speeches. He was not a marrying man, that was evident; and yet
+he did seem rather serious with Nathalie Marsh. Miss Marsh was the
+handsomest girl in Speckport; she would be the richest, and she was for
+certain the only one that ever had a grandfather--that is, to speak of:
+in the course of nature they all had, perhaps; but the grandfathers were
+less than nobody--peddlers, rag-men, and fish-hawkers. But her father
+and grandfather had been gentlemen born; and it is well to have good
+blood in one's veins, even on one side. So the young ladies hated Miss
+Marsh, and were jealous of each other; and that high-stepping young
+heiress laughed in their face, and walked and talked, and rode and
+sailed, and sang and danced with Captain Cavendish, and triumphed over
+them like a princess born.
+
+It was June, and very hot. Speckport was being grilled alive, and the
+dust flew in choking simooms.
+
+Cool through all the heat, Captain Cavendish walked up Queen Street in
+the broiling noonday sun. Charley Marsh and Alick McGregor walked on
+either side of him, like that other day on which they had met Cherrie;
+and Charley's face was flushed and clouded, and young McGregor's drawn
+down to a most lugubrious length. They had just come from Prince
+Street--an every-day resort now; and Charley and McGregor seldom left it
+of that late without clouded expression. Captain Cavendish was laughing
+at them both.
+
+"All in the downs!" he cried; "nonsense, Marsh. One would think you were
+ruined for life."
+
+"I soon shall be at this rate. I owe you a small fortune now."
+
+"Only fifty pounds," said the captain, as carelessly as if it were fifty
+pence, "a mere trifle."
+
+"And I owe you twice as much," said young McGregor, with a sort of
+groan; "won't there be the dickens to pay when it's found out at home."
+
+"Don't let them find it out, then," said Captain Cavendish, in the same
+off-hand manner.
+
+"That's easily said. How am I to help it?"
+
+"Your father has a check-book--help yourself."
+
+"That would be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs," said
+Charley. "Let the old man find that out and good-bye to Alick's chance
+of ever seeing Prince Street again. Here are my quarters--no use asking
+you in to hear the row old Leach will make at my delay, I suppose."
+
+He nodded, with his own careless laugh, and entered the office of Doctor
+Leach. Captain Cavendish looked at his watch.
+
+"Half-past eleven! I believe I owe your people a call, McGregor; so _en
+avant_!"
+
+Miss Jeannette McGregor was at home, and received the captain and her
+brother in her boudoir, a charming little room, with velvet-pile carpet,
+gilding, and ormolu, and medallion pictures of celebrated beauties set
+in the oval paneled walls. A copy of Longfellow, all gold and azure, was
+in her hand; she had once heard Captain Cavendish express his admiration
+of the great American poet; and having seen her brother and he coming up
+the front steps, she had arranged this little tableau expressly for the
+occasion. If there was one young lady in all Speckport who more than
+another sincerely hated Nathalie Marsh, or more sincerely admired
+Captain Cavendish, that one was Miss McGregor. She had long been jealous
+of Natty's beauty, but now she detested her with an honest earnestness
+that, I think, only women ever feel. She kissed her whenever they met;
+she invited her to every party they gave; she made calls at Redmon: and
+she hated her all the time, and could have seen her laid in her coffin
+with the greatest pleasure. It is a very common case, my brethren; Judas
+Iscariot was not a woman, but kisses after his fashion are very popular
+among the gentler sex.
+
+"Evangeline," said Captain Cavendish, taking up her book; "I always
+liked that, but never half so well as since I came to Speckport."
+
+"Because you saw Miss Marsh in the character," said Jeannette, laughing,
+as young ladies must, in these cases.
+
+"Miss Marsh took her character very well, but that is not the only
+reason why I shall long remember that night."
+
+A glance accompanied this speech that brought a glow to Miss McGregor's
+cheek and a flutter to her heart. Captain Cavendish was a clever man. He
+had more irons in the fire than even Val knew of, and allowed none of
+them to cool; and it does take a clever man to make love discreetly to
+half-a-dozen women at once.
+
+"Natty looked stunning that night," put in Alick; "she is the handsomest
+girl in Speckport."
+
+"You think so--we all know that," said Jeannette, flashing a spiteful
+glance at him; "you have been making a simpleton of yourself about her
+for the last two years. Why don't you propose at once."
+
+"Because she wouldn't have me," blurted honest Alick; "I wish to heaven
+she would! I would soon do the popping."
+
+"Faint heart never won fair lady; take courage and try," said the
+captain.
+
+Jeannette looked at him with her most taking smile.
+
+"Are you quite sincere in that, Captain Cavendish?"
+
+"Quite! Why not?"
+
+"Oh, nothing! Only rumor says you are going to carry a Bluenose bride
+back to Merrie England."
+
+"Perhaps I may. You are a Bluenose, are you not, Miss Jeannette?"
+
+Before Jeannette could answer, a sort of shout from Alick, who was at
+the window, took their attention. Miss McGregor looked languidly over.
+
+"Oh, how noisy you are! What is it, pray?"
+
+The door-bell rang loudly.
+
+"It's Natty herself and Laura Blair. You ought to have seen Natty
+driving up, captain; she handles the ribbons in tiptop style, and that
+black mare of Blair's is no joke to drive."
+
+Before he had finished speaking, the door opened, and a servant showed
+in the two young ladies. Miss Jeannette sprang up with the utmost
+effusion, and kissed each on both cheeks.
+
+"You darling Natty! It is ages since you were here. Laura, how good it
+is of you to fetch her! for I know it must have been you."
+
+"So it was," said Laura, shaking hands with Captain Cavendish. "I
+haven't time, I haven't time, is always her cry. I tell her there will
+be time when we are all dead--won't there, captain?"
+
+"I presume so, unless at the loss of Miss Laura Blair the whole economy
+of creation blows up with a crash."
+
+"And so you see," said Laura, sitting down on a chair, and flirting out
+her skirts all around her, "I drove up to Redmon this morning, with a
+great basketful of English strawberries the size of crab-apples, as a
+coaxer to Lady Leroy; and through their eloquence, and the promise of
+another, got her to let Natty come to town with me on business."
+
+"On business;" said Captain Cavendish; "that means shopping."
+
+"No, sir, it doesn't; it means something serious, and that you must take
+share in. You, too, Jeannette, and you, Alick, if we run short."
+
+"Thank you," said Alick, "what is it?"
+
+"Why, you know," began Miss Blair, with the air of one about entering
+upon a story, "there's that Mrs. Hill--you know her, Alick?"
+
+"What! the wife of the pilot who was drowned in the storm last week?"
+
+"That's the one," nodded Laura. "Well, she's poor--Oh, dear me! ever so
+poor, and her two children down in the measles, and herself half dead
+with rheumatism. I shouldn't have known a thing about it only for Miss
+Rose. I do declare Miss Rose is next door to an angel; she found her
+out, and did lots of things for her, and told me at last how poor she
+was, and asked me to send her some things. So then I made up this plan."
+
+"What plan?" inquired Jeannette, as Laura stopped for want of breath,
+and Nathalie sat listening with an amused look.
+
+"Oh, didn't I tell you? Why, we're going to have a play, and every one
+of us turn into actors; admission, half a dollar. Won't it be grand?"
+
+"And the play is Laura's own," said Nathalie; "nothing less than the
+adventures of Telemachus dramatized."
+
+"That is delightful," said Jeannette, with sparkling eyes. "Have I a
+part, Laura?"
+
+"To be sure, and so has Natty, and myself, and Captain Cavendish, and
+Val Blake, and Charley Marsh, and as many more as we want. The new wing
+that pa has built to our house is just finished, and, being unfurnished,
+will make a lovely theater. Only a select number of tickets will be
+issued, and the place is sure to be crowded. The proceeds will be a
+little fortune to Mrs. Hill."
+
+"You should have given Miss Rose a part, as she was the head of it,"
+suggested Alick.
+
+"She wouldn't have it. I tried hard enough, but she was resolute. She is
+such a timid little thing, you know, and she would make a lovely nymph,
+too."
+
+"What part have you assigned me?" inquired Captain Cavendish.
+
+"Being a soldier and a hero, you are Ulysses, of course; Charley is
+Telemachus; Val is Mentor--fancy Val with flowing white hair and beard,
+like an old nanny-goat. Jeannette, you will be Calypso; Natty will take
+Eucharis; I, Penelope. I wanted Miss Rose to be Eucharis--the part would
+have suited her so well."
+
+"I don't believe it would come natural to Charley to make love to her,"
+said Alick; "he'll have to, won't he, if he is Telemachus?"
+
+"You must change the casts, Miss Blair," said the captain, decidedly.
+"If Telemachus is to do the love-making, I must be Telemachus. Mr. Marsh
+and I must change."
+
+"You would make such a nice Ulysses," said Laura, meditatingly, while
+Nathalie blushed; "but please yourself. You must all spend the evening
+at our house, and when the whole _dramatis personæ_ are gathered, we can
+discuss and settle the thing for good, fix the rehearsal and the night
+of the play. Don't fail to come."
+
+"You need not be in a hurry," said Jeannette, as Laura rose and was
+sailing off; "stay for luncheon."
+
+"Couldn't possibly--promised to leave Natty back safe and sound in an
+hour, and it only wants ten minutes now. If we fail one second, she
+will never get off for rehearsals. Remember, you are all engaged for
+this evening."
+
+The two long parlors of the Blairs were pretty well filled that night
+with young ladies and gentlemen, and a very gay party they were. There
+was so much laughing and chaffing over it, that it was some trouble to
+settle preliminaries; but Laura was intensely in earnest, and could see
+nothing to laugh at, and Captain Cavendish coming gallantly to her aid,
+matters were arranged at last. Charley Marsh, who was a Rubens on a
+small scale, undertook to paint the scenery, superintend the carpenters
+and the machinery of the stage. The young ladies arranged the costumes;
+everybody got their parts in MS.; rehearsals were appointed, and some
+time before midnight the amateurs dispersed. In the June moonlight, the
+English officer drove Nathalie home, and it was not all theatricals they
+talked by the way. There was a good deal of trouble about the thing yet,
+now that it was finally started. In the first place, there was that
+tiresome Lady Leroy, who made a row every time Natty went to rehearsal,
+and required lots of strawberries, and jellies, and bottles of old wine,
+to bring her to reason. Then they bungled so in their parts, and wanted
+so much prompting, and Miss Elvira Tod, sister to the Rev. Augustus, who
+was tall and prim, and played Minerva, objected to wearing a tin shield,
+and wanted to keep on her hoops.
+
+"Now, Miss Tod," expostulated Laura, ready to cry, "you know the goddess
+Minerva always is painted with a breastplate, to conceal her want of a
+bust; and as for your skeleton, you would be a nice goddess with
+hoops--wouldn't you?"
+
+On the whole, things progressed as favorably as could be expected; and
+the eventful night was announced, tickets were issued and eagerly
+bought, and Speckport was on the qui vive for the great event. When the
+appointed night came, the impromptu theater was crowded at an early
+hour, and with nothing but the upper-crust, either; the military band,
+which formed the orchestra, played the "Nymph's Dance" ravishingly, and
+amid a breathless hush, the curtain rose.
+
+Mrs. Hill, the destitute widow, was made happy next day by some twenty
+pounds, the produce of the play, and Speckport could talk of nothing
+else for a week. The Speckport Spouter even went into personalities.
+"Miss Nathalie Marsh," that journal said, "as Eucharis, astonished every
+one. The fire, the energy, the pathos of her acting could not be
+surpassed by the greatest professionals of the day. Captain Cavendish,
+as the hero, performed his part to the life--it seemed more like reality
+than mere acting; and Mr. C. Marsh as Ulysses, and Miss Laura Blair as
+Penelope, were also excellent."
+
+On the morning after this laudatory notice appeared in the Spouter, a
+young gentleman, one of the employees of that office, walked slowly
+along Queen Street, his hands thrust deep in his coat-pockets, his cap
+very much on one side of his head, and his face lengthened to
+preternatural solemnity. The young gentleman was Bill Blair; and that he
+had something on his mind was evident, for his countenance was
+seriously, not to say dismally, meditative. Reaching the office, he
+walked deliberately up-stairs, entered the outer room, swung himself
+nimbly up on the handiest stool, and began flinging his legs about,
+without the ceremony of removing his cap. Mr. Clowrie, the only other
+occupant of the apartment, looked at him over his desk with a frown.
+
+"I thought Mr. Blake told you to be here at half-past six this morning,
+and now it's a quarter past eight," began Mr. Clowrie; "if I was Blake,
+I would turn you out of the office."
+
+"But you ain't Blake!" retorted Master Blair; "so don't ruffle your fine
+feathers for nothing, Jakey! If you had been up till half-past one this
+morning, perhaps you wouldn't be any spryer than I am."
+
+"What kept you up till that time? Some devilment, I'll be bound."
+
+"No, it wasn't," said Bill; "our folks, the whole crowd but me, streaked
+off to the theatre; so as I couldn't see the fun of playing Robinson
+Crusoe at home, I just went over to Jim Tod's to have a game of
+all-fours, and a look at the pups, and they're growing lovely. I didn't
+mean to stay long, but some of the rest of the fellows were there, and
+Jim had a box of cigars, and a bottle of sherry he had cribbaged out of
+the sideboard, and it was all so jolly I'll be blowed if it didn't
+strike twelve before we knew where we were."
+
+"Well, now you've come, go to work, or there will be a precious row when
+the boss comes."
+
+"Blake won't row," said Bill, nodding mysteriously; "but I know where
+there will be one before long. Cracky, won't there be a flare-up when
+it's found out!"
+
+Mr. Clowrie laid down his pen and looked up.
+
+"When what's found out?"
+
+"That's my secret," replied Bill, with a perfect shower of mysterious
+nods. "I saw the rummiest go last night when I was coming home ever you
+heard tell of."
+
+"I don't believe it," said Jake, disdainfully; "you're always finding
+mare's-nests, and a lot they come to when all's done!"
+
+"Jake, look here! you won't tell, will you?"
+
+"Bosh! go to work. What should I tell for?"
+
+"Well, then," said Bill, lowering his voice, "I've found out who stole
+that hundred pounds from old McGregor."
+
+"What?"
+
+"You remember that hundred pounds old McGregor had stole a week ago, and
+that went so mysteriously? Well, I've found out who took it."
+
+"You have!" cried Mr. Clowrie, excited; "why, there's a reward of fifty
+dollars out for the thief!"
+
+Bill nodded again.
+
+"I know it, but I ain't going to apply. You won't tell--honor bright!"
+
+"I won't tell! who was it?"
+
+"Don't faint if you can! It was his own son, Alick!"
+
+"Wha-a-t!"
+
+"I tell you it was; I heard him say so myself, last night."
+
+Mr. Clowrie sat thunderstruck, staring. Master Blair went on:
+
+"Charley Marsh is in the mess too--I don't mean about the
+money-stealing, mind! but him and Sandy McGregor are galloping the road
+to ruin at a 2.40 rate!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+Bill looked round as if fearful the very walls would hear him.
+
+"They go to Prince Street, Jake! I met them coming out of a certain
+house there past twelve o'clock last night!"
+
+"By ginger!" exclaimed Mr. Clowrie, aghast. "You never mean to say young
+McGregor stole the money to gam--"
+
+"Hu-sh-sh! I wouldn't have it found out through me for the world. It's
+all the work of that dandified officer; he was with them in a long
+overcoat, but I knew him the minute I clapped eyes on him. They were
+talking about the bank-note, and the captain was laughing and smoking
+away as jolly as you please; but I saw Charley's face as they passed a
+gas-lamp, and I swear he was as white as a ghost!"
+
+"I suppose he'd been losing."
+
+"I reckon so, and Alick didn't look much better. That captain's a
+regular scape--he's after Cherrie Nettleby as regular as clock-work
+now."
+
+Mr. Clowrie scowled suddenly, but Bill clattered on:
+
+"I saw him twice last night; once before I met them in Prince Street. It
+was about nine, and Cherrie was with him. There the two of them were
+standing, like Paul and Virginny, at the gate, making love like sixty!
+That Cherrie's the preciousest fool that ever drew breath, I do think.
+Why don't you----"
+
+He stopped short in consternation, for the door swung open and Val
+strode in, and, as he had done once before, collared him. With the other
+hand he turned the key in the lock to keep out intruders, and Bill
+fairly quaked, for Val's face looked ominous.
+
+"Now, look you, Master Bill Blair," he began, in a tone exceedingly in
+earnest, "I have been listening out there for some time, and I have just
+got this to say to you: if ever I find you repeat it to mortal man or
+woman, as long as you live, I'll break every bone in your body! Do you
+hear that?"
+
+Yes, Master Bill heard, and jerked himself free with a very red and
+sulky face.
+
+"Don't forget now!" reiterated Val; "I'll thrash you within an inch of
+your life, as sure as your name's Bill! And you, Clowrie, if you want to
+keep yourself out of trouble, take my advice and say nothing about it.
+Now get to work, you, sir, and no more gossiping."
+
+Val strode off to his own room, and sat down to look over a file of
+exchanges, and read his letters. But he could neither read nor do
+anything else with comfort this morning. The boy's gossip had disturbed
+him more than he would have owned; and at last, in desperation, he
+pitched all from him, seized his hat, and went out.
+
+"I played Mentor the other night on the stage. I think I'll try it in
+real life. Confound that Cavendish; why can't he let the boy alone? I
+don't mind McGregor; he's only a noodle at best, and the old man can
+afford to lose the money; but Charley's another story! That Cherrie,
+too! The fellow's a scoundrel, and she's a--! Oh, here she comes!"
+
+Sure enough, tripping along, her blue parasol up, her turban on, a
+little white lace vail down, a black silk mantle flapping in the breeze,
+a buff calico morning-wrapper, with a perfect hailstorm of white buttons
+all over it, sweeping the dust, came Miss Nettleby herself, arrayed as
+usual for conquest. The incessant smile, ever parting her rosy lips,
+greeted Val. Cherrie always kept a large assortment of different quality
+on hand for different gentlemen. Val greeted her and turned.
+
+"Where are you going, Cherrie?"
+
+"Down to Mrs. Marsh's. I've got a book of hers to return. How's Miss
+Jo?"
+
+"She's well. I'll walk with you, Cherrie; I have something to say to
+you."
+
+His tone was so serious that Cherrie stared.
+
+"Lord, Mr. Blake! what is it?"
+
+"Let us go down this street--it is quiet. Cherrie, does Captain
+Cavendish go to see you every evening in the week?"
+
+"Gracious me, Mr. Blake!" giggled Cherrie, "what a question!"
+
+"Answer it, Cherrie."
+
+"Now, Mr. Blake, I never! if you ain't the oddest man! I shan't tell you
+a thing about it!"
+
+"He was with you last night, was he not?"
+
+"It's none of your business!" said polite Cherrie; "he has as much right
+to be with me as any one else, I hope. You come yourself sometimes, for
+that matter."
+
+"Yes; but I don't make love to you, you know."
+
+"It wouldn't be any use for you if you did," said Miss Cherrie,
+bridling.
+
+"It's a different case altogether," said Val; "you and I are old
+friends--he is a stranger."
+
+"He's not! I've known him more than five weeks! If you only came to
+preach, Mr. Blake, I guess you had better go back, and I'll find Mrs.
+Marsh's alone."
+
+"Cherrie, I want to warn you--the less you have to do with Captain
+Cavendish the better. People are talking about you now."
+
+"Let 'em talk," retorted Miss Nettleby, loftily; "when Speckport stops
+talking the world will come to an end. I'll just do as I please, and
+talk to whom I like; and if everybody minded their own business, it
+would be better for some folks."
+
+With which the young lady swept away majestically, leaving Mr. Blake to
+turn back or follow if he pleased. He chose the former, and walked along
+to Dr. Leach's office. Charley was standing, looking out of the window,
+and whistling a tune.
+
+"Hallo, Val!" was his greeting, "what brings you here? Want a tooth
+pulled, or a little bleeding, or a trifle of physic of any kind? Happy
+to serve you in the absence of the doctor."
+
+"No, I don't want any physic, but I have come to give you a dose. Are
+you alone?"
+
+"Quite. Leach went to visit a patient ten minutes ago. What's the
+matter?"
+
+"Everything's the matter! What's this I hear you have been about
+lately?"
+
+"Turning actor--do you mean that? Much obliged to you, Val, for the puff
+you gave me in yesterday's Spouter."
+
+"No, sir, I don't mean that! Isn't Alick McGregor a nice fellow to rob
+his own father and you his aider and abettor? Fine doings that!"
+
+Charley fairly bounded.
+
+"Oh, the d----! Where did you find that out?"
+
+"Never mind, I have found it out; that is enough!"
+
+"Is it known? Who else knows it?"
+
+"Two that are not quite so safe to keep it as I am! No, I won't tell you
+who they are. Charley, what are you coming to?"
+
+"The gallows, I suppose; but I had no hand in that. If McGregor took the
+money, it was his own doings, and his father could spare it."
+
+"What did he want of it?"
+
+"Am I his keeper? How should I know?"
+
+"You do know! When did you turn gambler, Charley?"
+
+Charley turned round, his face white.
+
+"You know that, too?"
+
+"I do! McGregor stole the hundred pounds to pay a gambling-debt to
+Captain Cavendish. And you--where does your money come from, Marsh?"
+
+"I don't steal it," said Charley, turning from pale to red; "be sure of
+that!"
+
+"Come, my boy, don't be angry. You know I don't deserve that speech; but
+surely, Charley, this sort of thing should not go on. Where will it
+end?"
+
+"Where, indeed?" said Charley, gloomily. "Val, I wish you would tell me
+how you found this out?"
+
+"Pshaw! do you really expect to go in and out of the most notorious
+gambling-house in Speckport, at all hours of the day and night, and it
+not be discovered? You ought to know this place better."
+
+"That is true; but how did that infernal business of McGregor's leak
+out? No one knew it but ourselves."
+
+"It has leaked out, and is known to two persons, who may blow on you all
+at any moment."
+
+"And I wanted to keep it from Natty. Val, old fellow, do tell me who
+they are."
+
+"You know I won't; it would do no good. Charley, I wish you would stop
+in time."
+
+"Stuff! it's no hanging matter after all. Dozens go there as well as I!"
+
+"You won't give it up, then?"
+
+"Not until I win back what I have lost. My coffers are not so full that
+I can lose without trying to win it back. Don't talk to me, Blake, it's
+of no use; win I must, there is no alternative. Won't Alick go into
+white horror when he finds the murder's out?"
+
+Val turned to leave.
+
+"You're going, are you?" said Charley. "I need hardly tell you to keep
+dark about this; it will only mar, not mend matters, to let it get wind.
+Don't look so solemn, old boy, all's not lost that's in danger."
+
+Val said nothing--what was the use? He passed out and went home to his
+domain.
+
+"I knew how it would be," he said to himself, going along; "but I have
+done my duty, and that's satisfactory. I'll keep my eye on you, Captain
+Cavendish, and if ever I get a chance, won't I play you a good turn for
+this!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+WOOED AND WON.
+
+
+"And if ever I find her going prancing round with him any more," said
+Lady Leroy, clawing the air viciously with her skinny fingers, "or
+letting him come home with her again, I'll turn her out of doors, I
+will, as sure as your name's Midge."
+
+"Which it isn't," said Midge; "for I was christened Prisciller. And as
+for turning her out, you know right well, ma'am, you can never get along
+without her, so where's the good of your gabbing."
+
+The dialogue between mistress and maid took place, of course, in the
+former's room, which she rarely left. Midge was preparing her ladyship's
+dinner, all the cooking being done in the chamber, and all the edibles
+being kept under lock and key, and doled out in ounces. Midge and Lady
+Leroy fought regular pitched battles every day over the stinted
+allowance awarded her; and Natty had to come to the rescue by
+purchasing, from her own private purse, the wherewithal to satisfy
+Midge. No other servant would have lived at Redmon on the penurious
+wages the old lady grumblingly gave, probably on no wages at all,
+considering the loneliness of the place, its crabbed and miserly
+mistress, and hard work; but Midge stayed through her love of Nathalie,
+and contradicted and bickered with Lady Leroy from morning till night.
+In the days when the Marshes were rich and prosperous, Midge had been a
+hanger on of the household, doing pretty much as she pleased, and coming
+and going, and working or loafing as she liked. She had saved Charley's
+life once, nearly at the risk of her own, and loved him and Nathalie
+with a depth of self-sacrificing and jealous tenderness few would have
+given her credit for. Nathalie was good to her always, considerate and
+kind, putting up with her humor and querulousness, and ready to shield
+her from slights at any time. Midge scolded the young lady roundly on
+many an occasion, and Natty took it good-humoredly always. She was out
+now, and Lady Leroy's wrath had been kindled by something that had
+happened the preceding night, and which she had found out through
+Cherrie Nettleby, for Midge told no tales. Captain Cavendish, contrary
+to her express orders, had seen Nathalie home from a little sociable at
+her mother's. Val, Miss Jo, Laura Blair, Catty Clowrie, Jeannette and
+Alick McGregor, Charley, and Captain Cavendish only had been there; for
+some sick pauper had sent for Miss Rose, and she had gone, glad to
+escape. Cherrie had seen the captain and Miss Marsh pass the cottage,
+and, spiteful and jealous, had tattled next morning. Lady Leroy disliked
+Captain Cavendish--she did most people for that matter, but she honored
+him with especial aversion. Nathalie had gone off after breakfast to
+Speckport, to attend to her music-pupils and visit the school. Cherrie
+had come in afterward to retail the town-gossip, and had but just
+departed; and now the old lady was raging to Midge.
+
+"I tell you, Midge, I don't like him!" she shrilly cried, "I don't like
+him, and I don't want him coming here."
+
+"No more don't I," retorted Midge, "I'd go to his hanging with the
+greatest pleasure; but where's the odds? He don't care whether we like
+him or not; he only laughs and jeers at both of us, so long as she
+does."
+
+"It ain't her he likes," said Lady Leroy, "it's my money, my money, that
+I've pinched and spared to save, and that he thinks to squander. But
+I'll be a match for him, and for her too, the ungrateful minx, if she
+thinks to play upon me."
+
+"She ain't an ungrateful minx, ma'am!" sharply contradicted Midge;
+"she's better nor ever you were or ever will be! She lives shut up here
+from one week's end to t'other, slavin' herself for you, and much she
+gets for it! She can do what she likes with the money when you're dead!"
+
+Lady Leroy's face turned so horribly ghastly at this speech that it was
+quite dreadful to look at. The thought of death was her nightmare, her
+daily horror. She never thought of it at all if she could, and thus
+forcibly reminded, her features worked for a moment as if she had a fit.
+Even Midge grew a little scared at what she had done.
+
+"There, ma'am!" she cried, "you needn't go into fits about it. My
+speaking of it won't make you die any sooner. I dessay you're good for
+twenty years yet, if your appetite holds out!"
+
+The old woman's livid face grew a shade less deathlike.
+
+"Do you think so, Midge? Do you think so?"
+
+"Oh, I think so fast enough! Folks like you always is sure to spin out
+till everybody's tired to death of 'em. Here's your dinner ready now;
+so swallow it, and save your breath for that!"
+
+The sight of her meals always had an inspiring effect on the mistress of
+Redmon, and Natty was for the moment forgotten. Perhaps it might have
+spoiled her appetite a little had she seen the way that young lady was
+returning home, and in what company. Not walking discreetly along Redmon
+road, and not alone. In the pretty boat, all white and gold, with the
+name "Nathalie" in golden letters--the boat that had been poor Alick
+McGregor's gift--a merry little party were skimming over the sunlit
+waves, reaching Redmon by sea instead of land. The snow-white sail was
+set, and Nathalie Marsh was steering; the sea-wind blowing about her
+tangled yellow curls, fluttering the azure ribbons of her pretty hat,
+deepening the roses in her cheeks, and brightening the starry eyes. She
+sang as she steered, "Over the Sea in my Fairy Bark," and the melodious
+voice rang sweetly out over the wide sea. Near her Captain Cavendish
+lounged over the side, watching the ripples as they flew along in the
+teeth of the breeze, and looking perfectly content to stay there
+forever. Beside him sat Laura Blair, and, near her, Miss Jo Blake. Laura
+was often with Miss Jo, whom she liked, partly for her own sake--for she
+was the best-natured old maid that ever petted a cat--and partly for her
+brother's, whom Miss Blair considered but one remove from an angel.
+
+The quartet had "met by chance, the usual way," and Nathalie had invited
+him to have a sail. She had rowed herself to town in her batteau, but
+the sail back was inconceivably pleasanter. As the batteau ran up on the
+beach below Redmon, Natty did not ask them to the house, but no one was
+surprised at that. They accompanied her to the gate, Captain Cavendish
+slinging the light oars over his shoulder.
+
+"And you will be at the picnic day after to-morrow, without fail," Laura
+was saying to Nathalie.
+
+"Can't promise," replied Natty. "Mrs. Leroy may take it into her head to
+refuse permission, and I have been out a great deal lately."
+
+"I don't care," said Laura, "you must come! If Mrs. Leroy turns
+inexorable, I will go up with a basket of oranges and let them plead in
+your behalf. You see, captain, we have to 'stay that old lady with
+flagons and comfort her with apples' when we want Natty very badly, and
+she turns refractory."
+
+"All the oranges in Seville would not be thrown away in such a cause. By
+all means, Miss Marsh, come to the picnic."
+
+Speckport was famous for its picnics, and excursions by land and water.
+This one was the first of the season, and was to be held on Lady Leroy's
+grounds--a pretty high price having to be paid for the privilege.
+
+"There won't be any fun without you, Natty," said Miss Jo; "I won't hear
+of your absenting yourself at all. Is Miss Rose to have a holiday on the
+occasion?"
+
+"I offered her one, but she declined; she did not care for going, she
+said."
+
+"What a singular girl she is!" said Laura, thoughtfully; "she seems to
+care very little for pleasure of any kind for herself; but the poor of
+Speckport look upon her as an angel sent down expressly to write their
+letters, look after them in sickness, make them beef-tea, and teach
+their children for nothing. I wish you would make her go to the picnic,
+Natty, and not let her mope herself to death, drudging in that horrid
+school-room."
+
+Captain George Cavendish, leaning on the oars he had been carrying,
+seemed not to be listening. He was looking dreamily before him, seeing
+neither the broad green fields with the summer sunlight sleeping in
+sheets of gold upon them, nor the white, winding, dusty highroad, nor
+the ceaseless sea, spreading away and away until it kissed the
+horizon-sky, nor tall Miss Blake, nor even the two pretty girls who
+talked. It had all faded from before him; and he was many a mile away in
+a strange, foreign-looking city, with narrow, crooked streets, filled
+with foreign-looking men and women, and priests in long black soutanes,
+and queer hats, and black nuns and gray nuns, and Notre Dame nuns and
+Sisters of Charity and Mercy, all talking in French, and looking at each
+other with dark Canadian eyes. He was back in Montreal, he saw the
+Champ-de-Mars, the Place d'Arme, the great convents, the innumerable
+churches with their tall crosses pointing to the heaven we are all
+trying to reach, and he saw himself beside one--fairer in his eyes than
+all the dusky Canadian beauties in the world, with their purple-black
+hair and great flashing black eyes. "Winnie! Winnie! Winnie!" his false
+heart was passionately crying, as that old time came back, and
+golden-haired, violet-eyed Nathalie Marsh was no more to him than if she
+had been but the fantasy of a dream. He had flirted and played the lover
+to scores; played it so long and so often that it had become second
+nature, as necessary as the air he breathed; but he had only loved one,
+and he seemed in a fair way of going on to the end. He had been a
+traitor, but he could not forget. The girl he had jilted was avenged if
+she wished for vengeance: no pang he had ever given could be keener than
+what he felt himself.
+
+A laugh aroused him, a merry, girlish laugh. He awoke from his dream
+with a start, and found them all looking at him.
+
+"So you have awoke at last," laughed Laura. "Three times have I told you
+we were going, and there you stood, staring at empty space, and paying
+no more attention than if you were stone-deaf. Pray, Captain Cavendish,
+where were you just now?"
+
+Before he could answer, the gate against which Nathalie leaned was
+pushed violently open, and the thick dwarfish figure and unlovely face
+of Midge was thrust out--not made more prepossessing by an ugly scowl.
+
+"Miss Natty," she shrilly cried, "I want to know if you mean to stand
+here all day long? It's past two now, and when you go up to the house,
+perhaps the old woman won't give it you--and serve you right, too!"
+added Miss Midge, sotto voce.
+
+"So late!" Nathalie cried, in alarm. "I had no idea of it! Good-bye,
+Miss Jo; good-bye, Laura. I must go!"
+
+She had smiled and nodded her farewell to the captain, and was off like
+a dart. Midge slammed the gate in their faces, and went sulkily after.
+
+In considerable consternation, Nathalie ran up-stairs and into the awful
+presence of the mistress of the house. She knew well she was in for a
+scolding, and was bracing herself to meet it.
+
+Lady Leroy had never been so furiously angry since the first day the
+young lady had entered beneath her roof, and the storm burst before Miss
+Marsh was fairly in the room. Such a tempest of angry words, such a
+tornado of scolding, such a wrathful outbreak of old woman's fury, it
+has been the ill-fortune of but few to hear. Nathalie bore it like a
+heroine, without flinching and without retreat, though her cheeks were
+scarlet, and her blue eyes flashing fire. She had clinched one little
+hand involuntarily, and set her teeth, and compressed her lips, as if to
+force herself not to fling back the old woman's rage in her face; but
+the struggle was hard. Passionate and proud Nathalie's nature was, but
+the fiery steeds of pride and passion she had been taught, long ago, at
+her father's knee, to rein with the curb of patience. But I am afraid it
+was not this Christian motive that held her silent always under Lady
+Leroy's unreasonable abuse. Ambition was the girl's ruling passion. With
+her whole heart and soul she longed for wealth and power, and the first
+of these priceless blessings, in whose train the second followed, could
+only be obtained through this vituperative old bel-dame. If Nathalie let
+nature and passion have their way, and flung back fury for fury, she
+would find herself incontinently turned out of doors, and back again,
+probably, the day after, in that odious school-room, wearing out her
+heart, and going mad slowly with the dull drudgery of a poor teacher's
+life. This motive in itself was strong enough, but of late days another
+and a stronger had been added. If she were Miss Marsh, the
+school-mistress, Captain Cavendish, the heir of a baronet, would
+doubtless admire, and--have nothing whatever to say to her; but Miss
+Marsh, the heiress of Redmon and of Lady Leroy's thousands, was quite
+another thing. He was poor now, comparatively speaking; she knew
+that--how sweet it would be to lay a fortune at the feet of the man she
+loved! Some day in the bright future he would lay a title at her fair
+feet in return, and all her dreams of love, and power, and greatness,
+would be more than realized. Not that Nathalie for one instant fancied
+George Cavendish sought her for her fortune--she would have flung back
+such a suspicion furiously in the face of the profferer--but she knew
+enough of the fitness of things to be aware that, however much he might
+secretly adore her rose-hued cheeks, golden hair, and violet eyes, he
+could never marry a portionless bride. On this tiger-cat old Tartar,
+then, all these sweet dreams depended for their fruition; and she must
+pocket her pride, and eat humble pie, and make no wry faces over that
+unpalatable pastry. She must be patient and long-suffering now, that she
+might reign like a princess royal hereafter; so while Lady Leroy stormed
+and poured no end of vials of wrath on her ward's unfortunate head, that
+young person only shut her rosy lips the harder, and bated her breath
+not to reply. We are so strong to conquer ourselves, you see, when
+pounds, shillings, and pence are concerned, and so weak and cowardly to
+obey the commands of One who was led "as a lamb to the slaughter, and
+who opened not his mouth." So Nathalie stood, breathing quick, and only
+holding herself from flying at her tormentress by main force, and Lady
+Leroy stormed on until forced to stop from want of breath.
+
+"And now, Miss," she wound up, her little eyes glaring on the young
+lady, "I should like to know what you've got to say for yourself."
+
+"I have nothing to say," replied Nathalie, speaking for the first time.
+
+"Oh, I dare say not! All I say goes in one ear and out t'other, doesn't
+it, now? Ain't you ashamed of yourself, you minx?"
+
+"No!" quietly said Nathalie.
+
+Mrs. Leroy glared upon her with a look of fury, horribly revolting in
+that old and wrinkled face.
+
+"Do you mean to say you'll ever do it again? Do you mean to say you'll
+go with that man any more? Do you mean to say you defy and disobey me?
+Tell me!" cried Lady Leroy, clawing the air as if she were clawing the
+eyes out of Captain Cavendish's handsome head, "tell me if you mean to
+do this!"
+
+"Yes!" was the fiery answer flaming in the girl's crimson cheeks and
+flashing eyes, "I defy you to the death!" But prudence sidled up to her
+and whispered, "Heiress of Redmon, remember what you risk!" and so--oh,
+that I should have to tell it!--Nathalie Marsh smoothed her contracted
+brows, vailed the angry brightness of her blue eyes under their sweeping
+lashes, and steadily said:
+
+"Mrs. Leroy, you know I have no wish to willfully defy or disobey you. I
+should be sorry to be anything but true and dutiful to you, and I am not
+conscious of being anything else now."
+
+"You are--you know you are!" the old woman passionately cried. "You know
+I hate this man--this spendthrift, this fortune-seeker, this
+smooth-spoken, false-hearted hypocrite! Give up this man--promise me
+never to speak to him again, and then I will believe you!"
+
+Nathalie stood silent.
+
+"Promise," shrilly screamed Lady Leroy, "promise or else----"
+
+She stopped short, but the white rage in her distorted face finished the
+sentence with emphasis.
+
+"I will promise you one thing," said Nathalie, turning pale and cold,
+"that he shall not come to Redmon any more. You accuse him unjustly,
+Mrs. Leroy--he is none of the things you say. Do not ask me to promise
+anything else--I cannot do it!"
+
+What Lady Leroy would have said to this Nathalie never knew; for at that
+moment there came a loud knock at the front door, and Miss Marsh, only
+too glad to escape, flew down to answer it.
+
+The alarm at the outer door proved to come from Charley Marsh; and
+Nathalie stared, as she saw how pale and haggard he looked--so unlike
+her bright-faced brother.
+
+"What ails you, Charley?" she anxiously asked. "Are you sick?"
+
+"Sick? No! Why should I be sick?"
+
+"You are as pale and worn-looking as if you had been ill for a month.
+Something has gone wrong."
+
+"I have been up all night," said Charley, omitting, however, to add,
+playing billiards. "That's why. Nathalie," hurriedly and nervously,
+"have you any money? I can't ask before that old virago up-stairs."
+
+"Money! Yes, I have some. Do you want it?"
+
+"I want you to lend me as much as you can, for a short time. There!" he
+said, impatiently, "don't begin asking questions, Natty. I want it
+particularly, and I will pay you back as soon as I can. How much have
+you got?"
+
+"I have nearly twenty pounds, more or less. Will that do?"
+
+"It will help. Don't say anything about it, Natty, like a good girl.
+Who's in?"
+
+"No one but Mrs. Leroy. Won't you come up?"
+
+"I must, I suppose. Get the money while I am talking to her, and give it
+to me as I go out. What a solemn face you have got, Natty!"
+
+He laughed as he spoke--Charley's careless, boyish laugh, but Nathalie
+only sighed as they ascended the stairs together.
+
+"Mrs. Leroy has been scolding ever since I came from town. If ever a
+fortune was dearly bought, Charley, mine will be."
+
+"Paying too dear for your whistle--eh? Never mind, Natty! it can't last
+forever, and neither can Lady Leroy."
+
+All the shadow had gone from Charley's brow, and the change was magical.
+Whether it was the promise of the money, or his natural elasticity of
+spirit rebounding, he knew best; but certainly when he shook hands with
+the mistress of the domain, the sunshine outside was not brighter than
+his handsome face. Mrs. Leroy rather liked Charley, which is saying
+folios in the young man's favor, considering how few that cantankerous
+old cat admitted to her favor--but every one liked Charley Marsh.
+
+While Nathalie went to her own room for the money, Nathalie's brother
+was holding Mrs. Leroy spell-bound with his brilliant flow of
+conversation. All the gossip and scandal of Speckport was
+retailed--business, pleasure, fashion, and fights, related with
+appetizing gusto; and where the reality fell short, Mr. Marsh called
+upon his lively imagination for a few extra facts. The forthcoming
+picnic and its delights were discussed, and Charley advised her to
+strain a point and be present.
+
+"Midge can wheel you about the field, you know, in your chair," said
+Charley. "You won't take cold--the day's sure to be delightful, and I
+know every one will enjoy themselves ten times better for having you
+there. You had better come. Val Blake and I will carry you down stairs!"
+
+To the astonishment of Nathalie, Mrs. Leroy assented readily to the odd
+proposition; and Charley departed, having charmed the old lady into
+utter forgetfulness, for the time being, of her antipathy to Captain
+Cavendish. Speckport could talk of nothing for a week beforehand but the
+picnic--the first of the season. All Speckport was going, young and old,
+rich and poor. Admission, twenty-five cents; children, half price.
+
+The Redmon grounds, where the picnic was to be held, were extensive and
+beautiful. Broad velvety fields, green lanes, among miniature forests of
+fragrant cedar and spruce, and all sloping down to the smooth, white
+sands of the beach, with the gray sea tramping dully in, and the salt
+spray dashing up in your face. And "I hope it won't be foggy! I do hope
+it won't be foggy!" was the burden of every one's cry; the fog generally
+choosing to step in and stay a week or two, whenever Speckport proposed
+a picnic. How many blinds were drawn aside in the gray and dismal dawn
+of that eventful morning, and how many eager pairs of eyes, shaded by
+night-cap borders, turned anxiously heavenward; and how delightedly they
+were drawn in again! for, wonderful to tell, the sky was blue and
+without a cloud, and the sun, rising in a canopy of rose and amber,
+promised all beholders a day of unremitting sunshine.
+
+Before nine o'clock the Redmon road was alive with people--all in
+gorgeous array. Before ten, the droves of men, women, and children
+increased fourfold, and the dust was something awful. The sun fairly
+blazed in the sky; had it ever shone so dazzlingly before, or was there
+ever so brilliantly blue a sky, or such heaps and heaps of billows of
+snowy white, floating through it? Before eleven, that boiling seaside
+sun would have grilled you alive only for the strong sea-breeze,
+heaven-sent, sweeping up from the bay. Through fiery heat, and choking
+dust, the cry was "still they come," and Redmon grounds swarmed with
+people, as the fields of Egypt once swarmed with locust. A great arch of
+evergreens surmounted the entrance-gate, and the Union Jack floated
+loyally over it in the morning sunshine. The clanging of the band and
+the roll of the drum greeted your delighted ears the moment you entered
+the fairy arch, and you found yourself lost and bewildered in a sea of
+people you never saw before. The swings were flying with dizzying
+velocity, young belles went up until the toes of their gaiters nearly
+touched the firmament, and your head reeled to look at them. Some two or
+three hundred ladies and gentlemen were tripping the light fantastic toe
+to the inspiring music of a set of Irish quadrilles; and some eight
+hundred spectators were gathered in tremendous circles about them,
+looking on, gazing as if never in all their lives had so glorious and
+wonderful a vision as their fellow-sinners jigging up and down, dazzled
+their enchanted eyes. The refreshment tents were in such a crowded and
+jammed and suffocating state, that you could see the steam ascending
+from them as from an escape-valve; and the fair ones behind the tables,
+bewildered by two dozen clamorous voices, demanding the attention of
+each one at once, passed pies and tarts, and sandwiches and soda water,
+and coffee and cakes frantically and at random, and let little boys feed
+in corners unnoticed, and were altogether reduced to a state of utter
+imbecility by the necessity of doing half a dozen things at one and the
+same time. Pink and blue, and yellow and green ribbons fluttered, and
+silks and muslins and bareges trailed the grass and got torn off the
+waist by masculine bootheels; and the picnic was too delightful for
+description, and, over all, the fiery noonday July sun blazed like a
+wheel of fire, and the sea wind swept up fresh and delicious, and the
+waves sang their old song down on the shore, and no one listened to
+their mystic music or wondered, like poor little Paul Dombey, what they
+were saying.
+
+No one! Yes, there was one sitting on a green bank, all alone, who had
+been very busy all morning until now, arranging tables and waiting on
+hungry pleasure-seekers, making little boys and girls behave themselves,
+and swinging little people who could get no one else to attend them. The
+breeze that set the tall reeds and fern at fandangoing waved her black
+barege dress, and flung back the little black lace vail falling from her
+hat. Tired and hot, she had wandered here to listen to the waves and to
+the tumult behind her.
+
+What were the thoughts of the man who leaned against a tall tamarack
+tree and watched the reclining figure as a cat does a mouse? There are
+some souls so dark that all the beauty of earth and heaven are as blank
+pages to them. They see without comprehending, without one feeling of
+thoughtfulness for all the glory around them. Surely it were better for
+such to have been born blind. This man saw no wide sea spreading before
+him, glittering as if sown with stars. There was more to him worth
+watching in one flutter of that thin black dress on the bank than in all
+the world beside, and he stood and watched with his eyes half closed,
+waiting until she should see him.
+
+He had not to wait long. Some prescience that something out of harmony
+with the scene was near, made her restless. She rose up on her elbow,
+and looked round--a second after, her face flushed, she was up off the
+grass and on her feet. The man lifted his hat and advanced.
+
+"Pardon my intrusion, Winnie--Miss Rose, and--no, no--I beg you will not
+go!"
+
+She had made to turn away, but he himself interposed--something of
+agitation in his manner, and it was but rarely, indeed. Captain George
+Cavendish allowed himself to be agitated. She stopped gently enough, the
+surprised flush faded out from her face--that pretty, pale face,
+tranquil as face could be, was only very grave.
+
+"If you have anything to say to me, Captain Cavendish, please to say it
+quickly. I do not wish to be seen here."
+
+"Is it such a disgrace, then, to be seen for one poor instant with me?"
+he said, bitterly.
+
+She did not reply, save by an impatient tapping of one foot on the
+grass, and a backward glance at the crowded grounds.
+
+"Winnie!" he broke out, passionately, as if stung by her manner, "have
+you turned into a flirt? Have you entirely forgotten what is past? You
+cannot--you cannot have ceased altogether to care for me, since I
+cannot, do what I will, forget you!"
+
+Miss Rose looked at him--steadily, quietly, gravely, out of her brown
+eyes. If he had hoped for anything, that one look would have shivered
+his air-castles as a stone shivers brittle glass.
+
+"I told you once before, Captain Cavendish, that such words from you to
+me were insults. The past, where you are concerned, is no more to me
+than if you had never existed. I have not forgotten it, but it has no
+more power to move me than the waves there can move those piles of rock.
+No! I have not forgotten it. I look back often enough now with wonder
+and pity at myself, that I ever should have been the idiot that I was."
+
+His face turned crimson at the unmistakable earnestness of her words.
+
+"Then I need scruple or hesitate no longer," he said, launching his last
+pitiful shaft. "I need hesitate no longer, on your score, to speak the
+words that will make one who is rich and beautiful, and who loves me,
+happy. I came here willingly to make what atonement I could for the
+past, by telling you beforehand, lest the shock of my marriage----"
+
+He stopped in actual confusion, but raging inwardly at the humiliation
+she was making him feel--this poor little pale schoolmistress, whom he
+could have lifted with one hand and flung easily over the bank. She was
+smiling as she listened to him, a smile not of mockery or disdain, only
+so gallingly full of utter indifference to him.
+
+"There is no atonement necessary," she said, with that conscious smile
+still hovering on her lips; "none, I assure you. I have no hard feelings
+toward you, Captain Cavendish, nothing to resent or forgive. If I was an
+idiot, it was my own fault, I dare say, and I would not blot out one day
+that is gone if I could. Marry when you will, marry as soon as you
+please, and no one will wish you joy more sincerely on your wedding day
+than I."
+
+It half-maddened him, that supreme indifference, that serene face. He
+knew that he loved her, herself, and her alone; and while he fancied her
+pining and love-lorn, he was very well satisfied and quite complacent
+over her case. But this turn of the story was a little too mortifying to
+any man's pride to stand, and the man a lady-killer by profession at
+that.
+
+"I don't believe it," he said, savagely, "you have not forgotten--you
+cared for me too much for that. I did not think you could stoop to
+falsehood while playing the rôle of a saint."
+
+Miss Rose gave him a look--a look before which, with all his fury, he
+shrank. She had turned to walk away, but she stopped for a moment.
+
+"I am telling no falsehood, Captain Cavendish: before I stoop to that, I
+pray I may die. You know in your heart I mean what I say, and you know
+that you believe me. I have many things to be thankful for, but chief
+among them, when I kneel down to thank God for his mercies, I thank him
+that I am not your wife!"
+
+She walked slowly away, and he did not follow her; he only stood there,
+swallowing the bitter pill, and digesting it as best he might. It was
+provoking, no doubt, not to be able to forget this wretched little
+school-ma'am, while she so coolly banished him from her memory--so
+utterly and entirely banished him; for Captain Cavendish knew better
+than to disbelieve her. He had jilted her, it is true, as he had many
+another; but where was his triumph now? If he could only have forgotten
+her himself; but when the grapes were within his reach, he had despised
+them, and now that they grew above his head, and he did want them, it
+was exasperating that he could not get them.
+
+"Pah!" he thought bitterly, "what a fool I am! I could not marry her
+were she ever so willing now, any more than I could then. This cursed
+debt is dragging me to--perdition--I was going to say, and I must marry
+a fortune, and that soon. Nathalie Marsh is the richest girl in
+Speckport, therefore I shall marry Nathalie Marsh. She is ten times more
+beautiful than that little quakeress who is just gone; but I can't love
+her, and I can't forget the other."
+
+Captain Cavendish leaned against the tamarack a long time, thinking. The
+uproar behind him and the roar of the surf on the shore blended together
+in a dull, meaningless tumult in his ears. He was thinking of this
+marriage de convenance he must make, of this bride he must one day take
+home to England. He was a gambler and a spendthrift, this man, over head
+and ears in debt, and with no way but this one of ever getting out of
+it. From his friends in England? He had no friends in England on whom he
+could rely. His only rich relative, his uncle, the baronet, had taken it
+into his head, at the age of fifty-five, to get married; and what was
+more, there was an heir, a young gentleman of five months old, between
+him and the baronetcy. His commission had been purchased by his uncle,
+and it seemed all he need ever expect from him. He had never seen
+service, and had no particular desire to see any. He must marry a rich
+wife--there was no alternative--and he knew the power of his handsome
+face extremely well. He had no fear of a refusal; there was no use in
+delaying; he would make the heiress of Redmon happy that very day.
+
+The sun was going down behind the waves, in an oriflamme of gold and
+crimson and purple and rose, flushing the whole sky with its tropical
+beauty, when the young officer turned away to seek for his future wife.
+As if his thoughts had evoked her she was coming toward him, and all
+alone; her white dress floating mistily about her, all her golden curls
+hanging damp and loose over her shoulders, and her cheeks flushed with
+the heat. She had taken off her hat, and was swinging it by its azure
+ribbons, as she came up; and she looked so beautiful that the young
+Englishman thought that it would not be so very dreadful a thing to
+sell himself to this violet-eyed sultana after all.
+
+"Truant!" said Nathalie, "where have you been all the afternoon? I
+thought you had gone away."
+
+"And all the time I have been standing here, like Patience on a
+monument, wishing you would come up."
+
+"Did you want me, then?"
+
+"When do I not want you?"
+
+Nathalie laughed, but she also blushed. "Then you should have gone in
+search of me, sir. Mrs. Leroy wants to go home now, and I must go with
+her."
+
+"But not just yet. I have something to say to you, Nathalie."
+
+And so here, in the hot warmth of the red sunset, the old, old story was
+told--the story that has been told over and over again since the world
+began, and will be told until its end, and yet is ever new. The story to
+which two little words, yes or no, ends so ecstatically, or gives the
+deathblow. It was yes this time; and when Nathalie Marsh, half an hour
+after, went home with Mrs. Leroy, she was wondering if there was one
+among all those thousands--one in all the wide world--as happy as she!
+
+The last red glimmer of the sunset had faded out of the sky, and the
+summer moon was up, round and white and full, before the last of the
+picnickers went home. And in its pale rays, with his hands in his
+pockets, and a cigar between his lips, Captain Cavendish went home with
+Cherrie Nettleby.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+FAST AND LOOSE.
+
+
+Miss Nathalie Marsh was not the only young lady who received a proposal
+that memorable picnic-day. Flashing in and out among the other belles of
+Speckport, and eclipsing them all as she went, the belle of the
+bourgeois, par excellence, came Miss Cherrie Nettleby, quite dazzling to
+look at in a pink and white plaid silk, a white lace mantle, the blue
+parasol you wot of, the turban-hat, with a long white feather streaking
+round it, and the colored white lace vail over her blooming brunette
+face. Miss Nettleby had fawn-colored kid gloves, an embroidered kerchief
+sticking out of her pocket; and, to crown all, two or three yards of
+gold chain around her neck, and hanging ever so far below her waist. An
+overgrown locket and a carnelian cross dangled from the chain; and no
+giddy young peacock ever strutted about prouder of its tail than did the
+little black-eyed belle of these glittering fetters. She had only
+received the chain, and locket, and cross the night before; they had
+come in a box, with a huge bouquet, under the weight of which a small
+black boy staggered, with the compliments of Captain Cavendish, and
+would Miss Nettleby do him the honor of accepting them? Nettleby did him
+the honor, and was not able to sleep a wink all night for rapture. A
+gold chain had been the desire of her heart for many and many a day;
+and, at last, some good fairy had taken pity on her and sent it, with
+the handsomest man in Speckport for her ambassador. Cherrie's ecstasies
+are not to be described; a chain from any one would have been a
+delightful gift; but from Captain Cavendish, one smile from whom Cherrie
+would have given all the rest of her admirers for, delightedly. She had
+hugged Ann in her transports, until that young person, breaking
+indignantly from her, demanded to know if she had gone mad; and she had
+dressed for the picnic, expecting to have the young Englishman devotedly
+by her side the whole day long, before the aggravated and envious eyes
+of all Speckport. But Cherrie had never made a greater mistake in all
+her life; the blue parasol, the pink silk, the white lace mantle, and
+fawn-colored kid gloves were powerless to charm--Captain Cavendish never
+came near her. He had not come at all until late, and then he had driven
+in in the McGregor barouche, with the heiress of that house by his side,
+resplendent to look at; and he had walked about with her, and with Miss
+Laura Blair, and Miss Marsh, and sundry other young ladies, a step or
+two higher up the ladder of life than Miss Nettleby, but he had not once
+walked with her. He had passed her two or three times, as he could not
+very well help doing, since she had put herself straight in his way; and
+he had nodded and smiled, and walked deliberately on. Cherrie could have
+cried with chagrin; but she didn't, not wishing to redden her eyes and
+swell her nose there, and she consoled herself by flirting outrageously
+with everybody who would be flirted with.
+
+As the afternoon wore on, Cherrie began to experience that fatigue which
+five or six hours' dancing in a blazing July sun is apt to engender, and
+informed her partner in the quadrille she was roasted to death. The
+partner--who was Mr. Charles Marsh, and who had been her most devoted
+all day--was leaning against a stout elderly gentleman as against a
+post, fanning himself with his straw wideawake, leisurely set that
+headpiece sideways on his brown locks and presented his arm.
+
+"I thought you would come to that by-and-by, Miss Nettleby, in spite of
+your love of dancing. Quadrilles are all very well in December, but I
+can't say that I fancy them in the dog-days. Suppose we go down to the
+shore and get a whiff of fresh air."
+
+Miss Nettleby put her fawn-colored kid-glove inside Mr. Marsh's
+coat-sleeve, and poising her azure parasol in the other hand, strolled
+with him to the beach. On their way, Nathalie, standing with Captain
+Locksley, young McGregor, and a number of other gentlemen and ladies,
+espied them, and her color rose and her blue eyes flashed at the sight.
+
+"Egad! I think they'll make a match of it!" laughed Locksley. "Charley
+seems to be completely taken in tow by that flyaway Cherrie."
+
+Nathalie said nothing, but her brow contracted ominously as she turned
+impatiently away.
+
+"Oh, that's nothing," said the Reverend Augustus Tod; "it's the fashion
+to go with Cherrie, and Charley is ready to follow fashion's lead. The
+little girl will settle down some day, I dare say, into a sensible,
+hard-working fisherman's wife."
+
+Even Nathalie laughed at the idea of Miss Nettleby hard-working and
+sensible; and that young lady and her escort sauntered leisurely on to
+the breezy seashore. The sun was dipping behind the western waves, the
+sky all flushed and radiant with the scarlet and golden glory of its
+decline, the blue sea itself flooded with crimson radiance. Even Mr.
+Marsh was moved to admiration of its gorgeous splendor.
+
+"Neat thing in the way of sunsets, Cherrie," he remarked, taking out a
+cigar, and lighting it.
+
+"What a nice magenta color them clouds is!" said Miss Nettleby,
+admiringly; "they would make a lovely dress trimmed with black braid.
+And that mauve cloud over there with the yellow edge, I should like to
+have a scarf of that."
+
+"Well," said Charley, "I can't get you the mauve cloud, but if there's a
+scarf at all like it in Speckport you shall have it. By the way,
+Cherrie, where did you get that chain?"
+
+"You didn't give it to me, anyhow," replied Miss Nettleby, tossing her
+turban. "I might wait a long time for anything before I got it from
+you."
+
+"I didn't know you wanted one, or I might. I wish you wouldn't take
+presents from anybody but me, Cherrie."
+
+"From anybody but you!" retorted Cherrie, with scorn. "I'd like to know
+the time you gave me anything, Charley Marsh?"
+
+"Come now, Cherrie, I don't want to be mean, but that's a little too
+bad!"
+
+"I suppose you're hinting at that coral set you sent me last week?" said
+Cherrie, in a resentful tone. "But, I can tell you, there's lots of
+folks, not a thousand miles off, would be glad to give me ten times as
+much if I would take it."
+
+"Don't take their gifts, Cherrie; there's a good girl; it's not
+ladylike, you know; and some day you shall have whatever you want--when
+I am rich and you are my wife, Cherrie."
+
+"The idea!" giggled Cherrie, her color rising, "your wife, indeed; I
+think I see myself!"
+
+"Wouldn't you have me, Cherrie?"
+
+He was still smoking, and still looking at the sunset--not seeing it,
+however. Poor Charley Marsh, light as was his tone, was exceedingly in
+earnest. Miss Nettleby stole a glance at him from under the blue
+parasol, not quite certain whether he were in jest or in earnest, and
+her silly little heart beating a trifle faster than was its wont.
+
+"I suppose, Mr. Marsh," said the young lady, after a moment's
+deliberation, thinking it best to stand on her dignity, "you think it a
+fine thing to make fun of me; but I can tell you I ain't going to stand
+it, if you are a doctor, and me only a gardener's daughter. I think you
+might find something else to amuse you."
+
+"I'll take my oath, Cherrie," said Charley, throwing his cigar over the
+bank, "I never was so much in earnest in all my life."
+
+"I don't believe it," said Miss Nettleby.
+
+"What's the reason you don't? Haven't I been going with you long enough?
+What did you suppose I meant?"
+
+"I didn't suppose nothing at all about it. You aren't the only one that
+pays attention to me."
+
+"No; but I don't think any of the others mean anything. I intend to
+marry you, Cherrie, if you'll consent."
+
+Cherrie tossed her turban disdainfully, but in her secret heart she was
+in raptures. Not that she meant to accept him just then, with Captain
+Cavendish in the background; but neither had she the slightest intention
+of refusing him. The handsome Englishman had given her a gold chain, to
+be sure, but then he had also given her the cold shoulder all that day;
+and if things did not turn out with him as she could wish, Charley Marsh
+would do as a dernier resort. Cherrie liked Charley, and he could make
+her a lady; and if she failed in becoming Mrs. Cavendish, it would be a
+very nice thing to become Mrs. Marsh, and half the young ladies in
+Speckport would be dying of envy. Cherrie thought all this in about two
+seconds and a half.
+
+"Well, Cherrie, have you nothing to say?" inquired Charley, rather
+anxiously.
+
+"Mr. Marsh," said Miss Nettleby, with dignity, remembering how the
+heroine of the last novel she had read had answered in a similar case,
+"I require time to pon--ponder over it. On some other occasion, when I
+have seriously reflected on it, you shall have my answer."
+
+Mr. Marsh stood aghast for a moment, staring at the young lady, and then
+went off into a fit of uproarious laughter.
+
+"Well," demanded Cherrie, facing round rather fiercely, "and what are
+you laughing at, sir?"
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon, Cherrie," said Charley, recovering from his
+paroxysm; "but really you did that so well that I----"
+
+Charley came near going off again; but, seeing the black eyes flashing,
+recovered himself.
+
+"Come, Cherrie, never mind Laura-Matilda speeches, but tell me, like a
+sensible little girl, that you like me, and by-and-by will be my wife."
+
+"I'll do nothing of the sort!" cried Miss Nettleby, in a state of
+exasperation, "either now or at any other time, if I don't choose.
+You'll just wait for your answer, or go without."
+
+She sailed away as she spoke, leaving Charley too much taken aback, not
+to say mortified, to follow her.
+
+"Hang it!" was Mr. Marsh's exclamation, as he turned in an opposite
+direction; "the idea of getting such an answer from that girl! What
+would Natty say? She would think it bad enough my proposing at all, but
+to get such a reply."
+
+Yet, even in the midst of his chagrin, he laughed again at the
+recollection of Miss Nettleby's speech--careless Charley, who never let
+anything trouble him long.
+
+"She'll come to it, I dare say," he reflected, as he went along, "and I
+can wait. I do like her, she's such a pretty little thing, and good,
+too, in the main, though rather frivolous on the surface. Well, Miss
+Rose, how are you enjoying yourself?"
+
+Miss Rose's fair, sweet face was rather a striking contrast after
+Cherrie's, but Charley was not thinking of that, as he offered her his
+arm. Cherrie in the distance saw the act, and felt a pang of jealousy.
+
+"He's gone off with that pale-faced school-mistress, now," she thought,
+resentfully. "I dare say she'd be glad to catch him, if she could. Oh!"
+
+She stopped short with an exclamation half suppressed. She had come upon
+Captain Cavendish leaning against a tall tree, and talking to Nathalie
+Marsh. Another jealous pang pierced the frivolous heart, and--I am sorry
+to tell it--she crept in close under the tree, with the blue parasol
+furled, and--yes, she did--she listened. Listened for over twenty
+minutes, her color coming and going, her breath bated, her hands
+clenched. Then she fluttered hurriedly off, just in time to escape them,
+as they walked away, plighted lovers.
+
+There was a little clump of cedar-bushes, forming a sort of dell, up the
+side of the bank. Cherrie Nettleby fell down here in the tall grass,
+dashing the blue parasol down beside her, crumpling the turban, soiling
+the white feather, and smearing the pink dress, tore off the gold chain,
+and burst into such a passion of spiteful, jealous, and enraged tears,
+as she had never before shed in her life. To think that all her hopes
+should have come to this; that the gold chain was only a glittering
+delusion; all his pretty speeches and lover-like attentions only hollow
+cheats, and Nathalie Marsh going to be his wife! Cherrie seized the
+chain in a paroxysm of fury, as she thought of it, and hurled it over
+the bank.
+
+"The hateful, lying, deceitful scamp," she passionately cried. "I hate
+him, and I'll go and marry Charley Marsh, just for spite."
+
+Charley was not hard to find. He was playing quoits with a lot of other
+young Speckportians; and Miss Catty Clowrie was standing gazing
+admiringly on, and ready to talk to him between whiles. Cherrie tapped
+him on the arm with her parasol, and looked shyly up in his face with a
+rosy blush. But the shy look and the blush were exceedingly well got up,
+and Charley dropped the quoits with a delighted face.
+
+"Cherrie! what is it? Have you made up your mind, then?"
+
+"Yes, Charley! You didn't believe I was in earnest that time, did you? I
+do like you, and I will be your wife as soon as ever you like."
+
+Did Miss Catty Clowrie, standing unheeded by, with ears as sharp as
+lances, hear this very straightforward avowal? She had flashed a keen,
+quick glance from one to the other; had dropped her vail suddenly over
+her face, and turned away. Neither noticed her.
+
+Charley was in raptures, and might have fallen on Miss Nettleby and
+embraced her there and then, only that before that maiden had quite
+finished speaking, Nathalie confronted them, her face haughty, her step
+ringing, her voice imperious.
+
+"Charley, Mrs. Leroy is going home, and desires you to come immediately
+and assist Mr. Blake."
+
+"Oh, bother!" cried Charley, politely, "let her get some of the other
+fellows; I can't go."
+
+"Charley!"
+
+"Why can't she get McGregor, or some of the rest?" said Charley,
+impatiently; "don't you see I'm playing quoits, Natty?"
+
+"I see you're doing nothing of the sort, sir, and I insist on you coming
+this instant! Don't trouble yourself about Miss Nettleby, she has
+legions of adorers here, who will only be too happy to attend her
+home."
+
+Miss Marsh swept away like a young queen; her violet eyes flashing, her
+perfect lips curling. Charley turned to follow, saying, hurriedly, as he
+went:
+
+"I'll be back in half an hour, Cherrie, wait for me here."
+
+"Proud, hateful thing!" exclaimed Cherrie, apostrophizing the receding
+form of Miss Marsh; "she looked at me that time as if she scorned to
+touch me! Wait until I am her brother's wife, we will see who will put
+on mistress." From where she stood, Cherrie could see the party for
+Redmon come. Charley and Val Blake wheeled Mrs. Leroy in her chair of
+state over the grass, that mummy having consented to be exhumed for the
+occasion, and having been the chief curiosity and attraction of the
+picnic. Nathalie walked on one side, and Midge on the other, but Captain
+Cavendish did not make one of the party now, for the moment they were
+out of sight, that gallant officer hurriedly walked deliberately up to
+her. Cherrie tossed her turban again, and curled her lip suspiciously,
+not deigning to notice him by so much as a glance.
+
+"Come, Cherrie, what's the matter?" he began, in a free and easy way;
+"how have I got into disgrace?"
+
+"Oh, it's you, Captain Cavendish, is it?" said Cherrie, loftily,
+condescending to become aware of his presence, "I don't know what you
+mean."
+
+"Nonsense, Cherrie! What is the matter? Come, now, be reasonable, and
+tell me what I have done."
+
+"You haven't done anything to me," quite frigidly, though; "how could
+you?"
+
+"That's precisely what I want to know. Where is that chain I saw around
+your neck a short time ago?"
+
+"In my pocket. You had better take it back again. I don't want it."
+
+Captain Cavendish stared. Miss Nettleby, grasping the parasol firmly,
+though the sun had gone down, and the moon was rising, with a very
+becoming glow in her cheeks, and bright, angry light in her eyes,
+looked straight before her, and addressed empty space when she spoke.
+
+"There is some mystery here, and I am going to get at the bottom of it,"
+he said, resolutely; "Cherrie, let me go home with you, and see if we
+cannot clear it up by the way."
+
+"With me?" said Cherrie, stepping back, and looking at him disdainfully;
+"why, what would Miss Marsh say to that?"
+
+A light broke on the captain.
+
+"Miss Marsh! Why, what have I to do with Miss Marsh?"
+
+"A great deal, I should think, after what passed between you over there
+on the beach."
+
+"Cherrie! where were you? Not listening?"
+
+"I was passing," said Miss Nettleby, stiffly, "and I chanced to
+overhear. It wasn't my fault if you spoke out loud."
+
+Even Captain Cavendish stood for a moment non-plussed by this turn of
+affairs. He had no desire his proposal to Miss Marsh should become
+public property, for many reasons; and he knew he might as well have
+published it in the Speckport Spouter, as let Cherrie find it out.
+Another thing he did not want--to lose Cherrie; she was a great deal too
+pretty, and he fancied her a great deal too much for that.
+
+"Cherrie, that was all an--an accident! I didn't mean anything! There
+are too many people looking at us here, to talk; but, if you will go
+home, I will explain by the way."
+
+"No," said Cherrie, standing resolutely on her dignity, but trying to
+keep from crying, "I can't. I promised Mr. Marsh to wait for him."
+
+"Oh, confound Mr. Marsh! Come with me, and never mind him."
+
+"No, Captain Cavendish; I think I'll wait. Charley thinks more of me
+than you do, since he asked me to marry him this afternoon, and I am
+going to do it."
+
+Captain Cavendish looked at her. He knew Cherrie's regard for truth was
+not the most stringent; that she would invent, and tell a fib with all
+the composure in life, but she was palpably telling no falsehood this
+time. He saw it in the triumphant flash of her black eyes, in the flush
+of her face, and set his teeth inwardly with anger and mortification.
+"How blessings brighten as they take their flight!" Never had Cherrie
+Nettleby looked so beautiful; never had her eyes been so much like black
+diamonds as now, when their light seemed setting to him forever. Captain
+Cavendish believed her, and resolved not to lose her, in spite of all
+the Charley Marshes in the world.
+
+"So Marsh has asked you to be his wife, has he? Now, Cherrie, suppose I
+asked you the same question, what would you say?"
+
+"You asked Miss Marsh to-day, and I think that's enough."
+
+"I did not mean it, Cherrie. I swear I did not! I am fifty times as much
+in love with you as I am with her."
+
+And Captain Cavendish was speaking truth. Humiliating as it is to say so
+of one's heroine, the black-eyed grisette was a hundred times more to
+his taste than the blue-eyed lady. Could they have changed places, he
+would have married Cherrie off-hand, and never given one sigh to
+Nathalie. It was the prospective fortune of that young lady he was in
+love with.
+
+"Cherrie, you don't believe me," he said, seeing incredulity in her
+face, "but I swear I am telling the truth. Let me prove it--give up
+Charley Marsh and marry me!"
+
+"Captain!"
+
+"I mean it! Which of us do you like best--Marsh or I?"
+
+"You know well enough," said Cherrie, crying. "I like you ever so much
+the best; but when I heard you asking Miss Natty, I--I----" here the
+voice broke down in good earnest, and Cherrie's tears began to flow.
+
+Captain Cavendish looked hurriedly about him. The last rays of the
+sunset had burned themselves out, and the moon was making for herself a
+track of silver sheen over the sea. The crowd were flocking homeward,
+tired out, and there was no one near; but in the distance his eagle eye
+saw Charley Marsh striding over the dewy evening grass. Poor Charley!
+The captain drew Cherrie's arm inside his own, and walked her rapidly
+away. They were out on the Redmon road before either spoke again.
+
+"I did not mean one word of what I said to Miss Marsh. But I'll tell you
+a secret, Cherrie, if you'll never mention it again."
+
+"I won't," said Cherrie. "What is it?"
+
+"I should like to share her fortune--that is, you and I--and if she
+thinks I am in love with her, I stand a good chance. I should like to be
+richer than I am, for your sake, you know; so you must not be jealous. I
+don't care a straw for her, but for her money."
+
+"And you do care for me?"
+
+"You know I do! Are you ready to give up Charley, and marry me?"
+
+"Oh!" said Cherrie, and it was all she replied; but it was uttered so
+rapturously that it perfectly satisfied him.
+
+"Then that is settled? Let me see--suppose we get married next week, or
+the week after?"
+
+"Oh! Captain!" cried the enraptured Cherrie.
+
+"Then that is settled too. What a little darling you are, Cherrie! And
+now I have only one request to make of you--that you will not breathe
+one word of this to a living soul. Not a syllable--do you understand?"
+
+"Why? said Cherrie, a little disappointed.
+
+"My dear girl, it would ruin us both! We will be married privately--no
+one shall know it but the clergyman and--Mr. Blake."
+
+"Mr. Blake? Val?"
+
+"Yes," said Captain Cavendish, gravely, "he shall be present at the
+ceremony, but not another being in Speckport must find it out. If they
+do, Cherrie, I will have to leave you forever. There are many reasons
+for this that I cannot now explain. You will continue to live at home,
+and no one but ourselves shall be the wiser. There, don't look so
+disappointed; it won't last long, my darling. Let Charley still think
+himself your lover; but, mind you, keep him at a respectful distance,
+Cherrie."
+
+They reached the cottage at last, but it took them a very long time.
+Captain Cavendish walked back to Speckport in the moonlight, smoking,
+and with an odd little smile on his handsome face.
+
+"I'll do it, too," he said, glancing up at the moon, as if informing
+that luminary in confidence. "There's a law against bigamy, I believe;
+but I'll marry them both, the maid first, the mistress afterward."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+HOW CAPTAIN CAVENDISH MEANT TO MARRY CHERRIE.
+
+
+The clerk of the weather in Speckport might have been a woman, so fickle
+and changeable in his mind was he. You never could put any trust in him;
+if you did, you were sure to be taken in. A bleak, raw, cheerless,
+gloomy morning, making parlor fires pleasant in spite of its being July,
+and hot coffee as delicious a beverage as cool soda-water had been the
+day before; a morning not at all suited for constitutionals; yet on this
+cold, wet, raw, foggy morning Charley Marsh had arisen at five o'clock,
+and gone off for a walk, and was only opening the front-door of the
+little cottage as the clock on the sitting-room mantel was chiming nine.
+Breakfast was over, and there was no one in the room but Mrs. Marsh, in
+her shawl and rocker, beside the fire which was burning in the Franklin,
+immersed ten fathoms deep in the adventures of a gentleman, inclosed
+between two yellow covers, and bearing the euphonious name of "Rinaldo
+Rinaldi." Miss Rose had gone to school, Betsy Ann was clattering among
+the pots in the kitchen; the breakfast-table looked sloppy and littered;
+the room, altogether dreary. Perhaps it was his walk in that cheerless
+fog, but Charley looked as dreary as the room; his bright face haggard
+and pale, his eyes heavy, and with dark circles under them, bespeaking a
+sleepless night. Mrs. Marsh dropped "Rinaldo Rinaldi," and looked up
+with a fretful air.
+
+"Dear me, Charley, how late you are! What will Doctor Leach say? Where
+have you been?"
+
+"Out for a walk."
+
+"Such a hateful morning--it's enough to give you your death! Betsy Ann,
+bring in the coffee-pot!"
+
+Betsy Ann appeared with that household god, and a face shining with
+smiles and yellow soap, and her mistress relapsed into "Rinaldo Rinaldi"
+again. Charley seemed to have lost his appetite as well as his spirits.
+He drank a cup of coffee, pushed the bread and butter impatiently away,
+donned his hat and overcoat, the former pulled very much over his eyes,
+and set out for the office.
+
+Charley had enough to trouble him. It was not only Cherrie's desertion,
+though that was enough, for he really loved the girl with the whole
+fervor and strength of a fresh young heart, and meant to make her his
+honored wife. He was infatuated, no doubt; he knew her to be illiterate,
+silly, unprincipled, false and foolish, a little dressy piece of
+ignorance, vanity, selfishness and conceit, or might have known it if he
+chose; but he knew, too, she was a beautiful, brilliant, bewitching
+little fairy, with good-natured and generous impulses now and then, and
+the dearest little thing generally that ever was born. In short, he was
+in love with her, and love knows nothing about common sense; so when he
+had seen her walk off the previous evening with Captain Cavendish, and
+desert him, he had leaned against a tree, feeling--heaven only knows how
+deeply and how bitterly. Once he had started up to follow them, but had
+stopped--the memory of a heavy debt contracted in Prince Street, owing
+to this man, and hanging like an incubus about his neck, night and day,
+thrust him back as with a hand of iron. He was in the power of the
+English officer, beyond redemption; he could not afford to make him his
+enemy.
+
+How that long morning dragged on, Charley never knew; certainly his
+medical studies did not progress much. Poor and in debt, in love and
+deserted, those were the changes on which his thoughts rang. A
+sulky-faced clock, striking one, made him start. It was time to go home
+to dinner, and he arose and went out. As he opened the shop-door, he
+stopped short. Tripping gayly along the foggy and sloppy streets came
+Cherrie herself, her dress pinned artistically up, to display a
+brilliant Balmoral skirt, of all the colors of a dying dolphin; her
+high-heeled boots clinking briskly over the pavement. Charley's foolish
+heart gave a great bound, and he stepped impulsively forward, with her
+name on his lips.
+
+"Cherrie?"
+
+Cherrie had not seen him until he spoke, and she recoiled with a scream.
+
+"Sir! Charley Marsh! how you scare me! I wish you wouldn't shout out so
+sudden and frighten me out of my wits!"
+
+"You may spare your hysterics, Cherrie," said Charley, rather coldly;
+"you could stand more than that if Captain Cavendish was in question."
+
+Cherrie laughed, and tripped along beside him with dancing eyes. She
+liked Charley, though in a far less degree than the dashing and elegant
+young officer, and was in a particularly good-natured state of mind that
+morning. There was more than her liking for Charley to induce her to
+keep good friends with him--the warning of the captain and her own
+prudence. Cherrie, faithless herself, had no very profound trust in her
+fellow-creatures. Until she was actually the captain's wife, she was not
+sure of him; there is many a slip, she knew; and if he failed her,
+Charley was the next best in Speckport. Therefore, at his insinuation,
+she only tossed her turbaned head after her coquettish fashion, until
+all her black curls danced a fandango, and showed her brilliant white
+teeth in a gay little laugh.
+
+"Oh, you're jealous, are you?" she said. "I thought you would be!"
+
+"Cherrie!"
+
+"There, now, Charley, don't be cross! I just did it to make you jealous,
+and nothing else! I was mad at you for going off the way you did!"
+
+"You know I could not help it!"
+
+"Oh, I dare say not. I'm nobody beside Miss Natty! So, when Captain
+Cavendish came up and asked leave to see me home, I just let him! I
+thought it wouldn't do you any harm to be a little jealous, you know,
+Charley."
+
+Charley's hopes were high again; but his heart had been too deeply
+pained for him to forget its soreness at one encouraging word. Something
+wanting in Cherrie, he could not quite define what, had often struck him
+before, but never so palpably as now. That want was principle, of which
+the black-eyed young lady was totally devoid; and he was vaguely
+realizing that trusting to her was much like leaning on a broken reed.
+
+Cherrie, a good deal piqued, and a little alarmed by his silence, looked
+at him askance.
+
+"Oh, you're sulky, are you? Very well, sir, you can just please
+yourself. If you've a mind to get mad for nothing, you may."
+
+"Cherrie," Charley said, quite gravely for him, "do you think you did
+right last night? After promising to be my wife, to go off and leave me
+as you did?"
+
+"I didn't, either!" retorted Cherrie; "it was you went off and left me."
+
+"That was no fault of mine, and I didn't go with another young lady.
+Cherrie, I want you to promise me you will let Captain Cavendish see you
+home no more."
+
+"I shall promise nothing of the sort!" cried Cherrie, with shrill
+indignation. "Because I promised to marry you, I suppose you would like
+me to live like a nun for the rest of my life, and not even look at any
+other man. I'll just do as I did before, Mr. Charley Marsh; and if you
+ain't satisfied with that, you may go and marry somebody else--Miss
+Rose, or Miss Clowrie--she'd have you, fast enough!"
+
+"I don't want Miss Clowrie; I only want you, Cherrie; and if you cared
+for me, you wouldn't act and talk as you do."
+
+Some of poor Charley's pain was in his voice and it touched the
+coquette's frivolous heart. She stopped, at a dry-goods store, for an
+encouraging word before entering.
+
+"You know very well, Charley, I like you ever so much--a great deal
+better than I do any one else; but I can't help being pretty, and having
+the young men after me, and I hate to be cross to them, too. Come up to
+Redmon this evening, I haven't time to stop to talk now."
+
+With which the little hypocrite made a smiling obeisance, and darted
+into the shop, leaving her lover to pursue his homeward way, a little
+lighter in the region of the heart, but still dissatisfied and
+mistrustful.
+
+The afternoon was as long and dreary as the morning. Charley sat in the
+dismal little back-office, listening listlessly to the customers coming
+in and out of the surgery, to buy Epsom-salts and senna, or hair-oil and
+bilious pills; and the shopboy droning over a song-book, which he read
+half aloud, in a monotonous sing-song way, when alone, staring vacantly
+at the rotten leaves, and bits of chips and straw and paper fluttering
+about the wet yard in the chill afternoon wind. And still the fog
+settled down thicker, and wetter, and colder than ever; and when the
+shopboy came in a little after six, to light the flaring gas-jet--it was
+already growing dark--Charley arose, drearily, to go.
+
+"What a long day it has been!" he said, gaping in the boy's face; "it
+seems like a week since I got up this morning. Where's the doctor?"
+
+"Up to Squire Tod's, sir. The old gentleman's took bad again with the
+gout."
+
+The lamps were flaring through the foggy streets as he walked along, and
+the few people abroad flitted in and out of the wet gloom, like shadowy
+phantoms. Queen Street was bright enough with the illumination from
+shop-windows, but the less busy thoroughfares looked dismal and
+deserted, and the spectral passers-by more shadowy than ever. As he was
+turning the corner of Cottage Street, one of these phantoms, buttoned up
+in an overcoat, and bearing an umbrella, accosted him in a very
+unphantomlike voice, and with a very unphantomlike slap on the shoulder.
+
+"How are you, Marsh? I thought I should come upon you here!"
+
+Charley turned round, and, with no particular expression of rapture,
+recognized Captain Cavendish.
+
+"Good evening," he said, coldly; "were you looking for me?"
+
+The captain turned and linked his arm within his own.
+
+"I was. What became of you last night? We expected you at Prince
+Street."
+
+"I made another engagement."
+
+"You will be there to-night, of course? I owe you your revenge, you
+know."
+
+"Which means," said Charley, with a laugh, that sounded strange and
+bitter from him, "you will get me some thirty or forty dollars more in
+your debt!"
+
+"Talking of debt," said Captain Cavendish, in an indifferent
+matter-of-fact tone, "could you oblige me with a trifle on account--say
+twenty pounds?"
+
+Charley silently produced his pocketbook, and handed over the twenty he
+had received from Nathalie a few days before. The nonchalant young
+officer pocketed it as coolly as if it had been twenty pence.
+
+"Thanks! One often needs a trifle of this sort on an occasion. Is this
+your house? Who is that playing? Not your sister?"
+
+They had halted in front of the cottage, and could hear the sound of the
+piano from within.
+
+"It is Miss Rose, I presume," said Charley, in the same cold voice;
+"will you come in?"
+
+"Not now. You will be up at Prince Street for certain then to-night?"
+
+Charley nodded, and entered the house.
+
+At her own door stood Miss Catty Clowrie. She was often standing there;
+and though she returned the captain's bow, it was after Charley she
+looked until he disappeared. There was no one in the sitting-room when
+he entered; his mother's rocking-chair was vacant, and Miss Rose was
+playing and singing in the parlor--touching the keys so lightly and
+singing so sweetly that it seemed more an echo of the wind and waves
+than anything else. The table was set for tea, and Betsy Ann was
+scouring knives in the kitchen, humming some doleful ditty at her work.
+There was a lounge under the window overlooking the bay, sullen and
+stormy to-night. Charley flung himself upon it, his arm across the
+pillow, his face lying in it, and listened in a vague and dismal way to
+the music. The song was weird and mournful, truly an echo of the wailing
+wind and sea.
+
+"Come to supper, ma'am!" at this juncture shrilly pealed the voice of
+Betsy Ann at the foot of the stairs, to some invisible person above;
+"Mr. Charley's here, and the biscuit is getting cold."
+
+The song died away, as if it had drifted out on the gale surging up from
+the black bay, and Mrs. Marsh crept shivering down stairs.
+
+"Come in, Miss Rose," she said, looking in at the parlor door before
+entering the room; "tea is ready, and Charley is here."
+
+Charley started up; and, as he did so, the front door unceremoniously
+opened, and Nathalie, wrapped in a large shawl, and wearing a white
+cloud about her head, stepped in, to the surprise of all.
+
+"Gracious me! Natty! is it you?" cried her mamma, in feeble
+consternation, "whatever has taken you out such an evening?"
+
+"What's the matter with the evening?" said Nathalie, kissing her and
+Miss Rose. "A little cold sea-fog is nothing new, that it should keep me
+in-doors. Good evening, Charley."
+
+"It's not a good evening," said Charley; "it's a very bad one, and you
+deserve to get your death of cold for venturing out in it. Did the old
+lady send you?"
+
+"No, indeed! I had hard work to get off. Is tea ready, mamma? I have
+had no dinner, and am almost famished."
+
+Mrs. Marsh was profuse in her sympathy. Another cup and plate were laid,
+and the quartet sat down to tea. It was wonderful how Nathalie's bright
+presence radiated the before gloomy room; the laughing light of her
+violet eyes made sunshine of their own, and all her luxuriant golden
+hair, falling loose and damp, in curls short and long around her face
+and shoulders, never looked so much like silky sunbeams before.
+
+"How did you get on in school to-day?" she was asking Miss Rose; "I
+could not get down. The picnic must have disagreed with Mrs. Leroy; for
+I never saw her so cross."
+
+"I should say all the cake, and pastry, and nastiness of that sort she
+devoured, would have disagreed with a horse," said Charley; "it was a
+sight only to see Laura Blair cramming her."
+
+"I got on very well," answered Miss Rose, smiling at Charley's remark,
+which was perfectly true; "but the day seems long, Miss Marsh, when you
+do not visit us, and the children seem to think so too. I have got a new
+music-pupil--little Vattie Gates."
+
+"You will make your fortune, Miss Rose, if you are not careful," said
+Charley; "eight dollars per quarter from each of those music-pupils,
+beside your school-salary. What do you mean to do with it all?"
+
+"I should say rather she will work herself to death," said Nathalie. "Do
+you want to kill yourself, Miss Rose, that you take so many pupils?"
+
+"Dear me! I think it agrees with her," remarked Mrs. Marsh, languidly,
+stirring her tea; "she is getting fat."
+
+Everybody laughed. Miss Rose was not getting very fat; but she certainly
+had gained flesh and color since her advent in Speckport, though the
+small face was still rather pale, and the small brow sometimes too
+thoughtful and anxious. As they arose from table, Miss Clowrie came in
+with her crotcheting to spend the evening, Natty went to the piano, Miss
+Rose, with some very unfanciful-looking work in a dropsical
+work-basket, sat down at the window to sew while the last gray ray of
+daylight lingered in the sky, and Charley lounged on the sofa, beside
+Catty.
+
+"What are you making, Miss Rose?" inquired Miss Clowrie, looking
+curiously at the small black figure, drooping over the work, at the
+window. Miss Rose laughed, and threaded her needle.
+
+"You needn't ask," said Nathalie; "clothes for all the poor in
+Speckport, of course. Why don't you become a Sister of Charity at once,
+Miss Winnie?"
+
+"I came very near it one time," smiled Miss Rose; "perhaps I may yet. I
+wish I could."
+
+There was no mistaking the sincerity of her tone. Nathalie shrugged her
+shoulders--to her it looked like wishing for something very dreary and
+dismal indeed. The world seemed a very bright and beautiful place to the
+heiress of Redmon that foggy summer night.
+
+"Why don't you become one, then?" asked Catty, who would have been very
+glad of it; "I should think they would be pleased to get you."
+
+"I am not so sure of that; I would be no great acquisition. But just at
+present there is a reason that renders it impossible."
+
+Of course, no one could ask the reason, though all would have liked to
+know. When it grew too dark to sew or play, the lamp was lit, and they
+had cards, and it was nine when Nathalie arose to go.
+
+"Couldn't you stay all night, Natty?" asked her mother; "it's dreadfully
+foggy to go up to Redmon to-night."
+
+"If it were ten times as foggy, I should have to go. I don't mind it,
+though, in company with Charley and an umbrella."
+
+She kissed them all good night, even Catty, in the happiness of her
+heart; and, wrapped in her shawl and cloud, she took her brother's arm
+and started. The fog was thicker, and wetter, and colder than ever; the
+night as wretched a one for a walk as could well be imagined, and the
+bleak sea wind blew raw in their faces all the way.
+
+"How confoundedly cold it is!" exclaimed Charley, "more like January
+than July. You will perish, Natty, before we get to Redmon! You should
+not have come out this evening."
+
+"I wanted to talk to you, Charley, on a very important matter indeed!"
+
+Charley stared at her grave tone, but it all flashed upon him directly.
+Nathalie was used to talk to him more as a mother than a sister, in her
+superior woman's wisdom, and Charley was accustomed to take her lectures
+cheerfully enough; but in the damp darkness his face flushed
+rebelliously now.
+
+He would not speak again, and his sister, after waiting a moment, broke
+the silence herself.
+
+"It is about that girl, Charley?"
+
+"What girl?" inquired Mr. Marsh, rather sulkily.
+
+"You know well enough--Cherrie Nettleby."
+
+"Well, what of Cherrie Nettleby?" this time defiantly.
+
+"Charley, what do you mean by going with her as you do?"
+
+"Nathalie," said Charley, mimicking her tone, "what do you mean by going
+with Captain Cavendish as you do?"
+
+"My going with Captain Cavendish has nothing whatever to do with it; but
+if you want to know what I mean--I mean to marry him!"
+
+"Nathalie, I don't want you to have anything to do with that man,"
+Charley burst out passionately. "He is a villain!"
+
+"Charley!"
+
+"He is, I tell you! You know nothing about him--I do! I tell you he is a
+villain!"
