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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Ambitious Man, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
+
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+Title: An Ambitious Man
+
+Author: Ella Wheeler Wilcox
+
+Release Date: April, 2005  [EBook #7866]
+[This file was first posted on May 28, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, AN AMBITIOUS MAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+AN AMBITIOUS MAN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+
+Preston Cheney turned as he ran down the steps of a handsome house on
+"The Boulevard," waving a second adieu to a young woman framed
+between the lace curtains of the window.  Then he hurried down the
+street and out of view.  The young woman watched him with a gleam of
+satisfaction in her pale blue eyes.  A fine-looking young fellow,
+whose Roman nose and strong jaw belied the softly curved mouth with
+its sensitive darts at the corners; it was strange that something
+warmer than satisfaction did not shine upon the face of the woman
+whom he had just asked to be his wife.
+
+But Mabel Lawrence was one of those women who are never swayed by any
+passion stronger than worldly ambition, never burned by any fires
+other than those of jealousy or anger.  Her meagre nature was truly
+depicted in her meagre face.  Nature is ofttimes a great lair and a
+cruel jester, giving to the cold and vapid woman the face and form of
+a sensuous siren, and concealing a heart of volcanic fires, or the
+soul of a Phryne, under the exterior of a spinster.  But the old dame
+had been wholly frank in forming Miss Lawrence.  The thin, flat chest
+and narrow shoulders, the angular elbows and prominent shoulder-
+blades, the sallow skin and sharp features, the deeply set, pale blue
+eyes, and the lustreless, ashen hair, were all truthful exponents of
+the unfurnished rooms in her vacant heart and soul places.
+
+Miss Lawrence turned from the window, and trailed her long silken
+train across the rich carpet, seating herself before the open
+fireplace.  It was an appropriate time and situation for a maiden's
+tender dreams; only a few hours had passed since the handsomest and
+most brilliant young man in that thriving eastern town had asked her
+to be his wife, and placed the kiss of betrothal upon her virgin
+lips.  Yet it was with a sense of triumph and relief, rather than
+with tenderness and rapture, that the young woman meditated upon the
+situation--triumph over other women who had shown a decided interest
+in Mr Cheney, since his arrival in the place more than eighteen
+months ago, and relief that the dreaded role of spinster was not to
+be her part in life's drama.
+
+Miss Lawrence was twenty-six--one year older than her fiance; and she
+had never received a proposal of marriage or listened to a word of
+love in her life before.  Let me transpose that phrase--she had never
+before received a proposal of marriage, and had never in her life
+listened to a word of love; for Preston had not spoken of love.  She
+knew that he did not love her.  She knew that he had sought her hand
+wholly from ambitious motives.  She was the daughter of the Hon.
+Sylvester Lawrence, lawyer, judge, state senator, and proposed
+candidate for lieutenant-governor in the coming campaign.  She was
+the only heir to his large fortune.
+
+Preston Cheney was a penniless young man from the West.  A self-made
+youth, with an unusual brain and an overwhelming ambition, he had
+risen from chore boy on a western farm to printer's apprentice in a
+small town, thence to reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent,
+and after two or three years of travel gained in this manner he had
+come to Beryngford and bought out a struggling morning paper, which
+was making a mad effort to keep alive, changed its political
+tendencies, infused it with western activity and filled it with
+cosmopolitan news, and now, after eighteen months, the young man
+found himself coming abreast of his two long established rivals in
+the editorial field.  This success was but an incentive to his
+overwhelming ambition for place, power and riches.  He had seen just
+enough of life and of the world to estimate these things at double
+their value; and he was, beside, looking at life through the
+magnifying glass of youth.  The Creator intended us to gaze on
+worldly possessions and selfish ambitions through the small end of
+the lorgnette, but youth invariably inverts the glass.
+
+To the young editor, the brief years behind him seemed like a long
+hard pull up a steep and rocky cliff.  From the point to which he had
+attained, the summit of his desires looked very far away, much
+farther than the level from which he had arisen.  To rise to that
+summit single-handed and alone would require unremitting effort
+through the very best years of his manhood.  His brain, his strength,
+his ability, his ambitions, what were they all in the strife after
+place and power, compared to the money of some commonplace adversary?
+Preston Cheney, the native-born American directly descended from a
+Revolutionary soldier, would be handicapped in the race with some
+Michael Murphy whose father had made a fortune in the saloon
+business, or who had himself acquired a competency as a police
+officer.
+
+America was not the same country which gave men like Benjamin
+Franklin, Abraham Lincoln and Horace Greeley a chance to rise from
+the lower ranks to the highest places before they reached middle
+life.  It was no longer a land where merit strove with merit, and the
+prize fell to the most earnest and the most gifted.  The tremendous
+influx of foreign population since the war of the Rebellion and the
+right of franchise given unreservedly to the illiterate and the
+vicious rendered the ambitious American youth now a toy in the hands
+of aliens, and position a thing to be bought at the price set by un-
+American masses.
+
+Thoughts like these had more and more with each year filled the mind
+of Preston Cheney, until, like the falling of stones and earth into a
+river bed, they changed the naturally direct current of his impulses
+into another channel.  Why not further his life purpose by an
+ambitious marriage?  The first time the thought entered his mind he
+had cast it out as something unclean and unworthy of his manhood.
+Marriage was a holy estate, he said to himself, a sacrament to be
+entered into with reverence, and sanctified by love.  He must love
+the woman who was to be the companion of his life, the mother of his
+children.
+
+Then he looked about among his early friends who had married, as
+nearly all the young men of the middle classes in America do marry,
+for love, or what they believed to be love.  There was Tom Somers--a
+splendid lad, full of life, hope and ambition when he married Carrie
+Towne, the prettiest girl in Vandalia.  Well, what was he now, after
+seven years?  A broken-spirited man, with a sickly, complaining wife
+and a brood of ill-clad children.  Harry Walters, the most infatuated
+lover he had ever seen, was divorced after five years of discordant
+marriage.
+
+Charlie St Clair was flagrantly unfaithful to the girl he had pursued
+three years with his ardent wooings before she yielded to his suit.
+Certainly none of these love marriages were examples for him to
+follow.  And in the midst of these reveries and reflections, Preston
+Cheney came to Beryngford, and met Sylvester Lawrence and his
+daughter Mabel.  He met also Berene Dumont.  Had he not met the
+latter woman he would not have succumbed--so soon at least--to the
+temptation held out by the former to advance his ambitious aims.
+
+He would have hesitated, considered, and reconsidered, and without
+doubt his better nature and his good taste would have prevailed.  But
+when fate threw Berene Dumont in his way, and circumstances brought
+about his close associations with her for many months, there seemed
+but one way of escape from the Scylla of his desires, and that was to
+the Charybdis of a marriage with Miss Lawrence.
+
+Miss Lawrence was not aware of the part Berene Dumont had played in
+her engagement, but she knew perfectly the part her father's
+influence and wealth had played; but she was quite content with
+affairs as they were, and it mattered little to her what had brought
+them about.  To be married, rather than to be loved, had been her
+ambition since she left school; being incapable of loving, she was
+incapable of appreciating the passion in any of its phases.  It had
+always seemed to her that a great deal of nonsense was written and
+talked about love.  She thought demonstrative people very vulgar, and
+believed kissing a means of conveying germs of disease.
+
+But to be a married woman, with an establishment of her own, and a
+husband to exhibit to her friends, was necessary to the maintenance
+of her pride.
+
+When Miss Lawrence's mother, a nervous invalid, was informed of her
+daughter's engagement, she burst into tears, as over a lamb offered
+on the altar of sacrifice; and Judge Lawrence pressed a kiss on the
+lobe of Mabel's left ear which she offered him, and told her she had
+won a prize in the market.  But as he sat alone over his cigar that
+night, he sighed heavily, and said to himself, "Poor fellow, I wish
+Mabel were not so much like her mother."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+"Baroness Brown" was a distinctive figure in Beryngford.  She came to
+the place from foreign parts some three years before the arrival of
+Preston Cheney, and brought servants, carriages and horses, and
+established herself in a very handsome house which she rented for a
+term of years.  Her arrival in this quiet village town was of course
+the sensation of the hour, or rather of the year.  She was known as
+Baroness Le Fevre--an American widow of a French baron.  Large,
+voluptuous, blonde, and handsome according to the popular idea of
+beauty, distinctly amiable, affable and very charitable, she became
+at once the fashion.
+
+Invitations to her house were eagerly sought after, and her
+entertainments were described in column articles by the press.
+
+This state of things continued only six months, however.  Then it
+began to be whispered about that the Baroness was in arrears for her
+rent.  Several of her servants had gone away in a high state of
+temper at the titled mistress who had failed to pay them a cent of
+wages since they came to the country with her; and one day the
+neighbours saw her fine carriage horses led away by the sheriff.
+
+A week later society was electrified by the announcement of the
+marriage of Baroness Le Fevre to Mr Brown, a wealthy widower who
+owned the best shoe store in Beryngford.
+
+Mr Brown owned ten children also, but the youngest was a boy of
+sixteen, absent in college.  The other nine were married and settled
+in comfortable homes.
+
+Mr Brown died at the expiration of a year.  This one year had taught
+him more of womankind than he had learned in all his sixty and nine
+years before; and, feeling that it is never too late to profit by
+learning, Mr Brown discreetly made his will, leaving all his property
+save the widow's "thirds" equally divided among his ten children.
+
+The Baroness made a futile effort to break the will, on the ground
+that he was not of sound mind when it was drawn up; but the effort
+cost her several hundred of her few thousand dollars and the
+increased enmity of the ten Brown children, and availed her nothing.
+An important part of the widow's third was the Brown mansion, a
+large, commodious house built many years before, when the village was
+but a country town.  Everybody supposed the Baroness, as she was
+still called, half in derision and half from the American love of
+mouthing a title, would offer this house for sale, and depart for
+fresh fields and pastures new.  But the Baroness never did what she
+was expected to do.
+
+Instead of offering her house for sale, she offered "Rooms to Let,"
+and turned the family mansion into a fashionable lodging-house.
+
+Its central location, and its adjacence to several restaurants and
+boarding houses, rendered it a convenient place for business people
+to lodge, and the handsome widow found no trouble in filling her
+rooms with desirable and well-paying patrons.  In a spirit of fun,
+people began to speak of the old Brown mansion as "The Palace," and
+in a short time the lodging-house was known by that name, just as its
+mistress was known as "Baroness Brown."
+
+The Palace yielded the Baroness something like two hundred dollars a
+month, and cost her only the wages and keeping of three servants; or
+rather the wages of two and the keeping of three; for to Berene
+Dumont, her maid and personal attendant, she paid no wages.
+
+The Baroness did not rise till noon, and she always breakfasted in
+bed.  Sometimes she remained in her room till mid-afternoon.  Berene
+served her breakfast and lunch, and looked after the servants to see
+that the lodgers' rooms were all in order.  These were the services
+for which she was given a home.  But in truth the young woman did
+much more than this; she acted also as seamstress and milliner for
+her mistress, and attended to the marketing and ran errands for her.
+If ever a girl paid full price for her keeping, it was Berene, and
+yet the Baroness spoke frequently of "giving the poor thing a home."
+
+It had all come about in this way.  Pierre Dumont kept a second-hand
+book store in Beryngford.  He was French, and the national
+characteristic of frugality had assumed the shape of avarice in his
+nature.  He was, too, a petty tyrant and a cruel husband and father
+when under the influence of absinthe, a state in which he was usually
+to be found.
+
+Berene was an only child, and her mother, whom she worshipped, said,
+when dying, "Take care of your poor father, Berene.  Do everything
+you can to make him happy.  Never desert him."
+
+Berene was fourteen at that time.  She had never been at school, but
+she had been taught to read and write both French and English, for
+her mother was an American girl who had been disinherited by her
+grandparents, with whom she lived, for eloping with her French
+teacher--Pierre Dumont.  Rheumatism and absinthe turned the French
+professor into a shopkeeper before Berene was born.  The grandparents
+had died without forgiving their granddaughter, and, much as the
+unhappy woman regretted her foolish marriage, she remained a patient
+and devoted wife to the end of her life, and imposed the same
+patience and devotion when dying on her daughter.
+
+At sixteen, Berene was asked to sacrifice herself on the altar of
+marriage to a man three times her age; one Jacques Letellier, who
+offered generously to take the young girl as payment for a debt owed
+by his convivial comrade, M. Dumont.  Berene wept and begged
+piteously to be spared this horrible sacrifice of her young life,
+whereupon Pierre Dumont seized his razor and threatened suicide as
+the other alternative from the dishonour of debt, and Berene in
+terror yielded her word and herself the next day to the debasing
+mockery of marriage with a depraved old gambler and roue.
+
+Six months later Jacques Letellier died in a fit of apoplexy and
+Berene was freed from her chains; but freed only to keep on in a life
+of martyrdom as servant and slave to the caprices of her father,
+until his death.  When he was finally well buried under six feet of
+earth, Berene found herself twenty years of age, alone in the world
+with just one thousand dollars in money, the price brought by her
+father's effects.
+
+Without education or accomplishments, she was the possessor of youth,
+health, charm, and a voice of wonderful beauty and power; a voice
+which it was her dream to cultivate, and use as a means of support.
+But how could she ever cultivate it?  The thousand dollars in her
+possession was, she knew, but a drop in the ocean of expense a
+musical education would entail.  And she must keep that money until
+she found some way by which to support herself.
+
+Baroness Brown had attended the sale of old Dumont's effects.  She
+had often noticed the young girl in the shop, and in the street, and
+had been struck with the peculiar elegance and refinement of her
+appearance.  Her simple lawn or print gowns were made and worn in a
+manner befitting a princess.  Her nails were carefully kept, despite
+all the household drudgery which devolved upon her.
+
+The Baroness was a shrewd woman and a clever reasoner.  She needed a
+thrifty, prudent person in her house to look after things, and to
+attend to her personal needs.  Since she had opened the Palace as a
+lodging-house, this need had stared her in the face.  Servants did
+very well in their places, but the person she required was of another
+and superior order, and only to be obtained by accident or by
+advertising and the paying of a large salary.  Now the Baroness had
+been in the habit of thinking that her beauty and amiability were
+quite equivalent to any favours she received from humanity at large.
+Ever since she was a plump girl in short dresses, she had learned
+that smiles and compliments from her lips would purchase her friends
+of both sexes, who would do disagreeable duties for her.  She had
+never made it a custom to pay out money for any service she could
+obtain otherwise.  So now as she looked on this young woman who,
+though a widow, seemed still a mere child, it occurred to her that
+Fate had with its usual kindness thrown in her path the very person
+she needed.
+
+She offered Berene "a home" at the Palace in return for a few small
+services.  The lonely girl, whose strangely solitary life with her
+old father had excluded her from all social relations outside,
+grasped at this offer from the handsome lady whom she had long
+admired from a distance, and went to make her home at the Palace.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+
+Berene had been several months in her new home when Preston Cheney
+came to lodge at the Palace.
+
+He met her on the stairway the first morning after his arrival, as he
+was descending to the street door.
+
+Bringing up a tray covered with a snowy napkin, she stepped to one
+side and paused, to make room for him to pass.
+
+Preston was not one of those young men who find pastime in
+flirtations with nursery maids or kitchen girls.  The very thought of
+it offended his good taste.  Once, in listening to the boastful tales
+of a modern Don Juan, who was relating his gallant adventures with a
+handsome waiter girl at a hotel, Preston had remarked, "I would as
+soon think of using my dinner napkin for a necktie, as finding
+romance with a servant girl."
+
+Yet he appreciated a snowy, well-laundried napkin in its place, and
+he was most considerate and thoughtful in his treatment of servants.
+
+He supposed Berene to be an upper servant of the house, and yet, as
+he glanced at her, a strange and unaccountable feeling of interest
+seized upon him.  The creamy pallor of her skin, colourless save for
+the full red lips, the dark eyes full of unutterable longing, the
+aristocratic poise of the head, the softly rounded figure, elegant in
+its simple gown and apron, all impressed him as he had never before
+been impressed by any woman.
+
+It was several days before he chanced to see her again, and then only
+for a moment as she passed through the hall; but he heard a trill of
+song from her lips, which added to his interest and curiosity.  "That
+girl is no common servant," he said to himself, and he resolved to
+learn more about her.
+
+It had been the custom of the Baroness to keep herself quite hidden
+from her lodgers.  They seldom saw her, after the first business
+interview.  Therefore it was a matter of surprise to the young editor
+when he came home from his office one night, just after twelve
+o'clock, and found the mistress of the mansion standing in the hall
+by the register, in charming evening attire.
+
+She smiled upon him radiantly.  "I have just come in from a benefit
+concert," she said, "and I am as hungry as a bear.  Now I cannot
+endure eating alone at night.  I knew it was near your hour to
+return, so I waited for you.  Will you go down to the dining-room
+with me and have a Welsh rarebit?  I am going to make one in my
+chafing dish."
+
+The young man hid his surprise under a gallant smile, and offering
+the Baroness his arm descended to the basement dining-room with her.
+He had heard much about the complicated life of this woman, and he
+felt a certain amount of natural curiosity in regard to her.  He had
+met her but once, and that was on the day when he had called to
+engage his room, a little more than two weeks past.