+
+"This is ungenerous of you, Charley," she calmly said; "it is cowardly.
+Is not Captain Cavendish your friend?"
+
+"A friend I could throttle with the greatest pleasure in life!"
+exclaimed Charley, savagely.
+
+"What has he done?"
+
+"More than I would like to tell you--more than you would care to hear!
+All I have to say is, I would rather shoot you than see you his wife!"
+
+"You are slandering him!" said Nathalie, her passion rising in spite of
+herself. "You are trying to baffle me; to keep me from talking of
+Cherrie, but I'll not be put off. You cannot--you cannot mean to marry
+that girl."
+
+"Natty look here," he said, more gently, "I don't want to be
+disagreeable, but I cannot be dictated to in this! I am a man, and must
+choose for myself. I have obeyed you all my life; but in this you must
+let me be my own master."
+
+"You know what a name she has! She is the talk of all Speckport!"
+
+"Is Speckport ever done talking? Wouldn't it slander an archangel, if it
+got the chance?"
+
+"But it is true in this instance--she is all that Speckport says--an
+idle, silly, senseless, flirty, foolish, dressy, extravagant thing! She
+has nothing in the wide world to recommend her but her good looks."
+
+"Neither has Captain Cavendish, if it comes to that!"
+
+"Charley, it is false! He is a gentleman by birth, rank, and education!"
+
+"Yes," said Charley, bitterly. "Nature did her best to make a gentleman
+of him, but I know street-sweepers in Speckport ten times more of a
+gentleman than he! I tell you he is corrupt to the core of his heart--a
+spendthrift and a fortune-hunter! If you were Miss Marsh, the
+school-teacher, as you were two or three years ago, he would as soon ask
+Miss Jo Blake to be his wife as you!"
+
+"I don't doubt it," said Nathalie, quite calmly; "he may not be able to
+afford the luxury of a penniless bride, and for all that be no
+fortune-hunter. You can't shake my faith in him, Charley!"
+
+"You are blind!" Charley cried, vehemently. "I am telling you Heaven's
+truth, Natty, with no other motive than your good!"
+
+"We will drop the subject," said Nathalie, loftily, "and talk of you and
+Cherrie Nettleby!"
+
+"We'll do nothing of the sort," replied Charley, "resolutely go your own
+way, Natty, if you will, and I will go mine! The one marriage can be no
+madder than the other!"
+
+"And you will really marry this girl?"
+
+"I really will, if she will have me!"
+
+Nathalie laughed a low and bitter laugh.
+
+"Have you? Oh, there is little doubt of that, I fancy. Every one knows
+how she has been running after you this many a day!"
+
+"But there is doubt of it. Your fine Captain Cavendish pursues her like
+her shadow."
+
+"Charley, I will not listen to another word," cried Nathalie,
+imperiously. "Your infatuation seems to have changed your very nature.
+Why, oh why, has this girl crossed your path? If you wanted to marry,
+why could you not have chosen some one else? Why could you not have
+chosen Miss Rose?"
+
+Charley smiled under cover of the darkness. The question was absurd. Why
+could she not have chosen any of her other suitors, all good and
+honorable men? Why could she not have chosen Captain Locksley, young,
+handsome, rich, and the soul of integrity. He did not say so, however,
+and neither spoke again till the gate of Redmon was reached.
+
+"Good night," Nathalie briefly said, her voice full of inward pain.
+
+"Good night, Natty," Charley replied, "and God bless you and," lowering
+his voice as he turned away "keep you from ever becoming the wife of
+Captain Cavendish!"
+
+He walked on and entered the Nettleby cottage, where he found Cherrie in
+the parlor alone, bending over a novel. Cherrie's welcome to her lover
+was uncommonly cordial, for she was ennuied nearly to death. She had
+expected Captain Cavendish all the afternoon, and had been disappointed.
+Had she known that officer was making arrangements for their speedy
+nuptials, she might perhaps have forgiven him; and at that very moment,
+whilst talking to Charley of the time when she should be Mrs. Marsh,
+everything was arranged for her becoming, the very next week, Mrs.
+Captain George Cavendish.
+
+About five o'clock of that foggy July afternoon, Mr. Val Blake sat in
+his private room, in the office of the Speckport Spouter, his
+shirt-collar limp and wilted with the heat, his hair wildly disheveled,
+and his expression altogether bewildered and distracted. The table at
+which he sat was, as usual, heaped with MS., letters, books, buff
+envelopes, and newspapers; and Mr. Blake was poring over some sheets of
+white ruled foolscap, closely written in a very cramp and spidery hand.
+It was a story from "the fascinating pen of our gifted and talented
+contributor 'Incognita,' whose previous charming productions have held
+spellbound hosts of readers," as the Spouter said, in announcing it the
+following week, and the title of the fascinating production was the "Ten
+Daughters of Dives." Miss Laura Blair had just finished reading the
+"Seven Loves of Mammon," by Mr. George Augustus Sala; hence the title
+and the quaint style in which the thing was written. So extremely quaint
+and original indeed was the style, that it soared totally beyond the
+comprehension of all ordinary intellects, beginning in the most
+disconcertingly abrupt manner, and ending with a jerk, while you were
+endeavoring to make out what it was all about.
+
+"It's of no use trying," he murmured, pensively, "the thing is beyond me
+altogether. I'll put it in, hit or miss, or Laura will never forgive me;
+and I dare say the women will make out what it means, though I can't
+make top or tail of it."
+
+There was a tap at the door as he arrived at this conclusion, and Master
+Bill Blair, in a state of ink, and with a paper cap on his head, labeled
+with the startling word "Devil" made his appearance, and announced that
+Captain Cavendish was in the office and wanted to see him.
+
+"Tell him to come in," said Val, rather glad than otherwise of a chat by
+way of relaxation after his late severe mental labor.
+
+The captain accordingly came in, smoking a cigar, and presented his
+cigar-case the first thing to Val. That gentleman helped himself, and
+the twain puffed in concert, and discussed the foggy state of the
+weather and the prospects of the "Spouter." As this desultory
+conversation began to flag, and the weed smoked out, Mr. Blake
+remembered he was in a hurry.
+
+"I say, captain, you'll excuse me, won't you, if I tell you I haven't
+much time to spare this evening. We go press to to-morrow, and I shall
+have to get to work."
+
+Captain Cavendish came out of a brown study he had fallen into, and lit
+another cigar.
+
+"I won't detain you long, Val. I know you're a good fellow, and would do
+me a favor if you could."
+
+Val nodded and lit a cigar also.
+
+"I want you to do me the greatest service, and I shall be forever your
+debtor."
+
+"Right," said Val; "let us hear what it is."
+
+"You won't faint, will you? I am going to be married."
+
+"Are you?" said Mr. Blake, no way discomposed. "To whom?"
+
+"To Cherrie Nettleby."
+
+Val did start this time, and stared with all his eyes.
+
+"To what? You're joking, ain't you? To Cherrie Nettleby!"
+
+"Yes, to Cherrie Nettleby, but on the cross you know, not on the square.
+Do you comprehend?"
+
+"Not a bit of it. I thought you were after Natty Marsh all the time."
+
+Captain Cavendish laughed.
+
+"You dear old daisy, you're as innocent as a new-born babe. I'm not
+going to marry Cherrie in earnest, only sham a marriage, and I cannot do
+it without your help. The girl is ready to run away with me any day; but
+to make matters smooth for her, I want her to think, for a while at
+least, she is my wife. You understand now?"
+
+"I understand," said Val, betraying, I regret to say, not the slightest
+particle of emotion at this exposé of villainy; "but it's an
+ugly-looking job, Cavendish."
+
+"Not as bad as if she ran away with me in cold blood--for her I
+mean--and she is sure to do it. You know the kind of girl pretty little
+Cherrie is, Blake; so you will be doing her rather a service than
+otherwise in helping me on. If you won't help, you know I can easily get
+some one who will, and I trust to your honor to keep silent. But come,
+like a good fellow, help me out."
+
+"What do you want me to do? Not to play clergyman?"
+
+"No; but to get some one--a stranger to Cherrie and I--consequently a
+stranger in Speckport, who will tie the knot, and on whose discretion
+you may depend. You shall play witness."
+
+Val put his hands in his pockets and mused.
+
+"Well," he said, after a pause, "it's a horrid shame, but rather than
+that she should run off with you, without any excuse at all, I'll do it.
+How soon do you want the thing to come off?"
+
+"As early as possible next week--say Tuesday night. It will be better
+after night, she won't be so apt to notice deficiencies."
+
+Val mused again.
+
+"Cherrie's a Methodist herself; at least, she sits under the teaching of
+the Reverend Mr. Drone, who used to be rather an admirer of hers before
+he got married. The chapel is in an out-of-the-way street, and I can
+feign an excuse for getting the key from Drone. Suppose it takes place
+there?"
+
+Captain Cavendish grasped his hand, and gave it a friendly vise-like
+grasp.
+
+"Val, you're a trump! You shall have my everlasting gratitude for this."
+
+"Next Tuesday night, then," responded Val, taking the officer's rapture
+stoically enough. "And now I must beg you to leave me, for I have
+bushels of work on hand."
+
+Captain Cavendish, expressing his gratitude once more, lounged into the
+drear and foggy night. How lucky for the peace of the community at
+large, we cannot read each other's thoughts. The young captain's ran
+something after this fashion:
+
+"I always knew Blake was a spoon, but I never thought he was such an
+infernal scoundrel as this. Why, he is worse than I am; for I really am
+in love with the girl, and he does his rascality without a single
+earthly motive. Well, it's all the better for me. I'll have Cherrie as
+sure as a gun."
+
+Mr. Blake, in the seclusion of his room, leaned back in his chair, and
+indulged himself in a low and quiet laugh, before commencing work.
+
+"I said I owed you one," he soliloquized, throwing away the stump of his
+second cigar, "for leading Charley Marsh astray, and now's the time to
+pay you. If I don't serve you out this go, Captain Cavendish, my name's
+not Valentine Blake!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+IN WHICH THE WEDDING COMES OFF.
+
+
+The foggy day had ended in a stormy night. Black clouds had hurried
+wildly over the troubled face of the sky; a dull peal of thunder,
+booming in the distance, had been its herald. Rain, and thunder, and
+lightning had it all its own way until about midnight, when the sullen
+clouds had drifted slowly, and the moon showed her fair, sweet face in
+her place. A day of brightest sunshine, accompanied by a high wind, had
+been the result; and in its morning refulgence, Captain Cavendish was
+sauntering along the Redmon road. Not going to the big brick house,
+surely: Nathalie had told him the picnic day of Mrs. Leroy's growing
+dislike to visitors, and the hint had been taken. Perhaps it was only
+for a constitutional, or to kill time; but there he was, lounging in the
+teeth of the gale, and whistling an opera air as he went. The Nettleby
+cottage, fairly overrun with its luxuriance of sweetbrier, and climbing
+roses, and honeysuckle, was a pretty sight, and well worth looking at,
+and perhaps that was the reason Captain Cavendish stood still to admire
+it. The windows, all wreathed with crimson and pink roses, were open;
+and at one sat Cherrie, in all her beauty, like a picture in a frame.
+The crimson July roses about her were not brighter than her cheeks at
+the sight of him, and her starry eyes flashed a welcome few men would
+not have coveted. How prettily she was dressed, too--knowing well he
+would come, the gypsy!--in pink muslin; her bare neck and arms rising
+plump and rounded out of the gauziness; all her shining jetty curls
+flashing about, and sprays of rosebuds twisted through them. How the
+pale, blue-eyed, snowy-skinned, fair-haired prettiness of Nathalie
+dimmed in the young officer's ardent imagination beside this tropical,
+gorgeous loveliness of the sunny South. He opened the little gate, and
+was at the window before she arose.
+
+"My black-eyed fairy? You look perfectly dazzling this morning. Who is
+in?"
+
+"No one," said Cherrie, showing her pearl-white teeth in her deepening
+smile. "The boys are off fishing; father's up working in Lady Leroy's
+garden, and Ann's gone to town for groceries."
+
+"Allah be praised! I may come in, then, my darling, may I not?"
+
+Cherrie's answer was to throw the door wide open; and the young officer
+entered and took a seat, screened from the view of passers-by by the
+green gloom of the vines. That green twilight of roses and honeysuckles
+was just the thing for lovers to talk in; and Captain Cavendish had a
+great deal to say to Cherrie, and to all he said Cherrie had nothing to
+give but rapturous assents, and was altogether in the seventh heaven,
+not to say a few miles beyond that lofty elysium. It was all arranged at
+last as the young gentleman wished, and, lolling easily on the sofa, he
+went off on another tack.
+
+"Are you often up in Redmon House, Cherrie?" he asked, stringing the
+black ringlets about his fingers.
+
+Cherrie, seated on a low stool beside his couch, nestled luxuriously,
+with her head on his knee.
+
+"Pretty often, George." It had come to that, you see. "Why?"
+
+"Because--because I think you might find out something for me. I have a
+fancy, do you know, that the old lady doesn't over and above like me."
+
+"I know she don't," said Cherrie, decidedly. "She can't bear you, nor
+Midge either. They scold Miss Natty like sixty every time you go there."
+
+"The deuce they do? Suppose she fancied--mind, I only say fancied--I
+wanted to marry Miss Natty, do you suppose she would consent?"
+
+"Consent! She'd pack Miss Natty bag and baggage out of the house, more
+likely. She'd die before she'd give in, would Mrs. Leroy."
+
+Captain Cavendish fell to musing, and mused so long that Cherrie glanced
+up from under her black lashes, wondering what made his handsome face
+look so grave.
+
+"What are you thinking about?" she pouted; "Miss Natty, I suppose."
+
+"No, my little black-eye. I was thinking how you could do something for
+me."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Couldn't you listen; couldn't you manage to hear sometimes what Mrs.
+Leroy says to Natty, when they are talking of me?"
+
+Miss Nettleby was not at all shocked at this proposal; but I suppose the
+reader is. I know very well it is disgraceful in one calling himself a
+gentleman, and altogether dishonorable; but Captain Cavendish's ideas of
+honor, and yours and mine, are rather different. Had any one called him
+a liar or a swindler, or thrown a decanter at his head, or a tumbler of
+wine in his face, at the mess-table, or elsewhere, he would have
+considered his honor forfeited forever, if he did not stand up to shoot
+and be shot at by the offending party, as soon as possible afterward. In
+one word, not to mince matters, Captain Cavendish, handsome and elegant
+as he was, was an infidel and a villain, and you may as well know it
+first as last.
+
+"I dare say I can," was Cherrie's reply to his proposal. "I am up there
+often enough, and I know all the ins and outs of the place. I'll do what
+I can."
+
+Captain Cavendish rewarded her, as lovers do reward one another, I am
+told, and shortly after arose to take his leave. Miss Nettleby escorted
+him to the gate.
+
+"You won't forget Tuesday night, Cherrie," he said, turning to go.
+
+"It's not very likely," said Cherrie; "but I'll see you again before
+that--won't I, George?"
+
+"Of course, my darling! Take care of yourself, and good-bye."
+
+He sauntered up the road at an easy pace; and Cherrie lingered at the
+gate, admiring his tall and elegant figure, and thinking, with an
+exultant heart beating, what a happy and lucky girl she was. Forget
+Tuesday night! the night that was to make her his bride. She quite
+laughed aloud at the thought, in the glee of her heart. He was still in
+sight, this Adonis of hers, and she still lingered at the gate watching
+him. Lingering there, she saw something not quite so pleasant as she
+could wish. Miss Nathalie Marsh, in a dress of blue barege, a black silk
+mantle, and a pretty white hat trimmed with azure ribbon, its long white
+plume tipped with blue, and set jauntily on her flowing sunny curls;
+came down the avenue from the house, opened the gate, and stepped into
+the road, and confronted her (Cherrie's) beloved. Cherrie saw him start
+eagerly forward, but could not hear what he said, and perhaps for her
+peace of mind it was just as well.
+
+"My darling Nathalie! the fortunate chance I have been wishing for has
+come then! Are you going to town?"
+
+Nathalie, smiling and blushing, shyly held out her hand.
+
+"Good morning, Captain Cavendish! I----" but he interposed
+reproachfully.
+
+"Captain Cavendish, from you, Nathalie; I thought you knew my name."
+
+"Perhaps I have forgotten it," she laughed. "What are you doing up here,
+George," a little hesitatingly, though, and with a vivid flush, not half
+so glibly as Miss Nettleby had uttered it ten minutes before. "Were you
+going to call?"
+
+"Hardly--remembering the hint you gave me the other day. But though I
+could not storm the castle of my fairy-princess, it was pleasant, at
+least, to reconnoiter the outside, and I hoped, too, for the lucky
+chance that has arrived. Am I to have the happy privilege of escorting
+you into town?"
+
+Nathalie cast a half-apprehensive glance behind, but Midge was not on
+the watch. Had she known how dearly she was to pay for that walk--for
+that escort, rather--she had hardly answered with that happy, careless
+laugh.
+
+"Yes, you may have that happy privilege! What did you do with yourself
+all day yesterday in the fog?" Cavendish thought of what he had been
+doing in Val's office, but he did not tell Miss Marsh. Cherrie was still
+standing by the cottage gate, and they were passing it now, looking like
+a black-eyed queen, under the arches of scarlet runners and
+morning-glories.
+
+"A pretty place," said Captain Cavendish, "and that girl at the gate has
+a beautiful face. They tell me she has turned half the heads in
+Speckport."
+
+Nathalie's fair brow contracted; not in jealousy, she never thought of
+that, but at the recollection of Charley. She made no answer. Her
+attention was attracted by a lady who was coming toward them. A young
+lady, nicely dressed, who stepped mincingly along, with a sweet smile on
+her sullen face.
+
+"What brings Catty Clowrie up this way, I wonder?" exclaimed Nathalie,
+bowing as she passed, while the captain lifted his hat. "It is ever so
+long since I have seen her on this road before. I hope she is not going
+to Redmon."
+
+But Miss Clowrie was going to Redmon. She had not started with that
+idea; it had never entered her head until she met the lovers; but she
+turned and looked after them with a smile of evil menace on her face.
+
+"I hate her!" was her thought. "I hate her! But for her I might have had
+him once. Now he is that Nettleby girl's beyond hope. I wish Miss Marsh
+joy of her sister-in-law."
+
+"That Nettleby girl" still stood at the gate. Miss Clowrie bestowed the
+light of her smile upon her in passing, still deep in thought. "They say
+in Speckport Lady Leroy has forbidden Captain Cavendish the house, and
+threatens to disinherit Natty if she keeps his company. Perhaps she does
+not know of this. I think I'll go up and tell her. One good turn
+deserves another."
+
+Midge answered the young lady's knock, and admitted her to the presence
+of Lady Leroy. That mummy she found in her usual state of wrappings, and
+very ready for a little gossip.
+
+"Why don't you go out more, Mrs. Leroy," insinuated Catty; "it would do
+you good, I am sure."
+
+"No, it wouldn't!" snapped the old lady. "It does me harm. I hain't got
+over that picnic yet."
+
+"But I should think you would find it very lonely here, with Nathalie
+away so much. I hear she spends most of her time in town of late."
+
+"So she does," Lady Leroy screamed. "She will go in spite of me. If it
+ain't the school, it's a party or a picnic--something or other; but
+she's gallivanting all the time."
+
+"I met her just now," remarked Catty, in a careless way, "with Captain
+Cavendish. He had been waiting for her, I think, at the gate."
+
+"What?" shrieked Lady Leroy, "who with, or who did you say?"
+
+"Captain Cavendish," repeated Miss Clowrie, looking surprised. "I
+thought you said they were engaged! At least, every one says they are."
+
+Lady Leroy fell back, gasping, clawing the air in her struggle with her
+ten talon-like fingers. Catty, quite alarmed, started up to assist her.
+Lady Leroy grasped her by the wrist with a fierce grip.
+
+"You're sure of this? You're sure of this?" she huskily whispered, still
+gasping. "You're sure she was walking with him? You're sure she is
+engaged to him?"
+
+"I am sure she was walking with him," said Catty; "and every one says
+she is engaged to him; and what every one says must be true. It's very
+strange you did not know it."
+
+Lady Leroy "grinned horribly a ghastly smile." "I do know it now! I told
+her not to go with him--I told her not to go with him--and this is the
+way she obeys me!"
+
+She fell to clawing the air again, in a manner so very uncomfortable to
+look at, that Miss Clowrie arose, with some precipitation, to go.
+
+"They say he is a fortune-hunter and very extravagant, and goes after
+her because she is your heiress; but I'm sure I don't know. Good
+morning, Mrs. Leroy. I am glad to see you looking so well."
+
+With which the fair Miss Clowrie bowed herself out, smiling more than
+Midge had ever seen her before, and quite laughing, in fact, when she
+got out of doors.
+
+"I think I have paid a little of my debt, Miss Natty," she thought.
+"I'll pay it all, my dear, I hope, before either of us die."
+
+In the silent solitude of her lonely room, Lady Leroy had ample time to
+nurse her wrath before the return of her ward. It was nearly noon before
+that young lady reached home, her pretty face glowing with her rapid
+walk.
+
+"Midge," was her first breathless question, "has Catty Clowrie been here
+this morning?"
+
+Midge answered in the affirmative, and Nathalie's heart sank. All the
+way up-stairs she was preparing herself for a violent outburst of wrath;
+but, to her astonishment, Lady Leroy was quite tranquil. She glanced
+very hard at her, it is true, and her fingers were clawing empty air
+very viciously, but her voice was not loud nor angry.
+
+"You're very late, aren't you?" she said. "What kept you?"
+
+"I ran down to see mamma. Miss Rose told me she was not very well; but I
+hurried home as fast as I could. I'll make out those bills now."
+
+"Let the bills wait awhile," said the old lady. "I have something to
+tell you."
+
+This was an ominous commencement, and Nathalie looked at her in some
+dread.
+
+"Who was it you walked into town with this morning?" she asked, glaring
+harder than ever.
+
+Catty had told, then. All the blood in Nathalie's body seemed blazing in
+her face, as she answered:
+
+"It was Captain Cavendish. I chanced to meet him near the gate, and I
+could not very well help his walking back to town with me."
+
+"Didn't you promise me," said Lady Leroy, still speaking with
+astonishing calmness, but clawing the air fiercely with both hands,
+"when I forbade you going with him, that you would walk with him no
+more?"
+
+"No," said Nathalie. "I said he would come here no more, and neither he
+shall."
+
+"Until I am dead, I suppose," said the old woman, with a laugh that was
+very unpleasant to hear, "and you have all my money. Answer me one
+question, Natty. Are you engaged to him? Don't tell a lie."
+
+"No," said Nathalie, proudly, "I am not in the habit of telling
+deliberate lies. I am!"
+
+Lady Leroy gave a shrill gasp, her fingers working convulsively, but the
+spasm was over in a moment. She sat up again; and Nathalie, hurriedly
+and imploringly, went on:
+
+"Dear Mrs. Leroy, don't be angry! Indeed, you misjudge Captain
+Cavendish; he is a good and honorable man, and respects you much. Dear
+Mrs. Leroy, consent to our engagement and I will be the happiest girl in
+the world!"
+
+She went over and put her arms round the mummy's neck, kissing the
+withered face. The old woman pushed her away with another of her
+unpleasant laughs.
+
+"There--there, child! do as you please. I knew you would do it anyway,
+only I won't have him here--mind. I won't have him here! Now, get to
+work at them bills. What's the matter with your mother?"
+
+"Sick headache," said Nathalie, chilled, she scarcely knew why, by the
+old woman's manner. "She wanted me to stay with her this afternoon; but
+I told her I was afraid you could not spare me."
+
+Mrs. Leroy mused a few moments, while Nathalie wrote, and then looked
+up.
+
+"I'll spare you this afternoon, Natty, since your mother is sick. You
+can take the bills in with you and collect them. If you are back by
+nine, it will do."
+
+Nathalie was so amazed, she dropped her pen and sat staring, quite
+unable to return a word of thanks, and not quite certain she was not
+dreaming.
+
+"Get on, get on!" exclaimed Lady Leroy, in her customary testy tone.
+"You'll never have the bills done at that rate."
+
+Nathalie finished the bills mechanically, and with a mind far otherwise
+absorbed. Then she went to her room, and put on her hat and mantle for
+another walk to Speckport; but all the time that uneasy feeling of doubt
+and uncertainty remained. Mrs. Leroy had acted so strangely, had been so
+ominously quiet and unlike herself, and had not consented. Nathalie came
+in dressed for town, and bent over her, until her long bright curls
+swept the yellow old face.
+
+"Dear Mrs. Leroy!" she pleadingly said, "I cannot feel satisfied until
+you actually say you agree to this engagement. Do--do, if you love your
+Natty, for all my happiness depends upon it. Do say you consent, and I
+will never offend you again as long as I live?"
+
+Lady Leroy glared up at her with green, and glittering, and wicked old
+eyes.
+
+"If I don't consent, will you break off, Natty?"
+
+"You know I cannot. I love him with all my heart. Oh, Mrs. Leroy!
+remember you were once young yourself, and don't be hard!"
+
+Looking at that dry and withered old antediluvian, it was hard to
+imagine her ever young--harder still to imagine her knowing anything
+about the fever called love. She pushed Nathalie impatiently away.
+
+"Get along with you, and don't bother!" was her cry. "I told you to have
+your way, and you ought to be satisfied. You won't give in to me, but
+you'd like me to give in to you--wouldn't you? Go along, and don't
+torment me!"
+
+When Mrs. Leroy's cracked voice grew shrill and piercing, and her little
+eyes gleamed greenish flame, Nathalie knew better than to irritate her
+by disobedience. She turned to go, with a strange sinking of the heart.
+
+"I will be back by nine," she said, simply, as she quitted the room.
+
+Miss Nettleby, seated at her cottage door, under the roses and
+sweetbrier, industriously stitching on some gossamer article to be worn
+next Tuesday evening, looked up in some surprise at sight of Miss Marsh
+on her way to Speckport, for the second time that day.
+
+"Going back to town, Miss Natty?" she called out, familiarly.
+
+Miss Natty's answer was a cold and formal bow, as she passed on. Cherrie
+dropped her work and started up.
+
+"I'll go to the house and have a talk with Granny Grumpy herself before
+she comes back. Perhaps I may find out something. I wonder what sort of
+humor she is in."
+
+Lady Leroy was in uncommonly serene humor for her. Before Nathalie had
+been ten minutes gone, she had shouted for Midge; and that household
+treasure appearing, with sleeves rolled up over her elbows, and in a
+very soapy and steamy state, had desired her to array herself in other
+garments, and go right away into Speckport.
+
+"Go into Speckport!" cried Midge, in shrill indignation. "I'll see you
+boiled alive first, ma'am, and that's the long and short of it. Go into
+town, wash-day, indeed! What do you want in town, ma'am?"
+
+"I want Mr. Darcy--that's what I want!" vehemently replied her mistress.
+"I want Mr. Darcy, you ugly little imp; and if you don't go straight
+after him, I'll heave this at your head, I will!"
+
+"This" was a huge black case bottle, which trifle of glass the lady of
+Redmon brandished in a manner that made even Midge draw back a few paces
+in alarm.
+
+"I want Mr. Darcy on important business, I do!" screamed Lady Leroy.
+"And tell him not to let the grass grow under his feet on the way. Be
+off, will you?"
+
+"Why didn't you tell Miss Natty?" sulkily said Midge.
+
+"Because she isn't coming back till nine o'clock, that's why; and I
+can't wait. Well, what do you want, young woman?"
+
+This last polite interrogation was addressed to Miss Nettleby, who stood
+smiling in the doorway, in all the splendor of her charms.
+
+"I just ran up to see how you were," said Cherrie. "If you want any
+errand done in the town, Mrs. Leroy, I'll go. I can walk faster than
+Midge, you know."
+
+"So she can," cried Midge; "let her go, ma'am; I won't."
+
+With which Midge waddled off, making the hall quake with her airy tread.
+Mrs. Leroy looked with unusual graciousness at the young lady.
+
+"Will you go, Cherrie, and be quick about it. Tell Darcy to hurry; you
+can drive back with him, you know."
+
+Cherrie wanted nothing better, and was off like a dart, scenting a
+secret, and determined to get at the bottom of it.
+
+"What does she want with her lawyer, I wonder?" soliloquized Cherrie, on
+the road. "I'll find out. Miss Natty's out of the way, and Midge will be
+down in the kitchen. I'll find out."
+
+Mr. Darcy was one of the best lawyers in the town, and was Lady Leroy's
+man of business ever since her advent in Speckport. Cherrie found him in
+his office--a handsome and gentlemanly old man, with gray hair,
+whiskers, and mustache, and a clear, bright eye.
+
+"What can the old lady want?" he wondered, aloud, putting on his hat;
+"she didn't tell you, I suppose? Will you drive back with me, Miss
+Cherrie?"
+
+Miss Cherrie consented, and they had a very pleasant drive together, the
+old gentleman chaffing her about her beaux, and wanting to know when she
+was going to stop breaking hearts, and get married. Cherrie did not say
+"next Tuesday," she only laughed, and desired to be set down at her own
+gate.
+
+There she watched the lawyer out of sight, and then went deliberately
+after him. Not to the front door, however, but to a back window she knew
+of, easily lifted, through it, up-stairs on tiptoe, and into Nathalie's
+room, which she locked on the inside. Nathalie's room adjoined Lady
+Leroy's, and the wall being thin, the conversation of the lawyer and the
+old woman was distinctly audible. Cherrie sat down on the floor, with
+her ear glued to the wall, and listened. It was a prolonged and excited
+talk, the lawyer angrily protesting, Mrs. Leroy angrily determined;
+and it ended in Mr. Darcy's yielding, but grumblingly, and
+still under protest. Cherrie had fairly held her breath while
+listening--astonishment and delight pictured on her face.
+
+There was a long silence; Mr. Darcy was writing. In half an hour his
+task was completed, and he read it aloud to the mistress of Redmon.
+"That will do," said Lady Leroy, "I'm glad it's over."
+
+"Do you want that paper witnessed? Call Midge."
+
+Mr. Darcy opened the door, and shouted through the darkness for Midge,
+as Captain Cavendish had once done before. Midge made her appearance, as
+soapy and steamy as ever.
+
+"Write your name here," said Mr. Darcy, abruptly pointing to the place.
+
+"What is it?" inquired Midge.
+
+"That's no affair of yours, is it? Sign it, will you?"
+
+Midge took the pen as if it weighed half a ton or so, set her head very
+much on one side, thrust her tongue a little out of one corner of her
+mouth, and with much labor and painstaking, affixed a blotted
+autograph--Priscilla Short.
+
+"That will do," said Mr. Darcy; "we want another. Call in old
+Nettleby--he can write."
+
+Midge, casting a parting look, of much complacence at her performance,
+departed on her errand, and old Nettleby coming in shortly after,
+affixed another blotted signature. Mr. Darcy dispatched him about his
+business, folded the document, put it in his pocket-book, and took his
+hat and cane to go. On the threshold he paused.
+
+"This has been done under the influence of anger, Mrs. Leroy," he said;
+"and you will think better of it, and send me word to destroy it before
+long. I consider it most unjust--exceedingly unjust--altogether
+unjustifiable! Good afternoon, ma'am."
+
+Cherrie waited in her hiding-place until she heard the hall door close
+after him, then stole noiselessly out, down-stairs, through the window,
+and gained her own home, unobserved.
+
+What had she heard? Her face was flushed, her eyes bright, her whole
+manner strangely excited. She could not keep still--she walked
+ceaselessly to and from the gate, straining her eyes in the direction of
+Speckport.
+
+"Why don't he come! Why don't he come!" she kept repeating, hurriedly.
+"Oh, what will he say to this?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+AFTER THE WEDDING.
+
+
+Ann Nettleby, busy in the culinary department, never remembered seeing
+her restless sister so exceedingly restless as on this afternoon. When
+the clock struck six, and old Mr. Nettleby plodded home from his day's
+work, and the two young Mr. Nettleby's came whistling from town, and tea
+was ready, Ann came out to call her to partake. But Cherrie impatiently
+declined to partake; and still waited and watched, while the sunset was
+burning itself out of the purple sky, and the cinnamon roses drooped in
+the evening wind. The last amber and crimson flush was paling behind the
+blue western hills, when he, so long waited for, came up the dusty road,
+twirling a cane in his hand, and smoking a cigar. The unspeakable beauty
+and serenity of the summer twilight was no more to him than to her who
+watched at the vine-wreathed gate. A handsome man and a pretty
+girl--each was far more to the taste of the other than all the beauty of
+sky and earth.
+
+Right opposite the cottage were the dark, silent cedar woods. The moment
+he came in sight, Cherrie opened the gate, motioning him to follow,
+struck into the narrow footpath, winding among the woods. Captain
+Cavendish followed, and found her sitting on a little knoll, under the
+tree.
+
+"I have been watching for you this ever so long," she breathlessly
+began; "I thought you would never come! I have something to tell you,
+and I daren't tell you in the house, for father and the boys are there."
+
+Captain Cavendish leaned against a tree, puffed his cigar, and looked
+lazily down at her.
+
+"Well, petite, what is it?"
+
+"Oh, it's something dreadfully important. It's about Miss Marsh."
+
+The young captain threw away his cigar, and took a seat beside Cherrie,
+interested at once. He put his arm round her waist, too, but this is
+by-the-way.
+
+"About Miss Marsh? Have you been listening?"
+
+Cherrie gave him an account how she had gone for Mr. Darcy, and hidden
+afterward in Nathalie's room.
+
+"My clever little darling! And what did you hear?"
+
+"You never could guess! O my goodness," cried Cherrie, clasping her
+hands, "won't Miss Natty be in a passion, when she finds it out."
+
+"Will she, though? Let us hear it, Cherrie."
+
+"Well," said Cherrie, "you know Miss Natty was to be heiress of Redmon,
+and have all Lady Leroy's money when she dies?"
+
+"Yes! well?"
+
+"Well, she isn't to be any longer! Lady Leroy made a new will this
+afternoon, and Miss Natty is disinherited!"
+
+Captain Cavendish started with something like an oath.
+
+"Cherrie! are you sure of this?"
+
+"Certain sure!" said Cherrie, with a look and tone there was no
+doubting. "I heard every word of it--her telling him so first, and him
+reading the will afterward and father and Midge signed it!"
+
+"The--devil!" said Captain Cavendish between his teeth; "but what put
+such a freak in the old hag's head?"
+
+"You!" said Cherrie.
+
+"I!"
+
+"Yes--just you! She told Mr. Darcy Natty was engaged to you, and would
+not give you up, all she could say; so she meant to disinherit her. She
+said Nathalie should never know, unless she married you before she was
+dead--if she didn't, she shouldn't find it out until she was in her
+grave, and then you would desert her when you found out she was poor,
+and Nathalie would be rewarded for her disobedience!"
+
+Captain Cavendish's handsome face wore a scowl so black, and the oath he
+swore was so dreadful, that even Cherrie shrank away in something like
+terror.
+
+"The old hag! I could throttle her if I had her here! Cherrie, who did
+she leave her money to?"
+
+"To her brother--or, in case of his death, to his heirs; and five pounds
+to Natty to buy a mourning ring."
+
+"Did you hear her brother's name?"
+
+"Yes, but I forget! It was Harrington, or Harrison, or something like
+that. Mr. Darcy scolded like everything, and said it was unjust; but
+Lady Leroy didn't seem to mind him. Isn't it good I listened?"
+
+"Cherrie! Cherrie! Cherrie!" called Ann Nettleby, "Where are you,
+Cherrie? There's somebody in the house wants you!"
+
+"I must go!" said Cherrie, rising. "You stay here, so Ann won't see you.
+Will you be up to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes," said Captain Cavendish; and Cherrie flitted away rapidly in the
+growing dusk. For once he was glad to be rid of Cherrie--glad to be calm
+and think, and the late-rising moon was high in the sky before he left
+the wood, and walked back to Speckport.
+
+Cherrie's visitor turned out to be Charley Marsh, who received the
+reverse of a cordial welcome from his fickle-minded lady-love, who was
+more than a little provoked at his shortening her interview with one she
+liked better. She seated herself by the window, with her eyes fixed on
+the cedar wood, rapidly blackening now, waiting for her lover to emerge;
+but when his tall dark figure did at length stride out through the dark
+path, night had fairly fallen, and it was too late to see what
+expression his face wore.
+
+Whatever the young Englishman's state of mind had been on leaving the
+wood that night, it was serene as mood could be when, next morning,
+Sunday, Miss Nettleby, _en grande tenue_, gold chain and all, made her
+appearance in Speckport, and met him as she turned out of Redmon road.
+Miss Nettleby was going to patronize the cathedral this morning,
+confirmation was to take place, with all the magnificent and poetical
+ceremonies of the Catholic Church, and Cherrie would not have missed it
+for the world. Neither would Captain Cavendish, who went partly from
+curiosity, partly to kill time, partly to show himself in full uniform,
+and partly to hear Nathalie Marsh play and sing. Out of the great organ
+she was drawing such inspiring strains as Captain Cavendish thought he
+had never heard before; rolling out in volumes of harmony over the ears
+of people below, and grand and grateful were the notes the instrument
+gave forth to her master-hand. In front of the altar all the youthful
+aspirants for confirmation were seated, the girls robed in snowy white,
+and wearing vails and wreaths on their bowed heads, like young brides.
+But now the bishop, in mitre and chasuble, with a throng of attendant
+priests, in splendid vestments, preceded by a score of acolytes in
+scarlet soutanes, and white lace surplices, bearing candles and crozier,
+are all on the altar, and the choir have burst forth as with one voice,
+into the plaintive cry "Kyrie Eleison," and pontifical high mass has
+begun. High over all that swelling choir, high, clear and sweet, one
+soprano voice arises, the voice of the golden-haired organist: "Gloria
+in Excelsis!" Something in the deep solemnity of the scene, in the
+inspiring music, in the white-robed and flower-crowned girls, in the
+silent devotion of the thousands around him, stirred a feeling in the
+soul of the man, that he had never felt since, in early boyhood, before
+he knew Eton or Voltaire, he had knelt at his mother's knee, and
+learned there his childish prayers. He forgot, for a brief while, his
+wickedness and his worldliness, forgot the black-eyed girl by his side,
+and the blue-eyed girl whose voice vibrated through those lofty aisles,
+and, with dreamy eyes, and a heart that went back to that old time,
+listened to the sermon of the aged and white-haired priest, grown gray
+in the service of that God whom he, a poor atom of the dust, dared
+deride. It was one of those moments in which the great Creator, in his
+infinite compassion for his lost sheep, goes in search of us to lead us
+back to the fold, in which our good angel flutters his white wings about
+us, and tries to lift us out of the slime in which we are wallowing. But
+the sermon was over, the benediction given, the last voluntary was
+playing, and the vast crowd were pouring out. Captain Cavendish took his
+hat and went out with the rest; and before he had fairly passed through
+the cathedral gates was his old, worldly, infidel self again, and was
+pouring congratulations and praise into the too-willing ears of Nathalie
+Marsh, on her admirable performances, while Charley went home with
+Cherrie.
+
+All that day, and the next, and the next, Captain Cavendish never came
+near Redmon, or the pretty cottage where the roses and sweetbriers grew;
+but Mr. Johnston, a pleasant-spoken and dapper young cockney, without an
+h in his alphabet, and the captain's confidential valet, came back and
+forth with messages, and took all trouble and suspicion off his master.
+Neither had Miss Nettleby made her appearance in Speckport; she had
+spent the chief part of her time about the red-brick house, but had
+learned nothing further by all her eavesdropping. In a most restless and
+excited state of mind had the young lady been ever since Monday morning,
+in a sort of inward fever that grew worse and worse with every passing
+hour. She got up and sat down, and wandered in and out, and tried to
+read, and sew, and net, and play the accordion, and threw down each
+impatiently, after a few moments' trial. She sat down to her meals and
+got up without eating anything; her cheeks burned with a deep, steady
+fever-red, her eyes had the unnatural brightness of the same disease,
+and Ann stared at her, and opined she was losing her wits.
+
+In rain and gloom the wedding-day dawned at last. Cherrie's fever was
+worse--she wandered from room to room of the cottage all day long, the
+fire in her eyes and the hectic on her cheek more brilliant than ever.
+The sky was like lead, the wind had a warning wail in its voice, and the
+rain fell sullenly and ceaselessly. But the rain could not keep the girl
+in-doors; she went out and wandered around in it all, returning dripping
+wet, three or four times, to change her drenched clothes. The girls had
+the cottage to themselves; old Nettleby was out in the shed, mending his
+gardening-tools, and the boys were in Speckport. The dull day was ending
+in a duller and rainier twilight, and Ann Nettleby was bustling about
+the tidy kitchen, getting tea, and wondering if Cherrie had gone to bed
+in her room up-stairs, she had been so quiet for the last half-hour. She
+did not go up to see; but set the tea to draw, laid the table, and lit
+the lamp. The wet twilight had now closed in, in a black and dismal
+night, when Ann heard a carriage stop at the gate, and, a moment after,
+a loud knock at the front door. Before she could open it, some person
+without did so, and Ann saw Mr. Val Blake, wrapped in a mackintosh, and
+waiting at the gate a cab, with a lighted lamp.
+
+"How are you, Ann?" inquired Mr. Blake. "Is Cherrie in?"
+
+"Yes, here I am!" a voice called out, and Cherrie herself came running
+down stairs, her heart beating so fast and thick she could hardly speak.
+
+"I thought you would like a drive this evening, Cherrie," said Val;
+"it's wet, but you won't mind it in the cab, and I'll fetch you back
+before ten. Run and wrap up and come along."
+
+It was not the first time Ann Nettleby had heard such impromptu
+invitations given and accepted, and it was none of her business to
+interfere. Cherrie was off like a flash, and down again directly, in
+out-door dress, her vail down, to hide her flushed and excited face.
+
+Ann Nettleby, standing in the cottage-door, watched the cab drive away
+through the rainy night, and then, closing the door, went back to the
+kitchen, to give her father his tea. She took her own with him, setting
+the teapot back on the stove, to keep hot for her brothers. Old Nettleby
+fell asleep immediately after tea, with his pipe in his mouth, and Ann
+went back to her netting, wondering once more what Cherrie was about,
+and wishing she could have such fine times as her elder sister. Could
+she only have seen in some magic mirror what was at that moment going on
+in a humble little Wesleyan chapel in a retired street of the town! The
+building dimly lighted by one flickering candle; a minister, or what
+looked like one, in white neckcloth and clerical suit of black; the tall
+and distinguished man, wearing a shrouding cloak, and the little girl,
+who trembled and quivered so fearfully, standing before him, while he
+pronounced them man and wife; and that other tall young man, with his
+hands in his coat-pockets, listening and looking on! Could Ann Nettleby
+only have seen it all, and known that her pretty sister was that very
+night a bride!
+
+Val Blake was certainly the soul of punctuality. As the clock on the
+kitchen-mantel was striking ten, the cab stopped once more at the
+cottage-door, and she heard his unceremonious voice bidding Cherrie
+good-night. Ann opened the door, and Cherrie, her vail still down,
+brushed past her without saying a word, and flitted up the staircase to
+her own room.
+
+It was half an hour later when Ann Nettleby's two brothers came,
+dripping like water-dogs, home from town; and Ann having admitted them,
+went yawningly up-stairs to bed.
+
+"I say, father," said Rob Nettleby, pulling off his wet jacket, "was
+there company up at Redmon to-day?"
+
+"No," replied the old man. "Why?"
+
+"Oh, because we met a carriage tearing by just now, as if Old Nick was
+driving. I wonder what it was about?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+MINING THE GROUND.
+
+
+Miss Cherrie Nettleby was not a young lady of very deep feeling, or one
+likely to be long overcome by romantic emotion of any sort. Therefore,
+before a week stood between her and that rainy July night, she was all
+her own self again, and that night seemed to have come and gone out of
+her life, and left no trace behind it. She was Cherrie Nettleby still,
+not Mrs. Captain Cavendish; she lived in the cottage instead of the
+handsome suite of apartments the elegant young officer occupied in the
+best hotel in Speckport. She flaunted in the old gay way through her
+native town, and held her usual evening levee of young men in the
+cottage-parlor as regularly as the evening came round. It did seem a
+little strange to her at first that marriage, which makes such a change
+in the lives of other girls, should make so little in hers. She never
+doubted for a single second that she was really and legally his wife,
+and Val Blake kept his own counsel. The captain told her that he would
+resign his commission or exchange into the first homeward-bound
+regiment; and meantime she was to be a good girl and keep their secret
+inviolably. She was to encourage Charley Marsh, still--poor Charley!
+while he every day played the devoted to Nathalie.
+
+Cherrie's wedding night had been nearly the last of July. The crimson
+glory of an August sunset lay on the climbing roses, the sweetbrier and
+honeysuckle arches of the cottage, and was turning its windows into
+sheets of red gold. The sun, a crimson globe, was dropping in an
+oriflamme of indescribable gorgeousness behind the tree-tops; and at all
+this tropical richness of light and coloring, Cherrie, leaning over her
+father's garden-gate, looked.
+
+There were not many passers-by to look at that hot August evening; but
+presently up the dusty road came a young man, well-dressed and
+well-looking. Cherrie knew him, and greeted him with a gracious smile,
+for it was Mr. Johnston, Captain Cavendish's servant. Mr. Johnston, with
+a look of unqualified admiration at her dark, bright face, took off his
+hat.
+
+"Good-evening, Miss Nettleby. Ain't it shocking 'ot? Been to the picnic
+to-day?"
+
+Cherrie nodded.
+
+"'Ad a good time, I 'ope. Weren't you nearly melted with the 'eat?"
+
+"Yes, it was warm," said Cherrie; "got anything for me?"
+
+"A letter," said Mr. Johnston, producing the document, "which he'd 'ave
+come himself honely hold Major Grove hinvited 'im to dinner."
+
+Cherrie eagerly broke open the envelope and read:
+
+     "DEAREST:--Meet me to-night, at half-past eight, in the cedar dell,
+     without fail. Destroy this as soon as read.
+
+     "G. S."
+
+Cherrie tore the note into atoms, and strewed them over the grass.
+
+"There was to be a hanswer," insinuated Mr. Johnston.
+
+"Tell him yes," said Cherrie; "that is all."
+
+Mr. Johnston took off his hat once more, and himself immediately after.
+Ann Nettleby, at the same moment, came to the door to tell Cherrie tea
+was ready; and Cherrie went in and partook of that repast with her
+father, sister, and brothers.
+
+"Did you hear, boys," said old Nettleby, "that Lady Leroy has sold
+Partridge Farm?"
+
+"Sold Partridge Farm!" repeated Rob. "No! has she, though? Who to?"
+
+"To young Mr. Oaks, so Midge tells me; and a rare penny she'll get for
+it, I'll warrant you."
+
+"What does Oaks want of it, I wonder?" said his other son. "He isn't
+going to take to farming."
+
+"Oaks is the richest fellow in Speckport," said Rob Nettleby; "he has
+more money a great deal than he knows what to do with, and he may as
+well lay it out in property as at the gaming-table."
+
+"Does he gamble?" asked Cherrie, helping herself to bread and butter.
+
+Her brother laughed significantly.
+
+"Doesn't he, though? You may find him and that Captain Cavendish all
+hours of the day and night in Prince Street."
+
+"Is Captain Cavendish a gambler?" said Ann; "that's bad for Miss Natty.
+They say they're going to be married."
+
+Cherrie smiled to herself, and Rob went on speaking.
+
+"It's bad for Miss Nathalie, for that Cavendish is a villain, for all
+his fine airs and graces, and is leading her brother to the devil. I met
+him and young McGregor coming from Prince Street last night, and they
+hadn't a leg to put under them--either one."
+
+"Drunk?" said Cherrie, stirring her tea.
+
+"Drunk as lords, the pair of 'em. I helped them both home, and found out
+afterward how it was. They had gone with Cavendish to the gaming-house
+as usual, had lost heavily also, as usual, and, excited and maddened,
+had drank brandy until they could hardly stand. Young McGregor will
+fleece his father before he stops; and where Marsh's money comes from, I
+can't tell."
+
+"You ought to tell Miss Natty, Rob," said his father. "I should not like
+to see her throw herself away on such a man, such a handsome and
+pleasant-spoken young lady as she is."
+
+"Not I," said his son, getting up; "she wouldn't thank me, and it's none
+of my business. Let Charley tell her, if he likes--a poor fellow like me
+has no call to interfere with fine ladies and gentlemen."
+
+Cherrie, with a little disdainful toss of her black curls, but
+discreetly holding her tongue, went into the front room and seated
+herself with a novel at the window. She read until a quarter past eight,
+and it grew too dark to see; then, rising, she wrapped herself in a
+plaided shawl and crossed the deserted road unobserved. Cedar dell, the
+place of tryst, was but a few yards off--the green hollow in the woods
+where Cherrie had told the captain of the result of her eavesdropping; a
+delightful place, shut in by the tall, dark trees, with a carpet of
+velvet sward, and a rustic bench of twisted boughs. Cherrie sat down on
+the bench and listened to the twittering of the birds in their nests,
+the restless murmuring and swaying of the trees in the night-wind, and
+watched the blue patches of sky and the pale rays of the new moon
+glancing in and out of the black boughs. All the holy beauty of the pale
+summer night could not lift her heart to the Creator who had made
+it--she was only waiting for the fall of a well-known step, for the
+sound of a well-known voice. Both came presently. The branches were
+swept aside, a step crashed over the dry twigs, a pale and handsome
+face, with dark eyes and mustache, under a broad-brimmed hat, looked in
+the white moonlight through the opening, and the expected voice asked:
+
+"Are you there, Cherrie?"
+
+"Yes, George," said Cherrie composedly, "Come in."
+
+Captain George Cavendish came in accordingly, embraced her in very
+husbandly fashion, and sat down beside her on the bench. The gloom of
+the place and the hat he wore obscured his face, but not so much but
+that the girl could see how pale it was, and notice something strange in
+his voice and manner.
+
+"Is there anything the matter?" she asked. "Did you want anything very
+particular, George?"
+
+"Yes," he said, in a low, impressive voice, taking both her hands in
+his, and holding them tightly. "I want you to do me the greatest service
+it may ever be in your power to render me, Cherrie."
+
+Cherrie looked up at his white, set face, feeling frightened.
+
+"I will do whatever I can for you, George. What is it?"
+
+"You know you are my wife, Cherrie, and that my interests are yours now.
+Wouldn't you like I should become rich and take you away from this
+place, and keep you like a lady all the rest of your life?"
+
+Yes--Cherrie would decidedly like that, and gave him to understand
+accordingly.
+
+"Then you must take an oath, Cherrie--do you hear?--an oath to obey me
+in all things, and never reveal to living mortal what I shall tell you
+to-night."
+
+Now, Cherrie, thinking very little of a falsehood on ordinary occasions,
+held an oath to be something solemn and sacred, and not to be broken,
+and hesitated a little.
+
+"Perhaps it is something hard--something I can't do. I feel afraid to
+take an oath, George."
+
+"You must take it! It is not a matter of choice, and I will ask nothing
+you can't do. You must only swear to keep a secret."
+
+"Well, I'll try," said Cherrie, with a sigh, "but I hate to do it."
+
+"I dare say you do!" he said, breaking into a slight smile; "it is not
+in your line, I know, to keep secrets, Cherrie; but at present there is
+no help for it. You know what an oath is, don't you, Cherrie?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And you swear never to reveal what I am about to say to you?"
+
+"Yes," said Cherrie, her curiosity getting the better of her fear. "I
+swear! What is it?"
+
+Was it the gloom of the place, or some inward struggle, that darkened so
+his handsome face. The silence lasted so long after her question, that
+Cherrie's heart began to beat with a cold and nameless fear. He turned
+to her at last, holding both her hands in his own, and so hard that she
+could have cried out with the pain.
+
+"You have sworn, Cherrie, to help me. Say you hope you may die if you
+ever break that oath. Say it!"
+
+The girl repeated the frightful words, with a shiver.
+
+"Then, Cherrie, listen, and don't scream. I'm going to rob Lady Leroy
+to-morrow night."
+
+Cherrie did not scream; but she gave a gasping cry, and her eyes and
+mouth opened to their widest extent.
+
+"Going to rob Lady Leroy," repeated Captain Cavendish, looking at her
+fixedly, and magnetizing her with his powerful glance, "to-morrow night;
+and I want you to help me, Cherrie."
+
+"But--but they'll put you in prison for it," gasped Cherrie, all aghast.
+
+"No, they won't, with your help. I mean they shall put somebody else in
+prison for it; not through any dislike to him, poor devil, but to avert
+suspicion from myself. Will you help me, Cherrie? Remember, you have
+sworn."
+
+"I will do what I can," shivered poor Cherrie, "but oh! I am dreadfully
+scared."
+
+"There is no need--your part will be very easy, and to-morrow afternoon
+you shall leave Speckport forever."
+
+Cherrie's face turned radiant.
+
+"With you, George! Oh, I am so glad! Tell me what you want me to do, and
+see if I don't do it."
+
+"That is my good little wife. Now then for explanations. Do you know
+that Lady Leroy has sold Partridge Farm?"
+
+"To Mr. Tom Oaks--yes, and that he is coming up to-morrow to pay her
+eight thousand pounds for it."
+
+"Who told you?"
+
+"Father and the boys were talking about it at tea. George, is that the
+money you're going to steal?"
+
+"It is. I am deucedly hard-up just at present, Cherrie, and eight
+thousand would be a godsend. Now, my dearest, you must be up at the
+house when Oaks comes, and find out where the money is put."
+
+"I know where she always keeps the money," said Cherrie; "and she's sure
+to put this with the rest. It is in that black japanned tin box on the
+stand at the head of her bed."
+
+"Very well. You see, I must do it to-morrow night, for she never would
+keep so large a sum in the house; it will go into the bank the day
+after. The steamer for Halifax leaves to-morrow night at eleven o'clock,
+and I shall go to Halifax in her."
+
+"And take me with you?" eagerly asked Cherrie.
+
+"No; you must go in another direction. Until our marriage is made
+public, it never would do for us to go together, Cherrie. Let me see.
+You told me once you had a cousin up in Greentown, who wanted you to
+visit her, did not you?"
+
+"Yes--Cousin Ellen."
+
+"Well, there is a train leaving Speckport at half-past five in the
+afternoon. You must depart by that, and you will be in Greentown before
+nine. Take care to make your departure as public as possible. Go into
+Speckport early in the morning, and bid everybody you know good-bye.
+Tell them you don't know how long you may be tempted to stay."
+
+"Yes," said Cherrie, with a submissive sigh.
+
+"All but one. You must tell Charley Marsh a different story."
+
+"Charley! Why, what's Charley Marsh got to do with it?"
+
+"A good deal, since I mean he shall be arrested for the robbery. I hate
+to do it, but there is no help for it, Cherrie. You told me the other
+day that he was getting desperate, and wanted you to elope with him."
+
+"So he did," said Cherrie. "He went on dreadfully; said he was going to
+perdition, and you were dragging him down, but he would take me from you
+if he could. He wanted me to go with him to the United States, and we
+would be married in Boston."
+
+"And you--what is this you told him, Cherrie?"
+
+"I told him I would think about it, and give him his answer in a day or
+two."
+
+"Very well. Give him his answer to-morrow morning. Call at the office,
+and tell him you consent to run away with him, but that, to avoid
+suspicion for a few days, you are going to give out you are off on a
+visit to your cousin in Greentown. That you will actually start in the
+cars, but will step quietly out at the first station, which is only
+three miles from town, and that you will walk back and get to Speckport
+about dark. You understand, Cherrie? You are not really to do this, only
+to tell Marsh you will."
+
+"Yes," said Cherrie, looking hopelessly bewildered.
+
+"Tell him to come to Redmon between eight and nine, to call at your
+cottage first, and if you are not there, to go to Lady Leroy's and wait
+there as long as he can. If you are not there before the house is
+closed, he is to wait in the grounds for you in front of the house until
+you do come. I will enter by that back window you showed me, Cherrie,
+and the probability is Charley will wait all night, and, of course, will
+be seen by several people, and actually suspected of the robbery."
+
+"It seems a pity, though, don't it?" said Cherrie, her woman's heart
+touched for poor Charley.
+
+"If he is not suspected, I will be," said Captain Cavendish, sternly.
+"Remember your oath."
+
+"I remember. Is there anything else?"
+
+"Yes; you must send him a note in the afternoon. Ann will fetch it for
+you. To-morrow is Thursday, and at eight in the morning the steamer
+leaves for Boston."
+
+"Here," said the young man, putting his hand in his pocket and producing
+a slip of paper, "is a draft of the note you are to send him, written in
+pencil. Copy it word for word, and then tear this up. Listen, and I will
+read it."
+
+More from memory than the pale moon's rays glancing through the woods,
+Captain Cavendish read:
+
+     "DEAR CHARLEY:--I forgot to tell you this morning, when I consented
+     to elope with you, that you had better go down to the steamboat
+     office to-day and secure staterooms, so that we may conceal
+     ourselves as soon as we go on board. You can pay for this out of
+     that money; it will do us more good than it ever would do that
+     miser of a Lady Leroy. Ever yours,
+
+     "CHERRIE NETTLEBY."
+
+"What money?" inquired Cherrie. "What money is he to pay for the
+staterooms out of?"
+
+"Oh, I forgot. When you see him in the morning, give him this,"
+producing a bank note. "I know he has not a stiver, and I got this from
+Oaks myself yesterday. It is for ten pounds, and Oaks's initials were
+scrawled on it, as he has a fashion of doing with all his bills. Tell
+him Lady Leroy gave it to your father in payment, and he presented it to
+you. Charley will take it; he is too hard up to be fastidious. Your note
+will, no doubt, be found upon him, and convict him at once."
+
+"There's another thing," said Cherrie. "When Charley's arrested and my
+name found to that note, they'll think I knew about the robbery, and
+come up to Greentown after me. What should I do then?"
+
+"That is true," said the captain, thoughtfully. "Perhaps, after all,
+then, you had better not go to your cousin's. Go on to Bridgeford; it is
+thirty miles further up, and a quiet out-of-the-way place, where no one
+ever stops, hardly. There is one hotel there, where you can stay quietly
+for a few days, and then slip off and get board in some farmer's house.
+Call yourself Miss Smith, and write to me when you are settled, telling
+all the particulars. Disguise your hand in writing the address, and I
+will run up and see you as soon as I safely can, and settle our future
+plans. Now, you are sure you remember and understand all I have been
+saying?"
+
+"Yes," said Cherrie; "but, oh, dear me! I feel just as nervous and as
+scared! What will they do to Charley? Maybe they'll hang him!"
+
+"Not the least fear of it. If they put him in prison, I'll try and get
+him clear off. You say they always go to bed for certain at nine o'clock
+at Redmon house?"
+
+"At nine to a minute; but Lady Leroy always locks her door, nights. How
+will you get in?"
+
+Captain Cavendish smiled.
+
+"If it all was as easy as that, it would be a simple affair. Don't look
+so discouraged, my darling black eyes. With eight thousand pounds in my
+pocket, and the prettiest little girl in wide America as my wife, I will
+be off to merry England, and you and I will forget this land of fog and
+fish. I'm off now, Cherrie and perhaps it may be two or three weeks
+before I shall see you again, so take care of yourself. Here are eight
+sovereigns to pay your expenses; and be sure you write to me from
+Bridgeford."
+
+He got up, but Cherrie clung to him, crying:
+
+"Oh, I am afraid! O George, I am afraid I will never see you again."
+
+"Little simpleton," he said, giving her a parting caress, "what can
+happen if you do your part bravely? If you fail, then, indeed, we will
+never meet again."
+
+Cherrie's tears were falling fast now.
+
+"I will not fail; but--but----"
+
+"But what, my darling?"
+
+"When you go to Halifax, perhaps you will never come back; perhaps you
+will never come to Bridgeford."
+
+"Cherrie, you are a goose! Don't you know I am in your power, and that I
+must come back? Come, stop crying now, and give me a kiss, and say
+good-bye. It won't be long, you know."
+
+One other parting caress, and then he was gone.
+
+Cherrie listened until the echo of his footsteps died out in the
+distance, and then she threw herself on her face in the wet grass,
+heedless of her white dress, and cried like a spoiled child whose doll
+has been taken away. She was frightened, she was excited, she was
+grieved, but she was not remorseful. There was little compunction in her
+heart for the part she was to play--betraying the man who loved her and
+trusted her. It was the old story of Delilah and Samson over again.
+
+The clocks of Speckport striking ten, and clearly heard this still
+summer night, had ceased before she came out, her cheeks pale, her eyes
+red with weeping. There was a dull circle round the moon, foreboding a
+coming storm; but what was there to give warning to poor Charley Marsh
+of the storm about to burst upon him?
+
+Ann Nettleby was at the door waiting patiently for Cherrie. She turned
+crossly upon her when she appeared.
+
+"I wish you would learn to come home earlier, and not keep folks out of
+their beds all night. What were you doing in the woods?"
+
+"Crying," said Cherrie, quite as crossly as her sister. "I'm tired to
+death of this dull place. I'll go off to Greentown to-morrow."
+
+"I wish to mercy you would; the rest of us would have some peace then.
+Did you expect Charley Marsh to-night?"
+
+"No; why?"
+
+"He's been here, then, and only just gone. Come in, and let me lock the
+door."
+
+Cherrie went up to her room, but not to sleep. She sat by the window,
+looking out on the quiet road, the black woods, and the moon's sickly,
+watery glimmer, while the long hours dragged slowly on, and her sister
+slept. She was thinking of the eventful to-morrow--the to-morrow that
+was to be the beginning of a new life to her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+SPRINGING THE MINE.
+
+
+When Mr. Robert Nettleby informed his family circle that Charley Marsh
+was going to--well, to a certain dark spirit not to be lightly named in
+polite literature, he was about right. That young gentleman, mounted on
+the furious steed of extravagance, was galloping over the road to ruin
+at the rate of an express train.
+
+Not alone, either; young McGregor, Tom Oaks, Esquire, and some dozen
+more young Speckportians, were keeping him company--and all ran nearly
+abreast in the dizzy race.
+
+The terrible terminus--Disgrace, Misery, and Sudden Death--looked very
+near to some of them, very near, indeed, to the brother of Nathalie. He
+had taken to hard drinking of late, as a natural sequence of the other
+vice; gamblers must drink to drown remorse, and it was no unusual thing
+now for him to be helped home by pitying friends, and carried up-stairs
+to bed. How the mother cried and scolded; how the sister wept in
+passionate shame and sorrow in the silence of her own room; how he, the
+prodigal, suffered after, Heaven only knows, but it never came to
+anything.
+
+Next day's splitting headache, and insuperable shame and remorse, must
+be drowned in brandy; that fatal stimulant brought the old delusive
+hopes--he must go back, he must win.
+
+He was over four hundred dollars indebted to Captain Cavendish now,
+without possessing one dollar in the world, or the hope of one, to pay
+him. He had ceased to ask money from Nathalie--she had no more to give
+him, and Alick McGregor and Tom Oaks found enough to do to foot their
+own bills.
+
+Strange to say, the primary mover of this mischief, the arch-tempter
+himself, George Percy Cavendish, remained unsuspected, save by a few,
+and went altogether unblamed. Captain Cavendish seldom lost his money,
+never his temper; never got excited, was ever gentlemanly and cool,
+though half the men about him were mad with liquor and losses, and ready
+to hold pistols to their heads and blow their miserable brains out.
+
+Nathalie, humbled to the very dust with shame for Charley, never
+suspected her betrothed lover--never for one second; in her eyes he was
+the incarnation of all that was honorable and good.
+
+It was in one of his fits of rage and remorse that Charley had asked
+Cherrie to fly with him. Not that he expected to atone by that; but, far
+from Speckport, which enchanting town was fast becoming hateful to him,
+and with her as his wife, he hoped to begin a new life, away from those
+he had disgraced. He hated Captain Cavendish with a furious and savage
+hatred, and it would be a demoniac satisfaction to tear Cherrie from
+him. For, with the eyes of jealousy, Charley saw his game, though all
+Speckport was blind. Miss Nettleby, at her old game of fast and loose,
+had put him off indefinitely. And, casting bitter reproaches to Fate,
+after the manner of Dick Swiveller, Charley Marsh let himself drift
+with the rapid current, bearing him along to a fearful end.
+
+The day that came after the night spent by Cherrie and Captain Cavendish
+in the cedar dell was one of scorching, broiling heat and sunshine. The
+sun was like a wheel of red flame, the sky of burnished brass, the bay a
+sea of amber fire.
+
+Through all the fiery glare of this fierce August morning, went Charley
+Marsh to the office of Dr. Leach. No longer the Charley Marsh who had
+been the life of Mrs. McGregor's party, that foggy May evening when
+Captain Cavendish had first appeared in Speckport, but a pale,
+sunken-cheeked, hollow-eyed vision, with parched and feverish lip, and
+gaze that shrunk from meeting that of his fellow-men, his temples seemed
+splitting, his eyes ached with the blinding gleam, and he could have
+cursed the heat in his impious impatience and suffering. He glanced down
+toward the shining bay, and thought, if it had only looked blue and
+cool, instead of being a lake of fire, he could have gone and lain down
+in its pleasant waters, and escaped forever from the miseries of this
+life, at least.
+
+"Charley!"
+
+The voice at his elbow made him bound. He turned and saw Cherrie
+Nettleby, her shining ebon ringlets freshly curled, her black eyes dark
+and dewy, her rosy cheeks bright and unwilted, her dress airy and
+cool--unflushed, unheated; basking, like a little salamander, in the
+genial sunlight, and wearing the smile of an angel. Charley could scarce
+believe his eyes.
+
+"You here, Cherrie!" he cried, "this blazing day. Have you been in
+Speckport all night?"
+
+"No, I got a drive in this morning, and, Charley," dropping her wicked
+eyes, "I came to see you!"
+
+They were near the office. The surgery looked cool and shady, and
+Charley opened the door and ushered the young lady in. The shopboy had
+the place to himself, and he retreated to a distant corner, with a
+knowing grin, at sight of the pair. Dr. Leach was rarely at home. People
+would persist in devouring new potatoes, and green peas, and cucumbers,
+and string-beans, and other green stuffs, and having pains, and cramps,
+and cholera afterward, and the doctor was fairly run off his legs--that
+is to say, his horse was.
+
+"How nice and cool it is in here," said Cherrie; "it's the hottest day
+came this summer, I think. What a hurry you were in leaving, last night,
+Charley."
+
+"Hurry! It was past ten."
+
+"Well, I came in a few minutes after, and was so mad when I found you
+were gone. I got such a jawing for being out! I won't stand it," cried
+Miss Cherrie, flying out in an affected temper; "I just won't!"
+
+"Stand what?"
+
+"Why, being scolded and put upon the way I am! It's dreadful dull, too,
+and I am getting tired of the place altogether; and so, I am going to
+leave it."
+
+"With me, Cherrie?"
+
+"I don't care if I do! I'm off this very day; I'll not stand it a minute
+longer--so, if you want me to go with you, you haven't much time to
+spare!"
+
+Charley grasped both her hands, his pale face lighting with ecstasy; and
+the shopboy behind the pestle-and-mortar grinned delightedly at the
+scene, although he could not hear a word.
+
+"My darling Cherrie!" Charley cried, "you have made me the happiest
+fellow alive! Wait until to-morrow, and we will be off in the boat to
+Boston."
+
+Miss Nettleby fell to musing.
+
+"Well, I don't care if I do," she said, at length. "I should like to see
+Boston, and the trip in the steamboat will be nice. But, look here,
+Charley, I've gone and told our folks and everybody else that I was
+going to Greentown, in this afternoon's train, and it won't do to back
+out."
+
+"But you must back out, Cherrie! You cannot go to Greentown and to
+Boston, both."
+
+Cherrie put on her considering-cap again, only for a moment, though, and
+then she looked up with a sparkling face.
+
+"I have it, Charley! The nicest plan! This evening, at half-past five,
+I'll go off in the cars, and every one will think I've gone to
+Greentown, so my absence to-morrow won't be noticed. I'll get out at the
+first station, three miles off, and walk back home, but won't go in.
+About eight to-night you call at our house, pretending you don't know
+about my being off, you know; and when our Ann tells you I have gone,
+you go up to Lady Leroy's and stay till bed-time. Then wait around the
+grounds in front of the house, and I'll come to you about ten. I can
+stop in one of the hotels here, where they don't know me. I'll wear a
+thick vail until morning, and then we will hide on board the boat. Isn't
+it a splendid plan, Charley? They'll think I'm in Greentown, and never
+suspect we have gone off together!"
+
+No poor fly ever got entangled in a spider's web more readily than did
+Charley Marsh in that of Captain Cavendish. He thought the plan was
+capital, and he told her so.
+
+"You must be sure to wait in front of the house until I come," said the
+wicked little enchantress, keeping her black eyes fixed anywhere but on
+his face. "And here, Charley--now don't refuse--it is only a trifle, and
+I won't go with you, if you don't take it. I don't suppose you have much
+money, and father made it a present to me after Lady Leroy paid him. I
+must go now, because I have ever so much to do before evening. Good-bye,
+Charley, you won't forget anything I've said?"
+
+Forget! That face, fair in spite of its haggardness, was radiant. Bad as
+Cherrie was, she had not the heart to look at him as she hurried out of
+the shop and down the street. If he had only known!--if he had only
+known!--known of the cunning trap laid for him, into which he was
+falling headlong--if he had only known what was to take place that fatal
+night!
+
+Charley Marsh did not go home to his dinner; he had dinner enough for
+that day. All that long sweltering afternoon he sat in the smothering
+little back-office, staring out at the baked and blistered backyard, and
+weaving, oh! such radiant dreams of the future. Such dreams as we all
+weave; as we see wither to shreds, even in the next hour. Visions of a
+home, far, very far from Speckport, where the past should be atoned for
+and forgotten--a home of which Cherrie, his darling little Cherrie,
+should be the mistress and fireside fairy.
+
+It was some time past five, when, awakening from these blissful
+day-dreams, Charley Marsh found that the little back office was so
+insufferably hot as not to be borne any longer, and that a most
+extraordinary change had come over the sky, or at least as much of the
+firmament as was visible from the dirty office-window. He took his hat
+and sauntered out, pausing in the shop-door to stare at the sky. It had
+turned livid; a sort of ghostly, greenish glare, all over with wrathful
+black clouds and bars of blood-red streaking the western horizon. Not a
+breath of air stirred; the trees along the streets of Speckport and in
+its squares hung motionless in the dead calm, and feathers and bits of
+paper and straw lay on the sidewalk. The sea was of the same ghastly
+tinge as sky and air, as if some commotion in its watery bowels had
+turned it sick. And, worst of all, the heat was unabated, the planked
+sidewalks scorched your feet as you walked, and you gasped for a
+mouthful of air. Speckport declined taking its tea; its butter was
+butter no longer, but oil; its milk had turned sour, and the water from
+the street-hydrants nearly warm enough to make tea of, without boiling
+at all. There were very few out as Charley walked down Queen Street, but
+among these few he encountered Mr. Val Blake, striding in the direction
+of Great St. Peter Street.
+
+Val nodded familiarly.
+
+"Hot day, Charley. Going to be a thunder-storm, I take it. By the way,
+she'll have an ugly night for her journey."
+
+"Who will?"
+
+"Little Cherrie, of course; she's off to Greentown, man! Didn't you know
+it? I was down at the station ten minutes ago, and saw her off. How's
+the mother?"
+
+"Getting better. Good afternoon, Val," said Charley, passing on, and
+smiling at the news Mr. Blake had told him.
+
+"What a clever head the little darling has to put them off the scent!
+Hallo, what do you want?"
+
+Some one had shouted after him; and turning round, he saw Master Bill
+Blair, his hands in his pockets, his hat cocked on one side of his head,
+following at an extremely leisurely pace.
+
+"I want you to hold on. I'll go part of the way with you, for I'm going
+home to tea," replied Mr. Blair, not hurrying himself. "It's hot enough
+to roast an ox, it is. You don't suppose the sky has got the jaundice,
+do you; it is turned as yellow as a kite's claw."
+
+"You had better send up and inquire," said Charley, shortly, preferring
+his own thoughts to this companionship.
+
+"I say, Marsh," said Bill, grinning from ear to ear, "Cherrie's gone,
+hasn't she? Good riddance, I say. What took her streaking off to
+Greentown, and whatever will you do without her?"
+
+Mr. Marsh came to a sudden stand-still--they were in a quiet street--and
+took Mr. Blair by the collar.
+
+"Look you here, Master Bill," said Charley, emphatically, "you see the
+water down there! Well, now take warning; the next time I find you
+making too free use of that tongue of yours, I'll duck you! Mind! I've
+said it!"
+
+With which Mr. Marsh released him, and stalked on. Mr. Blair, pretty
+well used to being collared, took this admonition so much to heart, that
+he leaned against a lamp-post, and went off with a roar of laughter that
+awoke all the sleeping echoes of the place.
+
+There was no one in the cottage parlor when Charley went in; and on the
+lounge in the sitting-room his mother lay asleep. He went softly
+up-stairs to his own room, so as not to awake her. That poor, pale,
+peevish, querulous, novel-reading, fond mother, when should he see her
+again?
+
+A murmur of voices caught the young man's ear as he ascended; it came
+from Miss Rose's room--the door of which, that sultry evening, stood
+half open. Charley glanced in. Miss Rose, sitting at a little table, was
+writing, and an old woman on a chair near, with her shawl and bonnet
+on, rocked to and fro, and dictated. Charley knew Miss Rose was scribe
+to all the poor illiterate of Speckport, and knew she was at one of
+those sacred tasks now. He saw the pale, sweet face in profile; the
+drooping white eyelids, hiding the hazel eyes, and the brown hair, damp
+and loose, falling over her mourning-dress. He thought of what Nathalie
+had said--"If you must marry any one, why not Miss Rose?" as he closed
+the door without disturbing them.
+
+"No, Natty," he mentally answered. "Miss Rose is an angel, which I am
+not, unless it be an angel of darkness. No; she is too innocent and good
+for such a fellow as I am. I wouldn't marry her if I could, and
+couldn't, I dare say, if I would."
+
+He changed his dress, and packed his trunk, laying out a long waterproof
+coat on the bed, as a shield against the coming rain. Before he had
+finished, he heard Betsy Ann calling Miss Rose to tea. That reminded him
+he had had no dinner, and was hungry; so he went down stairs, and Mrs.
+Marsh, at sight of him, broke out in petulant complainings.
+
+Why had he not come home to dinner? Where had he been? What was the
+reason it was so hot, and why was he in evening dress? And Charley
+laughed good-humoredly as he took his place at the table.
+
+"Be easy, mother mine! Who could think of so preposterous a thing as
+dinner this sweltering day? I have been in the office since morning."
+
+"Catty Clowrie was in here some time ago," pursued Mrs. Marsh, feebly
+stirring her tea, "and she told me Cherrie Nettleby had gone away up the
+country. What's taken her off?"
+
+Miss Rose was kind-hearted enough not to look at him, and his mother was
+without her specs; so neither noticed the hot flush that arose to his
+face.
+
+"How should I know? Am I Miss Nettleby's confidant? Was Nathalie in the
+school-room to-day, Miss Rose?"
+
+"No."
+
+"It was too hot, I suppose. This intense closeness can only end in a
+thunder-storm."
+
+"I fancy we will have it shortly. The sky looks fearful; it has turned
+perfectly livid."
+
+The meal ended, Charley walked to the window overlooking the wide sea,
+and stood blankly gazing out. It was nearly seven--time he was off to
+Redmon; and yet, with love and Cherrie beckoning him on, he was
+hesitating. When should he stand here again--in this pleasant home where
+he had spent so many happy years? When, indeed? He was going to his
+fate, as we all go, blindly; and there was no foreshadowing dread to
+whisper to him--stand back.
+
+The clock struck seven. It was possible to linger no longer. He went
+over to where his mother sat, and bent over her. Miss Rose in the next
+room was practicing.
+
+"Mother!" Charley said, trying to laugh, and speaking very fast, "I have
+not been a very good boy lately, but I am going to turn over a new leaf
+from to-day. You can forgive the past, mother dear, can you not, if I
+promise better for the future?"
+
+Mrs. Marsh looked up at him rather surprised, but still peevish.
+
+"I am glad to hear it, I am sure. You have been acting disgracefully of
+late, just as if you wanted to break my heart."
+
+"But I don't, mother, and I am going to amend. And when after this you
+hear others speaking ill of me, you will be my defender, will you not,
+mother?"
+
+"Of course, Charles," his mother said, pettishly, "if you deserve it."
+
+"Good-bye, then, mother; take care of yourself, and try and forgive me."
+
+He kissed her, and hastily left the room. Miss Rose faintly and sweetly
+was playing some evening hymn. He stopped a moment to look at the slight
+black figure--for the last time, perhaps, he thought.
+
+"Good-bye, Miss Rose," he called out; "I am off."
+
+She turned round with a smile.
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Marsh! There is a storm coming--take care!"
+
+How little she dreamed of the storm that was coming when she gave him
+that warning. He went out of the cottage, closing the hall door after
+him; and the street and the figures in it looked blurred to him, seen
+through some foolish mist in his eyes.
+
+With the waterproof overcoat thrown across his arm, his umbrella in his
+hand, and his hat pulled far over his eyes, Charley Marsh walked through
+the streets of Speckport steadily to his fate. There was an ominous hush
+in the stifling atmosphere, a voiceless but terrible menace in the
+sullen sky, the black and glassy bay, and the livid-hued evening.
+Charley's thoughts wandered to Cherrie. The storm would overtake her
+coming to town; she would get drenched, and frightened half to death,
+for it was going to lighten. He could not walk fast, owing to the heat,
+and night fell before the Nettleby cottage came in sight. With it fell
+the storm, flash after flash of lightning cleaving black cloud and
+yellow air like a two-edged sword--flash after flash, blinding,
+intermittent, for nearly five minutes. Then a long dull roar, that
+seemed to shake the town, with great plashing drops of rain, as large
+and heavy as peas. And then the tempest burst in its might--flash,
+flash, flash!--the heavens seemed one sheet of flame--the earth rocking
+with the ceaseless roll of thunder, and the rain descending in torrents.
+Some low spruce-bushes, a zigzag fence, his glazed overcoat and
+umbrella, were shelter enough for Charley. He sat on a rock by the
+wayside, his hands over his eyes, feeling as though the fierce blue
+glare had struck him blind. The summer-hurricane was sublime in its
+fury, but too violent to last long. In three-quarters of an hour the
+lightning and thunder had ceased, but the rain still fell heavily.
+Charley got up, drew out his watch, struck a match--for the night had
+struck in pitch black--and looked at the hour. A quarter to nine, and
+where, oh where, in all this tempest was poor Cherrie? He hurried on at
+a frantic pace, fumbling in the blind blackness, until the red light of
+the cottage-window streamed across the inky gloom. He never stopped to
+imagine what they would think of his presence there at such a time; he
+was too full of anxiety for Cherrie. She might have hired a cab and
+driven home, frightened by the storm, and he rapped loudly at the door.
+Ann Nettleby, lamp in hand, answered his authoritative summons.
+
+"Is Cherrie here, Ann?"
+
+Ann stared.
+
+"Law, Mr. Marsh! how should she be here? Don't you know she went off to
+Greentown in the half-past five train?"
+
+Charley stood looking at her, so pale and wild and wet, that Ann stared
+at him harder than ever.
+
+"Is Lady Leroy worse?" she asked.
+
+"Worse! Yes--no--I don't know. Has she been ill?"
+
+"She's been very bad all the day. Dr. Leach has been up to see her, and
+our Bob's staying there all night for fear she should take another bad
+turn, and some one should be wanted to go for him again."
+
+This was news to Charley.
+
+"What is the matter with her?" he asked.
+
+"Cramps. Did you not get Cherrie's letter?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Cherrie's letter! She left a letter for you, and told me to fetch it to
+town to you, and I did this evening, but you weren't in, the boy said."
+
+"Did you leave it at the office?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Charley wondered what it could be about, but he did not ask Ann. He
+turned and walked through the darkness and the slanting rain, to Redmon
+House. The outer gate never was fastened, and he went under the dripping
+trees up to the castle of Lady Leroy. It was all in darkness, looming up
+a blacker spot in the blackness, but one feeble ray shone from
+Nathalie's room. Charley knew it was of no use entering then--past
+nine--when the place was closed and locked for the night, so he stood
+under the tall, gaunt trees, and watched that feeble, flickering ray. It
+seemed to connect him--to bring him in communion--with Nathalie; and
+when it went out, and all was dark and lonely, a light--the light of his
+love for her--seemed to go out of his heart with it.
+
+And now there was nothing to do but to watch for Cherrie. He seemed to
+have bidden farewell to all his old friends, and have only her left. His
+past life seemed gliding behind him, out of sight--a newer and better
+life opening before him, with her by his side to share it, until they
+should lie down at the far end, full of years and good works. He leaned
+against a tree, thinking of this, and waiting. The storm was abating,
+the rain ceasing, the clouds parting, and a pale and watery moon staring
+wanly across the gloom. In another hour the clouds were scudding wildly
+before a rising gale, and the moon had broken out, through their black
+bars, lighting up the grim old house with an eerie and spectral gloom.
+The trees looked like tall, moaning ghosts in the sickly and fitful
+rays, and the loneliness of the tomb reigned over all. Another weary
+hour of watching, and Charley was nearly mad with impatience and
+anxiety. Where--where--was Cherrie? The sighing night-wind, the moaning
+and tossing trees, the ghastly light of the fitful moon, and the ominous
+silence of nature, had no answer to give him.
+
+What was that which rent the silence of the night? A shriek from the
+house behind him--a woman's shriek--the sound of flying feet, a key
+turning in a rusty lock, and the front door thrown wide open. En sac de
+nuit, which means, in a short night-gown and red flannel petticoat, her
+head tied up in a yellow silk handkerchief, Midge rushed frantically
+out, followed by a man. Charley had started forward, and the moon's
+light fell full upon his black form in the middle of the park. Quick as
+lightning, the iron grasp of the dwarf was upon his collar, and the
+shrill voice piercing wildly the night air: "I have him! I have him!
+Murder! Murder! Murder!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+A CRIME.
+
+
+What was done that night?
+
+At the very hour of that fine August morning that Mr. Charles Marsh and
+Miss Cherrie Nettleby had the surgery of Dr. Leach so comfortably to
+themselves, that medical gentleman up at Redmon, helping its mistress to
+fight out a battle with death. Yes, on that hot summer morning Lady
+Leroy was likely to die, stood even within the portal of the Valley of
+the Shadow, and Redmon and all earthly possessions seem about to slip
+from her forever. Good-natured Miss Jo, in the early morning, had sent
+up a present of a basket of cucumbers and lettuce, of both of which
+specimens of the vegetable kingdom Mrs. Leroy had partaken, well soaked
+in vinegar, as a sharpener to breakfast appetite. The consequence was,
+that before that repast was well down, she was seized with such
+convulsive cramps as only cholera patients ever know. Brandy applied
+inwardly, and hot flannel and severe rubbing applied outwardly, being
+without avail, Dr. Leach was sent for in hot haste. The old woman was in
+agonies, and Nathalie frightened nearly out of her wits. Dr. Leach
+looked grave, but did his best. For some hours it was quite uncertain
+whether he or the grim Rider of the Pale Horse would gain the battle:
+but victory seated herself at last on the medical banner of the
+Speckport physician. Mrs. Leroy, totally exhausted with her fierce
+sufferings, took an opiate and fell asleep, and the doctor took his hat
+to leave.
+
+"She'll do well enough now, Miss Natty," he said, "only pitch the
+cucumbers into the fire the first thing. She'll be all right to-morrow."
+
+Nathalie sat patiently down in the steaming and oppressive sick-room, to
+keep watch. The house was as still as a tomb; Midge was buried in the
+regions below, and the sick woman slept long and profoundly.
+
+Nathalie took a book, and, absorbed by it, did not notice when Lady
+Leroy awoke. Awake she did, after some hours, and lay there quite still,
+looking at the young girl, and thinking. Of what? Of the long and weary
+months that young girl had in a manner buried herself alive in this
+living tomb of a house, to minister to her, to arrange all her business,
+to read to her, to talk to her, to do her all manner of good service,
+and to bear patiently her querulousness and caprice. It had been a
+lonely and eerie life for her, but when had she ever complained? and now
+what was she to gain by it all! For one act of disobedience she was
+disinherited--all these months and years wasted for nothing. She had
+come there in the belief--implanted by Mrs. Leroy herself--that she was
+to be the heiress of Redmon. Had she any right to go back from her
+word--to make her memory accursed--to go into that shadowy and unknown
+world opening before her with a lie on her soul? Dared she do it? She
+had an awful fear of death, this miserly old woman--an awful fear of
+what lay beyond death; and yet, with strange inconsistency, she felt
+herself on the verge of the grave--a long life of sin lying behind her,
+and making no effort to atone--only letting herself drift on. Yet is the
+inconsistency strange? Are we not, every one of us, doing the same? We
+are younger, perhaps, and fuller of life; yet do we not know the
+terrible truth, that death and ourselves are divided but by a single
+step?
+
+Nathalie, bending over her book, all her fair hair dropping loose about
+her, saw not the eyes so closely watching her. How pale she looked.
+Perhaps it was the fright, not yet over; perhaps the heat; but her face
+was like a lily-leaf. While she watched her, Midge came softly in, and
+Mrs. Leroy closed her eyes again.
+
+"Is she sleeping still?" Midge asked, looking toward the bed.
+
+"Yes," said Nathalie, glancing up.
+
+Midge bustled out, and presently returned with a cup of tea.
+
+"Who do you think was here this morning to say good-bye?" she asked,
+while Nathalie was drinking it.
+
+"I don't know. Who?"
+
+"Cherrie Nettleby, no less. She wanted to come up here whether or no, to
+see you and the missis, but I sent her to the right about quicker. The
+flyaway good-for-nothing's off to Greentown in the cars this afternoon."
+
+"Indeed. And how long is she going to stay?"
+
+"I told her I was glad to hear it," said Midge, "and that I hoped she
+wouldn't come bothering back in a hurry; and she laughed and shook back
+them black curls of hers, and said perhaps she would stay all summer.
+The place is well rid of her, and I told her so."
+
+Nathalie, reverting to Charley, perhaps, thought the same, but she did
+not say so. Midge departed, refreshed by her bit of gossip, and Nathalie
+resumed her book. The steaming sick-room was irksome enough to her, but
+she would not leave Mrs. Leroy even for a moment in her present state.
+That old lady opened her eyes again; and as she did so, Midge came
+bolting back.
+
+"Miss Natty, here's Mr. Tom Oaks come to pay that there money, I expect.
+Shall I send him off again?"
+
+Before Nathalie could reply, Lady Leroy half sat up in bed, feeble as
+she was, the ruling passion strong in death.
+
+"No, no, no!" she shrilly cried, "don't send him away. Fetch him up
+here--fetch him up!"
+
+Nathalie dropped her book and was bending over her directly.
+
+"Dear Mrs. Leroy, are you awake? How do you feel now?"
+
+"Better, Natty, better. Fetch him up, Midge--fetch him up."
+
+Midge trotted off, soliloquizing as she went:
+
+"Well, I never! I do think if she was dead and buried, the sound of
+money jingling atop of her grave would bring her out of it. You're to
+come up, Mr. Oaks. Missis is sick abed, but she'll see you."
+
+Mr. Tom Oaks, a dashing young fellow, well-looking of face, and free
+and easy of manner, strolled in, hat in hand. Nathalie rose to receive
+him.
+
+"Good day to you, Miss Nathalie. How are you, Mrs. Leroy? Nothing the
+matter, I hope."
+
+"She is better, now," said Nathalie, placing a chair for him by the
+bedside.
+
+"I suppose you've come up to pay the money?" Mrs. Leroy inquired, her
+fingers beginning to work, as they always did when she was excited.
+
+Yes, Mr. Oaks had come to pay the money and obtain possession of the
+documents that made him master of Partridge Farm. Sundry papers were
+signed and handed over--a long roll of bank-bills, each for fifty
+pounds, were presented to Lady Leroy and greedily counted by her, over
+and over again. Then Nathalie had to go through the performance, and the
+roll was found to be correct. Mr. Oaks, master of a magnificent farm,
+bowed himself out, the perspiration streaming from every pore.
+
+When he was gone, the old woman counted the bills over again--once,
+twice, three times; her eyes glittering with the true miser's delight.
+It was not to make sure of their accuracy, but for the pure and
+unalloyed pleasure it gave her to handle so much money and feel that it
+was hers.
+
+A knock at the front door. Mrs. Leroy rolled the bills hastily up.
+
+"Give me the box, Natty; some one's coming, and it's not safe to let any
+one know there's so much money in the house, and only three poor lone
+women of us here."
+
+Nathalie handed her the large japanned tin box Cherrie had spoken of,
+which always stood at the head of the bed, and the bills were placed in
+it, the tin box relocked and replaced, before the visitor entered. It
+proved to be Lawyer Darcy; and Nathalie, availing herself of his
+presence, left the room for a few moments to breathe purer air.
+
+"I was very sorry to hear of your illness," the lawyer said, "and ran in
+as I was going by, although I am in rather a hurry. By the way, I am
+expecting every day to be summoned back here to alter that last unjust
+will of yours. I hope you have begun to see its cruel injustice
+yourself."
+
+"Yes," Lady Leroy gravely replied, "I have. There is no one living has
+so good a right to whatever I possess as Nathalie Marsh. I did wrong to
+take it from her, but it is not too late yet. Come up here to-morrow
+morning and draw out another--my last will--she shall have everything I
+own."
+
+The old lawyer grasped the sick woman's hand delightedly.
+
+"Thank heaven, my dear Mrs. Leroy, that you have been brought to see
+matters in their true light. Natty's the best girl alive--ain't you,
+Natty?"
+
+"What, sir?" Nathalie asked, as she re-entered the room.
+
+"The best and prettiest girl alive! There, don't blush. Good afternoon
+to you both. I'll be up to-morrow morning without fail, Mrs. Leroy, and
+I trust I shall find you quite restored."
+
+He went out. How little did he think that never again, this side of
+eternity, should he meet that woman; how little did he think that with
+those words he had bidden her an eternal farewell.
+
+Midge brought up some tea and toast to her mistress after the lawyer's
+departure; and feeling more comfortable after it, the old woman lay back
+among her pillows, and requested her ward to "read a piece for her."
+
+The book Nathalie was reading had been one of her father's, and she
+loved it for his sake and for its own. It was not a novel, it was "At
+the Foot of the Cross," by Faber; and seating herself by the bedside,
+she read aloud in her sweet, grave voice. The touching story of Calvary
+was most touchingly retold there; more than once the letters swam on the
+page through a thick mist of tears, and more than once bright drops fell
+on the page and blistered it.
+
+The long, sultry afternoon hours wore over, and in that shuttered room
+it had grown too dark to see the words, before the girl ceased. There
+was a silence; Nathalie's heart was full, and Mrs. Leroy was quiet,
+looking unwontedly thoughtful.
+
+"It's a beautiful book," she said, at last, "a beautiful book, Natty;
+and it does me good to hear it. I wish you had read to me out of that
+book before!"
+
+"I will read it all through to you," Nathalie said; "but you are tired
+now, and it is past seven. You had better have some tea, and take this
+opiate and go to sleep. You will be quite well again to-morrow."
+
+Nathalie got the old woman's tea herself, and made the toast with her
+own white hands. Mrs. Leroy wished her to share the meal, but Nathalie
+could not eat there; the steaming and fetid atmosphere of that close
+chamber made her sick and faint. She was longing for the old woman to go
+to rest for the night, so that she might get out. She removed the
+tea-tray, and turned to leave the room.
+
+"I am going out for a walk in the grounds," she said, "but I will be
+back by eight to give you the sleeping draught; and, for fear you might
+be taken ill again in the night, I will ask one of the Nettlebys to
+sleep here."
+
+Without hat or mantle, she ran down-stairs and out into the hot
+twilight. The brassy hue of the sky, and the greenish-yellow haze
+filling the air, the ominous silence of nature, and the scudding black
+clouds, gave her warning for the first time of the coming storm.
+
+She went down the avenue, through the gate, and along the dusty road to
+the cottage. The roses about it were hanging their heavy heads, the
+morning-glories and the scarlet-runners looked limp and wilted. She
+found Ann washing the dishes, and the two young Nettlebys lying lazily
+on the grass behind the cottage, smoking pipes. Nathalie proferred her
+request, and Rob Nettleby at once volunteered.
+
+"I'll go up in half an hour, Miss Natty," he said, "and, if I'm wanted,
+I can gallop into town in ten minutes."
+
+"Thank you, Rob!"
+
+She went back to the kitchen, lounging a minute before she left.
+
+"And so Cherrie's gone, Ann?"
+
+"Yes," said Ann; "and I'm glad of it. We will have some peace for a
+while, which we don't have when she's here, with her gadding."
+
+Nathalie walked slowly back to the house, wondering and awed by the
+weird and ghostly look of the sky. The evening was so close and
+oppressive that no breath of air was to be had; yet still it was better
+than the house, and she lingered in the grounds until the lightning shot
+out like tongues of blue flame, and the first heavy raindrops began to
+fall.
+
+Hurrying in out of the coming storm, followed by Bob Nettleby, who
+opined it was going to be a "blazer of a night," she saw that all the
+doors and windows were secured, and then returned to Mrs. Leroy's room
+to administer the opiate. She found the old woman in a doze, from which
+her entrance aroused her, and raised her with her right arm in bed,
+while she held the glass to her lips with her left hand.
+
+"It will make you sleep, dear Mrs. Leroy," the girl said, "and you will
+be as well as ever to-morrow."
+
+"I hope so, Natty.--Is that thunder?"
+
+"Yes; it is going to be a stormy night. Is there anything else I can do
+for you before I go?"
+
+"Yes; turn down that lamp; I don't like so much light."
+
+A little kerosene lamp burned on the table. Nathalie lowered the light,
+and turned to go.
+
+"Good-night," she said, "I will come in once or twice through the night
+to see how you are. You are sure you do not want anything more?"
+
+The sleeping-potion was already taking effect. The old woman drowsily
+opened her eyes:
+
+"No," she said; "nothing else. You're a good girl, Natty, and it was
+wrong to do it; but I'll make it all right, Natty; I'll make it all
+right!"
+
+They were the last words she ever spoke! Nathalie wondered what she
+meant, as she went into her own room, and lit her lamp.
+
+The storm without was raging fast and furious; the blaze of the
+lightning filled the room with a lurid blue glare, the dull and
+ceaseless roll of the thunder was appalling, and the rain lashed the
+windows in torrents.
+
+"Heaven help any poor wanderer exposed to such a tempest!" Nathalie
+thought.
+
+If she had only known of him who cowered under the spruce bushes on
+Redmon road, waiting for it to subside.
+
+Nathalie brushed out her long, shining, showering curls, bathed her
+face, and said her prayers. The furious and short-lived tempest had
+raged itself out by that time, and she blew out the lamp and sat down by
+the window--it was too hot to go to bed. She made a pile of the pillows,
+and leaned her head against them where she sat; and, with the rushing
+rain for her lullaby, fell asleep.
+
+What was that? She awoke with a start. She knew she had not slept long,
+but out of a disturbed dream some noise awoke her--a sharp metallic
+sound. Her room was weirdly lighted by the faint rays of the wan and
+spectral moon, and with her heart beating thick and fast she listened.
+The old house was full of rats--she could hear them scampering over her
+head, under her feet, and between the partitions. It was this noise that
+had awoke her; the trees were writhing and groaning in the heavy wind,
+and tossing their green arms wildly, as if in some dryad agony--perhaps
+it was that. She listened, but save these noises all was still. Yes, it
+was the rats, Nathalie thought, and settling back among the pillows once
+more, she fell into another light slumber.
+
+No, Nathalie. Neither the wailing wind, nor the surging trees, nor the
+scurrying rats made the noise you heard. In the corridor outside your
+room a tall, dark figure, with a black crape mask on its face, is
+standing. The figure wears a long overcoat and a slouched hat, and it is
+fitting a skeleton key in the lock of Mrs. Leroy's door; for Nathalie
+has locked that door. Like some dark and evil spirit of the night, it
+glides into the chamber; the lamp on the table burns low, and the old
+woman sleeps heavily. Softly it steals across the room, lays hold of the
+japanned tin box, tries key after key from a bunch it carries,
+and at last succeeds. The box is open--the treasure is found.
+Fifty--fifty--fifty! they are all fifties--fifty-pound notes on good and
+sound Speckport banks. The eyes behind the mask glitter--the eager hands
+are thrusting the huge rolls into the deep pockets of the overcoat. But
+he drops the last roll and stops in his work aghast, for there is an
+awful sound from the bed. It is not a scream, it is not a cry; but
+something more awful than ever came from the throat of woman in all the
+history of woman's agony. It is like the death-rattle--hoarse and
+horrible. He turns and sees the old woman sitting up in bed, one
+flickering finger pointing at him, the face convulsed and livid, the
+lips purple and foaming, the eyes starting. One cry, and all for which
+he has risked so much will be lost! He is by the bedside like a flash;
+he has seized one of the pillows, and hurled her back; he has grasped
+her by the throat with one-powerful hand, while with the other he holds
+the pillow over her face. Fear and fury distort his own--could you see
+it behind the mask--and his teeth are set, and his eyeballs strained.
+There is a struggle, a convulsive throe, another awful rattle in the
+throat, and then he sees the limbs relax, and the palpitating throat
+grow still. He need fear no cry now; no sound will ever again come from
+those aged lips; the loss or gain of all the treasures in the wide earth
+will never disturb her more. He loosens his grasp, removes the pillow,
+and the lamplight falls on a horrible sight. He turns away with a
+shudder from that blackened and convulsed visage, from the starting eyes
+forced out of their sockets, and from the blood which trickles in a
+slow, dreadful stream between purple lips. He dare not stop to look or
+think what he has done; he thrusts the last roll into his pocket and
+flies from the room. He is so furiously impatient now to get away from
+that horrible thing on the bed, that he forgets caution. He flies down
+the stairs, scarcely knowing that the noise he makes echoes from cellar
+to attic of the silent old house. He takes the wrong turning, and swears
+a furious oath, to find himself at a door instead of the window by which
+he had entered. He hears a shriek, too; and, mad with terror, tears off
+his mask and turns down another passage. Right at last! this is the
+window! He leaps through it--he is out in the pale moonlight, tearing
+through the trees like a madman. He has gained the road--a horse stands
+tied to a tree, and he leaps on his back, drives his spurs furiously
+into the beast's side, and is off like the wind. In ten minutes, at this
+rate, he will be in Speckport, and safe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The apartment in which Midge sought sleep after the fatigues of the day,
+was the kitchen, and was on the first floor, directly under Lady Leroy's
+room. She had quartered Rob Nettleby in the adjoining apartment--a big,
+draughty place, where the rats held grand carnival all the year round.
+Midge, like all honest folks in her station, who have plenty of hard
+work, and employ their hands more than their heads, was a good sleeper.
+But on this stormy August night Midge was destined to realize some of
+the miseries of wakefulness. She had not dared to go to bed during the
+first fury of the storm; for Midge was scared beyond everything by
+lightning and thunder; but after that had subsided, she had ventured to
+unrobe and retire. But Midge could not sleep. Whether it was the heat,
+or that the tempest had made her nervous, or why or wherefore, Midge
+could never afterward tell; but she tossed from side to side, and
+listened to the didoes of the rats, and the whistling of the wind about
+the old house, and the ghostly moonlight shimmering down through the
+fluttering leaves of the trees, and groaned and fidgeted, and felt just
+as miserable as lying awake when one wants to go asleep, can make any
+one feel. There were all sorts of strange and weird noises and echoes in
+the lonely old house; so when Midge fancied she heard one of the back
+windows softly opened, and something on the stairs, she set it down to
+the wind and the rats, as Nathalie had done. She heard the clock
+overhead in Lady Leroy's room--the only timepiece in the house--strike
+eleven, and thought it had come very soon; for it hardly seemed fifteen
+minutes since it had struck ten. But she set this down to her
+fidgetiness, too; for how was she to know that the black shadow in the
+room above had moved the hands on the dial-plate before quitting? But
+that other noise! this is no imagination, surely. Midge starts up with a
+gasping cry of affright. A man's step is on the stairs--a man's hurried
+tread is in the hall--she hears a smothered oath--hears him turn and
+rush past her door--hears a leap--and then all is still. The momentary
+spell that has made Midge speechless is broken. She springs to her
+feet--yes, springs, for Midge forgets she is short and fat and given to
+waddling, in her terror, throws on the red flannel undergarment you wot
+of, and rushes out of her room and up-stairs, shrieking like mad. She
+cannot conceive what is the matter, or where the danger lies, but she
+bursts into Nathalie's room first. Nathalie, aroused by the wild screams
+from a deep sleep, starts up with a bewildered face. Midge sees she is
+safe, and still uttering the most appalling yells, flies to the next, to
+Lady Leroy's room, Nathalie after her; and Mr. Rob Nettleby, with an
+alarmed countenance and in a state of easy undress, making his toilet as
+he comes, brings up the rear.
+
+"What is it? Is Mrs. Leroy worse?" he asked, staring at the shrieking
+Midge.
+
+"There's been somebody here--robbing and murdering the house!
+Ah--h--h----!"
+
+The shriek with which Midge recoiled was echoed this time by Nathalie.
+They had entered the fatal room; the lamp still burned on the table, and
+its light fell full on the livid and purple face of the dead woman.
+Dead! Yes, there could be no doubt. Murdered! Yes, for there stood the
+open and rifled box which had held the money.
+
+"She's killed, Rob Nettleby! She's murdered!" Midge cried, rushing
+headlong from the room; "but he can't have got far. I heard him going
+out. Come!"
+
+She was down the stairs with wonderful speed, followed by the horrified
+Nettleby. Midge unlocked and flung open the hall-door, and rushed in the
+same headlong way out. There was a man under the trees, and he was
+running. With the spring of a tigress Midge was upon him, her hands
+clutching his collar, and her dreadful yell of "Murder!" piercing the
+stillness of the night. The grasp of those powerful hands was not to be
+easily shaken off, and Rob Nettleby laid hold of him on the other side.
+Their prisoner made no resistance; he was too utterly taken by surprise
+to do other than stand and stare at them both.
+
+"You villain! you robber! you murderer!" screamed Midge, giving him a
+furious shake. "You'll hang for this night's work, if anybody hung yet!
+Hold him fast, Rob, while I go and send your brother to Speckport after
+the p'lice."
+
+The address broke the spell that held their captive quiet. Indignantly
+endeavoring to shake off the hands that held him, he angrily demanded
+what they meant.
+
+Rob Nettleby, with a shout of astonishment, released his hold--he had
+recognized the voice. Midge, too, loosed her grasp, and backed a step or
+two, and Charley Marsh, stepping from under the shadow of the trees into
+the moonlight, repeated his question with some asperity.
+
+"Charley!" Midge gasped, more horror-stricken by the recognition than
+she had been by the murder.
+
+"What the deuce is the matter, Nettleby?" Charley demanded, impatiently.
+"What is all this row about?"
+
+"There has been a murder done," said the young man, so confounded by the
+discovery as to be scarcely able to speak.
+
+"Mrs. Leroy has been murdered!"
+
+Charley recoiled with a white face.
+
+"Murdered! Good heavens! When? By whom?"
+
+"To-night--just now."
+
+He did not answer the last query--he thought it superfluous. To his
+mind, Charley Marsh was as good as caught in the act.
+
+"And Nathalie! Where is she? Is she safe?"
+
+"She is in Lady Leroy's room."
+
+Charley only waited for the answer, and made a precipitate rush for the
+house. The other two followed, neither daring to look at the other or
+speak--followed him up-stairs and into the chamber of the tragedy. All
+was as it had been. The ghastly and discolored face of the murdered
+woman was there, even the pillow, horrible to look at. But going partly
+across a chair as she had fallen, all her golden hair tossed about in
+loose disorder, and her face white, and fixed, and cold as marble,
+Nathalie lay near the center of the room. There, by herself, where the
+dreadful sight had first struck her, she had fainted entirely away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+FOUND GUILTY.
+
+
+Mr. Val Blake sat in his office, in that inner room sacred to his
+privacy. He sat at that littered table, writing and scissoring, for they
+went to press that day, and the editor of the Speckport Spouter was over
+head-and-ears in work. He had just completed an item and was slowly
+reperusing it. It begins in a startling manner enough:
+
+     "Mysterious murder! The night before last a most shocking tragedy
+     occurred at Redmon House, being no less than the robbery and murder
+     of a lady well known in our town, Mrs. Leroy. The deceased owned
+     and occupied the house, together with her ward, Miss Nathalie
+     Marsh, and one female servant. About eleven o'clock on the night of
+     the 15th, this servant was alarmed by the sound of footsteps on the
+     stairs, and aroused a young man, Robert Nettleby, who chanced to be
+     staying in the house, and they proceeded together to discover the
+     cause. On entering the chamber occupied by Mrs. Leroy, they found
+     her dead; the protruding tongue and eyeballs, and purple visage,
+     telling plainly her death had been caused by strangulation. A box,
+     containing a large sum of money, eight thousand pounds, we believe,
+     was found broken open and rifled. The assassin escaped, and no
+     clue to him has as yet been discovered, but we trust the inquest
+     which is to be held on the premises this morning will throw some
+     light on the subject. It is a most inhuman affair, and, we are
+     sure, no effort will be wanting on the part of the officials
+     concerned to root out the heart of the matter, and punish the
+     barbarous perpetrator as he deserves!"
+
+Mr. Blake read this last neatly-rounded period with a complacent face,
+and then pulled out his watch.
+
+"Ten o'clock!" he muttered, "and the inquest commences in half an hour.
+Busy or not busy, I must be present."
+
+Speckport was in a state of unprecedented excitement. A murder--and
+people did murder one another sometimes, even in Speckport--always set
+the town wild for a week. Even the civic elections were nothing to it;
+and there having been a dearth of bloodshed lately, the tragedy at
+Redmon was greedily devoured in all its details. Like a rolling
+snowball, small enough at first, but increasing as it goes along, the
+story of the robbery and murder had grown, until, had Midge heard the
+recital, as correctly received in the town, she would have stared
+aghast. Crowds had flocked up Redmon Road the whole of that livelong day
+following the murder, and gazed with open-mouthed awe on the gloomy and
+lonely old house--gloomier and lonelier than ever now. Crowds were
+pouring up still. One would think from their morbid curiosity they
+expected the old house to have undergone some wonderful transformation.
+The Speckport picnics were nothing to it.
+
+Mr. Blake, going along at his customary swinging pace, speedily reached
+No. 14 Great St. Peter Street, and letting himself in with his
+latch-key, went up-stairs to his sleeping-apartment, to make some
+alteration in his toilet before proceeding to Redmon. There was no one
+in the house; for Miss Blake had been absent on a visit to some friend
+out of town for the past few days, and Val took his meals at a
+restaurant. Thinking himself alone, therefore, Mr. Blake, standing
+before the glass, adjusting an obstinate and painfully stiff collar,
+was not a little surprised to hear the street-door open and shut with a
+slam, then a rapid rush up-stairs, a strong rustling of silk in the
+passage, and his own door flung violently open. Mr. Blake turned round
+and beheld his sister, in a state of perspiration, her face red with
+heat and haste, anger in her eyes and in every rustle of her silk gown.
+
+"It's not true, Val!" she burst out, before that gentleman could speak;
+"it can't be true! They never can have been such a pack of fools!"
+
+"What can't be true? Who's a pack of fools?"
+
+"All Speckport! Do you mean to say they've really gone and taken up
+Charley Marsh?"
+
+"Oh, is that it?" said Mr. Blake, returning to his toilet. "They haven't
+taken him up that I know of. What brings you home? I thought you weren't
+coming until Saturday."
+
+"And do you mean to say you thought I could stop one moment after I
+heard that poor old thing was dead, and Charley Marsh taken up for it.
+If you can be unfeeling and cold-blooded," said Miss Jo, turning from
+deep pink to brightest scarlet, "I can't."
+
+"My dear Jo, don't make such a howling! Charley Marsh isn't taken up, I
+tell you."
+
+"But he's suspected, isn't he? Doesn't all Speckport point at him as the
+murderer? Isn't he held to appear at the inquest? Tell me that."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Blake, looking critically at his cravat, "he is. Is that
+collar straight, Jo?"
+
+Miss Jo's only answer was a withering look.
+
+"And he can talk of collars at such a time! And he pretended he used to
+be a friend of that poor boy!"
+
+"Don't be a fool, Jo," said Val, testily. "What can I do? I don't accuse
+him!"
+
+"You don't accuse him!" retorted Miss Jo, with sneering emphasis.
+"That's very good of you, indeed, Mr. Blake! Oh no, you don't accuse,
+but you stand up there, like--like a cold-blooded kangaroo" (Miss Blake
+could think of no better simile in the heat of the moment) "fixing your
+collar, while all Speckport's down on him, and no one to take his part!
+You won't accuse him, indeed! Hadn't you better run up and do it now?
+Where's Natty? Answer me that."
+
+Miss Jo turned so fiercely upon her brother with this query that Mr.
+Blake wilted at once.
+
+"At home with her mother!"
+
+"Poor dear girl!" and here Miss Jo softened into tears; "poor dear
+child! What a shock for her! How does she bear it?"
+
+"She has been ill and hysterical ever since. They don't suppose she will
+be able to give evidence at the inquest."
+
+"Poor dear Natty! And how does Mrs. Marsh take it?"
+
+"Very hard. Betsy Ann had to run to the nearest druggist's for
+fourpence-worth of smelling-salts, and she has been rocking, and
+reading, and smelling at it ever since."
+
+"Ah, poor dear!" said sympathetic Miss Jo, whose first fury had
+subsided. "Does she know they suspect Charley?"
+
+"Of course not. Who would tell her that? Oh, I say, Joanna, you haven't
+heard that about Miss Rose, have you?"
+
+"What about Miss Rose? Nobody suspects her of the murder, do they?"
+
+"Not exactly! She is going away."
+
+"Going where?"
+
+"To England!--hand me that vest, Jo--with Mrs. Major Wheatly."
+
+Miss Jo sat agape at the tidings.
+
+"It is very sudden," said Val, getting into his Sunday waistcoat. "Miss
+Rose had notice of it day before yesterday--it was that night, the night
+of that terrible affair at Redmon, you know, that it was proposed to
+her. She declined then, although the terms were double what she gets
+now, and the work very much less; but yesterday afternoon she accepted."
+
+"She did! What made her change her mind?"
+
+"Well, Mrs. Marsh told her, I believe, that now Lady Leroy was gone, and
+Nathalie come into her fortune, there would no longer be any need to
+keep the school, and that, in point of fact, it would break up. Of
+course, Miss Rose at once accepted the other offer, and leaves in a very
+few days."
+
+"Direct for England?"
+
+"Yes, that is to say, by way of Quebec. Mrs. Major Wheatly is a very
+great lady, and must have a companion for herself, and a governess for
+her little girl, and Miss Rose suits to a T. It's a very good thing for
+the little school-mistress, but she will be missed here. The poor looked
+upon her as an angel sent direct from heaven, to make their clothes and
+buy their blankets, and look after them when sick, and teach their young
+ones for nothing."
+
+"Well, I am sure! I declare, Val, I'm sorry! She was the nicest little
+thing!"
+
+"So she was," said Val, "and now I'm off! Don't you go howling about the
+town, Jo, and making a fuss about Marsh; if he is innocent, he will come
+out all square--don't you be afraid."
+
+"If!" screamed Miss Blake; but her brother was clattering down-stairs
+half a dozen steps at a time, and already out of hearing.
+
+Droves of people were still flocking out the Redmon road, raising
+blinding clouds of dust, and discussing the only subject proper to be
+discussed then in Speckport. Val's long strides outstripped all
+competitors; and arriving at the red brick house, presently ran the
+blockade of a group of some two hundred idlers, and strode into the
+house as one having authority. As Mr. Blake entered, Dr. Leach stepped
+forward and joined him, with a very grave face.
+
+"How are they getting on?" Val asked.
+
+"They are getting on fast enough," the doctor answered, in a
+dissatisfied tone. "They've been examining me. I had to describe that
+last interview with her," jerking his thumb toward the ceiling, "and
+prove to their satisfaction she came to her death by strangling, and in
+no other way. They had Natty up there, too."
+
+"Oh, she is better, then."
+
+"Not much! but she had very little to tell, and Laura Blair has driven
+her off again. They have detained Mrs. Marsh--she does not know for
+what, though--and will examine her presently."
+
+"To find out the cause of Charley's absence from home that night! Do you
+know, doctor, I begin to think things look black for Charley."
+
+"Ah! you might say so?" said Dr. Leach, with a significant nod, "if you
+knew what I do."
+
+Val looked at him.
+
+"What you do! Do you mean or pretend to say----"
+
+"There! there! there! Don't speak so loud. I may tell you, Blake--you're
+a friend of his and would do nothing against him. Read that."
+
+He handed him a note. Val read it with a blank face. It was the note
+sent by Cherrie to Charley, which Ann had told him of, and a verbatim
+copy of that given Cherrie by Captain Cavendish.
+
+"How did you get this?" Val asked, with a still whiter face.
+
+"It was sent by that gadfly, Cherrie, to the shop, the evening of the
+murder. Her sister brought it, and, Marsh being out, gave it to the boy.
+Now, what do you think the young rascal did? Why, sir, broke it open the
+minute the girl's back was turned, and read it. As luck would have it, I
+pounced in and caught him in the act. You ought to have seen his face,
+Blake! I took the note from him and read it myself, not knowing it was
+for Marsh, and I have it ever since. I meant to give it to him next day,
+and tell him what I have told you; but next day came the news of the
+murder, and underhand whispers of his guilt. Now, Val, what do you think
+of it? Isn't the allusion to Lady Leroy's money plain enough?"
+
+"That bit of paper might hang him," Val emphatically said, handing it
+back. "What do you mean to do with it?"
+
+"There is only one thing I can do with it, as a conscientious man--and
+that is, hand it over to the coroner. I like the boy, but I like justice
+more, and will do my duty. If we only had that Cherrie here, she might
+throw some light on the business."
+
+"What can she mean by that allusion to state-rooms?" said Val. "Can they
+have meant to run off together in the steamer, and was Greentown only a
+ruse? I know Charley has been spooney about her this long time, and
+would be capable of marrying her at a moment's notice."
+
+"Blake, do you know I have been thinking she is hiding somewhere not far
+off, and has the money. The police should be set on her track at once."
+
+"They will, when that note is produced. But, doctor, you seem to take it
+for granted that Charley is guilty."
+
+"How can I help it? Isn't the evidence strong enough?"
+
+"Circumstantial, doctor, circumstantial. It seems hard to believe
+Charley Marsh a murderer."
+
+"So it does, but Scripture and history, ever since the times of King
+David, are full of parallel cases. Think of the proof--think of this
+note, and tell me what you infer candidly yourself."
+
+"The note is a staggerer, but still--Oh, hang it!" cried Mr. Blake,
+impatiently, "I won't believe him guilty as long as I can help it. Does
+he say nothing in is own defense?"
+
+"Not a syllable, and the coroner and jury are all in his favor, too. He
+stands there like a sulky lion, and says nothing. They'll bring him in
+guilty without a doubt."
+
+"Who have been examined?"
+
+"All who saw Lady Leroy that day--Miss Marsh, Midge, myself, Lawyer
+Darcy, and Tom Oaks, who swore roundly when asked that Marsh knew of his
+paying the money that day, for he had told him himself. He also swore
+that he knew Charley to be over head and ears in debt--debts of honor,
+he called them. Debts of dishonor, I should say."
+
+"I think I'll go in! Can we speak to Charley, I wonder?"
+
+"Of course. He is not held precisely as a prisoner, as yet. They have
+Midge up again. I never knew her name was Priscilla Short, until
+to-day."
+
+"What do they want with her a second time?"
+
+"She was the first to discover the murder. Her evidence goes clear
+against Marsh, though she gives it with the greatest reluctance. Come,
+I'll go in with you."
+
+The two gentlemen went in together, and found the assemblage smiling at
+some rebut of Midge's. That witness, with a very red and defiant face,
+was glaring at the coroner, who, in rather a subdued tone, told her that
+would do, and proceeded to call the next witness, Robert Nettleby.
+
+Robert Nettleby took his place, and was sworn. In reply to the questions
+put to him, he informed his hearers that he had heard nothing until the
+yells of Midge aroused him from sleep, and, following her up-stairs, he
+found her in Miss Marsh's room.
+
+"Had Miss Marsh retired?" the coroner wanted to know.
+
+Mr. Nettleby was not sure. If, by retiring, the coroner meant going to
+bed, no; but if he meant going asleep, yes. She was sitting by the
+window, dressed, but asleep, until Midge aroused her by her screams.
+Then she started up, and followed them into the room of Mrs. Leroy, whom
+they found dead, and black in the face, as if she had been choked. Midge
+had run down stairs, and he had run after her, and they saw some one
+running under the trees, when they got out. Midge had flown out and
+collared him, and it proved to be Mr. Charley Marsh.
+
+Here the coroner struck in.
+
+"He was running, you say: in what direction?"
+
+Mr. Nettleby couldn't say positively--was inclined to think he was
+running toward, not from them. Couldn't swear either way, for it was a
+queer, shadowy kind of a night, half moonlight, half darkness. They had
+all three gone back to the house, Mr. Marsh appearing very much shocked
+at hearing of the murder; and on returning to the room of the deceased,
+had found Miss Marsh in a fainting-fit. They brought her to with water,
+and then her brother had taken her to her mother's house in Speckport,
+in a gig. He and Midge had gone to his father's cottage, where they had
+remained all night. Further than that Mr. Nettleby knew nothing,
+except--and here he hesitated.
+
+"Except what, sir?" the coroner sharply inquired. "Remember you are upon
+oath."
+
+"Well, sir," said Bob, "it isn't much, except that when we came back to
+the room, I picked this up close to the bed. It looked as if it belonged
+to a man, and I put it in my pocket. Here it is."
+
+He produced from his coat-pocket, as he spoke, a glove. A gentleman's
+kid glove, pale-brown in color, and considerably soiled with wear. Val
+started as he saw it, for those were the kind of gloves Charley Marsh
+always wore--he had them made to order in one of the stores of the town.
+The coroner examined it with a very grave face--there were two letters
+inside, "C. M."
+
+"Do you know to whom this glove belongs?" the coroner asked.
+
+"I know I found it," said Nettleby, not looking at it, and speaking
+sulkily, "that's all I know about it."
+
+"Does any one you know wear such gloves?"
+
+"Plenty of gentlemen I've seen wear brown kid gloves."
+
+"Have you seen the initials, 'C. M.,' inside this glove?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"And--on your oath, recollect--are you not morally certain you know its
+owner?"
+
+Nettleby was silent.
+
+"Speak, witness," the coroner cried; "answer the question put to you.
+Who do you suspect is the owner of this glove?"
+
+"Mr. Marsh! Them letters stands for his name, and he always wears them
+kind of gloves."
+
+"Had Mr. Marsh been near the bed, after your return to the room
+together, before you found this glove?"
+
+"No; I found it lying close by the bedside, and he had never been nearer
+than the middle of the room, where he was trying to fetch his sister
+to."
+
+Robert Nettleby was told he might stand down, and Mr. Marsh was called
+upon to identify his property. Charley, who had been standing at one of
+the windows listening, in gloomy silence, and closely watched by two
+policemen, stepped forward, took the glove, examined it, handed it back,
+and coldly owned it was his.
+
+How was he going to account for its being found by the bedside of the
+murdered woman?
+
+Mr. Marsh was not going to account for it at all--he knew nothing about
+it. He always had two or three such pairs of gloves at once, and had
+never missed this. Amid an ominous silence, he resumed his place at the
+window, staring out at the broad green fields and waving trees, bathed
+in the golden August sunshine, and seeing them no more than if he had
+been stone-blind.
+
+Mrs. Marsh was the next witness called, and came from an adjoining room,
+dressed in black, and simpering at finding herself the cynosure of so
+many eyes. Mrs. Marsh folded one black-kid-gloved hand over the other
+after being sworn, with a mild sigh, and prepared to answer the
+catechism about to be propounded. The coroner began wide of the mark,
+and asked her a good many questions, that seemed to have little bearing
+on the matter in hand, all of which the lady answered very minutely, and
+at length. Presently, in a somewhat roundabout fashion, he inquired if
+her son had been at home on the night of the murder.
+
+"No; he not been at home, at least not until he had come driving home
+with Natty, both of them as pale as ghosts, and no wonder, though they
+quite made her scream to look at them; but when she had heard the news,
+she had such a turn, it was a mercy she hadn't fainted herself, and she
+hadn't half got over it yet."
+
+Here Mrs. Marsh took a sniff at a smelling-bottle she carried, and the
+ammonia being strong, brought a tear into each eye, which she wiped
+away with a great show of pocket-handkerchief.
+
+"What time had her son left the house before returning with his sister?"
+
+"After tea. He had been home to tea, which in itself was so unusual a
+circumstance, that she, Mrs. Marsh, felt sure something was going to
+happen. She had had a feeling on her all day, and Charley's conduct had
+increased that feeling until she was perfectly convinced something
+dreadful was going to happen."
+
+"In what manner had her son's conduct augmented her presentiments?"
+
+"Well, she did not know exactly, but Charley had behaved odd. He had
+come over and talked to her before going out, telling her he had been
+bad, but meant to be good, and turn over a new leaf for the future; and,
+bidding her take his part if ever she heard him run down, which she
+meant to do, for Charley was a good boy as ever lived, in the main, only
+he had been foolish lately; but mothers, it is well known, can forgive
+anything, and she meant to do it; and if he, the coroner, was a mother,
+she would do it herself."
+
+"Was her son in the habit of stopping out nights?"
+
+"Not until lately; that is, within the last two weeks, since when he
+used to come home in a dreadful state of drink, worrying her nearly to
+death, and letting all her advice go in one ear and out of the other."
+
+Mrs. Marsh was shown the glove, and asked if she knew it. Yes, of course
+she did; it was one of Charley's; he always wore those kind, and his
+initials were inside. The coroner examined her further, but only got
+wordy repetitions of what she had already said. Everything was telling
+terribly against Charley, who stood, like a dark ghost, still moodily
+staring out of the window. Val Blake crossed over and laid his hand
+heavily on his shoulder as Mrs. Marsh left the room.
+
+"Charley, old boy! have you nothing at all to say for yourself?"
+
+Charley lifted his gloomy eyes, but turned away again in sullen
+silence.
+
+"You know they will charge you with this crime, and you know you are not
+guilty. Can you not prove yourself innocent?"
+
+"How? Will they take my word for it?"
+
+"Explain why you were found in the grounds at that hour of the night."
+
+"They have already asked me to do so, and I have already declined."
+
+"But this is folly--this is madness! What motive could you possibly have
+for being there at such an hour?"
+
+Charley was silent. Val laid his hand on his shoulder with a kindly
+look.
+
+"Charley, will you not tell me?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You know I am your friend."
+
+"You will not be so long. Those fellows over there will settle the
+matter shortly to their own satisfaction, and I am not going to spoil
+their sport."
+
+"Charley," said Val, looking him steadily in the face, "where is
+Cherrie?"
+
+Charley Marsh's face, white and haggard an instant previously, turned
+scarlet, and from scarlet whiter than before. But he lifted his eyes
+fearlessly to Val's face, roused to eagerness at last.
+
+"Where is she?" he repeated. "Do you know?"
+
+"No; but I think you do."
+
+"Why do you think so?"
+
+"That's not the question! Where is she?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"What!"
+
+"I don't know. I tell you I don't! She is a false-hearted, lying,
+treacherous----"
+
+His face was white with fury. His name, called by the coroner, restored
+him to himself. Turning round, he saw that gentleman holding out to him
+a letter. It was Charley's fatal note, given to him by Dr. Leach, while
+Val and Charley had been speaking.
+
+"Do you know this, Mr. Marsh?" the coroner asked.
+
+Charley glanced over the note, the coroner still holding it. It was all
+written on the first page, in a pothook-and-hanger fist; and Charley
+turned crimson for the second time, as he finished it and read the name
+at the bottom.
+
+"Do you know anything of this, Mr. Marsh?" the coroner repeated.
+
+"No," Charley coldly and briefly said.
+
+"You recognize the writing and the name?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"The writer of this, Cherrie Nettleby, alludes to money which she says
+will do you and her more good than it ever did Lady Leroy. To what money
+does she refer?"
+
+Charley thought of the bank-note he had taken from her through sheer
+necessity, and once more the blood rushed in a scarlet tide to his face,
+ebbing again, and leaving him white as ashes.
+
+Coroner, jury, and spectators saw his changing face, and set it down to
+conscious guilt.
+
+"To what money does she refer?" reiterated the coroner.
+
+"Sir, I decline answering that question."
+
+"Indeed! Are you aware, Mr. Marsh, such a refusal tells very much
+against you?"
+
+Charley smiled coldly, contemptuously.
+
+"I am quite aware, sir, every circumstance tells very much against me.
+Nevertheless, I refuse to answer that and any other question I choose."
+
+"The boy is either mad," thought Val Blake, "or else guilty. In either
+case, his doom is sealed!"
+
+The coroner now explained to his court how the letter came into the
+hands of Doctor Leach, and read it aloud, handing it over to the jury
+for their inspection when he had finished. The allusion to his taking
+state-rooms for them both puzzled all who knew of the girl's departure
+for Greentown; but was set down by them, as it had been by Val, as a
+blind to deceive her friends.
+
+Ann Nettleby was next called, and, in a state of great trepidation,
+related Charley's call at the cottage and inquiry for Cherrie. Informed
+the coroner, in reply to his question, that Mr. Marsh was "after"
+Cherrie, a constant visitor at their house, and had asked Cherrie not
+long before to run away with him to the States. Had not heard from her
+sister since her departure, but supposed she was up in Greentown.
+
+One or two other witnesses were called, who had nothing to relate
+concerning the murder, but a good deal about Mr. Marsh's late dissipated
+habits and gambling-debts. When these witnesses were gone, Mr. Marsh was
+called upon, and requested, if he had anything to say in his own behalf,
+to say it.
+
+Mr. Marsh had but little to say, and said that little with a
+recklessness that quite shocked the assemblage. The secret of his bitter
+tone and fiercely-scornful indifference they had no clue to, and they
+set it down to the desperation of discovered guilt. He informed them, in
+that reckless manner, flinging his words at them like a defiance, that
+Ann Nettleby's testimony was correct, that he had called at the cottage
+between eight and nine on the night of the murder, and on leaving her
+had gone straight to the old house, and remained in the grounds until
+discovered by Midge and Rob Nettleby. What had taken him there, what his
+motive in lingering, was what Cherrie meant in her note, and all else
+concerning his motives and actions he refused to answer. He was a
+drunkard, he was a gambler, he was in debt--"his friends" with sneering
+emphasis, "have given his character with perfect correctness. But for
+all that, strange as it might seem, incredible as he knew they would
+think it, he had neither robbed nor murdered his sister's benefactress.
+Further than that he had nothing to say."
+
+He returned to the window again, flashing fierce defiance on every hand,
+and the coroner summed up the evidence. He was an old man, and had known
+Charley Marsh since he was a pretty little fair-haired, frolicsome boy,
+and he would have given a good round sum in hard cash to be able to find
+him innocent. But he could not, and justice must be done. He
+recapitulated his irregular conduct on the evening of the murder, as
+related by his own mother, his lingering in the grounds from dark until
+discovered by Priscilla Short and Robert Nettleby, confessed by himself;
+his glove found at the bedside, as if dropped in his haste and alarm;
+his knowledge of the large sum of money paid the deceased that afternoon
+by Mr. Oaks; his knowledge, also, of the house, as proved by his
+entering the back-window, found open, and of its lonely and unprotected
+state; and lastly, this note of Cherrie Nettleby's, with its distinct
+allusion to the money of Mrs. Leroy, to benefit him. It was a pity this
+girl was not here--but she soon would be found; meantime, the case was
+perfectly clear without her. It was evident robbery, not murder, had
+been the primary instigation; but the unfortunate woman awakening,
+probably, had frightened him, and in the impulse of the moment he had
+endeavored to stifle her cries, and so--strangled her. Perhaps, too, his
+sister being her heiress, and inheritrix of all she possessed, he had
+persuaded himself, with the sophistry of guilt, that he had some right
+to this money, and that he was only defrauding his own sister, after
+all. His debts were heavy and pressing, no way of paying them open, and
+desperation had goaded him on. He (the coroner) trusted that the sad
+case of this young man, once so promising, until he had fallen into evil
+habits, would be a warning to others, and an inducement not to stray
+away from the path of rectitude into that broad road whose end was
+disgrace and ruin. The money stolen had not been found, but there had
+been ample time given him to conceal it. He begged the jury to reflect
+on the evidence they had heard, consult together, and return a verdict
+according to their conscience.
+
+The jury retired from the room, and in the awful silence which followed,
+you might have heard a pin drop. Charles Marsh, in this supreme crisis
+of his life, still stood looking out of the window. He neither moved nor
+spoke, nor looked at any one, nor betrayed the slightest sign of
+agitation; but his teeth were rigidly locked, and the palm of his strong
+right hand was bleeding where he had clenched it, in that silent agony,
+until the nails had sunk deep into the flesh. He had been reckless and
+defiant, and braved it out with a high hand; but Charles Marsh had had
+the misfortune to be born with a keenly sensitive heart, and a pride
+that had lain latent under all his careless life; and what he felt in
+that hour of disgrace and degradation, branded as a thief and a murderer
+before the friends who knew him all his life, was known only to Heaven
+and himself.
+
+The jury were not long away. Evidently, his case had been settled in
+their minds before they had left their seats. And in that dread silence
+the foreman, Mr. Blair, with a grave, sad face, stood up to announce
+their verdict. It was only one word--the terrible word, "Guilty."
+
+There was a swaying sound among the crowd, as if they had drawn breath
+for the first time. That dismal word fled from lip to lip like wildfire,
+until it passed from the room to the crowd in the hall, and from them to
+the swaying mob without. It was quite a lively scene, in fact, out
+there, where that big crowd of men stood broiling under the meridian
+sun, when the verdict was announced, and the inquiries as to how "young
+Marsh" behaved and looked were many and eager. The question was not very
+easily answered. Young Marsh, standing by that sunny window, was so
+screened by the towering figure of Mr. Valentine Blake, that the gaping
+and exasperated throng craned their throats and stood on tip-toe for
+nothing. They would see him, however, when he came out to enter the cab,
+already in waiting, that was to convey him in the custody of the
+constables into town, and it was worth while waiting even for that
+fleeting glimpse.
+
+Five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes passed. The expectant crowd were
+getting angry and impatient; it was shameful, this dallying. But two or
+three policemen are out now with their red batons and brass buttons of
+authority, clearing a way for the gentlemen who are coming out, and for
+the cab which is to draw up close to the front door. Still, the mob
+press forward, the coroner and jury are departing; and now the
+prisoner's coming. But a new disappointment is in store for them; for
+when he comes, he has his hat pulled so far over his eyes, and springs
+in so quickly, that they don't even get that fleeting glimpse of him
+they are crushing each other to death to obtain. The constables follow;
+it is pleasant even to see them; the blinds are pulled down; the cab
+drives off rapidly, and the crowd go home, ravenous for their dinner.
+And Charles Marsh is on his way to Speckport jail, to await his trial
+for the willful murder of Jane Leroy!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+THE DARKENING SKY.
+
+
+The day after the inquest, the funeral took place. As the clock of
+Speckport cathedral chimed in sonorous sweetness the hour of ten, all
+that was earthly of Mrs. Leroy was placed in the hearse, and the gloomy
+cortege started. A great many carriages followed the mistress of Redmon
+to her last long home; and, in the foremost, two ladies, robed in sable,
+and vailed in crape, rode. The outward mourning was for the dead, the
+deeper _deuil_ of the heart for the living--for him who, on this
+wretched August day, was a prisoner in Speckport jail, awaiting his
+trial for the greatest crime man can commit, doomed to suffer, perhaps,
+the greatest penalty man can inflict.
+
+Nobody in all the long line of carriages talked; they crouched into
+corners, and shivered, and were silent, and sulky, and cross, and
+uncomfortable, and gaped, and wished the thing was well over, or that
+they had never come.
+
+They got their wish after a while. The last sod was beaten down, and the
+carriages rattled back into the foggy town--all but three or four; and
+they drove back to the eerie old house, never so lonely and desolate as
+now. One ceremony was yet to be gone through--that ceremony the reading
+of the last will and testament of Mrs. Leroy. Here, where it had been
+written, in the ghostly reception-room, where the inquest had taken
+place, and where the rats and black beetles had it all their own way, it
+was to be read. It was this that brought Mrs. Marsh, who had been ill
+and hysterical ever since she had heard the result of the inquest, to
+the funeral at all. To her it was a great and joyful thing this wealth
+that after to-day was to be theirs, and not even in her grief could she
+forego the pleasure of being present. Heaven knows, it was nothing of
+the sort brought her daughter--the silent agony she had endured since
+yesterday can never be told; but she had hope yet. She had hope in this
+very wealth that was to be hers to help him. Young as she was, she knew
+enough of the power of money to be aware it can do almost anything in
+this world, and smooth the road to the next; and she trusted in its
+magic power to free her imprisoned brother. They all went into the
+silent and forlorn house together; Mr. Darcy, who was to read the will,
+and whose face was distressed and troubled to the last degree; Mr.
+Blair, as an intimate friend of the family; Mr. McGregor, Senior, and
+Dr. Leach; Mrs. McGregor and Mrs. Blair were with Mrs. Marsh, and Miss
+McGregor and Miss Blair were deeply sympathetic with Miss Marsh--the
+heiress!--and Mr. Val Blake, with his sister on his arm; and Midge, who
+had been at the signing of the will, brought up the rear.
+
+The shutters of the closed rooms had all been opened, and the casements
+raised, for the first time in many a day, and the pale light of the
+foggy morning poured in. Lawyer Darcy took his seat at a table, and laid
+out on it a legal-looking document tied with red tape. The others seated
+themselves around the apartment; and Nathalie Marsh, in her deep
+mourning-robes, and her thick black crape vail down over her face, took
+her seat beside one of the open windows, and leaned her forehead on her
+hand, as if it ached.
+
+Long afterward, when she was gone from them forever, they remembered
+that drooping black figure and bowed young head, with one or two bright
+curls, like lost sunbeams, shimmering out from under her crape bonnet.
+Long afterward, they thought of how she had sat that dull and miserable
+day, suffering as these patient womanly martyrs only suffer, and making
+no sign.
+
+Lawyer Darcy seemed strangely reluctant to commence his task. He
+lingered and lingered, his face pale and agitated, his lips twitching
+nervously, and the fingers that untied the document before him,
+trembling. His voice, too, when he spoke, was not quite steady.
+
+"I am afraid," said the lawyer, in that unsteady voice, "that the
+reading of this will will be a shock--a disappointment! I know it must
+astonish all, as it did me, and I should like to prepare you for it,
+before it is read."
+
+There was a surprised and alarmed murmur, but no one spoke.
+
+"You are all aware," the lawyer went on, keeping his eyes resolutely
+from that drooping figure at the window, "that when Mrs. Leroy made her
+will after coming to Speckport she bequeathed all she possessed to her
+ward, Miss Marsh. I drew up the will, and she made no secret of her
+intentions."
+
+There was another painful pause. Val Blake broke it.
+
+"Of course," he said, impatiently, "we all know Mrs. Leroy left Miss
+Marsh heiress of Redmon."
+
+"But you do not know," said Mr. Darcy, "that a short time ago--in fact,
+a few days before her tragical death, she revoked that first will and
+made a new one."
+
+"What?" the cry was from Val Blake, but no one heeded him; every eye was
+strained upon the lawyer.
+
+"Made a new one," the lawyer repeated, still averting his eyes from the
+black form at the window; "a new one, entirely different; leaving, I am
+sorry to say, Redmon away from Miss Marsh--in point of fact,
+disinheriting her."
+
+There were two little feminine shrieks from the Misses Blair and
+McGregor, a hysterical cry from Mrs. Marsh, but the bowed figure at the
+window never stirred. In the unnatural stillness of her attitude, her
+face hidden behind her crape mask, there was something more fearful than
+any outbursts of wild womanly distress.
+
+"The new will was made, as I told you," continued Mr. Darcy, "but a few
+days before her death; made whilst smarting under a sense of anger, and
+what she called ingratitude. Miss Marsh had offended her, disobeyed her
+in a matter on which she had set her heart, and for this she was going
+to disinherit her. I expostulated, entreated, did all I could, but in
+vain. She was obstinate, and this new will was made, which I now hold in
+my hand."
+
+Mrs. Marsh's face had turned as white as that of a dead woman, and great
+beads of cold sweat stood on her forehead. But she sat rigidly still,
+listening, and feeling as though she were in some dreadful dream.
+
+"I drew up the will," pursued Mr. Darcy, "and Midge yonder and old
+Nettleby signed it. I fancied when her first resentment cooled, she
+would see the injustice of her act, and retract it. I was right; the day
+preceding the night of her death, hearing she was ill, I called to see
+her, and she told me to come the next morning, and a third will should
+be made, leaving all to Nathalie as at first. Next morning she was
+dead."
+
+To the dark form, whose drooping face was pitifully hidden by the black
+vail, did any memory come of the words spoken to her by the dead woman
+that fatal night, and which had then been so mysterious:
+
+"I'll make it all right, Natty! I'll make it all right!" Did she know
+what was meant now?
+
+"And do you mean to say, Mr. Darcy," Val Blake cried, astonished and
+indignant, "that Nathalie Marsh is not the heiress of Redmon?"
+
+"I do! this will disinherits her! It is a crying wrong, but no fault of
+mine."
+
+"And who, then, is the heir?" asked Mr. McGregor.
+
+"She bequeaths all she possesses, unconditionally, to her brother,
+Philip Henderson, or, in case of his death, to his children. I will read
+the will."
+
+Amid that profound and impressive stillness, the lawyer read the last
+will and testament of Jane Leroy. It was concise enough, and left the
+whole of her property, real and personal, without conditions, to her
+brother, Philip Henderson, and his heirs, with the exception of five
+pounds to Miss Nathalie Marsh, to buy a mourning-ring.
+
+Mr. Darcy hesitated over this last cruel passage, and felt inclined to
+leave it out; but he did not, and there was a suppressed murmur of
+indignation from every lip on hearing it.
+
+Poor Mrs. Marsh was catching her breath in hysterical gasps, and being
+fanned and sprinkled with cold water, and the palms of her hands slapped
+by Miss Jo and the two married ladies. And still the vailed figure at
+the window sat rigidly there, uttering no cry, shedding no tears.
+
+There are griefs too deep for words, too intense for tears, when we can
+only sit in mute and stony despair, while the world reels under our
+feet, and the light of the sun is blackness. To Nathalie Marsh, the loss
+of fortune was the loss of everything--brother, lover, home,
+happiness--the loss of all to which she had looked forward so long, for
+which she had endured so much. And now, she sat there, like a figure
+carved in ebony; and only for the ghastly pallor of her face in the
+indistinct glimpses of it they could catch through the vail, could they
+tell that she even heard.
+
+It was Val Blake who again broke the silence that followed the reading
+of the will.
+
+"I protest against this will!" he indignantly cried. "It is unjust and
+ungrateful! You should never have produced it, Mr. Darcy. You should
+have read the former will."
+
+"You are jesting, Mr. Blake! While regretting as much as you can
+possibly do this unfortunate change, my duty is sacred, and by this will
+we must abide. Mrs. Marsh seems very ill; I think she had better be
+conveyed home."
+
+No one ventured to speak to Nathalie, her unnatural manner awed them;
+but when her mother was supported from the room, and she arose to
+follow, good natured Miss Jo was beginning a homily on resignation, and
+on its being all for the best, perhaps, in the end. Her brother,
+however, cut her short with very little ceremony, and handed Miss Marsh
+in after her mother, and seating himself by the coachman, they started
+off rapidly. He might have spared himself the trouble; good Miss Jo
+might have preached for an hour, and Nathalie would not have heard one
+word of it. She sat looking straight before her, seeing nothing, hearing
+nothing, conscious of nothing, save only that dull and dark despair at
+her heart. Midge, who had come with them in the carriage, waited on Mrs.
+Marsh, and cried quietly all the way, bestowing anything but blessings
+on the memory of her late mistress.
+
+Mr. Blake assisted both ladies into the house when they reached Cottage
+Street. Mrs. Marsh, who was very ill and in a state of hysterics, he
+carried in his arms and laid on the sofa. Nathalie entered the parlor,
+closed the door, and, still wearing her bonnet and mantle, sat down by
+the window that looked out on the blurred and misty street. She had
+flung back her vail, and in her white and ghastly face and dilated
+violet eyes you could read a waiting look. Nathalie was waiting for one,
+who, by some secret prescience, she knew would soon come.
+
+Doctor Leach entered the cottage soon after their return, prescribed for
+Mrs. Marsh, and departed again. Had he been able to minister to a mind
+diseased, he might have prescribed for Nathalie, too; but that not
+coming within his pharmacopoeia, he left without seeing her.
+
+It was dusk when he for whom she waited came. The dull wet day was
+ending in a duller and wetter evening, and the tramp, tramp of the
+long-roaring waves on the shore made a dull bass for the high, shrill
+soprano shrieks of the wind. The lamps were flaring through the foggy
+twilight in the bleak streets, when Captain Cavendish, in a loose
+overcoat, and bearing an umbrella, wended his way to that house of
+mourning. He had not been two hours in Speckport, but he had heard all
+that had transpired. Was there one in the town, from the aristocratic
+denizens of Golden Row and Park Lane to the miserable dwellers in filthy
+back-alleys and noisome water-side streets, that did not know, and were
+not discussing these unhappy events with equal gusto? The robbery and
+murder of Mrs. Leroy, the inquest, the sentence and imprisonment of
+Charley Marsh, the will, and the disinheriting of Nathalie, all were as
+well known in the obscurest corner of Speckport as in that unhappy home
+to which he was going.
+
+In the course of that long afternoon Midge had only once ventured into
+the parlor, and that was in fear and trembling, to ask her young
+mistress to take a cup of tea and some toast which she brought.
+
+Nathalie had tasted nothing since the day before; and poor Midge, with
+tears in her fretful eyes, urged it upon her now. The girl looked at her
+out of a pair of hollow eyes, unnaturally large and bright, in a vague
+way, as if trying to comprehend what she said; and when she did
+comprehend, refusing. Midge ventured to urge; and then Nathalie broke
+out of her rigid, despairing stillness, into passionate impatience.
+
+"Take it away!" she cried, "and leave me alone! Leave me alone, I tell
+you!"
+
+Midge could do nothing but obey. As she quitted the room with the tray,
+there came a knock at the front door. She set down the tray and opened
+it, and the tall form of the young English officer confronted her. Midge
+had no especial love for Captain Cavendish, as we know; but she was
+aware her young lady had, and was, for the first time in her life, glad
+to see him. It was good of him to come, she thought, knowing what had
+happened; and perhaps his presence might comfort her poor Miss Natty,
+and restore her to herself.
+
+"Yes," Midge said, in answer to his inquiry; "Miss Marsh was at home,
+and would see him, she thought. If he would wait one minute she would
+ascertain."
+
+She returned to the parlor to ask. But Nathalie had already heard his
+voice, and was sitting up, with a strained white face, and her poor
+wasted hands pressed hard over her heart. She only made an assenting
+motion to Midge's question, should she show him in, and a negative one
+when she spoke of bringing a lamp. Through all her torpor of utter
+misery, she was dimly conscious of a change in herself; that she was
+haggard and ghastly, and the beauty which had won him first to her side,
+utterly gone. That gloomy twilight hour was best befitting the scene so
+soon to take place; for her prophetic heart told her, as surely as if
+she had read it in the Book of Fate, that this meeting was to be their
+last.
+
+Midge admitted him, and closing the door behind him, retired into a
+distant corner of the hall, and throwing her apron over her head, cried
+quietly, as she had done all day. She would have given a good deal if
+the white painted panels of the parlor door had been clear glass, and
+that she could have seen this man comforting her beloved young lady.
+Much as she had disliked him, she could have knelt down in her
+gratitude, and kissed the dust off his feet.
+
+Even in the pale, sickly half-twilight of the dark evening, Captain
+Cavendish could see the haggard cheeks, the sunken eyes, and the
+death-like livid pallor of the girl's face, and was shocked to see it.
+He had expected to find her changed, but not like this; and there was
+real pity for the moment in his eyes as he bent over her and took her
+hand. He started to find it cold as ice, and it lay in his passive, and
+like a bit of marble.
+
+"Nathalie," he said, "my darling! I am sorry; I cannot tell you how
+sorry I am for you. You have suffered indeed since I saw you last."
+
+She did not speak. She had not looked at him once. Her dilated eyes were
+fixed on the blackening night-sky.
+
+"I only reached Speckport an hour ago," he went on, "and I can never
+tell you how deeply shocked I was to hear of the dreadful events that
+have taken place since my departure. Is it all true?"
+
+"Yes--all!" she said. Her voice sounded strange and far-off, even to
+herself, and she was aware it must sound hollow and unnatural to him.
+
+"All is true! My brother is in prison, accused of murder, and I am a
+beggar!"
+
+Her hand felt so icily deathlike in his, that he dropped it with a
+shiver. She still sat looking out into the deepening gloom, her white,
+set face gleaming marble-white against her black dress and the darkening
+room.
+
+Captain Cavendish rose up from the seat he had taken, and began pacing
+rapidly up and down, heartily wishing the scene was over.
+
+"I know," said the hollow voice, so unlike--so unlike the melodious
+voice of Nathalie, "that all between us must end now. Disgrace and
+poverty must be my portion from henceforth, and you will hardly care to
+marry so fallen and degraded a creature as I am. From all that binds you
+to me, Captain Cavendish, I free you now!"
+
+In the depths of her heart, unseen in the darkness of despair even by
+herself, did any feeble ray of hope--that great gift of a merciful
+God--still linger? If so, the deep and prolonged silence that followed
+her words must have extinguished the feeble glimmer forever. When
+Captain Cavendish spoke, and it was some time before he did so, there
+was a quiver of shame in his tones, all unusual there. Very few ever had
+a better opinion of their own merits, or were less inclined to judge
+hardly of themselves, than George Percy Cavendish, but she made him
+despise himself now, and he almost hated her for it.
+
+"You are generous, Miss Marsh," he said--cold and cruel words, and even
+he felt them so to be, "and I thank you for that generosity. Loss of
+fortune would be nothing to me--that is to say, I could overlook
+it--though I am not rich myself, but this other matter is different. As
+you say, I could hardly marry into a family stained with--unjustly let
+us hope--the brand of murder. I shall ever esteem and respect you, Miss
+Marsh, as the best and bravest of women, and I trust that you will yet
+make happy some one worthier of you than I am."
+
+Is murder, the murder of the body, when a man plunges a knife into his
+fellow-man's breast, and leaves him stark and dead, the greatest of all
+earthly crimes? Earthly tribunals consider it so, and inflict death on
+the perpetrator. But is there not another murder--a murder of the
+heart--committed every day, of which we hear nothing, and which man has
+never made a law to punish. There are wounds which leave little outward
+trace; but the patient bleeds inwardly, yet bleeds to death for all
+that, and it is the same ultimatum, death, by a different means. But
+there is a higher tribunal; and perhaps before that, the sins
+over-looked by man shall be judged and condemned.
+
+Captain Cavendish took his hat and turned to depart. He felt exceedingly
+uncomfortable, to say the least of it. He wished that black figure
+would not sit so petrified and stone-like, he wished that white face
+gazing out into the night would look a little less like the face of a
+corpse. He wished she would flame up in some wrathful outburst of
+womanly fury and insulted pride, and order him to depart, and never show
+her his false face again. He wished she would do anything but sit there,
+in that frozen rigidity, as if slowly turning to stone.
+
+"Nathalie!" he said, venturing to take her icy fingers again, "will you
+not speak one word to me before I go?"
+
+She withdrew her fingers, not hastily or in anger, but never looked at
+him.
+
+"I have nothing to say," her unnatural voice replied.
+
+"Then good-bye, Nathalie!"
+
+"Good-bye!"
+
+He opened and closed the parlor door, opened and closed the front door,
+and was gone. He looked at the window of that dark room as he strode by,
+and fancied he saw the white face gleaming on him menacingly through the
+gloom. The white face was there, but not menacing. Whatever she might
+feel in the time to come, when the first terrible shock of all this was
+over, she could feel nothing so petty as resentment now. Her anguish was
+too supreme in this first dreadful hour. The world to her stood still,
+and the blackness of desolation filled the earth. "All for love, and the
+world well lost!" had been her motto. It was for his sake she had risked
+everything, and verily, she had her reward!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE FLIGHT.
+
+
+Mrs. Major Wheatly was a very fine lady, and lived in a very fine house
+two or three miles out of town. Having secured a traveling companion and
+a governess for her daughter, in the person of Miss Rose, the little
+Speckport school-mistress, she had desired that young person to come out
+to their place immediately, and assist in the packing and other
+arrangements, preparatory to starting. Miss Rose had obeyed, and being
+out of town had heard nothing of the inquest and the verdict until that
+night, when the major drove in, after dusk, with the news. Mrs. Major
+Wheatly, like any other fine lady, was greatly addicted to news, and
+received a severe shock in her nervous system by the manner in which her
+paid companion received the intelligence. They were all sitting at tea
+when the major blurted out the story, and his conviction that "the young
+scamp would be hung, and serve him right," and Miss Rose had fallen
+suddenly back in her chair in a violent tremor and faintness. All the
+next day she had gone about so pale and subdued that it gave Mrs.
+Wheatly the fidgets to look at her; but whatever she felt, she had
+wisely kept to herself, and made her moan inwardly, as dependents who
+know their places always should. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil
+thereof"--that day brought its own evil tidings. The major returning at
+his usual hour of the evening from town, announced the astounding
+intelligence that Miss Nathalie Marsh was disinherited, and the broad
+lands of Redmon given to another. Mrs. Major Wheatly sipped her tea and
+ate her buttered toast, and was deeply sympathetic. She had met the
+pretty, golden-haired, violet-eyed heiress often in society, and had
+admired and liked her, as most people did, and was as sorry for her as
+was consistent with the dignity of so great a lady.
+
+"Of course Captain Cavendish must recede now," she said: "he paid her
+very marked attentions, but of course he will not marry a penniless
+bride. Were they engaged, I wonder?"
+
+"Cavendish is a fortune-hunter," said the major. "Miss Marsh is a very
+nice girl, and a very pretty one, and altogether too good for him. No
+fear of his marrying her, my dear; he wouldn't marry the Venus Celestis
+herself, without a handsome dowry."
+
+"Mrs. Wheatly," Miss Rose said, "I must go into town to-morrow morning,
+to see my friends and say good-bye."
+
+She was so pale and tremulous saying this, that the lady hastened to
+assent, nervously, lest she should make another scene.
+
+"I am going in about nine o'clock," the major said, "and will drive you.
+Harris will take you back."
+
+"And you must not stay long, Miss Rose," his lady languidly said;
+"remember we start at half-past two, and there is so much to be done."
+
+The clock on the sitting-room mantel of that silent house on Cottage
+Street was pointing to half-past nine, when Betsy Ann, with fuzzy hair
+and sleepy face, hastened to answer a knock at the front door. She
+stared sleepily at her visitor, who came hurriedly in.
+
+"Is she here, Betsy Ann?--Miss Marsh?"
+
+"Yes'm," Betsy Ann said, "she's up in your room, and Miss Laura Blair
+and Midge, they've been and sot up with her all night, and me and Miss
+Jo Blake we've been sitting up with Mrs. Marsh. Midge, she's gone to bed
+now, and you'd better go up-stairs."
+
+Miss Rose ascended the stairs, and tapped at the door that had been her
+own. It was opened by Laura Blair, looking pale and fagged.
+
+"Is it you, Miss Rose?" she said, in a low voice, kissing her. "I was
+afraid you were not coming to say good-bye."
+
+"I could not come sooner, and can stay only an hour now. How is she?"
+
+"There is no change. She has lain all night as she lying now."
+
+Miss Rose looked at the bed, tears slowly swelling up and filling her
+soft brown eyes. Nathalie lay among the white pillows, her amber tresses
+trailing and falling loose all about, her hands clasped over her head,
+her haggard face turned to the window overlooking the bay, her wide-open
+blue eyes staring blankly at the dim gray sea melting away into the low
+gray sky.
+
+"She lies like that," Laura softly said, "all the time. We sat up with
+her all night, but she never slept, she hardly moved; whenever we went
+near the bed, we found her eyes wide open and vacant, as they are now.
+If she could only talk or cry, she would be better, but it makes one's
+heart ache to look at her."
+
+"Does she not talk?"
+
+"She will answer you if you speak to her, but that is all. She is quite
+conscious, but she seems to be in a sort of torpor. I will leave you
+with her, and lie down for half an hour. She was very fond of you, and
+perhaps you can do more with her than I could."
+
+Laura departed; and Miss Rose, going over to the bed, stooped down and
+kissed the cold, white face, leaving two bright tears upon it.
+
+"Nathalie, dearest," she said, "do you know me?"
+
+Her large, melancholy eyes turned upon her sweet, tender face.
+
+"Yes," she said, in that voice so unlike her own, that it startled her
+hearer. She seemed so unlike herself every way, that Miss Rose's tears
+rained down far faster than they would have done at any outbreak of
+grief.
+
+"You are ill, my darling," Miss Rose faltered through her tears. "I wish
+I could stay and nurse you back to health, but I am going away
+to-day--going, perhaps, never to come back."
+
+"Going away? Oh, yes. I remember!"
+
+She turned wearily on the pillow, still gazing out over the wide sea, as
+if her thoughts were far away.
+
+"I am very sorry for you, dear, dear Nathalie! Very, very sorry for you!
+It seems to me, sometimes, there is nothing in all this world but
+suffering, and sorrow, and death."
+
+"Death!" Nathalie echoed, catching with sudden and startling vehemence
+at the word. "Miss Rose, are you afraid to die?"
+
+The question was so sudden and so strange, that Miss Rose could not for
+a moment answer. A wild gleam of light had leaped into the sick girl's
+eyes, and irradiated her face so unnaturally, that it struck her
+companion with terror.
+
+"Afraid to die?" she faltered. "To die, Nathalie?"
+
+"Yes," Nathalie repeated, that abrupt energy yet in her voice; "you are
+good and charitable, better than any other girl I know, and you ought
+not to be afraid to die. Tell me, are you?"
+
+She laid hold of Miss Rose's wrist, and looked wildly into her
+frightened face. The girl tried to still her beating heart and answer.
+
+"I am not good, Nathalie. I am an erring and sinful creature; but,
+trusting in the great mercy of God, I think I shall not be afraid to die
+when it shall please him to call me. We must rely on his mercy,
+Nathalie, on that infinite compassion for our misery that made him die
+for us. If we thought of his justice, we might all despair."
+
+Nathalie turned away, and looked out again over the dark, tossing bay.
+The sweet voice of Miss Rose broke the stillness.
+
+"To the just, Nathalie, there is no such word as death! To quit this
+world, to them, is only passing from earth to Heaven in the arms of
+angels. Why should we ever grow to love this world, when day after day
+it is only passing from one new trouble and sorrow to another?"
+
+"Sorrow!" Nathalie repeated, in a voice sadder than any tears. "Yes,
+sorrow, sorrow, sorrow! There is nothing left now but that."
+
+"Heaven is left, my darling," Miss Rose whispered, her fair face
+radiant. "Oh, look up, Nathalie! When all the world deserts us, there
+is One left who will never turn away when we cry out to him. We may turn
+our backs upon him and forget him in the hour of our happiness and
+prosperity, but when the world darkens around us, and all earthly love
+fails, he will never leave us or forsake us, but will lead us lovingly
+back to a better and purer bliss. Remember, Nathalie, the way to heaven
+is the way of the Cross. It is a hard and thorny one, perhaps; but think
+of the divine feet that have trodden it before us."
+
+"Stop, stop, stop!" Nathalie impatiently cried out, "why do you talk to
+me like this! I am not good--I am only miserable and despairing, and I
+want to die, only I am afraid!"
+
+She moved away her face; but Miss Rose, bending over her still, kissed
+once more the averted face.
+
+"There was a time, Nathalie," she said softly, "when I was almost as
+miserable as you are now, when, God forgive me, I prayed in my
+passionate and wicked rebellion to die too. There was a time, Nathalie,
+when I was rich and flattered, and beloved and happy--as happy as we can
+ever be with the blind happiness of a lotus-eater when we never think or
+thank the good God from whom that happiness comes. I thought myself an
+heiress as you did, Nathalie; my father was looked upon as a rich and
+honorable man, and his only daughter the most enviable girl in all the
+city of Montreal. It was balls and parties, and the theater and the
+opera, every night; and riding and driving, and dressing and shopping
+all day long. I had my carriage to ride in, a fine house to live in,
+servants to wait on me, and rich dresses and jewels to wear; and I
+thought life was one long holiday, made for dancing and music, and
+sunshine and joy. I had a lover, too, whom I thought loved me, and to
+whom I had given my whole heart, and we were on the verge of being
+married. Are you listening to me, Nathalie?"
+
+"Yes," Nathalie said. She had been listening intently, forgetting for
+the first time her own sorrows, to hearken to the story, so like her
+own.
+
+"Well, Nathalie, in one day, almost as you have done, I lost
+all--father, lover, fortune, honor. My father went out from breakfast,
+hale and well, and was carried home two hours afterward, struck dead.
+Congestion of the brain they said it was. I was so frantic at first, I
+could realize nothing but his death, but I was soon sternly compelled to
+listen to other bitter facts. Instead of being an heiress, I was a
+beggar. I was far poorer than you, for I was motherless and without a
+home to shelter me. The creditors seized everything--house, furniture,
+carriages, horses, plate, pictures--and turned me, in point of fact,
+into the street. I had been educated in a convent, and the good nuns
+gave me a home; but for that, I might have gone to the almshouse, for
+the friends of prosperity are but frail reeds to lean upon in adversity.
+He whom I was to have wedded, Nathalie, cast me off; he could never
+disgrace his English friends by bringing to them as his wife the
+daughter of a wretched defaulter. Dearest Nathalie, I need not tell you
+what I suffered--you are feeling the same anguish now--and I was
+rebellious and despairing, and wished impiously for nothing but death.
+The nuns, with the sweetness and patience of angels, as they are, used
+to sit by me for hours, telling me that blessed are they who mourn and
+are chastened; but I could not listen. Oh! it was a miserable, miserable
+time! and there seemed no light for me either in earth or heaven. If I
+had been 'cursed with the curse of an accomplished evil prayer,' and
+died then in my wicked despair, I shudder to think of what would have
+been my fate. But that merciful and loving Father had pity on me in
+spite of myself, and it is all over now, and I am happy. Yes, Nathalie,
+happy, with a far better and more rational happiness than I ever felt in
+the most joyous days of my prosperity; and I have learned to thank God
+daily, now, for what I then thought the greatest misery that could ever
+befall me. I wished to take the vail; but the nuns knew the wish
+proceeded from no real vocation, but from that weary heart-sickness that
+made me so disgusted with the world, and would not consent, at least not
+then. I was to go out into the world again, and mingle in its ceaseless
+strife once more; and if at the end of a year the desire was as strong
+as ever, I was to go back to that peaceful haven, like the dove to the
+ark, and be sheltered from the storms of life forever. So I came here,
+Nathalie; and I am happy, as I say--happy, as with Heaven's help you
+will one day be. I labor for a sacred cause, and until that is
+accomplished, I shall enter no convent--it is to pay my father's debts.
+They are not so very large now; and in three or four years, if life and
+health be granted me, I hope to accomplish my task.
+
+"And now, Nathalie, you have heard my story; it is not a very romantic
+one, but in many ways it is similar to your own. This fever of
+wretchedness will pass, as mine has done, if you only pray. All the
+secret lies there, pray; and he who has said 'Seek and ye shall find,'
+will not refuse you peace."
+
+Her face was like the face of an angel. Nathalie looked into the
+inspired eyes, and felt how sinful and lost she was beside this heroic
+girl--this simple, womanly martyr, kissing meekly the rod which struck
+her--this patient, humble soul, rebelling not, but thanking God alike
+for the joy and suffering it pleased him to send. She felt, through all
+the dull torpor of suffering, how unworthy she was beside her; but she
+could not, in that first bitter hour, imitate her. She could not; she
+only turned away again in gloomy silence.
+
+"You will think of all this, dearest Nathalie," the soft, tender voice
+went on; "for all this pain, like every other earthly pain, must pass
+away. The great lesson of life is endurance; and all, from the king to
+the beggar, must learn it."
+
+She rose, as she spoke, to go, for more than an hour had passed, and
+kissed the cold and averted face again.
+
+"I must leave you, Nathalie," she said, her tears falling on that
+colorless face. "Good-bye, and God bless and comfort you."
+
+"Good-bye," was the only response; and Miss Rose left the room. Laura
+Blair met her in the lower hall.
+
+"Are you going?" she asked; "the gig is waiting for you."
+
+"Yes; but I think I should like to see Mrs. Marsh, to say good-bye."
+
+"She is asleep, and so is Miss Blake. I will say it to both of them for
+you. I am very sorry you are going, Miss Rose. Do you think you will
+ever come back?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I hope so! If I send you my address, Miss Blair, will you
+write and tell me how--how all my friends get on?"
+
+"Yes, with pleasure."
+
+Betsy Ann came out to bid farewell, and Laura kissed her, and watched
+her as she entered her gig and was driven away. Miss Rose had no time to
+bid good-bye to any one else; but when she reached the station early in
+the afternoon, in the carriage, with Major and Mrs. and Miss Wheatly,
+she found all her pupils assembled, in Sunday attire, waiting to say
+farewell. Mrs. Wheatly shrugged her shoulders at the scene, and stared
+through her eye-glass, and was relieved when they were all seated in the
+car and the scene was over. As they took their place, a gentleman on the
+platform leaned his elbow on the window, and lifted his hat in
+salutation to the ladies.
+
+"Hallo, Blake!" said the major, nodding familiarly, "come to see us
+off?"
+
+"No," said Val; "I've come to see myself off. I'm going to take a couple
+of holidays and look at the country. Keep a place for me, Miss Rose; I
+want to talk to you. I'll be in in a brace of shakes."
+
+It is probable a brace of shakes meant fifteen minutes, for at the
+expiration of that period of time, and just as the train was in motion,
+Mr. Blake lounged in, laden with oranges, peaches, and newspapers, which
+he distributed promiscuously, and then took a seat beside Miss Rose. It
+was pleasant to have Val for a traveling companion, for he knew every
+inch of the country, and was so full of stories and anecdotes as to be
+perfectly fascinating. He talked of the murder, asserted his belief in
+Charley's innocence, in spite of any amount of circumstantial evidence,
+and his firm conviction that the mystery would be speedily cleared up;
+his present journey, he hinted, being taken to bring about that
+desirable result. The fact was, Mr. Blake had of his own choice turned
+amateur detective, and was on the track of Miss Cherrie Nettleby, and
+positively resolved never to stop until he had hunted that young lady
+down. A telegram had been dispatched to Greentown the day before, and
+the answer Val had expected returned; Cherrie had never been near her
+relations in Greentown at all. The reply threw the family at the cottage
+into consternation, but Val reassured them by expressing his resolution
+to find her, if she was above ground. From his inquiries at the station,
+he had found out from the clerk, who knew her (who did not know
+Cherrie?) that she had taken a through ticket to the terminus, thirty
+miles beyond Greentown. The conductor remembered very well the pretty
+girl with the dark eyes and curls, and rosy cheeks; had found her dozing
+every time through the night he had passed in that car; remembered her
+ticket was for S----, the terminus, but was positive she had got out
+before they reached the final station. Where or when she had left, he
+could not say; it was after night, and passengers were getting out and
+coming in at every station, and she could easily depart among them
+unnoticed. He did not know whether she had gone as far as Greentown; but
+he did not remember seeing her after they passed that place. Val got out
+at nearly every station where they made any stop, and inquired for the
+pretty girl with the dark eyes and curls, but without success. At
+Greentown, he bade Miss Rose farewell; told her to take care of herself
+and not be sea-sick, and not to go and marry an Englishman before she
+returned to them; and, carpet-bag in hand, and the address of Cousin
+Ellen in his pocket, strolled along through the gray twilight to pursue
+his inquiries. He found the farmhouse easily enough, but not Cherrie.
+She had never been seen there, and no one who had been at the station
+that night had seen any young lady whatever alight.
+
+Val remained in Greentown that night, and went on pursuing his inquiries
+next day, but with the like result. He went on to S----; it was just
+possible she had gone on there, and taken the steamer for Quebec. He
+inquired at all the hotels, but no one answering to her description had
+stopped at any of them, and her name was not on the list of passengers
+by the last steamer.
+
+Mr. Blake spent three days in the search, and was then compelled by
+business to return to town. Short as had been his absence, Speckport had
+received a new shock--no less than the escape of the prisoner from jail.
+Charley Marsh had broken prison and fled! How, could not very clearly be
+ascertained, though the bars had been wrenched from his window and the
+casement found wide open, his quilts torn into strips, and dangling from
+it. But the window was high, and there was a wall to be got over
+afterward, and how he had accomplished that last feat, puzzled
+Speckport. He had accomplished it, however, and was flown; and the
+police were after him, scouring the woods. Rewards were offered for his
+capture. Mr. Blake put his hands in his pockets and whistled, when he
+heard it. The recollection of a certain fact, not known to all Speckport
+as it was to him, rushed upon his memory. In the days gone by, when the
+late Mr. Marsh had been a wealthy man, and the jailer of the prison (not
+jailer then) sued for a debt he could not pay, Mr. Marsh had come to his
+relief, paid the debt, and freed him. It was hardly probable the man had
+forgotten this obligation, and the bread cast then upon the waters had
+returned after many days. But the jailer was not suspected, and he and
+Val kept their own counsel.
+
+"I hope he'll get clear off," thought Val; "for if ever he's caught now,
+unless the real criminal turns up, there will be nothing to save him.
+This flight of his is enough to hang him, in itself."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+"ONE MORE UNFORTUNATE."
+
+
+The first person to tell Val Blake of Charley's flight was Captain
+Cavendish. He found that officer killing time by lounging on the
+platform, and staring at the passengers, as he alighted. Speckport, from
+time immemorial, had had a great fancy for crowding steamboat wharves
+and railway-platforms, to look at new arrivals; and strangers in the
+place fell into the habits of the natives, unconsciously.
+
+"Poor devil!" said the captain, swinging his cane airily about, and
+linking his arm in Val's; "I hope he'll dodge them, and escape Jack
+Ketch. I never like to see any one I've been on friendly terms with
+once, coming to that."
+
+"Are your friends in the habit of coming to it?" Mr. Blake asked,
+innocently.
+
+"Bah! How did you enjoy your trip up the country?"
+
+"As well as I expected."
+
+"And did you find Cherrie?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Did you find Cherrie?" serenely repeated Captain Cavendish.
+
+"No," said Val. "Do you know where she is!"
+
+The question might have disconcerted any other man, but it only made the
+young officer stare.
+
+"I! My dear fellow, I don't understand you!"
+
+"Oh, yes, you do," said Mr. Blake. "I think you are about as apt to know
+the hiding-place of little Cherrie as any other man in this province.
+That she is in hiding I am positive; and I'll ferret her out yet, as
+sure as my name's Blake."
+
+There was a certain determination in Mr. Blake's voice that the captain
+by no means liked, but he only laughed indifferently.
+
+"Success to you! No one will be more rejoiced to see the little dear
+back in Speckport than I! The place is a desert without her; but I give
+you my word of honor, Blake, she might be in the moon for all I know to
+the contrary."
+
+And in saying this, Captain Cavendish spoke the truth, for Cherrie had
+not yet written.
+
+The notion had been vaguely floating through Val's mind, ever since the
+robbery and murder and Cherrie's flight, that the English officer was in
+some way connected with the affair. He might even have mentally
+suspected him of the crime, but for one circumstance. It was at
+precisely eleven o'clock Midge had first been alarmed by the flying
+footsteps of the assassin; and at precisely eleven the Princess Royal
+had left Speckport, with the captain on board. It was clear he could not
+be in two places at once; so Val had acquitted him of the murder, but
+not of knowing Cherrie's whereabouts. Even now, he was anything but
+ready to take him at his word, but it was useless to press the question.
+
+"How do they get on in Cottage Street?" he asked. "I presume you are
+there every day."
+
+"I call every day, of course," replied Captain Cavendish, a slight flush
+coloring his nonchalant face; "but I never see any one except Midge, or
+that other girl."
+
+"Betsy Ann?"
+
+"I suppose so. No one is permitted to enter, it appears, except your
+sister and Miss Blair."
+
+"Indeed," said Val; "I should think you would have the entry above all
+others. Have you not seen Nathalie since those melancholy changes have
+occurred?"
+
+"Yes. Once."
+
+"Ah! At Cottage Street?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well," said Val, who was never restrained by sentimental delicacy,
+"what did she say?"
+
+"Not much, but what she did say was exceedingly to the point. She gave
+me my _coup de conge_."
+
+"You don't say so! Did you take it?"
+
+"What could I do? She was inexorable! Of course, as a man of honor, I
+should have made her my wife, in spite of all, but she was determined."
+
+A queer smile went wandering for a second or two round Mr. Blake's
+mouth, but he instantly called his risible faculties to order, and
+became grave again.
+
+"How are they? How do they take Charley's escape?"
+
+"Mrs. Marsh is poorly--confined to her bed, I believe, but Nathalie,
+they tell me, appears better, and takes care of her mother. Your sister,
+however, will be able to tell you all particulars."
+
+"I say, Cavendish," exclaimed Val, "you could go in for Jane McGregor,
+now. She is nearly as rich as poor Natty was to be."
+
+"Bah! What do I care for her riches?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I understand; but just reflect that her papa will give her ten
+thousand pounds on her wedding-day, and three times that much at his
+death; and I am sure you will be brought to take pity on her."
+
+"Take pity on her?"
+
+"Tah! Tah! Tah!" cried Val; "don't play innocent. You know as well as I
+do, she is dying for you."
+
+"But, my dear Blake," expostulated the captain, "she has red hair and
+freckles."
+
+"Auburn hair--auburn! As for the freckles, her guineas will cover them.
+Will you come in?" They were at the office door, but Captain Cavendish
+declined.
+
+"I have to go to barracks," he said. "Good morning."
+
+Mr. Blake spent some two hours in his office, attending to business, and
+then sallied forth again. His steps were bent in the direction of
+Cottage Street, where he expected to find his sister. The house looked
+as if some one were dead within--the blinds all down, the doors all
+closed--and no one visible within or without. It was Midge who opened
+the door, in answer to his loud knock. "How are you, Midge?" inquired
+Mr. Blake, striding in, "and how are Mrs. and Miss Marsh?"
+
+Midge's reply was a prolonged and dismal narrative of the sufferings of
+both. The elder lady was unable to leave her bed--she had fretted
+herself into a low, nervous fever, and was so cross, and captious, and
+quarrelsome, and peevish, that she made the lives of every one in the
+house a misery to them. She did nothing but sigh, and cry, and moan, and
+complain from morning till night, and from night till morning. Nothing
+they did pleased her.
+
+Of Nathalie, Midge had the reverse of this story to tell--she never
+complained at all. No, Midge wished she would; her mute despair was far
+harder to bear than the weary complainings of her mother. She sat by
+that petulant invalid mother's side the livelong day, holding cooling
+drinks to her poor parched lips, bathing the hot brow and hands, and
+smoothing the tossed pillow; rarely speaking, save to ask or answer some
+question; never replying to the endless reproaches of the sick woman;
+never uttering one complaint or shedding one tear.
+
+Mr. Val Blake was ushered by Midge into the darkened chamber of Mrs.
+Marsh, and looked at Nathalie sitting by her bedside. In spite of what
+he had heard, he was shocked at the change which the past week had made
+in her--shocked at the wasted and shadowy form, the wan, transparent
+hands, the hollow eyes and haggard cheeks. She was dressed in mourning,
+and the crape and bombazine made her look quite ghastly by contrast.
+
+Mr. Blake's visit was not a long one. Nathalie scarcely spoke at all,
+and his sister was not there. Mrs. Marsh, who had been asleep when he
+entered, awoke presently, and poured her dreary wailings into his ear.
+Val consoled her as well as he could; but there was no balm in Gilead
+for her, and he was glad when he could with decency get out of the reach
+of her querulous voice. Her time, of late, seemed pretty equally divided
+between dozing and bewailings; and she fretted herself into another
+slumber shortly after.
+
+Left alone, Nathalie Marsh sat by the window, while the dull afternoon
+wore away, looking out over the gloomy bay, with a darkly brooding face.
+Her desolation had never seemed so present to her as on this eerie
+evening. She had been stunned and stupefied by the rapidly-falling
+blows, but the after-pain was far more acute and keen than that first
+dull sense of suffering. "Ruined and disgraced!" they were the two ugly
+words on which all the changes of her thoughts rang. Ruined and
+disgraced! Yes, she was that; and she who had once been the belle and
+boast of the town could never hold up her head there any more. How those
+who had envied and hated her for her beauty and her prosperity, would
+exult over her now! What had she done that such misery should fall upon
+her? What had she done?
+
+The little house in Cottage Street was very still. Mrs. Marsh yet dozed
+fitfully; Midge had gone out to give herself an airing, and Betsy Ann
+was standing in the open front door, looking drearily out at the rain,
+which was beginning to fall with the night. Like Mariana, she was
+"a-weary,"--though, not being quite so far gone in the blues as that
+forlorn lady, she did not wish she was dead--and was staring dismally at
+the slanting rain, when the rustle of a dress on the stairs made her
+turn round, and become transfixed with amazement at beholding Miss
+Marsh, in bonnet and shawl, arrayed to go out. Betsy Ann recoiled as if
+she had seen a ghost, for the white face of the young lady looked
+awfully corpse-like, in contrast with her sable wrappings.
+
+"Good gracious me! Miss Natty!" she gasped, "you're never going out in
+this here rain! Ye'll get your death!"
+
+If Nathalie heard her, she did not heed, for she walked steadily out and
+on through the wet evening, until she was lost to Betsy Ann's shivered
+view. There were very few abroad that rainy evening, and those few
+hurried along with bent heads and uplifted umbrellas, and saw not the
+black figure flitting by them in the gloom. On she steadfastly went,
+through the soaking rain, heeding it no more than if it were rays of
+sunshine; on, with one purpose in her face, with her eyes ever turned in
+one direction--toward the sea.
+
+Cottage Street wound away with a path that led directly to the shore. It
+had been familiar to her all her life, and there was an old disused
+wharf at the end, where she and Charley had used to play in the sunny
+summer days long ago--a hundred years ago, it seemed, at the least. It
+was a useless old wharf, rotten, and slippery, and dangerous, to which
+boats were made fast, and where fishermen mended their nets. To this
+wharf Nathalie made her way in the thickening darkness, the piteous rain
+beating in her face, the sea-wind fluttering her black vail and soaking
+dress. Heaven knows what purpose the poor half-delirious girl had in her
+mind! Perhaps only to stand on the familiar spot, and listen to the
+familiar voices of the wind and waves dashing against the rotten logs
+and slimy planks of the old wharf, on which she had spent so many happy
+hours. No one ever knew how it was; and we must only pity her in her
+dumb agony of despair, and think as mercifully of the dark and
+distracted soul as we can. The night was dark, the wharf dangerous and
+slippery with the rain, and one might easily miss their footing and
+fall. Who can say how it was? but there was a suppressed cry--the last
+wail of that despairing soul--a sullen plunge, a struggle in the black
+and dreadful waters, another smothered cry, and then the wharf was
+empty, and the devouring waves had closed over the golden head of
+Nathalie Marsh!
+
+In the roar of the surf on the shore, and the wailing cry of the night
+wind, there was no voice to tell what had happened in the lonely gloom
+of the rainy night. No, surely, or the faithful servant, who entered the
+cottage dripping, after her constitutional, would have fled wildly to
+the scene of the tragedy, instead of standing there in the kitchen,
+talking to Betsy Ann, as she placed her wet umbrella in a corner to
+drip.
+
+"I went up to Miss Jo's," said Midge, shaking herself, and giving Betsy
+Ann an impromptu shower-bath, "and she made me stay for tea, and fetch
+this umberel home. How's the Missis--asleep?"
+
+"Yes," said Betsy Ann, looking nervous and scared, for she was mortally
+afraid of the dwarf; "but you didn't--I mean to say, was not Miss Natty
+to Blake's?"
+
+"Miss--What!" screamed Midge; "how should Miss Natty get there, stupid!
+Isn't she in her own room?"
+
+"No, she ain't," said Betsy Ann, looking still more scared; "and I don't
+know where she is, neither! She came down stairs just afore dark, with
+her things on, and went out in all the rain. She wouldn't tell me where
+she was going, and she wouldn't stay in for me; and you needn't look so
+mad about it, for I couldn't help it! There!"
+
+Midge's florid face turned ashen gray with terror; a vague, nameless,
+dreadful fear, that brought cold beads of sweat out on her brow. Betsy
+Ann had no need to back in alarm; it was not anger that blanched the
+homely face, and her ears were in no danger of being boxed.
+
+"Which way did she take?" she asked, her very voice husky with that
+creeping fear.
+
+"She went straight along," Betsy Ann replied, "as if a going to the
+shore."
+
+It was the answer Midge had expected, but the hands fastening her shawl
+shook so, as she heard it, that she could hardly finish that operation.
+
+"Go to Mr. Blake!" she said; "run for your life, and tell Mr. Val to
+hurry to the beach, and fetch a lantern. Tell him I am afraid something
+dreadful has happened."
+
+She hurried off herself, as she spoke, heedless of the invalid
+up-stairs, of lashing rain, and driving wind, and black night. Heedless
+of all but that terrible fear, Midge hurried through the storm to the
+shore.