+
+He had thought her an excellent type of the successful American
+adventuress on that occasion, and her quiet and dull life in this
+ordinary town puzzled him.  He could not imagine a woman of that
+order existing a whole year without an adventure; as a rule he knew
+that those blonde women with large hips and busts, and small waists
+and feet, are as unable to live without excitement as a fish without
+water.
+
+Yet, since the death of Mr Brown, more than a year past, the Baroness
+had lived the life of a recluse.  It puzzled him, as a student of
+human nature.
+
+But, in fact, the Baroness was a skilled general in planning her
+campaigns.  She seldom plunged into action unprepared.
+
+She knew from experience that she could not live in a large city and
+not use an enormous amount of money.
+
+She was tired of taking great risks, and she knew that without the
+aid of money and a fine wardrobe she was not able to attract men as
+she had done ten years before.
+
+As long as she remained in Beryngford she would be adding to her
+income every month, and saving the few thousands she possessed.  She
+would be saving her beauty, too, by keeping early hours and living a
+temperate life; and if she carefully avoided any new scandal, her
+past adventures would be dim in the minds of people when, after a
+year or two more of retirement and retrenchment, she sallied forth to
+new fields, under a new name, if need be, and with a comfortably
+filled purse.
+
+It was in this manner that the Baroness had reasoned; but from the
+hour she first saw Preston Cheney, her resolutions wavered.  He
+impressed her most agreeably; and after learning about him from the
+daily papers, and hearing him spoken of as a valuable acquisition to
+Beryngford's intellectual society, the Baroness decided to come out
+of her retirement and enter the lists in advance of other women who
+would seek to attract this newcomer.
+
+To the fading beauty in her late thirties, a man in the early
+twenties possesses a peculiar fascination; and to the Baroness,
+clothed in weeds for a husband who died on the eve of his seventieth
+birthday, the possibility of winning a young man like Preston Cheney
+overbalanced all other considerations in her mind.  She had never
+been a vulgar coquette to whom all men were prey.  She had always
+been more or less discriminating.  A man must be either very
+attractive or very rich to win her regard.  Mr Brown had been very
+rich, and Preston Cheney was very attractive.
+
+"He is more than attractive, he is positively FASCINATING," she said
+to herself in the solitude of her room after the tete-a-tete over the
+Welsh rarebit that evening.  "I don't know when I have felt such a
+pleasure in a man's presence.  Not since--"  But the Baroness did not
+allow herself to go back so far.  "If there is any fruit I DETEST, it
+is DATES," she often said laughingly.  "Some people delight in a good
+memory--I delight in a good forgettory of the past, with its telltale
+milestones of birthdays and anniversaries of marriages, deaths and
+divorces."
+
+"Mr Cheney said I looked very young to have been twice married.
+Twice!" and she laughed aloud before her mirror, revealing the pink
+arch of her mouth, and two perfect sets of yellow-white teeth, with
+only one blemishing spot of gold visible.  "I wonder if he meant it,
+though?" she mused.  "And the fact that I DO wonder is the sure proof
+that I am really interested in this man.  As a rule, I never believe
+a word men say, though I delight in their flattery all the same.  It
+makes me feel comfortable even when I know they are lying.  But I
+should really feel hurt if I thought Mr Cheney had not meant what he
+said.  I don't believe he knows much about women, or about himself
+lower than his brain.  He has never studied his heart.  He is all
+ambition.  If an ambitious and unsophisticated youth of twenty-five
+or twenty-eight does get infatuated with a woman of my age--he is a
+perfect toy in her hands.  Ah, well, we shall see what we shall see."
+And the Baroness finished her massage in cold cream, and put her
+blonde head on the pillow and went sound asleep.
+
+After that first tete-a-tete supper the fair widow managed to see
+Preston at least once or twice a week.  She sent for him to ask his
+advice on business matters, she asked him to aid her in changing the
+position of the furniture in a room when the servants were all busy,
+and she invited him to her private parlour for lunch every Sunday
+afternoon.  It was during one of these chats over cake and wine that
+the young man spoke of Berene.  The Baroness had dropped some remarks
+about her servants, and Preston said, in a casual tone of voice which
+hid the real interest he felt in the subject, "By the way, one of
+your servants has quite an unusual voice.  I have heard her singing
+about the halls a few times, and it seems to me she has real talent."
+
+"Oh, that is Miss Dumont--Berene Dumont--she is not an absolute
+servant," the Baroness replied; "she is a most unfortunate young
+woman to whom my heart went out in pity, and I have given her a home.
+She is really a widow, though she refuses to use her dead husband's
+name."
+
+"A widow?" repeated Preston with surprise and a queer sensation of
+annoyance at his heart; "why, from the glimpse I had of her I thought
+her a young girl."
+
+"So she is, not over twenty-one at most, and woefully ignorant for
+that age," the Baroness said, and then she proceeded to outline
+Berene's history, laying a good deal of stress upon her own
+charitable act in giving the girl a home.
+
+"She is so ignorant of life, despite the fact that she has been
+married, and she is so uneducated and helpless, I could not bear to
+see her cast into the path of designing people," the Baroness said.
+"She has a strong craving for an education, and I give her good books
+to read, and good advice to ponder over, and I hope in time to come
+she will marry some honest fellow and settle down to a quiet, happy
+home life.  The man who brings us butter and eggs from the country is
+quite fascinated with her, but she does not deign him a glance."  And
+then the Baroness talked of other things.
+
+But the history he had heard remained in Preston Cheney's mind and he
+could not drive the thought of this girl away.  No wonder her eyes
+were sad!  Better blood ran in her veins than coursed under the pink
+flesh of the Baroness, he would wager; she was the unfortunate victim
+of a combination of circumstances, which had defrauded her of the
+advantages of youth.
+
+He spoke with her in the hall one morning not long after that; and
+then it grew to be a daily occurrence that he talked with her a few
+moments, and before many weeks had passed the young man approached
+the Baroness with a request.
+
+"I have become interested in your protegee Miss Dumont," he said.
+"You have done so much for her that you have stirred my better nature
+and made me anxious to emulate your example.  In talking with her in
+the hall one day I learned her great desire for a better education,
+and her anxiety to earn money.  Now it has occurred to me that I
+might aid her in both ways.  We need two or three more girls in our
+office.  We need one more in the type-setting department.  As The
+Clarion is a morning paper, and you never need Miss Dumont's services
+after five o'clock, she could work a few hours in the office, earn a
+small salary, and gain something in the way of an education also, if
+she were ambitious enough to do so.  Nearly all my early education
+was gained as a printer.  She tells me she is faulty in the matter of
+spelling, and this would be excellent training for her.  You have,
+dear madam, inspired the girl with a desire for more knowledge, and I
+hope you will let me carry on the good work you have begun."
+
+Preston had approached the matter in a way that could not fail to
+bring success--by flattering the vanity and pride of the Baroness.
+So elated was she with the agreeable references to herself, that she
+never suspected the young man's deep personal interest in the girl.
+She believed in the beginning that he was showing Berene this kind
+attention solely to please the mistress.
+
+Berene entered the office as type-setter, and made such astonishing
+progress that she was promoted to the position of proof-reader ere
+six months had passed.  And hour by hour, day by day, week by week,
+the strange influence which she had exerted on her employer, from the
+first moment of their meeting, grew and strengthened, until he
+realised with a sudden terror that his whole being was becoming
+absorbed by an intense passion for the girl.
+
+Meantime the Baroness was growing embarrassing in her attentions.
+The young man was not conceited, nor prone to regard himself as an
+object of worship to the fair sex.  He had during the first few
+months believed the Baroness to be amusing herself with his society.
+He had not flattered himself that a woman of her age, who had seen so
+much of the world, and whose ambitions were so unmistakable, could
+regard him otherwise than as a diversion.
+
+But of late the truth had forced itself upon him that the woman
+wished to entangle him in a serious affair.  He could not afford to
+jeopardise his reputation at the very outset of his career by any
+such entanglement, or by the appearance of one.  He cast about for
+some excuse to leave the Palace, yet this would separate him in a
+measure from his association with Berene, beside incurring the enmity
+of the Baroness, and possibly causing Berene to suffer from her anger
+as well.
+
+He seemed to be caught like a fly in a net.  And again the thought of
+his future and his ambitions confronted him, and he felt abashed in
+his own eyes, as he realised how far away these ambitions had seemed
+of late, since he had allowed his emotions to overrule his brain.
+
+What was this ignorant daughter of a French professor, that she
+should stand between him and glory, riches and power?  Desperate
+diseases needed desperate remedies.  He had been an occasional caller
+at the Lawrence homestead ever since he came to Beryngford.  Without
+being conceited on the subject, he realised that Mabel Lawrence would
+not reject him as a suitor.
+
+The masculine party is very dull, or the feminine very deceptive,
+when a man makes a mistake in his impressions on this subject.
+
+That afternoon the young editor left his office at five o'clock and
+asked Miss Lawrence to be his wife.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+Preston Cheney walked briskly down the street after he left his
+fiancee, his steps directed toward the Palace.  It was seven o'clock,
+and he knew the Baroness would be at home.
+
+He had determined upon heroic treatment for his own mental disease
+(as he regarded his peculiar sentiments toward Berene Dumont), and he
+had decided upon a similar course of treatment for the Baroness.
+
+He would confide his engagement to her at once, and thus put an end
+to his embarrassing position in the Palace, as well as to establish
+his betrothal as a fact--and to force himself to so regard it.  It
+was strange reasoning for a young man in the very first hour of his
+new role of bridegroom elect, but this particular groom elect had
+deliberately placed himself in a peculiar position, and his reasoning
+was not, of course, that of an ardent and happy lover.
+
+Already he was galled by his new fetters; already he was feeling a
+sense of repulsion toward the woman he had asked to be his wife:  and
+because of these feelings he was more eager to nail himself hand and
+foot to the cross he had builded.
+
+He was obliged to wait some time before the Baroness came into the
+reception-room; and when she came he observed that she had made an
+elaborate toilet in his honour.  Her sumptuous shoulders billowed
+over the low-cut blue corsage like apple-dumplings over a china dish.
+Her waist was drawn in to an hourglass taper, while her ample hips
+spread out beneath like the heavy mason work which supports a slender
+column.  Tiny feet encased in pretty slippers peeping from beneath
+her silken skirts looked oddly out of proportion with the rest of her
+generous personality, and reminded Preston of the grotesque cuts in
+the humorous weeklies, where well-known politicians were represented
+with large heads and small extremities.  Artistic by nature, and with
+an eye to form, he had never admired the Baroness's type of beauty,
+which was the theme of admiration for nearly every other man in
+Beryngford.  Her face, with its infantine colouring, its large,
+innocent azure eyes, and its short retrousse features, he conceded to
+be captivatingly pretty, however, and it seemed unusually so this
+evening.  Perhaps because he had so recently looked upon the sharp,
+sallow face of his fiancee.
+
+Preston frequently came to his room about this hour, after having
+dined and before going to the office for his final duties; but he
+seldom saw the Baroness on these occasions, unless through her own
+design.
+
+"You were surprised to receive my message, no doubt, saying I wished
+to see you," he began.  "But I have something I feel I ought to tell
+you, as it may make some changes in my habits, and will of course
+eventually take me away from these pleasant associations."  He paused
+for a second, and the Baroness, who had seated herself on the divan
+at his side, leaned forward and looked inquiringly in his face.
+
+"You are going away?" she asked, with a tremor in her voice.  "Is it
+not very sudden?"
+
+"No, I am not going away," he replied, "not from Beryngford--but I
+shall doubtless leave your house ere many months.  I am engaged to be
+married to Miss Mabel Lawrence.  You are the first person to whom I
+have imparted the news, but you have been so kind, and I feel that
+you ought to know it in time to secure a desirable tenant for my
+room."
+
+Again there was a pause.  The rosy face of the Baroness had grown
+quite pale, and an unpleasant expression had settled about the
+corners of her small mouth.  She waved a feather fan to and fro
+languidly.  Then she gave a slight laugh and said:
+
+"Well, I must confess that I am surprised.  Miss Lawrence is the last
+woman in the world whom I would have imagined you to select as a
+wife.  Yet I congratulate you on your good sense.  You are very
+ambitious, and you can rise to great distinction if you have the
+right influence to aid you.  Judge Lawrence, with his wealth and
+position, is of all men the one who can advance your interests, and
+what more natural than that he should advance the interests of his
+son-in-law?  You are a very wise youth and I again congratulate you.
+No romantic folly will ever ruin your life."
+
+There was irony and ridicule in her voice and face, and the young man
+felt his cheek tingle with anger and humiliation.  The Baroness had
+read him like an open book--as everyone else doubtless would do.  It
+was bitterly galling to his pride, but there was nothing to do, save
+to keep a bold front, and carry out his role with as much dignity as
+possible.
+
+He rose, spoke a few formal words of thanks to the Baroness for her
+kindness to him, and bowed himself from her presence, carrying with
+him down the street the memory of her mocking eyes.
+
+As he entered his private office, he was amazed to see Berene Dumont
+sitting in his chair fast asleep, her head framed by her folded arms,
+which rested on his desk.  Against the dark maroon of her sleeve, her
+classic face was outlined like a marble statuette.  Her long lashes
+swept her cheek, and in the attitude in which she sat, her graceful,
+perfectly-proportioned figure displayed each beautiful curve to the
+best advantage.
+
+To a noble nature, the sight of even an enemy asleep, awakes
+softening emotions, while the sight of a loved being in the
+unconsciousness of slumber stirs the fountain of affection to its
+very depths.
+
+As the young editor looked upon the girl before him, a passion of
+yearning love took possession of him.  A wild desire to seize her in
+his arms and cover her pale face with kisses, made his heart throb to
+suffocation and brought cold beads to his brow; and just as these
+feelings gained an almost uncontrollable dominion over his reason,
+will and judgment, the girl awoke and started to her feet in
+confusion.
+
+"Oh, Mr Cheney, pray forgive me!" she cried, looking more beautiful
+than ever with the flush which overspread her face.  "I came in to
+ask about a word in your editorial which I could not decipher.  I
+waited for you, as I felt sure you would be in shortly--and I was so
+TIRED I sat down for just a second to rest--and that is all I knew
+about it.  You must forgive me, sir!--I did not mean to intrude."
+
+Her confusion, her appealing eyes, her magnetic voice were all fuel
+to the fire raging in the young man's heart.  Now that she was for
+ever lost to him through his own deliberate action, she seemed
+tenfold more dear and to be desired.  Brain, soul, and body all
+seemed to crave her; he took a step forward, and drew in a quick
+breath as if to speak; and then a sudden sense of his own danger, and
+an overwhelming disgust for his weakness swept over him, and the
+intense passion the girl had aroused in his heart changed to
+unreasonable anger.
+
+"Miss Dumont," he said coldly, "I think we will have to dispense with
+your services after to-night.  Your duties are evidently too hard for
+you.  You can leave the office at any time you wish.  Good-night."
+
+The girl shrank as if he had struck her, looked up at him with wide,
+wondering eyes, waited for a moment as if expecting to be recalled,
+then, as Mr Cheney wheeled his chair about and turned his back upon
+her, she suddenly sped away without a word.
+
+She left the office a few moments later; but it was not until after
+eleven o'clock that she dragged herself up two flights of stairs
+toward her room on the attic floor at the Palace.  She had been
+walking the streets like a mad creature all that intervening time,
+trying to still the agonising pain in her heart.  Preston Cheney had
+long been her ideal of all that was noble, grand and good, she
+worshipped him as devout pagans worshipped their sacred idols; and,
+without knowing it, she gave him the absorbing passion which an
+intense woman gives to her lover.
+
+It was only now that he had treated her with such rough brutality,
+and discharged her from his employ for so slight a cause, that the
+knowledge burst upon her tortured heart of all he was to her.
+
+She paused at the foot of the third and last flight of stairs with a
+strange dizziness in her head and a sinking sensation at her heart.
+
+A little less than half-an-hour afterwards Preston Cheney unlocked
+the street door and came in for the night.  He had done double his
+usual amount of work and had finished his duties earlier than usual.
+To avoid thinking after he sent Berene away, he had turned to his
+desk and plunged into his labour with feverish intensity.  He wrote a
+particularly savage editorial on the matter of over-immigration, and
+his leaders on political questions of the day were all tinctured with
+a bitterness and sarcasm quite new to his pen.  At midnight that pen
+dropped from his nerveless hand, and he made his way toward the
+Palace in a most unenviable state of mind and body.
+
+Yet he believed he had done the right thing both in engaging himself
+to Miss Lawrence and in discharging Berene.  Her constant presence
+about the office was of all things the most undesirable in his new
+position.
+
+"But I might have done it in a decent manner if I had not lost all
+control of myself," he said as he walked home.  "It was brutal the
+way I spoke to her; poor child, she looked as if I had beat her with
+a bludgeon.  Well, it is just as well perhaps that I gave her good
+reason to despise me."
+
+Since Berene had gone into the young man's office as an employe her
+good taste and another reason had caused her to avoid him as much as
+possible in the house.  He seldom saw more than a passing glimpse of
+her in the halls, and frequently whole days elapsed that he met her
+only in the office.  The young man never suspected that this fact was
+due in great part to the suggestion of jealousy in the manner of the
+Baroness toward the young girl ever after he had shown so much
+interest in her welfare.  Sensitive to the mental atmosphere about
+her, as a wind harp to the lightest breeze, Berene felt this
+unexpressed sentiment in the breast of her "benefactress" and strove
+to avoid anything which could aggravate it.