+
+In the next day's issue of the Speckport Spouter, the following item
+appeared:
+
+     "MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE!--Yesterday evening, about seven o'clock,
+     Miss Nathalie Marsh quitted her residence in Cottage Street,
+     without informing her friends where she was going, and has not
+     since been heard of. Upon the discovery of her absence, search was
+     made along the shore, in which direction she was seen to go, and a
+     crape vail, recognized as belonging to Miss Marsh, found on the old
+     wharf at the end of Cottage Street. The vail had been caught by a
+     spike projecting from the wharf, immediately above the water. It
+     is feared that a dreadful accident has happened, and the young lady
+     has been drowned. She had been ill and a little delirious some time
+     before, and we presume wandered down to the old wharf, a most
+     dangerous place at all times, and particularly so on a dark and
+     stormy night, such as last night was, and fell in. Any intelligence
+     of her will be thankfully received, and liberally rewarded, by her
+     afflicted friends. The young lady was dressed in deep mourning, and
+     might easily be recognized by the luxuriant abundance of her golden
+     hair."
+
+Speckport read this paragraph over its breakfast coffee and toast, and
+was profoundly shocked thereby. And so poor Miss Marsh had drowned
+herself! They had expected as much all along--she was not the girl to
+survive such disgrace! But it was very dreadful; and they wouldn't
+wonder to hear next that the poor bereaved mother had died of a broken
+heart. They hoped the body would be recovered--it would be a melancholy
+consolation to her friends, not to say to her enemies, who would then be
+out of doubt as to her fate. People went past the house in Cottage
+Street with the same morbid curiosity that had driven them to Redmon
+after the murder, and stared at the closed blinds and muffled knocker,
+and thought of the wretched mother lying within, whose footsteps were
+even then crossing the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
+
+Two weeks passed, and these charitable wishes were not fulfilled. The
+mother of Nathalie still lay ill unto death, and still faithfully waited
+on by Midge and Miss Jo. It was toward the close of the second week that
+Val received a note from the coroner of a fishing-village, some ten
+miles up the coast, informing him that, the day previously, the body of
+a woman answering the description of Miss Marsh had been washed ashore,
+that an inquest had been held, and a verdict of "Found drowned"
+returned. If the missing girl's friends would come immediately they
+might be able to identify the corpse.
+
+Before noon, after the receipt of this missive, Mr. Val Blake was
+bending over the corpse of the drowned woman, as it lay in its rough
+deal coffin in the village dead-house. Before sunset he was back in
+Speckport, and bore the deal coffin and its quiet contents to No. 16.
+Great St. Peter Street. The slender girlish form, the mourning dress,
+the long fair hair, were not to be mistaken, though what had been the
+face was too horrible to look upon. Val turned away from what had once
+been so beautiful, with a shudder; and thought of the Duke of Gandia,
+made a saint by a similar sight. Before morning, the deal coffin was
+inclosed in another of rosewood, and a grave dug in Speckport Cemetery.
+The funeral was an unusually quiet and solemn one, though there was no
+requiem mass for the soul of the departed offered up in the
+cathedral--why should there for a wretched suicide, forever lost?
+
+Mr. Val Blake, with no sentimentality about him, and not over
+straight-laced either, in some things, was yet a generous, good-hearted
+fellow in the main, and placed a white marble cross over the dead girl's
+grave. Some very good people were rather scandalized by the act. A cross
+over the grave of a suicide!--it was sacrilege. But Mr. Blake did not
+care much what good people or bad people thought or said of his actions;
+and did just as he pleased, in spite of their teeth. So the white cross
+remained gleaming palely in the spectral moonlight, and casting its
+solemn shadow over the grave in the sunshine. It bore no
+inscription--what inscription could be placed over such a grave?--only
+the name "Nathalie." Her story was told, her life ended, the world went
+on, and she was forgotten! O sublime lesson of life! told in three
+words: Dead and forgotten!
+
+So, while Charley skulked in dark places, a hunted criminal, with a
+price on his head, and his mother lay still hovering on that narrow
+boundary that divides life and death, morning sunlight and noonday
+shadows brightened and darkened around that pale cross in the cemetery,
+and the night winds sighed over Nathalie's grave.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+MRS. BUTTERBY'S LODGINGS.
+
+
+The bleak blasts of a raw March afternoon swept through the city
+streets, cold and piercing, driving the dust in whirlwinds blindingly
+into the eyes of all it encountered.
+
+In spite of the cold and the piercing wind, Broadway was not empty--Is
+Broadway ever empty, I wonder?--and business-men, buttoned up to the
+chin in overcoats, and with caps drawn over their frosty noses, tore
+along like comets, to home and dinner; ladies in silks, and velvets, and
+furs, swarm down the pave to meet them, and young and old, rich and
+poor, jostled and elbowed, and pushed and trod on one another's heels
+and toes, as usual in that thronged thoroughfare.
+
+Moving among the ceaseless sea of human life, continually ebbing and
+flowing in Broadway, came a young woman, walking rapidly. I say "young
+woman" advisedly, for she was not a lady. Her black dress was gray and
+dingy, and frayed round the bottom; her black cloth mantle was of the
+poorest texture and simplest make, and her black straw bonnet was as
+plain and untrimmed as bonnet could be, and who could be a lady in such
+array as that? To a good many of the Broadway loungers, who devote their
+manly intellect to picking their teeth in front of first-class hotels,
+and stare at society going by for a living, her face was well known. It
+was a face not likely to pass unnoticed--not at all to be passed in a
+crowd; and more than once some of these expensively-got-up loafers had
+condescended to follow the young woman with the "deuced fine eyes;" but
+the black figure flitted along as if shod with the shoes of swiftness,
+and these languid admirers soon gave up the chase in despair.
+
+I don't think she ever was conscious of this attention; she walked
+steadfastly on, looking straight before her, never to the right or
+left, her shawl drawn closely around her tall, slight figure, as much
+alone as if she had been on Peter Wilkins's desert island. To a
+home-sick stranger in New York, I wonder if Broadway, at the fashionable
+hour, is not the loneliest and dreariest of places? Hundreds of faces,
+and not one familiar or friendly countenance among them; not one smile
+or glance of recognition to the lonely and heart-weary brother or sister
+jostled about in their midst. The men and women who passed might have
+been a set of automatons, for all the interest the young person dressed
+in shabby mourning appeared to take in them, as she hurried on with that
+rapid step and that darkly-sullen face. For I am sorry to say this
+heroine of mine (and she is that) wore a look of habitual sullenness
+that was almost a scowl, and something fierce lay latent behind the
+flashing of those brilliant eyes, and bitter and harsh in the compressed
+lips. A passing physiognomist, not over-choice in his phrases, meeting
+her once in the street, had carelessly observed to a friend walking with
+him, that "there was a spice of the devil in that girl;" and perhaps the
+girl herself might have agreed with him, had she heard it.
+
+Down town and west of Broadway, there is a certain unfashionable
+locality, known as Minetta Street. The houses are tall and dingy, and
+swarm with dirty children and noisy mothers; and it is dark and narrow,
+and utterly unknown on Fifth Avenue and Madison Square. Among the tall
+and dingy houses--all so much alike that they might have been cast in a
+mold--there is one with a white board in the front window of the
+ground-floor, bearing, in black letters, the name "Mrs. Butterby," and
+beneath this legend, "Lodgings." And in this bleak, windy twilight of
+this cold March day, the young woman dressed in black turns into Minetta
+Street, and walks into Mrs. Butterby's with the air of one having the
+right; for she is one of Mrs. Butterby's lodgers, this young person, and
+a lodger of some consequence, not only to the house, but to the whole
+street. And for this reason--she has a piano in her room! An old and
+battered piano, it is true, for which she only pays four dollars per
+month; but still it is a piano, and the wonderful harmonies her fingers
+evoke from its yellow keys, transfix Minetta Street with amazement and
+delight. She has the best room in Mrs. Butterby's house, the first floor
+parlor, front, and there is the faded remains of a Brussels carpet on
+the floor and a yellow-painted washstand in the corner, two cane-seated
+chairs, with three legs between them, a little table, with an oilcloth
+cover, and a sheet-iron stove; and these elegant luxuries all of which
+she has for the stipend of three dollars per week. There is a bed, too,
+and a small trunk, and the battered little high-backed piano, and there
+is almost room to turn round in the space which they leave. There is
+nothing like this elegant apartment in all Mrs. Butterby's house, and
+the other lodgers look into it with envious and admiring eyes. They are
+all young ladies, these lodgers--young factory-ladies, and young ladies
+in the dressmaking, and pantmaking, and vestmaking, and capmaking, and
+bookbinding lines of business, not to speak of an actress, a real
+actress, who performed in a Broadway theater, and whom they look upon
+with mingled awe and envy. But they like her better than they do the
+first-floor lodger, whom they unite in hating with a cordial hatred that
+would have delighted Dr. Johnson. They are all young ladies, but they
+stigmatize her as "that young woman," "that stuck-up thing," and would
+like to scratch those bright eyes of hers out of her head, though she
+never did anything to them in her life.
+
+They knew very little about her, either Mrs. Butterby or her fair
+lodgers, although she had been two months in the house, except that her
+name was Miss Wade, that she earned her living as an embroideress, and
+that she put on a great many unnecessary airs for a New York seamstress.
+She embroidered slippers, that were pictures in themselves, on rich
+velvets and silks, with floss and Berlin wool, and spangles, and beads;
+and cobweb handkerchiefs, that might have been the wonder of a Brussels
+lace-maker. She worked for a fashionable Broadway establishment, who
+asked fabulous prices for these gems of needlework, and who doled out a
+miserable pittance to the pale worker, whose light glimmered far into
+the night, and who bent over the glistening fabric in the gray and
+dismal dawn. They heard all this in the house, and nothing more; for,
+except to the landlady, she had never, scarcely, exchanged a word with a
+soul in it--with one exception--she had spoken to the actress, who
+occupied the room above her own, and who was nearly as cold and
+unsociable as herself. "Birds of a feather," the young ladies said, when
+Mrs. Butterby told how Miss Wade had been in Miss Johnston's room (the
+actress was Miss Johnston, in every-day life, and Miss St. John on the
+bills), sewing spangles and gold braid on Miss Johnston's theatrical
+robes, and how Miss Johnston had taken Miss Wade to the theater, and had
+made her stay and take tea with her in her own room. No human being of
+the "earth earthy," can quite live without any one to speak to; the
+heart must turn to some one, let it be ever so proud and self-sustained,
+and the actress was made of less coarse and rough clay than the young
+factory-ladies, who went dirty and hoopless all the week, and flaunted
+in gaudy silks on Sunday.
+
+Up in her own room, Miss Wade took off her bonnet, and sat down to work
+with her mantle still on, for the fireless apartment was perishingly
+cold. She had sat there for nearly an hour, and the cheerless March
+gloaming was falling drearily on Minetta Street, when there was a
+shambling footstep on the stairs, a shuffling, slip-shod,
+down-at-the-heel tread in the hall, and a rap at her door. Miss Wade,
+work in hand, opened it, and saw her portly landlady smiling in the
+doorway.
+
+"Miss Johnston's compliments, Miss, and would you please to step up to
+her room, she says. Bless my heart! ain't you got no fire on, this
+perishing evening?"
+
+"It was too much trouble to light it," Miss Wade said, shutting and
+locking her room-door, and going along the dark and dirty hall, up a
+dark and dirty staircase, into another hall, darker and dirtier still,
+and tapping at the first door she met.
+
+"Come in!" a feminine voice said, and Miss Wade went in accordingly. It
+was a smaller chamber than her own, and far less sumptuously furnished,
+with no fine fragments of Brussels on the bare floor, no piano in the
+corner, no yellow washstand, or oilclothed table. Its one dim window
+looked out on that melancholy sight, a New York backyard, and the gray
+and eerie dusk stole palely in, and the wild spring wind rattled the
+rickety casement. But it had a fire, this poor little room, in a little
+ugly black stove, and, sitting in the one chair the apartment boasted
+of, crouching over the heat, in a strange and wretched position, was the
+room's mistress. A poor, faded, pallid creature, young, but not
+youthful, with sharp cheekbones, and sunken eyes. She was wrapped in a
+plaid shawl, but she looked miserable and shivery, and crouched so low
+over the stove, that she nearly touched it. Sundry gaudy garments, all
+tinsel and spangles and glitter, lay on the bed, with two or three wigs
+keeping them company, a rouge-pot, and a powder-box. These were her
+stage-dresses; but, looking at her, as she sat there, you would as soon
+think of seeing a corpse tricked out in that ghostly grandeur as she.
+
+She rose up as her visitor entered, with a pale smile of welcome, and
+placed the chair for her. There was a certain quiet grace about her that
+stamped her, like Miss Wade herself, God help her! as "one who had seen
+better days." But she was far more fragile than the seamstress. Whatever
+she had once been, she was nothing but a poor, wasted shadow now.
+
+"Mrs. Butterby said you sent for me," Miss Wade remarked, taking the
+chair, and looking with a certain eagerness in her great eyes. "You
+spoke to the manager, I suppose?"
+
+Miss Johnston, who had seated herself on a wooden footstool, did not
+look up to meet that eager, anxious gaze.
+
+"Yes," she said, "but, I am sorry to say, I have been disappointed. The
+company was full, he said, and he wanted no more novices. He would not
+have taken me, had it not been at the earnest solicitation of a friend,
+and there was no room or need for any more."
+
+The sullen look that had left Miss Wade's face for a moment returned,
+and a dark gloom with it. She did not speak; she sat with her brows
+drawn into a moody form, staring at the ugly little black stove.
+
+"A friend of mine, though," the actress went on, "who has considerable
+influence, has promised to try and get you a situation in some other
+theater. I told him you would certainly be successful, and rise rapidly
+in the profession. I know you possess all the elements of a splendid
+tragic actress."
+
+If we might judge by the darkly-passionate face and fiercely-smoldering
+eyes, the young woman who sat so gloomily staring straight before her,
+was capable of acting a tragedy in real life, quite as fast as on the
+stage. There was a certain recklessness about her, that might break out
+at any moment, and which told fate and poverty had goaded her on to
+desperation. When she spoke, her words showed she had neither heard nor
+heeded the actress's last remark.
+
+"And so goes my last hope," she said, with slow, desperate bitterness;
+"the last hope of being anything but a poor, starved, beggarly drudge
+all the days of my life! I am a fool to feel disappointed. I might know
+well enough by this time, that there is nothing but disappointment for
+such a wretch as I!"
+
+The reckless bitterness of this speech jarred painfully on the hearer's
+nerves. Miss Johnston looked at her half-pityingly.
+
+"There is no need to despair," she quietly said; "the friend of whom I
+have spoken will be successful, and I am certain you will be a great
+actress yet. With me it is different. I will never rise above
+mediocrity."
+
+"You don't seem to care much," said Miss Wade, looking at her pale,
+still face.
+
+"I don't," said the actress, in the same quiet way.
+
+"Have you no ambition at all, then?"
+
+"No!"
+
+She did not say it indifferently, but in a tone of hard endurance. Miss
+Wade's large eyes were fixed curiously on her face.
+
+"I think," she said, "you have seen a great deal of trouble, and that it
+has crushed the ambition out of you. You were never born to be one of
+Mrs. Butterby's lodgers! Pardon me if I am impertinent."
+
+"You are not," the actress said, neither denying nor acknowledging the
+charge. "Whatever I once was, I am Mrs. Butterby's lodger now, and a
+poor actress, who must sew the spangles on her own dress."
+
+She took off the bed a short pink gauze skirt, and a bunch of tinsel
+braid, and began the womanly work of sewing, with her swift fingers.
+
+"Are you to wear that to-night?" asked Miss Wade.
+
+"Yes; it is the dress of a flower-girl."
+
+"What is the play?"
+
+"I forget the name," said the actress, indifferently; "it is a French
+vaudeville, written expressly for us. I am Ninon, a flower-girl, with
+two or three songs to sing. Will you come?"
+
+"Thank you, I should like to go. It keeps me from thinking for a few
+hours, and that in itself is a blessing. What a miserable, worthless
+piece of business life is! I think I shall buy twenty cents worth of
+laudanum, some of these days, in some apothecary-shop, and put an end to
+it altogether."
+
+The jarring, reckless tone had returned, and was painful to hear. The
+actress sewed, steadily on, replying not.
+
+"It is well enough for those girls," Miss Wade said; "those rough,
+noisy, factory girls, brawny arms, and souls that never rise above a
+beau or silk dresses; but for me and for you, who were born ladies--it
+is enough to drive us mad! Look at me!" she cried, rising to her feet;
+"look at me, Miss Johnston! Do I look like one born for a drudge? Do I
+look like the women who fill this house?"
+
+Miss Johnston looked up at the speaker, doing a little private
+theatrical tragedy, with her pale, quiet face, unmoved. Perhaps she had
+grown so used to tragedy that it had become stale and wearisome to her;
+and the regal figure drawn up to its full height, the white face, and
+flaring eyes, disturb her no more in her poor room, than Lady Macbeth,
+in black velvet, with blood on her hands, did on the theatrical boards.
+
+"No," she said, "you are not at all like the factory-hands, Miss Wade.
+I never doubted you were born a lady."
+
+"And a lady, rich and happy, flattered and courted, I should have been
+yet, but for the villainy of a man. My curse upon him, whether he be
+living or dead."
+
+She began pacing up and down the floor, like any other tragedy-queen.
+Miss Johnston, finding it too dark to sew, arose, lit a candle, stood it
+on a wooden box that did service for a table, and composedly pursued her
+work.
+
+"How was it?" she asked; "is it long ago?"
+
+"Long!" exclaimed Miss Wade; "it seems hundreds of years ago; though I
+suppose scarcely seven have really passed since he fled, taking all he
+possessed with him, and leaving my mother and I to beg, or starve, or
+die, if we pleased. Of all the villains Heaven ever suffered to pollute
+this earth, I think Philip Henderson was the worst!"
+
+"Philip Henderson!" Miss Johnston repeated, looking up from her work;
+"was that the name of the man who defrauded you?"
+
+"He was my step-father--the villain! My own father I do not
+recollect--he died in my infancy, leaving my mother wealthy--the
+possessor of half a million nearly. She had married this man Henderson
+before I was three years old; and I remember how pleased I was when he
+first came, with the little baby-sister he brought me--for he was a
+widower with a child not two years old. Shortly after my mother's second
+marriage, we left Rochester, where I was born. Mr. Henderson purchased,
+with my mother's money, of course, for he had none of his own, a
+magnificent place up at Yonkers--a house like a castle, and magnificent
+grounds. Everything was in keeping; the furniture, pictures, and plate
+superb; a whole retinue of servants; the fastest horses and finest
+carriages in the country. It is like a dream of fairy-land to me now to
+look back upon. Olly and I (his daughter's name was Olive), as we grew
+up, had a governess, and masters in the house, and played in bright silk
+dresses among the pastures, and fountains, and graperies of our
+palace-like home. The place was filled with company all the summer
+through--nothing but balls and soirees, and dressing and dancing, and
+fetes champetre; and in the winter, Mr. and Mrs. Henderson came down to
+the city, leaving us in charge of the housekeeper and governess. It is a
+very pleasant thing, no doubt, spending money as freely as if it were
+water; but, unfortunately, even half a million of dollars will not last
+forever. Mr. and Mrs. Henderson, and their two daughters--for I passed
+as his child, too, and scarcely knew the difference myself--were all the
+fashion for nearly ten years, and then the change began to come. I was
+only thirteen, and not old enough to understand the stormy scenes
+between Henderson and my mother--her passionate reproaches of his folly
+and extravagance, his angry recrimination, and the ominous whisperings
+of the servants. Suddenly the crash came--Henderson had fled, taking
+Olly with him, and the few thousands that yet remained of our princely
+fortune. He was over head and ears in debt; the creditors seized
+everything--house, furniture, plate, and all--and my mother and I were
+penniless. Miss Johnston, the shock killed her. She had always been
+frail and delicate, and she never held up her head after. She was buried
+before a month passed; and I, at the age of thirteen, was alone in the
+world, and a pauper. But a child of that age cannot realize misery as we
+can in after-years. I was fully conscious of present discomfort, but of
+the future I never thought. My mother had left Yonkers immediately after
+the creditors' seizure, too keenly sensitive to remain a beggar where
+she had once reigned a queen, and came here to the city. She came here
+to an old servant of hers, to whom she had been a kind friend in other
+days, and the woman did not forget it. She was comfortable enough with
+her husband and two children, and she kept me and sent me to learn the
+business I now work at. I remained with her nearly six years, realizing
+more and more every day what I had lost in losing wealth. She is dead
+now. Her husband is married again and gone to California, and I am here,
+the most miserable creature, I believe, in all this great desert of a
+city."
+
+She had been walking up and down all the time, this impetuous Miss
+Wade, with rapid, excited steps, speaking in a rapid, excited voice, a
+fierce light flaring in her large angry eyes. The actress had finished
+her work; it lay on her lap now, her quiet hands folded over it, her
+quiet eyes following the passionate speaker.
+
+"Wade, I suppose," was her first remark, "was your own father's name.
+When did you adopt it?"
+
+"Only when I came here. The name of Henderson had long been odious to
+me, but the family I lived with was too accustomed to it to change."
+
+"And have you never heard from this man Henderson or his daughter
+since?"
+
+"I have heard of them, which is as good; and, thank God! retribution has
+found them out! They are both dead--he committed a forgery, and shot
+himself to escape the consequences; and Olly--she was always a
+miserable, puling, sickly thing--died in a hospital. They have been made
+an example of, thank Heaven! as they deserved to be."
+
+She uttered the impious thanksgiving with a fierce joy that made the
+actress recoil. But her mood changed a second after; she stopped in her
+walk, the darkly-sullen look settling on her face again, and stared
+blankly at the flaring candle, dripping tears of fat over the
+candlestick. So long she stood that the actress rose and began folding
+up the flower-girl's dresses, preparatory to starting for the theater.
+
+"Are you going?" Miss Wade asked, coming out of her moody reverie.
+
+"Yes, when I have had a cup of tea--it is drawing down stairs at Mrs.
+Butterby's fire. Will you not take another?"
+
+"No, thank you; I can't eat. I will wait here while you take it."
+
+There was a newspaper on the bed. Miss Wade took it, and sat down to
+read whilst she waited. The actress left the room, returning a moment or
+two after, with a small snub-nosed teapot and a plate of buttered toast.
+She was standing at a little open pantry pouring out the tea, when she
+suddenly laid down the teapot, and turned round to look at her
+companion. It was not an exclamation Miss Wade had uttered, it was a
+sort of cry; and she was holding the paper before her, staring at it in
+blank amaze.
+
+"What is the matter?" Miss Johnston inquired, in her calm voice.
+
+Miss Wade looked up, a sudden and strange flush passing over her
+colorless face.
+
+"Nothing," she said, slowly. "That is--I mean I saw the--the death of a
+person I knew, in this paper."
+
+She held it up before her face, and sat there while the actress drank
+her tea and ate her toast, never moving or stirring. Miss Johnston left
+the pantry, put on her bonnet and shawl, and took up her bundle as if to
+go.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Miss Wade," she said, "but it is time for us to go."
+
+Miss Wade arose, with the paper still in her hand. Two bright spots, all
+unusual there, and which strong excitement alone could bring, burned on
+either cheek, and a strange dusky fire shone in her eyes.
+
+"I do not think I will go to the theater to-night, Miss Johnston," she
+said. "My head aches. I will take this paper, if you will let me, and
+read it in my room for a little while, and then go to bed."
+
+The actress assented, looking at her curiously, and Miss Wade passed
+down the dark stairs to her own room. There was a lamp on the table,
+which she lit, then she locked the door; and with that same red spot on
+each cheek, and that same bright light in each eye, sat down with the
+paper to read. But she only read one little paragraph among the
+advertisements, and that she read over and over, and over again. The
+paper was the Montreal True Witness, some two or three weeks old, and
+the paragraph ran thus:
+
+     "INFORMATION WANTED.--Of Philip Henderson or his heirs. When last
+     heard from he was in New York, but is supposed to have gone to
+     Canada. He or his descendants will hear of something to their great
+     advantage by applying to John Darcy, Barrister-at-Law, Speckport."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+THE HEIRESS OF REDMON.
+
+
+It is three days by steamer and rail-cars from New York to Speckport;
+but as steam never traveled half as fast as story-tellers, we are back
+there in three seconds. Dear, foggy Speckport, I salute thee!
+
+In a grimy office, its floor freshly sprinkled, its windows open to
+admit the March-morning sunshine, in a leathern-covered armchair, before
+a littered table, Mr. Darcy, barrister-at-law, sits reading the morning
+paper. It is the "Daily Snorter," and pitches savagely into the "Weekly
+Spouter," whose editor and proprietor, under the sarcastic title of
+"Mickey," it mildly insinuates is an ignorant, blundering, bog-trotting
+ignoramus, who ought still to be in the wilds of Connemara planting
+potatoes, instead of undermining the liberty of this beloved province,
+and trampling the laws of society under his ruthless feet, by asserting,
+as he did yesterday, that a distinguished member of the Smasher party
+had been found lying drunk in Golden Row, and conveyed in that unhappy
+state to his residence in that aristocratic street, instead of to the
+watch-house, as he should. Much more than this the "Daily Snorter," the
+pet organ of the Smasher party, had to say, and the anathemas it
+fulminated against "that filthy sheet," the "Spouter," and its vulgar,
+blockheaded, addle-pated editor, was blood-curdling to peruse. Mr. Darcy
+was deep in it when the office door opened, and Mr. Val Blake lounged
+carelessly in. Mr. Darcy looked up with a nod and a laugh.
+
+"Good morning, Blake! Fine day, isn't it? I am just reading this eulogy
+the 'Snorter' gives you."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Blake, mounting the back of a chair as if it were the
+back of a horse, and looking the picture of calm serenity. "Severe, is
+it? Who do you suppose I had a letter from last night?"
+
+"How should I know?"
+
+"You won't faint, will you? It was from Charley Marsh!"
+
+Mr. Darcy dropped the "Snorter," and stared.
+
+"Char--ley Marsh! It's not possible, Blake?"
+
+"Yes, it is. I am on my way to Cottage Street at this present writing,
+to tell his mother."
+
+"Well, this is an astonisher! And where is the boy?"
+
+"You'd never guess. A captain in the Southern army."
+
+"You don't say so! How did he ever get there?"
+
+"You see," said Val, "it's a long letter, and he explains everything.
+After he broke jail that time (of course, Turnbull helped him off), he
+skulked in the woods for two or three weeks, visited occasionally by a
+friend (Turnbull again), and through him heard of Nathalie's death. At
+last, he got the chance of a blockade-runner. The 'Stonewall Jackson'
+was leaving here, and he got on board, ran the blockade, and found
+himself in Dixie. There he was offered a captainship, if he would stay
+and fight a little. He accepted, and that's the whole story. I must tell
+the mother. It will do her more good than fifty novels and fifty
+thousand blue pills. Jo went into hysterics of delight when she heard it
+at breakfast, and I left her kicking when I came away."
+
+"Does he say anything at all about the murder?"
+
+"Oh, yes. I forgot that. He wants to know if Cherrie has turned up yet,
+and says he may thank her for all his trouble. He was up at Redmon that
+night to meet her. She had promised to elope with him, but she never
+came. He protests his innocence of the deed, and I believe him."
+
+"Humph!" said Mr. Darcy, reflectingly. "It is most singular Cherrie does
+not turn up. I dare say she could throw light on the subject, if she
+chose."
+
+"I don't despair, yet," said Val. "I'll find her before I stop, if she's
+above ground. No news yet, I suppose, from the heirs of Redmon?"
+
+"None; and I am sick and tired of advertising. Not a New York or
+Canadian paper I have not tried, and all alike unsuccessfully. I believe
+the man's dead, and it's of no use."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Blake, dismounting from the chair, "I'm off. I must get
+back to the office after I've seen Mrs. Marsh, and give the 'Snorter'
+such a flailing as it won't get over for a month of Sundays."
+
+Off went Mr. Blake like a long-legged steam-engine; and Mr. Darcy's
+office boy entered with a handful of letters from the post-office. The
+lawyer, laying down his paper, began to break the envelopes and read.
+The first three were business communications, brief and legal, in big
+buff envelopes. The fourth bore a different aspect. It was considerably
+stouter. The envelope was white; the writing, a lady's delicate spidery
+tracery; the postmark New York. The lawyer surveyed it for a moment in
+grave surprise, then broke it open and began to read. The letter was a
+long one--three sheets of note-paper closely written; and before he had
+got to the end of the first, Mr. Darcy, with a sort of shout of
+astonishment, began at the beginning again. Once, twice, three times,
+and Mr. Darcy perused the letter; and then rising, with the rest
+unopened, began pacing up and down the floor. The windows of the office
+faced the street, and, glancing out, he saw Mr. Blake striding past
+presently, as if shod with seven-league boots. Mr. Darcy put his head
+out of the window and hailed him.
+
+"Hallo, Blake! Come up here a moment, will you?"
+
+Mr. Blake looked up, ran up-stairs, and entered the office.
+
+"You'll have to be quick, Mr. Darcy," he said. "Time's precious this
+morning, and my conscience is uneasy until I give the 'Snorter' fits.
+Anything up?"
+
+"Yes. The heir of Redmon has turned up at last!"
+
+"By Jove!" cried Val, "you don't say so? Where is he?"
+
+"It's not a he. I should have said the heiress of Redmon has come to
+light. I have had a letter from Philip Henderson's daughter this
+morning."
+
+"And where's Philip himself?"
+
+"Where Heaven pleases. The man's dead, and has been these three years.
+No wonder he never answered our advertisements."
+
+"But it is a wonder this daughter of his did not?"
+
+"She never heard it until the day before she wrote, and then by the
+merest chance, she says. She is very poor, I fancy, though she does not
+exactly say so, and without the means to come on here."
+
+"Where is she?"
+
+"In New York. Mrs. Leroy told me her brother resided in Yonkers, with
+his wife and two daughters, she believed, and the writer of this letter
+corroborates that statement. They did live in Yonkers, she says, and
+were in affluent circumstances for a number of years, until she, the
+writer, was thirteen years old, when they became involved in debt, and
+everything was seized by the creditors. Henderson, the father, went to
+Canada. Mrs. Leroy told me she heard he had gone there, but they never
+held any correspondence. He went to Canada and died there about three
+years ago. The youngest daughter died about the same time, and the
+mother shortly after their loss of fortune. The writer of this letter,
+then, is the only survivor of the family, and the rightful heiress of
+Mrs. Leroy's fortune. She speaks of Mrs. Leroy, too; says her father had
+an only sister, who married a New York Jew of that name, for which low
+alliance, her father ever afterwards refused to have anything to do with
+her. She refers me to several persons in Yonkers, who can confirm her
+story, if necessary; though, as she has not been there since she was a
+child of thirteen, and is now a young lady of twenty, they would hardly
+be able to identify her. She works for her living, she says--as a
+teacher, I presume--and tells me to address my reply to 'Station G,
+Broadway.' Her story bears truth on the face of it, I think. Here is the
+letter--read it."
+
+Mr. Blake took the lady-like epistle, and, apparently forgetful of his
+late haste, sat down and perused it from the date "New York, March 7th,
+1862," to the signature, "Yours respectfully, Olive W. Henderson." He
+laid it down with a thoughtful face.
+
+"Her statement is frank and clear, and coincides in every particular
+with what Mrs. Leroy told you. I don't think there is any deception, but
+you had better write to Yonkers and ascertain."
+
+"I shall do so: and if all is right, I will forward money to Miss
+Henderson to come here at once. I am heartily glad to be rid of the
+bother at last. What will Speckport say?"
+
+"Ah, what won't it say! It's an ill wind that blows nobody good; and
+what killed poor Natty Marsh is the making of this girl. I wonder if
+she's good-looking. I shouldn't mind making up to her myself, if she
+is."
+
+"You might make down again, then. She wouldn't touch you with a pair of
+tongs. How did Mrs. Marsh take the news?"
+
+"She cried a little," said Val, turning to go, "and then went back to
+'Florinda the Forsaken,' I having disturbed her in the middle of the
+ninety-eighth chapter."
+
+Nodding familiarly, Mr. Blake took his departure, and Mr. Darcy sat down
+to write to Station G, Broadway, and to Yonkers.
+
+The very winds of heaven seemed to carry news in Speckport, and before
+night everybody at all concerned knew that the heiress of Redmon had
+turned up.
+
+Before the expiration of a fortnight, Mr. Darcy received an answer from
+Yonkers. Mr. and Mrs. Philip Henderson had resided there with their two
+daughters some years before, but he had absconded in debt, and his wife
+had left the place, and died shortly after. Harriet and Olive, they
+believed, were the names of the children; but they knew nothing whatever
+of them, whether they were living or dead. Mr. Henderson, they had read
+in the papers, had died very suddenly in Canada--committed suicide, they
+believed, but they were not certain.
+
+Mr. Darcy, upon receipt of these letters, forwarded a hundred dollars to
+Miss Henderson, desiring her to come on without delay to Speckport, and
+take possession of her property. The hunt for the heirs had given Mr.
+Darcy considerable trouble, and he was very glad to be rid of the bore.
+He directed the young lady to come to his house immediately upon
+landing, instead of a hotel; if she sent him word what day she would
+come, he would be at the boat to meet her.
+
+Mr. Val Blake, among less noted people, went down to the wharf one
+Tuesday afternoon, nearly a fortnight after Mr. Darcy had dispatched
+that last letter containing the hundred dollars, to New York. It was
+late in March now, a lovely, balmy, June-like day; for March, having
+come in like a lion, was going peacefully out like a lamb. There was not
+a shadow of fog in Speckport. The sky was as blue as your eyes, my dear
+reader--unless your eyes happen to be black--with billowy white clouds
+sailing like fairy ships through a fairy sea. The soft breezes and warm
+sunshine rendered fans unnecessary, and the bay was a sheet of sapphire
+and gold. The wharf, a superb wharf, by the way, and a delightful
+promenade, was thronged. All the pretty girls in Speckport--and, oh!
+what a lot of pretty girls there are in Speckport--were there; so were
+the homely ones, and all the nice young men, and the officers with canes
+under their arms, staring at the fair Speckportians. Young and old, rich
+and poor, lined the wharf, sitting down, standing up, and walking about,
+attracted by the beauty of the evening, and the report that the new
+heiress was coming in that day's boat.
+
+Mr. Val Blake, with his hands in his trowsers' pockets as usual, and his
+black Kossuth hat pushed far back on his forehead, not to obstruct his
+view, also as usual, lounged down through the crowd, nodding right and
+left, and joined a group near the end of the wharf, of whom Miss
+Jeannette McGregor, Miss Laura Blair, Miss Catty Clowrie, and Captain
+Cavendish formed prominent features. Two or three more officers and
+civilians hovered around, and way was made for Mr. Blake.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Blake, do you suppose we'll know her when she lands?" eagerly
+inquired Miss McGregor. "I am dying to see what she is like!"
+
+"Darcy's going on board after her," said Val, "you'll see him linking
+her up the wharf. I say, Laura, Bill told me you had a letter from Miss
+Rose."
+
+"Why, yes, didn't you know? And she is coming back with Mrs. Wheatly,
+and I am so glad!"
+
+"Have you been corresponding with Miss Rose all this time, Laura?"
+inquired Miss Clowrie.
+
+"No; this is the first letter I have received. I sent her the 'Spouter,'
+containing Nathalie Marsh's death, to Quebec, and she wrote back in
+reply. This is all I have heard of her until now. She says she has had
+scarcely a moment to herself."
+
+"Do you know, Laura," said Miss McGregor, "I used to think she was half
+in love with Charley Marsh before that terrible affair of his. He was a
+handsome fellow, and she must have seen a great deal of him, living in
+the same house."
+
+"One might fall in love with Charley without living in the same house
+with him, mightn't they, Catty?" asked Mr. Blake, with a grin; "but it's
+all nonsense in saying the little school-mistress cared about him. She
+was too much of a saint to fall in love with any one."
+
+"There's the boat!" cried Captain Cavendish; "coming round Paradise
+Island!"
+
+"And there goes Darcy down the floats," echoed Val. "Watch well, ladies,
+and you will behold the heiress of Redmon in a jiffy."
+
+The steamer swept around the island and floated gracefully up the
+harbor. In twenty minutes she was at the wharf; a little army of cabmen,
+armed with whips, stood ready, as if to thrash the passengers as they
+came up. A couple of M. P.'s, brass-buttoned, blue-coated, and
+red-batoned, stood keeping order among the rabble of boys, ready to tear
+each other's eyes out for the privilege of carrying somebody's luggage.
+Our party flocked to the edge of the high wharf overlooking the floats,
+up which the travelers must come, and strained their necks and eyes to
+catch sight of the heiress. Mr. Darcy had gone on board the first moment
+he could, and the passengers were flocking out and up the floats. Some
+of them, who had been to Speckport before, or had heard from others that
+it was one of the institutions of the place for the population of the
+town to flock down on such occasions, passed on indifferently; but
+others, more ignorant, looked, up in amazement, and wondered if all
+those people expected friends. Most of the passengers had gone, when
+there was an exclamation from more than one mouth of "Here she is!"
+"There's the heiress with Mr. Darcy!" "Look, she's coming!" and all bent
+forward more eagerly than before. Yes, Mr. Darcy was slowly ascending
+the floats with a lady on his arm, a tall lady, very slender and
+graceful of figure, wearing a black silk dress, a black cloth mantle
+trimmed with purple, a plain dark traveling bonnet, and a thick brown
+vail. The vail defied penetration--the eyes of Argus himself could not
+have discovered the face behind it.
+
+"Oh, hang the vail!" cried Captain Cavendish; "they ought to be indicted
+as public nuisances. The face belonging to such a figure should be
+pretty!"
+
+"How tall she is!" exclaimed Miss McGregor, who was rather dumpy than
+otherwise. "She is a perfect giantess!"
+
+"Five feet six, I should say, was mademoiselle's height," remarked Val,
+with mathematical precision. "I like tall women. How stately she walks!"
+
+"I suppose she'll be putting on airs now," remarked Miss McGregor, with
+true feminine dislike to hear another woman praised; "and forget she
+ever had to work for her living in New York. Or perhaps she'll go back
+there and take her fortune with her."
+
+"You wouldn't be sorry, Jeannette, would you?" said Laura. "She's a
+terrible rival, I know, with her thirty thousand pounds, and her stately
+stature. Val, I wish you would find out what she is like before you come
+to our house this evening. You can do anything you please, and I am
+dying to know."
+
+"All right," said Val; "shall I drop into Darcy's, and ask Miss
+Henderson to stand up for inspection, in order that I may report to Miss
+Blair?"
+
+"Oh, nonsense! you can go into Mr. Darcy's if you like, and see her,
+without making a goose of yourself."
+
+"And I'll go with him, Miss Laura," said Mr. Tom Oaks, sauntering up.
+"Blake has no more eye for beauty than a cow, or he would not have lived
+in Speckport all these years, and be a single man to-day. We'll both
+drop in to Darcy's on our way to you, Miss Blair, with a full, true, and
+particular account of Miss Henderson's charms."
+
+"Oh, her charms are beyond dispute, already," said Captain Cavendish;
+"she has thirty thousand, to our certain knowledge."
+
+"And of all charms," drawled Lieutenant the Honorable Blank, "we know
+that golden ones are the most to your taste, Cavendish. You'd better be
+careful and not put your foot in it with this heiress, as they tell me
+you did with the last."
+
+Very few ever had the pleasure of seeing Captain Cavendish disconcerted.
+He only stared icily at his brother-officer, and offered his arm to Miss
+McGregor to lead her to her carriage, which was in waiting, while Mr.
+Oaks did the same duty for Laura. Mr. Blake saw her led off under his
+very nose, with sublimest unconcern, and lounged along the wharf,
+watching the deck-hands getting out freight, with far more interest than
+he could ever have felt in Laura's pretty tittle-tattle. If that lady
+felt disappointed, she knew the proprieties a great deal too well to
+betray it, and held a laughing flirtation all the way up the wharf with
+Mr. Tom Oaks.
+
+"You will be sure to find out what the heiress is like," she said,
+bounding into the carriage. "I shall never know a moment's peace until I
+ascertain."
+
+"I will go to Darcy's with Blake," answered Tom; "that's all I can do.
+If she shows it is all right; if she don't, a fellow can't very well
+send word to her to come and exhibit herself. Adieu, mesdemoiselles!"
+
+The two gentlemen tipped their chapeaux gallantly as the carriage
+rattled off up the hilly streets of Speckport; for every street in
+Speckport is decidedly "the rocky road to Dublin." Mr. Oaks hunted up
+Mr. Blake, and led him off from the fascinating spot, where the men were
+noisily getting out barrels, and bales and boxes.
+
+"I'll call round for you, Blake," he said; "and we'll drop into Darcy's,
+promiscuous, as it were, before going to Laura's. I want to see the
+heiress myself, as much as the girls do."
+
+Mr. Blake was of much too easy a nature to refuse any common request;
+and when, about seven o'clock, Mr. Oaks, magnificently got up in full
+evening costume, partly concealed by a loose and stylish overcoat,
+called at Great St. Peter's Street, he found the master of No. 16
+putting the finishing touches to a characteristically loose and careless
+toilet.
+
+The two young men sallied forth into the brightly starlit March night,
+lighting their cigars as they went, and conjecturing what Miss Henderson
+might be like. At least Mr. Oaks was, Mr. Blake being constitutionally
+indifferent on the subject.
+
+"What's the odds?" said Val; "let her be as pretty as Venus, or as ugly
+as a blooming Hottentot, it makes no difference to you or I, does it?"
+
+"Perhaps not to you, you dry old Diogenes," said Tom; "but to me it's of
+the utmost consequence, as I mean to marry her, should she turn out to
+be handsome."
+
+Mr. Blake stared, for Mr. Oaks had delivered himself of this speech with
+profoundest gravity; but as they were at the lawyer's door, there was no
+time for friendly remonstrance on such precipitate rashness. Val rang,
+and was shown by the young lady who answered the bell, and did general
+housework for Mrs. Darcy, into the parlor. Mr. and Mrs. Darcy were
+there, and so was the new heiress, to whom they were presented in form.
+She still wore her black silk dress, and lay back in a cushioned rocker,
+looking at the bright coal-fire, and talking very little. It was very
+easy to look at her; had she been a tall statue, draped in black, it
+could scarcely have been easier; and the two gentlemen took a mental
+photograph of her, for Miss Blair's benefit and their own, before they
+had been two minutes in the room.
+
+"We were on our way to Miss Blair's tea-splash," Mr. Blake explained,
+"and dropped in. You're not coming, I suppose?"
+
+No, a note-apology had been sent. They were not going. Mrs. Darcy was
+saying this when the young lady looked suddenly up.
+
+"I beg you will not stay on my account," she said. "I am rather
+fatigued, and will retire. I shall be sorry if my arrival deprives you
+of any pleasure."
+
+She had a most melodious voice, deep, but musical, and her smile lit up
+her whole dark face with a luminous brightness, most fascinating, but
+not easily described. You know the magnetic power some of these dark
+faces have, of kindling into sudden light, and how bewitching it is. Mr.
+Oaks seemed to find it so; for she was gazing with an entranced
+absorption that rendered him utterly oblivious of all the rules of
+polite breeding.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Darcy hastened to disclaim the idea of her presence
+depriving them of any pleasure whatever, as people always do on these
+occasions, and repeated their intention of not going. Messrs. Blake and
+Oaks accordingly took their leave, and sallied forth again under the
+quiet stars for the residence of Miss Laura Blair.
+
+The pretty drawing-room of Laura's home was bright with gaslight and
+flowers, and fine faces and charming toilets, and red coats, for the
+officers were there when they entered. What Mr. Blake had denominated a
+"tea-splash" was a grand birth-day ball. Miss Laura was just twenty-one
+that night. She danced up to them as they entered, looking wonderfully
+pretty in rose-silk, and floating white lace, white roses in her hair
+and looping up her rich skirt. "So you have come at last!" was her cry,
+addressing Tom Oaks, and quite ignoring Mr. Blake--the little hypocrite!
+"Have you seen Miss Henderson?"
+
+"Yes," said Val, taking it upon himself to reply, "and she's homely. Her
+nose turns up."
+
+There was a cry of consternation from a group of ladies, who came
+fluttering around them, Miss Jo, tall and gaunt, and grand, in their
+midst.
+
+"Homely!" shouted Mr. Oaks, glaring upon Val. "You lying villain, I'll
+knock you down if you repeat such a slander. She is beautiful as an
+angel! the loveliest girl I ever looked upon."
+
+Everybody stared, and there was a giggle and a flutter among the pretty
+ones at this refreshingly frank confession.
+
+"Nonsense!" said Val. "You can't deny, Oaks, but her nose turns up!"
+
+"I don't care whether it turns up or down!" yelled Mr. Oaks, "or whether
+she's got any nose at all! I know it's perfect, and her eyes are like
+the stars of heaven, and her complexion the loveliest olive I ever
+looked at!"
+
+"Olive!" said Mr. Blake. "I'll take my oath it's yellow, and she's as
+skinny as our Jo there."
+
+"I'm obliged to you, Mr. Blake, for the compliment, I'm sure!" exclaimed
+Miss Jo, flashing fire at the speaker; "and I think you might have a
+little more politeness than running down the poor young lady, if her
+nose does turn up. Sure, she is not to blame, poor creature! if she is
+ugly!"
+
+"But, I tell you, ma'am," roared Mr. Oaks, growing scarlet in the face,
+"she is not ugly! She's beautiful! She's divine! She's an angel!--that's
+what she is!"
+
+"Well," said Mr. Blake, resignedly, "if she's an angel, all I've got to
+say is, that angels ain't much to my taste. She is not half as pretty as
+yourself, Laura; and now I want you to dance with me, after that."
+
+Miss Blair, with a radiant face, put her pretty white hand on Val's
+coat-sleeve, and marched him off. A quadrille was just forming, and they
+took their places.
+
+"So she's really not handsome, Val? What is she like?"
+
+"Oh, she's tall and thin, and straight as a poplar, and she has big,
+flashing black eyes, and tar-black hair, all braided round her head, and
+a haggard sort of look that I don't admire. I dare say, Lady Macbeth
+looked something like her; but she is not the least like poor Nathalie
+Marsh."
+
+"Ah! poor Nathalie! dear Nathalie!" Laura sighed. "It seems like
+yesterday since that night last May, at Jeannette McGregor's, when she
+was the belle and the heiress of Redmon, we all thought, and Captain
+Cavendish came for the first time. I remember, too, Miss Rose arrived
+that night, and we were asking Charley--poor Charley!--what she looked
+like. And now to think of all the changes that have taken place! I
+declare, it seems heartless of us to be dancing and enjoying ourselves
+here, after all!"
+
+"So it is," said Val, "and we are a heartless lot, I expect; but,
+meantime, the quadrille is commencing, and as you have not taken the
+vail yet, Miss Blair, suppose you make me a bow, and let us have a whack
+at it with the rest!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+THE HEIRESS OF REDMON ENTERS SOCIETY.
+
+
+A pretty room--Brussels carpet on the floor, marble-topped table strewn
+with gayly-bound books and photograph-albums, chairs and sofas cushioned
+in green billiard-cloth, hangings of lace and damask on the windows, a
+tall Psyche mirror, a dressing-table, strewn with ivory-backed brushes,
+perfume bottles, kid gloves, and cambric handkerchiefs; and marble
+mantel, adorned with delicate vases filled with flowers. You might have
+thought it a lady's boudoir but for the pictures on the papered
+walls--pictures of ballet-dancers and racehorses, with one or two Indian
+scenes of pig-sticking, tiger and jackal hunts, and massacres of Sepoys,
+and the pistols and riding-whips over the mantel, and the gentleman
+standing at the window, looking out. He wore a captain's uniform, and
+nothing could have set off his fine figure so well; and this lady-like
+apartment was his, and told folios about the man's tastes and character.
+He stood looking out on the lamp-lit street, with people passing
+carelessly up and down, not looking at them, but thinking
+deeply--thinking how the best-laid plans of his life had been defeated
+by that invincible Fate, which was the only deity he believed in, and
+laying fresh plans, so skillfully to be carried out as to baffle grim
+Madam Fate herself. He was going to a party to-night--a party given by
+Mrs. Darcy, to introduce the new heiress of Redmon to Speckportian
+society.
+
+Captain George Percy Cavendish, standing at the window, looking
+abstractedly out at the starlit and gaslit street, was thinking. No one
+had wished more to see the heiress than he. She was the fashion, the
+sensation, the notoriety of the day. What eclat for him, not to speak of
+the solid advantages in the way of dollars and cents, to carry off this
+heiress, in fair and open combat, from all competitors. Tom Oaks, the
+most insensible of mankind, had seen her but once, and had gone raving
+about her ever since. Then, she was the heiress of Redmon, and Captain
+Cavendish had vowed a vow long ago, that Redmon and its thousands should
+be his, in spite of the very old Diable himself. Did he think
+remorsefully of that other heiress who had staked all for him, and lost
+the game? I doubt it.
+
+A little toy of a clock on a Grecian bracket struck ten. There had been
+a noisy mess-dinner to detain him, and he was late; but he did not mind
+that. Mr. Johnson, his man, appeared, to assist him on with his
+greatcoat, and Captain Cavendish started to behold his fate!
+
+The drawing-room of the lawyer's house was filled when he entered--he
+being himself the latest arrival. He stood near the door for some time,
+watching the figures passing and re-passing, gliding in and out of the
+dance--for they were dancing--glancing from one to the other of those
+pretty mantraps, baited in rainbow-silk, jewelry, and artificial
+flowers, for the capture of such as he. He was looking for the heiress,
+but all of those faces were familiar, and almost all deigned him their
+sweetest smiles in passing--for was there another marriageable man in
+all Speckport as handsome as he? While he waited, Lieutenant the
+Honorable L. H. Blank, in a brilliant scarlet uniform, approached with a
+lady on his arm, and Captain Cavendish knew that he was face to face
+with the heiress of Redmon! She had been dancing, and the lieutenant led
+her to a seat, and left her to fulfill some request of hers. Captain
+Cavendish looked at her, with an electric thrill flashing through every
+nerve. Tom Oaks was right when he had called this woman glorious. It was
+the only word that seemed to fit her, with her dark Assyrian beauty, her
+flaming black eye, and superb wealth of dead-black hair. Yes, she was
+glorious, this black-eyed divinity, who was dressed like the heroine of
+a novel, in spotless white, floating like a pale cloud of mist all about
+her, and emblematic of virgin innocence, perhaps; only this dark
+daughter of the earth would hardly do to sit to an artist for an ideal
+Innocence.
+
+She was dressed with wonderful simplicity, with a coronal of vivid
+scarlet berries and dark-green leaves in the shining braids of her black
+hair, and a little diamond star, shining and scintillating on her
+breast. Her nose might turn up, her forehead might be too broad and
+high, her face too long and thin for classic beauty, but with all that
+she was magnificent. There was a streaming light in her great black
+eyes, a crimson glow on her thin cheeks, and a sort of subtle brilliant
+electricity about her, not to be described, and not to be resisted. This
+flashing-eyed girl was one of those women for whom worlds have been
+lost--dark enchantresses not to be resisted by mortal man.
+
+While Captain Cavendish stood there, magnetized and fascinated, a
+ringing laugh at his elbow made him look round. It was Miss Laura Blair,
+of course; no one ever laughed like that, but herself.
+
+"Love at first sight, is it?" she asked, with a wicked look; "come
+along, and I'll introduce you."
+
+A moment after he was bowing to the dark divinity, and asking her to
+dance. Miss Henderson assented, with a bewitching smile, and turned that
+dark entrancing face of hers to Laura.
+
+"Do you know I wanted you, and have sent my late partner off in search
+of you. I suppose the poor fellow is scouring the house in vain. They
+are going to take me to Redmon and around the town to-morrow, it seems,
+and I want to know if you will come?"
+
+Come! Laura's sparkling face answered before her words. The enchantress
+had fascinated her as well as the rest; and, in a superb and gracious
+sort of way, she seemed to have taken a fancy in turn to the
+laughter-loving Bluenose damsel.
+
+While Laura was speaking, Lieutenant Blank came up, looking dazed and
+helpless after his search; and directly after him, Mr. Tom Oaks, who had
+been hovering around Miss Henderson all the evening, like a moth round a
+candle. Mr. Oaks wanted her to dance, and glared vindictively upon
+Captain Cavendish on hearing she was engaged to that gentleman, who led
+her off with a calm air of superiority, very galling to a jealous lover.
+
+The dance turned out to be a waltz, and Miss Henderson waltzed as if she
+had indeed been the ballet-dancer envious people said she was. She
+floated--it was not motion--and the young officer, who was an excellent
+waltzer himself, thought he never had such a partner before in his life.
+Long after the rest had ceased, they floated round and round, the
+cynosure of all eyes, and the handsomest pair in the room. Tom Oaks,
+looking on, ground his teeth, and could have strangled the handsome
+Englishman without remorse.
+
+As he stood there glowering upon them, Mr. Darcy came along and slapped
+him on the back.
+
+"It's no use, Oaks. You can't compete with Cavendish! Handsome couple,
+are they not?"
+
+Mr. Oaks ground out something between his teeth, by way of reply, that
+was very like an oath, and Mr. Darcy went on his way, laughing. Standing
+there, scowling darkly, Mr. Oaks saw Captain Cavendish lead Miss
+Henderson to the piano.
+
+Miss Henderson was a most brilliant pianiste, and quite electrified
+Speckport that night. Her white hands swept over the ivory keys, and a
+storm of music surged through the room, and held them spell-bound.
+
+Those who had stigmatized her as a ballet-dancer and a dress-maker were
+staggered. Ballet-dancers and dressmakers, poor things! don't often play
+the piano like that, or have Mendelssohn's and Beethoven's superbest
+compositions at their finger-ends. In short, Miss Henderson bewitched
+Speckport that night, even as she had bewitched poor Tom Oaks. Never had
+a debut on the great stage of life been so successful. Where the
+witchery lay, none could tell; she was not beautiful of feature or
+complexion, yet half the people there thought her dazzlingly beautiful.
+
+In short, Olive Henderson was not the sort of woman fire-side fairies
+and household angels and perfect wives are made of, but the kind men go
+mad for, and rarely marry. She was so brightly beautiful that she defied
+criticism; and she moved in their midst a young empress, crowned with
+the scarlet coronal and jetty braids, her diamond-star scintillating
+rays of rainbow fire, and that smiling face of hers alluring all. Even
+that slow Val Blake felt the spell of the sorceress, recanted his former
+heresy, and protested he was as near being in love with her as he had
+ever been with any one in his life.
+
+The confession was made to Laura Blair, of all people in the world; but
+the glamour was over her eyes, too, and she heard it without surprise,
+almost without jealousy.
+
+"Oh, she's splendid, Val," the young lady enthusiastically cried. "I
+never loved any one so much in my life as I do her! How could you say
+she was ugly?"
+
+"Upon my word, I don't know," responded Mr. Blake helplessly; "I thought
+she was at the time, but she don't seem like the same person. How that
+Cavendish does stick to her, to be sure."
+
+The cold pale dawn of the April day was lifting a leaden eye over the
+bay and the distant hill-top, when the assembly broke up. It was four
+o'clock of a cold and winter morning before the lights were fled, the
+garlands dead, and the banquet-halls deserted. Speckport was very quiet
+as the tired pleasure-seekers went wearily home, the chill sweeping wind
+penetrating to the bone.
+
+Leaning against a lamp-post, opposite Mr. Darcy's house, and gazing with
+ludicrous earnestness at one particular window of that mansion, was a
+gentleman, whom the cold and uncomfortable dawn appeared to affect but
+very little. The gentleman was Mr. Tom Oaks, his face flushed, his hair
+tumbled, and his shirt-bosom in a limp and wine-splashed state, and the
+window was that of Miss Henderson's room. Heaven only knows how these
+mad lovers find out things; perhaps the passion gives them some
+mysterious indication; but he knew the window of her room, and stood
+there watching her morning-lamp burn, with an absorption that rendered
+him unconscious of cold and sleet and fatigue. While he was gazing at
+the light, with his foolish heart in his eyes, a hand was laid on his
+shoulder, and a familiar voice sounded in his ear:
+
+"I say, Oaks, old fellow! What are you doing here? You'll be laid up
+with rheumatic fever, if you stand in this blast much longer."
+
+Tom turned round, and saw Captain Cavendish's laughing face. The young
+officer was buttoned up to the chin, and was smoking a cigar.
+
+"It's no affair of yours, sir," cried Mr. Oaks, rather more fiercely
+than the occasion seemed to warrant. "The street's free, I suppose!"
+
+"Oh, certainly," said the captain, turning carelessly away; "only Miss
+Henderson might consider it rather impertinent if she knew her window
+was watched, and there is a policeman coming this way who may possibly
+take you up on suspicion of burglary."
+
+It is not improbable, if Captain Cavendish had not already been some
+paces off, Tom's fist would have been in his face, and his manly length
+measured on the pavement. Tom never knew afterward what it was kept him
+from knocking the Englishman down, whom he already hated with the
+cordial and savage hatred of a true lover. But the captain was not
+knocked down, and walked home to his elegant rooms, a contemptuous smile
+on his lips, but an annoyed feeling within. He was so confoundedly
+good-looking, he thought, this big, blustering, noisy Tom Oaks, and so
+immensely rich, and women had such remarkably bad taste sometimes that--
+
+"Oh, pshaw!" he impatiently cried to himself, "what am I thinking of to
+fear a rival in Tom Oaks--that overgrown, blundering idiot. What a
+glorious creature she is! By Jove! If she were a beggar, those eyes of
+hers might make her fortune!"
+
+Early in the afternoon of the next day, the plain dark carryall of the
+lawyer, containing himself and Miss Henderson, drove up to Mr. Blair's
+for Laura.
+
+Laura did not keep them long waiting; she ran down the steps, her pretty
+face all smiles, and was helped in and driven off. Miss Henderson lay
+back like a princess among the cushions, a black velvet mantle folded
+around her, and looked languidly at the beauties of Speckport as Laura
+pointed them out. Queen Street stared with all its eyes after the
+heiress, and the young ladies envied Miss Blair her position, the
+cynosure of all. The windows of Golden Row were luminous with eyes. If
+the heiress of Redmon had been the pig-faced lady, she could hardly have
+attracted more attention. But she might have been a duchess, instead of
+an ex-seamstress, she was so unaffectedly and radically indifferent; she
+looked at banks, and custom-houses, and churches, and squares, and men,
+and women, with listless eyes, but never once kindled into interest.
+Yes, once they did. It was when they reached the lower part of the town,
+Cottage Street, in fact, and the bay, all alive with boats, and
+schooners, and steamers, and ships, came in sight, its saline breath
+sweeping up in their faces, and its deep, solemn, ceaseless roar
+sounding in their ears. The heiress sat erect, and a vivid light kindled
+in her wonderful eyes.
+
+"Oh, the sea!" she cried; "the great, grand, beautiful sea! Oh, Laura! I
+should like to live where its voice would sound always, night and day,
+in my ears!"
+
+She had grown so accustomed to hear every one the night before call Miss
+Blair Laura, that the name came involuntarily, and Laura liked it best.
+
+"It is down here Nathalie Marsh used to live," Laura said; "there is the
+house. Poor Nathalie!"
+
+"Mrs. Darcy was telling me of her. She was very pretty, was she not?"
+
+"She was beautiful! Not like you," said Laura, paying a compliment with
+the utmost simplicity; "but fair, with dark blue eyes, and long golden
+curls, and the loveliest singer you ever heard. Every one loved her.
+Poor Natty!"
+
+Tears came into Laura's eyes as she spoke of the friend she had loved,
+and through their mist she did not see how Olive Henderson's face was
+darkening.
+
+"I never received such a shock as when I heard she was missing. I had
+been with her a little before, and she had been talking so strangely and
+wildly, asking me if I thought drowning was an easy death. It frightened
+me; but I never thought she would do so dreadful a deed."
+
+"There can be no doubt, I suppose, but that it was suicide?"
+
+"Oh no! but she was delirious; she was not herself--my poor, poor Natty!
+They talk of broken hearts--if ever any one's heart broke, it was hers!"
+
+The strange, dark gloom falling like a pall on the face of the heiress,
+darkened, but Laura did not notice.
+
+"Was it," she hesitated, and averted her face; "was it the loss of this
+fortune?"
+
+"That, among other things; but I think she felt most of all about poor
+Charley. Ah! what a handsome fellow he was, and so fond of fun and
+frolic--every one loved Charley! I suppose Mrs. Darcy told you all the
+story?"
+
+"Yes. You are quite sure it wasn't he, after all, who committed the
+murder?"
+
+"Sure!" Laura cried, indignantly. "I am certain! If everybody hadn't
+been a pack of geese, they would never have suspected Charley Marsh, who
+wouldn't hurt a fly! No, it was some one else, and Val--I mean Mr.
+Blake--says if ever Cherrie Nettleby is found, it will be sure to come
+out!"
+
+"And Mr. Blake supports Mrs. Marsh, Mrs. Darcy says. That is very good
+of him."
+
+Laura's eyes sparkled.
+
+"Good! Val Blake's the best, the kindest-hearted, and most generous
+fellow that ever lived. He has that off-hand, unpolished way, you know;
+but at heart, he is as good, and kind, and tender as a woman!"
+
+She spoke with an eagerness--this impulsive Laura--that told her secret
+plainly enough; but the heiress was thinking of other things.
+
+"She was engaged to Captain Cavendish--this Miss Marsh--was she not?"
+she asked.
+
+"Yes, I believe so; but it never was so publicly given out. He was her
+shadow; and every one said it would be a match after Mrs. Leroy's
+death, for she detested him."
+
+"How did he act after she lost her fortune?"
+
+"Well, the time was so short between that and her dreadful death, that
+he had very little opportunity of doing anything; but the general
+opinion was, the engagement would be broken off. In fact, he told Val
+himself that she broke off, immediately after--for Natty was proud. He
+went to the house every day, I know, until--Oh! _quand on parle de
+diable_--there he is himself!"
+
+Laura did not mean by this abrupt change that his Satanic Majesty was
+coming, though it sounded like it. It was only one of his earthly
+emissaries--Captain Cavendish, on horseback. Captain Cavendish looked
+handsomer on horseback than anywhere else, a fact of which he was fully
+convinced, and he rode up and lifted his hat to the ladies with gallant
+grace.
+
+"Good day to you, mesdemoiselles! I called at your house, Mr. Darcy, but
+found Miss Henderson out! I trust I find you well, ladies, after last
+night's fatigue?"
+
+He addressed both, but he spoke only to one. That one lifted her dark
+eyes and bowed distantly, almost coldly, and it was Laura who answered.
+
+"Seven or eight hours' incessant dancing have no effect on such
+constitutions as ours, Captain Cavendish! We have been showing Miss
+Henderson the lions of Speckport!"
+
+"And what does Miss Henderson think of those animals?"
+
+"I like Speckport," she said, scarcely taking the trouble to lift her
+proud eyes; "this part of it particularly."
+
+She was in no mood for conversation, and took little pains to conceal
+it. "Not at home to suitors," was printed plainly on those contracted
+black brows, and in the somber depths of those gloomy eyes. Captain
+Cavendish lifted his hat and rode on, and the distrait beauty just
+deigned a formal bend of her regal head, and no more.
+
+Laura smiled a little maliciously to herself, not at all sorry to see
+the irresistible Captain Cavendish rather snubbed than otherwise. There
+was nowhere to go now but to Redmon, and they drove along the quiet
+road, in the gathering twilight of the short March afternoon. A gray and
+eerie twilight, too, the low flat sky, of uniform leaden tint, hanging
+dark over the black fields and moaning sea. The trees, all along the
+road, stretched out gaunt, bare arms, and the cries of the whirling
+sea-gulls came up in the cold evening blasts. They had fallen into
+silence, involuntarily--the gloom of the hour and the dreary scene
+weighing down the spirits of all. Something of the gloominess of the
+flat dull landscape lay shadowed on the face of the heiress, as she
+shivered behind her wraps in the raw sea-gusts.
+
+Ann Nettleby stood at her own door as the party drove by. The cottage
+looked forlorn and stripped, too, with only bare poles where the
+scarlet-runners used to climb, and a dismal entanglement of broom
+stalks, where the roses and sweetbrier used to flourish. Mr. Darcy drew
+rein for a moment to nod to the girl.
+
+"How d'ye do, Ann! Any news from that runaway Cherrie yet?"
+
+"No, sir," said Ann, her eyes fixed curiously on the heiress.
+
+"Is this Redmon?" asked Miss Henderson, looking over the cottage at the
+red brick house. "What a dismal place!"
+
+Dismal, surely, if house ever was! All the shutters were closed, all the
+doors fastened, no smoke ascending from the broken chimneys, no sound of
+life within or without; not even a dog, to humanize the ghostly solitude
+of the place. Black, and grim, and ghostly, it reared its gloomy front
+to the gloomy sky; the stripped and skeleton trees moaning weirdly about
+it, an air of decay and desolation over all. Forlorn and deserted, it
+looked like a haunted house, and such Speckport believed it to be. The
+two young ladies leaning on Mr. Darcy's arms as they walked up the
+bleak, bare avenue, between the leafless trees, drew closer to his side,
+in voiceless awe. The rattling branches seemed to catch at the heiress
+as she passed them, to catch savagely at this new mistress, out of whose
+face every trace of color had slowly died away.
+
+"It's a dismal old barrack," Mr. Darcy said, trying to laugh; "but you
+two girls needn't look like ghosts about it. If the sun was shining now,
+I dare say you would be laughing at its grimness, both of you."
+
+"I don't know," said the heiress, "I cannot conceive this place anything
+but ghostly and gloomy. I should be afraid of that murdered woman or
+that drowned girl coming out from under those black trees in the dead of
+night. I shall never like Redmon."
+
+"Oh, pooh!" said Mr. Darcy, "yes, you will. When the sun is shining and
+the grass is green, and the birds singing in these old trees, you'll
+sing a different tune, Miss Olive. We'll have a villa here, and this old
+rookery out of the way, and fine doings up here, and, after a while, a
+wedding, with Laura here, for bridesmaid, and myself to give you away.
+Won't we, Laura?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know, sir. Who do you want to give her away to?"
+
+"Well, I'm not certain. There's Tom Oaks looney about her; and there's
+that good-looking Englishman, all you girls are dying for. You like
+soldiers, don't you, Miss Olive?"
+
+"Not particularly. Especially soldiers who never smell powder except on
+parade-day, and whose only battles are sham ones. I like those poor
+fellows who are fighting and dying down South, but carpet-knights I
+don't greatly affect.
+
+"That's a rap over the head, Mr. Darcy," cried Laura, with sparkling
+eyes. "I wish he heard you, Miss Henderson."
+
+"He might if he liked," said the heiress, scornfully.
+
+"Well," said the lawyer, taking the "rap" good-humoredly, "he can make
+whom he marries, 'my lady,' some day. Is not that an inducement, my
+dear?"
+
+"Is he of the nobility, then?" asked Olive Henderson, indifferently, and
+not replying to the question.
+
+"He is next heir to a baronetcy. Lady Olive Cavendish does not sound
+badly, does it?"
+
+"He used to come here often enough in the old days," Laura said,
+looking at the gloomy old mansion; "he was all devotion to poor
+Nathalie."
+
+Miss Henderson's beautiful short upper-lip curled.
+
+"He seems to have got wonderfully well over it in so brief a time, for a
+love so devoted."
+
+"It is man's nature, my dear," said Mr. Darcy; "here's the house, will
+you go through?"
+
+Laura absolutely screamed at the idea.
+
+"Good gracious, Mr. Darcy! I would not go in for all the world. Don't
+go, Olive--I mean Miss Henderson."
+
+"Oh, call me Olive! I hate Miss Henderson. No, I don't care for going
+in--the place has given me the horrors already."
+
+As they walked back to the carriage, Laura asked her what she thought of
+Mr. Darcy's plan of the villa.
+
+"I shall think about it," was the reply. "Meantime, Mr. Darcy, I wish
+you would look out for a nice house for me, one with a garden attached,
+and a stable, and in some nice street, with a view of the water."
+
+"But, dear me!" said Laura, "I should think it would be ever so much
+nicer and handier to board. It will be such a bother, housekeeping and
+looking after servants, and all that kind of thing. If I were you I
+would board."
+
+She turned upon Laura Blair, her eyes, her face, her voice, so
+passionate, that that young lady quite recoiled.
+
+"Laura!" she cried out, in that passionate voice, "I must have a home. A
+home, do you hear, not a boarding-house. Heaven knows I have had enough
+of them to last me my life, and the sound of the word is hateful to me.
+I must have a home where I will be the mistress, free to do as I please,
+to come and go as I like, to receive my friends and go to them as it
+suits me, unasked and unquestioned. I must have a home of my own, or I
+shall die."
+
+Mr. Darcy looked out a house for the heiress; and after a fortnight's
+search, found one to suit. It belonged to a certain major, who was going
+with his bride, a fair Speckportian, home to old England, on a prolonged
+leave of absence. It was to be let, all ready furnished; it was situated
+around the corner from Golden Row, commanding a fine view of the
+harbor, and with two most essential requisites, a garden and a stable.
+It was a pretty little cottage house, with a tiny drawing-room opening
+into a library, and a parlor opening into a dining-room. There was a
+wide hall between, with a delightful glass porch in front, a garden
+fronting the street, and the door at the other end of the hall opening
+into a grass-grown backyard. Altogether it was a pleasant little house,
+and Miss Henderson took it at once, as it stood, on the major's own
+terms, and made arrangements for removing there at once.
+
+"I must have a horse, Laura, you know," she said to Miss Blair, as they
+inspected the cottage together, for the two girls had grown more and
+more intimate, with every passing day. "I must have a horse, and a man
+to take care of him; and besides, I shall feel safer with a man in the
+house. Then I must have a housekeeper, some nice motherly old lady, who
+will take all that trouble off my hands; and a chambermaid, who must be
+pretty, for one likes to have pretty things about one; and I shall get
+new curtains and pictures, and send to Boston for a piano and lots of
+music, and oh, Laura! I shall be just as happy as a queen here all day
+long."
+
+She waltzed round the room where they were alone, in her new glee, for
+she was as fitful of temper as an April day--all things by turns, and
+nothing long. Laura, who was lolling back in a stuffed rocker, looked at
+her lazily. "A housekeeper, Olly! There's Mrs. Hill, that widow you told
+me once you thought had such a pleasant face. She is the widow of a
+pilot, and has no children. She lives with her brother-in-law, Mr.
+Clowrie, and would be glad of the place."
+
+Miss Henderson gave a last whirl and wheeled breezily down upon a
+lounge.
+
+"Would she? But perhaps she wouldn't suit. I want some one that can get
+up dinners, and oversee everything when I have a party. I must have a
+cook, too--I forgot that."
+
+Laura laughed.
+
+"If you went dinnerless one day, you would be apt to remember it
+afterward. Mrs. Hill is quite competent to a dinner, or any other
+emergency, for she was housekeeper in some very respectable English
+family, before she married that pilot. I am sure she would suit, and I
+know she would like to come."
+
+"And I know I would like to have her. I'll go down to Mr. Clowrie's
+to-morrow, and make her hunt me up a cook and housemaid, and stableman.
+I shall want a gardener, too--that's another thing I forgot."
+
+"Old Nettleby will do that. I say, Olly, you ought to give us a
+house-warming."
+
+"I mean to; but they never can dance in these little rooms. Oh, how nice
+it is to have a house of one's own!"
+
+Laura wondered at the morbid earnestness of Miss Henderson on this
+subject. She knew very little of the prior history of the heiress,
+beyond that from great wealth she had fallen to great poverty, and had
+had unpleasant experience in New York boarding-houses; the probable
+origin of this desperate heart-sick longing for a house of her own--a
+home where she would be the mistress, the sovereign queen.
+
+Mrs. Hill, the pilot's widow, was very glad of Miss Henderson's offer,
+and gratefully closed with it at once. Perhaps the bread of dependence,
+never very sweet, was unusually bitter, when sliced by the fair hand of
+Miss Catty. She was a tall, portly old lady, with a fair, pleasing,
+unwrinkled face, and kindly blue eyes, that had a motherly tenderness in
+them for the rich young orphan girl.
+
+"And I want you to find me a cook, and a groom, and a housemaid, Mrs.
+Hill," Olive said; "and the girl must be pretty. I mean to have nothing
+but pretty things about me. I am going to the cottage on Monday, and you
+must have them all before then."
+
+Mrs. Hill was a treasure of a housekeeper. Before Saturday night she had
+engaged a competent cook, whose husband knew all about horses, and took
+the place of groom and coachman. She got, too, a chambermaid, with a
+charmingly pretty face and form; and the new window-draperies of snowy
+lace and purple satin were festooned from their gilded cornices; and the
+new furniture was arranged; and the new pictures, lonely little
+landscape-scenes, hung around the walls. It was a perfect little bijou
+of a cottage, and the heiress danced from room to room on Monday morning
+with the glee of a happy child delighted with its new toy, and hugged
+Laura at least a dozen times over.
+
+"Oh, Laura, Laura, how happy I am! and how happy I am going to be here!
+I feel as if this great big world were all sunshine and beauty, and I
+were the happiest mortal in it!"
+
+"Yes, dear," said Laura, "but don't strangle me, if you can help it. The
+rooms are beautiful, and your dear five hundred are dying to behold
+them. When does that house-warming come off?"
+
+Miss Henderson was whirling round and round like a crazy teetotum, and
+now stopped before Miss Blair with a sweeping courtesy that ballooned
+her dress all out around her.
+
+"On Thursday night, mademoiselle, Miss Henderson is 'At Home'. The cards
+will be issued to-day. Come and practice 'Come Where my Love Lies
+Dreaming.' Captain Cavendish takes the tenor, and Lieutenant Blank the
+bass. We must charm our friends with it that night."
+
+Miss Henderson did not invite all her dear five hundred friends that
+Thursday night--the cottage-rooms would not have held them. As it was,
+the pretty dining-room and parlor were well filled, and the heiress
+stood receiving her guests with the air of a royal princess holding a
+drawing-room. She looked brilliantly beautiful, in her dress of rich
+mauve silk sweeping the carpet with its trailing folds, its flounces of
+filmy black lace, a circlet of red gold in her dead black hair, twisted
+in broad shining plaits around her graceful head, a diamond necklace and
+cross blazing like a river of light around her swanlike throat, and a
+diamond bracelet flashing on one rounded arm. Speckport, ah!
+ever-envious Speckport, said these were but Australian brilliants, and
+that the whole set had not cost three hundred dollars in New York; but
+Speckport had nothing like them, and Speckport never looked on anything
+so beautiful as Olive Henderson that night. She was no longer wan and
+haggard; her dark cheeks had a scarlet suffusion under the brown skin,
+and the majestic eye a radiance that seemed more and more glorious every
+time you saw her.
+
+No one could complain that night of caprice or coquetry, or partiality;
+all were treated alike; Tom Oaks, Lieutenant Blank, Mr. Val Blake, and
+Captain Cavendish; she had enchanting smiles, and genial hostess-like
+courtesies for all, love for none. Whatever beat in the heart throbbing
+against the amber silk, the lace and the diamonds of her bodice, she
+only knew--the beautiful dark face was a mask you could not read.
+
+Miss Henderson's reception was a grand success; Mrs. Hill's supper
+something that immortalized her forever after in Speckport. The guests
+went home in the gray morning light with a dazed feeling that they had
+been under a spell all night, and were awakening uncomfortably from it
+now. They were under the spell of those magical smiles, of that
+entrancing face and voice--a spell they were powerless to withstand,
+which fascinated all against their better judgment, which made poor Tom
+Oaks wander up and down in the cold, before the cottage, until sunrise,
+to the imminent risk of catching his death; which made half a score of
+his young towns-men lose their sleep and their appetite, and which made
+Captain George Percy Cavendish pace up and down his room in a sort of
+fever for two mortal hours, thrilling with the remembrance of the
+flashing light in those black eyes, in the bewildering touch of those
+hands. For you see, Captain Cavendish, having set a net to entrap an
+heiress, was getting hopelessly entangled in its meshes himself, and was
+drunk with the draught he would have held to her lips.
+
+And so the reeling world went round, and she who wove the spell, who
+turned the heads, and dazed the hot brains of these young men, lay
+tossing on a sleepless pillow, sleepless with the excitement of the dead
+hours, sleepless with something far worse than excitement--remorse!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+THE SPELL OF THE ENCHANTRESS.
+
+
+The changes which Mr. Darcy had prophesied were going on at Redmon.
+Before the middle of May, the transformation had begun. The weird old
+red-brick house, haunted by so many dismal associations, lay on the
+ground a great heap of broken bricks and mortar, and the villa was going
+up with a rapidity only surpassed by Aladdin's palace. Miss Henderson
+had drawn out the plans herself, and superintended the works, with a
+clear head and a bright eye for all shortcomings and deficiencies. She
+rode over every day from the cottage, mounted on her black steed
+Lightning, her black-velvet cap with its long scarlet-tipped plume
+flashing in among the workmen, as, with gathered-up skirt, she inspected
+the progress of the building.
+
+She entered with a true womanly interest into the erection and
+beautifying of this new home, and had quite got over her superstitious
+awe of the place. Perhaps this was owing to an artfully-laid plan of
+that scheming lawyer, Mr. Darcy, who, being absurdly fond of the
+dark-eyed heiress, and fearful of her depriving Speckport of the light
+of her beautiful countenance, by flying off somewhere, resolved she
+should like Redmon, and reside there. Accordingly, about a week after
+Miss Henderson had gone to the cottage, he had gotten-up a picnic to
+Redmon--a select picnic, with the military band and a platform for
+dancing.
+
+The picnic day had dawned in cloudless splendor. Coquettish April,
+finding she must yield in spite of all her tears and smiles to her
+fairer sister, May, seemed resolved to put up with the inevitable with a
+good grace; and the day was more like sunny June than early spring.
+Before ten in the morning the party were on the grounds, swinging among
+the trees, dancing on the shaded platform, wandering among the grand
+old woods, or fishing in the clear streams running through them. The
+string band, perched up in a gallery, played away merrily; and what with
+sunshine and music, and gay laughter and bright faces, Redmon was a very
+different-looking place from the Redmon of a few weeks before. Miss
+Henderson had driven Laura Blair up in a little pony-carriage she had
+purchased, and owned that Redmon was not so lifeless after all. But she
+did not enter into the spirit of the thing with any great zest. Laura
+whispered it was one of her "dark days" to those who noticed the silent,
+abstracted, almost gloomy manner of the heiress. She danced very little,
+and had walked moodily through the quadrille, chafing at its length, and
+then had broken from her partner, and gone wandering off among the
+trees. Laura Blair made up in herself for all that was wanting in her
+friend. She was everywhere at once; now flying through a crazy cotillon;
+now on the swings, flashing in and out among the trees; now
+superintending the unpacking, and assisting Mrs. Hill and Catty Clowrie
+to set the table. The cloth was laid on the grass; the cold hams and
+fowls; the hot tea and coffee; the pies, and cakes, and sandwiches; the
+hungry picnickers called, and great and mighty was the eating thereof.
+
+After dinner, the house was to be explored, the sight of ghosts, Mr.
+Darcy considered, being unfavorable to digestion. Some weak-minded
+persons declined with a shiver; they had no desire for cold horrors
+then, or the nightmare when they went to bed; and among the number was
+Captain Cavendish. He had no fancy for exploring ratty old buildings, he
+said; he would lie on the grass, and smoke his cigar while they were
+doing the house. Did any thought of unfortunate Nathalie Marsh obtrude
+itself upon the selfish Sybarite as he lay there, smoking his cigar, on
+the fresh spring grass, and looking up through the leafy arcades at the
+serene April sky? Did any thought of the old days, and she who had loved
+him so true and so well, darken for one moment that hard, handsome
+mask--his face? Did any more terrible recollection of a ghostly midnight
+scene that old house had witnessed, come back, terribly menacing? Who
+can tell? The past is haunted for the whole of us; but we banish the
+specter as speedily as possible, and no doubt Captain Cavendish did the
+same.
+
+Miss Henderson, of course, was one of the party, leaning on Mr. Darcy's
+arm; but her face was very pale, and her great eyes filled with a sort
+of nameless fear, as she crossed its gloomy portal. Laura Blair clung
+tightly, with little delightful shudders of apprehension, to the arm of
+Mr. Val Blake, who took it all unconcernedly, as usual, and didn't put
+himself out any to reassure Miss Blair. The house had a damp and earthy
+odor, as of the grave; and their footsteps echoed with a dull, dismal
+sound, as footsteps always do in a deserted house. Dark, dreary, and
+forlorn, it looked, indeed, a haunted house, and every voice was silent
+in awe; the gayest laugh hushed; the most fearless feeling a cold chill
+creeping over him. Rats ran across their path; black beetles swarmed
+everywhere; the walls were slimy, and fat bloated spiders swung from
+vast cobwebs wherever they went. It was all dismal, but in the chamber
+of the tragedy most dismal of all. They hurried out of it almost before
+they had entered it, and went into the next room, the room that had been
+Nathalie's. In the darkness, something caught Val Blake's eye in one
+corner, he picked it up. It was "Paul and Virginia," bound in blue and
+gold; and on the title-page was written, in a man's hand: "To Nathalie,
+from hers in life and death--G. P. C." The book passed from hand to
+hand. No one spoke, but all knew those initials, and all wondered what
+the heiress thought of it. That young lady had not spoken one word since
+they had entered the house, and her face was as white as the dress she
+wore. But they had seen enough now, and they hurried out, heartily
+thankful when the front door boomed slowly behind them, and they were in
+the sunshine and fresh air once more. Every tongue was at once unloosed,
+and ran with a vengeance, as if to make up for lost time. Captain
+Cavendish started from the grass, flung away his cigar, and approached.
+
+"Well, ladies--well, Miss Laura," he asked, "have you seen the ghost?"
+
+"Yes," said Laura, gravely. "Here is a ghost we found in Nathalie's
+room. I presume you have the best right to it!"
+
+She handed him the book before them all, and every eye was turned upon
+him as he glanced at the title-page. His face changed, in spite of all
+his self-control, turning nearly as colorless as Miss Henderson's.
+
+"I believe I did give Miss Marsh this once," he said, trying to be at
+his ease. "I suppose you gave the rats a rare fright! There's the music.
+Miss McGregor, I believe I have this dance?"
+
+The band was playing the "Aline Polka," and no mortal feet could resist
+that. All the girls were soon whirling about like teetotums, and the
+elderly folks sat down for a game of euchre on the grass. Olive
+Henderson, declining, coldly, a dozen eager aspirants for the honor of
+her hand in the polka, strolled off unsociably herself, as she had done
+before. They were too busy enjoying themselves to notice her absence at
+first, and only one followed her. That one was poor Tom Oaks; and to
+him, in her absence, the sun was without light, the world empty, since
+the universe held but her. She did not hear him--she was leaning against
+a tree, looking out with that darkly-brooding face of hers, over the
+spreading fields and wood, sloping down to the sea, and all her own.
+Looking out over that wide sea, with a dreary stare, that told plainly
+all the wealth she had inherited, all the love and admiration she had
+won, had not the power to make her happy. Her white dress fluttered in
+the spring breeze; her shawl, of rich gold-colored crape, fell in loose,
+graceful folds, like sunlight-drapery, around her, held together with
+one little brown hand. Her head was bare, and the shining profusion of
+thick black hair was twisted in great serpent-like coils around her
+head. She looked more sultana-like than ever, holding that mass of
+glowing golden drapery around her, a woman to command a kingdom, not to
+be wooed for a household-angel; but that poor Tom Oaks was down on the
+grass at her feet, before she knew he was near, imploring her to take
+pity upon him. Heaven only knows what he said--Tom never did; but he was
+pouring out his whole heart in a vehement outburst of passionate
+pleading. The man had chosen an unpropitious moment.
+
+"Get up, Mr. Oaks," the cold sweet voice said; "don't make such a scene!
+Hush! some one will hear you."
+
+She might as well have told a rushing waterfall to hush. Tom got up,
+pleading vehemently, passionately, wildly, for what seemed to him--poor,
+foolish fellow!--more than life.
+
+"No, no, no!" she said, impatiently; "go away, Mr. Oaks. It is of no
+use."
+
+It seemed like the old parable of asking for bread and receiving a
+stone. Tom Oaks turned away, but something in his despairing face
+touched her woman's heart. She laid her hand lightly on his arm, and
+looked compassionately into his white face.
+
+"I am sorry," she said, in a voice that faltered a little, "I am sorry!
+I did not think you cared for me like this, but I cannot help you! You
+must forget me, Mr. Oaks!"
+
+There was one other witness to this little love-passage besides the
+birds, singing their songs, in the green branches. Captain Cavendish had
+seen Tom Oaks follow Olive Henderson off the grounds, and knew, by the
+prescience of jealousy, as well what was going to happen, as he did
+after the scene was over. He had followed the young man, and, in the
+tangled green heart of the wood, had heard every word, and watched the
+white and amber figure flit out of sight. He leaned against a tree now,
+almost as pale as Tom Oaks had been. But if she should refuse him, too!
+It was the first time in his life he had ever asked himself that
+question; and he had made love, and offered marriage even, to more than
+Winnifred Rose and Nathalie Marsh. What if she should refuse him like
+this? Pride, love, ambition, all were at stake with Captain Cavendish
+now, and what if he should lose her? He set his breath and clenched his
+hand at the thought.
+
+"I will not lose her!" he said to himself. "I will not! I should go as
+mad as that idiot on the grass there is, if I lost that glorious girl!"
+
+He might have gone after her, and proposed on the spot, had he not
+possessed so fully that sixth sense, tact. Like the lady immortalized in
+the Irish poem of "Paddy, Would You Now," she must be taken when she was
+"in the humor," and that most decidedly was not to-day. So he strolled
+back to the rest, and had the satisfaction of seeing her waltzing with
+his superior officer, Major Marwood, who was unmarried, and rich, and
+one of her most obedient very humble servants.
+
+The picnic was to wind up with what Mr. Blake called a "danceable tea,"
+at Mr. Darcy's, whither they all drove, in the pleasant April twilight,
+and the handsome captain enjoyed the privilege of sitting beside the
+heiress in the pony carriage, to the great envy of every one else. They
+drove very slowly, watching the moon rise in a long glory of silvery
+radiance over the sleeping sea, while he told her of Italian moon-rises,
+and Alpine sunsets, he had gazed upon; and she listened, lying back with
+half-vailed eyes, and a longing sensation of pleasure in it all at her
+heart. Was she in love with Captain Cavendish? No; but she liked him
+best of all her admirers; and there were few women who would not have
+listened with pleased interest to those vivid word-pictures of far-off
+lands, and looked with admiration, at least, into that pale, high-bred,
+classically handsome face.
+
+Captain Cavendish retained his advantage all that evening, and left
+competitors far behind. He sang duets with Miss Henderson, danced with
+her, took her in to supper, and folded the shawl around her when they
+were going home. She might be the veriest iceberg to-morrow, the
+haughtiest and most imperious Cleopatra; but she was gentle, and
+graceful, and all feminine sweetness to-night. His hopes were high, his
+heart all in a glow of thrilling ecstasy, as he went home, under the
+serene stars. The cup of bliss was almost at his lips, and the many
+slips were quite forgotten.
+
+The afternoon following the picnic, Olive sat in her cottage
+drawing-room entertaining some callers. The callers were Major Marwood,
+Lieutenant Blank, and Captain Cavendish. Mrs. Darcy, who was spending
+the day with her, sat at a window crotcheting, and playing propriety,
+with Mrs. Hill and Mrs. Hill's niece, Miss Clowrie. Somehow this young
+lady was very fond of dropping in to see her aunt, and staying for
+dinner, and often all night. The heiress sat at the piano, playing some
+exquisite "song without words," when a servant entered and ushered in
+Miss Blair. The officers, who had been there some time, took their
+departure, and Laura burst out into thanksgiving.
+
+"Now, thank goodness! they're gone. Run up and get your hat, Olly, and
+come down to see the boat come in."
+
+"I don't care about seeing the boat come in," said the heiress, lazily,
+lying back in a fauteuil. "I feel comfortable where I am."
+
+"But you must come, I tell you!" cried Laura, "there's a lot of
+delegates coming from somewhere, about something, and everybody will be
+there, and I want to see them."
+
+Miss Henderson laughed at this lucid explanation.
+
+"I shan't go," she said.
+
+Miss Blair changed from the imperative mood to the potential, exhorting,
+entreating.
+
+"Now, Olly, don't be hateful, but go and put your things on, like a
+darling. I am just dying to go, and I can't go without you, so do come,
+there's a dear!"
+
+"But don't you see I have company," laughed Olive; "I can't be rude; I
+can't leave them."
+
+"Nonsense, Olive, my love," cut in Mrs. Darcy; "you don't call Catty and
+I strangers, I hope. Go down to the wharf; the sea-breeze will sharpen
+your appetite for dinner."
+
+"A very romantic reason, certainly," said Olive, sauntering out of the
+room, however. "You had better come too, Miss Clowrie."
+
+This was said for politeness' sake, for the attorney's daughter was no
+favorite with the heiress. Catty, only too glad to be seen in public
+with Miss Henderson, accepted at once, and went up to dress.
+
+"Is it true, Laura," asked Mrs. Darcy, "that Miss Rose came back last
+night?"
+
+"Yes," said Laura, "she called this morning, and I was so glad to see
+her. She looks extremely well. England must have agreed with her."
+
+"Where is she stopping? I should like to see her."
+
+"At ---- House, with Mrs. and Major Wheatly. She told me she would be at
+the boat this afternoon, when she would see all the old faces, if
+Speckport had not changed greatly in her absence."
+
+"Tell her to call and see me," said Mrs. Darcy; "I always liked Miss
+Rose. I think she has the sweetest face I ever saw."
+
+"Now, then, Laura," exclaimed Olive, appearing at the door with Catty,
+"I am ready, and I hear the steamer blowing."
+
+The three young ladies walked down to the wharf, which, as usual, was
+crowded. One of the first persons they met was Val Blake, watching the
+passengers, who were beginning to come up the floats, running the
+gauntlet of all eyes. He was telling them something about Tom Oaks, who
+had started off up the country, when he stopped in the middle of what he
+was saying with a sort of shout of astonishment, and stared at a
+gentleman coming up the floats, with a valise in one hand, and an
+overcoat across his arm.
+
+"Now, of all the people coming and going on the face of the earth,"
+cried out Mr. Blake, in his amazement, "whatever has sent Paul Wyndham
+to Speckport?"
+
+The next instant he was off, flinging the crowd right and left out of
+his way, and arresting the traveler with a sledge-hammer tap on the
+shoulder. The girls laughingly watched him, as he shook the stranger's
+hand as vigorously as if he meant to wrench it off, crying out in a
+voice that everybody heard: "Why, Wyndham, old fellow! what the deuce
+drove you here?"
+
+Mr. Wyndham smiled quietly at his impetuous friend, and walked away with
+him to a cab, which they both entered, and Olive Henderson, still
+laughing at Mr. Blake, looked carelessly after them, and never dreamed
+that she had met her fate. No; who ever does dream it, when they meet
+that fate first!
+
+So Paul Wyndham passed Olive Henderson, and the curtain of the future
+shrouded the web of life destiny was weaving. She forgot him as soon as
+seen, and turned to Laura, who was speaking animatedly.
+
+"Look, Olly! there's the Miss Rose you have heard me speaking of so
+often--that little girl with the black silk dress and mantle, and black
+straw hat, talking to Miss Blake. Look! hasn't she the sweetest face!
+I'll call her over."
+
+The crowd of men, women and children, thronging the wharf and floats,
+were strangely startled a moment after, and every eye turned in one
+direction. There had been a long, wild, woman's shriek, and some one had
+reeled and fallen to the ground like a log. There was a rushing and
+swaying, and startled talking among the people; and Dr. Leach, coming
+along, took the Rev. Augustus Tod by the button, and wanted to know what
+was the matter.
+
+"Miss Olive Henderson had fainted," the Rev. Augustus said, with a
+startled face. "She had been standing on the wharf, apparently quite
+well, only a second before, when she had suddenly screamed out and
+fallen down in a fainting-fit. It was really quite shocking."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+THE DOUBLE COMPACT.
+
+
+Olive Henderson lay on a sofa in her bedroom, her face half buried among
+the pillows, her cloud of tar-black hair all loose and disordered,
+falling about her, and still wearing the out-door dress of yesterday.
+Bright streaks of crimson glory, in the dull dawn sky, heralded the
+rising of another sun, of another day to the restless, feverish little
+planet below. Dressed in that uncomfortable attire for repose, Olive
+Henderson, while the red morning broke, lay there and slept. Stuff! It
+was more stupor than sleep, and she had only sank into it half an hour
+before, from sheer physical exhaustion. Those in the cottage had been
+disturbed all night long, by the sound of restless footsteps pacing up
+and down the chamber where she now lay, up and down, up and down,
+ceaselessly, the livelong night. When they had lifted her up, and
+carried her home in that death-faint, and Dr. Leach had brought her to,
+her first act had been to turn every soul of them out of her room, Laura
+Blair included, to lock the door, and remain there alone by herself,
+ever since. Everybody wondered; Catty Clowrie, most of all, and
+tender-hearted Laura cried. That sympathizing confidante had gone to the
+locked door, and humbly and lovingly entreated "Olly" to let her in; but
+Olly turned a deaf ear to all her entreaties, and never even
+condescended to reply. Mrs. Hill felt deeply on the subject of
+refreshments--if her young lady would but partake of some weak tea and
+dry toast, or even water-gruel, and go to bed comfortable, and sleep it
+off, she would be all right to-morrow; but to shut herself up, and her
+friends out, was enough to give her her death. Catty Clowrie said very
+little, but she thought a good deal. She had remained all night at the
+cottage, and had listened to that troubled footstep, and had mused
+darkly, instead of sleeping. At day-dawn the restless pacing had ceased,
+and Olive Henderson lay sleeping, a deep, stupor-like sleep. Her face,
+lying among the pillows, contrasting with her black hair, looked ghastly
+white in the pale dawn, and her brows were drawn, and her position
+strangely wretched and unnatural.
+
+Mrs. Hill came to the door several times and tried to get in, but in
+vain. Her feeble knocks failed to awake her young mistress from that
+deep sleep, and the sun was high in the purple arch outside, before the
+dark eyes slowly opened to this mortal life again. She sat up feeling
+stiff, and cold, and cramped, and unrefreshed, and put the black cloud
+of hair away from her face, while memory stepped back to its post. With
+something like a groan she dropped her face once more among the pillows,
+but this time not to sleep. She lay so still for nearly half an hour,
+that not a hair of her head moved, thinking, thinking, thinking. A
+terrible fear came upon her, a horrible danger threatened her, but she
+was not one easily to yield to despair. She would battle with the rising
+tide, battle fiercely to the last, and if the black waves engulfed her
+at the end, she would die waging war against relentless doom, to the
+close.
+
+Olive Henderson rose up, twisted her disordered tresses away from her
+face, searched for her ink and paper, and sat down to a little rosewood
+desk, to write. It was very short, the note she rapidly scrawled, but
+the whole passionate heart of the girl was in it.
+
+     "For God's sake come to me!" (this abrupt note began) "every second
+     is an age of agony till I see you. I thought you were dead--as
+     Heaven is my witness, I did, or I should never have come here! By
+     the memory of all the happy days we have spent together, by the
+     memory of your dead father, I conjure you be silent, and come to me
+     at once!
+
+     "H."
+
+The note had neither date, address, nor signature, save that one capital
+letter, but when it was folded and in the envelope, she wrote the
+address:--"Miss W. Rose, ---- House, Queen Street, Speckport."
+
+Then, rising, she exchanged the crumpled robe in which she had slept for
+one of plain black silk, hastily thrust her hair loose into a chenille
+net, put on a long black silk mantle, a bonnet and thick brown vail,
+placed the letter in her pocket, and went down stairs. There was no
+possibility of leaving the house unseen; Mrs. Hill heard her opening the
+front door and came out of the dining-room. Her eyes opened like full
+moons at the sight of the street costume, and the young lady's white,
+resolute face.
+
+"My patience, Miss Olive, you're never going out?"
+
+"Yes," Miss Henderson said, constraining herself to speak quietly. "My
+head aches, and I think a walk in the air will do it good. I will be
+back directly."
+
+"But, do take something before you go. Some tea, now, and a little bit
+of toast."
+
+"No, no! not any, thank you, until I come back."
+
+She was gone even while she spoke; the thick vail drawn over her face,
+her parasol up, screening her effectually. Catty Clowrie, watching her
+from the window, would have given considerable to follow her, and see
+where she went. She had little faith in that walk being taken for the
+sake of walking; some covert meaning lay hidden beneath.
+
+"I declare to you, Catty," exclaimed Mrs. Hill, coming back, "she gave
+me quite a turn! She was as white as a ghost, and those big black eyes
+of hers looked bigger and blacker than ever. She is turning bilious,
+that's what she's doing."
+
+Miss Henderson walked to Queen Street by the most retired streets, and
+passed before the hotel, where Major and Mrs. Wheatly boarded. She had
+some idea of putting the letter in the post-office when she started, but
+in that case Miss Rose would not receive it until evening, and how could
+she wait all that time, eating out her heart with mad impatience? There
+was a man standing in the doorway of the ladies' entrance, a waiter, and
+quite alone. With her vail closely drawn over her face, Miss Henderson
+approached him, speaking in a low voice:
+
+"There is a young lady--a governess, called Miss Rose, stopping here--is
+there not?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"Is she in now?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"Will you please give her this letter! give it into her own hand, and at
+once!"
+
+She gave him the letter, and a fee that made him stare, and was gone.
+The man did not know her, and Olive reached home without once meeting
+any one who recognized her.
+
+Miss Catty Clowrie did not leave the cottage all that day. She was
+sewing for Mrs. Hill; and, seated at the dining-room window, she
+watched Miss Henderson furtively, but incessantly, under her white
+eyelashes. That young lady seemed possessed of the very spirit of
+restlessness, since her return from her walk. It had not done her much
+good, apparently, for it had neither brought back color nor appetite;
+and she wandered from room to room, and up-stairs and down-stairs, with
+a miserable feverish restlessness, that made one fidgety to look at her.
+And all the time in her dark colorless face there was only one
+expression, one of passionate, impatient waiting. Waiting, waiting,
+waiting! For what? Catty Clowrie's greenish-gray eyes read the look
+aright, but for what was she waiting?
+
+"I'll find it out, yet," Miss Clowrie said, inwardly. "She is a very
+fine lady, this Miss Olive Henderson, but there is an old adage about
+'All that glitters is not gold.' I'll wait and see."
+
+There were a great many callers in the course of the morning, but Miss
+Henderson was too indisposed to see any of them. Even Miss Blair was
+sent away with this answer, when she came; but Miss Henderson had left
+word, Mrs. Hill said, that she would be glad to see Miss Laura
+to-morrow. Miss Henderson herself, walking up and down the drawing-room,
+heard the message given, and the door closed on her friend, and then
+turned to go up-stairs. She stopped to say a word to her housekeeper as
+she did so.
+
+"There is a person to call to-day, Mrs. Hill," she said, not looking at
+the pilot's widow, "and you may send her up to my room when she comes.
+It is Miss Rose, Mrs. Major Wheatly's governess!"
+
+Her foot was on the carpeted stair as she said this, and she ran up
+without giving her housekeeper time to reply. Catty Clowrie,
+industriously sewing away, listened, and compressed her thin lips.
+
+"Miss Rose coming to see her, and admitted to a private interview, when
+every one else is excluded! Um--m--m! That is rather odd; and Miss Rose
+is a stranger to her--or is supposed to be! I wonder why she fainted at
+sight of Miss Rose, on the wharf, yesterday, and why Miss Rose's face
+turned to pale amazement at sight of her. She did not ask any questions,
+I noticed; but Miss Rose was always discreet; and no one observed her
+but myself, in the hubbub. There is something odd about all this!"
+
+She threaded her needle afresh, and went on with her sewing, with the
+patient perseverance of all such phlegmatic mortals. Mrs. Hill came in,
+wondering what Miss Henderson could possibly want of Miss Rose, but her
+niece could throw no light on the subject.
+
+"Perhaps she wants a companion," Miss Clowrie remarked; "fine ladies
+like Miss Henderson are full of freaks, and perhaps she wants some one
+to play and sing and read to her, when she feels too lazy to do it
+herself."
+
+Catty Clowrie had read a good many novels in her life, full of all sorts
+of mysteries, and secret crimes, and wicked concealments, and
+conspiracies--very romantic and unlike every-day life--but still liable
+to happen. She had never had the faintest shadow of romance, to cover
+rosily her own drab-hued life--no secret or mystery of any sort to
+happen to herself, or any of the people among whom she mingled. The most
+romantic thing that had ever occurred within her personal knowledge was
+the fact of this new heiress, this Olive Henderson, rising from the
+offal of New York, from the most abject poverty, to sudden and great
+wealth.
+
+Miss Clowrie sat until three o'clock, sewing at the dining-room window.
+Luncheon-hour was two, but Miss Henderson would not descend, and asked
+to have a cup of strong tea sent up, so Mrs. Hill and her niece partook
+of that repast alone. As the clock was striking three, a young lady,
+dressed in half-mourning, came down the street and rang the door-bell;
+and Catty, dropping her work, ran to open it, and embrace with effusion
+the visitor. She had not spoken to Miss Rose before since her return,
+and kissed her now, as though she were really glad to see her.
+
+"I am so glad you are back again, dear Miss Rose!" the young lady cried,
+holding both Miss Rose's hands in hers; "you cannot think how much we
+have all missed you since you went away!"
+
+Now, it was rather unfortunate for Miss Clowrie, but nature, who will
+always persist in being absurdly true to herself, had given an insincere
+look to the thin, wide mouth, and a false glimmer to the greenish-gray
+eyes, and a clammy, limp moistness to the cold hand, that made you feel
+as if you had got hold of a dead fish, and wished to drop it again as
+soon as possible. Miss Rose had taken an instinctive aversion to Miss
+Clowrie the first time she had seen her, and had never been quite able
+to get over it since, though she had conscientiously tried; but she
+never betrayed it, and smiled now in her own gentle smile, and thanked
+Miss Clowrie in her own sweet voice. She turned to Mrs. Hill, though,
+when that lady appeared, with a far different feeling, and returned the
+kiss that motherly old creature bestowed upon her.
+
+"It does my heart good to see you again, Miss Rose," the housekeeper
+said. "I haven't forgotten all you did for me last year when poor, dear
+Hill was lost, going after that horrid ship. You can't think how glad I
+was when I heard you were come back."
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Hill," the governess said. "It is worth while going
+away for the sake of such a welcome back. Is Miss--" she hesitated a
+moment, and then went on, with a sudden flush lighting her face; "is
+Miss Henderson in?"
+
+"Yes, my dear; I will go and tell her you are here."
+
+The housekeeper went up-stairs, but reappeared almost immediately.
+
+"You are to go up-stairs, my dear," she said; "Miss Henderson is not
+very well, and will see you in her own room."
+
+Miss Rose ascended the stairs, entered the chamber of the heiress, and
+Catty heard the door closed and locked after her. As Mrs. Hill
+re-entered the dining-room, she found her gathering up her work.
+
+"I left the yokes and wristbands in your room, aunt," she explained. "I
+must go after them, and I'll just go up and finish this nightgown
+there."
+
+There were four rooms up-stairs, with a hall running between each two.
+The two on the left were occupied by Miss Henderson, one being her
+bedroom, the other a bath-room. Mrs. Hill had the room opposite the
+heiress, the other being used by Rosie, the chambermaid.
+
+Miss Clowrie (one hates to tell it, but what is to be done?) went
+deliberately to Miss Henderson's door, and applied first her eye, then
+her ear, to the key-hole. Applying her eye, she distinctly beheld Miss
+Olive Henderson, the heiress of Redmon, the proudest woman she had ever
+known, down upon her knees, before Miss Rose, the governess--the
+ex-school-mistress; holding up her closed hands, in wild supplication,
+her face like the face of a corpse, and all her black hair tumbled and
+falling about her.
+
+To say that Miss Catty Clowrie was satisfied by this sight, would be
+doing no sort of justice to the subject. The first words she caught were
+not likely to lessen her astonishment--wild, strange words.
+
+"I thought you were dead! I thought you were dead!" in a passion of
+consternation, that seemed to blot out every thought of prudence. "I
+thought you were dead! As Heaven hears me, I thought you were dead, or I
+never would have done it."
+
+Miss Rose was standing with her back to the door, and the eavesdropper
+saw her trying to raise the heiress up.
+
+"Get up, Harriet," she distinctly heard her say, though she spoke in a
+low voice; "I cannot bear to see you like this; and do not speak so
+loud--some one may hear you."
+
+If they had only known of the pale listener at the door, hushing her
+very heart-beating to hear the better. But Miss Henderson would not
+rise; she only knelt there, white and wild, and holding up her clasped
+hands.
+
+"I will never get up," she passionately cried. "I will never rise out of
+this until you promise to keep my secret. It is not as a favor, it is as
+a right I demand it! Your father robbed my mother and me. But for him I
+would have never known poverty and misery--and God only knows the misery
+that has been mine. But for him, I should never have known what it is to
+suffer from cold and hunger, and misery and insult; but for him I would
+have been rich to-day; but for him my mother might still be alive and
+happy. He ruined us, and broke her heart, and I tell you it is only
+justice I ask! I should never have come here had I not thought you dead;
+but now that I have come, that wealth and comfort have been mine once
+more, I will not go. I will not, I tell you! I will die before I yield,
+and go back to that horrible life, and may my death rest forever on your
+soul!"
+
+Catty Clowrie, crouching at the door, turned as cold as death, listening
+to these dreadful words. Was she awake--was she dreaming? Was this Olive
+Henderson--the proud, the beautiful, the queenly heiress--this mad
+creature, uttering those passionate, despairing words. She could not see
+into the room, her ear was at the keyhole--strained to a tension that
+was painful, so absorbed was she in listening. But at this very instant
+her strained hearing caught another sound--Rosie, the chambermaid,
+coming along the lower hall, and up-stairs. Swift as a flash, Catty
+Clowrie sprang up, and darted into her aunt's room. She did not dare to
+close the door, lest the girl should hear her, and she set her teeth
+with anger and suppressed fury at the disappointment.
+
+Rosie had come up to make her bed, and set her room to rights, and was
+in no wise disposed to hurry over it. She sang at her work; but the
+pale-faced attorney's daughter in the next room, furious with
+disappointment, could have seen her choked at the moment with the
+greatest pleasure. Half an hour passed--would the girl never go?
+Yes--yes, there was Mrs. Hill, at the foot of the stairs, calling her,
+and Rosie ran down. Quick as she had left it, Catty was back at her
+post, airing her eye at the keyhole once more.
+
+The scene she beheld was not quite so tragic this time. The heiress and
+the governess were seated opposite one another, an inlaid table between
+them. There was paper and ink on the table; Miss Henderson held a pen in
+her hand, as if about to write, and Miss Rose was speaking. Her voice
+was sweet and low, as usual; but it had a firm cadence, that showed she
+was gravely in earnest now.
+
+"You must write down these conditions, Harriet," she was saying, "to
+make matters sure; but no one shall ever see the papers, and I pledge
+you my solemn word, your secret shall be kept inviolable. Heaven knows
+I have done all I could to atone for my dead father's acts, and I will
+continue to do it to the end. He wronged your mother and you, I know,
+and I am thankful it is in my power to do reparation. I ask nothing for
+myself--but others have rights as well as you, Harriet, and as sacred.
+Two hundred pounds will pay all the remaining debts of my father now.
+You must give me that. And you must write down there a promise to pay
+Mrs. Marsh one hundred pounds a year annuity, as long as she lives. Her
+daughter should have had it all, Harriet, and neither you nor I; and the
+least you can do, in justice, is to provide for her. You will do this?"
+
+"Yes--yes," Miss Henderson cried; "that is not much to do! I want to do
+more. I want you to share with me, Olly."
+
+"No," said Miss Rose, "you may keep it all. I have as much as I want,
+and I am very well contented. I have no desire for wealth. I should
+hardly know what to do with it if I had possessed it."
+
+"But you will come and live with me," Miss Henderson said, in a voice
+strangely subdued; "come and live with me, and let us share it together,
+as sisters should."
+
+That detestable housemaid again! If Catty Clowrie had been a man, she
+might have indulged in the manly relief of swearing, as she sprang up a
+second time, and fled into Mrs. Hill's room. This time, Rosie was not
+called away, and she sat for nearly an hour, singing, at her chamber
+window, and mending her stockings. Catty Clowrie, on fire with impotent
+fury, had to stay where she was.
+
+Staying there, she saw Miss Henderson's door opened at last; and,
+peeping cautiously out, saw the two go down-stairs together. Miss Rose
+looked as if she had been crying, and her face was very pale, but the
+fierce crimson of excitement burned on the dark cheeks and flamed in the
+black eyes of Miss Henderson. It was the heiress who let Miss Rose out,
+and then she came back to her room, and resumed the old trick of walking
+up and down, up and down, as on the preceding night.
+
+Catty wondered if she would never be tired. It was all true, then; and
+there was a dark secret and mystery in Olive Henderson's life. "Olive!"
+Was that her name, and if so, why had Miss Rose called her "Harriet."
+And if the governess's name was Winnie, why did the heiress call her
+"Olly?"
+
+Catty Clowrie sat thinking while the April day faded into misty
+twilight, and the cold evening star glimmered down on the sea. She sat
+there thinking while the sun went low, and dipped into the bay, and out
+of sight. She sat thinking while the last little pink cloud of the
+sunset paled to dull gray, and the round white moon came up, like a
+shining shield. She sat there thinking till the dinner-bell rang, and
+she remembered she was cold and hungry, and went slowly
+down-stairs--still thinking.
+
+To her surprise, for she had been too absorbed to hear her come out of
+her room, Miss Henderson was there, beautifully dressed, and in high
+spirits. She had such a passion for luxury and costly dress, this young
+lady, that she would array herself in velvets and brocades, even though
+there were none to admire her but her own servants.
+
+On this evening, she had dressed herself in white, with ornaments of
+gold and coral in her black braids, broad gold bracelets on her superb
+arms, and a cluster of scarlet flowers on her breast. She looked so
+beautiful with that fire in her eyes, that flush on her cheek, that
+brilliant smile lighting up her gypsy face, that Mrs. Hill and Catty
+were absolutely dazzled. She laughed--a clear, ringing laugh--at Mrs.
+Hill's profuse congratulations on her magical recovery.
+
+"You dear old Mrs. Hill!" she said, "when you are better used to mo, you
+will cease to wonder at my eccentricities! It is a woman's privilege to
+change her mind sixty times an hour, if she chooses--and I choose to
+assert all the privileges of my sex!"
+
+She rose from the table as she spoke, still laughing, and went into the
+drawing-room. The gas burned low, but she turned it up to its full
+flare, and, opening the piano, rattled off a stormy polka. She twirled
+round presently, and called out:
+
+"Mrs. Hill!"
+
+Mrs. Hill came in.
+
+"Tell Sam to go up to Miss Blair's, and fetch her here. Let him tell her
+I feel quite well again, and want her to spend the evening, if she is
+not engaged. He can take the gig, and tell him to make haste, Mrs.
+Hill."
+
+Mrs. Hill departed on her errand, and Miss Henderson's jeweled fingers
+were flying over the polished keys once more. Presently she twirled
+around again, and called out: "Miss Clowrie."
+
+"I wish Laura would come!" Miss Henderson said, pulling out her watch,
+"and I wish she would fetch a dozen people with her. I feel just in the
+humor for a ball to-night."
+
+She talked to Catty Clowrie vivaciously, and to Mrs. Hill, because she
+was just in the mood for talking, and rattled off brilliant sonatas
+between whiles. But she was impatient for Laura's coming, and kept
+jerking out her watch every five minutes, to look at the hour.
+
+Miss Blair made her appearance at last, and not alone. There was a
+gentleman in the background, but Miss B. rushed with such a frantic
+little scream of delight into the arms of her "dear, darling Olly," and
+so hugged and kissed her, that, for the first moment or two, it was not
+very easy to see who it was. Extricating herself, laughing and
+breathless, from the gushing Miss Blair, Olive looked at her companion,
+and saw the amused and handsome face of Captain Cavendish.
+
+"I hope I am not an intruder," that young officer said, coming forward,
+"but being at Mr. Blair's when your message arrived, and hearing you
+were well again, I could not forbear the pleasure of congratulating you.
+The Princess of Speckport can be ill dispensed with by her adoring
+subjects."
+
+Some one of Miss Henderson's innumerable admirers had dubbed her
+"Princess of Speckport," and the title was not out of place. She laughed
+at his gallant speech, and held out her hand with frank grace.
+
+"My friends are always welcome," she said, and here she was interrupted
+by a postman's knock at the door.
+
+"Dear me! who can this be?" said Mrs. Hill, looking up over her
+spectacles, as Rosie opened the door.
+
+It proved to be Mr. Val Blake. That gentleman being very busy all day,
+had found no time to inquire for Miss Henderson, until after tea, when,
+strolling out, with his pipe in his mouth, for his evening
+constitutional, he had stepped around to ask Mrs. Hill. Miss Henderson
+appeared in person to answer his friendly inquiries, and Mr. Blake came
+in, nothing loth, and joined the party.
+
+Some one proposed cards, after a while; and Mr. Blake, and Miss Blair,
+and Mrs. Hill, and Miss Clowrie, gathered round a pretty little
+card-table, but Miss Henderson retained her seat at the piano, singing,
+and playing operatic overtures. Captain Cavendish stood beside her,
+turning over her music, and looking down into the sparkling, beautiful
+face, with passionately loving eyes. For the spell of the sorceress
+burdened him more this night than ever before, and the man's heart was
+going in great plunges against his side. He almost fancied she must hear
+its tumultuous beating, as she sat there in her beauty and her pride,
+the red gold gleaming in her black braids and on her brown arms. It had
+always been so easy before for him to say what was choking him now, and
+he had said it often enough, goodness knows, for the lesson to be easy.
+But there was this difference--he loved this black-eyed sultana; and the
+fever called love makes a coward of the bravest of men. He feared what
+he had never feared before--a rejection; and a rejection from her, even
+the thought of one, nearly sent him mad.
+
+And all this while Miss Olive Henderson sat on her piano-stool, and sang
+"Hear me, Norma," serenely unconscious of the storm going on in the
+English officer's breast. He had heard that very song a thousand times
+better sung, by Nathalie Marsh. Ah! poor forgotten Nathalie!--but he was
+not listening to the singing. For him, the circling sphere seemed
+momentarily standing still, and the business of life suspended. He was
+perfectly white in his agitation, and the hand that turned the leaves
+shook. His time had come. The card-party were too much absorbed in
+scoring their points to heed them, and now, or never, he must know his
+fate. What he said he never afterward knew--but Miss Henderson looked
+strangely startled by his white face and half incoherent sentences. The
+magical words were spoken; but as the self-possessed George Cavendish
+had never spoken thus before, and the supreme question, on which his
+life's destiny hung, asked.
+
+The piano stood in a sort of recess, with a lace-draped window to the
+right, looking out upon Golden Row. Miss Henderson sat, all the time he
+was speaking, looking straight before her, out into the coldly moonlit
+street. Not once did her color change--no tremor made the scarlet
+flowers on her breast rise and fall--no flutter made the misty lace
+about her tremble. She was only very grave, ominously grave, and the
+man's heart turned sick with fear, as he watched her unchanging face and
+the dark gravity of her eyes. She was a long time in replying--all the
+while sitting there so very still, and looking steadfastly out at the
+quiet street; not once at him. When she did reply, it was the strangest
+answer he had ever received to such a declaration. The reply was another
+question.
+
+"Captain Cavendish," she said, "I am an heiress, and you--pardon
+me--have the name of a fortune-hunter. If I were penniless, as I was
+before this wealth became mine--if by some accident I were to lose it
+again--would you say to me what you have said now?"
+
+Would he? The answer was so vehement, so passionate, that the veriest
+skeptic must have believed. His desperate earnestness was written in
+every line of his agitated face.
+
+"I believe you," she said; "I believe you, Captain Cavendish. I think
+you do love me; but I--I do not love you in return."
+
+He gave a sort of cry of despair, but she put up one hand to check him.
+
+"I do not love you," she steadily repeated, "and I have never loved any
+one in this way. Perhaps it is not in me, and I do not care that it
+should be: there is misery enough in the world, Heaven knows, without
+that! I do not love you, Captain Cavendish, but I do not love any one
+else. I esteem and respect you; more, I like you: and if you can be
+content with this, I will be your wife. If you cannot, why, we will be
+friends as before, and----"
+
+But he would not let her finish. He had caught her hand in his, and
+broke out into a rhapsody of incoherent thanks and delight.
+
+"There, there!" she smilingly interposed, "that will do! Our friends at
+the card-table will hear you. Of one thing you may be certain: I shall
+be true to you until death. Your honor will be safe in my hands; and
+this friendly liking may grow into a warmer feeling by-and-by. I am not
+very romantic, Captain Cavendish, and you must not ask me for more than
+I can give."
+
+But Captain Cavendish wanted no more. He was supremely blessed in what
+he had received, and his handsome face was radiant.
+
+"My darling," he said, "I ask for no more! I shall think the devotion of
+a whole life too little to repay you for this."
+
+"Very well," said Miss Henderson, rising; "and now, after that pretty
+speech, I think we had better join our friends, or my duty as hostess
+will be sadly neglected."
+
+She stood behind Miss Laura Blair for the rest of the evening, watching
+the fluctuations of the game, and with no shadow of change in her
+laughing face. She stood there until the little party broke up, which
+was some time after ten, when Mr. Blair called around for Laura himself.
+Miss Laura was not to say over and above obliged to her pa for this act
+of paternal affection--since she would have infinitely preferred the
+escort of Mr. Blake. That gentleman hooked his arm within that of
+Captain Cavendish, and bade Miss Blair good-night, with seraphic
+indifference.
+
+Miss Henderson's bedroom windows commanded an eastward view of the bay,
+and when she went up to her room that night, she sat for a long time
+gazing out over the shining track the full moon made for herself on the
+tranquil sea. "Gaspereaux month" had come around again, and the whole
+bay was dotted over with busy boats. She could see the fishermen
+casting their nets, now in the shadow, now in the glittering moonlight,
+and the peaceful beauty of the April night filled her heart with a deep,
+sweet sense of happiness. Perhaps it was the first time since her
+arrival in Speckport she had been really happy--a vague dread and
+uncertainty had hung over her, like that fabled sword, suspended by a
+single hair, and ready to fall at any moment. But the fear was gone, she
+was safe now--her inheritance was secure, and she was the promised wife
+of an honorable gentleman. Some day, perhaps, he might be a baronet, and
+she "my lady," and her ambitious heart throbbed faster at the thought.
+She sat there, dreaming and feeling very happy, thinking of the double
+compact ratified that most eventful day, but she never once thanked
+God--never gave one thought to him to whom she owed it all. She sat
+there far into the night, thinking, and when she laid her head on the
+pillow and fell asleep, it was to act it all over in dreamland again.
+
+Some one else lay awake a long time that night, thinking, too. Miss
+Clowrie, in the opposite chamber, did not sit up by the window; Mrs.
+Hill would, no doubt, not have permitted it, and Miss Clowrie was a
+great deal too sensible a person to run the risk of catching cold. But,
+though she lay with her eyes shut she was not asleep, and Olive
+Henderson might not have dreamed quite such happy dreams had she known
+how dark and ominous were the thoughts the attorney's pale daughter was
+thinking.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+MR. PAUL WYNDHAM.
+
+
+On the morning after the day fraught with so many events to the heiress
+of Redmon, the mother of the late heiress sat in the sitting-room of her
+pleasant seaside home, reading a novel. The firelight shone on her
+mourning-dress, but the inward mourning was not very profound. She had
+cried a good deal at first for the loss of her son and daughter; she
+cried sometimes still when people talked to her about them; but she
+cried quite as much over the woes of her pet heroes and heroines, bound
+in paper and cloth, and slept just as soundly, and took her meals with
+as good a relish as ever she had done in her life. Mrs. Marsh was not
+greatly given to borrowed trouble; she took the goods the gods provided,
+and let to-morrow take care of itself, so long as she had enough for
+to-day. Mr. Val Blake paid the butcher's, and baker's, and grocer's
+bills quarterly; settled with Betsy Ann, and Miss Jo saw that she was
+well dressed; and Mrs. Marsh took all as a matter of course, and I don't
+think even once thanked Mr. Blake for his kindness.
+
+On this sunny spring morning Mrs. Marsh sat comfortably reading, so
+absorbed in her book as to be out of the reach of all mundane affairs.
+The book had a bright yellow cover, with a striking engraving of one man
+grasping another by the throat, and presenting a pistol at his head, and
+was called the "Red Robber of the Rocky Mountains"--a sequel to the
+"Black Brigand,"--when, just in the middle of a most thrilling chapter,
+Mrs. Marsh was disturbed by a knock at the front door. Betsy Ann
+answered the summons, and stood transfixed at the shining apparition she
+beheld. A beautiful young lady, with big black eyes, that shone on Betsy
+Ann like two black diamonds, arrayed in rustling silk, and a rich
+creamy crape shawl, with a bonnet fine enough for the queen of England,
+stood before her, asking, in a silvery voice, if Mrs. Marsh were at
+home. Standing before the door was a small open carriage, drawn by two
+milk-white ponies; and Miss Laura Blair sat within, nodding pleasantly
+to her, Betsy Ann, and holding the reins. The girl, quite dazzled by the
+splendor of this early visitor, ushered the radiant vision into the room
+where her mistress sat, and Mrs. Marsh arose with an exclamation of
+surprise she could not repress. They had met a few times before at the
+houses of mutual friends, but this was the young lady's first call.
+
+"Miss Henderson," Mrs. Marsh stammered, utterly at a loss what to
+say--"I am sure I am very glad to see you; I have not had many visitors
+of late."
+
+Tears rose to her eyes as she spoke, with the thoughts of the pleasant
+days gone by, when the friends of Nathalie and Charley, the friends of
+their prosperity, had made the cottage more gay with laughter and music.
+Miss Henderson was not looking at her, but into the red coal-fire.
+
+"I have come on a little matter of business, Mrs. Marsh," she said. "I
+have come to fulfill a duty I owe to you. I know the story of the past,
+and, I am afraid, you must feel in some degree as if I had taken from
+you what should have been yours. Your--your daughter had no doubt a
+prior claim to what I now possess, and common justice requires you
+should not be defrauded. I am aware of Mr. Blake's great generosity, but
+the duty--and, I assure you, it is a pleasure to me--lies with me, not
+with him. I have, therefore, settled upon you, for life, an annuity of
+one hundred pounds per annum, which will be paid to you at my banker's,
+monthly or quarterly, as you may prefer. It was to say this I came so
+early this morning, but, if you will permit me, this visit shall be but
+the forerunner of many others."
+
+She was standing up as she finished, with a look of intense relief at
+having accomplished her task, and Mrs. Marsh altogether too dazed and
+bewildered to utter a word.
+
+"And I shall be very, very happy, my dear Mrs. Marsh," the heiress said,
+bending over her, and taking her hand, "if you will sometimes come up
+and see me. I have no mother, and I will look upon you as such, if you
+will let me."
+
+Mrs. Marsh saw her go, feeling as though she were in a dream, or acting
+a chapter out of one of her own romances.
+
+Miss Henderson took her place beside Laura in the pony carriage, and
+they drove slowly along Cottage Street, looking at the broad blue bay,
+sparkling in the sunshine, as if sown with stars. The beach, with its
+warm, white sands, edged the sea like a silver streak; and the waves
+sang their old music, as they crept up on its breast.
+
+"How beautiful it all is!" the heiress cried, her dark face lighting up
+as it always did at sight of the ocean. "Let us get out, Laura; I could
+stay here listening to those sailors singing forever."
+
+There were some idle boys at play on an old wharf, overgrown with moss
+and slimy seaweed, its tarry planks rotting in the sun.
+
+Miss Henderson dropped a bright silver shilling into the dirty palm of
+one, and asked him to hold the ponies for ten minutes; and the two girls
+walked along the decaying and deserted old wharf together.
+
+"My solemn Laura!" the heiress said, looking at her friend's grave face;
+"what a doleful countenance you wear! Of what are you thinking?"
+
+"I am thinking of poor Nathalie Marsh," Laura answered; "it was on this
+very wharf she met her death, that wild, windy night. I have never been
+near the place since."
+
+It is a remarkable trait of these swarthy faces that emotion does not
+pale them as it does their blonde neighbors--they darken. Miss
+Henderson's face darkened now--it always seemed to do so when the name
+of the dead girl was mentioned. She turned away from her friend, and
+stood staring moodily out to sea, until an exclamation from that young
+lady caused her to turn round and perceive that either the sea-wind or
+some other cause had very perceptibly heightened Miss Blair's color.
+
+"I declare if that's not Val," Laura cried, "and that strange gentleman
+with him that came from New York the other day. There! they see us, and
+are coming here."
+
+Miss Henderson looked indifferently as Mr. Blake and his friend
+approached. Val introduced his companion to the ladies as Mr. Paul
+Wyndham, of New York, and that gentleman was received graciously by Miss
+Blair, and coldly, not to say haughtily, by Miss Henderson.
+
+The heiress did not like people from New York. She never talked about
+that city, if she could help it, and rather avoided all persons coming
+from it. She stood, looking vacantly out at the wide sea, and listening
+to the sailors' song, taking very little part in the conversation. She
+turned round, when the singing ceased, in the direction of her carriage,
+with a listless yawn she was at little trouble to suppress, and a bored
+look she took no pains to conceal. The gentlemen saw them safely off,
+and then loitered back to the old wharf.
+
+"Well, Wyndham," Val asked, "and what do you think of the Princess of
+Speckport?"
+
+Mr. Paul Wyndham did not immediately reply. He was leaning lazily
+against a rotten beam, lighting a cigar, for he was an inveterate
+smoker.
+
+Mr. Wyndham was not handsome, he was not dashing--he had neither
+mustache nor whisker, nor an aquiline nose; and he could not dance or
+sing, or do anything else like any other young Christian gentleman. He
+was very slight and boyish of figure, with a pale, student-like face, a
+high forehead, deep-set eyes, a characteristic nose, and a thin and
+somewhat cynical mouth. There was character in everything about him,
+even in the mathematical precision of his dress, faultlessly neat in the
+smallest particular, and scrupulously simple. He looked like a gentleman
+and a student, and he was both. More, he was an author, a Bohemian, with
+a well-earned literary fame, at the age of seven-and-twenty. When he
+was a lad of seventeen he had started with his "knapsack on his back,"
+containing a clean shirt, and a quire of foolscap, and had traveled
+through Europe and Asia, and had written two charming books of travel,
+that filled his pockets with dollars, and established his fame as an
+author. Since then he had written some half-dozen delightful novels,
+over which Laura Blair herself had cried and laughed alternately,
+although she did not know now that Mr. Wyndham and ---- ---- were one
+and the same. He had written plays that had run fifty nights at a time,
+and his sketches were the chief charm of one or two of the best American
+magazines. He was a poet, an author, a dramatist, sometimes an actor,
+when he took the notion, and a successful man in all. He looked as those
+inspired men who chain us with their wonderful word-painting should
+look, albeit I reiterate he was not handsome. He stood now leaning
+against the rotten beam, smoking his cigar, and looking dreamily over
+the shining sea, while Mr. Blake repeated his question.
+
+"I say, Wyndham, how do you like her--the beauty, the belle, the
+Princess of Speckport?"
+
+"She is a fine-looking girl," Mr. Wyndham quietly replied. "And those
+big black eyes of hers are very handsome, indeed. It strikes me I should
+like to marry that girl!"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Blake, composedly, "I dare say. I know several other
+gentlemen in Speckport who would like to do the same thing, only they
+can't, unfortunately."
+
+"Can't they? Why?"
+
+"Because there is an absurd law against bigamy in this province, and the
+young lady has promised to marry one man already."
+
+"Ah! who is he?"
+
+"Captain Cavendish. You met him yesterday, you remember. He proposed the
+other night at the house, and told me about it coming home. She accepted
+him; but the affair has not yet been made public, by the lady's express
+desire."
+
+Mr. Wyndham took out his cigar, knocked off the ashes with the end of
+his little finger, and replaced it.
+
+"Captain Cavendish is a lucky fellow," he said. "But yet I don't
+despair. Until the wedding-ring actually slips over the lady's finger,
+there is room for hope."
+
+"But, my dear fellow, she is engaged."
+
+"_C'est bien!_ There is many a slip. I don't believe she will ever be
+Mrs. Cavendish."
+
+Mr. Blake stared at his friend; but that gentleman looked the very
+picture of calm composure.
+
+"My dear Wyndham," Mr. Blake remarked, compassionately, "you are simply
+talking nonsense. I know you are very clever, and famous, and all that
+sort of thing, and brain is excellent in its way; but I tell you it has
+no chance against beauty."
+
+"By which you would imply, I stand no chance against Captain Cavendish.
+Now, if you'll believe me, I am not so sure of that. I generally manage
+to accomplish whatever I set my heart upon; and I don't think--I really
+don't, old boy--that I shall fail in this. Besides, if it does come to
+beauty, I am not such a bad-looking fellow, in the main."
+
+To say that Mr. Blake stared after hearing this speech would be but a
+feeble description of the open-mouthed-and-eyed gape with which he
+favored its deliverer. To do Mr. Wyndham justice, he was that phenomenon
+not often seen--a modest author. He never bored his enemy about "My last
+book, sir!" he never alluded to his literary labors at all, unless
+directly spoken to on the subject; and certainly had never before
+displayed any vanity. Therefore, Mr. Blake stared, not quite decided
+whether he had heard aright; and Mr. Wyndham, seeing the look, did what
+he did not often do, burst out laughing.
+
+"My dear old Val," he cried, slapping him on the shoulder, "I have not
+lost my senses; so there is no need of that look. I should like to have
+a tall wife--small men always do, you know--with black eyes and two
+hundred thousand dollars; and I shall enter the lists with this
+fascinating Captain Cavendish, and bear off the prize if I can, in spite
+of his sword, and uniform, and handsome face. I think, on the whole, I
+shall make the young lady quite as good a husband as he."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Blake, drawing a long breath, and appealing to the
+deep, "for cool impudence and self-conceit, Paul Wyndham hasn't his
+match in broad America. Here he comes from New York; and before he is a
+week in the place he talks of marrying the richest and handsomest girl
+it contains, as coolly as if he were Sultan of all Turkey, and she a
+Circassian slave. Yes, Mr. Wyndham, ask her, by all means, and when you
+get your _conge_, let me know--it will be one of the happiest days of my
+life."
+
+"But I don't think I shall get my _conge_" persisted Paul Wyndham. "Do
+you know if she is in love with this Captain Cavendish?"
+
+"I never asked her," responded Mr. Blake. "I leave that for Mr. Wyndham
+to ascertain."
+
+"Because I don't think she is," went on his friend. "When she stood here
+a few minutes ago, you and the other young lady, Miss--what's her
+name?--were talking of the gallant captain, and she listened with a face
+of perfect indifference. I was watching her, and I don't think she cares
+about him."
+
+"I saw you watching her," said Val, "and so did she, and I don't think
+she liked it. I saw those black brows of hers contract once or twice,
+and that is an ominous sign with Miss Henderson."
+
+"Miss Henderson could fly into a dickens of a passion, too, if she
+liked. Your black-eyed, black-haired, brown-skinned women raise the very
+old diable herself, if you stroke them the wrong way. They are something
+like big black cats. I tell you, Blake, I don't believe she cares about
+that military popinjay, Cavendish."
+
+"Don't you," said Mr. Blake, with his hands in his pockets. "Of course,
+if you say so it must be so."
+
+"No; but I really think so. Are his family anything in England?"
+
+"It is currently believed he is next heir to a baronetcy. But the
+baronet got married in his old days, and there is a little shaver in
+petticoats to cut Master George out. Still, he lives in hope. The new
+baronet has the measles and the mumps, and the whooping-cough, and the
+scarlatina, and the chicken-pox, and a tribe of other diseases, his
+teeth included, to struggle through, before he reaches man's estate.
+There is no telling but Cavendish may be a baronet yet."
+
+"That is it, then!" said Wyndham. "It is for his prospective baronetcy
+the girl has promised to marry him. Pride and ambition, the two sins
+that hurled Lucifer from heaven to hell, are strong in that woman."
+
+"Oh, come now," said Val, starting up, "I think we had better get out of
+this, and drop the subject. It strikes me your language is rather
+forcible, Mr. Wyndham; and there is no telling what you may work
+yourself up to, if you keep on. It wouldn't be healthy for you, I'm
+thinking, if Miss Henderson heard you."
+
+"Nevertheless," Paul Wyndham persisted, flinging away his smoked-out
+weed, "I shall marry Miss Henderson."
+
+The two friends walked away together to the office in Queen Street--Mr.
+Blake disdaining all reply to the last remark.
+
+On their way they met Captain Cavendish, mounted on his favorite bay,
+and looking the very beau ideal of a military rider, slowly cantering
+beside the pretty pony-carriage where the Princess of Speckport sat in
+state. The contrast between the handsome officer on horseback and the
+young author on foot was great; but Mr. Wyndham bowed to the soldier and
+his fair friends with undisturbed placidity.
+
+"You see!" said Mr. Blake, significantly.
+
+"I see," serenely answered Mr. Wyndham; "and I repeat. I shall marry
+Miss Olive Henderson!"
+
+There was nothing at all of boasting in the tone of Mr. Paul Wyndham in
+saying this--simply one of deep, quiet determination. You had only to
+look at his face--that pale, steadfast face--if you were any judge of
+physiognomy, to perceive that his assurance to Mr. Blake, of seldom
+failing in any undertaking, was no idle bravado. He was one of those men
+of iron inflexibility, of invincible daring, of over mastering strength
+of will, bending all other wills to their own. Men of the Napoleon
+Bonaparte stamp, made to sway empires, and move about other men, kings
+and knights, queens and bishops, as they please, on the great chessboard
+of life. Mr. Val Blake, knowing Paul Wyndham, had some dim perception of
+this; but he knew, too, that Olive Henderson was no ordinary woman. He
+had a strong will, and so had she; but it was only a woman's will after
+all, and with it went womanly weakness, passion, and impulse, and the
+calm, passionless man was the master-mind.
+
+"But I think she will baffle him here, after all," Mr. Blake said to
+himself, as he ceased thinking about the matter. "I don't believe Olive
+Henderson will ever marry Paul Wyndham, not but what he's a great deal
+better fellow than Cavendish, after all!"
+
+It seemed as though he was right, for a whole week passed before Mr.
+Wyndham and Miss Henderson met again. The engagement of the heiress with
+Captain Cavendish, though not formally announced, was pretty generally
+known; and it was rumored that the wedding was to take place early in
+June. May had come in, draped in a sodden sheet of gray wet fog; but the
+villa at Redmon went steadily up, despite of wind and weather.
+Landscape-gardeners were turning the potato-patches and broad meadows
+and turnip-fields into a little heaven below, and the place was to be
+completed in July, when Mrs. Grundy said the happy pair would be
+returning from their bridal-tour, and take up their abode therein.
+
+Mr. Paul Wyndham heard all this as he smoked his cigars and wrote away
+placidly at his new novel, and was in nowise disturbed. Mr. Val Blake
+heard it, and grinned as he thought of the egotistical young author
+getting baffled for once. Miss Henderson's innumerable admirers heard
+it, and gnashed their teeth with impotent, jealous fury, and, lastly,
+Miss Henderson herself heard it, and frowned and laughed alternately.
+
+"This horrid gossiping town of yours, Laura!" she said impatiently; "how
+do they find out everything as soon as one knows it one's self, I
+wonder! I wish people would mind their own business and let me alone!"
+
+"Great people must pay the penalty of greatness, my dear," Miss Blair
+answered, philosophically; "and, besides, it is only a question of time,
+so don't get into a gale about it! It doesn't matter much whether it is
+known this minute or the next."
+
+The conversation between the young ladies took place in Miss Henderson's
+room, and while dressing for a ball. It was to be a very grand ball
+indeed, given by the officers, and to which only the tiptop cream of the
+cream of Speckport society was to be invited. Of course Miss Henderson
+was the first lady thought of, and of course her friend Miss Blair came
+next; but Mr. Val Blake, who didn't belong to the crême at all, was to
+be there too. But Mr. Blake was such a good fellow, and hand and glove
+with the whole barracks, and was so useful to puff their concerts and
+theatricals in the "Spouter," and praise the bass of Lieutenant the
+Honorable L. H. Blank, and the tenor-solo of Captain G. P. Cavendish,
+etc., etc., that it would have been an unpardonable breach to have
+omitted him. Mr. Paul Wyndham, whose fame as an author had by this time
+reached Speckport, was also to be there; and the ball was expected to be
+the most brilliant thing of the season.
+
+As far as weather went, it was rather a failure already. The dismal,
+clammy fog had subsided at last into rain, and the rain lashed the
+windows of Miss Henderson's room, and the wind shrieked about the
+cottage, and roared out at sea as if bent on making a night of it. The
+heiress, with Rosie, the maid, putting the finishing touches to her
+toilette, stood listening to the storm, and drearily watching the
+reflection of her own face and figure in the tall glass. She had taken a
+fancy to be grandly somber to-night, and wore black velvet and the
+diamonds Speckport talked so much of, ablaze on throat and arms. There
+were blood-red flowers in her tar-black hair, and in her bouquet which
+lay on the dressing table, but she looked more superb in her sable
+splendor than ever.
+
+Was Miss Laura Blair, with her commonplace prettiness of fair skin, pink
+cheeks, and waving brown hair, laying herself out as a foil to the
+black-eyed siren? She was dressed in white moire antique, gemmed with
+seed-pearls, and with a train of richness that swept half way across the
+room. She had white roses in her hair, on her breast, and in her
+bouquet. She wore pearl bracelets and necklace, and looked fair as a
+lily--a vivid contrast to her black and crimson neighbor.
+
+Miss Henderson sent Rosie out of the room, and stood listening in
+silence for a while to the raging of the storm. Presently she turned to
+Laura, who was all absorbed settling her laces and jewels, with a rather
+singular inquiry on her lips.
+
+"Laura," she said, abruptly, "what is the matter with me to-night? Why
+am I afraid to go to the ball?" Miss Blair turned round and gazed aghast
+at this question. The shadow that sometimes lay on her friend's face was
+there now, like a dark vail.
+
+"Dear me, Olly! I'm sure I don't know what you mean! Afraid to go to the
+ball?"
+
+"Yes," repeated Olive, "afraid! I feel as though something were going to
+happen! I have a presentiment that some misfortune is before me! I have
+had it all day!"
+
+"It's the weather, dear," said Laura, retiring to the toilet, "or else
+it's indigestion. Don't be foolish!"
+
+Olive Henderson was in no laughing humor, but she did laugh, half
+fretfully, though, at this reply. "It's not the weather, and it's not
+the indigestion, Miss Blair," she said, "it is the moral barometer
+giving warning of a coming storm--it is coming events casting their
+shadows before. I have half a mind not to go to the ball to-night."
+
+"Nonsense, Olly!" exclaimed Laura, in some alarm, knowing very well
+Olive was just the girl not to go if she took it in her head, "how
+absurd you are. Presentiments! pooh! You've been reading some German
+trash--that's what you've been doing, and you have caught some absurd
+German silliness! I should like to see you try to stay away from the
+ball, the last, the best, the brightest of the season, and you looking
+divine, too, in that black velvet! What could possibly happen you at
+the ball, I should like to know?"
+
+Miss Henderson and Miss Blair were rather late in arriving--nearly every
+one was there before them. There were two gentlemen who came
+considerably late, but no one noticed them much, being only Mr. Val
+Blake and his New York friend, Mr. Paul Wyndham. Mr. Blake was fond of
+dancing, and was captured by Miss Blair almost as soon as he entered,
+and led off; for Miss Laura did make love to this big stupid Val in
+pretty roundabout feminine fashion, as women have a way of doing all the
+world over. Mr. Wyndham did not dance, and as he was not at liberty to
+smoke, the ball was rather a bore than otherwise. He stood leaning
+against a pillar, watching the dancers; his pale, grave, quiet face and
+thoughtful gray eyes ever turned in one direction. A great many more
+gentlemen's faces turned presently in the same quarter, for the
+loadstone of the ball shone there, magnificent, in black velvet, and
+with eyes that outshone her diamonds. Was there rapport between them?
+Was it some inward magnetism that made the belle of the ball, in the
+height of her triumph and power, aware of this fixed, steadfast gaze,
+and uneasy under it? Flatterers and sycophants surrounded her on every
+hand, but she had to turn restlessly away from them and look over every
+now and then to that pale, watchful face, and those fixed, grave gray
+eyes.
+
+Paul Wyndham still watched her. She grew nervously miserable at last,
+and enraged with herself for becoming so. If this strange man stared
+rudely, what was it to her? She would take no further notice of him, she
+would not look at him; and saying this to herself, she floated away in
+the waltz, with her eyes persistently fixed on her partner or on the
+floor.
+
+The waltz concluded, and Miss Henderson, being tired and hot, her
+partner led her to a seat, and left her to get an ice. It was the first
+time all that evening she had been for a moment alone, and she lay back
+among the cushions of her chair and listened to the raging of the storm
+without.
+
+The seat was in the recess of a bay window, partly shut out from the
+room by scarlet drapery, and she was glad to think she was alone. Alone!
+No, for there opposite to her stood Paul Wyndham, his magnetic eyes
+fixed with powerful intensity on her face. A cold thrill of fear, vague
+and chilling, crept through every vein--she would have risen, in
+undefined panic, but he was by her side directly, speaking quietly the
+commonest of commonplace words.
+
+"Good evening, Miss Henderson. I trust I see you well and enjoying
+yourself. It is the first time I have had the pleasure of approaching
+you, you have been so surrounded all the evening."
+
+She did not speak; a cold bend of the head answered him, and she rose
+up, haughty and pale. But he would not let her go; the power of his
+fixed gaze held her there as surely as if she had been chained.
+
+"I fear," he said, in that quiet voice of his, "I fear you thought me
+rude in watching you, as I must own to having done. But I assure you,
+Miss Henderson, it was no intentional rudeness; neither was it my
+admiration, which, pardon me, is great! I watched, Miss Henderson,
+because I find you bear a most startling, a most wonderful resemblance
+to a person--a young girl--I once knew in New York."
+
+She caught her breath, feeling the blood leaving her face, and herself
+growing cold. Paul Wyndham never took his pitiless eyes off her charming
+face.
+
+"In saying I knew this young girl," he slowly went on, "I am wrong; I
+only saw her in the city streets. You came from New York, but you could
+not have known her, Miss Henderson, for she was abjectly poor. She lived
+in a mean and dirty thoroughfare called Minetta Street; she lodged in a
+house filled with rough factory-women, and kept by one Mrs. Butterby;
+and the young woman's name was Harriet Wade."
+
+A moment after Mr. Wyndham said this, he came out of the curtained
+recess, and crossed the ballroom rapidly. On his way he met Laura Blair,
+and paused to speak.
+
+"I am going for a glass of water," he said, "for Miss Henderson. I was
+talking to her at that window when she was taken suddenly ill. You had
+better go to her, Miss Blair. I am afraid she is going to faint."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+MR. WYNDHAM'S WOOING.
+
+
+A bleak and rainy morning in Speckport--a raw and windy morning, with a
+sky all lead-color, except where it was inky black. A wild, wet, rainy
+day, on which nobody wanted to stir out if they could help it. An
+utterly black and miserable day, that which followed the officers' ball.
+
+On this wretchedly wet and windy day Olive Henderson sat at her chamber
+window, and looked out over the black and foam-crested bay. The room
+looked very cozy and pleasant, with its soft, warm, bright-hued Brussels
+carpet, its cushioned easy-chairs and lounges, its white-draped bed, its
+pretty pictures and tables, and bright coal fire burning in the
+glittering steel grate, its costly window-draperies of lace and damask,
+looking all the more pleasant and luxurious by contrast with the black,
+bleak day outside.
+
+A delightful room this bad May morning, a room to bask and luxuriate in,
+this chamber of Olive Henderson. But Olive Henderson herself, sitting by
+the window, staring blankly out, seemed to take very little enjoyment in
+its comfort and beauty. She wore a white loose muslin wrapper, tied
+carelessly round the slender waist with a crimson cord, its every fold,
+as it hung straight about her, telling how indifferently the simple
+toilette had been made. All her profuse black hair was drawn away from
+her face, haggard and worn in the gray morning light, and fastened in a
+great careless knot behind. But, somehow, the stateliness that was a
+part of herself characterized her as strikingly in this primitive
+simplicity as when robed in velvet and diamonds last night. Perhaps
+Semiramis, Queen of Assyria, when in trouble with foreign parts, wore
+white muslin wrappers, and her black hair disheveled, before her
+subjects, and managed to look Queen Semiramis withal. It isn't likely,
+you know, but she may.
+
+Rain, rain, rain! How ceaselessly it lashed the windows, and how
+piteously it beat on the heads of the poor little newsboys, passing up
+and down Golden Row, and chanting, disconsolately, "Morning Snorter,"
+the "Sn-o-o-or-ter!" Perhaps, looking up at the curtained-window, where
+the young lady sat, these newsboys thought it was a fine thing to be
+Miss Olive Henderson, the heiress of Redmon, and live in a handsome
+house, with servants to wait on her, and nothing to do but play the
+piano, and drive about in her carriage all day long. But, I am pretty
+sure, there was not a pug-nosed urchin coming there that particular
+morning, who was not a thousand times happier than the heiress of
+Redmon.
+
+Discovered--disgraced--in the power of this man--this stranger! Liable
+to be exposed as a liar and a cheat to the world at any hour! Liable to
+have all this wealth and luxury, for which she had done so much--for
+which she had risked her very soul--torn from her at any instant, and
+she herself thrust out to fight the battle of life, with poverty and
+labor and misery once more. She seemed to have grown old in
+four-and-twenty hours, with her haggard cheeks and great hollow eyes.
+She had sat as she was sitting now for hours, her hands clasped loosely
+in her lap, her vacant gaze fixed on the wretched day, but seeing
+nothing. Only yesterday, and she had been so sure, so secure, so happy,
+and now--and now!
+
+She had not fainted the night before. Laura Blair found her lying back
+ghastly and white in her chair, but not insensible. The ballroom had
+been filled with consternation, and she was so surrounded immediately
+that Mr. Wyndham, returning with his glass of water, could find no
+possibility of approaching her. They had led her into the ladies'
+dressing-room, and Captain Cavendish had gone for a cab; and when she
+was a little better, they took her home, and the rest went back to the
+ballroom. People began to think that in spite of Miss Henderson's
+apparent physical perfection, she was subject to fainting fits, and
+pitied her very much, as they resumed their dancing. But the eclipsed
+belles of Speckport rejoiced, I am afraid, in their wicked little
+hearts, that the conqueress was gone, and held up their pretty heads,
+which had drooped in the sunlight of her shining presence before.
+
+Once at home, Miss Henderson professed herself perfectly restored, and
+insisted on Laura and her mamma, who had been their chaperone, and
+Captain Cavendish, going back to the ball once more.
+
+"I shall do well enough now," she said, wearily. "I am very foolish,
+but----"
+
+Her voice died away, and her head drooped forward on her arm. Captain
+Cavendish bent tenderly over her, as she lay on a sofa, with a pale and
+anxious face.
+
+"My darling," he said, "I am afraid you are very ill. Let me go for Dr.
+Leach--this may be something serious."
+
+But Miss Henderson positively refused, and insisted on their returning
+to the ball.
+
+"I shall lie down and go asleep," she said, "and I will be quite
+restored to-morrow. Go at once."
+
+"I shall go," the captain said, holding her hands, "but not back to the
+ball. Do you think there could be any pleasure for me there, and you
+absent, Olive? Good night, my love--get rid of this white face before I
+see you to-morrow."
+
+Olive Henderson slept that night, but it was more like stupor than
+healthful sleep, and she awoke with a dully throbbing headache, and a
+numbing sense of misery at her heart. She had arisen in the black and
+wretched dawn of that miserable May morning, and had sat staring
+vacantly out at the ceaseless rain, and dark and turbid sea. She was not
+thinking--she was sitting there in a dull torpor of despair, waiting for
+the end.
+
+There was a knock at the door. It had to be repeated two or three times
+before she comprehended what it meant, and then she arose and opened the
+door. It was Rosie, the housemaid; and the girl recoiled at sight of
+her, as if she had seen a ghost.
+
+"My patience, Miss! how bad you do look! I am afraid you are worse than
+you was last night."
+
+"No. What is it you want?"
+
+"It's a gentleman, Miss, that has called, and is in the drawing-room,
+although it is raining cats and dogs."
+
+She presented a card to her mistress, and Olive read the name of "Paul
+Wyndham." She turned sick at sight of that name--that name so lately
+heard for the first time, but so terribly familiar now; and looked at
+the girl with a sort of terror in her great black eyes.
+
+"Is this man--is this Mr. Wyndham here?"
+
+"Down in the drawing-room, Miss, and his overcoat and umbrella making
+little streams of rain-water all along the hall. Will you go down,
+Miss?"
+
+Olive Henderson's hand had closed on the pasteboard with so convulsive a
+pressure, that the card was crushed into a shapeless mass. Her stupor
+was ending in a sort of sullen desperation. Let the worst come, it was
+Fate; and she was powerless to battle with so formidable a foe. Whatever
+brought this man now, his coming was merciful; the most dreadful
+certainty was better than this horrible suspense, which had made the
+past night a century of misery.
+
+Rosie, the pretty housemaid, watched her young lady's changing face, as
+she walked rapidly up and down, her eyes staring straight before her
+with a fierce and feverish luster, and her lips so rigidly set. Rosie
+saw all this, and greatly marveled thereat. A gentleman had called very
+early on a very wet morning; but that was no reason why Miss Henderson
+should be prancing up and down her room, with the look of an inmate of a
+lunatic asylum.
+
+"Will I tell him you'll come down, Miss?" Rosie ventured to ask, when
+she thought the silence had lasted long enough.
+
+The voice of the girl drew Olive out of her darkly-brooding fit, and she
+turned to close her door.
+
+"Yes," she said. "Tell him I will be down in five minutes."
+
+She walked to the glass, and looked at herself. I dare say Lady Jane
+Grey and Mary Queen of Scots did the same before they were led to the
+block; and I doubt if either wore a more ghostly face at that horrible
+moment than the girl standing there did now. She smiled in bitter scorn
+of herself, as she saw the haggard face and the hollow, burning eyes.
+
+"I look as if I had grown old in a night," she said. "Where is the
+beauty now that so many have praised since I came here?"
+
+She made no attempt to change her dress, but with the loose white muslin
+wrapper trailing in long folds around her, and girdled with scarlet, she
+descended the stairs, and entered the drawing-room.
+
+Mr. Paul Wyndham was sitting at a window, watching the ceaseless rain
+beating against the glass. At that very window, looking out at the
+silvery moonlight, she herself had sat a few nights before, while she
+promised Captain Cavendish she would be his wife. Perhaps she thought of
+this as she swept past, à la princesse, just deigning to acknowledge her
+visitor's presence by her haughtiest bow. She could not have acted
+otherwise, had a hundred fortunes depended on it, and she did not sit
+down.
+
+She stood beside the mantel, her arm, from which the flowing white
+sleeves dropped away, leaning on it, her eyes fixed steadily upon the
+man before her, waiting in proud silence for what he had to say. Any one
+else might have been disconcerted; but Mr. Wyndham did not look as if he
+was. He looked pale and quiet and gentlemanly, and entirely
+self-possessed.
+
+"You do not ask the object of my visit, Miss Henderson," he said,
+"although the hour is unfashionably early, and the day not such as
+callers usually select. But I presume you have been expecting me, and
+are not surprised."
+
+"I am not surprised," she said, coldly.
+
+"I thought that at this hour I should be most certain of finding you at
+home and alone. Therefore, I have come, knowing that after what passed
+last night, the sooner we come to an understanding the better."
+
+"How have you found out my secret?" she abruptly demanded. "You never
+knew me in New York?"
+
+"That is my secret, Miss Henderson--I presume you prefer being called by
+that name--that is my secret, and you will pardon me if I do not reveal
+it. I do know your secret, and it is that knowledge which has brought me
+to this place."
+
+"And knowing it, what use do you intend to make of it?"
+
+He smiled slightly.
+
+"You are very straightforward, Miss Henderson. It is almost as easy
+getting on with you as if you were a man. I foresee that we shall settle
+this little matter pleasantly, after all."
+
+Olive Henderson contracted her black brows, and reiterated her question.
+
+"Knowing this secret, sir, what use do you intend making of it?"
+
+"That depends upon yourself, madam."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I shall keep your secret, Miss Henderson," Paul Wyndham said, "I shall
+keep it inviolably; you shall still be Olive Henderson, heiress of
+Redmon, the lady paramount of Speckport, on one condition."
+
+Her heart beat so fast and thick that she had to press her hands over it
+to still its tumultuous throbbing. Her hollow, burning black eyes never
+left his face, they were strained there in suspense too intense for
+words.
+
+"You are aware, Miss Henderson," the cold, clear, yet melodious voice of
+Paul Wyndham went on, "of the position in which you stand. You have
+usurped the place of another--your stepsister--you have assumed a name
+which does not belong to you, and you have come here to dupe the people
+of this place, to pass yourself off for what you are not, and possess
+yourself of wealth to which you have no shadow of claim. In doing this,
+Miss Henderson, you must be aware you are guilty of a felony, punishable
+by law, punishable by trial, imprisonment, and life-long disgrace. All
+this you know, and knowing it, must be aware how entirely and
+irrevocably you are in my power!"
+
+"Irrevocably and completely in my power," the pitiless voice went on,
+"you see it yourself as well as I. You know also much better than I do,
+the misery, the shame, the degradation exposure must bring. Your name
+published, your crime published far and wide, yourself the scoff and
+jeer of every boor in the town, the horrors of a jail, of a criminal
+cell, of a public trial before gaping thousands, of----"
+
+Paul Wyndham stopped. It was not a cry she had uttered, but a gasping
+sob, telling more of the unutterable agony, the intense misery she was
+suffering, than any wild outbreak of womanly shrieks. She put out her
+hands with a passionate cry.
+
+Paul Wyndham looked at the disturbed, crouching form, convulsed with
+despairing agony, with Heaven only knows how much of pity in his face.
+
+"Miss Henderson! Miss Henderson!" he cried, "I did not mean--I did not
+think what I said would affect you like this. I only told you what might
+be, but it never will be, for you will listen to what I have yet to say,
+and I never will reveal your secret to a living soul!"
+
+She lifted her head, and looked at him as a hunted stag might, with the
+knife at its throat.
+
+"Mr. Wyndham," she said, with that dignity which is born of extreme
+misery, "what have I ever done to you that you should come here and
+torment me like this?"
+
+Paul Wyndham turned away from that reproachful face, with a dark shadow
+on his own.
+
+"Heaven knows, Miss Henderson, I hate the necessity which compels me to
+cause you this pain, but it is a necessity, and I must do it; you never
+have wronged me--I have no wish to give you a moment's suffering, but a
+fatality against which I am powerless, urges me on. I hate myself for
+what I am doing--but what can I do--what can I do?"
+
+He seemed to ask himself the question, as he sprang up and took, like
+herself, to walking excitedly up and down. His face was so darkly
+troubled that Olive Henderson looked at him with searching, wondering
+eyes.
+
+"I do not understand you," she said, chilled with a new fear, "does any
+one but yourself know my secret?"
+
+She was still sitting, and never ceasing to watch him. Paul Wyndham
+leaned against the mantel, as she had done a moment before, and looked
+down at her.
+
+"Miss Henderson, I can tell you nothing but that your secret is safe
+with me if you will comply with the condition I have to name. You may
+trust me; I shall never reveal it!"
+
+"And that condition is----"
+
+There was a pause, during which Olive could have counted the raindrops
+on the window or the loud beating of her heart.
+
+Paul Wyndham's large, clear, bright gray eyes steadily met her own.
+
+"The condition is, that you become my wife."
+
+She gave a cry, she was so utterly astonished, and sat staring at him,
+speechless.
+
+"Your--wife!" she slowly said, when her returned senses enabled her to
+speak.
+
+"Yes, Miss Henderson, my wife! I am no more insensible to the power of
+wealth than you are. You have risked everything for the future; you can
+only hold it now, on condition of becoming my wife!"
+
+Olive Henderson rose up, white and defiant, "I never will!" she said, "I
+never will! I will lose every shilling of it, I will die before I
+consent!"
+
+"Oh, no!" Mr. Wyndham said, quietly, "I do not think you will, when you
+come to reflect, it is not pleasant to die when one is young and
+handsome and prosperous, particularly if one has not been very good, and
+not at all sure of going to Heaven. You will not die, Miss Henderson;
+you will keep the fortune and marry me."
+
+"I never will!" she vehemently cried; "what if I told you my stepsister,
+the real Olive Henderson, were alive, that I have seen her lately, and
+that she has made over everything to me. What if I told you this?"
+
+He smiled incredulously.
+
+"You do not believe me, but I swear to you I state the truth. Olive
+Henderson lives, though I thought her dead; and I have seen her, I tell
+you, and she has consented to my keeping all."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Wyndham quietly, "supposing, for argument's sake, what
+you say to be true, it does not alter your position in the least. Should
+I go to a lawyer and tell him your story, the arrest, the exposure, the
+disgrace all follow as inevitably as ever. The rightful heiress may, as
+you say, be alive, and willing you should usurp her birthright, though
+it does not sound very likely; but even if so, Harriet Wade is too proud
+a woman to incur life-long disgrace and humiliation, when she can avert
+it so easily."
+
+She turned away from him, dropped into her seat, and laid her hand on a
+table near. The action, the attitude, told far more than words, of the
+cold, dark despair thickening around her.
+
+She never lifted her head. She was suffering, as other women have
+suffered, dumbly.
+
+"In asking you to be my wife, Miss Henderson," Mr. Wyndham still
+continued, "I make no pretense of being in love with you myself. I am
+not--I may as well tell you plainly--and I shall never ask love from
+you. In becoming my wife, you will go through a legal ceremony that will
+mean nothing. I shall never intrude upon you one single moment out of
+all the twenty-four hours, unless you desire it, or when the presence of
+others makes our being together unavoidable. We may dwell under the same
+roof, and yet live as far apart as if hemispheres divided us. Believe
+me, I shall not force myself upon you against your will; but for your
+own sake, Miss Henderson, and to still the whispers of busy tongues, it
+would be as well to keep your sentiments regarding me to yourself, as
+well we should be apparently on cordial terms. Are you listening, Miss
+Henderson?"
+
+He really thought she was not. She was lying so still, so rigid, with
+her poor white face on the table, and the thick coils of her dead-black
+hair unloosing themselves, and trailing and twining about her like
+black snakes. She was not hysterical now; she was lying there in a sort
+of dumb anguish, that none but very proud and sensitive hearts, crashed
+to the very dust in shame and humiliation, can ever feel.
+
+"Miss Henderson," Mr. Wyndham repeated, looking at the drooping, girlish
+figure, its very attitude speaking so much of supreme misery, "I am
+waiting for my answer."
+
+She lifted her head and looked at him, with something the look of a deer
+at bay.
+
+"Have you no pity?" she said. "Will you not spare me? I am only a girl,
+alone in the world, and you might pity me and be merciful. I have done
+wrong, I know, but Heaven alone knows what I have suffered from poverty,
+and the degradation it inevitably entails. I was tempted, and I yielded;
+but I think I never was so miserable in the worst days of my suffering
+as I have been at times since I came here. I am not good, I know, but I
+am not used to wickedness and plotting like this, and I think I am the
+most miserable creature on the face of this wide earth. But I never
+wronged you, sir; and you might pity me and spare me."
+
+Her head dropped down again with a sort of sob, and the pitiful pleading
+was touching to hear from those proud lips. If Paul Wyndham had
+possessed the hardest heart that ever beat in a man's breast since the
+days of Nero, I think it must have been touched by the sight of that
+haughty spirit so bowed and crushed before him. His face showed no sign
+of whatever he might feel, but his clear voice shook a little as he
+replied.
+
+"It is of little use, Miss Henderson, for me to say how deeply I do pity
+you--how sorely against my will I wage this unequal warfare, since the
+battle must go on all the same. It would only sound like mockery were I
+to say how grieved I am to give you this pain, since I should still
+remain inexorable."
+
+"Will nothing bribe you?" she asked. "Half the wealth I possess shall be
+yours if----"
+
+She had lifted her face again in eager hopefulness, but he interrupted
+with a gesture.
+
+"I said I was inexorable, Miss Henderson, and I must repeat it.
+Besides," he added, with a slight smile, that showed how credulous he
+was about the story, "the real heiress, though she might make over the
+fortune to you, might object to your handing the half of it over to a
+stranger. No, Miss Henderson, there is only the one alternative--be my
+wife, or else----"
+
+"Or else you will tell all?"
+
+He did not speak. He stood, quietly waiting his answer--quiet, but very
+inflexible.
+
+Olive rose up and stood before him.
+
+"Must you have your answer now?" she asked, "or will you not even give
+me a few hours respite to think it over?"
+
+"As many as you please, Miss Henderson."
+
+"Then you shall have it to-night," she said, with strange, cold
+calmness. "I promised Miss Blair to go to the theater--you will see me
+there, and shall have your answer."
+
+Mr. Wyndham bowed, and with a simple "Good morning," walked out of the
+room. As he shut the door behind him, he felt as though he were shutting
+Olive Henderson in a living tomb, and he her jailer.
+
+"Poor girl! poor girl!" he was thinking, as he put on his overcoat;
+"what a villain I must seem in her eyes, and what a villain I am, ever
+to have consented to this. But it is only retribution after all--one ill
+turn deserves another."
+
+Paul Wyndham walked to his hotel through the drenching rain and cold
+sea-wind, and Olive Henderson listened to the tumult of the storm, with
+another storm quite as tumultuous in her own breast.
+
+The play that night was the "Lady of Lyons." There is only one theater
+in Speckport, so Mr. Wyndham was not likely to get bewildered in his
+search. The first act was half over when he came in, and looked round
+the dress circle, and down in the orchestra stalls. In the glare of the
+gaslight Olive Henderson looked superb. Never had her magnificent black
+eyes shone with such streaming luster as to-night, and a crimson glow,
+quite foreign to her usual complexion, beamed on either cheek--the
+crimson glow, rouge, worn for the first time in her life; and though she
+was a New York lady, she had the grace to be ashamed of the paint, and
+wear a thin black vail over her face. She took her eyes off Mademoiselle
+Pauline for a moment, to fix them on Mr. Wyndham, who came along to pay
+his respects, and to find a seat directly behind that of the heiress,
+but she only bent her head in very distant acknowledgment of his
+presence, and looked at Pauline again.
+
+The curtain fell on the first act. Miss Henderson was very thirsty--that
+feverish thirst had not left her yet, and Captain Cavendish went out for
+a glass of ice-water. Laura was busy chattering to Mr. Blake, and Paul
+Wyndham bent forward and spoke to the heiress, who never turned her
+head.
+
+"I have come for my answer, Miss Henderson," he said; "it is 'Yes,' I
+know."
+
+"It is 'Yes,' Mr. Wyndham, and, with my consent, take the knowledge that
+I hate and despise you more than any other creature on the face of the
+earth."
+
+She never turned while saying this. She stared straight before her at
+the row of gleaming footlights. The music was croaking out, every one
+was talking busily, and not one of the young ladies who looked enviously
+at the beautiful and brilliant heiress, nor the men who worshiped her at
+a distance, and who hated the young New Yorker for the privilege he
+enjoyed of talking to her--not one of them all dreamed ever so faintly
+of that other play being enacted off the stage.
+
+Captain Cavendish came back with the water, the play went on, but I
+doubt if Olive Henderson heard a word, or knew whether they were playing
+"Othello" or the "Lady of Lyons," but none of the others knew that; that
+serviceable mask, the human face, is a very good screen for the heart.
+
+The play was over, and they were all going out. Mr. Wyndham had not
+addressed her since, but she knew he was behind her all the time, and
+she knew nothing else. He was by her side as they descended the stairs,
+and the cold night-wind struck them on the face. She was leaning on the
+arm of Captain Cavendish, but how was that conquering hero to know it
+was for the last time?
+
+"I will have the pleasure of calling on you to-morrow, Miss Henderson,"
+he distinctly said, as he bowed an adieu and was lost in the crowd.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+MR. WYNDHAM'S WEDDING.
+
+
+Captain Cavendish, sitting at the window of his room in the hotel,
+stared at the red sunset with a clouded face and a gloomy abstraction of
+manner, that told how utterly its lurid glory was lost upon him.
+
+Captain Cavendish had been sitting there since four in the afternoon,
+thinking this over and over again, and never able to get beyond it. His
+day of retribution had come. He was feeling the torture he had so often
+and so heartlessly made others feel; he was learning what it meant to be
+jilted in cold blood. Olive Henderson had turned out the veriest, the
+most capricious, the most heartless of flirts, and Captain Cavendish
+found himself incontinently snubbed! He had asked for no explanation
+yet, but the climax had come to-day. He had ridden over to escort the
+heiress on her breezy morning gallop, and had found Mr. Wyndham just
+assisting her into the saddle. She had bowed distantly to him, cut her
+horse a stinging blow across the neck, and had galloped off, with Paul
+Wyndham close beside her. Catty Clowrie looked out of the cottage
+window, and laughed a voiceless laugh, to see the captain's blank
+consternation.
+
+"Tit for tat!" Catty said; "you are getting paid back in your own coin,
+Captain George Cavendish!"
+
+So, while the fierce red sun blazed itself out in the purple arch, and
+the big round yellow moon rose up, like another Venus, out of the
+bluish-black bay, Captain Cavendish sat at his window, telling the same
+refrain over and over in his mind, as perseveringly as ever any holy
+monk told the Ave Maria on his rosary:--"What has changed her? what has
+changed her? what has changed her?"
+
+The moon was high in the sky before he roused himself from his long and
+somber musing-fit, and, pulling out his watch, looked at the hour.
+
+"Half-past seven," he said; "they were to start at eight, and she
+promised to go. I shall ask for an explanation to-night."
+
+He rang for his servant, and desired that young man, when he appeared,
+to fetch him his overcoat. Mr. Johnston brought that garment, and
+assisted his master into it, and the captain put on his hat and gloves,
+and with his cane under his arm (for, of course, as an officer of the
+British army, it was his duty at all times to carry a cane under his
+arm), he set off for the cottage of my Lady Caprice.
+
+The whole front of the pretty cottage was in a state of illumination, as
+he opened the little gate and walked up the gravel path, and men's
+shadows moved on the curtained windows as he rang the bell. Rosie, with
+pink ribbons in her hair, and her Sunday dress on, opened the door and
+showed him into the drawing-room.
+
+"I'll tell Miss Olive you're here," she said; "she is engaged with
+company just now."
+
+Captain Cavendish said nothing. He walked over to the low chimney-piece,
+and leaned moodily against it, as Paul Wyndham had done that rainy
+morning, little better than a week before. He had seen something as he
+came in that had not tended to raise his spirits. The dining-room door
+stood half-open, and glancing in as he passed, he perceived that Miss
+Henderson had given a dinner-party, and that the company was still
+lingering around the table. He saw the Rev. Augustus Tod and his
+sister--and the Tods were the very cream of Speckport society--Major
+and Mrs. Wheatly, and Mr. Paul Wyndham. That was all; but he, her
+betrothed husband, her accepted suitor, had known nothing of it--had
+never been invited!
+
+Captain Cavendish, leaning against the mantel, listened to the laughter,
+and pleasant mingling of voices, and the jingling of glasses in the
+dining-room, and he could plainly distinguish the musical laughter of
+Olive, and her clear voice as she talked to her guests. He stood there
+for upward of half an hour, raging with inward fury, all the more fierce
+for having to be suppressed. Then he heard the dining-room door open, a
+rustle of silk in the passage, an odor of delicate perfume in the air,
+and then the drawing-room door opened.
+
+Miss Henderson swept into the room, bowing and smiling as she passed
+him, and sinking gracefully into a low violet-velvet chair, her rosy
+skirts and misty white lace floating all about her like pink and white
+clouds, and she looked up at him with the same glance of inquiry she
+might have given any lout of a fisherman in Speckport, had such a person
+presumed to call.
+
+"I fear I intrude, Miss Henderson," he said, suppressing, as a gentleman
+must, his rage. "I did not know there was a dinner-party at the
+cottage."
+
+"Oh, it is of no consequence," Miss Henderson said, carelessly, toying
+with her watch and chain; "my guests are all friends, who will readily
+excuse me. Will you not take a seat, Captain Cavendish?"
+
+"No, Miss Henderson! in a house where I am made to feel I am an intruder
+I must decline being seated. I believe you promised to join the
+sailing-party on the bay to-night, but I suppose it is useless to ask
+you if you are going now."
+
+"Why, yes," in the same careless way, "it is hardly probable I should
+leave my friends, even for the moonlight excursion. Are you going? I am
+sure you will have a very pleasant time; the night is lovely."
+
+"Yes," said Captain Cavendish, "I am likely to have a pleasant time, as
+I have had, you must be aware, all through the past week. If you can
+spare a few minutes from these very dear friends of yours, Miss
+Henderson, I should be glad to have an explanation of your conduct."
+
+"Of my conduct?" still in that careless way. "How?"
+
+Captain Cavendish choked down an oath, but there was a subdued
+fierceness in his voice when he spoke.
+
+"Miss Olive Henderson, has it quite escaped your memory that you are my
+promised wife? It strikes me your conduct of late has not been
+altogether in keeping with this fact. Will you have the goodness to
+explain the contempt, the slights, the strangeness of your conduct?"
+
+"It is very easily explained," Miss Henderson answered, with supreme
+indifference, which, whether real or assumed, was very natural. "I have
+repented that rash promise, and now retract it. I have changed my mind;
+it is a woman's privilege, Captain Cavendish, and here is your
+engagement ring."
+
+She drew the little golden circlet off her finger and held it out to
+him, as she might have returned it to some jeweler who had asked her to
+purchase it. He did not take it--he only stood looking at her, stunned!
+
+"Olive!"
+
+"I am sorry to give you pain, Captain Cavendish," Miss Henderson replied
+to that cry, still toying with her chain; "but you know I told you that
+night I did not love you, so you ought not to be surprised. I suppose it
+seems heartless, but then I am heartless; so what can you expect."
+
+She laughed to herself a little hard laugh, and looked up at him with
+coldly-shining eyes. He was white, white even to his lips; for,
+remember, he loved this woman--this cold-blooded and capricious
+coquette.
+
+"Olive! Olive!" was all he could cry, and there was nothing but wild
+astonishment and passionate reproach in his voice. There was no room for
+anger now. He loved her, and it made him a coward, and he faltered and
+broke down.
+
+Olive Henderson rose up as if to end the interview.
+
+"Better we should understand one another now, Captain Cavendish, than
+later. Perhaps the day may come and sooner than you expect, when you
+will thank me for this. I am not good, and I should not have made you a
+good wife, and you have more cause for thankfulness than regret. Here is
+your ring, and with it I renounce all claim to you! We are from
+henceforth what we were before you spoke--friends! In that character I
+shall at all times be happy to see you. Good evening, Captain
+Cavendish!"
+
+Captain Cavendish walked back to his hotel in a stunned and stupefied
+sort of way, much as a man might who had received a heavy blow on the
+head, and was completely benumbed. He had received a blow, a most
+unexpected and terrible blow; a blow so inconceivable, he could hardly
+realize it had really fallen. His worst enemy could scarcely have wished
+him a more miserable night than that which he spent, ceaselessly walking
+his room, and acting over and over again the scene that had so lately
+passed. O Nathalie Marsh! could you have risen up in spirit before him
+then, surely you would have thought yourself completely avenged.
+
+Was Miss Olive Henderson, lying in luxurious ease among the satin
+pillows of a lounge in the dining-room, next morning, wearing a most
+becoming matin neglige, and listlessly turning over the leaves of a
+novel, thinking of her rejected lover, I wonder? Catty Clowrie, sitting
+sewing industriously at the window--for Catty was not above doing plain
+sewing for the heiress--and watching her stealthily between the
+stitches, wondered if she were really reading, or only thinking, as she
+lay there, turning over the leaves with restless fingers, and jerking
+out her pretty little watch perpetually to look at the hour. It was very
+early, only nine o'clock, too soon for her to expect visitors--even that
+indefatigable Mr. Wyndham, who came like clockwork every day, could
+hardly have made his appearance so early. Catty, thinking this, stopped
+suddenly, for a gentleman was ringing the door-bell--a gentleman with a
+white, fierce face, and a look about him, altogether, Miss Clowrie had
+never seen him wear before. Olive sat up and looked at Catty.
+
+"Who is it?" she asked.
+
+"Captain Cavendish."
+
+The black brow contracted suddenly, and Catty saw it. She, as well as
+all Speckport, knew there was a breach between the two, and she and all
+Speckport set Mr. Wyndham down as the cause.
+
+Olive Henderson rose up, with her brows still contracted, and walked
+into the drawing-room. She shut the door behind her; and oh! what would
+not Catty Clowrie have given had the painted panels of that door been
+clear glass, that she might see what was going on. She could hear, not
+their words, but the voice of the captain, passionate and then
+reproachful, then pleading, then passionately angry again. Once she
+crept to the door; it was after an unusually vehement outburst on his
+part; and when her curiosity was excited beyond all bounds, she affixed
+her ear to the keyhole.
+
+"It hardly becomes you, Captain Cavendish," she heard the voice say, in
+a tone of cold disdain; "it does not become you to talk like this of
+infidelity. If all tales be true, you have been rather faithless
+yourself in your time. People who live in glass houses are always the
+readiest to throw stones, I think!"
+
+Catty dared not stay, lest they should suddenly open the door, and went
+back to her work.
+
+"She has refused him!" she thought. "What new mystery is this?"
+
+Had Miss Clowrie been able to look into the room, she would have seen
+Captain Cavendish pacing it like a caged tiger, and Miss Henderson
+standing up and leaning against the mantel, and looking icily at him out
+of her great black eyes. He stopped abruptly before her, controlling his
+passion, and steadfastly returned her gaze.
+
+"And is it for Mr. Paul Wyndham," he asked, with sneering emphasis, "the
+little pitiful quill-driver, that I am rejected?"
+
+The black eyes of Olive Henderson flashed flame at the gibing tone.
+
+"Yes!" she flashed, impetuously, "it is for Mr. Paul Wyndham, whose name
+is a household word in lands where he has never been--who will be
+remembered by thousands when you are dead and forgotten!"
+
+If Captain Cavendish could, with any propriety, have knocked the defiant
+young lady down at that moment, I think he would have done it. He set
+his strong white teeth, and clenched his hands, in the impotence of his
+fury.
+
+"And this insult, am I to understand, is your final answer?"
+
+"The answer is final," Olive said, frigidly. "The insult, if such it be,
+you provoked yourself, by first insulting me. I wished to part friends
+with you; if you prefer we should part enemies, it is immaterial to me.
+I do not know why you have come to make this scene this morning, when
+you received your answer last night."
+
+The morning sunshine was streaming brightly into the room; but, as she
+spoke, it was suddenly darkened, and Paul Wyndham, riding past, strung
+his horse at the door. An instant after, Catty Clowrie saw Captain
+Cavendish leave the house, his hat slouched over his eyes, and stride
+away as if shod with seven-league boots. Mr. Wyndham had come to escort
+Miss Henderson on her customary morning-ride to Redmon, and Olive ran
+up-stairs to put on her riding-habit. But not until Catty had seen how
+haughtily cold her reception of Mr. Wyndham was, and how ghostly pale
+she looked as she ran up-stairs.
+
+Catty Clowrie was not the only young lady in Speckport puzzled by Miss
+Henderson's remarkable conduct. Laura Blair was bothering her poor
+little brain with the enigma, and could not solve it, though she tried
+ever so.
+
+"Olly, dear," she said, in a perplexed tone, when she came to the
+cottage next day, and up in Olive's room seated herself for a
+confidential chat, "have you quarreled with Captain Cavendish?"
+
+Olive was reclining in a vast Sleepy Hollow of an armchair, looking pale
+and fagged; for she had been at a ball the previous night, and lay with
+her hands folded listlessly in her lap, and the lazy lids hiding the
+splendor of her eyes. She hardly took the trouble to lift these heavy
+eyelids, as she replied:
+
+"No--yes. Why?"
+
+"Because, he's gone away, dear! I thought you knew it. He has gone off
+on leave of absence to Canada, I believe."
+
+"Indeed!" Miss Henderson said, indifferently. "When did he go?"
+
+"He left in the steamer for Portland, Maine, this morning. Olly,
+dearest, will you not tell me what it is all about?"
+
+"All what is about?" asked Olive, impatiently.
+
+Laura looked frightened; she always got scared when Miss Henderson's big
+black eyes flashed.
+
+"You won't be angry, my darling Olly? but I thought--every one
+thought--you were going to marry Captain Cavendish."
+
+"Did they? Then it's a pity 'every one' must be disappointed, for I am
+not going to marry Captain Cavendish."
+
+Laura sat silent after this quencher. She was seated on a low stool at
+her friend's feet, with her brown head lying on her lap. The heiress
+bent down and kissed the pretty face.
+
+"My poor, silly, inquisitive little Laura!" she said, "you would like a
+wedding, I know. You have a feminine love of bridal-vails and
+orange-wreaths, and you would like to look pretty in white silk and
+Honiton lace, as my bridemaid--wouldn't you, now?"
+
+"Yes," said Miss Blair.
+
+"Well, then, Laura, you shall!"
+
+Laura started up, and stared.
+
+"What?"
+
+"I say," repeated Olive, quietly, "you shall be gratified. You shall
+wear the white silk and the Honiton lace, my dear, and be first
+bridemaid, for I am going to be married!"
+
+Laura Blair clasped her hands.
+
+"Oh, Olly! and to Mr. Wyndham?"
+
+"Yes; to Mr. Wyndham."
+
+Laura sat like one transfixed, digesting the news. Somehow, she was not
+so much surprised, but the suddenness of the intelligence stunned her.