+
+With a lagging step and a listless air, Preston made his way up the
+first of two flights of stairs which intervened between the street
+door and his room.  The first floor was in darkness; but in the upper
+hall a dim light was always left burning until his return.  As he
+reached the landing, he was startled to see a woman's form lying at
+the foot of the attic stairs, but a few feet from the door of his
+room.  Stooping down, he uttered a sudden exclamation of pained
+surprise, for it was upon the pallid, unconscious face of Berene
+Dumont that his eyes fell.  He lifted the lithe figure in his sinewy
+arms, and with light, rapid steps bore her up the stairs and in
+through the open door of her room.
+
+"If she is dead, I am her murderer," he thought.  But at that moment
+she opened her eyes and looked full into his, with a gaze which made
+his impetuous, uncontrolled heart forget that any one or anything
+existed on earth but this girl and his love for her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+
+One of the greatest factors in the preservation of the Baroness's
+beauty had been her ability to sleep under all conditions.  The woman
+who can and does sleep eight or nine hours out of each twenty-four is
+well armed against the onslaught of time and trouble.
+
+To say that such women do not possess heart enough or feeling enough
+to suffer is ofttimes most untrue.
+
+Insomnia is a disease of the nerves or of the stomach, rather than
+the result of extreme emotion.  Sometimes the people who sleep the
+most profoundly at night in times of sorrow, suffer the more
+intensely during their waking hours.  Disguised as a friend,
+deceitful Slumber comes to them only to strengthen their powers of
+suffering, and to lend a new edge to pain.
+
+The Baroness was not without feeling.  Her temperament was far from
+phlegmatic.  She had experienced great cyclones of grief and loss in
+her varied career, though many years had elapsed since she had known
+what the French call a "white night."
+
+But the night following her interview with Preston Cheney she never
+closed her eyes in sleep.  It was in vain that she tried all known
+recipes for producing slumber.  She said the alphabet backward ten
+times; she counted one thousand; she conjured up visions of sheep
+jumping the time-honoured fence in battalions, yet the sleep god
+never once drew near.
+
+"I am certainly a brilliant illustration of the saying that there is
+no fool like an old fool," she said to herself as the night wore on,
+and the strange sensation of pain and loss which Preston Cheney's
+unexpected announcement had caused her gnawed at her breast like a
+rat in a wainscot.
+
+That she had been unusually interested in the young editor she knew
+from the first; that she had been mortally wounded by Cupid's shaft
+she only now discovered.  She had passed through a divorce, two
+"affairs" and a legitimate widowhood, without feeling any of the keen
+emotions which now drove sleep from her eyes.  A long time ago,
+longer than she cared to remember, she had experienced such emotions,
+but she had supposed such folly only possible in the high tide of
+early youth.  It was absurd, nay more, it was ridiculous to lie awake
+at her time of life thinking about a penniless country youth whose
+mother she might almost have been.  In this bitterly frank fashion
+the Baroness reasoned with herself as she lay quite still in her
+luxurious bed, and tried to sleep.
+
+Yet despite her frankness, her philosophy and her reasoning, the
+rasping hurt at her heart remained--a hurt so cruel it seemed to her
+the end of all peace or pleasure in life.
+
+It is harder to bear the suffocating heat of a late September day
+which the year sometimes brings, than all the burning June suns.
+
+The Baroness heard the click of Preston's key in the street door, and
+she listened to his slow step as he ascended the stairs.  She heard
+him pause, too, and waited for the sound of the opening of his room
+door, which was situated exactly above her own.  But she listened in
+vain, her ears, brain and heart on the alert with surprise,
+curiosity, and at last suspicion.  The Baroness was as full of
+curiosity as a cat.
+
+It was not until just before dawn that she heard his step in the
+hall, and his door open and close.
+
+An hour later a sharp ring came at the street door bell.  A message
+for Mr Preston, the servant said, in answer to her mistress's
+question as she descended from the room above.
+
+"Was Mr Preston awake when you rapped on his door?" asked the
+Baroness.
+
+"Yes, madame, awake and dressed."
+
+Mr Preston ran hurriedly through the halls and out to the street a
+moment later; and the Baroness, clothed in a dressing-gown and silken
+slippers, tiptoed lightly to his room.  The bed had not been occupied
+the whole night.  On the table lay a note which the young man had
+begun when interrupted by the message which he had thrown down beside
+it.
+
+The Baroness glanced at the note, on which the ink was still moist,
+and read, "My dear Miss Lawrence, I want you to release me from the
+ties formed only yesterday--I am basely unworthy--" here the note
+ended.  She now turned her attention to the message which had
+prevented the completion of the letter.  It was signed by Judge
+Lawrence and ran as follows:-
+
+
+"My Dear Boy,--My wife was taken mortally ill this morning just
+before daybreak.  She cannot live many hours, our physician says.
+Mabel is in a state of complete nervous prostration caused by the
+shock of this calamity.  I wish you would come to us at once.  I fear
+for my dear child's reason unless you prove able to calm and quiet
+her through this ordeal.  Hasten then, my dear son; every moment
+before you arrive will seem an age of sorrow and anxiety to me.  "S.
+LAWRENCE."
+
+
+A strange smile curved the corners of the Baroness's lips as she
+finished reading this note and tiptoed down the stairs to her own
+room again.
+
+Meantime the hour for her hot water arrived, and Berene did not
+appear.  The Baroness drank a quart of hot water every morning as a
+tonic for her system, and another quart after breakfast to reduce her
+flesh.  Her excellent digestive powers and the clear condition of her
+blood she attributed largely to this habit.
+
+After a few moments she rang the bell vigorously.  Maggie, the
+chambermaid, came in answer to the call.
+
+"Please ask Miss Dumont" (Berene was always known to the other
+servants as Miss Dumont) "to hurry with the hot water," the Baroness
+said.
+
+"Miss Dumont has not yet come downstairs, madame."
+
+"Not come down?  Then will you please call her, Maggie?"
+
+The Baroness was always polite to her servants.  She had observed
+that a graciousness of speech toward her servants often made up for a
+deficiency in wages.  Maggie ascended to Miss Dumont's room, and
+returned with the information that Miss Dumont had a severe headache,
+and begged the indulgence of madame this morning.
+
+Again that strange smile curved the corners of the Baroness's lips.
+
+Maggie was requested to bring up hot water and coffee, and great was
+her surprise to find the Baroness moving about the room when she
+appeared with the tray.
+
+Half-an-hour later Berene Dumont, standing by an open window with her
+hands clasped behind her head, heard a light tap on her door.  In
+answer to a mechanical "Come," the Baroness appeared.
+
+The rustle of her silken morning gown caused Berene to turn suddenly
+and face her; and as she met the eyes of her visitor the young
+woman's pallor gave place to a wave of deep crimson, which dyed her
+face and neck like the shadow of a red flag falling on a camellia
+blossom.
+
+"Maggie tells me you are ill this morning," the Baroness remarked
+after a moment's silence.  "I am surprised to find you up and
+dressed.  I came to see if I could do anything for you."
+
+"You are very kind," Berene answered, while in her heart she thought
+how cruel was the expression in the face of the woman before her, and
+how faded she appeared in the morning light.  "But I think I shall be
+quite well in a little while, I only need to keep quiet for a few
+hours."
+
+"I fear you passed a sleepless night," the Baroness remarked with a
+solicitous tone, but with the same cruel smile upon her lips.  "I see
+you never opened your bed.  Something must have been in the air to
+keep us all awake.  I did not sleep an hour, and Mr Cheney never
+entered his room till near morning.  Yet I can understand his
+wakefulness--he announced his engagement to Miss Mabel Lawrence to me
+last evening, and a young man is not expected to woo sleep easily
+after taking such an important step as that.  Judge Lawrence sent for
+him a few hours ago to come and support Miss Mabel during the trial
+that the day is to bring them in the death of Mrs Lawrence.  The
+physician has predicted the poor invalid's near end.  Sorrow follows
+close on joy in this life."
+
+There was a moment's silence; then Miss Dumont said:  "I think I will
+try to get a little sleep now, madame.  I thank you for your kind
+interest in me."
+
+The Baroness descended to her room humming an air from an old opera,
+and settled to the task of removing as much as possible all evidences
+of fatigue and sleeplessness from her countenance.
+
+It has been said very prettily of the spruce-tree, that it keeps the
+secret of its greenness well; so well that we hardly know when it
+sheds its leaves.  There are women who resemble the spruce in their
+perennial youth, and the vigilance with which they guard the secret
+of it.  The Baroness was one of these.  Only her mirror shared this
+secret.
+
+She was an adept at the art of preservation, and greatly as she
+disliked physical exertion, she toiled laboriously over her own
+person an hour at least every day, and never employed a maid to
+assist her.  One's rival might buy one's maid, she reasoned, and it
+was well to have no confidant in these matters.
+
+She slipped off her dressing-gown and corset and set herself to the
+task of pinching and mauling her throat, arms and shoulders, to
+remove superfluous flesh, and strengthen muscles and fibres to resist
+the flabby tendencies which time produces.  Then she used the dumb-
+bells vigorously for fifteen minutes, and that was followed by five
+minutes of relaxation.  Next she lay on the floor flat upon her face,
+her arms across her back, and lifted her head and chest twenty-five
+times.  This exercise was to replace flesh with muscle across the
+abdomen.  Then she rose to her feet, set her small heels together,
+turned her toes out squarely, and, keeping her body upright bent her
+knees out in a line with her hips, sinking and rising rapidly fifteen
+times.  This produced pliancy of the body, and induced a healthy
+condition of the loins and adjacent organs.
+
+To further fight against the deadly enemy of obesity, she lifted her
+arms above her head slowly until she touched her finger tips, at the
+same time rising upon her tiptoes, while she inhaled a long breath,
+and as slowly dropped to her heels, and lowered her arms while she
+exhaled her breath.  While these exercises had been taking place, a
+tin cup of water had been coming to the boiling point over an alcohol
+lamp.  This was now poured into a china bowl containing a small
+quantity of sweet milk, which was always brought on her breakfast
+tray.
+
+The Baroness seated herself before her mirror, in a glare of cruel
+light which revealed every blemish in her complexion, every line
+about the mouth and eyes.
+
+"You are really hideously passee, mon amie," she observed as she
+peered at herself searchingly; "but we will remedy all that."
+
+Dipping a soft linen handkerchief in the bowl of steaming milk and
+water, she applied it to her face, holding it closely over the brow
+and eyes and about the mouth, until every pore was saturated and
+every weary drawn tissue fed and strengthened by the tonic.  After
+this she dashed ice-cold water over her face.  Still there were
+little folds at the corners of the eyelids, and an ugly line across
+the brow, and these were manipulated with painstaking care, and
+treated with mysterious oils and fragrant astringents and finally
+washed in cool toilet water and lightly brushed with powder, until at
+the end of an hour's labour, the face of the Baroness had resumed its
+roseleaf bloom and transparent smoothness for which she was so
+famous.  And when by the closest inspection at the mirror, in the
+broadest light, she saw no flaw in skin, hair, or teeth, the Baroness
+proceeded to dress for a drive.  Even the most jealous rival would
+have been obliged to concede that she looked like a woman of twenty-
+eight, that most fascinating of all ages, as she took her seat in the
+carriage.
+
+In the early days of her life in Beryngford, when as the Baroness Le
+Fevre she had led society in the little town, Mrs Lawrence had been
+one of her most devoted friends; Judge Lawrence one of her most
+earnest, if silent admirers.  As "Baroness Brown" and as the landlady
+of "The Palace" she had still maintained her position as friend of
+the family, and the Lawrences, secure in their wealth and power, had
+allowed her to do so, where some of the lower social lights had
+dropped her from their visiting lists.
+
+The Baroness seemed to exercise a sort of hypnotic power over the
+fretful, nervous invalid who shared Judge Lawrence's name, and this
+influence was not wholly lost upon the Judge himself, who never
+looked upon the Baroness's abundant charms, glowing with health,
+without giving vent to a profound sigh like some hungry child
+standing before a confectioner's window.
+
+The news of Mrs Lawrence's dangerous illness was voiced about the
+town by noon, and therefore the Baroness felt safe in calling at the
+door to make inquiries, and to offer any assistance which she might
+be able to render.  Knowing her intimate relations with the mistress
+of the house, the servant admitted her to the parlour and announced
+her presence to Judge Lawrence, who left the bedside of the invalid
+to tell the caller in person that Mrs Lawrence had fallen into a
+peaceful slumber, and that slight hopes were entertained of her
+possible recovery.  Scarcely had the words passed his lips, however,
+when the nurse in attendance hurriedly called him.  "Mrs Lawrence is
+dead!" she cried.  "She breathed only twice after you left the room."
+
+The Baroness, shocked and startled, rose to go, feeling that her
+presence longer would be an intrusion.
+
+"Do not go," cried the Judge in tones of distress.  "Mabel is nearly
+distracted, and this news will excite her still further.  We thought
+this morning that she was on the verge of serious mental disorder.  I
+sent for her fiance, Mr Cheney, and he has calmed her somewhat.  You
+always exerted a soothing and restful influence over my wife, and you
+may have the same power with Mabel.  Stay with us, I beg of you,
+through the afternoon at least."
+
+The Baroness sent her carriage home and remained in the Lawrence
+mansion until the following morning.  The condition of Miss Lawrence
+was indeed serious.  She passed from one attack of hysteria to
+another, and it required the constant attention of her fiance and her
+mother's friend to keep her from acts of violence.
+
+It was after midnight when she at last fell asleep, and Preston
+Cheney in a state of complete exhaustion was shown to a room, while
+the Baroness remained at the bedside of Miss Lawrence.
+
+When the Baroness and Mr Cheney returned to the Palace they were
+struck with consternation to learn that Miss Dumont had packed her
+trunk and departed from Beryngford on the three o'clock train the
+previous day.
+
+A brief note thanking the Baroness for her kindness, and stating that
+she had imposed upon that kindness quite too long, was her only
+farewell.  There was no allusion to her plans or her destination, and
+all inquiry and secret search failed to find one trace of her.  She
+seemed to vanish like a phantom from the face of the earth.
+
+No one had seen her leave the Palace, save the laundress, Mrs Connor;
+and little this humble personage dreamed that Fate was reserving for
+her an important role in the drama of a life as yet unborn.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+
+Whatever hope of escape from his self-imposed bondage Preston Cheney
+had entertained when he began the note to his fiancee which the
+Baroness had read, completely vanished during the weeks which
+followed the death of Mrs Lawrence.
+
+Mabel's nervous condition was alarming, and her father seemed to rely
+wholly upon his future son-in-law for courage and moral support
+during the trying ordeal.  Like most large men of strong physique,
+Judge Lawrence was as helpless as an infant in the presence of an
+ailing woman; and his experience as the husband of a wife whose
+nerves were the only notable thing about her, had given him an
+absolute terror of feminine invalids.
+
+Mabel had never been very fond of her mother; she had not been a
+loving or a dutiful daughter.  A petulant child and an irritable,
+fault-finding young woman, who had often been devoid of sympathy for
+her parents, she now exhibited such an excess of grief over the death
+of her mother that her reason seemed to be threatened.
+
+It was, in fact, quite as much anger as grief which caused her
+nervous paroxysms.  Mabel Lawrence had never since her infancy known
+what it was to be thwarted in a wish.  Both parents had been slaves
+to her slightest caprice and she had ruled the household with a look
+or a word.  Death had suddenly deprived her of a mother who was
+necessary to her comfort and to whose presence she was accustomed,
+and her heart was full of angry resentment at the fate which had
+dared to take away a member of her household.  It had never entered
+her thoughts that death could devastate HER home.
+
+Other people lost fathers and mothers, of course; but that Mabel
+Lawrence could be deprived of a parent seemed incredible.  Anger is a
+strong ingredient in the excessive grief of every selfish nature.
+
+Preston Cheney became more and more disheartened with the prospect of
+his future, as he studied the character and temperament of his
+fiancee during her first weeks of loss.
+
+But the net which he had woven was closing closer and closer about
+him, and every day he became more hopelessly entangled in its meshes.
+
+At the end of one month, the family physician decided that travel and
+change of air and scene was an imperative necessity for Miss
+Lawrence.  Judge Lawrence was engaged in some important legal matters
+which rendered an extended journey impossible for him.  To trust
+Mabel in the hands of hired nurses alone, was not advisable.  It was
+her father who suggested an early marriage and a European trip for
+bride and groom, as the wisest expedient under the circumstances.
+
+Like the prisoner in the iron room, who saw the walls slowly but
+surely closing in to crush out his life, Preston Cheney saw his
+wedding day approaching, and knew that his doom was sealed.
+
+There were many desperate hours, when, had he possessed the slightest
+clue to the hiding-place of Berene Dumont, he would have flown to
+her, even knowing that he left disgrace and death behind him.  He
+realised that he now owed a duty to the girl he loved, higher and
+more imperative by far than any he owed to his fiancee.  But he had
+not the means to employ a detective to find Berene; and he was not
+sure that, if found, she might not spurn him.  He had heard and read
+of cases where a woman's love had turned to bitter loathing and
+hatred for the man who had not protected her in a moment of weakness.
+He could think of no other cause which would lead Berene to disappear
+in such a mysterious manner at such a time, and so the days passed
+and he married Mabel Lawrence two months after the death of her
+mother, and the young couple set forth immediately on extended
+foreign travels.  Fifteen months later they returned to Beryngford
+with their infant daughter Alice.  Mrs Cheney was much improved in
+health, though still a great sufferer from nervous disorders, a
+misfortune which the child seemed to inherit.  She would lie and
+scream for hours at a time, clenching her small fists and growing
+purple in the face, and all efforts of parents, nurses or physicians
+to soothe her, served only to further increase her frenzy.  She
+screamed and beat the air with her thin arms and legs until nature
+exhausted itself, then she fell into a heavy slumber and awoke in
+good spirits.
+
+These attacks came on frequently in the night, and as they rendered
+Mrs Cheney very "nervous," and caused a panic among the nurses, it
+devolved upon the unhappy father to endeavour to soothe the violent
+child.  And while he walked the floor with her or leaned over her
+crib, using all his strong mental powers to control these unfortunate
+paroxysms, no vision came to him of another child lying cuddled in
+her mother's arms in a distant town, a child of wonderful beauty and
+angelic nature, born of love, and inheriting love's divine qualities.
+
+A few months before the young couple returned to their native soil,
+they received a letter which caused Preston the greatest
+astonishment, and Mabel some hours of hysterical weeping.  This
+letter was written by Judge Lawrence, and announced his marriage to
+Baroness Brown.  Judge Lawrence had been a widower more than a year
+when the Baroness took the book of his heart, in which he supposed
+the hand of romance had long ago written "finis," and turning it to
+his astonished eyes revealed a whole volume of love's love.
+
+It is in the second reading of their hearts that the majority of men
+find the most interesting literature.
+
+Before the Baroness had been three months his wife, the long years of
+martyrdom he had endured as the husband of Mabel's mother seemed like
+a nightmare dream to Judge Lawrence; and all of life, hope and
+happiness was embodied in the woman who ruled his destiny with a
+hypnotic sway no one could dispute, yet a woman whose heart still
+throbbed with a stubborn and lawless passion for the man who called
+her husband father.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+
+More than two decades had passed since Preston Cheney followed the
+dictates of his ambition and married Mabel Lawrence.
+
+Many of his early hopes and desires had been realised during these
+years.  He had attained to high political positions; and honour and
+wealth were his to enjoy.  Yet Senator Cheney, as he was now known,
+was far from a happy man.  Disappointment was written in every
+lineament of his face, restlessness and discontent spoke in his every
+movement, and at times the spirit of despair seemed to look from the
+depths of his eyes.
+
+To a man of any nobility of nature, there can be small satisfaction
+in honours which he knows are bought with money and bribes; and to
+the proud young American there was the additional sting of knowing
+that even the money by which his honours were purchased was not his
+own.
+
+It was the second Mrs Lawrence (still designated as the "Baroness" by
+her stepdaughter and by old acquaintances) to whom Preston owed the
+constant reminder of his dependence upon the purse of his father-in-
+law.  In those subtle, occult ways known only to a jealous and
+designing nature, the Baroness found it possible to make Preston's
+life a torture, without revealing her weapons of warfare to her
+husband; indeed, without allowing him to even smell the powder, while
+she still kept up a constant small fire upon the helpless enemy.
+
+Owing to the fact that Mabel had come as completely under the
+hypnotic influence of the Baroness as the first Mrs Lawrence had been
+during her lifetime, Preston was subjected to a great deal more of
+her persecutions than would otherwise have been possible.  Mabel was
+never happier than when enjoying the companionship of her new mother;
+a condition of things which pleased the Judge as much as it made his
+son-in-law miserable.
+
+With a malicious adroitness possible only to such a woman as the
+second Mrs Lawrence, she endeared herself to Mrs Cheney, by a
+thousand flattering and caressing ways, and by a constant exhibition
+of sympathy, which to a weak and selfish nature is as pleasing as it
+is distasteful to the proud and strong.  And by this inexhaustible
+flow of sympathetic feeling, she caused the wife to drift farther and
+farther away from her husband's influence, and to accuse him of all
+manner of shortcomings and faults which had not suggested themselves
+to her own mind.
+
+Mabel had not given or demanded a devoted love when she married
+Preston Cheney.  She was quite satisfied to bear his name, and do the
+honours of his house, and to be let alone as much as possible.  It
+was the name, not the estate, of wifehood she desired; and motherhood
+she had accepted with reluctance and distaste.
+
+Never was a more undesired or unwelcome child born than her daughter
+Alice, and the helpless infant shared with its father the resentful
+anger which dominated her unwilling mother the wretched months before
+its advent into earth life.
+
+To be let alone and allowed to follow her own whims and desires, and
+never to be crossed in any wish, was all Mrs Cheney asked of her
+husband.
+
+This role was one he had very willingly permitted her to pursue,
+since with every passing week and month he found less and less to win
+or bind him to his wife.  Wretched as this condition of life was, it
+might at least have settled into a monotonous calm, undisturbed by
+strife, but for the molesting "sympathy" of the Baroness.
+
+"Poor thing, here you are alone again," she would say on entering the
+house where Mabel lounged or lolled, quite content with her situation
+until the tone and words of her stepmother aroused a resentful
+consciousness of being neglected.  Again the Baroness would say:
+
+"I do think you are such a brave little darling to carry so smiling a
+face about with all you have to endure."  Or, "Very few wives would
+bear what you bear and hide every vestige of unhappiness from the
+world.  You are a wonderful and admirable character in my eyes."  Or,
+"It seems so strange that your husband does not adore you--but men
+are blind to the best qualities in women like you.  I never hear Mr
+Cheney praising other women without a sad and almost resentful
+feeling in my heart, realising how superior you are to all of his
+favourites."  It was the insidious effect of poisoned flattery like
+this, which made the Baroness a ruling power in the Cheney household,
+and at the same time turned an already cold and unloving wife into a
+jealous and nagging tyrant who rendered the young statesman's home
+the most dreaded place on earth to him, and caused him to live away
+from it as much as possible.
+
+His only child, Alice, a frail, hysterical girl, devoid of beauty or
+grace, gave him but little comfort or satisfaction.  Indeed she was
+but an added disappointment and pain in his life.  Indulged in every
+selfish thought by her mother and the Baroness, peevish and petulant,
+always ailing, complaining and discontented, and still a victim to
+the nervous disorders inherited from her mother, it was small wonder
+that Senator Cheney took no more delight in the role of father than
+he had found in the role of husband.
+
+Alice was given every advantage which money could purchase.  But her
+delicate health had rendered systematic study of any kind impossible,
+and her twentieth birthday found her with no education, with no use
+of her reasoning or will powers, but with a complete and beautiful
+wardrobe in which to masquerade and air her poor little attempts at
+music, art, or conversation.
+
+Judge Lawrence died when Alice was fifteen years of age, leaving both
+his widow and his daughter handsomely provided for.
+
+The Baroness not only possessed the Beryngford homestead, but a house
+in Washington as well; and both of these were occupied by tenants,
+for Mabel insisted upon having her stepmother dwell under her own
+roof.  Senator Cheney had purchased a house in New York to gratify
+his wife and daughter, and it was here the family resided, when not
+in Washington or at the seaside resorts.  Both women wished to
+forget, and to make others forget, that they had ever lived in
+Beryngford.  They never visited the place and never referred to it.
+They desired to be considered "New Yorkers" and always spoke of
+themselves as such.
+
+The Baroness was now hopelessly passee.  Yet it was the revealing of
+the inner woman, rather than the withering of the exterior, which
+betrayed her years.  The woman who understands the art of bodily
+preservation can, with constant toil and care, retain an appearance
+of youth and charm into middle life; but she who would pass that
+dreaded meridian, and still remain a goodly sight for the eyes of
+men, must possess, in addition to all the secrets of the toilet,
+those divine elixirs, unselfishness and love for humanity.  Faith in
+divine powers, too, and resignation to earthly ills, must do their
+part to lend the fading eye lustre and to give a softening glow to
+the paling cheek.  Before middle life, it is the outer woman who is
+seen; after middle life, skilled as she may be by art and however
+endowed my nature, yet the inner woman becomes visible to the least
+discerning eye, and the thoughts and feelings which have dominated
+her during all the past, are shown upon her face and form like
+printed words upon the open leaves of a book.  That is why so many
+young beauties become ugly old ladies, and why plain faces sometimes
+are beautiful in age.
+
+The Baroness had been unremitting in the care of her person, and she
+had by this toil saved her figure from becoming gross, retaining the
+upright carriage and the tapering waist of youth, though she was upon
+the verge of her sixtieth birthday.  Her complexion, too, owing to
+her careful diet, her hours of repose, and her knowledge of skin
+foods and lotions, remained smooth, fair and unfurrowed.  But the
+long-guarded expression in her blue eyes of childlike innocence had
+given place to the hard look of a selfish and unhappy nature, and the
+lines about the small mouth accented the expression of the eyes.
+
+It was, despite its preservation of Nature's gifts, and despite its
+forced smiles, the face of a selfish, cruel pessimist, disappointed
+in her past and with no uplifting faith to brighten the future.
+
+The Baroness had been the wife of Judge Lawrence a number of years,
+before she relinquished her hopes of one day making Preston Cheney
+respond to the passion which burned unquenched in her breast.  It had
+been with the idea of augmenting the interests of the man whom she
+believed to be her future lover, that she aided and urged on her
+husband in his efforts to procure place and honour for his son-in-
+law.
+
+It was this idea which caused her to widen the breach between wife
+and husband by every subtle means in her power; and it was when this
+idea began to lose colour and substance and drop away among the
+wreckage of past hopes, that the Baroness ceased to compliment and
+began to taunt Preston Cheney with his dependence upon his father-in-
+law, and to otherwise goad and torment the unhappy man.  And Preston
+Cheney grew into the habit of staying anywhere longer than at home.
+
+During the last ten years the Baroness had seemed to abandon all
+thoughts of gallant adventure.  When the woman who has found life and
+pleasures only in coquetry and conquest is forced to relinquish these
+delights, she becomes either very devout or very malicious.
+
+The Baroness was devoid of religious feelings, and she became,
+therefore, the most bitter and caustic of cynical critics at heart,
+though she guarded her expression of these sentiments from policy.
+
+Yet to Mabel she expressed herself freely, knowing that her listener
+enjoyed no conversation so much as that of gossip and criticism.  A
+beautiful or attractive woman was the target for her most cruel
+shafts of sarcasm, and indeed no woman was safe from her secret
+malice save Mabel and Alice, over whom she found it a greater
+pleasure to exercise her hypnotic control.  For Alice, indeed, the
+Baroness entertained a peculiar affection.  The fact that she was the
+child of the man to whom she had given the strongest passion of her
+life, and the girl's lack of personal beauty, and her unfortunate
+physical condition, awoke a medley of love, pity and protection in
+the heart of this strange woman.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+
+The Baroness had always been a churchgoing woman, yet she had never
+united with any church, or subscribed to any creed.
+
+Religious observance was only an implement of social warfare with
+her.  Wherever her lot was cast, she made it her business to discover
+which church the fashionable people of the town frequented, and to
+become a familiar and liberal-handed personage in that edifice.
+
+Judge Lawrence and his family were High Church Episcopalians, and the
+second Mrs Lawrence slipped gracefully into the pew vacated by the
+first, and became a much more important feature in the congregation,
+owing to her good health and extreme desire for popularity.  Mabel
+and Alice were devout believers in the orthodox dogmas which have
+taken the place of the simple teachings of Christ in so many of our
+churches to-day.  They believed that people who did not go to church
+would stand a very poor chance of heaven; and that a strict
+observance of a Sunday religion would ensure them a passport into
+God's favour.  When they returned from divine service and mangled the
+character and attire of their neighbours over the Sunday dinner-
+table, no idea entered their heads or hearts that they had sinned
+against the Holy Ghost.  The pastor of their church knew them to be
+selfish, worldly-minded women; yet he administered the holy sacrament
+to them without compunction of conscience, and never by question or
+remark implied a doubt of their true sincerity in things religious.
+They believed in the creed of his church, and they paid liberally for
+the support of that church.  What more could he ask?
+
+This had been true of the pastor in Beryngford, and it proved equally
+true of their spiritual adviser in Washington and in New York.
+
+Just across the aisle from the Lawrences sat a rich financier, in his
+sumptuously cushioned pew.  During six days of each week he was
+engaged in crushing life and hope out of the hearts of the poor,
+under his juggernaut wheels of monopoly.  His name was known far and
+near, as that of a powerful and cruel speculator, who did not
+hesitate to pauperise his nearest friends if they placed themselves
+in his reach.  That he was a thief and a robber, no one ever denied;
+yet so colossal were his thefts, so bold and successful his
+robberies, the public gazed upon him with a sort of stupefied awe,
+and allowed him to proceed, while miserable tramps, who stole
+overcoats or robbed money drawers, were incarcerated for a term of
+years, and then sternly refused assistance afterward by good people,
+who place no confidence in jail birds.
+
+But each Sunday this successful robber occupied his high-priced
+church pew, devoutly listening to the divine word.
+
+He never failed to partake of the holy communion, nor was his right
+to do so ever questioned.
+
+The rector of the church knew his record perfectly; knew that his
+gains were ill-gotten blood money, ground from the suffering poor by
+the power of monopoly, and from confiding fools by smart lures and
+scheming tricks.  But this young clergyman, having recently been
+called to preside over the fashionable church, had no idea of being
+so impolite as to refuse to administer the bread and wine to one of
+its most liberal supporters!
+
+There were constant demands upon the treasury of the church; it
+required a vast outlay of money to maintain the splendour and
+elegance of the temple which held its head so high above many others;
+and there were large charities to be sustained, not to mention its
+rector's princely salary.  The millionaire pewholder was a liberal
+giver.  It rarely occurs to the fashionable dispensers of spiritual
+knowledge to ask whether the devil's money should be used to gild the
+Lord's temple; nor to question if it be a wise religion which allows
+a man to rob his neighbours on weekdays, to give to the cause of
+charity on Sundays.
+
+And yet if every clergyman and priest in the land were to make and
+maintain these standards for their followers, there might be an
+astonishing decrease in the needs of the poor and unfortunate.
+
+Were every church member obliged to open his month's ledgers to a
+competent jury of inspectors, before he was allowed to take the holy
+sacrament and avow himself a humble follower of Christ, what a
+revolution might ensue!  How church spires would crumble for lack of
+support, and poorhouses lessen in number for lack of inmates!
+
+But the leniency of clergymen toward the shortcomings of their
+wealthy parishioners is often a touching lesson in charity to the
+thoughtful observer who stands outside the fold.
+
+For how could they obtain money to convert the heathen, unless this
+sweet cloak of charity were cast over the sins of the liberal rich?
+Christ is crucified by the fashionable clergymen to-day more cruelly
+than he was by the Jews of old.
+
+Senator Cheney was not a church member, and he seldom attended
+service.  This was a matter of great solicitude to his wife and
+daughter.  The Baroness felt it to be a mistake on the part of
+Senator Cheney, and even Judge Lawrence, who adored his son-in-law,
+regretted the young man's indifference to things spiritual.  But with
+all Preston Cheney's worldly ambitions and weaknesses, there was a
+vein of sincerity in his nature which forbade his feigning a faith he
+did not feel; and the daily lives of the three feminine members of
+his family were so in disaccord with his views of religion that he
+felt no incentive to follow in their footsteps.  Judge Lawrence he
+knew to be an honest, loyal-hearted, God and humanity loving man.  "A
+true Christian by nature and education," he said of his father-in-
+law, "but I am not born with his tendency to religious observance,
+and I see less and less in the churches to lead me into the fold.  It
+seems to me that these religious institutions are getting to be vast
+monopolistic corporations like the railroads and oil trusts, and the
+like.  I see very little of the spirit of Christ in orthodox people
+to-day."
+
+Meanwhile Senator Cheney's purse was always open to any demand the
+church made; he believed in churches as benevolent if not soul-saving
+institutions, and cheerfully aided their charitable work.
+
+The rector of St Blank's, the fashionable edifice where the ladies of
+the Cheney household obtained spiritual manna in New York, died when
+Alice was sixteen years old.  He was a good old man, and a sincere
+Episcopalian, and whatever originality of thought or expression he
+may have lacked, his strict observance of the High Church code of
+ethics maintained the tone of his church and rendered him an object
+of reverence to his congregation.  His successor was Reverend Arthur
+Emerson Stuart, a young man barely thirty years of age, heir to a
+comfortable fortune, gifted with strong intellectual powers and
+dowered with physical attractions.
+
+It was not a case of natural selection which caused Arthur Stuart to
+adopt the church as a profession.  It was the result of his middle
+name.  Mrs Stuart had been an Emerson--in some remote way her family
+claimed relationship with Ralph Waldo.  Her father and grandfather
+and several uncles had been clergymen.  She married a broker, who
+left her a rich widow with one child, a son.  From the hour this son
+was born his mother designed him for the clergy, and brought him up
+with the idea firmly while gently fixed in his mind.
+
+Whatever seed a mother plants in a young child's mind, carefully
+watches over, prunes and waters, and exposes to sun and shade, is
+quite certain to grow, if the soil is not wholly stony ground.