+
+Olive Henderson laughed outright as she looked at her.
+
+"Well, Miss Blair," she said, "if I had told you I had committed a
+murder, and was going to be hanged for it, you could hardly look more
+aghast! Pray, is there anything so very terrible in my marrying Mr.
+Wyndham?"
+
+"It's not that," said Laura, recovering herself slowly, "but the news
+came so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that----"
+
+"Unexpectedly! Is it possible, Laura, Speckport has not decided before
+now I should marry Mr. Wyndham?"
+
+"Speckport doesn't know what to think," said Laura; "it decided upon
+your marriage with Captain Cavendish; it said that you were engaged, and
+that all was settled, when, lo! this Mr. Wyndham appears, and presto!
+all is changed. Captain Cavendish flies out of the country, and Mr.
+Wyndham becomes the hero of the story. Speckport never was so pleased
+before; you are as erratic as a comet, Miss Henderson, and it is as
+useless trying to account for your vagaries."
+
+"I am glad Speckport has found that out. Well, Laura, you will be
+bridemaid?"
+
+"Of course. Oh how strange it all seems! When is it to come off?"
+
+"What, the wedding? Oh, near the end of next month, I believe. Mr.
+Wyndham, like any other ardent lover, objects to long engagements."
+
+She laughed, as she spoke, a little disdainful laugh, that made Laura
+fix her brown eyes thoughtfully on her face.
+
+"Olly--don't be angry, please--do you love Mr. Wyndham?"
+
+"Of course, you silly child," the heiress laughed, carelessly, "if not,
+should I marry him? You have read a great many novels, my Laura, of the
+high-pressure school, and have formed your own ideas of lovers from the
+rapturous proceedings therein recorded. But Mr. Wyndham and I are not
+romantic; it is not in my nature to be, and all the romance in his he
+reserves as his stock-in-trade for his books, and has none left for this
+prosy every-day life. He is sufficiently well-looking, he is gentlemanly
+and attentive, and he is famous, and he has asked me to marry him, and I
+have said yes; and I will do it, too, if I don't change my mind before
+the day comes."
+
+"Does Mr. Wyndham love you, Olly?" she asked, after a long, grave pause,
+during which Olive had been humming an opera air.
+
+"Of course, my love! How can he help it?"
+
+"And you are really going to be married so soon, and to this stranger?
+Oh, Olly! take care!"
+
+"You absurd Laura! Take care of what? Are you afraid Mr. Wyndham will
+beat me after the magic words are spoken?"
+
+"I suppose it is the suddenness of it all that makes me feel so strange
+about it. I like Mr. Wyndham very much, and I think his books are
+lovely! I dare say you will be very happy with him, after all. How many
+bridemaids are you going to have, and what are we to wear?"
+
+After this truly feminine turn to the conversation, love and happiness
+were forgotten in the discussion of silks and moire antiques, and the
+rival merits of pink or white for the bridemaids' bonnets. They were a
+very long time deciding; for somehow Olive Henderson, with all her
+inborn love of dress, did not seem to take much interest in the matter.
+
+"We'll settle it all again, Laura," she said, impatiently, "there's no
+hurry--six weeks is a long time. Come, and let us have a drive."
+
+As the young ladies entered the little pony-carriage, Mr. Wyndham rode
+up on his bay, looking his best, as good riders always do on horseback.
+Laura, who was on very friendly, not to say familiar, terms with the
+young author, held out her hand.
+
+"Accept my congratulations," she said, "I am to be bridemaid-in-chief on
+the happy occasion; and, next to being married myself, there is nothing
+we girls like better than that!"
+
+Mr. Wyndham smiled, lifted her hand to his lips gallantly, and made some
+complimentary reply; but there was no rapture in his face, Laura
+noticed, even although his bride-elect, in the dark splendor of her
+beauty, sat before him among the rich cushions, like an Egyptian queen.
+
+"He does not love her," thought Laura; "he is like all the rest; he
+wants to marry her because she is handsome, and the fashion, and the
+heiress of Redmon. I wonder, if I were in her place, if that stupid Val
+would ever come to the point. I know he likes me, but the tiresome
+creature won't say so."
+
+Mr. Wyndham had but just left Mr. Blake's office, after having
+bewildered that gentleman with the same news Olive had imparted to her
+friend.
+
+Mr. Blake's hands were very deep in his pockets, and he was whistling a
+dismally perplexed whistle, as the young author left his sanctum.
+
+"It's very odd!" Mr. Blake was thinking, "it's very odd, indeed! He said
+he would do it, and I didn't believe him, and now it's done. It's very
+odd! I know she doesn't care about him, rather the reverse; and then,
+she was promised to Cavendish. What can she be marrying him for?
+Wyndham, too, he isn't in love with her; it's not in him to be in love
+with any one. What can he want marrying her? It can't be her money--at
+least, it's not like Paul Wyndham, if it is. And then he's a sort of
+novel-writing hermit, who would live on bread and water as fast as
+turtle-soup, and doesn't care a button for society. It's odd--it's
+uncommonly odd!"
+
+Speckport found it odd, too, and said so, which Mr. Blake did not,
+except to himself. But then the heiress with the imperious beauty and
+flashing eyes was a singular being, anyhow, and they put it down as the
+last coquetry of my Lady Caprice. And while they talked of it, and
+conjectured about it, and wondered if she would not jilt him for
+somebody else before the day came round--while Speckport gossiped
+ravenously, Mr. Wyndham was a daily visitor at the cottage, and
+Speckport beheld the betrothed pair galloping together out along the
+lovely country-roads and over the distant tree-clad hills, and saw the
+new villa at Redmon going up with magical rapidity, and the once bleak
+and dreary grounds being transformed into a fairy-land of beauty. All
+the head dressmakers and milliners of the town were up to their eyes in
+the wedding-splendors, and such a lot of Miss Henderson's dear five
+hundred had been invited to the wedding that the miracle was how the
+cottage was going to hold them all. Speckport knew all about the
+arrangements beforehand; how they were to be married in Trinity Church,
+being both High-Church people; how they were going on a bridal-tour
+through the Canadas, and would return toward the close of August, when
+the villa would be ready to receive them.
+
+Speckport talked of all this incessantly, and of the five bridemaids; of
+whom Laura Blair, Jeannette McGregor and Miss Tod, were the chief; and
+while they talked, the day came round. A dull and depressing day, with a
+clammy yellow fog that stuck to everything, and a bleak wind that
+reddened the pretty noses of the bridemaids, and made them shiver in
+their white satin shoes. The old church was crowded. Young and old,
+gentle and simple, all flocked to see the beautiful black-eyed heiress
+who had set so many unhappy young men crazy, married at last to the man
+of her choice. The dismal weather had no effect on her, it seemed; for
+she swept up the aisle, leaning on the arm of Mr. Darcy, who was to play
+papa, in a dress whose splendor electrified Speckport, and which had
+been imported direct from Paris; all in white, an immense vail floating
+all around her like a silvery mist, she didn't, as scandalized Speckport
+said, for all, look a bit like a bride. Where was the drooping of the
+long eye-lashes; where the paling and flushing cheek; where the shy and
+timid graces of virginhood? Was it not the height of impropriety to walk
+up the aisle with her head erect, her black eyes bright and defiant, her
+lips compressed, and her color never varying? It was the vulgarity and
+brazenness of the New York grisette breaking out, or the spangles and
+sawdust of the circus-rider. But Speckport said all this under their
+breath; and when it was all over, and the names down in the register,
+kissed the bride, at least female Speckport did, the beings in
+broadcloth and white vests only looking as if they would like to. And
+then they drove back to the cottage; and Miss Henderson--no, it was Mrs.
+Wyndham now--went to her room at once to put on her traveling-dress, for
+the steamer started in half an hour. There was a great crowd on the
+wharf to see them off; and the bride and bridegroom stood to be looked
+at--he, pale, quiet, and calm; she, haughty and handsome, and uplifted
+to the end.
+
+So it was all over, and the heiress of Redmon was safely married at
+last! The news came out in next day's "Spouter," with a string of good
+wishes from the editorial chair for the happy pair. Two young
+men--Captain George P. Cavendish, in the reading-room of a Montreal
+hotel, and Mr. Tom Oaks, in an Indian's tent up the country, where he
+shot and fished--read it, and digested the bitter pill as best they
+might. Some one else read it, too; Mr. Wyndham, with his own hands,
+posted the first copy of that particular "Spouter" he received to a
+young lady, who read it with strange eagerness in her own room in a
+quaint New York hotel. A lady who read it over and over and over again,
+as often and as eagerly as Miss Wade had read that advertisement long
+before in the Canadian paper shown her in Mrs. Butterby's lodgings, by
+the pale actress.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+MR. WYNDHAM'S MOTHER.
+
+
+Mr. Wyndham and Miss Henderson had had but one confidential interview
+after that first one, during the length of their brief engagement. It
+was the day after the evening at the theater. Mr. Wyndham had called
+early and found the heiress waiting for him in the drawing-room. There
+was no terror, no humiliation in her manner now, nothing but reckless,
+scornful defiance, and fierce pride, with which she seemed to dare him
+and Fate to do their worst.
+
+"I was afraid of you yesterday, Mr. Paul Wyndham," she said, with an
+unpleasant laugh. "I shall never be afraid of you again. I see that it
+is of no use to struggle against Destiny--Providence, good people would
+say, but I make no pretense of goodness. The French have a saying that
+embodies the character of the nation: '_Couronnons nous des roses avant
+qu'elles ne se fleurissent._' I take that for my motto from henceforth,
+and crown myself with roses before they fade. I shall dress and spend
+money and enjoy this fortune while I may--when it goes, why, let it
+go,--I, shall know what to do when that time comes!"
+
+Mr. Wyndham bowed in grave silence, and waited to hear all she might
+have to say. "To retain this wealth," she went on in the same reckless
+tone, and with her black deriding eyes seeming to mock him, "I consent
+to marry you; that is, I consent to go through a civil and religious
+ceremony which the world will call a marriage, and which to us will
+simply mean nothing but an empty form. It will give you a right to my
+money, which is all you want; it will give you a right to dwell under
+the same roof, but no right ever to intrude yourself upon me for one
+second, except when others are present and it is necessary to avoid
+suspicion. The world will call me by your name; but I shall still remain
+Olive Henderson, free and unfettered--free to come and go and do as I
+please, without interference or hindrance from you. Do I make myself
+understood?"
+
+"Perfectly," Mr. Wyndham said, coolly, "and express my views entirely. I
+am delighted with your good sense, Miss Henderson, and I foresee we
+shall make a model couple, and get on together famously. Now, as to our
+wedding arrangements. When is it to be?"
+
+"Whenever you please," she said, scornfully; "it is a matter of perfect
+indifference to me."
+
+"I do not like to hurry you too much, but if the end of June----"
+
+Olive made a careless gesture with her ringed hand:
+
+"That will do! One tune is as good as another."
+
+"And our bridal tour? There must be a bridal tour, you know, or people
+will talk."
+
+"I told you," she said, impatiently, "it was of no consequence to me!
+Arrange it as you please--I shall make no objection."
+
+"Then suppose we go to Canada for a couple of months? The villa at
+Redmon can be ready upon our return."
+
+And this tender tête-à-tête between the plighted pair settled the
+matter. And in due time the solemn mockery was performed by the Rev.
+Augustus Tod, and Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham departed on their wedding tour.
+The upholsterer had received his orders, and the villa would be in
+readiness upon their return, and there would be a famous house-warming,
+to which half Speckport was to be invited. About three weeks after the
+amicable adjustment of affairs between the author and the heiress, Mr.
+Wyndham made a little investment in landed property on his own account.
+There was a delightful little dwelling, known as "Rosebush Cottage," for
+sale. A real bijou of a cottage, painted cream color, with vivid green
+window-shutters and door, and with a garden in front that was a perfect
+sea of roses--crimson roses, and monthly roses, and damask roses, and
+bridal roses, all kinds bloomed here, until the air became faint with
+perfume; and behind there was a gnarled old orchard, where apple-trees
+and plum-trees nearly covered the creamy cottage with their long green
+arms. This delicious Rosebush Cottage was for sale; and Mr. Wyndham, who
+had for some time been quietly on the look-out for just such a place,
+became its purchaser. When asked what he could possibly want of it, Mr.
+Wyndham answered it was for his mother.
+
+"For your mother!" exclaimed Mr. Blake, when Mr. Wyndham first told him.
+"You never mean to say, Wyndham, your mother is going to exchange the
+genial and spicy breezes of Westchester County for our bleak
+province--hey?"
+
+"Westchester County is a delightful place, no doubt," responded Mr.
+Wyndham; "but in my absence, it is only vanity and vexation of spirit to
+my poor mother. What are all the Westchester Counties in America to her
+without her Paul, her only one! I shall send for her as soon as I return
+from Canada, to come here."
+
+"Perhaps she won't come," said Val; "perhaps she will think of the old
+adage, 'My son's my son till he gets him a wife,' and prefer remaining
+where she is."
+
+"No," said Mr. Wyndham, "my mother knows her son will be her son all the
+days of his life. She is very much changed, Blake, since you knew her;
+she never was very fond of society, as you are aware; but of late she
+has become a perfect recluse, shutting herself in and shutting the world
+out. Rosebush Cottage will make her a very nice hermitage, I think, and
+it is conveniently near Redmon. The next thing is to look out for a
+competent and trustworthy servant--not a young girl, you know, giddy and
+frivolous, but a quiet and sensible woman, who would not object to the
+loneliness."
+
+Mr. Blake put on his considering-cap.
+
+"There's Midge," he said, "she's out of place, and stopping with us--you
+saw her at our house last night, you remember; but I'm afraid she
+mightn't suit."
+
+"That little dwarf, do you mean? She would do well enough, as far as
+looks are concerned, if that is the only objection."
+
+"But that isn't the only objection," said Val; "more's the pity, for she
+is perfectly trustworthy, and can work like a horse. As for the
+loneliness, she would rather prefer it on that very account."
+
+"Then what is the objection?"'
+
+"Why, you see," said Mr. Blake, "we're none of us perfect in this lower
+world, and Midge, though but one remove from an angel in a general point
+of view, has yet her failings. For instance, there's her temper."
+
+"Bad?" inquired Mr. Wyndham.
+
+Mr. Blake nodded intelligently.
+
+"It never was of the best, you know; but after she lost Nathalie Marsh,
+it became--well, she is never kept in any place over a week, and then
+she comes to us and makes a purgatory of No. 16 Great St. Peter Street,
+until she finds another situation. I'm afraid she wouldn't do."
+
+Mr. Blake, smelling audibly at the roses as he said this, did not see
+the sudden change that had come over Mr. Wyndham's face nor the
+eagerness hardly repressed in his voice when he spoke.
+
+"She was formerly a servant, then, of this Miss Nathalie Marsh, of whom
+I have heard so many speak since I came here?"
+
+"Yes, for years, and devotedly attached to her. Poor Natty! I think
+Midge felt her loss ten degrees more than her own mother; but grief, I
+regret to say, hasn't a sweetening effect on Midge's temper."
+
+"Still I think I shall try her," said Paul Wyndham, carelessly. "My
+mother is very quiet and easy, and I don't believe they will quarrel. I
+will see Midge about it this very day."
+
+Which he did accordingly, sending her off at once to keep the cottage
+until his mother's arrival. The upholsterer furnishing Redmon Villa had
+his orders for Rosebush Cottage also, and both were to be in readiness
+when September came round.
+
+Olive Henderson heard with extreme indifference of the expected arrival
+of Mr. Wyndham's mother, from the lips of Miss Jo Blake, next day.
+
+"Ah! is she?" the heiress said, suppressing a yawn; "well, as she is to
+reside a mile and a half from Redmon, I don't suppose she will be much
+trouble to me. If the mistress be like the maid, Laura," said the
+heiress, turning with a scornful laugh to her friend, "I am likely to
+have a charming mamma-in-law."
+
+Good Miss Jo, who thought the motherless heiress would rejoice at the
+tidings she brought her, was scandalized at the speech. Indeed, Miss
+Jo--the best of women and old maids--did not approve of Miss Henderson's
+capers at all. She had always thought her too proud; for Miss Jo's
+simple Irish belief was, that we earthly worms have no business at all
+with that sin which drove Lucifer, Star of the Morning, from Paradise,
+and was sorry to see her favorite Laura so much taken up with the
+queenly coquette.
+
+"Laura was such a nice little girl, Val," Miss Jo said, to the editor of
+the "Speckport Spouter," across the tea-table that evening; "and now, I
+am afraid, she will fall into the ways of that young girl, whom
+everybody is running crazy after. If Miss Henderson was like poor Natty,
+or that little angel, Miss Rose, now!"
+
+"How is Miss Rose, Jo?" asked Val; "I haven't seen her this month of
+Sundays?"
+
+"She isn't out much," said Miss Blake; "Mrs. Wheatly keeps her busy; and
+when she does come out, it's to Mrs. Marsh's she goes, or to see her
+poor pensioners. Miss Henderson asked her to be one of her bridemaids, I
+hear, but she refused."
+
+"Stuff!" said Val, politely. "Miss Henderson isn't the woman to ask a
+governess to be her bridemaid. Not but that Miss Rose is as good as she
+is!"
+
+"As good!" cried Miss Jo, in shrill indignation, "she's fifty thousand
+times better. Miss Rose is a little pale-faced angel on the face of the
+earth; and that rich young woman with the big black eyes is no more an
+angel than I am!"
+
+Miss Jo manifested her disapprobation of the heiress by not going to see
+her married, and by declining an invitation to the wedding-breakfast;
+neither of which slights, had she known of them, which she didn't, would
+have troubled the high-stepping young lady in the least.
+
+But Miss Jo was destined to become an heiress herself; for, a fortnight
+after the great wedding, and just as Speckport was getting nicely round
+after the shock, it received another staggerer in the news that a great
+fortune had been left to Miss Jo Blake. Thirty thousand pounds, the
+first startling announcement had it; thirteen, the second; and three,
+the final and correct one.
+
+Yes; Miss Jo had been left the neat little sum of three thousand pounds
+sterling, and was going home to take possession of the fortune. An old
+maiden aunt, after whom Miss Joanna had been named, and from whom she
+had long had expectations--as all Speckport had heard a million times,
+more or less--had died at last, and left Miss Jo the three thousand and
+her blessing.
+
+Upon receiving the tidings, Miss Blake was seized with a violent desire
+to revisit the scenes of her infantile sports, and gave warning of her
+intention of starting in the first vessel bound for Liverpool.
+
+"And it's not in one of them dirty steamboats I'll go," said Miss Jo,
+decisively, "that's liable to blow up any minute; but I'll go an a ship
+that's slow and sure, and not put a hand in my own life by trusting to
+one of them new-fangled inventions!"
+
+Mr. Blake expostulated with his sister on the impropriety of leaving him
+alone and unprotected to the mercies of heartless servant-girls. Miss Jo
+was inexorable.
+
+"If you don't like keeping house and fighting with the servants," said
+Miss Blake, "go and board. If you don't like boarding, why, go and get
+married! it won't hurt your growth any, I'm sure!"
+
+As Mr. Blake was on the wrong side of thirty, and had probably done
+growing, there was a great deal of sound truth in Miss Jo's remark. Mr.
+Blake, however, only stood aghast at the proposal.
+
+"It's time you were getting married, Val," pursued Miss Jo, busily
+packing; "particularly now, that I'm going to leave you. You're well
+enough off, and there's lots of nice girls in Speckport who would be
+glad to snap at you. Not that I should like to see you marry a
+Bluenose--Lord forbid! if it could be helped; but there's Miss Rose, or
+there's Laura Blair, both of them as nice girls as you will find. Now,
+why can't you take and marry one of them?"
+
+Mr. Blake was beyond the power of replying. He could only stare in blank
+and helpless consternation at his brisk, match-making sister.
+
+"I would rather you took Miss Rose," pursued Miss Blake, "she's the best
+of the two, and a rock of sense; but Laura's very fond of you,
+and--where are you going now?"
+
+For Mr. Blake had snatched up his hat and started out, banging the door
+after him. The first person he met, turning the corner, was Mr. Blair.
+
+"So you're going to lose Jo, Blake," he said, taking his arm. "Laura
+tells me she is off next week in the Ocean Star. What are you going to
+do with yourself when you lose her?"
+
+"Become a monk, I think," said Mr. Blake, helplessly. "I don't know
+anything else for it! Jo talks of boarding, but I hate boarding-houses,
+and where else can I go?"
+
+"Come to us," cried Mr. Blair, heartily. "Mrs. B. thinks there's nobody
+like you, and you and I will have a fine chance to talk things over
+together. Come to us, old boy, and make our house your home!"
+
+Mr. Blake closed with this friendly offer at once, on condition that the
+ladies of the house were satisfied.
+
+"No danger of that," said Laura's father; "they will be in transports.
+Come up this evening and have a smoke with me, and see if they don't."
+
+Laura Blair's eyes danced in her head when her father told them the
+news; but the little hypocrite affected to object.
+
+"It will make so much trouble, pa," the young lady said, in a
+dissatisfied tone, "trouble for ma and me, I mean. I wish he wasn't
+coming."
+
+Mr. Blair listened to the shocking fib with the greatest indifference.
+He didn't care whether she liked it or not, and said so, with paternal
+frankness.
+
+So Miss Jo kissed everybody and departed, and Val translated his Lares
+and Penates to Mr. Blair's; at least, such of them as were not disposed
+of by public auction.
+
+Speckport was just settling its nerves after this, when it was thrown
+into another little flutter by the unexpected return of Captain
+Cavendish.
+
+Yes, Captain Cavendish, the defeated conqueror, came back to the scene
+of his defeat, rather swaggering than otherwise, and carrying things
+with a high hand. Perhaps the gallant captain wanted to show Speckport
+how little he cared for being jilted; perhaps he wanted to see what kind
+of life Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham would lead together; perhaps he found
+himself too well known as a roué and gambler in Montreal; or perhaps he
+was not tired bleeding young Alick McGregor and young Speckport
+generally, in that quiet house in Prince Street. He was back, anyway,
+handsome, and nonchalant, and unprincipled as ever.
+
+Miss Blair received a letter from her friend three weeks after her
+departure, dated Niagara. Mrs. Wyndham was not a good correspondent, it
+seemed; her letter was very brief and unsatisfactory, and she only
+mentioned her husband once, and then merely to say Mr. Wyndham was well.
+She signed the letter simply, "Olive," not using her real name, and told
+Laura that Montreal was tiresome and the Canadians stupid. Miss Blair
+sent her half a quire of note-paper by way of answer, recording every
+item of information, and every possible scrap of news, and imploring a
+speedy reply. But Olive never replied, although August wore itself out
+while Laura waited. On the last day of that month, Mrs. Hill received a
+telegram from Portland, Me., from Mr. Wyndham, informing her her master
+and mistress would arrive next day.
+
+It was a glorious September afternoon that on which the wedded pair
+returned from their short bridal-tour. The steamer swept up to the
+crowded wharf in a sort of sun-burst of glory, and the air was opaque
+with amber mist, as if it were raining impalpable gold-dust. Not a sign
+of fog in the cloudless blue sky; it might have been Venice instead of
+Speckport, so luminously brilliant was sky and earth that afternoon.
+
+The passengers poured out of the steamer, and came up the bustling
+floats, where cabmen, porters, hotel-runners and the steamer-hands were
+making a Babel of discord, and the passengers wondered to see the crowd
+of people looking curiously down upon them from the wharf above. Laura
+Blair stood straining her eyes for a sight of her friend. Olive
+Henderson, with her dangerous gift of fascination, had won the girl's
+love as it had never been won before, and Laura had missed her sadly
+during these two last months. As she stood impatiently waiting, she was
+thinking of that pleasant March evening when Olive Henderson had first
+come to Speckport, and they had watched her walk up these very floats,
+stately and tall, leaning on Mr. Darcy's arm, and wearing a vail over
+her face. And while Laura thought of it, and could scarcely believe it
+was only six months ago, she saw the same Olive--Olive Wyndham
+now--coming toward her on her husband's arm. She was not vailed this
+time, although a long drab gossamer vail floated back from the pretty
+jockey-hat she wore, and Laura saw how pale and fagged and spiritless
+she looked. The next moment, she had thrown her arms impetuously around
+her, and was kissing her rapturously.
+
+"My darling Olly! my darling Olly!" she was crying out. "Oh, how glad I
+am to see you again!"
+
+Her darling Olly did not return the embrace very enthusiastically,
+though her face lit up at sight of her friend. Laura shook hands with
+Mr. Wyndham, who was smiling at her effusions, and then turned again to
+the friend she loved.
+
+"Oh, Olly! how dull it has been since you went away, and how cruel of
+you never to write to me! Why didn't you write?"
+
+"Writing is such a bore," Olive said, drearily. "I hate writing. Is that
+the carriage waiting up there?"
+
+"Yes," said Laura; "and how did you enjoy your travel? You look pale and
+tired."
+
+"I am tired to death," Mrs. Wyndham said, impatiently, "and I have not
+enjoyed myself at all. Every place was stupid, and I am glad to be home!
+Do let us get out of this mob, Mr. Wyndham!"
+
+Mr. Wyndham had paused for a moment to give some directions about the
+baggage, and his wife addressed him so sharply that Laura stared. Laura
+noticed during the homeward drive how seldom she spoke to her husband,
+and how cold her tone always was when she addressed him. But Mr. Wyndham
+did not seem to mind much. He talked to Laura--and Mr. Wyndham knew how
+to talk--and told her about their travels, and the places they had
+been, and the people they had met, and the adventures they had
+encountered.
+
+"Olive reigned Lady Paramount wherever we went," he said, smiling (he
+never called her Mrs. Wyndham or "my wife," always Olive). "Our tour was
+a long succession of brilliant triumphs for her."
+
+Olive merely shrugged her shoulders disdainfully, and looked at the
+swelling meadows as they drove along Redmon road. A beautiful road in
+summer time, and the Nettleby cottage was quite lost in a sea of green
+verdure, sprinkled with red stars of the scarlet-runners. Ann Nettleby
+stood in the door as they drove by in a cloud of dust--in that doorway
+where pretty Cherrie used to stand, pretty, flighty little Cherrie, whom
+Speckport was fast learning to forget.
+
+And Redmon! Could Mrs. Leroy have risen from her grave and looked on
+Redmon, she might well have stared aghast at the magical changes. A
+lovely little villa, with miniature peaks and turrets, and a long piazza
+running around it, and verdant with climbing roses and sweetbrier. A
+sloping velvety lawn, on which the drawing-room and dining-rooms windows
+opened, led from the house to the avenue; and fair flower-gardens, where
+fountains played in marble basins, and bees and butterflies disported in
+the September sunshine, spread away on all sides. Beyond them lay the
+swelling meadows, the dark woods; and, beyond all, the shining sea
+aglitter in the summer sunshine. The groom came up to lead away the
+horse, and Mrs. Hill, in a black silk dress and new cap, stood in the
+doorway to receive them. The dark, sunless face of Olive lit up and
+became luminous for the first time as she saw all this.
+
+"How pretty it is, Laura!" she said. "I am glad I am home."
+
+The servants were gathered in the hall to welcome their master and
+mistress as they entered arm-in-arm. The upholsterer had done his work
+well, the drawing-room was one long vista of splendor, the dining-room
+almost too beautiful for eating in, and there was a conservatory the
+like of which Speckport had never seen before. Mrs. Wyndham had a suite
+of rooms, too--sleeping-room, dressing-room, bath-room, and boudoir--all
+opening into one another in a long vision of brightness and beauty, and
+there was a library which was a library, and not a mockery and a
+delusion, and was lined with books from floor to ceiling. Speckport had
+been shown the house, and pronounced it perfection.
+
+Olive Wyndham forgot her languor and weariness, and broke out in her old
+delighted way as she went through it.
+
+"How beautiful it all is!" she cried, "and it is all mine--my own! I am
+going to be happy here--I will be happy here!"
+
+Her black eyes flashed strangely upon her husband walking by her side,
+and the hand clenched, as if she defied Fate from henceforth.
+
+"I hope so," Paul Wyndham said, gravely. "I hope, with all my heart, you
+may be happy here."
+
+Laura looked from one to the other in silent wonder. Mr. Wyndham turned
+to her as they finished the tour of the house.
+
+"I suppose Rosebush Cottage is hardly equal to this, Miss Laura? Have
+you been there lately?"
+
+"Yes," said Laura. "Val and I--he stops with us now, you know--went
+through it last week. The rooms are very pretty, and the garden is one
+wilderness of roses; and Midge reminds me of Eve in Eden, only there is
+no Adam."
+
+"And Midge does not exactly correspond with our ideas of our fair first
+mother," laughed Mr. Wyndham. "I must go there to-morrow and see the
+place. Will you come, Olive?"'
+
+"No, thank you," she said, coldly. "Rosebush Cottage has very little
+interest for me."
+
+Again Laura stared.
+
+"Why is she so cross?" she thought. "How can she be cross, when he seems
+so kind? How soon do you expect your mother, Mr. Wyndham?" she said
+aloud.
+
+"This is Friday--I shall leave on Monday morning for New York to fetch
+her."
+
+There was an announcement that dinner was ready, and nothing more was
+said of Mr. Wyndham's mother. He rode over to Rosebush Cottage early
+next morning, attended only by a big Canadian wolf-hound, of which
+animals he had brought two splendid specimens with him, and told Midge
+he was going to leave him as guardian of the premises. Before he left
+the cottage, he called Midge into the pretty drawing-room, and held a
+very long and very confidential interview with her, from which she
+emerged with her ruddy face blanched to the hue of a sheet. Whatever was
+said in that long conversation, its effect was powerful on Midge; for
+she remained in a dazed and bewildered state for the rest of the day,
+capable of doing nothing but sitting with her arms folded on the
+kitchen-table, staring very hard at vacancy with her little round eyes.
+
+Mr. Wyndham departed for New York on Monday morning, taking the other
+big dog, Faust, with him. Mrs. Wyndham took his departure with superb
+indifference--it was nothing to her. John, the coachman, was of as much
+consequence in her eyes as the man she had promised to love, honor, and
+obey. She did not ask him when he was coming back--what was it to her if
+he never came?--but he volunteered the information. "I will be back next
+week, Olive," he said. "Good-bye." And Olive had said good-bye, icily,
+and swept past him in the hall, and never once cast a look after him, as
+he drove down the long avenue in the hazy September sunshine.
+
+The house-warming at Redmon could not very well come off until Mr.
+Wyndham's return; and the preparations for that great event being going
+on in magnificent style, and Olive eager for it to take place, she was
+not sorry when, toward the close of the following week, she learned her
+husband had returned. It was Miss McGregor who drove up to the villa to
+make a call, and related the news.
+
+"The boat got in about two o'clock, my dear Mrs. Wyndham," Jeannette
+said, "and Mr. Wyndham and his mother came in her. I chanced to be on
+the wharf, and I saw them go up together, and enter a cab and drive
+off. I am surprised they are not here."
+
+"They drove to Rosebush Cottage, I presume," Olive said, rather
+haughtily. "Everything is in readiness for Mrs. Wyndham there."
+
+"What is she like, Jeannette?" asked Laura, who was always at Redmon,
+familiarly. "I suppose she was dressed in black?"
+
+"Yes," Miss McGregor said, "she was dressed in black, and wore a thick
+black vail over her face, and they had driven off before any one had
+time to speak to them. No doubt, she would be present at the
+house-warming, and then they could call on her afterward."
+
+But Mrs. Wyndham, Senior, did not appear at the house-warming; and
+society was given to understand, very quietly, by Mr. Wyndham, that his
+mother would receive no callers. Her health forbade all exertion or
+excitement, it appeared. She seldom, if ever, crossed her own threshold,
+from week's end to week's end; and it was her habit to keep her room,
+and she did not care to be disturbed by any one. Her health was not so
+very poor as to require medical attendance; but Mr. Wyndham owned she
+was somewhat eccentric, and he liked to humor her. Speckport was quite
+disappointed, and said it thought Mr. Wyndham's mother was a very
+singular person, indeed!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+VERY MYSTERIOUS.
+
+
+The house-warming at Redmon was such a house-warming as Speckport never
+saw before; for, as Mr. Blake with his customary good sense remarked,
+"When Mrs. P. Wyndham did that sort of thing, she did do it." In the
+luminous darkness of the September evening, the carriages of the guests
+drove through the tall iron gates up the back avenue, all aglow with
+red, and blue, and green lamps, twinkling like tropical fireflies among
+the trees. The whole front of the beautiful villa blazed with
+illumination, and up in the gilded gallery the musicians were filling
+the scented air with delicious melody. It was not Redmon, this; it was
+fairy-land; it was a scene out of the Arabian Nights, and the
+darkly-beautiful lady in ruby velvet and diamonds, welcoming her
+friends, was the Princess Badelbradour, lovely enough to turn the heads
+of a brigade of poor Aladdins. Society went through the house that
+night, and had the eyes dazzled in their heads by the blinding radiance
+of light, and the glowing coloring and richness of all. The ladies went
+into raptures over Mrs. Wyndham's rooms, and the literary people cast
+envious eyes over the book-lined library, with its busts of poets, and
+pictures of great men, dead and gone. There was a little room opening
+off this library that seemed out of keeping in its severe plainness with
+the magnificence of the rest of the house--a bare, severe room, with
+only one window, looking out upon the velvety sward of the lawn at the
+back of the villa; a room that had no carpet on the floor, and very
+little furniture, only two or three chairs, a baize-covered
+writing-table, a leather-covered lounge under the window, a few pictures
+of dogs and horses, a plaster head of John Milton, a selection of books
+on swinging shelves, a bureau, a dressing-table, a lavatory, a
+shaving-glass, and a sofa-bedstead. Except the servants' apartments,
+there was nothing at all so plain as this in the whole house; and when
+people asked what it was, they were told by Mrs. Hill, who showed the
+house, that it was Mr. Wyndham's room. Yes, this was Mr. Wyndham's room,
+the only room in that house he ever entered, save when he went to
+dinner, or when visitors required his presence in the drawing-room or
+library. His big dog Faust slept on a rug beside the table, his canaries
+sung to him in their cages around the window, he wrote in that hard
+leathern armchair beside the green-baize table, he lay on that lounge
+under the open window in the golden breeze of the September weather,
+and smoked endless cigars; late into the night his lamp glimmered in
+that quiet room; and when it went out after midnight, he was sleeping
+the sleep of the just on the sofa-bedstead. The servants at Redmon
+talked, as servants will talk, about the palpable estrangement between
+master and mistress, about their never meeting, except at dinner, when
+there always was company; for Mrs. Wyndham breakfasted in the boudoir
+and Mr. Wyndham never ate luncheon. He was quite hermit-like in his
+habits, this pale, inscrutable young author--one glass of wine sufficed
+for him--he was out of bed and at work before the stable-boys or
+scullery-maids were stirring, and his only extravagance was in the way
+of cigars. From the day he had married Olive Henderson until this, he
+had never asked or received one stiver of her money; he had more than
+sufficient of his own for his simple wants and his mother's, and had
+Olive been the hardest virago of a landlady, she could hardly have
+brought in a bill against him, even for board and lodging, for he more
+than repaid her for both. He was always courteous, genial, and polite to
+her--too polite for one spark of her affection; always deferring to her
+wishes, and never attempting in the smallest iota to interfere with her
+caprices, or thwart her desires, or use his husbandly authority. She was
+in every way as much her own mistress as she had ever been; so much so
+that sometimes she wondered, and found it impossible to realize that she
+was really married. No, she was not married; these two had never been
+united either in heart or desire; they were bound together by a compact
+never mentioned now. What had he gained by this marriage? Olive
+sometimes wonderingly asked herself. He told her, or as good as told
+her, he wanted her for her money; but now that money was at his
+disposal, and he never made use of it. What had he married her for?
+
+"How proud you must be of your husband, Mrs. Wyndham!" other women had
+said to her, when abroad; and sometimes, in spite of herself, a sharp
+pang cut to the center of her haughty heart at the words. Why, these
+very women had as much right to be proud of him, to speak to him, to be
+near him, as she had. Proud of him! She thought she had cause to hate
+him, she was wicked enough to wish to hate him, but she could not.
+Neither could she despise him; she might treat him as coldly as she
+pleased, but she never could treat him with contempt. There was a
+dignity about the man, the dignity of a gentleman and a scholar, that
+asserted itself, and made her respect him, as she never had respected
+any other man. Once or twice a strange thought had come across her; a
+thought that if he would come to her and tell her he was growing to love
+her, and ask her not to be so cruelly cold and repellent, she might lay
+her hand on his shoulder with the humility of a little child, and trust
+him, and yield herself to him as her friend and protector through life,
+and be simply and honestly happy, like other women. But he never did
+this; his manner never changed to her in the slightest degree. She had
+nothing to complain of from him, she had every cause to be grateful for
+his kindness and clemency. And so she shut herself up in her pride, and
+silenced fiercely her mutinous heart, and sought happiness in costly
+dress and jewelry, and womanly employment, and incessant visiting, and
+party-giving, and receptions and money-spending--and failed miserably.
+Was she never to be happy? She had everything her heart could desire--a
+beautiful house, servants to attend her, rich garments to wear, and she
+fared sumptuously every day; but for all that, she was wretched. I do
+not suppose Dives was a happy man. There is only one receipt in this
+wide world for happiness, believe me, and that is goodness. We may be
+happy for a brief while, with the brief happiness of a lotus-eater; but
+it cannot last--it cannot last! and the after-misery is worse than
+anything we ever suffered before. Olive Henderson had said she would be
+happy, she had tried to compel herself to be happy; and thought for a
+few poor minutes, sometimes, when she found herself the belle of some
+gay party, dancing and laughing, and reigning like a queen, that she had
+succeeded. But "Oh, the lees are bitter, bitter!" Next day she would
+know what a ghastly mockery it had all been, and she would watch Paul
+Wyndham, mounted on his pony, with his dog behind him, riding away to
+his mother's cottage, with a passionately rebellious and bitter heart,
+and wonder if he or any one else in the wide world would really care if
+they found her lying on the floor of her costly boudoir, stark and dead,
+slain by her own hand.
+
+Paul Wyndham appeared to be very fond of his mother, if he was not of
+his wife. He rode over to Rosebush Cottage every day, rain or shine, and
+sometimes staid there two or three days together.
+
+Mr. Wyndham's mother, for all her age and her ill-health, could play the
+piano, it seemed. People going past Rosebush Cottage had often heard the
+piano going, and played, too, with masterly skill. At first, it was
+thought to be Mr. Wyndham himself, who was quite a musician, but they
+soon found out the piano-playing went on when he was known to be at
+Redmon. Olive heard all this, and, like Speckport, would have given a
+good deal to see Mr. Wyndham's mother; but she never saw her. She had
+asked him, carelessly, if his mother would come to the house-warming,
+and he had said "No, she never went out;" and so the house-warming had
+come off without her.
+
+There was one person present on that occasion whom Speckport was
+surprised to see, and that was Captain Cavendish. Captain Cavendish had
+received a card of invitation, and, having arrayed himself in his
+uniform, made his appearance as a guest, in the house he once hoped to
+call his own. Those floating stories, whispered by the servants, and
+current in the town, of the cold disunion between husband and wife, had
+reached him, and delighted him more than words can tell. After all,
+then, she had loved him! Doubtless she spent her nights in secret
+weeping and mourning for his loss, fit to tear her black hair out by the
+roots, in her anguish at having lost him. He was very late in arriving
+at Redmon, purposely late; and he could imagine her straining her eyes
+toward the drawing-room door, her heart throbbing at every fresh
+announcement, and turning sick with disappointment when she found it was
+not he. Would she betray any emotion when she met him? Would her voice
+falter, her eyes droop, her color rise, or her hand turn cold in his
+own?
+
+Oh, Captain Cavendish! you might have spared yourself the trouble of all
+these conjectures. Not one poor thought had she ever given you; not once
+had your image crossed her mind, until you stood bowing before her; and
+then, when she spoke to you, every nerve was as steady as when, an
+instant later, she welcomed old Squire Tod. Her eyes were following
+furtively another form, nothing like so tall, or stately, or gallant as
+your own, Captain Cavendish; another form that went in and out through
+the crowd--the form of her husband, who welcomed every one with a face
+infinitely kind and genial, who found partners for forlorn damsels, who
+stopped to talk courteously to neglected wall-flowers, and who came to
+where his wife stood every now and then, and addressed her as any other
+gentleman in his own house might address his wife, showing no sign of
+coldness or disunion on his part, at least.
+
+Captain Cavendish was disappointed, and all Speckport with him. Where
+was the cold neglect on Mr. Wyndham's part, they had come prepared to
+see and relish? where the haughty disdain of the neglected and resentful
+wife? They were calmly polite to one another, and what more was
+required? As long as Mr. Wyndham did not beat her, or Mrs. Wyndham
+showed no sign of intending to elope with any other man, Speckport could
+see no reason why it should set them down as other than a very
+well-matched couple.
+
+It was noticeable that Mr. Wyndham that night paid rather marked
+attention to one of the lady guests present; but as the lady wore black
+bombazine and crape, a widow's cap, and was on the frosty side of fifty,
+no scandal came of it. The lady was poor Mrs. Marsh, who had come,
+nothing loth, and who simpered a good deal, and was fluttered and
+flattered to find herself thus honored by the master of Redmon.
+
+"Her story is a very sad one, Olive," he said; "I am glad you settled
+that annuity upon her; it does you credit."
+
+Olive said nothing; but a dark red streak flushed across her face--a
+burning glow of shame. She was thinking of Mrs. Major Wheatly's
+governess--what would Paul Wyndham say of that pale little girl if he
+knew all? Mrs. Wyndham had repeatedly invited Miss Rose to Redmon; and
+Miss Rose had come two or three times, but never when there was company.
+
+Mr. Wyndham led Mrs. Marsh in to supper, and sat beside her, and filled
+her plate with good things, and talked to her all through that repast.
+His wife, sitting between Major Wheatly and the Rev. Augustus Tod, still
+watched him askance, and wondered what he could find to say to that
+insipid and faded nonentity, who simpered like a school-girl as she
+listened to him. But shortly after conducting Mrs. Marsh back to the
+ballroom, and seeing her safely seated at a card-table, he disappeared,
+and was nowhere to be seen. Every one was so busy dancing, and flirting,
+and card-playing, that his absence was quite unnoticed--no, not quite,
+his wife had observed it. It was strange the habit she had insensibly
+contracted, of watching this man, for whom she did not care--or
+persuaded herself she did not--of listening for his voice, his step, and
+feeling better satisfied, somehow, to see him in the room. Where had he
+gone to? What was he doing? How could he be so rude as to go and leave
+their guests? She grew distrait, then fidgety, then feverishly and
+foolishly anxious to know what he could be about, and who he was with;
+and gliding unobserved from the crowded ballroom, she visited the
+dining-room, the library, peeped into his own room, which she never
+condescended to enter; all in vain. Mr. Wyndham was nowhere to be seen.
+
+"It is very strange!" said Mrs. Wyndham to herself, knitting her black
+brow--always her habit when annoyed. "It is most extraordinary conduct!
+I think he might show a little more attention to his guests."
+
+The library windows opened on the velvet lawn, and were opened now to
+their widest extent, to admit the cool night air. She stepped out into
+the pale starlit night, her rich ruby velvet dress and starry diamonds
+glowing dimly in the luminous darkness. As she walked across the lawn,
+glad to be alone for a moment, a figure all in white flew past her with
+a rush, but not before she had recognized the frightened face of Laura
+Blair.
+
+"Laura!" she said, "is it you? What is the matter?"
+
+Laura stopped, and passed her hands over her beating heart.
+
+"I have had such a scare! I came out of the conservatory five minutes
+ago, on to the lawn to get cool, when I saw a figure that had been
+standing under the trees dart behind one of them, as if to hide. The
+person seemed to have been watching the house, and was trying to hide
+from me. It frightened me, and I ran."
+
+Olive Wyndham was physically as brave as a man: she never screamed, or
+ran, or went into hysterics, from palpable terror. Now, she drew Laura's
+arm within her own, and turned in the direction that young lady had
+come.
+
+"You little goose," she said, "it was some of the people here, out to
+get cool like yourself. We will go and see who they are."
+
+"I don't believe it is any of the people here. I think it was a woman in
+a long cloak, with the hood over her head. Oh, I had rather not go!"
+
+"Nonsense! it was some of the servants, or some curious, inquisitive
+straggler, come to----"
+
+She stopped, for Laura had made a warning gesture, and whispered, "Look
+there!" Olive looked. Directly opposite the house, and shrinking behind
+a clump of cedar trees, on the edge of a thickly-wooded portion of the
+grounds, she could see a figure indistinctly in the star-light--the
+figure of a female it looked, wearing, as Laura said, a long cloak, with
+the hood drawn over the head and shrouding the face. They were in deep
+shadow themselves, and Laura hid her white dress behind some laurel
+bushes. Olive's curiosity was excited by the steadfast manner in which
+the shrouded figure watched the house--through those large, lighted
+windows, Olive knew the person could distinctly see into the
+drawing-room, if not distinguish the people there.
+
+"Laura," she whispered, "I must find out who that is. I can get round
+without being seen--you remain and wait for me here."
+
+Keeping in the shadow, Olive skirted the lawn and round the cedar clump,
+without being seen or heard by the watcher. She glided behind the
+stunted trees; but though she was almost near enough to touch the
+singular apparition, she could not see its face, it was so shrouded by
+the cowl-like hood. While she stood waiting for it to turn round, a man
+crossed the lawn hurriedly, excitedly, and, with a suppressed
+exclamation, clasped the cloaked figure in his arms. Olive hardly
+repressed a cry--the man was her husband, Paul Wyndham!
+
+"My darling!" she heard him say, in a voice she never forgot--a voice so
+full of infinite love and tenderness, that it thrilled to her very
+heart--"my darling, why have you done this? I have been searching for
+you everywhere since I heard you were here. My love! my love! how could
+you be so rash?"
+
+"I was so lonely, Paul, without you!" a woman's voice answered--a voice
+that had a strangely-familiar sound, and Olive saw the cloaked figure
+clinging to him, trustingly. "I was so lonely, and I wanted to see them
+all. But I am very cold now, and I want to go home!"
+
+"I shall take you home at once, my darling! Your carriage is waiting at
+the gate. Come, I know a path through this wood that will lead us
+out--it will not do to go down the avenue. Oh, my dearest! never be so
+rash again! You might have been seen."
+
+They were gone; disappearing into the black cedar woods, like two dark
+specters, and Olive Wyndham came out from her place of concealment, and
+stood an instant or two like one who has been stunned by a blow. Laura
+Blair rose up at her approach with a startled face, and saw that she was
+ghastly white.
+
+"Olly!" Laura said, in a scared voice, "wasn't that Mr. Wyndham who went
+away with--with--that person?"
+
+Olive Wyndham turned suddenly upon her, and grasped her arm, with a
+violence that made Laura cry out with pain.
+
+"Laura Blair!" she cried, with passionate fierceness in her voice, "if
+ever you say a word of what you have seen to-night, I will kill you!"
+
+With which remark, Mrs. Wyndham walked away, stepped through the library
+window, and into the house. She was in the drawing-room when poor Laura
+ventured in, sitting at the piano, enchanting her guests with some new
+and popular music, but with a face that had blanched to a sickly white.
+She might play, she might talk, she might laugh and dance, but she could
+not banish that frozen look from her face; and her friends, looking at
+her, inquired anxiously if she was ill; no, she said she was not ill;
+but she had been out in the grounds a short time before, and had got
+chilled--that was all.
+
+Half an hour later, Mr. Wyndham re-appeared in the drawing-room, with a
+calm face that hid his secret guilt well. Some of the people were
+already beginning to depart, and his absence was unknown to all save
+two. Once he spoke to his wife, remarking on her paleness, and telling
+her she had fatigued herself dancing; and she had laughed strangely and
+answered, yes, it had been a delightful evening all through, and she had
+never enjoyed herself so much. And then she was animatedly bidding the
+last of her guests good-night, and the lights were fled, the garlands
+dead, and the banquet-hall deserted. And Paul Wyndham bade her good
+night, and left her alone in her velvet robes and diamond necklace, and
+splendid misery, and never dreamed that he was found out.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham did not meet again until Sunday. The next day,
+Friday, the young author had gone over to Rosebush Cottage with his MSS.
+and fishing-rod, and there spent the rest of the week. The dissipation
+at Redmon, the constant round of dressing, and visiting, and
+party-giving, knocked him up, he told Val Blake, and unfitted him for
+work; and, at the cottage, he could recruit, and smoke, and get on with
+his writing.
+
+Speckport saw Mrs. Wyndham driving, and riding, and promenading through
+its streets, that day and the next, beautifully dressed and looking
+beautiful, but Speckport never once dreamed of the devouring jealousy
+that had eaten its way to her inmost heart, and must hitherto be added
+to her other tortures. Yes, Olive Wyndham was jealous, with the fierce
+jealousy of such natures as hers--and your dark women can be jealous of
+your fair women with a vengeance. And as real jealousy without love is
+simply an impossibility, the slow truth broke upon Olive Wyndham that
+she had grown to love her husband.
+
+How it had come about, Heaven only knows; she had honestly done her best
+to hate him. But that mischievous little blind god, flying his arrows at
+random, had shot one straight to her haughty heart. This, then, was the
+secret of all her anxiety and watchfulness, though she had never
+suspected it--she might have been a long time in suspecting it, but for
+the discovery made in the grounds that night. She loved him who would
+never love her. She knew him indifferent to herself; but while she
+thought him equally indifferent to every one else, she had not cared
+much; but now, but now! Who was this woman who had stepped between her
+and the man to whom she was married?
+
+Who was she? who was she? she asked herself the miserable question a
+hundred times a minute--she could think of nothing else--but she never
+could answer it. In all Speckport she could not fix upon any one she
+knew Paul Wyndham was likely to address such words as she had heard to.
+How their memory thrilled her--those tones so full of passionate
+love--it made her grind her teeth to think of them.
+
+"If I had her here, whoever she is," she thought, "I could tear the eyes
+out of her head, and send her back to him streaming blood! Oh, who can
+she be? who can she be?"
+
+It was Catty Clowrie who first changed the course of her ideas, and set
+her off at a new tangent. Catty was sewing at the villa; and, as Mrs.
+Wyndham, in her miserable restlessness, wandered from room to room, she
+came at last to a pleasant vine-grown glass porch at the back of the
+house, where Miss Clowrie sat stitching away in the afternoon sunshine.
+An open book lay beside her, as if she had just been reading, and Olive
+saw it was Mr. Wyndham's volume of travels. She took it up with a
+strange contradictory feeling of tenderness for the insensate thing.
+
+"How do you like it?" she asked, looking at his portrait in front, the
+deep, thoughtful eyes gazing back at her from the engraving, with the
+same inscrutable look she knew so well.
+
+"I think it is lovely," said Catty. "I wish I could finish it, but I
+must get on with my work. Mr. Wyndham must be wonderfully clever; his
+descriptions set the places before you as if you saw them."
+
+Olive sat down, and began talking to this girl, whom she instinctively
+disliked, about her husband and her husband's books. Catty, snapping off
+her thread, asked at last:
+
+"Mr. Wyndham is not at home to-day, is he? I haven't seen him."
+
+"No," said his wife, carelessly, "he has gone over to Rosebush Cottage."
+
+Miss Clowrie gave an unpleasant little laugh.
+
+"Of course he is at Rosebush Cottage! Every one knows Mr. Wyndham never
+goes anywhere else! If he had a Fair Rosamond shut up there, he could
+not be fonder of going there. Mr. Wyndham must be very much attached to
+his mother."
+
+There was a long blank pause after her cruel speech, during which the
+mistress of Redmon never took the book from before her face. She felt
+that she was deadly pale, and had sense enough left not to wish Catty
+Clowrie to see it. She rose up presently, throwing the book on the
+ground as she did so, and walked out of the porch with such fierce
+rebellious bitterness in her heart, as never at her worst of misery had
+she felt before. A Fair Rosamond! Yes, the secret was out! and what a
+blind fool she must have been not to have seen it before! It was no
+sickly old mother Paul Wyndham had shut up in Rosebush Cottage, but a
+fair inamorata. It was she, too, whom they had seen in the grounds the
+previous night; she who, wearied of her pretty prison without him, and
+fall of curiosity, doubtless, had come to Redmon. "I was so lonely
+without you, Paul!"--she remembered the sweet and strangely-familiar
+voice that had said those words, and the tender caress which had
+answered them; and she sank down in her jealous rage and despair in her
+own room, hating herself and all the world. Oh, my poor Olive! Surely
+retribution had overtaken you, surely judgment had fallen upon you even
+in this life, for your sins of ambition and pride!
+
+Mrs. Wyndham was not much of a church-goer, but rather the reverse. She
+had a heathenish way of lolling in her boudoir Sundays, and listening
+with a dreamy sensuous pleasure to the clashing of bells, and falling
+asleep when they ceased, and awakening to read novels until dinner-time.
+
+But sometimes she went to the fashionable Episcopal church, and yawned
+in the face of the Rev. Augustus Tod, expounding the word rather
+drawlingly in his white surplice, and sometimes she went to the
+cathedral with Laura Blair. She took the same sensuous, dreamy pleasure
+in going there that she did in listening to the bells, or in reading
+Owen Meredith's poetry. She liked to watch the purple, and violet, and
+ruby, and amber glows from the stained-glass windows on the heads of the
+faithful; she liked to listen to the grand solemn music of the old
+church, to inhale the floating incense, and listen to the chanting of
+the robed priests. And best of all she liked to see the Sisters of
+Charity glide noiselessly in through some side-door, with vailed faces
+and bowed heads, and to weave romances about them all the time high mass
+was going on. Matter-of-fact Catholics about her wondered why Mrs.
+Wyndham stared so at the Sisters, and it is probable the Sisters
+themselves would have laughed good-naturedly had they known of the tale
+of romance with which the dark-eyed heiress invested them. But it was
+not to look at the nuns--though she did look at them, almost wishing she
+were one too, and at rest from the great world strife--it was not to
+look at them she had come to the cathedral to-day, but to listen to a
+celebrated preacher somewhere from the United States. Laura had told
+her he was a Jesuit--those terrible Jesuits!--and Olive had almost as
+much curiosity to see a Jesuit as a nun. So she drove to the cathedral
+in her carriage, and sat in Mr. Blair's cushioned pew, and watched the
+people filling the large building, and listened to the grand, solemn
+strains of the organ touched by the masterly hand; and all listlessly
+enough. But suddenly her heart gave a quick plunge, and all listlessness
+was gone. There, coming up the aisle, behind the sexton, was a gentleman
+and a lady; a gentleman whose step she would have known the wide world
+over, and a lady she was more desirous of seeing than any other being on
+earth. It was Mr. Wyndham and his mother, and dozens of heads turned in
+surprise and curiosity, to look at that hitherto invisible mother. But
+she was invisible still, at least her face was, for the long black crape
+vail she wore was so impenetrably thick, no human eyes could pierce it.
+They saw she was tall and very slender, although she wore a great double
+black woolen shawl that would have made the slightest girlish form look
+clumsy and stout. She bent forward slightly as she walked, but the stoop
+was not the stoop of age--Olive Wyndham saw that. Mr. Wyndham, hat in
+hand, his mother hanging on his arm, his pale face gravely reverent,
+entered the pew the sexton indicated, after his mother.
+
+It was directly in front of Mr. Blair's, facing the grand altar, and the
+jealous wife had an excellent chance of watching her husband and his
+companion.
+
+Paul Wyndham was not a Catholic--he did not pretend to be anything in
+particular, a favorite creed with his countrymen, I think--but he was a
+gentleman; so he rose and sat and knelt as the worshipers about him did,
+and never once turned his back to the altar to stare at the choir.
+
+Mrs. Wyndham, Senior, made no attempt to raise her vail during the whole
+service. She knelt most of the time with her face lying on the front
+rail of the pew, as if in prayer--a good deal to the surprise of those
+who saw her and imagined her not of their faith.
+
+Olive never took her eyes off her--the Sisters of Charity, the swinging
+censers, the mitred bishop, the robed priests, the solemn ceremonies,
+the swelling music, were all unheard and unseen--that woman in front
+absorbed every sense she possessed. Even when the Jesuit mounted to the
+pulpit, she only gave him one glance, and saw that he was tall and thin
+and sallow, and not a bit oily and Jesuit-like, and returned to her
+watching of Mr. Wyndham's mother. That lady seemed to pay attention to
+the sermon, if her daughter-in-law did not, and a very impressive sermon
+it was, and one Olive Wyndham would have done well to heed. He took for
+his text that solemn warning of our Lord, "What will it avail a man to
+gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" and the hearts of his
+hearers thrilled within them with wholesome fear as they listened to the
+discourse which followed. "You are here to-day, but you may be gone
+to-morrow. O my brethren!" the sonorous voice, which rang from aisle to
+aisle, like the trump of the last angel, cried; "the riches you are
+laboring so hard to amass you may never enjoy. The riches for which you
+toil by day and by night mean nothing if your poor span of existence
+permits you to accomplish them. Stop and think, oh, worldlings, while
+time remains. Work while it is yet day, for the night is at hand, and
+work for the glory which shall last for eternity. The road over which
+you are walking leads nowhere, but ends abruptly in the yawning grave.
+The fame for which you suffer and struggle and give up ease and rest,
+will be when over but a hollow sound, heard for one poor, pitiful
+moment, ere your ears are stilled in death, and your laurel crown dust
+and ashes. The great of this world--who made kings their puppets, and
+the nations of the earth their toys--have lived their brief space and
+are gone, and what avails them now the glory and the greatness they won?
+The fame of Shakespeare, of Alexander, of Napoleon of France, of a
+Byron, and a Milton, and all other great men--great in this
+life--remains to posterity, but what availed it all to them at the
+judgment-seat of God. There, at that awful tribunal, where we all must
+stand, nothing but their good works--if they ever did good works--could
+soften the rigor of Divine Justice. The world is like an express-train,
+rushing madly on, with a fathomless precipice at the end; and you laugh
+and sing on your way to it, consoling yourself with the thought, 'At the
+last moment I will repent, and all will be well.' But the Divine Justice
+has answered you beforehand--terribly answered you--'You shall seek me
+and you shall not find me, and you shall die in your sins!'"
+
+The sermon was a very long one, and a very terrible one, likely to stir
+the dead souls of the most hardened sinner there. It was noticeable that
+Mr. Wyndham's mother never lifted her head all the time, but that it lay
+on the pew-rail, and that she was as immovable as a figure carved in
+ebony. Olive Wyndham had to listen, and her cheek blanched as she did
+so. Was this sermon preached for her? Was she bartering her immortal
+soul for dross, so soon to be taken from her? And then a wild terror
+took possession of her, and she dared think no longer. She could have
+put her fingers to her ears to shut out the inexorable voice, thundering
+awfully to her conscience: "You shall seek me and you shall not find me,
+and you shall die in your sins." There was a dead silence of dumb fear
+in the cathedral when the eloquent preacher descended, and very devout
+were the hearers until the conclusion of mass. Then they poured out, a
+good deal more subdued than when they had entered, and Olive had to go
+with the rest. Mr. Wyndham and his mother showed no sign of stirring,
+nor did they leave their pew until the last straggler of the
+congregation was gone. The carriage from Rosebush Cottage was waiting
+outside the gates, and Mr. Wyndham assisted his mother in, and they
+drove off.
+
+Olive dined at Mr. Blair's that day, and heard them discussing the
+sermon, and the unexpected appearance of Mr. Wyndham and his mother.
+Olive said very little--the panic in her soul had not ceased. The
+shortness of time, the length of eternity--that terrible eternity!--had
+never been brought so vividly before her before. Was the express-train
+in which she was flying through life near the end--near that awful chasm
+where all was blackness and horror? Human things frittered
+away--earthly troubles, gigantic before, looked puny and insignificant
+seen in the light of eternity--so soon to begin, never to end! She had
+been awakened--she never could sleep again the blind, heathenish sleep
+that had been hers all her life, or woe to her if she could.
+
+Mr. Blake and Miss Blair walked home with her in the hazy September
+moonlight. They found Mr. Wyndham sitting in one of the basket-chairs in
+the glass porch, looking up at the moon as seen through the smoke of his
+cigar, and Olive's inconsistent heart throbbed as if it would break from
+its prison and fly to him. Oh, if all this miserable acting could end;
+if he would only love her, and let her love him, she would yield forever
+the wealth that had never brought her happiness, and be his true and
+loving wife from henceforth, and try and atone for the sins of the past.
+She might be a good woman yet, if her life could only be simple and true
+like other women, and all this miserable secresy at an end. But, though
+the silken skirt of her rich robe touched him, they could not have been
+further apart if the wide world divided them. She could have laid her
+head down on the table there, and wept passionate, scalding tears, so
+utterly forlorn and wretched and lonely and unloved did she feel. She
+could not talk--something rose in her throat and choked her--but she
+listened to Mr. Wyndham telling in his quiet voice how he had persuaded
+his mother to go out that day to hear the famous preacher, and how he
+thought it had done her good.
+
+Val and Laura did not stay long, but set out on their moonlit homeward
+way. Ann Nettleby sat in her own doorway, and Val paused to speak to
+her.
+
+"No news of Cherrie, yet, Ann?"
+
+Ann made the usual reply, "No," and they walked on, talking of lost
+Cherrie.
+
+"I'll find her out yet," Mr. Blake said, determinedly. "I don't despair,
+even though--well, what's the matter?"
+
+Laura had uttered an exclamation, and clung suddenly to his arm. Redmon
+road was lonely, as you know, and not a creature was to be seen; but
+Laura was pointing to where, under the trees, in the moonlight, a woman
+was standing still. A woman or a spirit, which? For it was robed in
+white from head to foot, and a shower of pale hair drifted over its
+shoulders. The face turned toward them as they approached, a face as
+white as the dress, and Laura Blair uttered a loud shriek as she saw it,
+reeled and would have fallen, had not Val caught her in his arms.
+
+Val had turned white himself, for the pale shadow under the trees had
+worn the dead face of Nathalie Marsh! As Laura shrieked it had vanished,
+in a ghostly manner enough, among the trees, and Val Blake was left
+standing gaping in the middle of Redmon road, holding a fainting lady in
+his arms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+VAL'S DISCOVERY.
+
+
+Mr. Blake was in a predicament. Some men there are who would by no means
+turn aghast at being obliged to hold a fair, fainting damsel in their
+arms, but Mr. Blake was none of these. Should he lay her down on the
+road while he went for help, or should he carry her to the Nettleby
+Cottage? Yes, that was the idea; and Mr. Blake lifted the fair fainted
+in his stalwart arms, and bore her off like a man. The cottage was very
+near, and Mr. Blake was big and strong; but for all that he was in a
+very red and panting state when he gave a thundering knock at the
+cottage-door. One hundred and twenty pounds of female loveliness is no
+joke to carry, even for a short distance; and he leaned Miss Blair up
+against the door-post in such a way that she nearly toppled over on Miss
+Ann Nettleby's head, when that young lady opened the door. Ann screamed
+at the sight, but Mr. Blake pushed past her with very little ceremony.
+
+"She's only fainted, Ann! Don't make a howling. Get some water, or
+hartshorn, or something, and bring her to."
+
+Miss Ann Nettleby was a young lady of considerable presence of mind, and
+immediately began to apply restoratives. Whether it was that nature was
+coming round of her own accord, or from the intrinsic merit of burnt
+feathers held under her nose, and cold water doused in her face, Miss
+Blair, with a long, shivering sigh, consented at last to come to, and
+looked around her with a blank, bewildered stare.
+
+"Well, Laura," said Val, stooping over her, "how do you find yourself,
+now?"
+
+At the sound of his voice, recollection seemed to flash vividly across
+Laura's mind. She was lying on the couch in the front room; but she
+started up with a scream, her eyes dilating, and, to Mr. Blake's dismay,
+flung herself into his arms.
+
+"Oh, Val!" she cried, clinging wildly to him, "the ghost! the ghost! I
+saw the ghost of Nathalie Marsh."
+
+Ann Nettleby's eyes grew as round as saucers.
+
+"The ghost of Nathalie Marsh!" she repeated. "Lor! Miss Laura, you
+haven't seen her ghost, have you?"
+
+"Come, Laura, don't be frightened," said Val, soothingly, though sorely
+perplexed himself. "There is no ghost here, at all events. Perhaps you
+had better go back to Redmon, and stay with Mrs. Wyndham all night."
+
+But Laura, gasping and hysterical, protested she would not venture out
+that night again for all the world, and ended the declaration by falling
+back on the lounge in a violent fit of hysterics. Val seized his hat and
+made for the door.
+
+"You look after her, Ann," he said, "and I'll run up to Redmon for Mrs.
+Wyndham. She'll die before morning if she keeps on like this."
+
+Mr. Blake's long limbs never measured off the ground so rapidly before,
+as they did now the distance between the cottage and the villa. In the
+whole course of his life, Val Blake had never received such a staggerer
+as he had this night. He did not believe in ghosts; he was as devoid of
+imagination as a pig; he had not eaten a heavy supper, nor drank one
+single glass of wine, yet he had seen the ghost of Nathalie Marsh! They
+had not been talking of the dead girl; they had not been thinking of
+her; yet she had stood before them, wearing the face, and looking at
+them out of the blue eyes they knew so well. It was all very fine to
+talk of the freaks of the sense of vision, of optical illusions, and all
+that sort of thing. It was no illusion, optical or otherwise. Nathalie
+Marsh was dead and buried, and they had seen her ghost on Redmon Road.
+
+The servant who answered Mr. Blake's ring looked rather surprised, but
+showed him into the library, and went in search of his mistress. Olive
+came in, wearing the dress in which they had left her, and Val told his
+story with blunt straightforwardness. Olive's black eyes opened to their
+widest extent.
+
+"Seen a ghost! My dear Mr. Blake, do I understand you aright?"
+
+Mr. Blake gave one of his nods.
+
+"Yes. It was a ghost, and it frightened Laura into a fit; and she's in
+one still, down there at Nettleby's. It was a ghost, I'll take my oath
+of it; for it had Nathalie Marsh's face, and Nathalie Marsh is dead and
+buried."
+
+There was a slight noise at the door. Olive Wyndham's quick ear
+recognized it, and she turned round. Mr. Blake followed her eyes, and
+saw Paul Wyndham standing in the doorway. But what ailed him? His face
+was always pale; but it looked ghastly at this moment, turning from its
+natural hue to an awful ashen white.
+
+"Hallo, Wyndham!" cried Val, "what's gone wrong with you? You look as if
+you had seen a ghost yourself."
+
+"There is nothing the matter with me," said Mr. Wyndham, coming quietly
+forward. "What is that about ghosts, and where have you left Miss
+Blair?"
+
+"At Nettleby's, fit to die of fright. We saw a woman who has been dead
+for more than a year, on the road; and Laura screamed out, and dropped
+down like a stone!"
+
+"My dear Blake!"
+
+"I wanted her to come up here," pursued Val, "and stay all night, but
+she went off into strong hysterics in the middle of what I was saying;
+so I left her with Ann Nettleby, and came up here for Mrs. Wyndham."
+
+"I will go to her at once," Olive said, ringing the bell; "but, Mr.
+Blake, I don't understand this at all. Seen a ghost! It is
+incomprehensible!"
+
+"Just so!" said Mr. Blake, with constitutional composure, "but it's
+true, for all that. Nathalie Marsh is dead, and buried over there in the
+cemetery; but, for all that, I saw her as plainly this night on Redmon
+road as ever I saw her in my life!"
+
+There was something in Mr. Blake's manner that carried conviction with
+it, and Mr. Blake was not the man to tell a cock-and-bull story, or let
+himself be easily deceived. Had Laura Blair, a fanciful and romantic
+girl, alone told the story, every one would have laughed incredulously,
+but Val Blake was another story. Matter-of-fact Val had no fancies,
+natural or supernatural, and told his story with a resolute air of
+conviction now that perplexed his hearers. Mr. Wyndham affected to
+laugh; but, somehow, the laugh was mirthless, and his face and lips
+remained strangely colorless.
+
+"It was some one playing a practical joke, depend upon it," he said;
+"perhaps that imp of mischief, Sam's brother. As to ghosts--why, Blake,
+where have your wits gone to?"
+
+"All right," said Val; "I don't ask you to believe it, you know; but if
+it wasn't Nathalie Marsh's spirit, then it was Nathalie Marsh in the
+flesh, and we have all been deceived, and the woman buried in Speckport
+cemetery is not the woman I took her to be."
+
+Paul Wyndham turned round suddenly, and walked to the window and looked
+out. He turned round so suddenly that neither his wife nor his friend
+saw the awful change that came over his face when these words were
+said. A servant brought Mrs. Wyndham her hat and shawl, and he did not
+turn round again until they were leaving the room. Olive's heart stood
+still at sight of the white change in his face.
+
+"You are ill, Mr. Wyndham," she said, looking at him sharply and
+wistfully.
+
+"You're as pale as a ghost," said Mr. Blake; "don't come with us--what's
+the matter?"
+
+Mr. Wyndham gave them his former answer, "Nothing," and watched them
+walking down the moonlit avenue together, until they were out of sight.
+Then he left the room, put on his hat and overcoat, locked his own door,
+and dropped the key in his pocket, and followed them. Half an hour
+later, while Olive and Val were persuading Laura to come with them to
+Redmon, he was knocking at the door of Rosebush Cottage, and being
+admitted by Midge, whose ruddy face wore a look of blanched
+consternation at sight of him.
+
+Mr. Val Blake walked home in the moonlight alone. As he passed the spot
+where, under the tree, the ghostly-white figure with the hazy hair and
+deathlike face had stood, he felt a cold thrill in spite of himself; but
+the spot was vacant now--not a soul, in the flesh or out of it, was to
+be seen on Redmon road. Mr. Blake, as I said, walked home in the
+moonlight alone, and astounded the whole Blair family by the unearthly
+tidings. For good Mrs. Blake's sake he omitted that part concerning
+Laura's fainting-fits--merely saying she was frightened, and he had
+thought it best to leave her at Redmon. Mrs. Blair turned pale, Master
+Bill grinned, and Mr. Blair pooh-poohed the story incredulously.
+
+"A ghost! What nonsense, Blake! I always thought you a sensible man
+before; but if you draw the long bow like that, I shall have to change
+my opinion."
+
+"Very well," said Val, in nowise disturbed at having his veracity
+doubted, "seeing's believing! You may think what you please, and so
+shall I!"
+
+Before it took its breakfast next morning, Speckport had heard the
+story--the astounding story--that the ghost of Nathalie Marsh had
+appeared to Mr. Blake and Miss Blair on Redmon road, and had frightened
+the young lady nearly to death. Speckport relished the story
+amazingly--it was nothing more than they had expected. How could that
+poor suicide be supposed to rest easy in her grave! Mrs. Marsh, over her
+eternal novels, heard it, and cried a little, and wondered how Mr. Blake
+could say such cruel things on purpose to worry her. Captain Cavendish
+heard it, and laughed incredulously in Mr. Blake's face.
+
+"Why, Val," he cried, "are you going loony, or getting German, or taken
+to eating cold pork before going to bed? Cold pork might account for it,
+but nothing else could ever excuse you for telling such a
+raw-head-and-bloody-bones story as that, and expecting sensible people
+to believe it. As to Laura, any gatepost or white birch tree in the
+moonlight would pass for a ghost with her."
+
+Mr. Blake was entirely too much of a philosopher to waste his time in
+controversy with these unbelievers. He knew well enough it was no
+gatepost or white birch he had seen, but the subject was full of mystery
+and perplexity, and he was glad to let it drop. It could not be Nathalie
+Marsh; he had seen her dead and buried; and ghosts were opposed to
+reason and common sense, and all the beliefs of his life. It was better
+to let the subject drop then; so he only whistled when people laughed at
+him, or cross-questioned him, and told them if they didn't believe him
+the less they said about it the better.
+
+But the strange story was not so soon to die out. Mr. Blake, about a
+fortnight after, was suddenly and unexpectedly confirmed. The ghost of
+Nathalie Marsh had been seen again--this time in Speckport Cemetery,
+kneeling beside her own grave; and the person who saw it had fled away,
+shrieking and falling in a fit at the sexton's door. It was the sexton's
+nephew, a lad of fifteen or thereabouts, who, going at nightfall to
+close the cemetery-gates, had seen some one kneeling on one of the
+graves. This being nothing unusual, the boy had gone over, to desire the
+person to leave, when, to his horror, it slowly turned round its
+face--the face of one buried there a twelvemonth before. With an
+unearthly yell, the boy turned tail and fled, and had been raving
+delirious ever since. The alarmed sexton had gone out to prove the truth
+of the incoherent story, but had found the cemetery deserted, and no
+earthly or unearthly visitant near the grave of the doomed girl.
+
+Here was a staggerer for Speckport! People began to look blankly at each
+other, and took a sudden aversion to being out after nightfall. The
+"Snorter" and the "Bellower" and the "Puffer" reluctantly recorded this
+new marvel, confirming, as it did, the truth of Mr. Blake's story; but
+opined some evil person was playing off a practical joke, and hinted to
+the police to be on the look-out, and pin the ghost the first
+opportunity. It was the talk of the whole town--the boy was dangerously
+ill, and young ladies grew nervous and hysterical, and would not stay a
+moment in the dark, for untold gold. Laura Blair was worst of all; she
+was hysterical to the last degree, and shrieked if a door shut loudly,
+and fell into hysterics if they left her alone an instant night or day.
+Olive Wyndham's dark face paled with terror as she listened. Was the
+dead and defrauded heiress rising from her grave because her earthly
+wrongs would not let her rest there? Would she appear to her next?
+
+Was it superstitious fear that had taken all the color--and he never at
+best had much to spare--out of Paul Wyndham's face, and left him the
+ghost of his former self. The servants at Redmon could have told you how
+little he ate, and perhaps that accounted for his growing as thin as a
+shadow. A dark look of settled gloom over-shadowed his pale face always
+now. He spent more of his time than ever at his mother's cottage, and
+when asked what was the matter--was he ill?--he answered no, but his
+mother was. Why, then, did he not have medical advice, sympathizers
+asked; and Mr. Wyndham replied that his mother declined--she was very
+peculiar, and positively refused. What did he suppose was the matter
+with her? and Mr. Wyndham had told them it was her nervous system--she
+was hypochondriacal--in fact; and he made the admission very
+reluctantly, and with a painful quivering about the mouth--she was not
+quite herself--her mind had lost its balance. And the sympathizers going
+their way, informed other sympathizers that all old Mrs. Wyndham's
+oddities were accounted for--the woman was mad!
+
+Speckport pitied poor Mr. Wyndham, saddled with an insane mother, very
+much, when they saw his pale, worn face, and that gloomy look that never
+left it. Olive pitied him, too; and would have given the world, had it
+been hers to give, to comfort him in his great trouble; but she was
+nothing to him, and her heart turned to gall and bitterness, as she
+thought of it. No, she was nothing to him, she scarcely ever saw him at
+all now, and he seemed unconscious of her presence when they were
+together. But it was a relief to know the secret of Rosebush
+Cottage--however dreadful that secret was, it were better than the first
+diabolical thought suggested by Catty Clowrie. Once Olive Wyndham, in
+the humility born of this new love, had descended from the heights of
+high and mightydom on which she dwelt, and ate humble pie at her cold
+lord's feet. She might have left the unsavory dish alone--her humility
+was no more to him than her pride, and she had been repulsed. Not
+rudely, or unkindly. Mr. Wyndham was a gentleman, every inch of him, and
+would not be harsh to a woman; but still she was repulsed, and her proud
+heart quivered to its inmost core with the degradation.
+
+She had found him, one evening on entering the library, sitting alone
+there, his forehead bowed on his hand, a look that was so like despair
+on his face; but she forgot everything but that she loved him, and that
+he was suffering a sorrow too great for words to tell. Had she not a
+right to love him, to comfort him--was she not his wife? She would not
+listen to her woman's nature, which revolted, and ordered her sternly
+back. She only knew that she loved him; and she went over and touched
+him lightly on the shoulder. It was the first time they had ever so
+met--therefore the look of surprise which came into his eyes when he
+looked up, was natural enough. He rose up, looking with that quiet air
+of surprise on the downcast eyes and flushed face, and waited silently.
+
+"Mr. Wyndham," she said, her voice trembling so, her words were scarcely
+intelligible. "I--I am sorry to see you in such trouble? Can--can I do
+anything to alleviate it?"
+
+"Thank you!" he said, "No!"
+
+"If," still tremulously, "if I could do anything for your mother--visit
+her----"
+
+She broke down entirely. In Mr. Wyndham's face there was nothing but
+cold surprise.
+
+"You are very good," he said, "but you can do nothing."
+
+He bowed and left the room. And Olive, humbled, repulsed, mortified to
+death, hating, for the moment, herself and him and all the world, flung
+herself upon a sofa, and wept such a scalding rush of tears, as only
+those proud, sensitive hearts can ever shed. They might have been tears
+of blood, so torn and wounded was the poor heart from whence they
+sprang; and when they dried, and she rose up, they had left her like a
+stone.
+
+Between Nathalie Marsh's ghost and Mr. Wyndham's mad mother, Speckport
+was kept so busy talking, it had scarcely time to canvas the movement,
+when Captain George Cavendish announced his intention of selling out and
+going home. Mr. Blake was the only one, with the exception of some
+milk-and-water young ladies who were in love with the dashing Englisher,
+whom the announcement bothered; and it was not for the captain's sake,
+but for poor lost Cherrie's. Where was Cherrie? Val had vowed a vow to
+find her out, but this turn of affairs knocked all his plans in the
+head.
+
+"If he does go," said Val to himself, "I'll send him off with a flea in
+his ear! I must find Cherrie, or Charley Marsh will be an exile
+forever!"
+
+"But how?" Mr. Blake was at his wit's end thinking the matter over, and
+trying to hit on some plan. He was still thinking about it, when he
+sallied off to the post-office for his papers and letters, and
+encountered Mr. Johnston, the captain's man, coming out with a handful
+of letters. He was sorting them as he walked, and never noticed that he
+dropped one as he passed Mr. Blake. Val picked it up to return it,
+glancing carelessly at the superscription as he did so. His glance was
+magical--a red flush crimsoned his sallow face, and he turned it over to
+look at the postmark. Then he saw Mr. Johnston had missed it, and was
+turning round--he dropped it again, and walked on, and the captain's
+valet pounced upon it and walked off.
+
+Blake strode straight to his boarding-house, informed Mr. Blair sudden
+business required him to go up the country for a week or so, scrawled
+off a note to his foreman, flung a few things into a valise, and started
+for the cars. He was just in time to take a through ticket to S----,
+before the evening train started, and was whirled off in the amber haze
+of a brilliant September sunset.
+
+It was past midnight when the train reached the terminus, but Mr. Blake
+was not going to stop at S----. The steamer which started at eight next
+morning for Charlottetown, Prince Edward's Island, lay at the wharf, and
+Mr. Blake went on board immediately, and turned in. When the boat
+started next morning, he was strolling about the deck, smoking a pipe
+and watching the passengers come on board. There were not many, and he
+knew none of them, which was just what he wanted. It was a long,
+delightful day on the Gulf; and in the yellow glory of another sunset,
+Mr. Blake landed in Charlottetown, and, valise in hand, sauntered up to
+one of the principal hotels.
+
+Mr. Blake took his tea, and then set off for a ramble through the town.
+A quiet town, with grass-grown red-clay streets, and only a few
+stragglers abroad. A beautiful town, with a few quiet shops, and a
+drowsiness pervading the air, and a general stillness and torpor
+pervading everywhere. Val retired early; but he arose early also, and
+was out with his hands in his pocket and a cigar in his mouth, wandering
+about again, staring at the Government House and the Colonial Buildings,
+and the fly-specked books in the stationers' shops, and the deserted
+drygoods'-stores, and going into the cathedral where morning-service
+was going on, and contemplating the pretty nuns of Notre Dame reading
+their missals with devoutly downcast eyes, in their pew. He was out
+again the moment he had swallowed his breakfast and made a few inquiries
+of the clerk, traversing the town-streets once more. These inquiries of
+his were concerning a lady, a young lady, he told the polite clerk, a
+friend of his whom he was most anxious to find out, but whose precise
+residence he was ignorant of. He was pretty certain she was in
+Charlottetown, but he could not exactly tell where. Perhaps the clerk
+had seen her--a black-eyed young lady with black curls and red cheeks,
+and not tall? No!--the clerk did not remember; he had seen a good many
+black-eyed young ladies in his time, but he did not know that he had
+seen this particular one. Mr. Blake pursued these inquiries in other
+places, chiefly in dry goods' or milliners' stores, and in one of these
+latter, the lady in attendance informed him that she knew such a person,
+a young lady, a Miss Smith, she believed, who used to shop there, and
+generally walked by every afternoon.
+
+Mr. Blake never went home to dinner that day. It was a hot, sunshiny
+day, and he lounged about the milliner's shop, attracting a good deal of
+curiosity, and suspicion that he might have designs on the bonnets. But
+Val did not care for their suspicions; he was looking out for some one
+he felt sure would be along presently, if she were living and well. The
+watch was a very long one, but he kept it patiently, and about three in
+the afternoon he met with his reward. There, swinging along the street,
+with the old jaunty step he remembered so well, was a black-eyed,
+black-ringleted young lady, turban on head, parasol in hand. Mr. Blake
+bounced up, walked forward, and accosted her with the simple
+remark--sublime in its simplicity--"How are you, Cherrie?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+CHERRIE TELLS THE TRUTH.
+
+
+It was a fortunate thing, perhaps, that that quiet, grass-grown
+Charlotte Street was almost deserted; else the scream and recoil with
+which Cherrie--our old and long-lost-sight-of friend, Cherrie--received
+this salutation, might have attracted unpleasant attention.
+
+Mr. Blake took the matter with constitutional phlegm.
+
+"Oh, come now, Cherrie, no hysterics! How have you been all these
+everlasting ages?"
+
+"Mis-ter Blake?" Cherrie gasped, her eyes starting in her head with the
+surprise. "Oh, my goodness! What a turn you gave me!"
+
+"Did I?" said Val. "Then I'll give you another; for I want you to turn
+back with me, and take me to wherever you live, Mrs. Smith. That's the
+name you go by here, isn't it?"
+
+"Who told you so?"
+
+"A little bird! I say, Cherrie, you've lost your red cheeks! Doesn't
+Prince Edward's Island agree with you?"
+
+Cherrie had lost her bright bloom of color; but save that she was much
+thinner and paler, and far less gaudily dressed, she was the same
+Cherrie of old.
+
+"Agree with me!" exclaimed Cherrie, in rather a loudly-resentful tone,
+considering that they were on the street. "I hate the place, and I am
+nearly moped to death in it. I never was so miserable in all my life as
+I have been since I came here!"
+
+"Then why didn't you leave it?" inquired Mr. Blake.
+
+"Leave it!" reiterated Cherrie, like an angry echo. "It's very easy to
+say leave it; but when you have no money or nothing, it's not quite so
+easy doing it. I've been used shamefully; and if ever I get back to
+Speckport, I'll let some of the folks there know it, too! Did he send
+you?"
+
+"Who?"
+
+"You know well enough! Captain Cavendish!"
+
+"He send me!" said Val. "I should think not. There isn't a soul in
+Speckport knows whether you are alive or dead; and he takes care they
+shan't, either. I have been trying to find you out ever since you left;
+and I have asked Captain Cavendish scores of times, but he always vowed
+he knew nothing about you--that you had run off after Charley Marsh. It
+was only by chance I saw a letter from you to him the other day, posted
+here, and I started off in a trice. Why didn't you write to your folks,
+Cherrie?"
+
+"I daren't. He wouldn't let me. He told me, if I didn't stay here and
+keep quiet, he never would have anything more to say to me. I have been
+shamefully used!"--and here Cherrie began to cry on the street--"and I
+wish I was dead. There!"
+
+"Perhaps you will before long," said Val, significantly.
+
+Cherrie looked at him.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Perhaps you won't be let live long! You'll have to stand your trial
+when you go back, for helping in the murder of Mrs. Leroy; and maybe
+they'll hang you! Now, don't go screaming out and making such an
+infernal row on the street--will you?"
+
+Cherrie did not scream. She suppressed a rising cry, and turned ashen
+white.
+
+"I had nothing to do with the murder of Mrs. Leroy," she said, with lips
+that trembled. "You know I hadn't. You know I left Speckport the
+afternoon it happened. You have no business saying such things to me,
+Val Blake."
+
+She laid her hand on her heart while she spoke, as if to still its
+clamor. Val saw by her white and parted lips how that poor, fluttering,
+frightened heart was throbbing.
+
+"Oh, yes; I know you left Speckport that afternoon, Cherrie; but you and
+Cavendish had it all made up beforehand. You were to write Charley that
+note, and appoint a meeting in Redmon grounds, promising to run away
+with him, and making him wait for you there, while Cavendish got in
+through the window, and robbed the old woman. You never intended meeting
+Charley, you know; and you are just as much accessory to the murder as
+if you had stood by and held the lamp while he was choking Lady Leroy."
+
+They had left the dull streets of the town, and were out in a lovely
+country road. Swelling meadows of golden grain and scented hay spread
+away on either hand, until they melted into the azure arch; and the
+long, dusty road wound its way under pleasant, shadowy trees, without a
+living creature to be seen. Cherrie, listening to these terrible words,
+spoken in the same tone Mr. Blake would have used had he been informing
+her the day was uncommonly fine, sank down on a green hillock by the
+roadside, and, covering her face with her hands, broke out in a passion
+of tempestuous tears. He had taken her so by surprise--he had given her
+no time to prepare--the sight of him had brought back the recollection
+of the old pleasant days, and the wretched dullness of the present. She
+was weak, and sick, and neglected, and miserable; and now this last turn
+was coming to crush her. Poor Cherrie sat there and cried the bitterest
+tears she had ever shed in her life; her whole frame shaking with her
+convulsive sobs, her distress touched Val; for pretty Cherrie had always
+been a favorite of his, despite her glaring faults and folly; and a
+twinge of remorse smote his conscience at what he had done.
+
+"Oh, now, Cherrie, don't cry! People will be coming along, and what will
+they think? Come, get up, like a good girl, and we'll talk it over when
+we get to your house. Perhaps it may not be so bad after all."
+
+Cherrie looked up at him with piteous reproach through her tears.
+
+"Was it for this you wanted to find me out so bad, Mr. Blake? Was it to
+make me a prisoner you came over here?"
+
+"Well," said Val, with another twinge of conscience, "ye-e-es, it was
+partly. But you must recollect, Cherrie, you have done worse. You let
+Charley Marsh--poor Charley! who loved you a thousand times better than
+that scamp of an Englishman--be sentenced for a deed he never committed,
+when you could have told the truth and freed him. Worse still, you
+helped to inveigle him into as horrible a plot as ever was concocted."
+
+"I couldn't help it!" sobbed Cherrie. "I didn't want to do it, but he
+made me! I wish I had ran away with Charley that night. He never would
+have left me like this!"
+
+"No; that he wouldn't! Charley was as true as steel, poor fellow! and
+loved you as no one ever will love you again, in this world! He is a
+soldier now, fighting down South; and perhaps he's shot before this; and
+if he is, his death lies at your door, Cherrie."
+
+Cherrie's tears flowed faster than ever.
+
+"As for Cavendish," went on Val, "he's the greatest villain unhung! Not
+to speak of his other atrocities--his gambling, his robbing, his
+murdering, his breaking the heart of Nathalie Marsh--he has been the
+biggest rascal that ever lived, to you, my poor Cherrie."
+
+"Yes, he has!" wept Cherrie, all her wrongs bleeding afresh. "He's a
+villain, and I hate him. Oh dear me, I wish I was dead!"
+
+"You don't know half the wrong he has done you and means to do," said
+Val. "Come, Cherrie, get up, and I'll tell you about it as we go along.
+Do you live far from this?"
+
+"No; it's the first house you meet; the dullest old place on the face of
+the earth! He wouldn't let me leave it; and I know they despise me, and
+think I'm no better than I ought to be. There never was a girl in this
+world so ill-used as I have been! Why did he marry me, if he is ashamed
+of me? Why can't he stay with me as he ought to stay with his wife?"
+
+"His wife!" repeated Val, staring at her as they walked along. "Why,
+Cherrie, is that all you know about it? Hasn't he told you that you are
+not his wife?"
+
+"Not his wife!" shrieked Cherrie. "Val Blake, what do you mean?"
+
+"Bless my soul!" cried Mr. Blake, appealing in dismay to the scarecrows
+in the fields, "I thought he had told her. Why, you unfortunate Cherrie,
+don't you know the marriage was a sham one?"
+
+Cherrie gasped for breath. The surprise struck her speechless.
+
+"I thought you knew all about it!" said Val; "I'll take my oath I did!
+Why, you poor little simpleton, how could you ever be idiot enough to
+think a fellow like Cavendish would marry the like of you! If you had
+two grains of sense in your head," said Mr. Blake, politely, "you must
+have seen through it. He planned the whole thing himself--a sham from
+beginning to end!"
+
+"It isn't! it can't be! I don't believe it! I won't believe it!" panted
+Cherrie, recovering her breath. "You helped him, and the minister was
+there; and I am his wife, his lawful wedded wife. You are only trying to
+frighten me to death."