+
+Arthur Stuart adored his mother, and stifling some commercial
+instincts inherited from the parental side, he turned his attention
+to the ministry and entered upon his chosen work when only twenty-
+five years of age.  Eloquent, dramatic in speech, handsome, and
+magnetic in person, independent in fortune, and of excellent lineage
+on the mother's side, it was not surprising that he was called to
+take charge of the spiritual welfare of fashionable St Blank's Church
+on the death of the old pastor; or that, having taken the charge, he
+became immensely popular, especially with the ladies of his
+congregation.  And from the first Sabbath day when they looked up
+from their expensive pew into the handsome face of their new rector,
+there was but one man in the world for Mabel Cheney and her daughter
+Alice, and that was the Reverend Arthur Emerson Stuart.
+
+It has been said by a great and wise teacher, that we may worship the
+god in the human being, but never the human being as God.  This
+distinction is rarely drawn by women, I fear, when their spiritual
+teacher is a young and handsome man.  The ladies of the Rev. Arthur
+Stuart's congregation went home to dream, not of the Creator and
+Maker of all things, nor of the divine Man, but of the handsome face,
+stalwart form and magnetic voice of the young rector.  They feasted
+their eyes upon his agreeable person, rather than their souls upon
+his words of salvation.  Disappointed wives, lonely spinsters and
+romantic girls believed they were coming nearer to spiritual truths
+in their increased desire to attend service, while in fact they were
+merely drawn nearer to a very attractive male personality.
+
+There was not the holy flame in the young clergyman's own heart to
+ignite other souls; but his strong magnetism was perceptible to all,
+and they did not realise the difference.  And meantime the church
+grew and prospered amazingly.
+
+It was observed by the congregation of St Blank's Church, shortly
+after the advent of the new rector, that a new organist also occupied
+the organ loft; and inquiry elicited the fact that the old man who
+had officiated in that capacity during many years, had been retired
+on a pension, while a young lady who needed the position and the
+salary had been chosen to fill the vacancy.
+
+That the change was for the better could not be questioned.  Never
+before had such music pealed forth under the tall spires of St
+Blank's.  The new organist seemed inspired; and many people in the
+fashionable congregation, hearing that this wonderful musician was a
+young woman, lingered near the church door after service to catch a
+glimpse of her as she descended from the loft.
+
+A goodly sight she was, indeed, for human eyes to gaze upon.  Young,
+of medium height and perfectly symmetry of shape, her blonde hair and
+satin skin and eyes of velvet darkness were but her lesser charms.
+That which riveted the gaze of every beholder, and drew all eyes to
+her whereever she passed, was her air of radiant health and
+happiness, which emanated from her like the perfume from a flower.
+
+A sad countenance may render a heroine of romance attractive in a
+book, but in real life there is no charm at once so rare and so
+fascinating as happiness.  Did you ever think how few faces of the
+grown up, however young, are really happy in expression?  Discontent,
+restlessness, longing, unsatisfied ambition or ill health mar ninety
+and nine of every hundred faces we meet in the daily walks of life.
+When we look upon a countenance which sparkles with health and
+absolute joy in life, we turn and look again and yet again, charmed
+and fascinated, though we do not know why.
+
+It was such a face that Joy Irving, the new organist of St Blank's
+Church, flashed upon the people who had lingered near the door to see
+her pass out.  Among those who lingered was the Baroness; and all day
+she carried about with her the memory of that sparkling countenance;
+and strive as she would, she could not drive away a vague, strange
+uneasiness which the sight of that face had caused her.
+
+Yet a vision of youth and beauty always made the Baroness unhappy,
+now that both blessings were irrevocably lost to her.
+
+This particular young face, however, stirred her with those half-
+painful, half-pleasurable emotions which certain perfumes awake in
+us--vague reminders of joys lost or unattained, of dreams broken or
+unrealised.  Added to this, it reminded her of someone she had known,
+yet she could not place the resemblance.
+
+"Oh, to be young and beautiful like that!" she sighed as she buried
+her face in her pillow that night.  "And since I cannot be, if only
+Alice had that girl's face."
+
+And because Alice did not have it, the Baroness went to sleep with a
+feeling of bitter resentment against its possessor, the beautiful
+young organist of St Blank's.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+
+Up in the loft of St Blank's Church the young organist had been
+practising the whole morning.  People paused on the street to listen
+to the glorious sounds, and were thrilled by them, as one is only
+thrilled when the strong personality of the player enters into the
+execution.
+
+Down into the committee-room, where several deacons and the young
+rector were seated discussing some question pertaining to the well-
+being of the church, the music penetrated too, causing the business
+which had brought them together, to be suspended temporarily.
+
+"It is a sin to talk while music like that can be heard," remarked
+one man.  "You have found a genius in this new organist, Rector."
+
+The young man nodded silently, his eyes half closed with an
+expression of somewhat sensuous enjoyment of the throbbing chords
+which vibrated in perfect unison with the beating of his strong
+pulses.
+
+"Where does she come from?" asked the deacon, as a pause in the music
+occurred.
+
+"Her father was an earnest and prominent member of the little church
+down-town of which I had charge during several years," replied the
+young man.  "Miss Irving was scarcely more than a child when she
+volunteered her services as organist.  The position brought her no
+remuneration, and at that time she did not need it.  Young as she
+was, the girl was one of the most active workers among the poor, and
+I often met her in my visits to the sick and unfortunate.  She had
+been a musical prodigy from the cradle, and Mr Irving had given her
+every advantage to study and perfect her art.
+
+"I was naturally much interested in her.  Mr Irving's long illness
+left his wife and daughter without means of support, at his death,
+and when I was called to take charge of St Blank's, I at once
+realised the benefit to the family as well as to my church could I
+secure the young lady the position here as organist.  I am glad that
+my congregation seem so well satisfied with my choice."
+
+Again the organ pealed forth, this time in that passionate music
+originally written for the Garden Scene in Faust, and which the
+church has boldly taken and arranged as a quartette to the words,
+"Come unto me."
+
+It may be that to some who listen, it is the divine spirit which
+makes its appeal through those stirring strains; but to the rector of
+St Blank's, at least on that morning, it was human heart, calling
+unto human heart.  Mr Stuart and the deacons sat silently drinking in
+the music.  At length the rector rose.  "I think perhaps we had
+better drop the matter under discussion for to-day," he said.  "We
+can meet here Monday evening at five o'clock if agreeable to you all,
+and finish the details.  There are other and more important affairs
+waiting for me now."
+
+The deacons departed, and the young rector sank back in his chair,
+and gave himself up to the enjoyment of the sounds which flooded not
+only the room, but his brain, heart and soul.
+
+"Queer," he said to himself as the door closed behind the human
+pillars of his church.  "Queer, but I felt as if the presence of
+those men was an intrusion upon something belonging personally to me.
+I wonder why I am so peculiarly affected by this girl's music?  It
+arouses my brain to action, it awakens ambition and gives me courage
+and hope, and yet--"  He paused before allowing his feeling to shape
+itself into thoughts.  Then closing his eyes and clasping his hands
+behind his head while the music surged about him, he lay back in his
+easy-chair as a bather might lie back and float upon the water, and
+his unfinished sentence took shape thus:  "And yet stronger than all
+other feelings which her music arouses in me, is the desire to
+possess the musician for my very own for ever; ah, well! the Roman
+Catholics are wise in not allowing their priests and their nuns to
+listen to all even so-called sacred music."
+
+It was perhaps ten minutes later that Joy Irving became conscious
+that she was not alone in the organ loft.  She had neither heard nor
+seen his entrance, but she felt the presence of her rector, and
+turned to find him silently watching her.  She played her phrase to
+the end, before she greeted him with other than a smile.  Then she
+apologised, saying:  "Even one's rector must wait for a musical
+phrase to reach its period.  Angels may interrupt the rendition of a
+great work, but not man.  That were sacrilege.  You see, I was really
+praying, when you entered, though my heart spoke through my fingers
+instead of my lips."
+
+"You need not apologise," the young man answered.  "One who receives
+your smile would be ungrateful indeed if he asked for more.  That
+alone would render the darkest spot radiant with light and welcome to
+me."
+
+The girl's pink cheek flushed crimson, like a rose bathed in the
+sunset colours of the sky.
+
+"I did not think you were a man to coin pretty speeches," she said.
+
+"Your estimate of me was a wise one.  You read human nature
+correctly.  But come and walk in the park with me.  You will overtax
+yourself if you practise any longer.  The sunlight and the air are
+vying with each other to-day to see which can be the most
+intoxicating.  Come and enjoy their sparring match with me; I want to
+talk to you about one of my unfortunate parishioners.  It is a
+peculiarly pathetic case.  I think you can help and advise me in the
+matter."
+
+It was a superb morning in early October.  New York was like a
+beautiful woman arrayed in her fresh autumn costume, disporting
+herself before admiring eyes.
+
+Absorbed in each other's society, their pulses beating high with
+youth, love and health; the young couple walked through the crowded
+avenues of the great city, as happily and as naturally as Adam and
+Eve might have walked in the Garden of Eden the morning after
+Creation.
+
+Both were city born and city bred, yet both were as unfashionable and
+untrammelled by custom as two children of the plains.
+
+In the very heart of the greatest metropolis in America, there are
+people who live and retain all the primitive simplicity of village
+life and thought.  Mr Irving had been one of these.  Coming to New
+York from an interior village when a young man, he had, through
+simple and quiet tastes and religious convictions, kept himself
+wholly free from the social life of the city in which he lived.
+After his marriage his entire happiness lay in his home, and Joy was
+reared by parents who made her world.  Mrs Irving sympathised fully
+with her husband in his distaste for society, and her delicate health
+rendered her almost a recluse from the world.
+
+A few pleasant acquaintances, no intimates, music, books, and a large
+share of her time given to charitable work, composed the life of Joy
+Irving.
+
+She had never been in a fashionable assemblage; she had never
+attended a theatre, as Mr Irving did not approve of them.
+
+Extremely fond of outdoor life, she walked, unattended, wherever her
+mood led her.  As she had no acquaintances among society people, she
+knew nothing and cared less for the rules which govern the
+promenading habits of young women in New York.  Her sweet face and
+graceful figure were well known among the poorer quarters of the
+city, and it was through her work in such places that Arthur Stuart's
+attention had first been called to her.
+
+As for him, he was filled with that high, but not always wise,
+disdain for society and its customs, which we so often find in town-
+bred young men of intellectual pursuits.  He was clean-minded,
+independent, sure of his own purposes, and wholly indifferent to the
+opinions of inferiors regarding his habits.
+
+He loved the park, and he asked Joy to walk with him there, as freely
+as he would have asked her to sit with him in a conservatory.  It was
+a great delight to the young girl to go.
+
+"It seems such a pity that the women of New York get so little
+benefit from this beautiful park," she said as they strolled along
+through the winding paths together.  "The wealthy people enjoy it in
+a way from their carriages, and the poor people no doubt derive new
+life from their Sunday promenades here.  But there are thousands like
+myself who are almost wholly debarred from its pleasures.  I have
+always wanted to walk here, but once I came and a rude man in a
+carriage spoke to me.  Mother told me never to come alone again.  It
+seems strange to me that men who are so proud of their strength, and
+who should be the natural protectors of woman, can belittle
+themselves by annoying or frightening her when alone.  I am sure that
+same man would never think of speaking to me now that I am with you.
+How cowardly he seems when you think of it!  Yet I am told there are
+many like him, though that was my only experience of the kind."
+
+"Yes, there are many like him," the rector answered.  "But you must
+remember how short a time man has been evolving from a lower animal
+condition to his present state, and how much higher he is to-day than
+he was a hundred years ago even, when occasional drunkenness was
+considered an attribute of a gentleman.  Now it is a vice of which he
+is ashamed."
+
+"Then you believe in evolution?" Joy asked with a note of surprise in
+her voice.
+
+"Yes, I surely do; nor does the belief conflict with my religious
+faith.  I believe in many things I could not preach from my pulpit.
+My congregation is not ready for broad truths.  I am like an eclectic
+physician--I suit my treatment to my patient--I administer the old
+school or the new school medicaments as the case demands."
+
+"It seems to me there can be but one school in spiritual matters,"
+Joy said gravely--"the right one.  And I think one should preach and
+teach what he believes to be true and right, no matter what his
+congregation demands.  Oh, forgive me.  I am very rude to speak like
+that to you!"  And she blushed and paled with fright at her boldness.
+
+They were seated on a rustic bench now, under the shadow of a great
+tree.
+
+The rector smiled, his eyes fixed with pleased satisfaction on the
+girl's beautiful face, with its changing colour and expression.  He
+felt he could well afford to be criticised or rebuked by her, if the
+result was so gratifying to his sight.  The young rector of St
+Blank's lived very much more in his senses than in his ideals.
+
+"Perhaps you are right," he said.  "I sometimes wish I had greater
+courage of my convictions.  I think I could have, were you to
+stimulate me with such words often.  But my mother is so afraid that
+I will wander from the old dogmas, that I am constantly checking
+myself.  However, in regard to the case I mentioned to you--it is a
+delicate subject, but you are not like ordinary young women, and you
+and I have stood beside so many sick-beds and death-beds together
+that we can speak as man to man, or woman to woman, with no false
+modesty to bar our speech.
+
+"A very sad case has come to my knowledge of late.  Miss Adams, a
+woman who for some years has been a devout member of St Blank's
+Church, has several times mentioned her niece to me, a young girl who
+was away at boarding school.  A few months ago the young girl
+graduated and came to live with this aunt.  I remember her as a
+bright, buoyant and very intelligent girl.  I have not seen her now
+during two months; and last week I asked Miss Adams what had become
+of her niece.  Then the poor woman broke into sobs and told me the
+sad state of affairs.  It seems that the girl Marah is her daughter.
+The poor mother had believed she could guard the truth from her
+child, and had educated her as her niece, and was now prepared to
+enjoy her companionship, when some mischief-making gossip dug up the
+old scandal and imparted the facts to Marah.
+
+"The girl came to Miss Adams and demanded the truth, and the mother
+confessed.  Then the daughter settled into a profound melancholy,
+from which nothing seemed to rouse her.  She will not go out, remains
+in the house, and broods constantly over her disgrace.
+
+"It occurred to me that if Marah Adams could be brought out of
+herself and interested in some work, or study, it would be the
+salvation of her reason.  Her mother told me she is an accomplished
+musician, but that she refuses to touch her piano now.  I thought you
+might take her as an understudy on the organ, and by your influence
+and association lead her out of herself.  You could make her
+acquaintance through approaching the mother who is a milliner, on
+business, and your tact would do the rest.  In all my large and
+wealthy congregation I know of no other woman to whom I could appeal
+for aid in this delicate matter, so I am sure you will pardon me.  In
+fact, I fear were the matter to be known in the congregation at all,
+it would lead to renewed pain and added hurts for both Miss Adams and
+her daughter.  You know women can be so cruel to each other in subtle
+ways, and I have seen almost death-blows dealt in church aisles by
+one church member to another."
+
+"Oh, that is a terrible reflection on Christians," cried Joy, who, a
+born Christ-woman, believed that all professed church members must
+feel the same divine spirit of sympathy and charity which burned in
+her own sweet soul.
+
+"No, it is a simple truth--an unfortunate fact," the young man
+replied.  "I preach sermons at such members of my church, but they
+seldom take them home.  They think I mean somebody else.  These are
+the people who follow the letter and not the spirit of the church.
+But one such member as you, recompenses me for a score of the others.
+I felt I must come to you with the Marah Adams affair."
+
+Joy was still thinking of the reflection the rector had cast upon his
+congregation.  It hurt her, and she protested.
+
+"Oh, surely," she said, "you cannot mean that I am the only one of
+the professed Christians in your church who would show mercy and
+sympathy to poor Miss Adams.  Surely few, very few, would forget
+Christ's words to Mary Magdalene, 'Go and sin no more,' or fail to
+forgive as He forgave.  She has led such a good life all these
+years."
+
+The rector smiled sadly.
+
+"You judge others by your own true heart," he said.  "But I know the
+world as it is.  Yes, the members of my church would forgive Miss
+Adams for her sin--and cut her dead.  They would daily crucify her
+and her innocent child by their cold scorn or utter ignoring of them.
+They would not allow their daughters to associate with this blameless
+girl, because of her mother's misstep.
+
+"It is the same in and out of the churches.  Twenty people will
+repeat Christ's words to a repentant sinner, but nineteen of that
+twenty interpolate a few words of their own, through tone, gesture or
+manner, until 'Go and sin no more' sounds to the poor unfortunate
+more like 'Go just as far away from me and mine as you can get--and
+sin no more!'  Only one in that score puts Christ's merciful and
+tender meaning into the phrase and tries by sympathetic association
+to make it possible for the sinner to sin no more.  I felt you were
+that one, and so I appealed to you in this matter about Marah Adams."
+
+Joy's eyes were full of tears.  "You must know more of human nature
+than I do," she said, "but I hate terribly to think you are right in
+this estimate of the people of your congregation.  I will go and see
+what I can do for this girl to-morrow.  Poor child, poor mother, to
+pass through a second Gethsemane for her sin.  I think any girl or
+boy whose home life is shadowed, is to be pitied.  I have always had
+such a happy home, and such dear parents, the world would seem
+insupportable, I am sure, were I to face it without that background.
+Dear papa's death was a great blow, and mother's ill health has been
+a sorrow, but we have always been so happy and harmonious, and that,
+I think, is worth more than a fortune to a child.  Poor, poor Marah--
+unable to respect her mother, what a terrible thing it all is!"
+
+"Yes, it is a sad affair.  I cannot help thinking it would have been
+a pardonable lie if Miss Adams had denied the truth when the girl
+confronted her with the story.  It is the one situation in life where
+a lie is excusable, I think.  It would have saved this poor girl no
+end of sorrow, and it could not have added much to the mother's
+burden.  I think lying must have originated with an erring woman."
+
+Joy looked at her rector with startled eyes.  "A lie is never
+excusable," she said, "and I do not believe it ever saves sorrow.
+But I see you do not mean what you say, you only feel very sorry for
+the girl; and you surely do not forget that the lie originated with
+Satan, who told a falsehood to Eve."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+
+Ever since early girlhood Joy Irving had formed a habit of jotting
+down in black and white her own ideas regarding any book, painting,
+concert, conversation or sermon, which interested her, and
+epitomising the train of thought to which they led.
+
+The evening after her walk and talk with the rector of St Blank's,
+she took out her note-book, which bore a date four years old under
+its title "My Impressions," and read over the last page of entries.
+They had evidently been written at the close of some Sabbath day and
+ran as follows:-
+
+
+Many a kneeling woman is more occupied with how her skirts hang than
+how her prayers ascend.  I am inclined to think we all ought to wear
+a uniform to church if we would really worship there.  God must grow
+weary looking down on so many new bonnets.
+
+I wore a smart hat to church to-day, and I found myself criticising
+every other woman's bonnet during service, so that I failed in some
+of my responses.
+
+If we could all be compelled by some mysterious power to THINK ALOUD
+on Sunday, what a veritable holy day we would make of it!  Though we
+are taught from childhood that God hears our thoughts, the best of us
+would be afraid to have our nearest friends know them.
+
+I sometimes think it is a presumption on the part of any man to rise
+in the pulpit and undertake to tell me about a Creator with whom I
+feel every whit as well acquainted as he.  I suppose such thoughts
+are wicked, however, and should be suppressed.
+
+It is a curious fact, that the most aggressively sensitive persons
+are at heart the most conceited.
+
+I wish people smiled more in church aisles.  In fact, I think we all
+laugh at one another too much and smile at one another too seldom.
+
+After the devil had made all the trouble for woman he could with the
+fig leaf, he introduced the French heel.
+
+It is well to see the ridiculous side of things, but not of people.
+
+Most of us would rather be popular than right.
+
+
+To these impressions Joy added the following:-
+
+
+It is not the interior of one's house, but the interior of one's mind
+which makes home.
+
+It seems to me that to be, is to love.  I can conceive of no state of
+existence which is not permeated with this feeling toward something,
+somebody or the illimitable "nothing" which is mother to everything.
+
+I wish we had more religion in the world and fewer churches.
+
+People who believe in no God, invariably exalt themselves into His
+position, and worship with the very idolatry they decry in others.
+
+Music is the echo of the rhythm of God's respirations.
+
+Poetry is the effort of the divine part of man to formulate a worthy
+language in which to converse with angels.
+
+Painting and sculpture seem to me the most presumptuous of the arts.
+They are an effort of man to outdo God in creation.  He never made a
+perfect form or face--the artist alone makes them.
+
+I am sure I do not play the organ as well at St Blank's as I played
+it in the little church where I gave my services and was unknown.
+People are praising me too much here, and this mars all spontaneity.
+
+The very first hour of positive success is often the last hour of
+great achievement.  So soon as we are conscious of the admiring and
+expectant gaze of men, we cease to commune with God.  It is when we
+are unknown to or neglected by mortals, that we reach up to the
+Infinite and are inspired.
+
+I have seen Marah Adams to-day, and I felt strangely drawn to her.
+Her face would express all goodness if it were not so unhappy.
+Unhappiness is a species of evil, since it is a discourtesy to God to
+be unhappy.
+
+I am going to do all I can for the girl to bring her into a better
+frame of mind.  No blame can be attached to her, and yet now that I
+am face to face with the situation, and realise how the world regards
+such a person, I myself find it a little hard to think of braving
+public opinion and identifying myself with her.  But I am going to
+overcome such feelings, as they are cowardly and unworthy of me, and
+purely the result of education.  I am amazed, too, to discover this
+weakness in myself.
+
+How sympathetic dear mamma is!  I told her about Marah, and she wept
+bitterly, and has carried her eyes full of tears ever since.  I must
+be careful and tell her nothing sad while she is in such a weak state
+physically.
+
+I told mamma what the rector said about lying.  She coincided with
+him that Mrs Adams would have been justified in denying the truth if
+she had realised how her daughter was to be affected by this
+knowledge.  A woman's past belongs only to herself and her God, she
+says, unless she wishes to make a confidant.  But I cannot agree with
+her or the rector.  I would want the truth from my parents, however
+much it hurt.  Many sins which men regard as serious only obstruct
+the bridge between our souls and truth.  A lie burns the bridge.
+
+I hope I am not uncharitable, yet I cannot conceive of committing an
+act through love of any man, which would lower me in his esteem, once
+committed.  Yet of course I have had little experience in life, with
+men, or with temptation.  But it seems to me I could not continue to
+love a man who did not seek to lead me higher.  The moment he stood
+before me and asked me to descend, I should realise he was to be
+pitied--not adored.
+
+I told mother this, and she said I was too young and inexperienced to
+form decided opinions on such subjects, and she warned me that I must
+not become uncharitable.  She wept bitterly as she thought of my
+becoming narrow or bigoted in my ideas, dear, tender-hearted mamma.
+
+Death should be called the Great Revealer instead of the Great
+Destroyer.
+
+Some people think the way into heaven is through embroidered altar
+cloths.
+
+The soul that has any conception of its own possibilities does not
+fear solitude.
+
+A girl told me to-day that a rude man annoyed her by staring at her
+in a public conveyance.  It never occurred to her that it takes four
+eyes to make a stare annoying.
+
+Astronomers know more about the character of the stars than the
+average American mother knows about the temperament of her daughters.
+
+To some women the most terrible thought connected with death is the
+dates in the obituary notice.
+
+As a rule, when a woman opens the door of an artistic career with one
+hand, she shuts the door on domestic happiness with the other.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+
+The rector of St Blank's Church dined at the Cheney table or drove in
+the Cheney establishment every week, beside which there were always
+one or two confidential chats with the feminine Cheneys in the
+parsonage on matters pertaining to the welfare of the church, and
+occasionally to the welfare of humanity.
+
+That Alice Cheney had conceived a sudden and consuming passion for
+the handsome and brilliant rector of St Blank's, both her mother and
+the Baroness knew, and both were doing all in their power to further
+the girl's hopes.
+
+While Alice resembled her mother in appearance and disposition,
+propensities and impulses occasionally exhibited themselves which
+spoke of paternal inheritance.  She had her father's strongly
+emotional nature, with her mother's stubbornness; and Preston
+Cheney's romantic tendencies were repeated in his daughter, without
+his reasoning powers.  Added to her father's lack of self-control in
+any strife with his passions, Alice possessed her mother's hysterical
+nerves.  In fact, the unfortunate child inherited the weaknesses and
+faults of both parents, without any of their redeeming virtues.
+
+The passion which had sprung to life in her breast for the young
+rector, was as strong and unreasoning as the infatuation which her
+father had once experienced for Berene Dumont; but instead of
+struggling against the feeling as her father had at least attempted
+to do, she dwelt upon it with all the mulish persistency which her
+mother exhibited in small matters, and luxuriated in romantic dreams
+of the future.
+
+Mabel was wholly unable to comprehend the depth or violence of her
+daughter's feelings, but she realised the fact that Alice had set her
+mind on winning Arthur Stuart for a husband, and she quite approved
+of the idea, and saw no reason why it should not succeed.  She
+herself had won Preston Cheney away from all rivals for his favour,
+and Alice ought to be able to do the same with Arthur, after all the
+money which had been expended upon her wardrobe.  Senator Cheney's
+daughter and Judge Lawrence's granddaughter, surely was a prize for
+any man to win as a wife.
+
+The Baroness, however, reviewed the situation with more concern of
+mind.  She realised that Alice was destitute of beauty and charm, and
+that Arthur Emerson Stuart (it would have been considered a case of
+high treason to speak of the rector of St Blank's without using his
+three names) was independent in the matter of fortune, and so dowered
+with nature's best gifts that he could have almost any woman for the
+asking whom he should desire.  But the Baroness believed much in
+propinquity; and she brought the rector and Alice together as often
+as possible, and coached the girl in coquettish arts when alone with
+her, and credited her with witticisms and bon-mots which she had
+never uttered, when talking of her to the young rector.
+
+"If only I could give Alice the benefit of my past career," the
+Baroness would say to herself at times.  "I know so well how to
+manage men; but what use is my knowledge to me now that I am old?
+Alice is young, and even without beauty she could do so much, if she
+only understood the art of masculine seduction.  But then it is a
+gift, not an acquired art, and Alice was not born with the gift."
+
+While Mabel and Alice had been centring their thoughts and attentions
+on the rector, the Baroness had not forgotten the rector's mother.
+She knew the very strong affection which existed between the two, and
+she had discovered that the leading desire of the young man's heart
+was to make his mother happy.  With her wide knowledge of human
+nature, she had not been long in discerning the fact that it was not
+because of his own religious convictions that the rector had chosen
+his calling, but to carry out the lifelong wishes of his beloved
+mother.
+
+Therefore she reasoned wisely that Arthur would be greatly influenced
+by his mother in his choice of a wife; and the Baroness brought all
+her vast battery of fascination to bear on Mrs Stuart, and succeeded
+in making that lady her devoted friend.
+
+The widow of Judge Lawrence was still an imposing and impressive
+figure wherever she went.  Though no longer a woman who appealed to
+the desires of men, she exhaled that peculiar mental aroma which
+hangs ever about a woman who has dealt deeply and widely in affairs
+of the heart.  It is to the spiritual senses what musk is to the
+physical; and while it may often repulse, it sometimes attracts, and
+never fails to be noticed.  About the Baroness's mouth were hard
+lines, and the expression of her eyes was not kind or tender; yet she
+was everywhere conceded to be a universally handsome and attractive
+woman.  Quiet and tasteful in her dressing, she did not accentuate
+the ravages of time by any mistaken frivolities of toilet, as so many
+faded coquettes have done, but wisely suited her vestments to her
+appearance, as the withering branch clothes itself in russet leaves,
+when the fresh sap ceases to course through its veins.  New York City
+is a vast sepulchre of "past careers," and the adventurous life of
+the Baroness was quietly buried there with that of many another
+woman.  In the mad whirl of life there is small danger that any of
+these skeletons will rise to view, unless the woman permits herself
+to strive for eminence either socially or in the world of art.
+
+While the Cheneys were known to be wealthy, and the Senator had
+achieved political position, there was nothing in their situation to
+challenge the jealousy of their associates.  They moved in one of the
+many circles of cultured and agreeable people, which, despite the
+mandate of a M'Allister, formed a varied and delightful society in
+the metropolis; they entertained in an unostentatious manner, and
+there was nothing in their personality to incite envy or jealousy.
+Therefore the career of the Baroness had not been unearthed.  That
+the widow of Judge Lawrence, the stepmother of Mrs Cheney, was known
+as "The Baroness" caused some questions, to be sure, but the simple
+answer that she had been the widow of a French baron in early life
+served to allay curiosity, while it rendered the lady herself an
+object of greater interest to the majority of people.
+
+Mrs Stuart, the rector's mother, was one of those who were most
+impressed by this incident in the life of Mrs Lawrence.  "Family
+pride" was her greatest weakness, and she dearly loved a title.  She
+thought Mrs Lawrence a typical "Baroness," and though she knew the
+title had only been obtained through marriage, it still rendered its
+possessor peculiarly interesting in her eyes.
+
+In her prime, the Baroness had been equally successful in cajoling
+women and men.  Though her day for ruling men was now over, she still
+possessed the power to fascinate women when she chose to exert
+herself.  She did exert herself with Mrs Stuart, and succeeded
+admirably in her design.
+
+And one day Mrs Stuart confided her secret anxiety to the ear of the
+Baroness; and that secret caused the cheek of the listener to grow
+pale and the look of an animal at bay to come into her eyes.
+
+"There is just one thing that gives me a constant pain at my heart,"
+Mrs Stuart had said.  "You have never been a mother, yet I think your
+sympathetic nature causes you to understand much which you have not
+experienced, and knowing as you do the great pride I feel in my son's
+career, and the ambition I have for him to rise to the very highest
+pinnacle of success and usefulness, I am sure you will comprehend my
+anxiety when I see him exhibiting an undue interest in a girl who is
+in every way his inferior, and wholly unsuited to fill the position
+his wife should occupy."
+
+The Baroness listened with a cold, sinking sensation at her heart
+
+"I am sure your son would never make a choice which was not agreeable
+to you," she ventured.
+
+"He might not marry anyone I objected to," Mrs Stuart replied, "but I
+dread to think his heart may be already gone from his keeping.  Young
+men are so susceptible to a pretty face and figure, and I confess
+that Joy Irving has both.  She is a good girl, too, and a fine
+musician; but she has no family, and her alliance with my son would
+be a great drawback to his career.  Her father was a grocer, I
+believe, or something of that sort; quite a common man, who married a
+third-class actress, Joy's mother.  Mr Irving was in very comfortable
+circumstances at one time, but a stroke of paralysis rendered him
+helpless some four years ago.  He died last year and left his widow
+and child in straitened circumstances.  Mrs Irving is an invalid now,
+and Joy supports her with her music.  Mr Irving and Joy were members
+of Arthur Emerson's former church (Mrs Stuart always spoke of her son
+in that manner), and that is how my son became interested in the
+daughter--an interest I supposed to be purely that of a rector in his
+parishioner, until of late, when I began to fear it took root in
+deeper soil.  But I am sure, dear Baroness, you can understand my
+anxiety."
+
+And then the Baroness, with drawn lips and anguished eyes, took both
+of Mrs Stuart's hands in hers, and cried out:
+
+"Your pain, dear madam, is second to mine.  I have no child, to be
+sure, but as few mothers love I love Alice Cheney, my dear husband's
+granddaughter.  My very life is bound up in her, and she--God help
+us, she loves your son with her whole soul.  If he marries another it
+will kill her or drive her insane."
+
+The two women fell weeping into each other's arms.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+
+Preston Cheney conceived such a strong, earnest liking for the young
+clergyman whom he met under his own roof during one of his visits
+home, that he fell into the habit of attending church for the first
+time in his life.
+
+Mabel and Alice were deeply gratified with this intimacy between the
+two men, which brought the rector to the house far oftener than they
+could have tastefully done without the co-operation of the husband
+and father.  Besides, it looked well to have the head of the
+household represented in the church.  To the Baroness, also, there
+was added satisfaction in attending divine service, now that Preston
+Cheney sat in the pew.  All hope of winning the love she had so
+longed to possess, died many years before; and she had been cruel and
+unkind in numerous ways to the object of her hopeless passion, yet
+like the smell of dead rose leaves long shut in a drawer, there clung
+about this man the faint, suggestive fragrance of a perished dream.
+
+She knew that he did not love his wife, and that he was disappointed
+in his daughter; and she did not at least have to suffer the pain of
+seeing him lavish the affection she had missed, on others.
+
+Mr Cheney had been called away from home on business the day before
+the new organist took her place in St Blank's Church.  Nearly a month
+had passed when he again occupied his pew.
+
+Before the organist had finished her introduction, he turned to
+Alice, saying:
+
+"There has been a change here in the choir, since I went away, and
+for the better.  That is a very unusual musician.  Do you know who it
+is?"
+
+"Some lady, I believe; I do not remember her name," Alice answered
+indifferently.  Like her mother, Alice never enjoyed hearing anyone
+praised.  It mattered little who it was, or how entirely out of her
+own line the achievements or accomplishments on which the praise was
+bestowed, she still felt that petty resentment of small creatures who
+believe that praise to others detracts from their own value.
+
+A fortune had been expended on Alice's musical education, yet she
+could do no more than rattle through some mediocre composition, with
+neither taste nor skill.
+
+The money which has been wasted in trying to teach music to unmusical
+people would pay our national debt twice over, and leave a competency
+for every orphan in the land.
+
+When the organist had finished her second selection, Mr Cheney
+addressed the same question to his wife which he had addressed to
+Alice.
+
+"Who is the new organist?" he queried.  Mabel only shook her head and
+placed her finger on her lip as a signal for silence during service.
+
+The third time it was the Baroness, sitting just beyond Mabel, to
+whom Mr Cheney spoke.  "That's a very remarkable musician, very
+remarkable," he said.  "Do you know anything about her?"
+
+"Yes, wait until we get home, and I will tell you all about her," the
+Baroness replied.
+
+When the service was over, Mr Cheney did not pass out at once, as was
+his custom.  Instead he walked toward the pulpit, after requesting
+his family to wait a moment.
+
+The rector saw him and came down into the aisle to speak to him.
+
+"I want to congratulate you on the new organist," Mr Cheney said,
+"and I want to meet her.  Alice tells me it is a lady.  She must have
+devoted a lifetime to hard study to become such a marvellous mistress
+of that difficult instrument."
+
+Arthur Stuart smiled.  "Wait a moment," he said, "and I will send for
+her.  I would like you to meet her, and like her to meet your wife
+and family.  She has few, if any, acquaintances in my congregation."