+
+"No, I'm not," said Val; "and you're no more his wife than I am. The
+minister wasn't a minister, but a fellow who played the part. If you
+hadn't been the greatest goose that ever lived, Cherrie, you couldn't
+have been so taken in!"
+
+Cherrie's breath went and came, and her tears seemed turned to sparks of
+fire, as she turned her eyes upon her companion.
+
+"And you helped him to do this, Mr. Blake?"
+
+"Well, Cherrie, what could I do? If I hadn't helped him, some one else
+would; and, anyhow, you would have run away with him, marriage or no
+marriage. Now, don't deny it--you know you would!"
+
+"And you mean to say I'm not married to Captain Cavendish?"
+
+"Yes, I do. I only wonder he hasn't let you find it out long ago. He
+came to me and persuaded me to help him, telling me you were ready to
+run off with him any time he asked you, which I knew myself. I'm sorry
+for it now, but it can't be helped."
+
+"Very well, Mr. Blake," said Cherrie, whose cheeks were red, and whose
+eyes were flashing, "you may both be proud of your work. You are fine
+gentlemen, both of you, to distress a poor girl like me, as you have
+done. But I'll go back to Speckport, and I'll tell every soul in it how
+I have been taken in; and I hope they'll tar and feather the two of you
+for what you have done."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Blake, in a subdued tone, "we deserve it, I dare say,
+but Cavendish is the worst after all. Why, Cherrie, my girl, you don't
+know half the wrong he has done you. He would have been married three
+mouths ago, if the lady had not changed her mind and married another
+man."
+
+"Would he?" said Cherrie, vindictively, between her closed teeth. "Oh,
+if ever I get a chance, won't I pay him off! Who was the lady?"
+
+"The new heiress of Redmon--Miss Henderson she was then, Mrs. Wyndham
+she is now. He was crazy about her, as all Speckport can tell you; and
+he asked her to marry him; and she consented first, and backed out
+afterward. You never saw any one in the state he was in, Cherrie; and he
+started off to Canada, because he couldn't bear to stay in the place and
+see her married to another man."
+
+"But he's back, now," said Cherrie. "I had a letter from him two weeks
+ago, with a couple of pounds in it. He's the meanest, stingiest miser on
+the face of the earth, and I have to write and write, before I get
+enough from him to pay my board. I haven't had a decent dress these six
+months; and I can't leave the place, because I never have enough to pay
+my way back. I'm the worst-treated and most unfortunate creature in the
+whole world!"
+
+And here poor Cherrie's tears broke out afresh.
+
+"And that's not the worst, either," pursued Mr. Blake. "Do you know what
+has brought him back to Speckport, as you say? Of course, you don't--you
+are the last he would tell; but it is because he is selling out of the
+army, and going back to England for good. He wants to be rid of you
+entirely; and once he is there, and married to some one else with a
+fortune, many a fine laugh he will have at you."
+
+"Never!" cried Cherrie, wrought up to the right pitch of indignation;
+"never shall he leave Speckport, if I can help it! I'll tell all, if I
+was to hang for it myself, sooner than let him get off like that, the
+villain!"
+
+"But you won't hang for it, Cherrie, if you tell; it's only if you
+refuse to tell, that you are in danger. Whoever turns Queen's evidence
+gets off scot free, you know; and if you only do what is right, and take
+my advice, which means the same thing, you may triumph over Captain
+George Percy Cavendish yet."
+
+"I'll do it!" said Cherrie, her lips compressed and her eyes flashing,
+and the memory of all her wrongs surging back upon her at once. "I'll do
+it, and be revenged on the greatest scoundrel that ever called himself a
+gentleman! But, mind, Val Blake, I must be sure that this is all true--I
+must be sure that I am not his wife."
+
+"It will be very easy convincing you of that, once you are back in
+Speckport. You shall hear it from his own lips, without his knowing you
+are listening. Oh, is this the place?"
+
+For Cherrie had stopped before a little farmhouse, garnished with a
+potato garden in front, and adorned with numerous pigsties on either
+hand. She led the way to the front room of the establishment; which was
+carpetless, and curtainless, and unfurnished, and impoverished-looking
+enough.
+
+"Well," Val said, "this is rather different, Cherrie, from the days when
+you used to dress in silks and sport gold chains, and do nothing but
+flirt, and be petted and made love to from week's-end to week's-end. But
+never mind--the worst's over, now that I've found you out, and you'll
+have good times yet in Speckport."
+
+"If it hadn't been for you," sobbed Cherrie, "it never would have
+happened. I hate you, Mr. Blake! There!"
+
+"Now, Cherrie, you know right well you would have run away with Captain
+Cavendish that time, married or not married. Oh! you may deny it, and
+perhaps you think so now; but I know better. But he's the greatest
+rascal that ever went unhung, to use you as he has; and if you had the
+spirit of a turnip, you would be revenged."
+
+"I will!" cried Cherrie, clenching her little fist resolutely; "I will!
+I'll let him see I'm not the dirt under his feet! I've stood it long
+enough! I'll stand it no longer!"
+
+Mr. Blake's eyes sparkled at the spirited declaration.
+
+"That's my brave Cherrie! I always knew you were spunky! You shall hear
+from his own lips the avowal of his false marriage, and then you will go
+before a magistrate and swear to all you know about that night of the
+robbery and murder. There is a steamer to leave Charlottetown to-morrow,
+at nine. Will you be ready if I drive up here for you?"
+
+"Yes," said Cherrie; "I haven't so much to pack, goodness knows! and I'm
+sick and tired of this place. How's all our folks? It's time to ask."
+
+"They are all well, and will be very glad to get pretty Cherrie back
+again. Speckport's been a dull place since you left it. Cheer up,
+Cherrie! There's bright days in store for you yet."
+
+Cherrie did not reply, and she did not look very hopeful. She was crying
+quietly; and Val's heart was touched as he looked at the pale,
+tear-stained face, and thought how bright and pretty and rosy and
+smiling it used to be. He bent over her, and--well, I shouldn't like
+Miss Blair to know it--but Mr. Blake deliberately kissed her!
+
+"Keep up a good heart, little Cherrie; it will be all right yet, and
+we'll fix the flint of Captain G. P. Cavendish. I'll drive up here for
+you at eight to-morrow. Be all ready. Good-bye."
+
+Cherrie was all ready and waiting at the gate, next morning, when Mr.
+Blake drove up through the slanting morning sunlight, dressed in her
+best. She was in considerably better spirits than on the previous day,
+and much more like the Cherrie of other days, glad to get home and eager
+for the journey. The lady passengers, during the day, asked her if "the
+tall gentleman" was her husband. That gentleman had a great deal to tell
+her; of poor Nathalie's death, and Charley's flight; of the new
+heiress, who had turned so many heads, and had given the worst turn of
+all to Captain Cavendish; of that gentleman's despair when she married
+Mr. Wyndham; of the changes and gay doings at Redmon; and lastly, of
+Nathalie's ghost. This last rather scared Cherrie. What if Nathalie
+should appear to her--to her, who had wronged her so deeply through her
+brother.
+
+"Oh, no!" said Mr. Blake, to whom she imparted her fears; "I don't think
+she will, if you tell the truth; or, at all events, she will be a most
+unreasonable ghost if she does. You tell all, Cherrie, and Charley will
+come back to Speckport; and by that time you'll have got your red cheeks
+back again, and who knows what may happen?"
+
+Mr. Blake whistled as he threw out this artful insinuation; but Cherrie
+caught at it eagerly, and her face lit up. Charley's handsome visage
+rose before her--blue-eyed, fair-haired Charley--who had always loved
+her, and never would have treated her as Captain Cavendish had done. Who
+knew what might happen! Who, indeed!
+
+"I'll tell the whole truth," said Cherrie, aloud. "I'll tell everything,
+Mr. Blake, when I'm once sure I'm not Captain Cavendish's real wife. I
+know I did wrong to treat poor Charley as I did; but I will do all I can
+now to make up for it."
+
+They reached S---- at dark, and remained there all night and the
+following morning. They might have gone down to Speckport in the eight
+P.M. train; but Val preferred to remain for the two A.M., for reasons of
+his own.
+
+"If we land in Speckport at noon, Cherrie," he said, "we may be seen and
+recognized. We will go down in the afternoon and get there about nine,
+when it will be dark, and you can pass unnoticed. I don't want Captain
+Cavendish to find out you are there, until I am ready."
+
+So Cherrie, thickly vailed, took her place in the car, after dinner; and
+was whirled through the pleasant country, with its fields and forests
+and villages, toward good old Speckport--that dull, foggy town that her
+heart had grown sick with longing many a time to see.
+
+There were no lamps lit in the streets of Speckport that night. When the
+waning September moon shone out in such brilliance, surrounded by such
+a crowd of stars as persuaded one to believe all the constellations were
+flaming at once, gas became superfluous, and the city fathers spared it.
+The vailed lady was handed out by Mr. Blake; a proceeding which
+considerably excited the curiosity of some of Mr. Blake's friends,
+loafing around the platform.
+
+"Blake can't have got married up the country, can he?" drawled out
+Lieutenant the Honorable L. H. Blank to young McGregor. "Who's the
+woman?"
+
+"Blessed if I know," replied Alick.
+
+Val hurried his charge into a cab, sprang in after her, and gave the
+order, "Wasson's Hotel."
+
+"It's a new place, and not much patronized," he explained to Cherrie.
+"You won't be recognized there; and I'll tell them to fetch you your
+meals up to your room. And to-morrow, Cherrie, I want you to come round
+to my office at about eleven. Come in the back way off Brunswick street,
+you know; so you won't have to pass through the outer office, and be
+recognized by Clowrie and Gilcase, and the rest of 'em. I'll be waiting
+for you; and if Cavendish doesn't drop in, which he does to kill time
+about that hour every day, I'll send for him, and you'll hear his
+confession without being seen."
+
+Mr. Blake walked home that night, chuckling inwardly all the way.
+
+"I said I would pay you off, Cavendish," he soliloquized, "for leading
+Charley Marsh astray, and cutting up those other little cantrips of
+yours; and I think the time has come at last--I really think, my dear
+boy, the time has come!"
+
+It was some time after ten when Mr. Blake presented himself at Mr.
+Blair's, and found the family about retiring for the night. Laura was
+not at home, she was up at Redmon--Laura's mamma said--stopping with
+Mrs. Wyndham, who seemed to be very unhappy.
+
+"What was she unhappy about?" Mr. Blake inquired. But Mrs. Blair only
+sighed, and shook her head, and hinted darkly about hasty marriages.
+
+"Eh?" said Val, "Wyndham doesn't thrash her, does he? She's big and
+buxom, and he's only a little fellow; and I think, on the whole, she
+would be a match for him in a free fight!"
+
+Mr. Blair laughed, but Mrs. Blair looked displeased.
+
+"My dear Mr. Blake, how can you say such things? Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham
+are not a happy couple, that is clear; but whose is the fault I cannot
+undertake to say. He is greatly changed of late. I suppose he worries
+about his mother."
+
+"Oh, his mother! Has anybody seen that most mysterious lady yet?"
+
+"Not that I am aware of! He has not even called in medical advice."
+
+"And the ghost," said Val, lighting his bedroom-lamp, "has it been
+figuranting since?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Blair; "the ghost hasn't showed since you left. I say,
+Blake, did you settle your country-business satisfactorily?"
+
+"Very!" replied Mr. Blake, with emphasis. "I never settled any business
+more to my satisfaction in the whole course of my life!"
+
+Mr. Blake was in his office bright and early next morning, hard at work.
+At about eleven he descended the stairs, and opened the back door, which
+fronted on a dull little street, through which a closely-vailed female
+figure was daintily picking her way. Val admitted the lady, and ran
+before her up-stairs.
+
+"Up to time, Cherrie, there's nothing like it! I sent Bill Blair round
+to Cavendish's rooms to tell him to look in before twelve, and I expect
+them back every moment. By Jove! there's his voice outside now. Get in
+here quick, and sit down! There's a crack in the partition, through
+which you can see and hear. Not a chirp out of you, now. Come in!"
+
+Mr. Blake raised his voice; and in answer, the door opened, and Captain
+Cavendish, smoking a cigar, lounged in. Val gave one glance at the
+buttoned door of the little closet in which he had hidden Cherrie, and
+nodded familiarly to his visitor.
+
+"Good-morning, captain! find a chair. Oh, pitch the books on the
+floor--they're of no account. I'm to notice them all favorably in the
+'Spouter'--the author sent a five-dollar bill for me to do it!"
+
+"Young Blair said you wanted to see me," remarked the captain, tilting
+back his chair, and looking inquiringly through his cigar-smoke.
+
+"Why, so I did. I heard before I went up the country a rumor that you
+were going to leave us--going to leave the army, in fact, and return to
+England. Is it so?"
+
+"Yes. I'm confoundedly tired of Speckport, and this from-hand-to-mouth
+life. It is time I retired on my fortune, and I am going to do it."
+
+"How?"
+
+"Well, I mean to return home--run down to Cumberland, and saddle myself
+on my old uncle. He was always fond of me as a boy, and I know is yet,
+in spite of his new wife and heir. Perhaps I may drop into a good thing
+there--heiresses are plenty."
+
+"I should think you had got your heart-scald of that," said Val,
+grinning. "You bait your hook for heiresses often enough, but the
+gold-fish don't seem to bite."
+
+Captain Cavendish colored and frowned.
+
+"All heiresses are not Miss Hendersons," he said, with a cold sneer. "I
+might know what to look for from your Bluenose and Quaker tradesmen's
+daughters. I shall marry an English lady--one whose father did not make
+his money selling butter or hawking fish."
+
+"Oh, come now, Cavendish! You have been in love in Speckport. Don't deny
+it!"
+
+"I do deny it," said the captain, coldly.
+
+"Nonsense! You were in love with Nathalie Marsh."
+
+"Never! Azure-eyed and fair-haired wax dolls never were any more to my
+taste than boiled chicken! I never cared a jot for Nathalie Marsh."
+
+"Well, you did for Olive Henderson--you can't deny that! She is not of
+the boiled chicken order, and all Speckport knows you were mad about
+her."
+
+"Speckport knows more than its prayers. I did admire Miss Henderson--I
+don't deny it; but she had the temper of the old devil, and I am glad I
+escaped her!"
+
+"And Cherrie--have you quite forgotten Cherrie? You were spooney enough
+about her."
+
+"Bah!" said Captain Cavendish, with infinite contempt; "don't sicken me
+by talking of Cherrie! I had almost forgotten there ever was such a
+little fool in existence!"
+
+"And you never cared for Cherrie, either?"
+
+Captain Cavendish broke into a laugh.
+
+"You know how I cared for her. The woman a man can marry is another
+thing altogether!"
+
+"Some far higher up in the world than Captain Cavendish have stooped to
+fall in love and marry girls as poor as Cherrie. You never could, I
+suppose?"
+
+"Never! The idea is absurd! I wouldn't marry a girl like Cherrie if she
+had the beauty of the Venus de Medicis!"
+
+"Did you ever undeceive Cherrie about that marriage affair? Did you let
+her know she was not your wife?"
+
+"Not I," said Captain Cavendish, coolly. "I never took so much trouble
+about her! I was heartily sick of her before a week!"
+
+"Well, it seems hard," said Val. "Poor little thing! She was very fond
+of you, too."
+
+"Stuff! She was as fond of me as she was, or would be, of any other
+decently good-looking man. She was ready to rum off with any one who
+asked her, whether it were I, or young Marsh, or any of the rest. I know
+what Cherrie was made of."
+
+"And so she thinks she is still your wife?"
+
+"I don't know what she thinks!" exclaimed the young officer,
+impatiently; "and what's more, I don't care! What do you talk to me of
+Cherrie Nettleby for? I tell you I know nothing about her!"
+
+"And I tell you I don't believe it," said Val. "You have her hid away
+somewhere, Cavendish; and if you are an honorable man, you will tell her
+the truth, and provide for her before you leave Speckport."
+
+Captain Cavendish might have flown into a rage with any other man, but
+he only burst into a loud laugh at Val.
+
+"Tell her the truth and provide for her! Why, you blessed innocent, do
+you suppose Cherrie, wherever she is, has been constant to me all this
+time? I tell you I know nothing of her, and care nothing! Make your mind
+easy, old fellow! the girl is off with somebody else long before this!
+What's that?"
+
+Captain Cavendish looked toward the buttoned door of the closet. There
+had been a strange sound, between a gasp and a cry, but Mr. Blake took
+no notice.
+
+"It's only the rats! So you will leave Speckport, and do nothing for
+Cherrie? Cavendish, I am sorry I ever had a hand in that night's work!"
+
+"Too late now, my dear boy!" laughed the Englishman. "Make your mind
+easy about Cherrie! She's just the girl can take care of herself! If
+ever she comes back to Speckport, give her my regards!"
+
+He pulled out his watch, still laughing, and arose to go.
+
+"Half-past eleven--I have an engagement at twelve, and must be off.
+By-by, Blake! don't fret about Cherrie!"
+
+Mr. Blake did not reply, and his face was very grave as he shut and
+locked the door after his visitor.
+
+"You're a greater villain, Captain Cavendish," he said to himself, "than
+even I took you to be! Come out, Cherrie--have you heard enough?"
+
+Yes, she had heard enough! She was crouching on the door, her hands
+clenched, her eyes flashing. She leaped up like a little tigress as he
+opened the door.
+
+"Take me to a magistrate!" she cried. "Let me tell all I know! I'll hang
+him! I'll hang him, if I can!"
+
+"Sit down, Cherrie," said Val, "and compose yourself. It won't do to go
+in such a gale as this before the authorities. Tell me first. By that
+time you will be settled!"
+
+An hour afterward, Mr. Blake left his office by the back-door,
+accompanied by the vailed lady. Cherrie had told all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+OVERTAKEN.
+
+
+Mr. Blake had made little notes of Cherrie's discourse, and had the
+whole story arranged in straightforward and business-like shape, for the
+proper authorities. He did not lead his fair companion straight to those
+authorities, as she vindictively desired, but back to her hotel.
+
+"I think I'll hand over the case to Darcy, Cherrie," he said; "and he is
+out of town, and won't be back till to-morrow afternoon.--There's no
+hurry--Cavendish won't leave Speckport yet awhile. We'll wait until
+to-morrow, Cherrie."
+
+Cherrie had to obey orders; and passed the time watching the passers-by
+under her window. There were plenty of passers-by, for the window
+fronted on Queen Street, and Cherrie knew almost every one. It was hard
+sometimes to hide behind the curtain instead of throwing open the
+casement and hailing those old friends who brought back so vividly the
+happy days when she had been the little black-eyed belle, and Captain
+Cavendish was unknown. It seemed only like yesterday since she had
+tripped down that sunlit street, in glittering silk, with all the men
+bowing, and smiling, and tipping their hats jocosely to her; only
+yesterday since the good-looking young drygoods clerks vaulted airily
+over the counters to do her bidding. And now, and now! She never could
+be what she had been again. And to this man, this false and treacherous
+Englishman, for whom she had sacrificed noble-hearted Charley Marsh, she
+owed it all. She set her teeth vindictively, and clenched her little
+fist at the thought.
+
+"But I'll pay him for it! I'll teach him to despise me! I only hope they
+may hang him--the villain! Hard labor for life would not be half
+punishment enough for him!"
+
+They talk of presentiments! Surely, there never was such a thing, else
+why had George Cavendish no dim foreshadowing of the doom darkening so
+rapidly around him. He had told Val Blake he had an engagement. So he
+had; it was in Prince Street, with Mr. Tom Oaks, who had returned to
+Speckport, and who was going the road to ruin faster than any victim
+Captain Cavendish had ever in hand before. It was growing dusk when they
+left the gambling-hell; and Mr. Oaks was poorer and Captain Cavendish
+richer by several hundred pounds than when they entered. The gorgeous
+coloring of the sunset yet flared in the sky, though the crimson and
+amber were flecked with sinister black. Captain Cavendish drew out a
+gold hunting-watch, and looked at the hour. "Past six," he said,
+carelessly; "I shall be late at Redmon, I fear. The hour is seven, I
+believe. Do you drive there this evening?"
+
+"No," said Mr. Oaks, with a black scowl, "I hope my legs will be palsied
+if ever they cross the threshold of that woman! I'm not a hound, to fawn
+on people who kick me!"
+
+Captain Cavendish only smiled--he rarely lost his temper--and went off
+to his hotel, whistling an opera air. He passed under Cherrie's window;
+but no prescience of the flashing black eyes above troubled the serenity
+of his mind. He was walking steadily to his fate, as we all
+walk--blindly, unconsciously.
+
+Captain Cavendish was the last to arrive at Redmon--all the other guests
+were assembled in the drawing-room when he entered, and they had been
+discussing him and his departure for the last quarter of an hour.
+
+The dinner party at Redmon was a very pleasant one; and every one,
+except, perhaps, the stately hostess herself, was very gay and animated.
+Mr. Wyndham, despite the trouble he was in about his poor mad mother,
+was the most entertaining and agreeable of hosts. The ladies, when they
+flocked back to the drawing-room, enthusiastically pronounced Mr.
+Wyndham "a perfect love!" and declared they quite envied Mrs. Wyndham a
+husband who could tell such charming stories, and who was so
+delightfully clever and talented. And Olive Wyndham smiled, and sat
+down at the piano to do her share of the entertaining, with that dreary
+pain at her beating and rebellious heart that never seemed to leave it
+now. Yes, it was a very pleasant evening; and Captain Cavendish found it
+so, and lingered strangely, talking to his hostess after all the rest
+had gone. Lieutenant the Honorable L. H. Blank, who was waiting for him
+on the graveled drive outside, grew savage as he pulled out his watch
+and saw it wanted only a quarter of twelve.
+
+"Confound the fellow!" he muttered, "does he mean to stay all night
+talking to Mrs. Wyndham, and I am sleepy. Oh, here he is at last! I say,
+Cavendish, what the dickens kept you?"
+
+Captain Cavendish laughed, as he vaulted into his saddle.
+
+"What's your hurry, my dear fellow? I was talking to Mrs. Wyndham, and
+common politeness forbade my cutting the conversation short."
+
+"Common bosh! Mrs. Wyndham was yawning in your face, I dare say! My
+belief is, Cavendish, you are as much in love with that black-eyed
+goddess now as ever."
+
+"Pooh! it was only a flirtation all through; and I would as soon flirt
+with a married lady any day as a single one. She looked superb to-night,
+did not she, in that dress that flashed as she walked--was it pink or
+white--and that ivy crown on her head?"
+
+"She always looks superb! I should like to fetch such a wife as that
+back to old England. A coronet would sit well on that stately head."
+
+A strangely-bitter regret for what he had lost smote the heart of
+Captain Cavendish. It might have been. He might have brought that
+black-eyed divinity as his wife to England, but for Paul Wyndham. Why
+had she preferred that man to him?
+
+"I wonder if she loves him?" he said aloud.
+
+"Who?--her husband? Do you know, Cavendish, she puzzles me there. She
+treats him with fearfully frigid politeness, but she never ceases to
+watch him. If he were any kind of man but the kind he is, I should say
+she was jealous of him. He is a capital fellow, anyhow, and I like him
+immensely."
+
+They rode through the iron gates as he spoke, which clanged noisily
+behind them. The night was not very bright, for the moon struggled
+through ragged piles of black cloud, and only glimmered with a wan and
+pallid light on the earth. The trees loomed up black against the clear
+sky, and cast vivid and unearthly shadows across the dusty road. A
+sighing wind moaned fitfully through the wood, and the trees surged and
+groaned, and rocked to and fro restlessly. It was a spectral night
+enough, and the young lieutenant shivered in the fitful blast.
+
+"I feel as if I had taken a shower-bath of ice-water," he said. "Wasn't
+it somewhere near here that Val Blake saw the ghost? Good Heavens!
+What's that?"
+
+As he spoke, there suddenly came forth from the shadow of the tree, as
+if it took shape from the blackness, a figure--a woman's figure, with
+long disordered fair hair, and a face white as snow. Captain Cavendish
+gave an awful cry as he saw it; the cry startled his horse--only a
+half-tamed thing at best--and, with a loud neigh, it started off like an
+arrow from a bow. The horse of Lieutenant Blank, either taking this as a
+challenge, or frightened by the sudden appearance of the woman, pricked
+up its ears and fled after, with a velocity that nearly unseated his
+rider. The lieutenant overtook his companion as they clattered through
+the streets of the town, and the face of Captain Cavendish was livid.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Cavendish!" cried the young man, "what was that?
+What was that we saw?"
+
+"It was Nathalie Marsh!" Captain Cavendish said, in an awful voice.
+"Don't speak to me, Blank! I am going mad!"
+
+He looked as if he was, as he galloped furiously out of sight, waking
+the sleeping townsfolk with the thunder of his horse's hoofs. He had
+heard the story of the ghost, and had laughed at it, with the rest; but
+he had heard it in broad daylight, and the most timid of us can laugh at
+ghost-stories then. He had not been thinking of her, and he had seen
+her--he had seen her at midnight--true ghostly hour--on the lonesome
+Redmon road, with her death-white face and streaming hair! He had seen
+her--he had seen the ghost of Nathalie Marsh!
+
+Mr. Johnston, the sleepy valet, sitting up for his master, recoiled in
+terror as that master crossed the threshold of the room. Captain
+Cavendish only stared vaguely as the man spoke to him, and strode by him
+and into his room, with an unearthly glare in his eyes and the horrible
+lividness of death in his face. Mr. Johnston stood appalled outside the
+door, wondering if his master had committed a murder on the way
+home--nothing less could excuse his looking like that. Once, half an
+hour after, Captain Cavendish opened his door, still "looking like
+that," and ordered brandy, in a voice that did not sound like his own;
+and Mr. Johnston brought it, and got the door slammed in his face
+afterward.
+
+The usually peaceful slumbers of Mr. Johnston were very much disturbed
+that night by this extraordinary conduct on the part of his master. He
+lost at least three hours' sleep perplexing himself about it, for never
+since he had had the honor of being the captain's man, had that
+gentleman behaved so singularly, or exhibited so ghastly and deathlike a
+face. When, in the early watches of the morning, he presented himself at
+his master's door with towels and water, it was in a state of mingled
+curiosity and terror; but he found there was no call for the latter
+emotion. Beyond looking uncommonly pale and hollow-eyed (sure tokens of
+a sleepless night), Captain Cavendish was perfectly himself again; and
+whether this was owing to the brandy he had drank or the exhilarating
+effect of the morning sunshine, Mr. Johnston could not tell, but he was
+inclined to set it down to the brandy. Even the paleness and
+hollow-eyedness was not noticeable after he had shaved and dressed, and
+partaken of his breakfast, and sauntered out, swinging his cane and
+smoking his cigar, to kill thought in the bustling streets of the town.
+Val Blake, standing in his office-door, hailed him as he passed.
+
+"How are you, Cavendish? Heavenly morning, isn't it? Have you any
+particular engagement for this afternoon?"
+
+"This afternoon? What hour?"
+
+"Oh, about three. You must postpone your engagements to accommodate me."
+
+"I have none so early. I dine with the mess at six. What is it?"
+
+"A little surprise that I have in store for you. Drop into Darcy's
+office about five, and we'll give you a little surprise!"
+
+"A little surprise! Of what nature, pray?"
+
+"Honor bright!" said Val, turning to run up-stairs. "I won't tell. Will
+you come?"
+
+"Oh, certainly! It will kill time as well as anything else."
+
+He sauntered on unsuspiciously, never dreaming he was sealing his own
+fate, Val Blake had no compunctions about entrapping him. He was so
+artful a villain he must be taken by surprise, or he might baffle them
+yet.
+
+"So slippery an eel," argued Mr. Blake to himself, "must not be handled
+with gloves. He may as well walk into Darcy's office himself, as be
+brought there by a couple of police-officers."
+
+Captain Cavendish returned to his hotel early, and avoided all places
+where he was likely to meet Lieutenant Blank. Of all people, he wanted
+to shun him from henceforth; of all subjects, he never wanted to speak
+of the terrible fright he had received the previous night. So he
+returned to his rooms, and smoked and read, and wrote letters, and dined
+at two, and as the town clock was striking five, he was opening the door
+of Mr. Darcy's office. And still no presentiment of what was so near
+dawned darkly upon him; no weird foreboding thrilled in nameless dread
+through his breast; no dim and gloomy shadowing of the awful retribution
+overtaking him so fast, made his step falter or his heart beat faster as
+he opened that door. Perhaps it is only to good men that their
+angel-guardians whisper in that "still small voice" those mystic
+warnings, that tell us poor pilotless mariners on the sea of life of the
+shoals and quicksands ahead. Perhaps it is only men like this man,
+whose souls are stone-blind, that cannot see dimly the hidden shipwreck
+at hand. He saw nothing, felt nothing; he walked in carelessly, and saw
+Mr. Darcy, old Squire Tod, and Mr. Blake, sitting close together and
+talking earnestly. He wondered why they all looked so grave, and why two
+constables, who had been looking out of a window, should place
+themselves one on each side of the door, as if on guard, as he came in.
+He wondered, but nothing more. Mr. Darcy arose very gravely, very
+gravely bowed, and presented him with a chair.
+
+"Good afternoon, gentlemen," he said, indifferently, "I have dropped in
+on my way to the mess-room, at the request of Mr. Blake, who told me
+there was a surprise in store for me here."
+
+"There is, sir," replied Mr. Darcy, in a strange tone. "There is a
+surprise in there for you, and not a very pleasant one, either. Mr.
+Blake was quite right."
+
+Something in his voice chilled Captain Cavendish, for the first time;
+but he stared at him haughtily, and pulled out his gold hunting-watch.
+
+"I dine at six," he said coldly. "It is past five now. I beg you will
+let me know what all this means, as fast as possible. I have no time to
+spare."
+
+"You will make time for our business, Captain Cavendish; and as for the
+mess-dinner, I think you must postpone that altogether to-day."
+
+"Sir," cried Captain Cavendish, rising; but Mr. Darcy returned his gaze
+stonily.
+
+"Sit down, sir, sit down! The business that rendered your presence here
+necessary is of so serious a nature--so very serious a nature, that all
+other considerations must yield before it. You will not go to the
+mess-dinner, I repeat. I do not think you will ever dine at the
+mess-table again."
+
+The face of Captain Cavendish turned ghastly, in spite of every effort,
+and he turned with a look of suppressed fury at Val Blake.
+
+"You traitor!" he said, "you have done this. Your invitation was only a
+snare to entrap me."
+
+"Honest men, Captain Cavendish," said Mr. Blake, composedly, "fear no
+snare, dread no trap. It is only criminals, living in daily dread of
+detection, who need fear their fellow-men. I preferred you should enter
+here of your own accord, to being brought here handcuffed by the
+officials of the law."
+
+Every drop of blood had left the face of the Englishman; but he strove
+manfully to brave it out.
+
+"I cannot comprehend what you mean by these insults," he said. "Who dare
+talk to me, an English officer and a gentleman, of handcuffs and
+crimes?"
+
+"We dare," replied Mr. Darcy. "We, in whom the laws of the land are
+invested. These laws you have vilely broken, Mr. Cavendish--for I
+understand you have sold out of the service, and have no longer claim to
+military rank. In the name of the law, George Cavendish, I arrest you
+for the willful murder of Jane Leroy!"
+
+It was an utter impossibility for the white face of the man to grow
+whiter than it had been for the last ten minutes; but at the last words
+he gave a sort of gasp, and caught at the arms of the chair on which he
+sat. If they had wanted moral conviction before of his guilt, they
+wanted it no longer--it was written in every line of his bloodless face,
+in every quiver of his trembling lips, in every choking gasp of breath
+he drew. They sat looking at him with solemn faces, but no one spoke.
+They were waiting for him to recover from the shock, and break the
+silence. He did break it at last; but in a voice that shook so, the
+words seemed to fall to pieces in his mouth.
+
+"It is false!" he said, trying to steady his shaky voice. "I deny the
+charge. Charley Marsh was tried and found guilty long ago. He is the
+murderer!"'
+
+"Charley Marsh is an innocent man--you are the murderer. Your own face
+is your accuser," said Mr. Darcy. "I never saw guilt betrayed more
+plainly in all my life. You murdered Jane Leroy--yes, strangled her for
+her pitiful wealth."
+
+"Who has told you this infernal story?" exclaimed the infuriated
+captive, glaring upon the lawyer. "Has that d--d scoundrel found----" He
+stopped suddenly, nearly choking himself with his own words, and the
+phlegmatic lawyer finished the sentence.
+
+"Found Cherrie?--yes! You see there is no hope for you now. Here,
+Cherrie, my girl, come out!"
+
+There was a door standing ajar opposite them, that looked as if it led
+into some inner and smaller office. As the door opened wide, the
+prisoner caught a glimpse of two men, only a glimpse; for the next
+moment Cherrie stood before him. The last faint glimmer of hope died out
+in his breast at sight of her with that vindictive look in her face.
+
+"Oh, you villain!" screamed Cherrie, shaking her fist at him, her black
+eyes flashing fire. "You mean, lying, deceitful villain! I'll fix you
+off for the way you have treated me! I'll tell everything--I have told
+it, and I'll tell it again, and again, and again; and I hope they'll
+hang you, and I'll go to see you hung with the greatest pleasure, I
+will!"
+
+Here Cherrie, who had not drawn breath, and was scarlet in the face, had
+to stop for a second, and Mr. Darcy struck in:
+
+"Hold your tongue, Cherrie! Not another word! Stick to facts--abuse is
+superfluous. You see, Captain Cavendish, with the evidence of this
+witness, nothing more is needed but drawing out a warrant for your
+arrest. She is prepared to swear positively to your guilt."
+
+"I don't doubt it," said Captain Cavendish, with a bitter sneer; "such a
+creature as she is would swear to anything, I dare say. We all know the
+character of Cherrie Nettleby."
+
+"Silence, sir!" thundered Mr. Darcy; "you are the very last who should
+cast a stone at her--you, who have deliberately led her to her ruin!"
+
+"He told me I was his wife," sobbed Cherrie, hysterically, "or I never
+should have gone. I never knew it was a sham marriage, until Mr. Blake
+told me so down in Charlottetown. We were married in the Methodist
+meeting-house, and I thought it was a minister; and Mr. Blake was there,
+and I thought it was all right! Oh, dear me!" sobbed Cherrie, the
+hysterics growing alarming; "everybody was in a wicked plot against me,
+and I was only a poor girl, and not up to them; and I wish I had never
+been born--so there!"
+
+Squire Tod and Mr. Darcy turned with looks of stern inquiry upon Mr.
+Blake.
+
+"What does this mean?" asked old Squire Tod. "You never said anything
+about this, Blake."
+
+"No," said Val, perfectly undisturbed; "I only told you Cherrie had run
+away with Captain Cavendish."
+
+"That is my irreproachable accuser, you see," said Captain Cavendish,
+with sneering sarcasm. "What that woman says is true; I did inveigle her
+into a sham marriage, but Mr. Val Blake managed the whole affair--got
+the church and the sham clergyman, and deceived that crying fool there
+fifty times more than I did; for she trusted him!"
+
+Squire Tod's face darkened into a look of stern severity as he turned
+upon Val.
+
+"Mr. Blake," he said, "I am more astonished and shocked by this than
+anything I have heard yet. That you should be guilty of so base and
+unmanly an act--you, whom we all respected and trusted--as to entrap a
+poor weak-minded child (for she was only a child) to misery and ruin!
+Shame, shame on you, sir, for such a coward's act!"
+
+Very few people ever suspected Val Blake of dignity. One would have
+thought he must have shrunk under these stern words, abashed. But he did
+not--he held his head proudly erect--he rose with the occasion, and was
+dignified.
+
+"One moment!" he said, "wait one moment, squire, before you condemn me!
+Gentlemen," he rose up and threw wide the door of the room from which
+Cherrie had emerged, "gentlemen, please to come out."
+
+Everybody looked, curious and expectant. Cherrie ceased the sobbing to
+look, and even Captain Cavendish forgot for a moment his supreme peril,
+in waiting for what was to come next.
+
+Two gentlemen, the Reverend Mr. Drone, of the Methodist persuasion, and
+another clerical and white neck-clothed gentleman, came out and stood
+before the company. Mr. Drone was well known, the other was a stranger,
+a young man, with rather a dashing air, considering his calling, and a
+pair of bright, roving dark eyes. Captain Cavendish had only seen him
+once in his life before, but he recognized him instantaneously.
+
+"You all know Mr. Drone, gentlemen," said Val, "this other is the
+Reverend Mr. Barrett, of Narraville. Mr. Barrett, it is a year since you
+were in Speckport is it not?"
+
+"It is," replied Mr. Barrett, with the air of a witness under
+cross-examination.
+
+"Will you relate what occurred on the last night of your stay in this
+town, on the occasion of that visit?"
+
+"With pleasure, sir! I am a minister of the Gospel, gentlemen, as you
+may see," said Mr. Barrett, bowing to the room, "and a cousin of Mr.
+Drone's. I had been settled about two years up in Narraville last
+summer, when I took it into my head to run down here for a week or so on
+a visit to Mr. Drone. I had known Mr. Blake for years, and had a very
+high respect for his uprightness and integrity, else I never should have
+complied with the singular request he made me the day before I left."
+
+"What was the request?" asked Mr. Darcy, on whom a new light was
+bursting.
+
+"He came to me," said Mr. Barrett, "and having drawn from me a promise
+of strict secrecy, told me a somewhat singular story. A gentleman of
+rank and position, an English officer, had fallen in love with a
+gardener's pretty daughter, a young lady with more beauty than common
+sense, and wanted to entrap her into a sham marriage. He had intrusted
+the case to Mr. Blake, whose principles, he imagined, were as loose as
+his own, and Mr. Blake told me he would inevitably succeed in his
+diabolical plot if we did not frustrate him. Mr. Blake's proposal was,
+that I should marry them in reality, while letting him think it was only
+a mockery of a holy ordinance. He urged the case upon me strongly; he
+said the man was a gambler, a libertine, and a fortune-hunter; that he
+was striving to win for his wife a most estimable young lady--Miss
+Marsh--for her fortune merely; that if he succeeded, she would be
+miserable for life, and that this was the only way to prevent it. He
+told me the man was so thoroughly bad, that all compunctions would be
+thrown away on him; and at last I consented. To prevent a great crime, I
+married them privately in Mr. Drone's church. Mr. Blake was the witness,
+and the marriage is inserted in the register. I told Mr. Drone before I
+left, and he consented to keep the matter secret until such time as it
+was necessary to divulge it. I married George Percy Cavendish and
+Charlotte Nettleby the night before I left Speckport, and took a copy of
+the certificate with me; and I am ready to swear to the validity of the
+marriage at any time and in any place. I recognize them both, and that
+man and woman are lawfully husband and wife!"
+
+Mr. Barrett bowed and was silent. Poor Cherrie, with one glad cry,
+sprang forward and fell on her knees before Mr. Val Blake, and did him
+theatrical homage on the spot. Val lifted her up, and looked in calm
+triumph at the baffled Englishman, and saw that that gentleman's face
+was purple with furious rage.
+
+"Liar!" he half screamed, glaring with tigerish eyes as he heard Mr.
+Barrett, "it is false! You never performed it--I never saw you before!"
+
+"You have forgotten me, I dare say," said Mr. Barrett, politely, "but I
+had the pleasure of marrying you to this lady, nevertheless. It is
+easily proved, and I am prepared to prove it on any occasion."
+
+"You may as well take it easy, Cavendish," said Val. "Cherrie is your
+wife fast enough! Don't cry, Cherrie, it's all right now, and you're
+Mrs. Cavendish as sure as Church and State can make you."
+
+"It's a most extraordinary story," said Squire Tod, "and I hardly know
+what to say to you, Blake. How came you to let him get engaged to Miss
+Henderson, knowing this?"
+
+"Oh," said Val, carelessly, "Miss Henderson never cared a snap about
+him; and then Paul Wyndham came along and cut him out, just as I was
+getting ready to tell the story. I meant to make him find Cherrie before
+he left Speckport, and publish the marriage; only Providence let me find
+her out myself, to clear the innocent, and bring this man's guilt home.
+I had to keep Cherrie in the dark, as I never would have got that
+confession out of her."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Darcy, rising, "it is growing dark, and I think there
+is no more to be done this evening. Burke, call a cab. Captain
+Cavendish, you will have to exchange the mess-room for the town-jail
+to-night."
+
+Captain Cavendish said nothing. His fury had turned to black, bitter
+sullenness, and his handsome face was disturbed by a savage scowl.
+
+"You, gentlemen, and you, Mrs. Cavendish," said Mr. Darcy, bowing to
+Cherrie, and smiling slightly, "will hold yourselves in readiness to
+give evidence at the trial. I think we will have no difficulty in
+bringing out a clear case of willful murder."
+
+An awful picture came before the mind of the scowling and sullen
+captain. A gaping crowd in the raw dawn of a cheerless morning, a
+horrible gallows, the dangling rope, the hangman's hand adjusting it
+round his neck, the drop, a convulsed figure quivering in the air in
+ghastly agony, and then----Great beads of cold sweat broke out on his
+forehead, and his livid face was contracted by a spasm of mortal agony.
+Then he saw the two clergymen, Mr. Blake, and Cherrie standing up to go.
+
+"I think I'll take you home, Cherrie," said Val, "I'll get another cab
+for you! Won't they open their eyes when they see you, though?"
+
+Mr. Blake and Cherrie departed, followed by the two clergymen; and no
+one spoke to the ghastly-looking man, sitting, guarded by the constable,
+staring at the floor, with that black, desperate scowl, that so changed
+his face that his nearest friend would hardly have known it. Cherrie
+trembled and shrank away as she passed him, and did not breathe freely
+until she was safely seated in the cab beside Val, and rattling away
+through the streets on her way home.
+
+Home! how poor Cherrie's heart longed for the peace of that little
+cottage where those who loved her, and had mourned her, dwelt. She was
+crying quietly, as she sat silently away in a corner, thinking what a
+long, and wretched, and forlorn, and dreary year the last had been, and
+what a foolish girl she had been, and how much she owed to Val Blake.
+
+Mr. Blake did not disturb her reflections; he was thinking of wronged
+Charley Marsh, exiled from home, branded as a felon.
+
+The cab, for which Mr. Darcy had sent one of the constables, drew up at
+the office door, as Mr. Blake's drove away; and the prisoner, between
+the two officials, with Mr. Darcy following close behind, came
+down-stairs.
+
+Captain Cavendish had gone down-stairs very quietly between his two
+guards, neither speaking nor offering the slightest resistance; but his
+eyes were furtively taking in everything, and the captive's instinct of
+flight was strong upon him. One of the constables went forward to open
+the cab-door, the other had but a slight grasp of his arm. The murky
+darkness, the empty street, favored him.
+
+With the rapidity of lightning, he wheeled round, struck the constable a
+blinding blow in the face with his fist, that forced him to release his
+hold, and, like a flash, he sped off, turned sharp round a corner, and
+was gone! The whole thing had been the work of two seconds. Before any
+one among them could quite comprehend he had really gone, he was
+entirely out of sight.
+
+The next instant, the still street was in an uproar, the two constables
+and Mr. Darcy, shouting for assistance as they went, started in pursuit.
+The corner round which Captain Cavendish had cut, and which they now
+took, led to a dirty waterside street, branching off into numerous
+wharves, crowded with hogsheads, bales, barrels, and piles of lumber,
+affording a secure and handy hiding-place for any runaway. It was like
+looking for a needle in a hay-stack even in daylight; and now, in the
+thick fog and darkness, it was the wildest of wildgoose-chases. They ran
+from one wharf to another, collecting a crowd about them wherever they
+went; and all the time, he for whom they were searching was quietly
+watching them in a black and filthy alley, that cut like a dirty vein of
+black mud from that waterside street to the one above.
+
+Drawing his hat far down over his eyes, Captain Cavendish started up the
+alley, and found himself again in the street he had left. The cab still
+stood before the office door of Mr. Darcy; he gave it one derisive
+glance as he strode rapidly along, and struck into another by-street. If
+he could only make good his escape; if he could baffle them yet! Hope
+sent his heart in mad plunges against his side--if he could only escape!
+
+Suddenly, a thought flashed upon him--the cars. There had been a picnic
+that day, and an excursion-train, he knew, left at half-past seven to
+fetch the picnickers home. If he could only get to the depot in time, he
+might stay in hiding about the country until the first hue and cry was
+over, then, in disguise, make his way to S----, and take the steamer for
+Quebec. He had a large sum of money about him; he might do it--he might
+escape yet.
+
+He pulled out his watch as he almost ran along, twenty-five minutes past
+seven; only five minutes, and a long way off still. He fled through the
+dark streets like a madman, but no one knew him, and reached the depot
+at last, panting and breathless. A crowd lingered on the platform, a
+bell was clanging, and the train was in motion. Desperation goaded him
+on; he made a furious leap on board, and--there was a wild cry of horror
+from the bystanders, an awful shriek of "O my God!" from a falling man,
+and then all was uproar, and confusion, and horror, and dismay. Whether
+in his blind haste he had missed his footing, whether the darkness of
+the night deceived him, whether the train was moving faster than he had
+supposed, no one ever knew; but he was down, and ground under the
+remorseless wheels of the terrible Juggernaut.
+
+The train was stopped, and everybody flocked around in consternation.
+Two of the brakemen lifted up something--something that had once been a
+man, but which was crushed out of all semblance of humanity now. No one
+there recognized him; they had only heard that one agonized cry wrung
+from the unbelieving soul in that horrible moment--giving the lie to
+his whole past life--but they had heard or knew nothing more. Some one
+brought a door; and they laid the bloody and mangled mass upon it, and
+now raised it reverentially on their shoulders, and carried it slowly to
+the nearest house. A cloth was thrown over the white, staring face, the
+only part of him, it seemed, not mangled into jelly; and so they carried
+him away from the spot, a dreadful sight, which those who saw never
+forgot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+THE VESPER HYMN.
+
+
+He was not dead. He was not even insensible. While they carried him
+carefully through the chill, black night, and when they carried him into
+the nearest house, and laid him tenderly on a bed, the large, dark eyes
+were wide open and fixed, but neither in death nor unconsciousness. It
+was a hotel they had carried him to; and one of the pretty chambermaids,
+who owned a sentimentally-tender heart, and read a great many novels,
+cried as she looked at him.
+
+"Poor fellow!" she said, to another pretty chambermaid; "it's such a
+pity, ain't it--and he so handsome?"
+
+"Who is he, I wonder?" the other chambermaid wanted to know; but no one
+could tell her.
+
+"He looks like an officer," some one remarked; "I think I've seen him in
+the town before, and I'm pretty sure he's one of the officers."
+
+"The doctor will know, maybe," suggested the land-lord. "Poor fellow!
+I'm afraid it's all up with him. I don't think he can speak."
+
+He had never spoken but that once, when the soul of the infidel, in that
+supreme moment of mortal agony, in spite of the infidel creed of his
+life, had uttered that awful invocation--"O my God!" But the power of
+speech was not gone, nor of hearing; he retained all his senses, and,
+strangely enough, did not seem to suffer much. He lay quiescent, his
+dark eyes wide open, and staring vacantly straight ahead, his dark hair,
+dabbled with blood, falling loose on the pillow and around his bloodless
+face. They had drawn a white spread over him; and he had a strangely
+corpse-like look, with his white set face, and marble-like rigidity. But
+life burned yet in the strained, wide-open eyes.
+
+The doctor came--it was Dr. Leach; and he knew him immediately, and told
+the gaping and curious bystanders who he was. He was very much shocked,
+and more shocked still when the white spread was drawn away, and the
+terrible truth revealed. The eyes of the wounded man followed him as he
+made his examination, but with no eagerness or hopefulness--only with a
+dull and awful sort of apathy.
+
+"Do you know me, Captain Cavendish?" Dr. Leach asked, tenderly touching
+the heavy, dark hair falling over his face.
+
+"Yes. How long----?"
+
+He did not finish the sentence, not because he was unable to do it, but
+that he evidently thought he had finished it, and his eyes never once
+left the physician's face.
+
+Dr. Leach looked very sadly down in the dark, inquiring eyes.
+
+"My poor fellow!" he said, "it is hard, I know, and for one so young and
+so far from all your friends. It is hard to die like this; but it is
+Heaven's will, and we must submit."
+
+"How long?" repeated the sufferer, as if he had not heard him, and with
+that steady, inquiring gaze.
+
+"You mean, how long can you last? I am afraid--I am afraid, my poor boy,
+but a short time; not over three hours at the most."
+
+The dark, searching eyes turned slowly away from his face, and fixed
+themselves on vacancy as before; but he showed no signs of any emotion
+whatever. Physical and mental sense of suffering and fearing seemed
+alike to have forsaken him in this last dreadful hour. He had been a
+bad man; the life that lay behind him was a shameful record. He had been
+a gamester, a swindler, a libertine, a robber, and a murderer; and now
+he was dying in his sins, in a dull stupor, without remorse for the past
+or fear of the awful future. Dr. Leach stooped over him again, wondering
+at his unnatural apathy.
+
+"Would you like a clergyman, my poor boy?" he said.
+
+"No!"
+
+"Is there any one you would like to see? Your time is very short,
+remember."
+
+Captain Cavendish turned to him with something like human interest in
+his glance, for the first time.
+
+"I should like to see Val Blake," he said, "and Mr. Darcy."
+
+"I'll send for them," said the doctor, going out, and dispatching a
+couple of messengers in hot haste. "He wants to make his will, I
+suppose," Dr. Leach thought, as he returned to the bedroom. "Poor
+fellow; and Val Blake was his friend!"
+
+Dr. Leach had requested one of the messengers to go for the army-surgeon
+before he came back. He knew the case was utterly hopeless, but still it
+was better to have the surgeon there. He found his patient lying as he
+had left him, staring blankly at a lamp flaring on a table under the
+window, while the slow minutes trailed away, and his short span of life
+wore away. His last night on earth! Did he think of it as he lay there,
+never taking his eyes from the lamp-flame, even when the doctor came to
+his bedside again and held something to his lips.
+
+"My dear," Dr. Leach said, feeling as though he were speaking to a
+woman, and again stroking back his hair with a tender touch; "hadn't you
+better see a clergyman? You are dying, you know."
+
+"Did you send for them?" said Captain Cavendish, looking at him.
+
+"For Blake and Darcy? Yes. But will I not send for a clergyman too?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Would you like me to read to you, then? There is a Bible on the table?"
+
+"No."
+
+He sank back into his lethargic indifference once more and looked at the
+lamp again. Dr. Leach sighed as he sat down beside him, to watch and
+wait for the coming of the others.
+
+They came at last--Val Blake and Mr. Darcy--knowing all beforehand.
+Their presence seemed to rouse him. Dr. Leach would have left the room,
+but the lawyer detained him.
+
+"You may as well stay," he said, "it can make no difference to him now
+if all the world hears him. It is not his will--it is a confession he
+has to make."
+
+Mr. Darcy was right. Strangely enough he wanted to do that one act of
+justice before he went out of life, and he seemed to make an effort to
+rally, and rouse himself to do it. The doctor gave him a stimulant, for
+he was perceptibly sinking, and the lawyer sat down to write out the
+broken sentences of that dying confession. It was not long; but it was
+long enough to triumphantly vindicate Charley Marsh before any court in
+the world, and just as it was completed the surgeon came. But a more
+terrible visitor was there too, before whom they held their breath in
+mute awe. Death stood terrible and invisible in their midst, and no word
+was spoken. They stood around the bed, pale and silent, and watched him
+go out of life with solemn awe at their hearts. There was no frightful
+death struggles--he died peacefully as a little child, but it was a
+fearful deathbed for all that. The soul of the unbeliever had gone to be
+judged. "God be merciful to him!" Dr. Leach had said, and they had all
+answered, "Amen." They drew the counterpane over the marble face,
+beautiful in death, and left the room together. All were pale, but the
+face of Val Blake was ghastly. He leaned against an open window, with a
+feeling of deadly sickness at his heart. It was all so awful, so
+suddenly awful; they, poor erring mortals, had judged and condemned him,
+and now he had gone before the Great Judge of all mankind--and the dark
+story had ended in the solemn wonder of the winding-sheet.
+
+"Speak nothing but good of the dead," a pitiful old proverb says. "We
+were friends once," Val Blake thought. "I never want to speak of him
+again."
+
+The body of the dead man was to be taken to his hotel. The surgeon and
+Mr. Darcy volunteered to arrange it, and Dr. Leach and Val left. The
+doctor had his patients to attend to, and Val was going to tell Cherrie.
+She was his wife and ought to know, and Val remembered how she had loved
+the dead man once. But that love had died out long ago, under his cruel
+neglect; and though she cried when she heard the tragic end of the man
+to whom she had been bound by the mysterious tie of marriage, they were
+no very passionate tears. And before the Nettleby family had quite
+learned to comprehend she was a wife they found that Mrs. Cherrie
+Cavendish was a widow!
+
+Of all the shocks which Speckport had received within the last twenty
+years, there was none to equal this. Charley Marsh innocent, Captain
+Cavendish guilty! Cherrie Nettleby come back, his wife, his widow! And
+still it spread, and "still the wonder grew;" and it was like a play or
+a sensation novel, and the strange old proverb, "Truth is stranger than
+fiction," was on the tongues of all the wiseacres in the town.
+
+And while the good people talked and exclaimed and wondered, and told
+the story over and over and over again to one another, and found it ever
+new, the dead man lay in his own elegant room in the hotel, and Cherrie,
+his widow, sat at his bedhead, feeling she had become all at once a
+heroine, and making the most of it.
+
+Among the visitors to that darkened room were Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham, Miss
+Blair, and Mr. Blake. Olive Wyndham, stately and beautiful, as ever, but
+paler and thinner, and less defiantly bright than of old, stood beside
+the bed of death, and looked down on the white, beautiful face of the
+dead man, with a strange, remorseful pang at her heart. How her soul
+bowed down before the disembodied spirit, and how touching was the
+marble beauty of that rigid face! If he had been old and ugly, perhaps
+people would not have felt so sadly pitiful about his dreadful fate; but
+he was so young and so handsome, that tears came into their eyes, and
+they forgot he had been a villain in life, and went away shaking their
+heads and saying, "Poor fellow! Poor fellow! It's such a pity!"
+
+Laura Blair--but Laura was always tender-hearted--cried as she looked at
+him, and thought how much she had liked him, and what pleasant hours
+they had spent together. He was very bad, of course, but still----Laura
+never could get any further, for the tears came so fast they choked her
+words.
+
+She actually kissed Cherrie, who cried from sympathy, and Val Blake
+looked at her with a more tender glance than any one had ever seen in
+Val's unsentimental eyes before.
+
+The pony-phaeton from Redmon was in waiting at the hotel door. Mr.
+Wyndham assisted the ladies in, and touched his hat as if in
+leave-taking.
+
+"Are you not going back?" his wife asked, with strange timidity. She was
+in the habit now of speaking to him, and always in that
+strangely-hurried tone so foreign to her character.
+
+"No," Mr. Wyndham said, "not just now. I shall return before dinner."
+
+The carriage drove off. Mr. Wyndham took Val's arm, lit a cigar, and
+strolled with him down Queen Street.
+
+"It's a very sad business!" he said, thoughtfully. "I am sorry for him,
+poor fellow!--one can't help it; but, after all, I don't know that it is
+not a merciful deliverance. The public disgrace, the imprisonment, the
+trial, the sentence, would have been to him far more terrible. There are
+worse things than death!"
+
+He said the last words with a sudden bitterness that made Val look at
+him. "It's his mother he is thinking of," said Mr. Blake to himself.
+"Poor woman, she's mad!"
+
+"And it is really true that he confessed all before he died?" Mr.
+Wyndham asked; "and exculpated, beyond all doubt, Charley Marsh?"
+
+"Yes," said Val; "Charley Marsh is free to return to Speckport whenever
+he pleases now. I always knew he was innocent. I had a letter from him
+last night, too, inclosing one to his mother."
+
+"Indeed!" Mr. Wyndham said, with a look of interest. "Is he well? Is he
+still in the army?"
+
+"Yes; but his time is nearly up, it appears. I shall write to him
+to-day, and tell him to come back to us. I have a note--she called it a
+note, though it's four sheets of paper closely written, and she sat up
+until three this morning to finish it--from Laura Blair, to inclose to
+him. If he is proof against four sheets of entreaty from a lady, all I
+can say to him will not avail much."
+
+"Laura is a good little girl," said Mr. Wyndham, "and very much in
+earnest about all her friends. You ought to marry her, Blake."
+
+"Eh!" said Mr. Blake, aghast.
+
+"You ought to marry her," repeated Mr. Wyndham, as composedly as though
+he were saying, "You ought to smoke another cigar." "I am sure you will
+never come across one more suited to the purpose, if you live to be as
+old as Methuselah's cat!"
+
+"My dear Wyndham," expostulated Mr. Blake, rather shocked than
+otherwise, "what are you talking about? I give you my word I never
+thought of such a thing in my life."
+
+"I don't doubt it, in the least; but you know the proverb, 'Better late
+than never.'"
+
+"Nonsense! What do I want with a wife?"
+
+"A good deal, I should think; if only to save the trouble of boarding
+out, and securing some one to darn your stockings and button your
+shirt-collar. Have you never indulged in any vision, O most prosaic of
+men! of a quiet domestic fireside, garnished on one side by yourself,
+with your feet in slippers, and on the other by a docile cat and a Mrs.
+Blake?"
+
+"Never!" responded Mr. Blake, emphatically.
+
+"Then it's time you did! Your hair's turning gray, man, and your sister
+has left you! Come, rouse up, old fellow, and secure that little prize,
+Laura Blair, before some more ardent wooer bears her off, and leaves you
+in the lurch."
+
+Mr. Blair stared at him.
+
+"I say, Wyndham, what crotchet have you got in your head to-day? Marry
+Laura Blair! What should I marry her for, more than any one else?"
+
+"Well, for pure artlessness, Mr. Blake," he said, "I'll back you against
+the world! Why should you marry Laura Blair, indeed! Why you overgrown
+infant, because you are in love with her! That's why!"
+
+"Am I?" responded Mr. Blake, helplessly. "I didn't know it. Is she in
+love with me, too?"
+
+"Ask her," said Mr. Wyndham, still laughing. "Here we are at the office.
+Good-morning to you."
+
+"Won't you come in?"
+
+"Not this morning; I am going to Rosebush Cottage."
+
+"Oh," said Val, hesitatingly, for it was an understood thing the subject
+was very painful, "how is your mother?"
+
+"She is no better," said Mr. Wyndham, briefly. "Good-morning!"
+
+Mr. Blake went into his sanctum, and the first thing he did was to write
+to Charley and tell him all.
+
+"Come back to Speckport, dear old boy," wrote Val, "everybody is in a
+state of remorse, you know, and dying to see you. Come back for your
+mother's sake, and we will give you such a reception as no man has had
+since the Prince of Wales, long life to him! visited our town. Come
+back, Charley, and cheer us again with the sight of your honest sonsie
+face."
+
+It took some time for Speckport to recover thoroughly from the severe
+shock its nervous system had received in the death of Captain Cavendish,
+and the various wonderful facts that death brought to light. It was
+fully a month before the wonder quite subsided, and people could talk of
+other things over the tea-table.
+
+Cherrie, the bereaved, was safely back again in the parental nest.
+Creditors had flocked in with the dead man's long bills; and when all
+was settled, nothing was left for the widow. But some good men among
+them made up two hundred pounds, and Mrs. Wyndham added another hundred,
+and the three were presented to Mrs. Cavendish, with the sympathy of the
+donors. It was a little fortune for Cherrie, though a pitiful ending of
+the brilliant match she had made; and she took it, crying very much, and
+was humbly thankful. Once more she tripped the streets of her native
+town, and her crape, and bombazine, and widow's cap, were charmingly
+becoming; and when the roses began to return to her cheeks, she was
+prettier than ever.
+
+The town was quiet, and October was wearing away. The last week of that
+month brought a letter from Charley Marsh--a letter that was not like
+Charley, but was very grave, almost sad.
+
+"Under God, my dear Val," he wrote, "I owe the restoration of my good
+name to you. I know all you have done for me and mine--my poor mother
+has told me; but I cannot thank you. I am sure you do not want me to
+thank you; but it is all written deep in my heart, and will be buried
+with me. I am coming back to Speckport--ah! dear old Speckport! I never
+thought it could be so dear! I shall be with you in November, and
+perhaps I may say to you then what I cannot write now. I am coming back
+a man, Val; I went away a hot-headed, passionate, unreasoning boy. I
+have learned to be wise, I hope, and if the school has been a hard one,
+I shall only remember its lessons the longer. I am coming back rich;
+blessings as well as misfortunes do not come alone. I have been left a
+fortune--you will see an account of it in the paper I send you. Our
+colonel, a gallant fellow, and a rich Georgian planter, has remembered
+me in his will. I saved his life shortly after I came here, almost at
+the risk of my own, I believe. They promoted me for it at the time, and
+I thought I had got my reward; but I was mistaken. He died last week of
+a bayonet-thrust, and when his will was read, I found I was left thirty
+thousand dollars. He was a childless widower, with no near relatives; so
+no one is wronged. You see I shall not have to fall back upon Dr.
+Leach's hand on my return, and my mother need depend no more on Mrs.
+Wyndham's generosity. I am very grateful to that lady all the same."
+
+"I believe I'll show this letter to Father Lennard," said Val to
+himself; "he asked me on Sunday if I had heard from Charley lately, and
+told me to let him know when I did. Charley was always a favorite of
+his, since the day when he was a little shaver and an acolyte on the
+altar."
+
+Mr. Blake was not the man to let grass grow under his feet when he took
+a notion in his head; so he started off at once, at a swinging pace, for
+the cathedral. The October twilight was cold and gray. A dreary evening,
+in which men went by with pinched noses and were buttoned up in
+greatcoats, and women had vails over their faces, and shivered in the
+street--a melancholy evening, speaking of desolation, and decay, and
+death, and the end of all things earthly.
+
+Mr. Blake, to whom it was only a rawish evening, strode along, and
+reached the cathedral in the bleak dusk. The principal entrances were
+all closed, but he went in through a side door, and looked into the side
+chapel for the priest. Not finding him, he entered the cathedral through
+one of the transepts, but neither was Father Lennard there. The gray
+twilight shone but dimly through the painted windows, and the long and
+lofty aisles were very dim and shadowy. There was but one light in the
+great church--a tiny lamp burning on the grand altar--a lamp that never
+went out by night or day. Two or three shadowy female figures knelt
+around the altar-rails in silent prayer, and Val thought one of them
+looked like Miss Rose. He knew she was in the habit of coming in the
+twilight here; but something else had caught his attention, and he
+turned away and went on tiptoe down the echoing nave, staring up at the
+choir. Some one was singing softly there--singing so softly that it
+seemed but the sighing of the autumn-wind, and seemed to belong to it.
+But Val had a quick ear, and the low melancholy cadences struck him with
+a nameless thrill. What was there that sounded so strangely familiar in
+that voice? It was a woman's voice--a sweet, full soprano, that could
+rise to power at its owner's will. But what did it remind him of? A
+thought flashed through him--a sudden and startling thought--that
+brought the blood in a red gush to his face, and then left him cold and
+white. He softly ascended the stairs, the low, mournful voice breaking
+into a sweetly-plaintive vesper hymn as he went.
+
+Val Blake trembled from head to foot, and a cold sweat broke out on his
+face. He paused a moment before he entered into the choir, his heart
+beating faster than it ever had beat before. A woman sat before the
+organ, not playing, but with her fingers wandering noiselessly over the
+keys, her face upraised in the ghostly light. She looked like the
+picture of St. Cecilia, with a cloud of tressed hazy golden hair falling
+about that pale, earnest, upraised face. Her mantle had fallen back--a
+white cashmere mantle, edged with ermine and lined with blue satin--and
+she sung, unconscious, as it seemed, of all the world. Val Blake stood
+like a man paralyzed--struck dumb and motionless--and the sweet voice
+sang on:
+
+    "Ave Maria! Oh, hear when we call,
+    Mother of Heaven, who is Saviour of all;
+    Feeble and fearing, we trust in thy might;
+    In doubting and darkness thy love be our light.
+    Let us sleep on thy breast while the night-taper burns.
+    And wake in thine arms when the morning returns!
+        Ave Maria! Ave Maria! Ave Maria! audi nos!"
+
+The singing ceased, the fingers were motionless, and the pale face
+drooped and sunk down on the pale hands. And still Val Blake stood mute,
+motionless, utterly confounded. For there before him, with only the
+moonlight shadow of her former loveliness left, sat and sang, not the
+dead, but the living, Nathalie Marsh!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+"QUOTH THE RAVEN, 'NEVERMORE!'"
+
+
+How long Mr. Val Blake stood there, staring at that sight of wonder,
+neither he nor I ever knew; but while it drooped in a strange,
+heartbroken way over the instrument, and he stood looking at it,
+powerless to speak or move, a hand was laid on his shoulder, and looking
+round he saw the pale face of Paul Wyndham. Pale always, but deadly
+white, Mr. Blake saw, in the spectral October gloaming.
+
+"Blake," he said, in a hoarse whisper, that did not sound like Paul
+Wyndham's peculiarly clear and melodious voice, "if ever you were my
+friend, be silent now! Help me to get away from here unseen."
+
+Some dim foreshadowing of the truth dawned on the slow mind of Val
+Blake. The ghost of Nathalie Marsh--the invisible and mysterious woman
+shut up in Rosebush Cottage--could they, after all, be connected, and
+was the mad mother only a blind. The question passed through Val's mind
+in a vague sort of way, while he watched Paul Wyndham bend over the
+drooping figure, as tenderly as a mother over the cradle of her
+first-born. His voice too, had changed when he spoke to her, and was
+infinitely gentle and loving.
+
+"My darling," he said, "you must not stay here. I have come to fetch you
+home."
+
+She lifted up her head at once, and held out her arms to him, like a
+little child that wants to be taken. All the pale, misty hair floated
+softly back from her wan face. Oh! how altered from the bright face Val
+Blake once knew, and the blue eyes she lifted to his face had a strange,
+meaningless light, that chilled the blood in the veins of the looker-on.
+
+"Yes, take me away," she said, wearily; but in Nathalie Marsh's own
+voice. "I knew you would come. Where's Midge? I am cold here."
+
+"Midge is at home, my darling. Here is your mantle--stand up while I put
+it on."
+
+She arose; and Val saw she was dressed in white--a sort of white
+cashmere morning-gown, lined with quilted blue silk. Mr. Wyndham
+arranged the long white mantle around the wasted figure, drawing the
+hood over the head and face. Ghostly enough she looked, standing there
+in the gloom; and Val knew she must have been dressed in the same manner
+on the night she so startled him and Laura. But Mr. Wyndham, who wore a
+long black cloak himself these chilly evenings, took it off and arranged
+it over her white robes, effectually concealing them, as he drew her
+forward.
+
+"Go down-stairs, Blake," he said, "a cab is waiting outside the gates.
+Come with us, and I will tell you everything."
+
+Mr. Blake mechanically obeyed. He was not quite sure it was not all the
+nightmare, and not at all certain he was not asleep in his own room, and
+dreaming this singular little episode, and would awake presently to
+smile at it all. He went down-stairs in silent bewilderment, never
+speaking a word, and hardly able to think. Nathalie Marsh was dead--or
+at least some one was dead, and buried out there in the cemetery, that
+he had taken to be Nathalie Marsh--how then did she come to be walking
+down-stairs behind him, supported by that extraordinary man, Paul
+Wyndham?
+
+The cathedral was quite deserted when they got down, and the sexton was
+just locking it up for the night. He stared a little at the three forms
+going by him; but he was an old man, with sight not so good as it might
+be, and he did not recognize them. They met no one within the inclosed
+grounds. At the side gate a cab stood waiting; Mr. Blake opened the
+door, and Mr. Wyndham helped in his silent companion, who yielded
+herself, "passive to all changes."
+
+"Come with us, Blake," Mr. Wyndham said, as he entered and seated
+himself by the lady. "Rosebush Cottage, driver. Make haste!"
+
+Not a word was spoken during the drive. The slight figure of the woman
+lay back in a corner, her head drooping against the side of the
+carriage. Paul Wyndham sat by her, looking at her often, but not
+addressing her; and Mr. Blake, in a hopeless morass of doubt and
+mystification, sat staring at the living ghost, and wondering when he
+was going to wake from his dream.
+
+The distance was short. In ten minutes they stopped in front of the
+pretty cottage, from whose curtained windows a bright light shone. The
+roses in the garden were dead long ago, and only gaunt stalks and bare
+vines twined themselves, like ugly brown snakes, where the climbing
+roses grew. A queer figure stood at the gate--an ugly, dwarfed, and
+unwieldy figure, with a big head set on no neck at all, and a broad,
+florid face, and little pin-hole eyes. But the eyes were big enough to
+express a great deal of anxiety; and she flung the gate open and rushed
+out as the carriage door opened and Mr. Wyndham got out.
+
+"Have you found her?" she cried. "Oh, dear! oh, dear! Where was she,
+now?"
+
+Mr. Wyndham did not notice her.
+
+"Get out, Blake," he said; and Midge recoiled with a cry of
+consternation at sight of Val's towering form. The next instant, he had
+lifted the lady out in his arms, as if she were a baby, and carried her
+within the gate. "Take her into the house," he said, sternly. "I shall
+talk to you about this again!"
+
+Midge obeyed meekly--Val wondered as much at that meekness as at
+anything he had seen yet--and led the passive girlish creature into the
+house. Mr. Wyndham paid and dismissed the cabman, and held the gate open
+for Val.
+
+"Come in, Blake," he said gravely; "the time has come when my secret can
+be no longer kept, and I would sooner tell it to you than to any other
+human being in existence."
+
+"Tell me," said Val, finding voice for the first time, "is that really
+Nathalie Marsh?"
+
+"She was Nathalie Marsh--she is Nathalie Wyndham now. She is my wife!"
+
+Mr. Blake fairly gasped for breath.
+
+"Your wife!" he exclaimed, "are you going mad, Mr. Wyndham? Olive is
+your wife!"
+
+"No," said Paul Wyndham, with cold sternness, "she is not--she never has
+been. The compact I made with her was a formal matter of business, which
+gave me the right to dwell under the same roof with her, but never made
+me her husband. She and I understand each other perfectly. Nathalie is
+my wife--my dear and cherished wife, and was so before I ever came to
+Speckport."
+
+"Then, Mr. Wyndham," said Val, with gravity, "you are a scoundrel!"
+
+"Perhaps so. Come in."
+
+Val Blake took off his hat and crossed the threshold of Rosebush Cottage
+for the first time since it was inhabited.
+
+"And your mother was only a myth?" he asked, as Mr. Wyndham closed and
+locked carefully the front door.
+
+"Only a myth. My mother is in Westchester County yet."
+
+Val asked no more questions, but looked around him. The hall was long,
+with beautiful proof-engravings, and lit by pendant chandeliers. There
+was a door to either hand--Midge came out of the one to the left, still
+wearing that anxious face.
+
+"Now, then," said Mr. Wyndham, sternly, "how did this happen?"
+
+"It wasn't my fault," snapped Midge, her usual manner returning. "I did
+my best, and she'd behaved herself for so long, I'd no idee she was
+going to scud off again. The door wasn't open ten minutes, and I was out
+in the kitchen bakin' the pies, and when I came back she was gone. I put
+after her and met you, and I couldn't help it now; so talk's of no use.
+Where did you find her?"
+
+"In the cathedral. She was speaking of it this morning, and asking me to
+take her there, so I knew she would make for that."
+
+"What made you fetch him here?" inquired Midge, poking one stubby
+index-finger at Mr. Blake.
+
+"He saw her and recognized her before I did. Get out of the way, Midge,
+we are going in."
+
+Midge went away, snorting to herself, and Mr. Wyndham opened the door,
+and preceded Mr. Blake into the drawing-room of the cottage. Such a
+pretty drawing-room, lit by the rosy blaze of a clear coal-fire in a
+grate of shining steel, and pendent chandeliers of glittering glass and
+frosted silver. A small, high-ceilinged room, the walls hung with white
+and gold paperhangings, and adorned with perfect gems of art. The
+windows were draped in blue satin and white lace, and there was a
+Brussels carpet on the floor, where violets, and bluebells, and
+morning-glories ran wild on a white ground, and looked like pale spring
+flowers blooming in a snow bank. The chairs were of white enameled
+wood--the legs and back touched up with gold, and cushioned in blue
+satin. There were inlaid tables, laden with superbly bound books of
+beauty, annuals, albums, and portfolios of engravings; and a rosewood
+piano stood in one corner, with the music scattered about. There was an
+open door to the left, leading into a bed-room furnished in much the
+same style; but Val scarcely looked at it--all his attention was taken
+by the white girlish form lying back in a great carved and gilded chair
+in front of the fire. What a wreck she was! The transparent skin, the
+hollow cheeks, the sunken eyes, the wasted little hands, the shadowy
+figure--what a wreck of the blonde loveliness of other days. Her head
+lay back among the blue satin pillows, her hands dropped listless over
+the arms of the chair, and her eyes were fixed on the leaping jets of
+flame, in a meaningless stare. She never turned to look at them when
+they came in; she did not even turn when Val Blake crossed over and bent
+above her.
+
+"Nathalie," he said, a little tremor in his voice; "Nathalie, don't you
+know me?"
+
+She lifted her blue eyes vacantly to his face, murmured an inarticulate
+something, moved her head restlessly, and then went back to staring at
+the fire. Val rose up, white even to his lips.
+
+"Wyndham, what is it?" he asked, afraid, while he spoke, to hear the
+answer. "Why does she look like that?"
+
+Paul Wyndham was leaning against the mantel, his head drooping. Now he
+lifted it, and Val saw the dark despair that filled his eyes.
+
+"Its meaning," he said, "has nearly broken my heart. If I have done
+wrong, I have been terribly punished, and even you, Blake, might be
+merciful now. My poor darling's mind is gone!"
+
+There was a pause, a pause of mute consternation on Val's part. Mr.
+Wyndham bent over Nathalie, with that look of unspeakable tenderness
+that made his face something new to Val--a face entirely new.
+
+"My darling, you are tired, I know," he said, "and want to go to bed.
+Don't you, Natty?"
+
+The old name! It brought a pang to Val's heart to hear it. Paul Wyndham
+spoke to her as he would have spoken to a child of three years; and Val
+thought he would sooner she were indeed lying under the sods in the
+cemetery than see her as he saw her now--dead in life.
+
+"Yes, Paul," she said, rising wearily, but at once.
+
+"Or, perhaps," Mr. Wyndham said, looking at her thoughtfully, "you would
+like to sing before you go. You told me the other day, you know, you
+always slept better if you sang before going to bed."
+
+"Oh, yes!" Nathalie said, her face lighting suddenly with animation.
+"What shall I sing, Paul?"
+
+"Anything you like, my dearest."
+
+He led her to the piano, and opened it, while she took her seat on the
+stool, and ran her fingers lightly over the keys at random. Val Blake
+closed his eyes to listen. How long--how long ago it seemed since he had
+heard Nathalie Marsh's melodious voice ringing through the
+cathedral-aisles! The thin fingers wandered off into a plaintive little
+prelude, that had something wild and melancholy in its wailing minor
+key. The song was as sadly-sweet as the air, and the voice that sung was
+full of pathos.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The song died out as mournfully as the last cadence of a funeral-hymn,
+and the pale singer arose.
+
+"I am very tired, Paul," Nathalie said, in a spiritless sort of way,
+"and I think my head is aching. Tell Midge to come."
+
+He rang the bell and put his arm round her to lead her away.
+
+"Say good night to Mr. Blake, Nathalie. You remember Val Blake, don't
+you, my darling?"
+
+"Yes," she said; but the smile she turned upon him was meaningless, and
+as cold as moonlight in snow. "Good-night!"
+
+Something was choking Val's voice, and his answering good-night was very
+husky. Paul Wyndham led her into the inner room, and Midge bustled in
+after the old fashion, and Nathalie was left in her charge to be
+undressed for the night. Mr. Wyndham left the room and returned
+presently, bearing wine and cigars.
+
+"If I am what you called me a while ago, Blake," Mr. Wyndham said, with
+a smile that had very much of sadness in it, "there are extenuating
+circumstances that may lighten my guilt."
+
+"Wrong is wrong," said Mr. Blake, gravely, "and no extenuating
+circumstances can make it right. You are a bigamist, by your own
+confession, and you know how the civil law punishes that."
+
+"Yes, Blake, I know it," said Mr. Wyndham, "and, knowing it, I have
+risked all to win her, my poor lost darling within that room! Heaven
+knows, I have hardly had a day's peace since. The broad road may be
+strewn with roses, as preachers say it is, but the thorns in the flowers
+sting very sharply sometimes, too."
+
+Mr. Blake made no reply to this aphorism, he was lighting his cigar,
+with a listening face, waiting for the story his companion had to tell.
+Midge came out of the bed-room while he waited, threw more coal on the
+fire, and left the room. But still Paul Wyndham did not begin. He was
+smoking, and looking thoughtfully into the red fire and the falling
+cinders, and the ticking of an ormolu clock on the chimney-piece, and
+the dreary sighing of the night-wind without alone broke the silence.
+The clock struck eight, and Val lost patience.
+
+"Well, Wyndham, why wait? Go on. I am waiting to hear this most
+extraordinary affair explained."
+
+"You all here in Speckport thought Nathalie Marsh committed suicide--did
+you not?" said Mr. Wyndham, looking up. "It is such a charitable place
+this town of yours, and your good people are so wonderfully ready to
+place the worst construction on everything, that you never thought she
+might have fallen in by accident--did you?
+
+"It looked very suspicious," said Val. "Heaven knows how some of us
+pitied her, poor girl! but still----"
+
+"But still you gave her credit for suicide. Let me restore her
+character. She never for a moment thought of self-destruction. I have
+her own solemn word for it. She was heart-broken,--despairing--my own
+injured darling!--but all the teachings of her life told her suicide was
+the only crime for which God has no mercy. She never thought of suicide
+on the night she wandered down to the old wharf. Most miserable she was.
+Perhaps the wretched night was in harmony with her great trouble; but
+she did not go there to look for death. She missed her footing on the
+slimy, rotten plank, and fell in, and from that moment her story--as far
+as you know it--ends."
+
+Val nodded. He was smoking, and it was too much trouble to remove the
+cigar to speak.
+
+"She was saved almost by a miracle. A passing boat heard the splash and
+her cry for help, and rowed to the spot. They saw her as she arose, and
+saved her, and one man on board recognized her. The man's name was
+Captain Locksley. Do you remember it?"
+
+"Locksley!" cried Val. "Captain Frank Locksley of the 'Southern Cross?'
+Know him? Yes, as well as I know you! He was over head and ears in love
+with Nathalie, himself."
+
+"Yes, I know. He recognized her, and would have returned with her to the
+shore; but she positively refused to go. She would die, she cried out,
+if she did not get away from this horrible place. Captain Locksley took
+her on board of his ship. There was a woman there, the wife of the
+steward, and she took charge of the poor, deranged girl. Captain
+Locksley sailed that night. He was off on a three-years' voyage; but on
+his way he was to touch at New York. The evening before they reached
+that city, he made an offer of his hand to the poor girl he had saved.
+He knew her story. He loved her and pitied her; but she refused. She
+only wanted to be away from Speckport. She would remain in New York. One
+place was as good as another, and a great city the best of all; but her
+lot was dust and ashes. She would never marry, she told him. Captain
+Locksley had a cousin, the wealthy manager of a fashionable Broadway
+theater, and, as a favor, the manager consented to receive Nathalie into
+his corps. Her rôle was a very simple one--walking lady at first, coming
+on only to stare at the audience at first. But my poor girl's beauty,
+though the shadow only of the brightness that had been, made her rise.
+She took minor parts, and they made her sing when they found what a
+superb voice she possessed. Her voice, the manager told me once, might
+make her fortune--at least it would have made the fortune of any other
+woman; but my darling had lost life, and with it all ambition. She never
+would be a good actress, but the audience looked at her a great deal;
+and the mournful melody of her voice, whether she talked or sang, had a
+charm for all. It paid the manager; so he kept her, and doled out her
+weekly pittance, and she took it uncomplainingly. I have sometimes
+wondered since how it was no one from Speckport ever saw and recognized
+her; but, I dare say, if they did, they would merely set it down as an
+odd chance resemblance. They were all so certain of her death, and then
+the false name and the disguising stage-dresses helped to baffle them.
+It was at the theater I first met her. They took my dramas when I
+turned dramatist, and I was always there. She attracted me from the
+beginning. She interested me strongly the first time I saw her, and I
+found myself pitying her somehow without knowing anything about her. I
+could not cease thinking of her after. The pale face and mournful blue
+eyes haunted me wherever I went. I found out she was called Miss
+Johnson, and that she lodged in a shabby house in a shabby street; and
+that was all any one heard. But of my own knowledge I knew she was good
+and fair, and that great sorrow, not sin, had darkened her young life.
+Why it was I loved her, I never could tell. It way my fate, I suppose;
+for my struggles were vain, and only left me more helplessly entangled.
+The manager laughed at me; my friends talked of acts of lunacy and
+genteel private lunatic asylums for me; but it was all useless. I loved
+her, and was not to be laughed out of it, and one night the truth broke
+from me. I begged her to tell me who she was and to become my wife; but
+she refused. She refused, Blake, to do either; but she was very gentle
+and womanly saying the cruel words. She was very grateful to me, she
+said, my poor dear! but she could not be unjust enough to take me at my
+word. The fancy for her would soon leave me. She was not worthy to be
+the wife of any good man. I must forget her. I must never speak to her
+like this again. Blake, I went home that night in a sort of despair. I
+hated and despised myself for my pitiful weakness. I tried to conquer
+myself, and failed miserably. I could not stay away from the theater. I
+could not forget her. I could not do anything I ought to do. I went to
+the house where she lodged, and found out all they knew about her there.
+It was very little; but it was all good. I made the manager tell me
+again what his cousin, Captain Locksley, had told him of her, and I
+ascertained that Captain Locksley was an honorable and truthful man. He
+had said she had undergone a great deal of trouble, and had met with
+heavy reverse of fortune, but that she was the best and purest of
+beings, and he trusted his cousin would always be her true friend. He
+told him he had long loved her, and that he had asked her to be his
+wife, and she had refused. I knew, therefore, there was nothing worse
+than worldly misfortune in the past life of the woman I had loved. Once
+again I sought her out, and implored her to leave her hard life and be
+my wife, keeping her past life secret if she chose; and once again I was
+refused.
+
+"After that second refusal," Mr. Wyndham said, throwing his smoked-out
+cigar in the fire, and lighting another, "I gave up hope entirely. There
+was such a steady, inflexible resolution on her poor, pale, worn face,
+that a despairing conviction of the uselessness of all further attempts
+came upon me. Still I could not go away--I despised myself for my
+pitiful weakness--but I could not, Blake, I could not! I loved her, and
+I was a weak, irresolute coward, and lingered about the theater only to
+get a word from her, a look at her, as she went past, or follow her at a
+distance through the city streets, to see that she got safely home. I
+despaired, but I could not fly. And one cold March morning, as I sat at
+the window of my hotel, staring dreamily out, she passed by; trying to
+fix my thoughts on the manuscript before me, and unable to think of
+anything but the pale actress, a waiter came in and handed me a letter.
+It was a very large letter, in a strange female hand I had never seen
+before; but I knew it was from her--my darling! I tore off the envelope;
+it contained half a dozen closely-written sheets, and was signed
+"Nathalie Marsh." I knew the actress only as Miss Johnson; but I never
+thought it was her real name. I knew now what it was. It was a very long
+letter; she told me where she came from, and why she was here, an
+actress. She told me her whole story; her sad, pitiful story of wrong
+and suffering; the fortune she had lost; the brother wrongfully
+condemned; and the treachery--the false, cruel, shameful treachery--of
+the man she had loved and trusted. She told me all, in a simple,
+truthful, earnest way that went to my heart; and then she told me her
+reasons for telling it. I was her only friend, she said. I had always
+been good and kind to her--my poor, little, forlorn lamb!--and she
+trusted and believed in me. She did not love me; she never could love
+any one again; but she honored and esteemed me, and if I could be
+content with that, she would be my wife--faithful and true until
+death--on one condition."
+
+Paul Wyndham paused. He had been gazing dreamily into the fire whilst
+talking, but now he looked hesitatingly at Val Blake.
+
+"I hardly know how to go on," he said, "without involving others, whom I
+have no right to name, but I must, I suppose; there is no alternative
+after the discovery you have made to-night. Another had become possessed
+of the fortune that should have been hers; a fortune that was hers by
+every law of right and justice. Another, who had no claim upon it,
+except, perhaps, that of mere chance--and the new heiress had been a
+fellow-lodger of hers in Minetta street. She was young and handsome, and
+had been a lady. I knew her by sight, for she had accompanied my darling
+often to the theater. She would go to Speckport; she would possess the
+thousands that should have been my Nathalie's--the fatal thousands for
+which her heart had been broken, her young life ruined. She would be
+honored and flattered and happy; she would marry, perhaps, the very man
+who had so wronged herself. He was a notorious fortune-hunter; she was
+sure he would be at her feet in a month, and was almost equally sure he
+would be accepted. She could not endure the thought--not that she loved
+him now--that had all gone long ago; but she wanted to baffle him, to
+make him suffer as he had made her suffer, and to possess after all a
+portion of the wealth which should have been all hers. She would be my
+wife, she said, if I would bring this about. She knew a secret in the
+life of this new heiress that placed her completely in her power, and
+she confided that secret to me. She would be my wife as soon as I
+pleased, if I would only help her in this scheme--if, after our
+marriage, I would go to Speckport, compel the heiress into a formal
+union with myself that should mean nothing but a business compact on
+either side, and so battle Captain Cavendish, and win for my lawful wife
+after all the fortune that was hers by right. You stare, Blake; it
+sounds very extraordinary and improbable, but it is the simple truth,
+nevertheless, and I saw no reason to see why it could not be carried
+out. The secret I held placed the heiress utterly in my power and would
+force her to comply with my every wish. Mind, Blake, it was not the sort
+of secret that causes divorce cases; it was a crime committed, no doubt;
+a crime of falsehood and ambition, not of shame, else that woman at
+Redmon would never for one poor instant, under any temptation whatever,
+have borne my name.
+
+"I read the strange letter over a half a dozen times, and Val, old boy,
+I consented. You don't need to tell me how miserably weak and despicable
+it was. I know it all, and knew it then just as well. But I want you to
+think of me at my best. If the heiress had been a good woman, I would
+have lain down and died sooner than disturb her; but I knew she was not.
+I knew she was a bad, bold, crafty, ambitious creature, without a heart;
+with only a cold, calculating brain, capable of committing a great crime
+for her own ends; and I had no pity for her. I consented, for I loved my
+poor, pale girl with a passionate devotion you never can realize, and
+felt all her wrongs burning in my own breast, and longed to take them
+upon myself and go forth and avenge her. I did not know then, as I do
+now, that it was a diseased brain that prompted that letter. I did not
+know that reason had left her throne, with that constant brooding on one
+theme, and that my love was mad when she asked me to commit a crime. I
+did not know. I wrote her a long answer, promising anything, everything,
+if she would be my wife. My poor girl! My poor, poor Nathalie!"
+
+Mr. Blake sat staring stoically at the coals, making no comment whatever
+on anything he heard, even when Paul Wyndham made that pause, with a
+face full of tender pity and love.
+
+"We were married, Val," he said, looking up again, "and the month that
+followed was the happiest I ever knew. Our marriage was very recent, and
+I took my darling on a Southern tour, hoping that would make her forget
+the past and be happy. But it did not. Nothing could ever make her
+happy, she said, but seeing retribution fall on the unjust, and
+returning to her native town. Not openly, that was out of the
+question--but in secret, where she could know for herself that her
+wrongs had been avenged. So I left her in New York, and came here, and,
+Blake, you know the rest. I did frustrate that bad man, of whom I do not
+wish to speak since he is dead. I did marry the heiress, or we went
+through the ceremony that our friends took to be such. We understood
+each other perfectly from the first. I found her precisely what I had
+thought her--a bold, ambitious woman, reveling in wealth that was the
+birthright of another; ready to marry a man for whom she did not care a
+jot, because she hoped he would some day place a coronet on her head. I
+had little pity for such a woman, and besides, I was bound by a solemn
+promise to my dear one, who never would see me again if I failed. I
+married the heiress of Redmon, and had a legal right to share the wealth
+that should have been all my own true wife's. I purchased this
+cottage--I brought Nathalie here--I secured the services of her faithful
+old servant, and Speckport thought it was my sick mother!
+
+"Very slowly some dim shadow of the truth came into my mind--very
+slowly--for I turned cold with horror only at the thought. Her mind was
+going--I saw it now--and the horror and anguish and despair of that
+discovery is known only to Heaven and myself. I had been so happy in
+spite of all--happy in this cottage with my darling wife--and now my
+punishment was coming, and was heavier than I could bear. My own act
+brought on the crisis. I was always urging her to let me take her out--I
+knew it would do her good; but she had such a dread of discovery that I
+never could persuade her. You remember the Sunday you saw us at the
+cathedral. She had often said she would like to go there, and that day I
+persuaded her to go, to hear the popular preacher. The sermon was a
+fearful one--you recollect it--and it completed the work remorse and
+suffering had begun. My wife was a hopeless lunatic from that day. O my
+love! my love! surely your punishment was greater than your sin!"