+
+Mr Cheney went down the aisle, and joined the three ladies who were
+waiting for him in the pew.  All were smiling, for all three believed
+that he had been asking the rector to accompany them home to dinner.
+His first word dispelled the illusion.
+
+"Wait here a moment," he said.  "Mr Stuart is going to bring the
+organist to meet us.  I want to know the woman who can move me so
+deeply by her music."
+
+Over the faces of his three listeners there fell a cloud.  Mabel
+looked annoyed, Alice sulky, and a flush of the old jealous fury
+darkened the brow of the Baroness.  But all were smiling deceitfully
+when Joy Irving approached.
+
+Her radiant young beauty, and the expressions of admiration with
+which Preston Cheney greeted her as a woman and an artist, filled
+life with gall and wormwood for the three feminine listeners.
+
+"What! this beautiful young miss, scarcely out of short frocks, is
+not the musician who gave us that wonderful harmony of sounds.  My
+child, how did you learn to play like that in the brief life you have
+passed on earth?  Surely you must have been taught by the angels
+before you came."
+
+A deep blush of pleasure at the words which, though so extravagant,
+Joy felt to be sincere, increased her beauty as she looked up into
+Preston Cheney's admiring eyes.
+
+And as he held her hands in both of his and gazed down upon her it
+seemed to the Baroness she could strike them dead at her feet and
+rejoice in the act.
+
+Beside this radiant vision of loveliness and genius, Alice looked
+plainer and more meagre than ever before.  She was like a wayside
+weed beside an American Beauty rose.
+
+"I hope you and Alice will become good friends," Mr Cheney said
+warmly.  "We should like to see you at the house any time you can
+make it convenient to come, would we not Mabel?"
+
+Mrs Cheney gave a formal assent to her husband's words as they turned
+away, leaving Joy with the rector.  And a scene in one of life's
+strangest dramas had been enacted, unknown to them all.
+
+"I would like you to be very friendly with that girl, Alice," Mr
+Cheney repeated as they seated themselves in the carriage.  "She has
+a rare face, a rare face, and she is highly gifted.  She reminds me
+of someone I have known, yet I can't think who it is.  What do you
+know about her, Baroness?"
+
+The Baroness gave an expressive shrug.  "Since you admire her so
+much," she said, "I rather hesitate telling you.  But the girl is of
+common origin--a grocer's daughter, and her mother quite an inferior
+person.  I hardly think it a suitable companionship for Alice."
+
+"I am sure I don't care to know her," chimed in Alice.  "I thought
+her quite bold and forward in her manner."
+
+"Decidedly so!  She seemed to hang on to your father's hand as if she
+would never let go," added Mabel, in her most acid tone.  "I must
+say, I should have been horrified to see you act in such a familiar
+manner toward any stranger."  A quick colour shot into Preston
+Cheney's cheek and a spark into his eye.
+
+"The girl was perfectly modest in her deportment to me," he said.
+"She is a lady through and through, however humble her birth may be.
+But I ought to have known better than to ask my wife and daughter to
+like anyone whom I chanced to admire.  I learned long ago how futile
+such an idea was."
+
+"Oh, well, I don't see why you need get so angry over a perfect
+stranger whom you never laid eyes on until to-day," pouted Alice.  "I
+am sure she's nothing to any of us that we need quarrel over her."
+
+"A man never gets so old that he is not likely to make a fool of
+himself over a pretty face," supplemented Mabel, "and there is no
+fool like an old fool."
+
+The uncomfortable drive home came to an end at this juncture, and
+Preston Cheney retired to his own room, with the disagreeable words
+of his wife and daughter ringing in his ears, and the beautiful face
+of the young organist floating before his eyes.
+
+"I wish she were my daughter," he said to himself; "what a comfort
+and delight a girl like that would be to me!"
+
+And while these thoughts filled the man's heart the Baroness paced
+her room with all the jealous passions of her still ungoverned nature
+roused into new life and violence at the remembrance of Joy Irving's
+fresh young beauty and Preston Cheney's admiring looks and words.
+
+"I could throttle her," she cried, "I could throttle her.  Oh, why is
+she sent across my life at every turn?  Why should the only two men
+in the world who interest me to-day, be so infatuated over that girl?
+But if I cannot remove so humble an obstacle as she from my pathway,
+I shall feel that my day of power is indeed over, and that I do not
+believe to be true."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+
+Two weeks later the organ loft of St Blank's Church was occupied by a
+stranger.  For a few hours the Baroness felt a wild hope in her heart
+that Miss Irving had been sent away.
+
+But inquiry elicited the information that the young musician had
+merely employed a substitute because her mother was lying seriously
+ill at home.
+
+It was then that the Baroness put into execution a desire she had to
+make the personal acquaintance of Joy Irving.
+
+The desire had sprung into life with the knowledge of the rector's
+interest in the girl.  No one knew better than the Baroness how to
+sow the seeds of doubt, distrust and discord between two people whom
+she wished to alienate.  Many a sweetheart, many a wife, had she
+separated from lover and husband, scarcely leaving a sign by which
+the trouble could be traced to her, so adroit and subtle were her
+methods.
+
+She felt that she could insert an invisible wedge between these two
+hearts, which would eventually separate them, if only she might make
+the acquaintance of Miss Irving.  And now chance had opened the way
+for her.
+
+She made her resolve known to the rector.
+
+"I am deeply interested in the young organist whom I had the pleasure
+of meeting some weeks ago," she said, and she noted with a sinking
+heart the light which flashed into the man's face at the mere mention
+of the girl.  "I understand her mother is seriously ill, and I think
+I will go around and call.  Perhaps I can be of use.  I understand
+Mrs Irving is not a churchwoman, and she may be in real need, as the
+family is in straitened circumstances.  May I mention your name when
+I call, in order that Miss Irving may not think I intrude?"
+
+"Why, certainly," the rector replied with warmth.  "Indeed, I will
+give you a card of introduction.  That will open the way for you, and
+at the same time I know you will use your delicate tact to avoid
+wounding Miss Irving's pride in any way.  She is very sensitive about
+their straitened circumstances; you may have heard that they were
+quite well-to-do until the stroke of paralysis rendered her father
+helpless.  All their means were exhausted in efforts to restore his
+health, and in the employment of nurses and physicians.  I think they
+have found life a difficult problem since his death, as Mrs Irving
+has been under medical care constantly, and the whole burden falls on
+Miss Joy's young shoulders, and she is but twenty-one."
+
+"Just the age of Alice," mused the Baroness.  "How differently
+people's lives are ordered in this world!  But then we must have the
+hewers of wood and the drawers of water, and we must have the
+delicate human flowers.  Our Alice is one of the latter, a frail
+blossom to look upon, but she is one of the kind which will bloom out
+in great splendour under the sunshine of love and happiness.  Very
+few people realise what wonderful reserve force that delicate child
+possesses.  And such a tender heart!  She was determined to come with
+me when she heard of Miss Irving's trouble, but I thought it unwise
+to take her until I had seen the place.  She is so sensitive to her
+surroundings, and it might be too painful for her.  I am for ever
+holding her back from overtaxing herself for others.  No one dreams
+of the amount of good that girl does in a secret, quiet way; and at
+the same time she assumes an indifferent air and talks as if she were
+quite heartless, just to hinder people from suspecting her charitable
+work.  She is such a strange, complicated character."
+
+Armed with her card of introduction, the Baroness set forth on her
+"errand of mercy."  She had not mentioned Miss Irving's name to Mabel
+or Alice.  The secret of the rector's interest in the girl was locked
+in her own breast.  She knew that Mabel was wholly incapable of
+coping with such a situation, and she dreaded the effect of the news
+on Alice, who was absorbed in her love dream.  The girl had never
+been denied a wish in her life, and no thought came to her that she
+could be thwarted in this, her most cherished hope of all.
+
+The Baroness was determined to use every gun in her battery of
+defence before she allowed Mabel or Alice to know that defence was
+needed.
+
+The rector's card admitted her to the parlour of a small flat.  The
+portieres of an adjoining room were thrown open presently, and a
+vision of radiant beauty entered the room.
+
+The Baroness could not explain it, but as the girl emerged from the
+curtains, a strange, confused memory of something and somebody she
+had known in the past came over her.  But when the girl spoke, a more
+inexplicable sensation took possession of the listener, for her voice
+was the feminine of Preston Cheney's masculine tones, and then as she
+looked at the girl again the haunting memories of the first glance
+were explained, for she was very like Preston Cheney as the Baroness
+remembered him when he came to the Palace to engage rooms more than a
+score of years ago.  "What a strange thing these resemblances are!"
+she thought.  "This girl is more like Senator Cheney, far more like
+him, than Alice is.  Ah, if Alice only had her face and form!"
+
+Miss Irving gave a slight start, and took a step back as her eyes
+fell upon the Baroness.  The rector's card had read, "Introducing Mrs
+Sylvester Lawrence."  She had known this lad by sight ever since her
+first Sunday as organist at St Blank's, and for some unaccountable
+reason she had conceived a most intense dislike for her.  Joy was
+drawn toward humanity in general, as naturally as the sunlight falls
+on the earth's foliage.  Her heart radiated love and sympathy toward
+the whole world.  But when she did feel a sentiment of distrust or
+repulsion she had learned to respect it.
+
+Our guardian angels sometimes send these feelings as danger signals
+to our souls.
+
+It therefore required a strong effort of her will to go forward and
+extend a hand in greeting to the lady whom her rector and friend had
+introduced.
+
+"I must beg pardon for this intrusion," the Baroness said with her
+sweetest smile; "but our rector urged me to come and so I felt
+emboldened to carry out the wish I have long entertained to make your
+acquaintance.  Your wonderful music inspires all who hear you to know
+you personally; the service lacked half its charm on Sunday because
+you were absent.  When I learnt that your absence was occasioned by
+your mother's illness, I asked the rector if he thought a call from
+me would be an intrusion, and he assured me to the contrary.  I used
+to be considered an excellent nurse; I am very strong, and full of
+vitality, and if you would permit me to sit by your mother some
+Sunday when you are needed at church, I should be most happy to do
+so.  I should like to make the acquaintance of your mother, and
+compliment her on the happiness of possessing such a gifted and
+dutiful daughter."
+
+Like all who sat for any time under the spell of the second Mrs
+Lawrence, Joy felt the charm of her voice, words and manner, and it
+began to seem as if she had been very unreasonable in entertaining
+unfounded prejudices.
+
+That the rector had introduced her was alone proof of her worthiness;
+and the gracious offer of the distinguished-looking lady to watch by
+the bedside of a stranger was certainly evidence of her good heart.
+The frost disappeared from her smile, and she warmed toward the
+Baroness.  The call lengthened into a visit, and as the Baroness
+finally rose to go, Joy said:
+
+"I will take you in and introduce you to mamma now.  I think it will
+do her good to meet you," and the Baroness followed the graceful girl
+through a narrow hall, and into a room which had evidently been
+intended for a dining-room, but which, owing to its size and its
+windows opening to the south, had been utilised as a sick chamber.
+
+The invalid lay with her face turned away from the door.  But by the
+movement of the delicate hand on the counterpane, Joy knew that her
+mother was awake.
+
+"Mamma, I have brought a lady, a friend of Dr Stuart's, to see you,"
+Joy said gently.  The invalid turned her head upon the pillow, and
+the Baroness looked upon the face of--Berene Dumont.
+
+"Berene!"
+
+"Madam!"
+
+The two spoke simultaneously, and the invalid had started upright in
+bed.
+
+"Mamma, what is the matter?  Oh, please lie down, or you will bring
+on another haemorrhage," cried the startled girl; but her mother
+lifted her hand.
+
+"Joy," she said in a firm, clear voice, "this lady is an old
+acquaintance of mine.  Please go out, dear, and shut the door.  I
+wish to see her alone."
+
+Joy passed out with drooping head and a sinking heart.  As the door
+closed behind her the Baroness spoke.
+
+"So that is Preston Cheney's daughter," she said.  "I always had my
+suspicions of the cause which led you to leave my house so suddenly.
+Does the girl know who her father is?  And does Senator Cheney know
+of her existence, may I ask?"
+
+A crimson flush suffused the invalid's face.  Then a flame of fire
+shot into the dark eyes, and a small red spot only glowed on either
+pale cheek.
+
+"I do not know by what right you ask these questions, Baroness
+Brown," she answered slowly; and her listener cringed under the old
+appellation which recalled the miserable days when she had kept a
+lodging-house--days she had almost forgotten during the last decade
+of life.
+
+"But I can assure you, madam," continued the speaker, "that my
+daughter knows no father save the good man, my husband, who is dead.
+I have never by word or line made my existence known to anyone I ever
+knew since I left Beryngford.  I do not know why you should come here
+to insult me, madam; I have never harmed you or yours, and you have
+no proof of the accusation you just made, save your own evil
+suspicions."
+
+The Baroness gave an unpleasant laugh.
+
+"It is an easy matter for me to find proof of my suspicions if I
+choose to take the trouble," she said.  "There are detectives enough
+to hunt up your trail, and I have money enough to pay them for their
+trouble.  But Joy is the living evidence of the assertion.  She is
+the image of Preston Cheney, as he was twenty-three years ago.  I am
+ready, however, to let the matter drop on one condition; and that
+condition is, that you extract a promise from your daughter that she
+will not encourage the attentions of Arthur Emerson Stuart, the
+rector of St Blank's; that she will never under any circumstances be
+his wife."
+
+The red spots faded to a sickly yellow in the invalid's cheeks.  "Why
+should you ask this of me?" she cried.  "Why should you wish to
+destroy the happiness of my child's life?  She loves Arthur Stuart,
+and I know that he loves her!  It is the one thought which resigns me
+to death; the thought that I may leave her the beloved wife of this
+good man."
+
+The Baroness leaned lower over the pillow of the invalid as she
+answered:  "I will tell you why I ask this sacrifice of you."
+
+"Perhaps you do not know that I married Judge Lawrence after the
+death of his first wife.  Perhaps you do not know that Preston
+Cheney's legitimate daughter is as precious to me as his illegitimate
+child is to you.  Alice is only six months younger than Joy; she is
+frail, delicate, sensitive.  A severe disappointment would kill her.
+She, too, loves Arthur Stuart.  If your daughter will let him alone,
+he will marry Alice.  Surely the illegitimate child should give way
+to the legitimate.
+
+"If you are selfish in this matter, I shall be obliged to tell your
+daughter the true story of her life, and let her be the judge of what
+is right and what is wrong.  I fancy she might have a finer
+perception of duty than you have--she is so much like her father."
+
+The tortured invalid fell back panting on her pillow.  She put out
+her hands with a distracted, imploring gesture.
+
+"Leave me to think," she gasped.  "I never knew that Preston Cheney
+had a daughter; I did not know he lived here.  My life has been so
+quiet, so secluded these many years.  Leave me to think.  I will give
+you my answer in a few days; I will write you after I reflect and
+pray."
+
+The Baroness passed out, and Joy, hastening into the room, found her
+mother in a wild paroxysm of tears.  Late that night Mrs Irving
+called for writing materials; and for many hours she sat propped up
+in bed writing rapidly.
+
+When she had completed her task she called Joy to her side.
+
+"Darling," she said, placing a sealed manuscript in her hands, "I
+want you to keep this seal unbroken so long as you are happy.  I know
+in spite of your deep sorrow at my death, which must come ere long,
+you will find much happiness in life.  You came smiling into
+existence, and no common sorrow can deprive you of the joy which is
+your birthright.  But there are numerous people in the world who may
+strive to wound you after I am gone.  If slanderous tales or cruel
+reports reach your ears, and render you unhappy, break this seal, and
+read the story I have written here.  There are some things which will
+deeply pain you, I know.  Do not force yourself to read them until a
+necessity arises.  I leave you this manuscript as I might leave you a
+weapon for self-defence.  Use it only when you are in need of that
+defence."
+
+The next morning Mrs Irving was weakened by another and most serious
+haemorrhage of the lungs.  Her physician was grave, and urged the
+daughter to be prepared for the worst.
+
+"I fear your mother's life is a matter of days only," he said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+
+The Baroness went directly from the home which she had entered only
+to blight, and sent her card marked "urgent" to Mrs Stuart.
+
+"I have come to tell you an unpleasant story," she said--"a painful
+and revolting story, the early chapters of which were written years
+ago, but the sequel has only just been made known to me.  It concerns
+you and yours vitally; it also concerns me and mine.  I am sure, when
+you have heard the story to the end, you will say that truth is
+stranger than fiction, indeed:  and you will more than ever realise
+the necessity of preventing your son from marrying Joy Irving--a
+child who was born before her mother ever met Mr Irving; and whose
+mother, I daresay, was no more the actual wife of Mr Irving in the
+name of law and decency than she had been the wife of his many
+predecessors."
+
+Startled and horrified at this beginning of the story, Mrs Stuart was
+in a state of excited indignation at the end.  The Baroness had
+magnified facts and distorted truths until she represented Berene
+Dumont as a monster of depravity; a vicious being who had been for a
+short time the recipient of the Baroness's mistaken charity, and who
+had repaid kindness by base ingratitude, and immorality.  The man
+implicated in the scandal which she claimed was the cause of Berene's
+flight was not named in this recital.
+
+Indeed the Baroness claimed that he was more sinned against than
+sinning, and that it was a case of mesmeric influence, or evil eye,
+on the part of the depraved woman.