+
+Val did not speak. The white anguish on Paul Wyndham's face was beyond
+all wordy consolation.
+
+"It was after that she took to wandering out. She was haunted by one
+idea now--the sin she had committed against Olive; and tormented by a
+ceaseless desire to find her out, and kneel at her feet for forgiveness.
+She wandered to the Redmon road on the night you saw her first, with
+some such idea, and fled in terror at Laura's scream. Midge had followed
+and found her, and led her home. From that time, Midge had to watch her
+ceaselessly to keep her in; but sometimes, in spite of all, she would
+make her way out. She went to the cemetery to see her own grave, poor
+child! and Midge found her there, too; she went to the cathedral this
+evening in the same way. All the old familiar places drew her to them
+with an irresistible power of attraction, and I knew this discovery must
+come, sooner or later. I am deeply thankful you were the first to make
+it, for I can trust you, dear old Val! I dare not call in medical
+service, but I know her case is quite hopeless. She is never otherwise
+than gentle and patient--she is like a little child, and I know reason
+has gone forever. Blake, I know I have done wrong. I know I have
+deserved this, but it breaks my heart!"
+
+"And this is the end of your story," said Val, looking at him with a
+stony face.
+
+"This is the end--a pitiful story of weakness and wrong-doing, isn't
+it?"
+
+"Yes," said Val, rising, and flinging his smoked-out cigar in the fire,
+"it is. A bad and cruel story as ever I heard. A story I never should
+have given you the credit of being the hero of, Paul Wyndham. You have
+profaned a holy rite--you have broken the laws of God and man--you have
+committed a felony, for which life-long imprisonment is the penalty. You
+are a bigamist, sir. The laws of this matter-of-fact land recognize no
+romantic glossing over of facts. You have married two wives--that humbug
+about one marriage meaning nothing, being only a business arrangement,
+is only bosh. You are a bigamist, Mr. Wyndham, and you cannot expect me
+to hoodwink your crime from the eyes of the land."
+
+"No," said Mr. Wyndham, bitterly, "I expect nothing. You will turn
+Rhadamanthus, and have justice, though the heavens fall, I dare say. You
+will publish my misdoings on the house-tops, and at the street-corners.
+It will be a rare treat for Speckport, and Mr. Val Blake will awake all
+at once, and find himself famous!"
+
+Mr. Blake listened with the same face of stone.
+
+"I will do what is right and above-board, Mr. Wyndham. I will have no
+act or part in any plot as long as I live. The only one I ever had a
+hand in was that affair of Cherrie's, and I was sorry enough for that
+afterward. If Nathalie Marsh were my sister, I could scarcely care more
+for her than I do; but I tell you I would sooner know she was dead and
+buried out there, than living, and as she is. I am sorry for you, Mr.
+Wyndham, for I had some faith in you; but it is out of all reason to ask
+me to conceal such a crime as this."
+
+"I ask for nothing," Paul Wyndham said, more in sorrow than in anger. "I
+am entirely at your mercy. Heaven knows it does not matter much what
+becomes of me, but it is hard to think of her name--my poor
+dear!--dragged through the slime of the streets."
+
+Perhaps Val Blake was sorry for him in his secret heart--for it was a
+kindly heart, too, was Val's--but his face did not show it. He lifted
+his hat, and turned to go.
+
+"I shall be as merciful as is compatible with justice," he said; "before
+I make this matter known to the proper authorities, you shall be warned.
+But there are others who must be told to-morrow. She must have medical
+advice at once, for she is evidently dying by inches; her mother must
+know, and--" His hand was on the lock of the door as he stopped, and
+faced round--"and the woman you have wronged. As to your secret power
+over her, you need not make such a mystery of it. I know what it is!"
+
+"You!" Paul Wyndham said, turning his powerful gray eyes upon him. "You,
+Blake! Impossible!"
+
+Mr. Blake nodded intelligently.
+
+"She is not the true heiress! Ah! I see I am right! I have had reason
+to think so for some time past; but I never was sure until to-night. Oh,
+yes! I know the secret, and I know more. I think I can put my hand on
+one who is the heiress, before to-morrow's sun goes down."
+
+There flashed through Paul Wyndham's mind what Olive had said, in that
+first stormy interview they had held, about the true heiress, who had
+made over to her the true estate. What if it had been true?
+
+"Who is it?" he asked. "You cannot! She is dead!"
+
+"Not a bit of it. She is worth half a dozen dead people yet! I shall see
+her to-morrow, and find out if I am not right."
+
+"See her to-morrow! Then she is in Speckport?"
+
+"To be sure she is! I will visit the other one, too--Harriet, you know.
+She must be told at once."
+
+"You know her name! Blake, who has told you all this?"
+
+"Not now!" said Val, opening the door; "some other time I will tell you.
+You are at liberty to make what use of your time you please. You have
+between this and to-morrow."
+
+"I shall not make use of it to fly," said Mr. Wyndham, coolly; "whatever
+comes, I shall stay here and meet it. I have only one request to
+make--be as tender with that poor girl at Redmon as you can. I do not
+think she is happy, and I believe she is a far better woman than I took
+her to be. I am sorry for the wrong I have done her, but it is too late
+in the day for all that now. I do not ask you to spare me, but do spare
+her?"
+
+"I shall not add to the truth--be sure of it. Good night!"
+
+"Good night!" Paul Wyndham said, locking and closing the door after him,
+and returning to the room they had left. So it was all over, and the
+discovery he had dreaded and foreseen all along, had come at last. It
+was all over, and the scheme of his life was at an end. He had been
+happy here--oh, very, very happy! with the wife he loved, and who had
+trusted and clung to him, as a timid child does to a father. How often
+he had sat in this very room, reading to her dreamy, misty Shelley, or
+Byron, or Owen Meredith, and she had sat on a low stool at his feet, her
+blue eyes looking up in his face, her hazy gold hair rippling loose
+about her, like a cloud of sunlight, or with that golden head pillowed
+on his knee, while she dropped asleep in the blue summer twilight,
+listening. Yes, he had been unspeakably happy there, while some one had
+sat unthought of at Redmon, eating out her own heart in her grand
+miserable solitude. He had been very happy here; but it was all over
+now, and his life seemed closing black around him, like a sort of iron
+shroud. It would all pass, and he would exist for years, perhaps, yet,
+and eat, and drink, and sleep, and go on with the dull routine of
+existence, but his life was at an end. He had sinned, and the
+retribution that always follows sin in this world, or the next,
+had overtaken him. He had been happy here, but it was gone
+forever--nevermore to be--nevermore--nevermore!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+DRIFTING OUT.
+
+
+In Mrs. Major Wheatly's pretty drawing-room in their new house in Golden
+Row sat Miss Winnie Rose, the governess. She is dressed in slight
+mourning, very simple, as becomes a governess, but fitting the small,
+light figure with exquisite neatness, and she is counting time for Miss
+Wheatly, who sits strumming out her music-lesson at the piano. Mrs.
+Wheatly lies on a sofa at the window, dawdling over a novel and looking
+listlessly at the passers-by, and wishing some one would call. She
+started up, thinking her mental prayer was granted, as a servant
+entered with a card. But it was not for her. It was handed to the
+governess.
+
+"Mr. Blake!" said Miss Rose, hesitatingly. "This cannot be for me,
+Margaret."
+
+"O yes'm, it is! He requested particularly to see Miss Rose."
+
+"Is it Mr. Blake?" inquired Mrs. Wheatly. "What can he want with you, I
+wonder?"
+
+Miss Rose smiled as she got up.
+
+"I am sure I don't know. I may go down, I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, certainly, my dear!" said Mrs. Wheatly, yawning. "And ask him if he
+has heard from his sister lately. Stop your strumming, Louisa, it makes
+my head ache."
+
+Mr. Blake was sitting in what was called the morning-room, and shook
+hands with Miss Rose when she came in. But how strangely grave he was!
+What could he want with her? Her heart fluttered a little as she looked
+at him.
+
+"My dear young lady!" he began, with an ominously grave face, "it is
+very serious business that brings me here this morning. Are you quite
+sure no one can overhear us?"
+
+Awful beginning! The little governess turned pale as she listened.
+
+"No one," she faltered. "What is it you mean, Mr. Blake?"
+
+"My dear," said Mr. Blake, as if he were speaking to a young lady of ten
+years, "don't look so frightened. I want to ask you a question, and you
+must pardon me if it sounds impertinent. Is your name, your family-name,
+really Rose?"
+
+The governess uttered a low cry, and covered her face with both hands.
+
+"I am answered," said Val. "Your name is Henderson--Olive Henderson; and
+you should be heiress of Redmon, instead of--of the person whose name is
+Harriet, and who reigns there now. Oh, my dear young lady, how is this?
+Is there no one in the world to be trusted?"
+
+She rose from her seat suddenly, and sank on her knees at his feet with
+a gushing sob.
+
+"I have done wrong," she cried, "for all deceit is wrong; and though
+Rose is my name, it is not my father's. But oh, Mr. Blake! if you only
+knew all, I don't think you would blame me so much. It was not I who
+changed it. It has been the name by which I have gone for years, and I
+could not resume my rightful one without suspicion and explanation that
+involved the honor of the dead; and so I was silent. No one was wronged
+by it--no one in the wide world; and I did not think it so very wrong."
+
+She sobbed out as she spoke, in a sudden outbreak of distress. Val
+stooped kindly and raised her up.
+
+"My dear child, I only doubted you for a moment. You are too good to
+willfully deceive any one to their harm. But you must calm yourself and
+listen to me; for right must be done to all. Who is that woman at
+Redmon? Is she your stepsister?"
+
+The governess's only reply was to clasp her hands piteously.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Blake, what have you done? How have you found this out? Oh, I
+am so sorry, so very sorry; for you don't know the misery you will
+make!"
+
+"Misery! Do you mean to yourself?"
+
+"No, no! but to her. Poor Harriet! Oh, Mr. Blake, who can have told you
+this?"
+
+"Sit down and calm yourself, my dear Miss Rose, and you shall hear all.
+Do you recollect one day, very shortly after your return here, visiting
+Miss Henderson at her cottage down the street here?"
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+"You and she had along conversation in her chamber that day, part of
+which was overheard. Miss Catty Clowrie was in the house at the time,
+and she overheard--how, I don't pretend to say; but she heard enough to
+excite her suspicions that all was not as it should be. She heard you
+addressed as 'Olly', and heard you call Miss Henderson 'Harriet.' She
+saw her down on her knees before you, pleading desperately for
+something, Miss Clowrie could not quite make out what; and she heard
+you promise to comply with her request, on condition of her paying over
+to Mrs. Marsh a certain annuity. All this looked very odd, you know; and
+Miss Clowrie, who is a good deal of an attorney, they tell me, scented a
+criminal case. She consulted with her father on the subject, and was
+overheard by her brother Jacob, who is in my office. Jake communicated
+the story next morning in confidence to Bill Blair, and Bill related it
+in confidence to me. I cross-questioned Jake, and got out of him all he
+knew, and then pooh-poohed the story, and told them Catty must have been
+dreaming. But the annuity was paid, and I suspected the whole thing at
+once. It was none of my business, however, so I held my tongue; and as
+Mr. and Miss Clowrie hadn't facts enough to go upon, they held theirs,
+too, and waited for something to turn up. There is the story to you,
+Miss Rose; and now why on earth, if you are the true Olive Henderson,
+have you slaved here as a governess, while you let another, who had no
+right, usurp your place and wealth?"
+
+The governess lifted her head with some spirit.
+
+"It is no slavery, Mr. Blake! They are very kind to me here, Mr. Blake,
+and I have every reason to be happy; and Harriet has a right, a strong
+right, which I never mean to dispute, to possess whatever belongs to me.
+She is no usurper, for I have made over to her fully and sincerely the
+legacy bequeathed to Philip Henderson.
+
+"I understand. You are very generous and self-sacrificing, Miss
+Rose--but still she has no right there, and--" But Miss Rose
+interrupted, clasping her hands in passionate appeal.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Blake, what are you going to do? Oh, I entreat of you, if you
+have any regard for me or poor Harriet, not to reveal what you know.
+Indeed, indeed, I don't want it! What should I do with half that money?
+I have everything I want, and am as happy as the day is long. Do you
+think I could ever be happy again if I turned poor Harriet out; do you
+think I could ever live in that grand place, knowing I had made her
+miserable for life? Oh, no, Mr. Blake! You are good and kind-hearted,
+and would not make any one unhappy, I know! Then let things go on as
+they are; and don't say anything about this?"
+
+"But I cannot, my dear little martyr!" said Val, "and I must speak of it
+to her, at least, because it is involved in another story she must
+hear."
+
+"In another story?"
+
+"Yes, Miss Rose--for I suppose I must still call you by that name--in
+another story, stranger than anything you ever heard out of a novel. A
+cruel and shameful story of wrong and revenge, that I have come here to
+tell you this morning, and to which all this has been but the preface."
+
+The governess lifted her pale, wondering face in mute inquiry, and Val
+began the story Paul Wyndham had related the night before. The brown
+eyes of the little governess dilated, and her lips parted as she
+listened, but she never spoke or interrupted him until he had finished.
+She sat with her clasped hands in her lap, her eyes never leaving his
+face, her lips apart and breathless.
+
+"So you see, Miss Rose," Val wound up, "in telling that unfortunate girl
+at Redmon that she is not, and never has been, legally the wife of Paul
+Wyndham, it is of absolute impossibility to shirk the other story. Had
+she never falsely possessed herself of that to which she had no claim,
+this dishonor would have been saved her. She might have been poor, but
+not disgraced, as she is now."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Blake! what have I heard? Nathalie Marsh alive and here?"
+
+"Not Nathalie Marsh--Nathalie Wyndham. Whatever your stepsister may be,
+Nathalie at least is his lawful wife!"
+
+"Oh, my poor, poor, Nathalie! And is she really insane--hopelessly
+insane?"
+
+"Hopelessly, I fear, but she does not look as if her life would last
+long. She is only the shadow of what she was--a poor, thin, frail
+shadow.
+
+"And Harriet, who is so proud, what will she say when this is told her?
+Oh, how could Mr. Wyndham do her such a wrong? It was cruel! it was
+unmanly!"
+
+"So it was," nodded Val, "and it's not like him, either; for Wyndham is
+a pretty honorable fellow, as the world goes. But man, even at the
+best," said Mr. Blake, modestly, thinking of his own short-comings, "is
+weak, and temptation is strong. I think he is sorry enough for it
+now--not selfishly sorry, either. And now, Miss Rose, what I want is
+this. I know you are a sort of unprofessed Sister of Charity where the
+sick are concerned, and you and poor Natty used to be friends. I want to
+know if you will come and stay with her for awhile; she hasn't a soul of
+the female kind but Midge. If Joanna were here, I wouldn't have to
+trouble you; but in her absence you are the only one I can think of. Of
+course, her mother must go; but poor Mrs. Marsh is of no more use in a
+sick room than a big wax doll. She will play propriety while you stay."
+
+"Yes, yes; I will go at once!" exclaimed Miss Rose, starting up in
+womanly impulsiveness. "Wait one moment while I run and tell Mrs.
+Wheatly."
+
+"Oh, there's no such hurry! It will do this afternoon, when I will call
+for you, with Mrs. Marsh. Don't tell Mrs. Wheatly who it is you are
+going to see, mind--the secret will get out, of course, but we don't
+want everybody to know it just yet."
+
+"I will not tell. What time will you call?"
+
+"About three. I am going to Redmon now. She ought to know at once!"
+
+"My poor, poor Harriet! Oh, Mr. Blake! She is so proud and sensitive.
+You will spare her as much as you can?"
+
+Mr. Blake took the two little clasped hands between his own broad palms,
+and looked down kindly in the pale, pleading face.
+
+"I think I could spare my worst enemy if you pleaded for him, my little
+friend. Don't be afraid of me, Miss Winnie. I don't think it is in me to
+strike a fallen foe--and that poor girl at Redmon never injured me.
+Good-bye, until then!"
+
+Mr. Blake's composure, as we know, was not easily disturbed; but he rang
+the bell at Redmon with much the same sensation a miserable sufferer
+from toothache rings at a dentist's door.
+
+Yes, Mrs. Wyndham was in, the servant said, taking the visitor's card
+and ushering him into the library, where a bright fire blazed, for the
+lady of Redmon liked fires. Val sat and stared at it, wondering how he
+would begin his disagreeable task, and how she would take it.
+
+"She's such a flarer anyway!" thought Mr. Blake, "that I dare say she'll
+fly out at me like a wildcat! What a mess it is! I wish I never had got
+into it!"
+
+The door opened while he was thinking, and Olive came in. She was
+dressed in a loose morning negligee, every fold showing how
+indifferently her toilet had been made. Val saw, too, how pale, and wan,
+and weary her dark face looked; how hollow, and earthen, and melancholy
+her large black eyes. She had had her own share of the suffering, and
+her pride and haughty defiance seemed subdued now.
+
+"Does she know already?" wondered Val; "if not, why does she look like
+that? Have you been ill, Mrs. Wyndham?" he asked, aloud.
+
+"Oh, no," she said, drearily; "but I have not been out much of late, and
+so have got low-spirited, I suppose. This wretched autumn weather, too,
+always makes me dismal."
+
+"How shall I begin?" thought Val, staring moodily in the fire. But the
+cheering blaze gave forth no answer, and it was Olive herself who broke
+the ice.
+
+"Has anything happened, Mr. Blake, to make you wear that serious face?
+Mr. Wyndham----"
+
+She paused--her voice quivering a little. Val looked up.
+
+"Mr. Wyndham is at Rosebush Cottage," he said. "Did you know it?"
+
+"I thought he was. It is three days since he was here."
+
+The tremor was in her voice again.
+
+"What does it mean, at all?" thought Val; "it can't be that she cares
+for the fellow, surely!"
+
+"Is his mother worse, do you know?" she asked, her spirit rebelling
+against the question her torturing anxiety forced from her.
+
+"Now it is coming!" thought Val; "bless my soul! but it is hard to get
+out! It sticks in my throat like Macbeth's amen! Madam," he said, aloud,
+facing round and plunging into the icy shower-bath at once, "there has
+been a terrible mistake, which only came to my knowledge last night. A
+great wrong has been done you by Mr. Wyndham, and it is to inform you of
+it I have come here to-day."
+
+Her pale face turned blood-red, and then ghastly white.
+
+"You need not tell me," she cried, "I know it! She is not his mother!"
+
+"She is not!" said Val, very much surprised; "but how in the world did
+you find it out?"
+
+She did not speak. She sat looking at him with a dreadful fixed stare.
+
+"Tell me all," she said; "tell me all! Who is she?"
+
+"She is his wife! I don't think you can know that. He was a married man
+before he ever saw you here."
+
+A low cry of despair broke from Olive's white lips. This was not what
+she had expected--at the worst, she had never thought of this.
+
+"His wife!" she cried, "and what, then, am I?"
+
+Val sat dumb. It was not a very pleasant question to answer; and, to
+tell the truth, he was more than a little afraid of the lightning
+flashing from those midnight eyes.
+
+"What am I?" she repeated, in a voice almost piercing in its shrillness.
+"What am I? If she is his wife, what am I?"
+
+"My dear madam, it is a most wicked affair from beginning to end, and
+you have been most shamefully duped. Believe me, I pity you from the
+very bottom of my heart."
+
+With a cry that Val Blake never forgot, in its broken-hearted anguish
+and despair, she dropped down on the sofa, and buried her face among the
+pillows, as if she would have shut out the world and its miseries, as
+she did the sight of the man before her.
+
+Mr. Blake, not knowing any panacea for misery such as this, and fearing
+to turn consoler, lest he should make a mess of it, did the very best
+thing he could have done, let it alone, and began the story he had to
+tell. So, lying there in her bitter humiliation, this woman heard that
+her miserable secret was a secret no longer, and that the pale, silent
+actress of Mrs. Butterby's lodgings had been Nathalie Marsh, and was now
+Paul Wyndham's beloved wife. That was the misery--she scarcely heeded,
+in the supreme suffering of that thought, the discovery of her own
+trickery and deceit--she only knew that the man she had thought her
+husband, and who, in spite of herself, she had learned to love, had
+cruelly and shamefully deceived her. She had never for one poor moment
+been his wife, never for an instant had a right to his name; she was
+only the poor despised tool, whom he used at the bidding of the wife he
+loved. The horrible agony she suffered lying there, and thinking of
+those things, no human pen can tell--no heart conceive.
+
+Mr. Blake rose up when he finished his narrative, thankful it was over.
+She had never moved or spoken all the time, but he knew she had heard
+him, and he paused, with his hand on the door, to make a last remark.
+
+"I beg, my dear young lady, you will not be overcome by this unfortunate
+affair. It will be kept as close as possible, and you need not be
+disturbed in the possession of Redmon, since such is Miss Rose's wish. I
+have done my duty in telling you, though the duty has been a very
+unpleasant one, good-morning, madam."
+
+She never moved. Val looked at the prostrate figure with a vague
+uneasiness, and remembered it was just such women as this that swallowed
+poison, or went down to the river and drowned themselves. He thought of
+it all the way to Mrs. Marsh's, growing more and more uneasy all the
+time.
+
+"Oh, hang it," thought Mr. Blake, "I wish Paul Wyndham had been at
+Jericho before I ever got mixed up in his dirty doings. If that
+black-eyed young woman goes and does something desperate, I shall feel
+as if I had a hand in her death. I am always getting into other people's
+scrapes, somehow! I suppose it's my luck!"
+
+Val knocked at the cottage door, and was admitted to the pleased
+presence of Mrs. Marsh. And to her, once again, the story of plot and
+counterplot had to be told; but it was a long time before she could
+quite comprehend it. She cried a good deal when she fully took in the
+sense of the thing, said she wondered at Mr. Wyndham, and thought it was
+dreadful to have Nathalie restored, only to find she was out of her
+mind. She wanted to go to her at once, she said--poor dear Natty! and so
+Mr. Blake went for a cab without more ado, and found Mrs. Marsh shawled
+and bonneted, and all ready, upon his return. They drove up Golden Row
+and stopped at Mrs. Wheatly's for Miss Rose, whom Val handed in, in a
+few minutes, and then packed himself up beside the driver.
+
+Midge opened the door of Rosebush Cottage to the visitors, and stared
+aghast upon seeing who they were.
+
+"Is Mr. Wyndham in?" asked Val.
+
+Midge nodded, and jerked her head toward the room he had been in the
+preceding night, and, unconscious Val tapped at it, and then walked in,
+followed by the two ladies.
+
+Paul Wyndham stood up as they entered, pale and quiet as ever. Nathalie,
+wrapped in a loose white morning-dress, lay on a lounge, a pile of
+pillows under her head, and a mingled odor of vinegar and cologne and a
+number of saturated cloths showed he had been bathing her forehead when
+they came in. Mrs. Marsh never noticed him, but fell down on her knees
+beside the lounge, in an outburst of motherly grief and joy, raining
+kisses on the feverish face. Alas! that now-flushed, feverish face! the
+cheeks crimson, the forehead shining, and burning with raging fever, the
+golden hair all tossed and disordered over the pillows, and the hot,
+restless head turning ceaselessly from side to side, vainly trying to
+cool its fire. The blue eyes shone with fever's luster; but no light of
+recognition came into them at her mother's passionate words and kisses.
+Miss Rose, throwing off her hat and mantle, knelt beside her and dipped
+the cloths in vinegar and water, and laid them on the burning brow of
+the poor stricken girl. Val looked inquiringly at Mr. Wyndham.
+
+"She must have taken cold last evening in the church," he answered, in a
+low tone; "she became delirious in the night, and has continued so ever
+since."
+
+"I'll be off for the doctor at once," said Val, briskly; "she's in a bad
+way, I know. I'll fetch Dr. Leach, he was their family physician, and
+won't tell."
+
+Energetic Mr. Blake stalked out of the room without more ado. Paul
+Wyndham followed him to the door.
+
+"They know?" he inquired, motioning toward the room they had quitted.
+
+"All about it," said Val, "and so does that unhappy young woman at
+Redmon, and if she doesn't commit suicide before night it will be a
+mercy. And oh, Wyndham, by the way, you had better not show yourself. It
+isn't a very creditable affair, you know, to any of the parties
+concerned, and the best atonement you can make is to keep out of sight."
+
+He strode off, without waiting for a reply, in search of Dr. Leach, and
+had the good fortune to find that gentleman taking his dinner. Mr. Blake
+hurried him through that meal with little regard to calm digestion, and
+on the road had to relate, for the fourth time, the story, of which he
+was by this time heartily sick.
+
+Dr. Leach listened like a man who cannot believe his own ears.
+
+"Bless my soul!" he exclaimed, "is it a story out of the Arabian Nights
+you are telling me? Nathalie Marsh alive, and Mr. Wyndham's wife! The
+mother all a hoax, and the young woman at Redmon a--what is she, Blake?"
+
+"Blamed if I know!" replied Mr. Blake; "but, whatever she is, Nathalie
+was the first wife. It's a very uncommon story, but it is true as
+preaching for all that, only I am getting tired of telling it so often."
+
+"Well, well, well! Wonders will never cease! Natty returned to life,
+Cherrie back in Speckport, and Charley coming! Why, Val, we will have
+the old merry time all over again before long."
+
+"I am afraid not! I am afraid poor Nathalie is beyond even your skill,
+doctor. She was almost at death's door before, and this fever will
+finish her."
+
+Mr. Wyndham was not in the room when the doctor and Val returned. Mrs.
+Marsh and Miss Rose were still keeping cooling applications to the hot
+forehead, but nothing could cool the fever that consumed her. Val drew
+Miss Rose aside as the doctor bent over his patient.
+
+"Where is Wyndham?" he asked.
+
+"I don't know. He has not been here since you left."
+
+"What do you think of her?" nodding toward the fever-stricken girl on
+the lounge.
+
+The governess, whose experience among the sick poor made her no
+unskillful leech, looked out of the window through a mist of tears.
+
+"We have found her to lose her again, I fear. Look at Dr. Leach's face!
+Can you not read his verdict there?"
+
+The old physician certainly was looking seriously grave, and shook his
+head at Mrs. Marsh's eager questioning.
+
+"We must hope for the best, ma'am, and do what we can. The result is in
+the hands of Providence."
+
+"Then you think there is danger, doctor?" said Val, coming forward.
+
+"Imminent danger, sir! It is typhoid fever, and a very serious case,
+too. A strong constitution would stand a chance, but she has no
+constitution at all. Gone, sir! gone! she is as feeble as an infant."
+
+"Then there is no hope at all?"
+
+"None!" replied Dr. Leach, solemnly; "she will never leave this room
+alive. And better so, better so than as she was."
+
+"Yes," said Val, sadly; "it is better as it is! My dear Mrs. Marsh,
+don't distress yourself so. Think that her mind is entirely gone, and
+never could be restored, I believe, and you will be thankful that her
+earthly troubles are so nearly ended."
+
+Dr. Leach was giving directions in a low tone to Miss Rose, and Val, at
+his desire, lifted the slight form of the sufferer in his strong arms,
+carried her into the inner room, and laid her on the bed.
+
+"I will call in again before night," said the doctor. "Remember my
+directions, Miss Rose. Come, Blake; you're going, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes; in a moment. I want to see Wyndham."
+
+Paul Wyndham was walking up and down the hall as they came out, his pale
+face expressive of but one thing--intensest anxiety. Dr. Leach, with a
+stiff bow, passed on and went out, but Val halted.
+
+"Well?" Mr. Wyndham asked, eagerly.
+
+"No hope," said Val; "no earthly power can save her. It's typhoid--the
+most malignant kind. She will die, thank God!"
+
+Paul Wyndham leaned against the wall and covered his face, with a bitter
+groan.
+
+"As to you," pursued Val, sternly, "you must leave this house at once,
+and enter it no more. Do not forget that we are acting criminally in
+screening you from the law, and that we can enforce our commands. Go at
+once, and do not come here again until all is over!"
+
+He left the house as he spoke, and joined the doctor, who had gained the
+highroad. Some people passing stared to see them coming from Rosebush
+Cottage, and surmised Mr. Wyndham's mad mother must be worse than ever.
+
+"How long can she last, doctor?" Val asked, before they parted.
+
+"Not over two weeks, I fancy, at the most. This fever will carry her off
+at once."
+
+Late in the evening Dr. Leach returned, and found Nathalie worse. Mr.
+Wyndham had left the cottage, after taking one last look at the wife he
+loved so passionately. The agony in his face had gone to Mrs. Marsh's
+heart, and she cried now, as she spoke of it to the doctor.
+
+"Yes, I dare say," the old man returned, shortly, "he's very sorry, no
+doubt, but he's a villain for all that; and, only for poor Natty's sake,
+I'd have him arrested for bigamy this minute!"
+
+Miss Rose did not go home that night; she would never leave Nathalie
+now. She sent a note to Mrs. Wheatly by the doctor, explaining that it
+was a case of typhoid, and that she feared to bring the infection into
+the family. All further explanation she left to the doctor, only
+desiring that her clothes might be sent to her. Mrs. Marsh dispatched a
+similar message to Betsy Ann, and before night everybody knew that Mr.
+Wyndham's mother was very bad, that Dr. Leach and Val Blake had been
+there, and that Mrs. Marsh and Miss Rose were staying to take care of
+her.
+
+And what did Speckport say to all this? Oh, Speckport had a great deal
+to say, and surmise, and inquire. How was it, Speckport wanted to know,
+in the first place, that Mrs. Marsh and Miss Rose should be especially
+selected as the sick woman's nurses? To which Dr. Leach replied that
+Miss Rose, being such a capital hand at the business, and so fond of it
+into the bargain, he thought that there was no one in the town so fitted
+for the task; and Mrs. Marsh, having nothing else to do, could play
+propriety and read novels there as well as in Cottage Street. What was
+Mr. Wyndham's mother like, was she a violent lunatic, and was her
+present disease infectious? Speckport further inquired. To which Dr.
+Leach said, Mrs. Wyndham was the wreck of a very handsome woman, that
+she was not violent, only imbecile, and that her fever was highly
+infectious, and made it extremely dangerous for any one but the
+physician and nurses to enter the house; on which account Mr. Wyndham
+would absent himself from Redmon, and Mrs. Olive from Rosebush Cottage,
+until all was over. After which ominous phrase the doctor would hurry
+away, and Speckport was satisfied.
+
+Mr. Blake, to be consistent, took up his quarters elsewhere, and visited
+the cottage every day to inquire. Paul Wyndham, who was stopping at the
+Farmer's Hotel, very near the cottage, came two or three times a day to
+ask, but no one invited him to enter, and a sense of honor forbade his
+intruding. The answer to all inquiries was continually the same, "No
+better." No, Nathalie was no better--never would be better in this
+world! She lay tossing on her feverish bed, raving wildly, consumed with
+burning heat, never resting night or day. All the scenes of her life
+were acted over again in that burning chasm. Now she babbled of her
+schoolgirl-days, her mathematics and her music, or berrying and nutting
+frolics with Charley. Now she was with Captain Cavendish, loving and
+trusting and happy; and now she was shrieking out again that she saw the
+murdered woman, and covering her eyes to shut out the ghastly sight. Now
+the days of her misery had come; now she was at sea with Captain
+Locksley, and in the New York lodging-house; now on the stage, making
+rambling, incoherent speeches, and singing stage-songs. Now she was with
+Paul Wyndham, his wife; now she was in the cathedral listening to the
+stern preacher. And here she would shriek out, and toss her arms wildly,
+and ask them to take her to Redmon, that she must tell her all--she
+must! she must! And Miss Rose and her mother would have to hold her down
+by force to prevent her from rising from the bed in her excitement, and
+soothe her with promises that she should go there--only to wait a little
+while. And the poor sufferer would fall back exhausted, and perhaps go
+back to the old days when she played with Charley, a child.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+DIES IRÆ, DIES ILLA.
+
+
+The November day broke bleak and gloomy. The dismal dawn was laden with
+thick, sodden fog, and wretched, drizzling rain. The wind, full of the
+wail of coming winter, was cold and raw; and the sky, seen dimly through
+the fog-bank, was of sullen lead, the earth black and dreary; and the
+sea and the fog so mixed that you could hardly tell where one began and
+the other ended.
+
+In the Farmers' Hotel, a rambling wooden building, standing by itself on
+a quiet country road, all was still as the grave at this early hour of
+the miserable November morning. Even in the kitchen and halls there was
+as yet no step, and the servants slept the sleep of the just in their
+own dormitories. Perhaps of all in the house the man who stood at his
+chamber window, blurred and smeared with clammy wet, and stared
+hopelessly out through the full blank of fog and mist, was the only one
+astir in the house.
+
+In the murky dawn of this bad November morning, Paul Wyndham, with
+hollow creases under his eyes, and deep plowshares of silent suffering
+about his mouth and forehead, stood looking out of the stained window,
+at the flat waste of desolation without. It was hardly two poor weeks,
+but it seemed a lifetime; and a horrible numbness was coming over him
+and blunting all sense of pain. Would it always go on like this--this
+dull, dead blank in life--would it last forever? All things were
+beginning to look unreal, and lose their significance, nothing seemed
+palpable or as it used to be. He was conscious that the crisis had come;
+that in the long, black, sluggish watches of that wet November night a
+battle had been fought between life and death, in the cottage whose
+lighted window he could see from his own; but only conscious in a dull,
+numb sort of way, to which the sharpness of the torture had given force.
+
+The pale, cold dawn crept shining in while he stood there blankly
+staring out at the hopeless dreariness, and he roused himself from his
+torpor by a great effort at last. A loud-voiced clock somewhere in the
+silent house struck six as he put on his overcoat and hat and went down
+stairs.
+
+Paul Wyndham waded on through the sea of mud, in the cold morning rain,
+not meeting a soul, until he stood before Rosebush Cottage. The red
+light in the window burned still; but had that other light, that light
+of a beloved life, gone out in the night? It had been the crisis of the
+fever--that low, miserable, burning, delirious fever, in which for so
+many weary days and endless nights, the poor, unconscious sufferer had
+tossed. Ah! that dreary time of probation--when the faithful watchers
+had seen her sink day by day; when they had to force her clenched teeth
+apart to admit teaspoonfuls of beef-tea; when they had listened with
+aching hearts to her meaningless babble, or the songs the weak voice
+sang. But that sad time of waiting had dragged itself out, and the night
+came which must end all suspense. Does hope ever entirely leave the
+human heart, until the blank face actually grows rigid and the
+death-rattle sounds? Those sad and silent watchers in that darkened room
+hoped against hope through the slow lingering hours of that night. They
+were all there--Dr. Leach, Val, Mrs. Marsh, Miss Rose, and Midge, all
+mutely watching the pale shadow of Nathalie lying so still and white on
+the bed. You might have thought her dead had you entered, and looked at
+her lying with closed eyes, and no perceptible respiration. But she was
+only sleeping, and a faint breath still came from the colorless
+lips--sleeping a sleep from which the doctor, at least, knew she could
+only awake to die. He had a strong hope she might awake free from fever,
+and that reason might return before the last hour. He sat by the
+bedside, holding her wrist in his fingers, never taking his eyes off her
+face. Mrs. Marsh had fallen asleep quietly in her chair, and Mr. Blake
+was dozing; so when, as the pale morning broke, and the blue eyes
+opened to life once more, there was only the doctor and Miss Rose to
+bend over her.
+
+"Nathalie, darling!" the governess said, with trembling lips, "don't you
+know me?"
+
+The blue eyes turned upon the sweet face with the clear light of
+restored reason, and a faint smile dawned on the wasted face.
+
+"Miss Rose," she said, in a voice so faint that it sounded scarcely
+above a whisper. "You here?"
+
+"I am here, too, Natty," said the physician. "Don't you know the old
+doctor?"
+
+Yes, she knew him--she knew them all when they came crowding around her,
+and looked up at them with faint wonder in her fever-dimmed blue eyes.
+
+"I have been ill, haven't I?" she said, feebly, glancing at her poor,
+transparent, wasted hands. "Have I been ill long?"
+
+"Not very long, Natty dear," her mother answered, kissing her, "only two
+weeks, and you will be better soon now, won't she, doctor?"
+
+But Dr. Leach did not reply. How could he deceive that dying girl? She
+looked into his grave, sad face, and a solemn shadow fell on her own, a
+shadow of the dark truth.
+
+"Oh, doctor!" she cried out, "am I dying?"
+
+He bent over her, and stroked away tenderly the full dark hair off her
+forehead.
+
+"My poor child! my dear child! God knows I would save you if I could;
+but the power of life and death lies in higher hands. Has this world
+been such a pleasant place to you that you should wish to stay in it?
+Think of that better world, my poor little girl, that lies beyond the
+grave. It would be cruel in me to deceive you now."
+
+She drew the hand he held out of his suddenly, and turned her face away
+from them. Mrs. Marsh broke out into strong sobbing, but the doctor
+sternly hushed her. But the dulled, dying ear caught the sound, and she
+turned to them again.
+
+"How long have I to live?" she asked.
+
+He could not tell an untruth with those earnest eyes fixed on his face,
+and his voice was husky as he replied:
+
+"Not long! not long, my poor girl! But long enough to prepare for the
+world to which you are going."
+
+"Will I die to-day?"
+
+Her mother's sobs broke out again; but Nathalie looked only at the
+doctor.
+
+"Yes, dear child, you will last to-day, I think; but try and be calm,
+and not disturb yourself at the shortness of the time."
+
+Her hands dropped in a kind of collapse of despair.
+
+"So soon, so soon!" she said, "and so much to do--so much to atone for!"
+
+"Shall we send for a clergyman?" the doctor asked.
+
+"Shall I fetch you Father Lennard?" inquired Val, stooping over her.
+
+Her face brightened a little. The gray old priest had baptized her, an
+infant, had confirmed her a young girl, rind she had loved and
+reverenced him more than any one else on earth.
+
+"Yes, yes," she said, eagerly. "Bring Father Lennard. Oh, how short the
+time is, and so much to be done."
+
+Mr. Blake found Father Lennard at home, and had to go over again the
+weary story of wrong-doings and falsehood. He was a very old man; his
+hair had grown gray in his holy calling, and he was long used to tales
+of sorrow and sin--sorrow and sin, that go so surely hand in hand. He
+had learned to listen to such recitals--as a pitiful doctor, who knows
+all the ailments poor human nature is subject to, does to stories of
+bodily suffering--tenderly, sadly, but with no surprise. He had known
+Nathalie Marsh from babyhood; he had had a father's affection for the
+pretty, gentle, blue-eyed little girl, who had knelt at his confessional
+so often, lisping out her childish faults; he had moaned for her tragic
+fate; and he had nothing but pity, and prayer, and sorrow for her now.
+
+Mrs. Marsh and Miss Rose were in the room with the dying girl when they
+returned; Mrs. Marsh sitting at the foot of the bed, weeping
+incessantly, and the pale governess kneeling beside the pillows,
+holding the cold thin hands in hers, and reading prayers for the sick
+out of a missal. Both arose when the Father entered, and the dying face
+lit up with a sudden light of recognition and hope.
+
+"My poor child! my poor baby!" the old man said, tenderly, bending over
+her. "Is it thus I find my little Natty again? Thank God that reason has
+returned to you in your last hours."
+
+The mother and friend of the dying girl quitted the room, leaving the
+old priest alone to prepare the departing soul for its last great
+journey. Miss Rose knelt in silent, fervent prayer all the time; but
+Mrs. Marsh--poor weak soul!--could do nothing but sit and cry. Val had
+found Mr. Wyndham in the kitchen, leaning against the wooden
+chimney-piece, with a white, despairing face; and, pitying him in spite
+of his misdoings, turned comforter as best he could. He walked up and
+down the hall restlessly between whiles, feeling in the solemn hush of
+the house as if he were in the tomb. His watch, which he was perpetually
+jerking out, pointed to ten; and he was thinking he would have to run
+down to the office presently, when, opening the parlor-door to announce
+that intention, he saw Father Lennard come out of the sick-room.
+
+"Well, Father?" Val said, anxiously.
+
+"All is well, thank God! She is quite resigned now; and if sincere
+contrition ever atoned for sin, hers will surely be pardoned. Are you in
+a hurry, Val?"
+
+"I should be very much hurried indeed, Father, if I could not do
+anything you or she may desire! What is it?"
+
+"Will you go to Redmon, and fetch that unhappy young lady here. The poor
+child says she cannot die until she has heard her pardon her."
+
+"I'll go," said Val, "but I'm not so sure Mrs. Wyndham will come. You
+see, she is one of your proud and high-stepping people, and is in such
+trouble herself that----"
+
+"Let me go with you, Mr. Blake," cried Miss Rose, starting up; "I think
+she will come with me."
+
+"All right, then! Put your bonnet on while I run round and make Peter
+get out the buggy."
+
+The buggy came round to the front door, and Val assisted the governess
+in and drove off.
+
+Father Lennard returned to the sick-room, and sat there holding the hand
+of the dying, whose sad, sunken blue eyes never left his face, and
+talking of that merciful Redeemer, who once said to another poor sinful
+creature, "Neither do I condemn thee!" Nathalie lay, clasping a crucifix
+to her breast, her pale lips moving in ceaseless inward prayer, while
+she listened, her face calm and beautiful in its holy hope. The hours
+that intervened seemed very short, and then the carriage wheels crunched
+over the gravel, and Nathalie caught her breath with a sort of gasp.
+
+"Oh, Father, do you think she has come?"
+
+"I trust so, dear child! I will go and see."
+
+As he entered the drawing-room, the front door opened. Val stalked in,
+followed by Miss Rose and--yes, by a figure stately and tall, dressed
+very plainly, and closely vailed. The priest knew that majestic figure,
+although the face, seen dimly through the vail, was so changed that he
+hardly knew it.
+
+"You may go in," he said, in reply to Miss Rose's appealing look; "she
+is waiting for you."
+
+As the door closed upon the tall vailed form, and the two women, united
+to the same man, were face to face, Father Lennard took his hat to go.
+
+"I shall return again in the afternoon," he said; "I would stay all day
+if I could, but it is impossible."
+
+"I will drive you into town," said Val; "Peter can fetch the traps back.
+Oh, here's the doctor!"
+
+Dr. Leach opened the garden-gate as they came out, and lifted his hat to
+the clergyman.
+
+"How is she?" he asked.
+
+"Failing fast," said Father Lennard. "I do not think she will wear the
+night through!"
+
+"You are coming back, I suppose?"
+
+"I shall endeavor to do so. I promised her I would, poor child!"
+
+The doctor went into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Marsh, through her
+tears, told him who was with her. The old doctor looked dissatisfied.
+
+"They'll agitate her too much--I know they will, with their crying and
+taking on. If they stay long, I will go and turn them out!"
+
+He waited for a quarter of an hour, watch in hand, frowning impatiently
+at the dial-plate, and then the chamber-door reopened and the
+half-sisters came out. The swollen eyes of the governess told how she
+had been weeping, but the other had dropped her vail once more, and was
+invisible. Dr. Leach bowed to her, but she passed on without seeming to
+see him. Miss Rose followed her to the door, and looked wistfully out at
+the wet, foggy November weather, and the hopeless slough of mud.
+
+"You cannot walk back, Harriet. I will send Peter to Redmon for the
+carriage. You will get your death of cold to walk there, unused as you
+are to walking."
+
+"What does it matter?" she said, in a strangely hollow voice, "the
+sooner I get my death the better. If I could only die like her, I should
+rejoice however soon it came!"
+
+"But, Harriet----"
+
+But Harriet was gone, even while she spoke, walking rapidly through the
+drizzling rain and clammy mud--she, who had had a fastidious horror of
+mud on her dainty boots--and knowing nothing of either. All that was
+best in her nature had been roused into life by that dying-bed, but
+still that utter sense of despair and desolation filled her soul. Her
+life was done--there was no future for her--in all the wide universe
+there was not such another miserable woman as herself, she
+thought--desolate, unloved, and alone.
+
+There were not many people abroad that bad November day; but those who
+were, and who recognized Mrs. Wyndham through her vail, and bowed
+ceremoniously, felt themselves outraged at receiving the cut direct. She
+never saw them--she walked straight forward to that stately home that
+was hers no longer, as people walk in sleep, with eyes wide open and
+staring straight before her, but seeing nothing.
+
+Dr. Leach went into the sick-room as the others left it; but he returned
+presently, frowning again.
+
+"Where is the fellow to be found?" he asked, impatiently; "she will
+excite herself in spite of all I can say. She must see him, she says, if
+only for ten minutes."
+
+"Is it Mr. Wyndham?" asked Miss Rose; and the doctor nodded crossly.
+
+It was the first time that the dying girl had spoken of him; and Miss
+Rose, who knew he was in the house, left the room without a word.
+
+"Oh, he is here, is he?" said Dr. Leach. "I might have known it! Hem!
+Here he comes!"
+
+Paul Wyndham followed the governess into the parlor, looking so haggard
+that even the old doctor pitied him.
+
+"Now, Mr. Wyndham," he said, "my patient is not to be unnecessarily
+excited, remember! I give you just ten minutes, not a second more!"
+
+Mr. Wyndham bowed his head and passed into the chamber; and Dr. Leach,
+watch in hand, planted himself at the door, and grimly counted the
+minutes. When the ten had passed, he opened the door.
+
+"Time's up," he said; "say good-bye, Mr. Wyndham, and come out!"
+
+They were all merciful enough not to look at him as he obeyed. Dr. Leach
+went in and found poor Nathalie lying with her eyes closed, clasping her
+crucifix, her lips still moving in voiceless prayer. She looked up at
+him with her poor, pleading eyes.
+
+The old doctor departed, and the two women were left alone with the
+dying wife of Paul Wyndham. Miss Rose sat by the bedside, reading, in
+her sweet, low voice, the consoling prayers for the sick, while poor,
+weak, useless Mrs. Marsh only rocked backward and forward in the
+rocking-chair, moaning and crying in feeble helplessness. And Paul
+Wyndham, in the room on the other side of the hall, walking restlessly
+up and down, or stopping to gaze out of the window, or running to Midge
+every five minutes to go and inquire how she was--felt and suffered as
+men only can feel and suffer once in a lifetime.
+
+The leaden hours of the twilight deepened into night--black, somber,
+starless. With the night came the wind and fell the rain. The storm had
+been gathering sullenly all day, and broke with the night fast and
+furious. The rain lashed the windows, and the melancholy autumn winds
+shrieked and wailed alternately around the cottage, waking a surging
+roar in the black cedar woods beyond. The feeble hands still fold
+themselves over the precious crucifix--that "sign of hope to man"--but
+the power of speech has gone. She cannot move, either; her eyes and lips
+are all that seem alive, but her sense of hearing remains. She hears the
+sound of carriage-wheels outside, and hears when Father Lennard, Dr.
+Leach, and faithful Val enter the drawing-room. The old priest takes
+Miss Rose's place, to administer the last solemn rites to the dying, and
+Nathalie smiles faintly up in his face and kisses the cross he holds to
+her lips. Val Blake goes into the room where he knows Paul Wyndham must
+be, and finds him lying as Midge found him a quarter of an hour before.
+He stoops down and finds he is asleep--Ah! when had he slept night or
+day before?--and his face looks so haggard and heart-broken in repose
+that Val says "Poor fellow!" and goes softly out.
+
+And so, with death in their midst, the faithful watchers sit and keep
+vigil, while the stormy night wore on. Ah! Heaven strengthen us all for
+that dread death-watch, when we sit beside those we love, and watch and
+wait for the soul to take its fight. No one spoke, except in hushed
+whispers, and the roaring of the wild storm sounded awfully loud in the
+stillness. They can hear the voice of the old priest as he reads, or
+talks, or prays with that fluttering spirit, already in the shadow of
+the valley of death. As the watch of Val points to eleven, Miss Rose
+glides softly out, with a face like snow, and tells them to kneel, while
+Father Lennard reads the prayers for the dying. So they kneel and bow
+their heads with awe-struck spirits, while the solemn and beautiful
+prayers of the old church are read, and thrill as they hear that awful
+adjuration: "Depart, Christian soul, out of this world!" and then, as it
+is finishing, there is a pause. What does it mean? The service for the
+dying is not ended. A moment later and they know--Father Lennard goes
+on, but it is prayers for the dead he renders now, and they know all is
+over; and Val Blake leans his head on his arm and feels it grow wet,
+while the sad and solemn voice of the old priest goes on. Then they all
+arise, Father Lennard reverentially closes the blue eyes, that have
+looked their last on this mortal life, and there is a wild outbreak of
+motherly love from poor Mrs. Marsh; and Miss Rose, with her face buried
+in the pillow, is crying as she has not cried for many a day; and Val
+and the old doctor go softly in and look on the beautiful dead face, and
+think of the bright, happy Nathalie Marsh of last year--for whom all the
+world might have prophesied a long and happy life--and feel that neither
+youth, nor health, nor beauty, nor all the glory of the world, can save
+us one hour from death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+OUT OF THE CROOKED WAYS.
+
+
+And so all was over; and Speckport found out that the poor, miserable
+creature, Mr. Wyndham's mother, was dead. It must have been a merciful
+release for her, poor soul! they said; but the fever was infectious, and
+they sympathized at a respectful distance. But Mr. Wyndham's wife left
+Redmon and went to the cottage as soon as she heard it, and staid there
+through all the weary time that intervened between the death and the
+burial. There had been a consultation about the funeral and the grave,
+and it was decided that that other grave, marked with the white cross,
+and bearing the name of Nathalie Marsh, should not be disturbed.
+By-and-by, Val said, the name can be erased; to disturb it now would
+involve the telling of the whole story. Let Mr. Wyndham erect what sort
+of monument he pleases. So the grave was dug in a sunny inclosure, under
+a tamarack tree, and the funeral-service was held in the cathedral, and
+a long file of carriages followed the hearse to the cemetery. Paul
+Wyndham, in his deep mourning, stood bareheaded in the cold November
+sunlight while the coffin was being lowered and the sods rattled heavily
+on the lid; and Speckport, as represented by the funeral cortege,
+whispered that Mr. Wyndham looked ten years older since his mother's
+death.
+
+So Rosebush Cottage was left once more to the sole care of Midge, and
+Mr. Wyndham returned to his late quarters at the "Farmer's Hotel." Mrs.
+Marsh was driven to Cottage Street, and Mr. Blake, having fumigated
+himself thoroughly, delighted the home of Miss Laura Blair once more
+with the light of his presence. Poor Laura had led rather a lonely life
+of late; for her darling Olly, wrapped up in her own troubles, had no
+time to attend to her, and Val had deserted them altogether. She was
+sitting, pale and listless, turning over the leaves of a new and popular
+novel, with an indifference not very flattering to the author, when the
+opening of the door made her start up, with a flush on her pretty face
+and a light in her bright eyes, to whose flattering interest even Mr.
+Blake could not be insensible.
+
+"Yes, I've come back to poor Laura," Mr. Blake said, shaking hands with
+more warmth than perhaps there was any real necessity for. "I find I
+can't stay away from you somehow. How's everybody?"
+
+"Pa and ma are well, if you mean them by 'everybody.' So poor Mr.
+Wyndham's mother has gone?"
+
+Mr. Blake nodded.
+
+"And what is Mr. Wyndham going to do with that love of a cottage now, I
+wonder?"
+
+"I," said Mr. Blake, imperiously, "am going to purchase that love of a
+cottage myself!"
+
+"You! Why, Val! What will you ever do with a house?"
+
+"Live in it, Miss Blair, like any other Christian!"
+
+"Oh, yes; of course; I suppose you will send for Miss Jo to keep house
+for you again?"
+
+"Why, no," said Mr. Blake, thoughtfully. "I think not. Do you know,
+Laura, what I have been thinking of lately?"
+
+"No; how should I?"
+
+"Well, then," said Val, in a confidential tone, "I have been thinking of
+getting married! You need not mention it just yet, until I see more
+about it. In fact, I have not asked the lady yet, and don't know what
+she may say."
+
+"And who is the happy lady, pray?"
+
+"A particular friend of mine," nodded Val, sagely, "and of yours, too,
+Laura. The nicest girl in Speckport."
+
+"It is Miss Rose," thought Laura, with a sudden sinking of the heart.
+"He always admired her, and they have been so much together lately!"
+
+"I'll buy the cottage from Wyndham as it stands," pursued Val, serenely
+unconscious of the turn Miss Blair's thoughts had taken, "and fetch my
+wife there, and live in clover all the rest of my life. So hold yourself
+in readiness, Miss Laura, to dance at the wedding."
+
+Miss Laura might have replied but for a sudden choking sensation in the
+throat, and the entrance of her portly mamma. Under cover of that lady's
+entrance, she made her exit, and going up to her room, flung herself,
+face downward, on the bed, and cried until her eyes were as red as a
+ferret's. And all the time Mr. Blake was in a state of serene
+complacency at the artful way in which he had prepared her for what was
+to come.
+
+"I couldn't speak much plainer," he thought, blandly. "How pretty she
+looked, blushing and looking down. Of course I'll get married. I wonder
+I never thought of it before. Dear little Laura! I'll never forget the
+first time I heard her sing, 'We won't go home till morning!' I thought
+her the jolliest girl then I ever met."
+
+Mr. Blake was a gentleman in the habit of striking while the iron was
+hot. He called round at the office, rapped Master Bill Blair over the
+head with the tongs for standing on his hands instead of his feet, and
+then started off for the Farmer's Hotel, without more ado, and was
+ushered by a waiter into Mr. Wyndham's room.
+
+"Blake, I owe you more than I can ever repay," he said; "you have been
+my true friend through all this miserable time; and believe me, I feel
+your goodness as much as a man can feel, even though I cannot express
+it! Please God, this trouble of my life shall make me a better man, if I
+can never be a happy one."
+
+"Oh, you'll be happy," said Mr. Blake. "Get into the straight path
+again, Wyndham, and keep there. I don't set up for a preacher, goodness
+knows! but you may depend there is nothing like it."
+
+"The straight path!" Paul Wyndham repeated, with a weary, regretful
+sigh; "yes, I have been straying sadly out of the straight path of truth
+and honor and rectitude into the crooked ways of falsehood and treachery
+and deceit. Heaven help me, it never was with a contented heart! No one
+on this earth could ever despise me half so much as I despised myself
+all the time!"
+
+"All right," cried Val, cheerily, "it's never too late to mend. Keep
+straight now, and we can all forgive and forget the past. I suppose you
+will be for leaving us shortly now?"
+
+"Immediately. This is Tuesday--I shall depart in Thursday's boat."
+
+"Will you," said Val, lighting a cigar; "that soon? What are you going
+to do with Rosebush Cottage?"
+
+"The cottage! Oh, I shall leave it as it is--that is, shut it up. In
+time--a year or two, perhaps--I may return and sell it, if any one will
+purchase."
+
+"Don't wait a year or two. Sell it now."
+
+"Who wants it?"
+
+"I do," said Val, with one of his nods.
+
+"You! What do you want of the place, may I ask."
+
+"Well, now, I don't see any just cause or impediment to my possessing a
+house any more than the rest of mankind, that everybody should be so
+surprised. I want the house to live in, of course--what else?"
+
+Paul Wyndham looked at him and smiled. The great trouble of his life had
+changed him to a grave, sad man; but being only human, he could still
+smile.
+
+"I wish you joy with all my heart! Laura has said yes, then?"
+
+"Why, no, not exactly--that is to say, I haven't asked her out-and-out
+yet. I wanted to settle about the house first. But I gave her a pretty
+broad hint, and I guess it's all right. I think I should like to live
+there particularly, and now what will you take for it as it stands?"
+
+Mr. Wyndham arose, opened a desk, and took out a bundle of papers, which
+he laid before Val.
+
+"Here is the deed and all the documents connected with the place. You
+can see what it cost me yourself. Here is the upholsterer's bill, but
+you must deduct from that, for it is only second-hand furniture now. I
+leave the matter entirely to yourself."
+
+With such premises, bargaining was no very difficult matter; and half an
+hour after, Val had the deed in his pocket, and was the happy owner of
+Rosebush Cottage.
+
+"You stay here, I suppose, until Thursday," he said, rising to go.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And how about that poor girl at Redmon? What is to become of her?"
+
+Mr. Wyndham laid his hand on Val's shoulder, and looked very gravely up
+in his face.
+
+"Val, before she died, in that last brief interview, she spoke of
+Harriet, and I gave her a promise then which I shall faithfully keep.
+The devotion of a whole life can scarcely atone to her for the wrong I
+have done her; but if she will accept that atonement, Heaven knows it
+will make me happier now than anything else on earth. If she does not
+utterly loathe and hate me--if she will be my wife in reality, as she
+has hitherto been in name--we will leave this place together; and
+whether my life be long or short, it shall be entirely devoted to her
+alone."
+
+Val's face turned radiant. He seized Mr. Wyndham's other hand, and shook
+it with crushing heartiness.
+
+"My dear Wyndham! My dear old boy! I always knew your heart was in the
+right place, in spite of all your shortcomings. Oh, you'll be all right
+now! You've got the stuff in you that men are made of!"
+
+With which Mr. Blake strode off, fairly beaming with delight, and
+whistling all the way home. He sprang up the outer steps at a bound,
+rang the bell with emphasis, and shooting past the astonished servant,
+bolted whirlwind-fashion into the dining-room. At first he thought there
+was no one there, but, disturbed by the noisy entrance, from a sofa
+before the fire, and from out a heaving sea of pillows, Laura lifted up
+her head and looked at him. Poor Laura! That feminine luxury, a "real
+good cry," had brought on a raging headache, and now her face was
+flushed, her eyes dim and heavy, and her head throbbing and hot. She
+dropped that poor but aching head again as she saw who it was, with a
+rebellious choking in the throat, and a sudden filling of the eyes.
+
+"Oh, I say, Laura," cried Mr. Blake, in considerable consternation,
+"you're not sick, are you? What's the matter?"
+
+"My head aches," Laura got out, through her tears.
+
+"Poor little head!" Mr. Blake piteously remarked, and Laura sobbed
+outright; "don't cry, Laura, it will be better before you are twice
+married. Look, here's a plaster I've brought you for it!"
+
+He put the deed of Rosebush Cottage in her feverish hand. Laura stayed
+her tears, and looked at it, blankly.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.
+
+"Can't you see? It's the deed of Rosebush Cottage. I've bought it,
+furniture and all--and the furniture is very pretty, Laura--from Paul
+Wyndham. I'll let you keep that paper, if you'll promise to take good
+care of it."
+
+"I don't understand you! Oh, Val!" cried Miss Blair, her heart beginning
+to flutter wildly again, "what is it you mean?"
+
+"Why, didn't I tell you this morning? I'm going to be married--that is,
+if you will have me, Laura!"
+
+Happy Laura! Such a rosy tide swept over her fair face, and dyed it
+radiant red to the roots of her hair.
+
+"Oh, Val! I thought it was Miss Rose."
+
+Val stared.
+
+"Miss Rose! What the dickens put that in your head? I never thought of
+Miss Rose--I meant you all the time. Is it all right, Laura?"
+
+All right! He need hardly have asked that question, seeing the radiant
+face before him. Laura laughed and cried, and blushed, and forgot all
+about her headache, and for the next fifteen minutes was completely and
+perfectly happy. It was one of those little glimpses of Eden that we
+poor pilgrims of the desert sometimes catch fleetingly as we wander
+wearily through long dreary wastes of sand, of sluggish marshes, or
+briery roads. Transient gleams of perfect joy, when we forget the past,
+and ask nothing of the future--when we hold the overflowing cup of bliss
+to our lips and drink to our heart's content.
+
+"Dinner on the table!" Somebody made this announcement in a stentorian
+voice, and Val insisted on Laura's taking his arm, and accompanying him
+to the dining-room. Papa and Mamma Blair and Master Bill were waiting
+there; and Mr. Blake, ever prompt and business-like, led the blushing
+and shrinking fair one to the parental side, and boldly demanded their
+blessing. To say that Mr. and Mrs. Blair were astonished, would be doing
+no sort of justice to the subject; to say they were delighted, would be
+doing still less; and Miss Laura was formally made over to Mr. Blake
+before grace was said. Dinner was only a matter of form that day with
+Miss Blair--her appetite was effectually gone; and even
+Val--matter-of-fact, unromantic, unsentimental Val--ate considerably
+less underdone roast-beef than usual, and looked a good deal more across
+the table at the rosy, smiling face of his vis-a-vis than at the
+contents of his plate. But dinner was over at last, and an extra bottle
+of crusty old port drank to the happy event; and then Papa Blair
+buttoned up his overcoat and set off to business again, and Master Bill
+started full gallop for the office, to retail the news to Mr. Clowrie;
+and Mamma Blair went about her domestic concerns, and the lovers were
+alone together. But Mr. Blake was not at all "up" in the rôle of Romeo,
+and stood beside Laura at the window, looking at the pale moon rising,
+and using his toothpick.
+
+"What a lovely night!" Laura said; for all the world, so lately a
+howling wilderness, was moonlight and couleur de rose to her now, with
+plain Val Blake standing by her side. "How beautifully the moon is
+rising over the bay!"
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Blake, eying it with the glance of a connoisseur in
+moonshine. "It's rather a neat thing in the way of moonrise. What
+whistle's that?"
+
+"It's the American boat getting in. Suppose we go down, Val, and see
+who's coming?"
+
+"All right!" said Val. "Run and put your things on, and don't be an hour
+about it, if you can help it."
+
+Laura ran off, and reappeared in a quarter of the allotted time,
+turbaned and mantled, and furred, and tripped along through the moonlit
+and gaslit streets, with her new fiancé down to the wharf. The fine
+night had, as usual, drawn crowds down there, and the wharf was all
+bustle, and excitement, and uproar. Miss Blair, clinging confidingly to
+Mr. Blake's arm, watched the passengers making their way through the
+tumult to where the cabs were waiting, when all of a sudden she dropped
+the arm she held, with a little shrill feminine scream, and darting
+forward, plumped head foremost into the arms of a gentleman coming up
+the wharf, valise in hand. To say that Mr. Blake stared aghast would be
+a mild way of putting it; but stare he undoubtedly did, with might and
+main. The gentleman wore a long, loose overcoat, heavily furred, and his
+face was partially shaded by a big, black, California hat; but Val saw
+the handsome, sun-browned face beneath for all that, with its thick,
+dark mustache and beard. Could it be? surely not, with all those
+whiskers and that brown skin; and yet--and yet, it did look like: but by
+this time Laura had got out of the mustached stranger's coat-sleeves,
+and was back, breathless with excitement, beside the staring editor.
+
+"Oh, Val! it's Charley!--it's Charley Marsh! Charley Marsh!" Charley,
+sure enough, in spite of the whiskers and the sun-brown. Val was beside
+him in two strides, shaking both hands as if he meant to wrench the arms
+from their sockets.
+
+"My dear boy! my dear boy! my dear boy!" was all Mr. Blake could get
+out, while he spoke, and shook poor Charley's hands; and Laura performed
+a little jig of ecstasy around them, to the great delight of sundry
+small boys looking on. As for Charley himself, there were tears in his
+blue eyes, even while he laughed at Val.
+
+"Dear old Val!" he said, "it is a sight for sair een to look at your
+honest face again! Dear old boy! there is no place like home!"
+
+"Come along," cried Val, hooking his arm in Charley's. "The people are
+gaping as if we had two heads on us! Here's a cab; get in, Laura; jump
+after her, Charley. Now, then, driver, No. 12 Golden Row!"
+
+"Hold on!" exclaimed Charley, laughing at his phlegmatic friend's sudden
+excitement, "I cannot permit myself to be abducted in this manner. I
+must go to Cottage Street."
+
+"Come home with us first," said Val, gravely. "I have something to tell
+you--something you ought to know before you go to Cottage Street."
+
+"My mother!" Charley cried, in sudden alarm; "she is ill--something is
+wrong."
+
+"No, she's not! Your mother is well, and nothing is wrong. Be patient
+for ten minutes, and you'll find out what I mean!"
+
+The cab stopped with a jerk in front of Mr. Blair's; and, as they got
+out, a gentleman galloped past on horseback, and turned round to look at
+them. Val nodded, and the rider, touching his hat to Laura, rode on.
+
+"Where is Mr. Wyndham going, I wonder?" said Laura.
+
+"To Redmon, I think," Val answered. "Come in, Charley! Won't the old
+folks stare, though, when they see you?"
+
+Miss Rose--her name is Rose, you know--had gone from Rosebush Cottage to
+Redmon, at the earnest entreaties of her half-sister. She had wished to
+return to Mrs. Wheatly's, and let things go on as before; but Harriet
+Wade--the only name to which she had any right--had opposed it so
+violently, and pleaded so passionately, that she had to have her way.
+
+"Stay with me, Olive, stay with me while I am here!" had been the
+vehement cry. "I shall die if I am left alone!"
+
+"Very well, I will stay," her sister said, kissing her; "but, please,
+Harriet, don't call me Olive, call me Winnie. I like it best, and it is
+the name by which they know me here."
+
+So Winnie Rose Henderson went to Redmon--her own rightful home, and hers
+alone--and on the night of Charley Marsh's return, when Paul Wyndham
+entered the house, her small, light figure crossing the hall was the
+first object he saw. She came forward with a little womanly cry at sight
+of him.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Wyndham, I am so glad you have come! I want you to talk to
+Harriet. She is going away."
+
+"Going away! Where?"
+
+"Back to New York, she says--anywhere out of this. Back to the old life
+of trouble and toil. Oh, Mr. Wyndham, talk to her. All I say is useless.
+But you have influence over her, I know."
+
+"Have I?" Mr. Wyndham said, with a sad, incredulous smile. "What is it
+you want her to do, Miss Henderson?"
+
+"I want you to make her stay here. I want you to persuade her to let
+everything go on as before. I mean," the governess said, coloring
+slightly, "as regards myself and her, of course."
+
+Mr. Wyndham took her hand and looked down at her, with that grave, sad
+smile still on his face.
+
+"My dear Miss Henderson," he said, "--for by that name I must call
+you--you are the best and noblest woman in the world, and I shall
+venerate all womankind henceforth for your sake. But we would be as
+selfish as you are noble did we accept the sacrifice you are so willing
+to make. I have come to offer the only atonement it is in my power to
+make for the wrong I have done her. On the result depends what her
+future life shall be."
+
+The governess understood him, and the color deepened on her face.
+
+"She is in the library," she said, withdrawing her hand and moving away.
+"You have my best wishes."
+
+Paul Wyndham tapped at the library-door, and the familiar voice of the
+woman he sought called "Come in!" She was lying on a lounge, drawn up
+before a glowing coal-fire, listlessly lying there, its ruddy glow
+falling on her face, and showing how wan and worn it was. At sight of
+him, that pale face turned even paler, and she rose up and looked at
+him, as some poor criminal under trial for her life might look at her
+judge.
+
+"Have I frightened you?" he said, noticing that startled glance. "Pray
+resume your seat. You hardly look well enough to stand up."
+
+She sank back on the lounge, holding one hand over her throbbing heart.
+Paul Wyndham stood leaning against the marble mantel, looking down at
+the fire, and thinking of that other interview he had held with this
+woman, when he had to tell her she must be his wife. How few months had
+intervened since then, but what a lifetime of trouble, and secrecy, and
+suspicion, and guilt it seemed; and how she must hate and despise him!
+She had told him so once. How useless, then, it seemed, for him to
+approach her again! But, whether refused or not, that way duty lay; and
+he had deserved the humiliation. She sat before him, but not looking at
+him. He could not see her face, for she held up a dainty little toy of a
+hand-screen between it and the firelight; but he could see that the hand
+which held it shook, and that the lace on her breast fluttered, as if
+with the beating of the heart beneath. And seeing it, he took courage.
+
+"I scarcely know," he began, "how I can say to you what I have come here
+to-night to say. I scarcely know how I dare speak to you at all. Believe
+me, no man could be more penitent for the wrong I have done you than I
+am. If my life could atone for it, I would give it, and think the
+atonement cheaply purchased. But my death cannot repair the sin of the
+past. I have wronged you--deeply, cruelly wronged you--and I have only
+your woman's pity and clemency to look to now. I can scarcely hope any
+feeling can remain for me in your heart but one of abhorrence, and that
+abhorrence I have deserved; but I owe it to you to say what I have come
+here to utter. You know all the story of the past. You heard it from the
+lips that are cold in death now, and those dying lips encouraged me to
+make this poor reparation. Harriet, my poor, wronged girl, if you will
+take her place, if you will be to me what the world here has for so many
+months thought you--what she really was--if you will be my wife, my dear
+and cherished wife, I will try what a lifetime of devotion will do to
+atone for the sorrowful past. Perhaps, my poor dear, you will be able to
+care for me enough in time to forgive me--almost to love me--and Heaven
+knows I will do my best to be all to you a husband should be to a
+beloved wife!"
+
+He stopped, looking at her; but she did not stir, only the hand holding
+the screen trembled violently, and the fluttering breast rose and fell
+faster than ever.
+
+"Harriet," he said, gently, "am I so hateful to you that you will not
+even look at me? Can you never forgive me for what I have done?"
+
+She dropped the screen and rose up, her face all wet with a rain of
+happy tears, and held out both hands to him--all pride gone forever now.
+
+"I do not forgive you," she said. "I love you, and love never has
+anything to forgive. O Paul, I have loved you ever since you made me
+your wife!"
+
+So Paul Wyndham found out at last what others had known so long, and
+took his poor, forlorn wife to his arms with a strange, remorseful sort
+of tenderness, that, if not love, was near akin to it. So, while the
+fire burned low, and cast weird shadows on the dusky, book-lined walls,
+and the November wind wailed without, these two, never united before,
+sat side by side, and talked of a future that was to be theirs, far from
+Speckport and those who had heard the sinful and sorrowful story of the
+past.
+
+By and by, a servant coming in to replenish the fire found them sitting
+peacefully together, as he had never seen his master and mistress sit
+before, and was sent to find Miss Rose and bring her to them. And I
+think Harriet herself was hardly happier in her new bliss than her
+gentle stepsister in witnessing it.
+
+So, while Charley Marsh, up in Val Blake's room, that cold November
+night, listened in strange amazement to all that had been going on of
+late--to the romance-like story in which his unhappy sister had played
+so prominent a part--the two sat in the luxurious library at Redmon in
+this new happiness that had come to them from Nathalie Marsh's grave!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+IN HOPE.
+
+
+In the pale November sunlight of the next morning, in the plain, dark
+traveling-carriage from Redmon, a little party of four persons drove
+rapidly along the country-roads to a quiet little out-of-the-way church,
+some fifteen miles out of town. They were Mr. and Mrs. Paul Wyndham, Mr.
+Blake, and Miss Rose Henderson; and in the quiet church a quiet ceremony
+was performed by special license, which made Paul Wyndham and Harriet
+Wade man and wife, beyond the power of earthly tribunals to dispute. The
+clergyman was quite young, and the parties were all strangers to him,
+and he had a private opinion of his own that it was a runaway match.
+There were no witnesses but the two, and when it was over they drove
+back again to Redmon, and Harriet's heart was at peace at last. She had
+a trial to undergo that day--a great humiliation to endure--but it was a
+voluntary humiliation; and with her husband--hers now--she could undergo
+anything. The old, fierce, unbending pride, too, that had been her sin
+and misfortune all her life, had been chastened and subdued, and she
+owed to the society she had deceived the penance self-inflicted.
+
+Val Blake had all the talking to himself on the way home, and, to do him
+justice, there wasn't much silence during the drive. He was talking of
+Charley Marsh, who had come home a far finer fellow than he had gone
+away, a brave and good and rich man.
+
+They were all to meet that evening at a quiet dinner-party at Redmon--a
+farewell dinner party, it was understood, given by Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham,
+before their departure from Speckport to parts unknown. The invited
+guests were Mrs. Marsh and her son, Dr. Leach, Mr. Blake, and Miss
+Blair, Father Lennard (the old priest), and Mr. Darcy (the lawyer). A
+very select few, indeed, and all but Mr. Darcy acquainted with the story
+of the woman who had died at Rosebush Cottage, and the other story of
+the true and false heiress. He, too, was to be enlightened this evening,
+and Harriet Wyndham was publicly to renounce and hand over to her
+half-sister, Winnifred Rose Henderson, the fortune to which she never
+had possessed a claim. That was her humiliation; but with her husband by
+her side, she was great enough for that or anything else.
+
+So the wedding-day passed very quietly at Redmon, and in the pale early
+twilight the guests began to arrive. Among the first to arrive was Mrs.
+Marsh and her son; the next to appear was Val, with Laura tucked under
+his arm; and Laura, with a little feminine scream of delight, dropped
+into Mrs. Wyndham's arms, and rained upon that lady a shower of gushing
+tears.
+
+"Oh, what an age it is since I have seen my darling Olly before!" Miss
+Blair cried, "and I have been fairly dying for this hour to arrive."
+
+Mrs. Paul Wyndham kissed the rosy rapturous face, with that subdued and
+chastened tenderness that had come to her through much sorrow; and her
+dark eyes filled with tears, as she thought, perhaps, loving little
+Laura might leave Redmon that night with all this pretty girlish love
+gone, and nothing but contempt in its place.
+
+Half an hour after, all the guests had arrived, and were seated around
+the dinner table; but the party was not a very gay one, somehow. The
+knowledge of what had passed was in every mind; but Mr. Darcy was yet in
+ignorance, and he set the dullness down to the recent death of Mr.
+Wyndham's mother. Once, too, there was a little awkwardness--Wyndham,
+speaking to Miss Rose, had addressed her as Miss Henderson, and Mr.
+Darcy stared.
+
+"Henderson!" he exclaimed, "you are talking to Miss Rose, Wyndham! Are
+you thinking of your courting days and Miss Olive Henderson?"
+
+But Mrs. Wyndham and her half-sister colored, and everybody looked
+suddenly down at their plates. Mr. Darcy stared the more; but Paul
+Wyndham, looking very grave, came to the rescue.
+
+"Miss Rose is Miss Rose Henderson! Eat your dinner, Mr. Darcy; we will
+tell you all about it after."
+
+So, when all returned to the drawing-room, Val Blake told Mr. Darcy how
+he had been outwitted by a girl. Not that Mr. Blake put it in any such
+barbarous way, but glossed over ugly facts with a politeness that was
+quite unusual in straightforward Val. But Mrs. Paul Wyndham herself rose
+up, very white, with lips that trembled, and was brave enough and strong
+enough to openly confess her sin and her sister's goodness. She looked
+up, with pitiful supplication, in the face of her husband, as she
+finished, with the imploring appeal of a little child for pardon; and he
+put his protecting arm around her, and smiled tenderly down in the
+mournful black eyes, once so defiantly bright to him. Mr. Darcy's
+amazement was beyond everything.
+
+"Bless my soul!" was his cry, "and little Miss Rose is Miss Henderson,
+after all, and the heiress of Redmon."
+
+Miss Henderson, on whom all eyes were admiringly bent, was painfully
+confused, and shrank so palpably, that the old lawyer spared her, and no
+one was sacrilegious enough to tell the little heroine what they thought
+of her noble conduct. And when Mrs. Marsh burst unexpectedly out in a
+glowing eulogy on all her goodness, not only to herself and Nathalie,
+but to all who were poor and friendless in the town, the little heiress
+broke down and cried. So no more was said in her hearing, and the
+gentlemen gathered together, and talked the matter over apart from the
+ladies, and settled how the news was to be taken to Speckport.
+
+It was late when the party broke up, and good-night and good-bye was
+said to Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham, who were to leave to-morrow at eight. Val
+and Laura promised to be at the boat to see them off; and they were down
+true to their word, before the Redmon carriage arrived. Charley was
+there, too, and so was Cherrie, in crape to the eyes, looking very
+pretty in her widow's weeds, and all in a flutter at the thought of
+seeing Charley again. But this bearded and mustached and grave-looking
+young man was not the hot-headed, thoughtless Charley her pretty face
+had nearly ruined for life; and as he held out his hand to her, with a
+grave, almost sad smile, Cherrie suddenly recollected all the evil she
+had caused him, and had the grace to burst into tears, much to the
+horror of Mr. Blake, who had a true masculine dread of scenes.
+
+"Don't cry, Cherrie," Charley said, "it's all over now, and it has done
+me good."
+
+If any lingering hope remained that the old time might be renewed, that
+question and the smile that accompanied it banished forever from poor
+Cherrie's foolish heart and her punishment that moment was bitterer than
+all that had gone before.
+
+Miss Henderson was in the carriage with Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham, and went
+on board with them, as did the rest of their friends, and lingered until
+the last bell rang. Then, as Mrs. Wyndham threw back her vail for a
+parting kiss, they all saw that her eyes were swollen with crying. Paul
+Wyndham held both the little hands of the heiress in his own, and looked
+down in the gentle face with tender reverence.
+
+"Good-bye, little sister," he said; "good-bye, and God bless you!"
+
+The others were crowding around, and hasty farewells were spoken; and
+then the steamer was moving away from the wharf, and Charley led Miss
+Henderson, who was crying behind her vail, ashore; and they stood on the
+wharf to watch the steamer out of sight. They saw Paul Wyndham with his
+wife on his arm, waving a last farewell from the deck; and then the
+steamer was down the bay, and all the people on the wharf were going
+home. Charley Marsh assisted Miss Henderson into her carriage, and she
+was driven away to her new home.
+
+Speckport knew everything--the murder was out, and Speckport, from one
+end to the other, was agape at the news. There was one thing about the
+affair they could not understand, and that was, how the rightful
+heiress, knowing herself to be so, and perfectly able to prove it, could
+wear out her life as a pitiful governess, and leave a princely fortune
+in the hands of a usurping stepsister. Speckport could not understand
+this--never could understand it, and set her down as an insipid little
+nonentity, with no will of her own, and easily twisted around the finger
+of that bold, bad, ambitious woman, Mrs. Paul Wyndham. Speckport did not
+spare its late enchantress, and for all their contempt of that "insipid
+thing" the present heiress, were very well satisfied to be noticed by
+her in public, and only too happy to call at Redmon. It was in her
+favor, they said, that she put on no airs in consequence of her sudden
+rise in the world, but was as gentle, and humble, and patient, and
+sweet, as heiress of Redmon as she had been when Mrs. Wheatly's
+governess. A few there were who understood and appreciated her; and when
+old Father Lennard laid his hand on her drooping head and fervently
+exclaimed, "God bless you, my child!" her eyes filled, and she felt more
+than repaid for any sacrifice she had ever made. Speckport said--but
+Speckport was always given to say a good deal more than its
+prayers--Speckport said Mr. Charles Marsh appreciated her, too, and that
+the estate of Redmon would eventually go, in spite of Mrs. Leroy's
+unjust will, to the Marsh family. But it was only gossip, this, and
+nobody knew for certain, and Mrs. Marsh and Miss Rose Henderson had
+always been the best of friends.
+
+And just about this time, too, Speckport found something else to talk
+about--no less a matter, indeed, than the marriage of Valentine Blake,
+Esq., to Miss Laura Amelia Blair. Such a snapper of a day as the
+wedding-day was--cold enough to freeze the leg off an iron pot--but for
+all that, the big cathedral was half filled with curious
+Speckportonians, straining their necks to see the bride and bridegroom,
+and their aiders and abettors. Mr. Blake stood it like a man, and looked
+almost good-looking in his neatly-fitting wedding suit; and Charley
+Marsh by his side looked like a young prince--handsomer than any prince
+that ever wore a crown, poor Cherrie thought, as she made eyes at him
+from her pew.
+
+There was a wedding-breakfast to be eaten at Mr. Blair's, and a very
+jolly breakfast it was. And then Mrs. V. Blake exchanged her bridal-gear
+for a traveling-dress, and was handed into the carriage that was to
+convey her to the railway station, by her husband; and the bridemaids
+were kissed all round by the bride, and good-bye was said, and the happy
+pair were fairly started on their bridal tour.
+
+It took Speckport a week to fairly digest this matter, and by the end of
+that time it got another delectable morsel of gossip to swallow. Charley
+Marsh was going away. He was a rich man, now; but for all that he was
+going to be a doctor, and was off to New York right away, to finish his
+medical studies and get his diploma.
+
+It was a miserably wet and windy day, that which preceded the young
+man's departure. A depressing day, that lowered the spirits of the most
+sanguine, and made them feel life was a cheat, and not what it is
+cracked up to be, and wonder how they could ever laugh and enjoy
+themselves at all. A dreary day to say good-bye; but Charley, buttoned
+up in his overcoat, and making sunshine with his bright blue eyes and
+pleasant smile, went through with it bravely, and had bidden his dear
+five hundred adieu in the course of two brisk hours. There was only one
+friend remaining to whom he had yet to say "that dear old word
+good-bye;" and in the rainy twilight he drove up the long avenue of
+Redmon, black and ghastly now, and was admitted by Mrs. Hill herself.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Charley, is it you?" the good woman said. "You're going away,
+they tell me. Dear me, we'll miss you so much!"
+
+"That's right, Mrs. Hill! I like my friends to miss me; but I don't mean
+to stay away forever. Is Miss Henderson at home?"
+
+"She is in the library. Walk right in!"
+
+Charley was quite at home in Redmon Villa. The library door stood ajar.
+Some one was playing, and he entered unheard. The rain lashed and
+blustered at the windows; and the wail of the wind, and sea, and woods
+made a dull, roaring sound of dreariness without; but a coal-fire glowed
+red and cheery in the steel grate; and curtained, and close, and warm,
+the library was a very cozy place that bad January day. The twilight
+shadows lurked in the corners; but, despite their deepening gloom, the
+visitor saw a little, slender, girlish shape sitting before a small
+cottage-piano and softly touching the keys. Old, sad memories seemed to
+be at work in her heart; for the chords she struck were mournful, and
+she broke softly into singing at last--a song as sad as a funeral-hymn:
+
+    "Rain! rain! rain!
+      On the cold autumnal night!
+    Like tears we weep o'er the banished hope
+      That fled with the summer light.
+
+    "O rain! rain! rain!
+      You mourn for the flowers dead;
+    But hearts there are, in their hopeless woe,
+      That not even tears may shed!
+
+    "O rain! rain! rain!
+      You fall on the new-made grave
+    Where the loved one sleeps that our bitter prayers
+      Were powerless to save!
+
+    "O fall! fall! fall!
+      Thou dreary and cheerless rain!
+    But the voice that sang with your summer-chime
+      Will never be heard again!"
+
+The song died away like a sigh; and she arose from the instrument,
+looking like a little, pale spirit of the twilight, in her flowing white
+cashmere dress. The red firelight, flickering uncertainly, fell on a
+young man's figure leaning against the mantel, and the girl recoiled
+with a faint cry. Charley started up.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Miss Henderson--Winnie" (they had all grown to call
+her Winnie of late). "I am afraid I have startled you; but you were
+singing when I came in, and the song was too sweet to be broken. I am
+rather late, but I wanted to say good-bye here last."
+
+"Then you really go to-morrow?" she said, not looking at him. "How much
+your mother will miss you!"
+
+"Yes, poor mother! but," smiling slightly, "I shall send her a box full
+of all the new novels when I get to New York, and that will console her.
+I wish somebody else would miss me, Winnie."
+
+Is a woman ever taken by surprise, I wonder, in these cases? Does she
+not always know beforehand when that all-important revelation is made
+that it is coming, particularly if she loves the narrator? I am pretty
+sure of it, though she may feign surprise ever so well. She can tell the
+instant he crosses the threshold what he has come to say. So Winnifred
+Rose Henderson knew what Charles Marsh had come to tell her from the
+moment she looked at him; and sitting down on a low chair before the
+glowing fire, she listened for a second time in her life to the old, old
+story. What a gulf lay between that time and this--a girl then, a woman
+now! And how different the two men who had told it!
+
+Worthy Mrs. Hill, trotting up-stairs and down-stairs, seeing to fires
+and bed-rooms, and everything proper to be seen to by a good
+housekeeper, suddenly remembered the fire in the library must be getting
+low, and that it would be just like the young people saying good-bye to
+one another to forget all about it, rapped to the door some half an hour
+after. "Come in!" the sweet voice of Miss Henderson said, and Mrs. Hill
+went in and found the young lady and Mr. Marsh sitting side by side on a
+sofa, and both wearing such radiant faces, that the dear old lady saw at
+once through her spectacles how matters stood, and kissed Miss Henderson
+on the spot, and shook hands with Mister Charley, and wished him joy
+with all her honest heart. So the momentous question had been asked and
+answered, and on Miss Henderson's finger glittered an engagement-ring,
+and Charley Marsh, in the bleak dawn of the next morning, left Speckport
+once more, the happiest fellow in the universe.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The story is told, the play played out, the actors off the stage, and
+high time for the curtain to fall. But the audience are dissatisfied
+yet, and have some questions to ask. "How did Val Blake and Laura get
+on, and Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham? What became of Cherrie and Catty Clowrie?
+and have Charley and Miss Henderson got married yet? and who was at the
+wedding? and who were the bridemaids? and what did the bride wear?"
+Well, let me see. I'll answer as they come. It is six months after,
+red-hot July--not a sign of fog in Speckport, picnics and jollifications
+every day, and the blessed little city (it is a city, though I have
+stigmatized it as a town) out in its gala-dress. Do you see that
+handsome house in Golden Row? There is a shining door-plate on the front
+door, and you can read the name--"V. Blake." Yes, that is Mr. Blake's
+house, and inside it is sumptuous to behold; for the "Spouter" increases
+its circulation every day, and Mr. B. keeps his carriage and pair now,
+and is a rising man--I mean out of doors. In his own single nook, I
+regret to say, he is hen-pecked--unmercifully hen-pecked. The gray mare
+is the better horse; and Mr. Blake submits to petticoat-government with
+that sublime good-nature your big man always manifests, and knocks
+meekly under at the first flash of Mistress Laura's bright eye--not that
+that lady is any less fond of Mr. Val than of yore. Oh, no! She thinks
+there is nobody like him in this little planet of ours; only she
+believes in husbands keeping their proper place, and acts up to this
+belief. She is becoming more and more literary every day--fearfully
+literary, I may say; and the first two fingers of the right hand are
+daily steeped to the bone in ink.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Wyndham are in New York, and are very busy. Charley Marsh
+was a frequent visitor at their house last winter, and says he never saw
+a happier and more loving husband and wife. Mr. Wyndham is high in the
+literary world; and Mrs. Wyndham is very much admired in society, as
+much, perhaps, for her gentleness and goodness as for her beauty. They
+are happy and at peace; and so we leave them.
+
+Cherrie Nettleby (nobody thinks of calling her Mrs. Cavendish) is going
+to be married next week. The happy man is Sergeant O'Shaughnessy, a big
+Irishman, six feet four in his stockings, with a laugh like distant
+thunder, rosy cheeks, and curly hair. A fine-looking fellow, Sergeant
+O'Shaughnessy, with a heart as big as his body, who adores the ground
+Cherrie walks on.
+
+And Charley is married, and happier than I can ever tell. He is rich and
+honored, and does a great deal of good, and is a great man in
+Speckport--a great and good man. And his wife--but you know her--and she
+is the same to-day, and will be the same unto death, as you have known
+her. Mrs. Marsh, Senior, lives with them, and reads as much as ever; and
+is waited on by Midge, who lives a life of luxurious leisure in Redmon
+kitchen, and queens it over the household generally.
+
+There is a quiet little grave out in the country which Charles Marsh and
+his wife visit very often, and which they never leave without loving
+each other better, and feeling more resolute, with God's help, to walk
+down to the grave in the straight and narrow path that leads to
+salvation. They are only human. They have all erred, and sinned, and
+repented; and in that saving repentance they have found the truth of the
+holy promise: "There shall be light at the eventide."
+
+
+THE END.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Transcriber's Note: Hyphen variations left as printed.
+
+page 136 We go press to to-morrow ==> We go to press to-morrow]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+                     POPULAR NOVELS.
+
+                  BY MAY AGNES FLEMING.
+
+
+    1.--GUY EARLSCOURT'S WIFE.
+
+    2.--A WONDERFUL WOMAN.
+
+    3.--A TERRIBLE SECRET.
+
+    4.--NORINE'S REVENGE.
+
+    5.--A MAD MARRIAGE.
+
+    6.--ONE NIGHT'S MYSTERY.
+
+    7.--KATE DANTON.
+
+    8.--SILENT AND TRUE.
+
+    9.--HEIR OF CHARLTON.
+
+    10.--CARRIED BY STORM.
+
+    11.--LOST FOR A WOMAN.
+
+    12.--A WIFE'S TRAGEDY.
+
+    13.--A CHANGED HEART.
+
+    14.--PRIDE AND PASSION.
+
+    15.--SHARING HER CRIME.
+
+    16.--A WRONGED WIFE (_New_).
+
+    "Mrs. Fleming's stories are growing more and more popular every day.
+    Their delineations of character, life-like conversations, flashes of
+    wit, constantly varying scenes, and deeply interacting plots,
+    combine to place their author in the very front rank of Modern
+    Novelists."
+
+    All published uniform with this volume. Price, $1.50 each, and sent
+    _free_ by mail on receipt of price,
+
+    BY
+    G. W. CARLETON & CO., Publishers,
+    New York.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Changed Heart, by May Agnes Fleming
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41672 ***