+
+Mrs Lawrence took pains to avoid any reference to Beryngford also;
+speaking of these occurrences having taken place while she spent a
+summer in a distant interior town, where, "after the death of the
+Baron, she had rented a villa, feeling that she wanted to retire from
+the world."
+
+"My heart is always running away with my head," she remarked, "and I
+thought this poor creature, who was shunned and neglected by all,
+worth saving.  I tried to befriend her, and hoped to waken the better
+nature which every woman possesses, I think, but she was too far gone
+in iniquity.
+
+"You cannot imagine, my dear Mrs Stuart, what a shock it was to me on
+entering that sickroom to-day, my heart full of kindly sympathy, to
+encounter in the invalid the ungrateful recipient of my past favours;
+and to realise that her daughter was no other than the shameful
+offspring of her immoral past.  In spite of the girl's beauty, there
+is an expression about her face which I never liked; and I fully
+understand now why I did not like it.  Of course, Mrs Stuart, this
+story is told to you in strict confidence.  I would not for the world
+have dear Mrs Cheney know of it, nor would I pollute sweet Alice with
+such a tale.  Indeed, Alice would not understand it if she were told,
+for she is as ignorant and innocent as a child in arms of such
+matters.  We have kept her absolutely unspotted from the world.  But
+I knew it was my duty to tell you the whole shameful story.  If worst
+comes to worst, you will be obliged to tell your son perhaps, and if
+he doubts the story send him to me for its verification."
+
+Worst came to the worst before twenty-four hours had passed.  The
+rector received word that Mrs Irving was rapidly failing, and went to
+act the part of spiritual counsellor to the invalid, and sympathetic
+friend to the suffering girl.
+
+When he returned his mother watched his face with eager, anxious
+eyes.  He looked haggard and ill, as if he had passed through a
+severe ordeal.  He could talk of nothing but the beautiful and brave
+girl, who was about to lose her one worshipped companion, and who ere
+many hours passed would stand utterly alone in the world.
+
+"I never saw you so affected before by the troubles and sorrows of
+your parishioners," Mrs Stuart said.  "I wonder, Arthur, why you take
+the sorrows of this family so keenly to heart."
+
+The young rector looked his mother full in the face with calm, sad
+eyes.  Then he said slowly:
+
+"I suppose, mother, it is because I love Joy Irving with all my
+heart.  You must have suspected this for some time.  I know that you
+have, and that the thought has pained you.  You have had other and
+more ambitious aims for me.  Earnest Christian and good woman that
+you are, you have a worldly and conventional vein in your nature,
+which makes you reverence position, wealth and family to a marked
+degree.  You would, I know, like to see me unite myself with some
+royal family, were that possible; failing in that, you would choose
+the daughter of some great and aristocratic house to be my bride.
+Ah, well, dear mother, you will, I know, concede that marriage
+without love is unholy.  I am not able to force myself to love some
+great lady, even supposing I could win her if I did love her."
+
+"But you might keep yourself from forming a foolish and unworthy
+attachment," Mrs Stuart interrupted.  "With your will-power, your
+brain, your reasoning faculties, I see no necessity for your allowing
+a pretty face to run away with your heart.  Nothing could be more
+unsuitable, more shocking, more dreadful, than to have you make that
+girl your wife, Arthur."
+
+Mrs Stuart's voice rose as she spoke, from a quiet reasoning tone to
+a high, excited wail.  She had not meant to say so much.  She had
+intended merely to appeal to her son's affection for her, without
+making any unpleasant disclosures regarding Joy's mother; she thought
+merely to win a promise from him that he would not compromise himself
+at present with the girl, through an excess of sympathy.  But already
+she had said enough to arouse the young man into a defender of the
+girl he loved.
+
+"I think your language quite too strong, mother," he said, with a
+reproving tone in his voice.  "Miss Irving is good, gifted, amiable,
+beautiful, beside being young and full of health.  I am sure there
+could be nothing shocking or dreadful in any man's uniting his
+destiny with such a being, in case he was fortunate enough to win
+her.  The fact that she is poor, and not of illustrious lineage, is
+but a very worldly consideration.  Mr Irving was a most intelligent
+and excellent man, even if he was a grocer.  The American idea of
+aristocracy is grotesquely absurd at the best.  A man may spend his
+time and strength in buying and selling things wherewith to clothe
+the body, and, if he succeeds, his children are admitted to the
+intimacy of princes; but no success can open that door to the
+children of a man who trades in food, wherewith to sustain the body.
+We can none of us afford to put on airs here in America, with
+butchers and Dutch peasant traders only three or four generations
+back of our 'best families.'  As for me, mother, remember my loved
+father was a broker.  That would damn him in the eyes of some people,
+you know, cultured gentleman as he was."
+
+Mrs Stuart sat very still, breathing hard and trying to gain control
+of herself for some moments after her son ceased speaking.  He, too,
+had said more than he intended, and he was sorry that he had hurt his
+mother's feelings as he saw her evident agitation.  But as he rose to
+go forward and beg her pardon, she spoke.
+
+"The person of whom we were speaking has nothing whatever to do with
+Mr Irving," she said.  "Joy Irving was born before her mother was
+married.  Mrs Irving has a most infamous past, and I would rather see
+you dead than the husband of her child.  You certainly would not want
+your children to inherit the propensities of such a grandmother?  And
+remember the curse descends to the third and fourth generations.  If
+you doubt my words, go to the Baroness.  She knows the whole story,
+but has revealed it to no one but me."
+
+Mrs Stuart left the room, closing the door behind her as she went.
+She did not want to be obliged to go over the details of the story
+which she had heard; she had made her statement, one which she knew
+must startle and horrify her son, with his high ideals of womanly
+purity, and she left him to review the situation in silence.  It was
+several hours before the rector left his room.
+
+When he did, he went, not to the Baroness, but directly to Mrs
+Irving.  They were alone for more than an hour.  When he emerged from
+the room, his face was as white as death, and he did not look at Joy
+as she accompanied him to the door.
+
+Two days later Mrs Irving died.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+
+The congregation of St Blank's Church was rendered sad and solicitous
+by learning that its rector was on the eve of nervous prostration,
+and that his physician had ordered a change of air.  He went away in
+company with his mother for a vacation of three months.  The day
+after his departure Joy Irving received a letter from him which read
+as follows:-
+
+
+"My Dear Miss Irving,--You may not in your deep grief have given me a
+thought.  If such a thought has been granted one so unworthy, it must
+have taken the form of surprise that your rector and friend has made
+no call of condolence since death entered your household.  I want to
+write one little word to you, asking you to be lenient in your
+judgment of me.  I am ill in body and mind.  I feel that I am on the
+eve of some distressing malady.  I am not able to reason clearly, or
+to judge what is right and what is wrong.  I am as one tossed between
+the laws of God and the laws made by men, and bruised in heart and in
+soul.  I dare not see you or speak to you while I am in this state of
+mind.  I fear for what I may say or do.  I have not slept since I
+last saw you.  I must go away and gain strength and equilibrium.
+When I return I shall hope to be master of myself.  Until then,
+adieu.  "ARTHUR EMERSON STUART."
+
+
+These wild and incoherent phrases stirred the young girl's heart with
+intense pain and anxiety.  She had known for almost a year that she
+loved the young rector; she had believed that he cared for her, and
+without allowing herself to form any definite thoughts of the future,
+she had lived in a blissful consciousness of loving and being loved,
+which is to the fulfilment of a love dream, like inhaling the perfume
+of a rose, compared to the gathered flower and its attending thorns.
+
+The young clergyman's absence at the time of her greatest need had
+caused her both wonder and pain.  His letter but increased both
+sentiments without explaining the cause.
+
+It increased, too, her love for him, for whenever over-anxiety is
+aroused for one dear to us, our love is augmented.
+
+She felt that the young man was in some great trouble, unknown to
+her, and she longed to be able to comfort him.  Into the maiden's
+tender and ardent affection stole the wifely wish to console and the
+motherly impulse to protect her dear one from pain, which are strong
+elements in every real woman's love.
+
+Mrs Irving had died without writing one word to the Baroness; and
+that personage was in a state of constant excitement until she heard
+of the rector's plans for rest and travel.  Mrs Stuart informed her
+of the conversation which had taken place between herself and her
+son; and of his evident distress of mind, which had reacted on his
+body and made it necessary for him to give up mental work for a
+season.
+
+"I feel that I owe you a debt of gratitude, dear Baroness," Mrs
+Stuart had said.  "Sad as this condition of things is, imagine how
+much worse it would be, had my son, through an excess of sympathy for
+that girl at this time, compromised himself with her before we
+learned the terrible truth regarding her birth.  I feel sure my son
+will regain his health after a few months' absence, and that he will
+not jeopardise my happiness and his future by any further thoughts of
+this unfortunate girl, who in the meantime may not be here when we
+return."
+
+The Baroness made a mental resolve that the girl should not be there.
+
+While the rector's illness and proposed absence was sufficient
+evidence that he had resolved upon sacrificing his love for Joy on
+the altar of duty to his mother and his calling, yet the Baroness
+felt that danger lurked in the air while Miss Irving occupied her
+present position.  No sooner had Mrs Stuart and her son left the
+city, than the Baroness sent an anonymous letter to the young
+organist.  It read:
+
+
+"I do not know whether your mother imparted the secret of her past
+life to you before she died, but as that secret is known to several
+people, it seems cruelly unjust that you are kept in ignorance of it.
+You are not Mr Irving's child.  You were born before your mother
+married.  While it is not your fault, only your misfortune, it would
+be wise for you to go where the facts are not so well known as in the
+congregation of St Blank's.  There are people in that congregation
+who consider you guilty of a wilful deception in wearing the name you
+do, and of an affront to good taste in accepting the position you
+occupy.  Many people talk of leaving the church on your account.
+Your gifts as a musician would win you a position elsewhere, and as I
+learn that your mother's life was insured for a considerable sum, I
+am sure you are able to seek new fields where you can bide your
+disgrace.
+
+"A WELL-WISHER."
+
+
+Quivering with pain and terror, the young girl cast the letter into
+the fire, thinking that it was the work of one of those half-crazed
+beings whose mania takes the form of anonymous letters to unoffending
+people.  Only recently such a person had been brought into the courts
+for this offence.  It occurred to her also that it might be the work
+of someone who wished to obtain her position as organist of St
+Blank's.  Musicians, she knew, were said to be the most jealous of
+all people, and while she had never suffered from them before, it
+might be that her time had now come to experience the misfortunes of
+her profession.
+
+Tender-hearted and kindly in feeling to all humanity, she felt a
+sickening sense of sorrow and fear at the thought that there existed
+such a secret enemy for her anywhere in the world.
+
+She went out upon the street, and for the first time in her life she
+experienced a sense of suspicion and distrust toward the people she
+met; for the first time in her life, she realised that the world was
+not all kind and ready to give her back the honest friendship and the
+sweet good-will which filled her heart for all her kind.  Strive as
+she would, she could not cast off the depression caused by this vile
+letter.  It was her first experience of this cowardly and despicable
+phase of human malice, and she felt wounded in soul as by a poisoned
+arrow shot in the dark.  And then, suddenly, there came to her the
+memory of her mother's words--"If unhappiness ever comes to you, read
+this letter."
+
+Surely this was the time she needed to read that letter.  That it
+contained some secret of her mother's life she felt sure, and she was
+equally sure that it contained nothing that would cause her to blush
+for that beloved mother.
+
+"Whatever the manuscript may have to reveal to me," she said, "it is
+time that I should know."  She took the package from the hiding
+place, and broke the seal.  Slowly she read it to the end, as if
+anxious to make no error in understanding every phase of the long
+story it related.  Beginning with the marriage of her mother to the
+French professor, Berene gave a detailed account of her own sad and
+troubled life, and the shadow which the father's appetite for drugs
+cast over her whole youth.  "They say," she wrote, "that there is no
+personal devil in existence.  I think this is true; he has taken the
+form of drugs and spirituous liquors, and so his work of devastation
+goes on."  Then followed the story of the sacrilegious marriage to
+save her father from suicide, of her early widowhood; and the proffer
+of the Baroness to give her a home.  Of her life of servitude there,
+her yearning for an education, and her meeting with "Apollo," as she
+designated Preston Cheney.  "For truly he was like the glory of the
+rising day to me, the first to give me hope, courage and unselfish
+aid.  I loved him, I worshipped him.  He loved me, but he strove to
+crush and kill this love because he had worked out an ambitious
+career for himself.  To extricate himself from many difficulties and
+embarrassments, and to further his ambitious dreams, he betrothed
+himself to the daughter of a rich and powerful man.  He made no
+profession of love, and she asked none.  She was incapable of giving
+or inspiring that holy passion.  She only asked to be married.
+
+"I only asked to be loved.  Knowing nothing of the terrible conflict
+in his breast, knowing nothing of his new-made ties, I was wounded to
+the soul by his speaking unkindly to me--words he forced himself to
+speak to hide his real feelings.  And then it was that a strange fate
+caused him to find me fainting, suffering, and praying for death.
+The love in both hearts could no longer be restrained.  Augmented by
+its long control, sharpened by the agony we had both suffered,
+overwhelmed by the surprise of the meeting, we lost reason and
+prudence.  Everything was forgotten save our love.  When it was too
+late I foresaw the anguish and sorrow I must bring into this man's
+life.  I fear it was this thought rather than repentance for sin
+which troubled me.  Well may you ask why I did not think of all this
+before instead of after the error was committed.  Why did not Eve
+realise the consequences of the fall until she had eaten of the
+apple?  Only afterward did I learn of the unholy ties which my lover
+had formed that very day--ties which he swore to me should be broken
+ere another day passed, to render him free to make me his wife in the
+eyes of men, as I already was in the sight of God.
+
+"Yet a strange and sudden resolve came to me as I listened to him.
+Far beyond the thought of my own ruin, rose the consciousness of the
+ruin I should bring upon his life by allowing him to carry out his
+design.  To be his wife, his helpmate, chosen from the whole world as
+one he deemed most worthy and most able to cheer and aid him in
+life's battle--that seemed heaven to me; but to know that by one
+rash, impetuous act of folly, I had placed him in a position where he
+felt that honour compelled him to marry me--why, this thought was
+more bitter than death.  I knew that he loved me; yet I knew, too,
+that by a union with me under the circumstances he would antagonise
+those who were now his best and most influential friends, and that
+his entire career would be ruined.  I resolved to go away; to
+disappear from his life and leave no trace.  If his love was as
+sincere as mine, he would find me; and time would show him some wiser
+way for breaking his new-made fetters than the rash and sudden method
+he now contemplated.  He had forgotten to protect me with his love,
+but I could not forget to protect him.  In every true woman's love
+there is the maternal element which renders sacrifice natural.
+
+"Fate hastened and furthered my plans for departure.  Made aware that
+the Baroness was suspicious of my fault, and learning that my lover
+was suddenly called to the bedside of his fiancee, I made my escape
+from the town and left no trace behind.  I went to that vast haystack
+of lost needles--New York, and effaced Berene Dumont in Mrs Lamont.
+The money left from my father's belongings I resolved to use in
+cultivating my voice.  I advertised for embroidery and fine sewing
+also, and as I was an expert with the needle, I was able to support
+myself and lay aside a little sum each week.  I trimmed hats at a
+small price, and added to my income in various manners, owing to my
+French taste and my deft fingers.
+
+"I was desolate, sad, lonely, but not despairing.  What woman can
+despair when she knows herself loved?  To me that consciousness was a
+far greater source of happiness than would have been the knowledge
+that I was an empress, or the wife of a millionaire, envied by the
+whole world.  I believed my lover would find me in time, that we
+should be reunited.  I believed this until I saw the announcement of
+his marriage in the press, and read that he and his bride had sailed
+for an extended foreign tour; but with this stunning news, there came
+to me the strange, sweet, startling consciousness that you, my
+darling child, were coming to console me.
+
+"I know that under the circumstances I ought to have been borne down
+to the earth with a guilty shame; I ought to have considered you as a
+punishment for my sin--and walked in the valley of humiliation and
+despair.
+
+"But I did not.  I lived in a state of mental exaltation; every
+thought was a prayer, every emotion was linked with religious
+fervour.  I was no longer alone or friendless, for I had you.  I sang
+as I had never sung, and one theatrical manager, who happened to call
+upon my teacher during my lesson hour, offered me a position at a
+good salary at once if I would accept.
+
+"I could not accept, of course, knowing what the coming months were
+to bring to me, but I took his card and promised to write him when I
+was ready to take a position.  You came into life in the depressing
+atmosphere of a city hospital, my dear child, yet even there I was
+not depressed, and your face wore a smile of joy the first time I
+gazed upon it.  So I named you Joy--and well have you worn the name.
+My first sorrow was in being obliged to leave you; for I had to leave
+you with those human angels, the sweet sisters of charity, while I
+went forth to make a home for you.  My voice, as is sometimes the
+case, was richer, stronger and of greater compass after I had passed
+through maternity.  I accepted a position with a travelling
+theatrical company, where I was to sing a solo in one act.  My
+success was not phenomenal, but it WAS success nevertheless.  I
+followed this life for three years, seeing you only at intervals.
+Then the consciousness came to me that without long and profound
+study I could never achieve more than a third-rate success in my
+profession.
+
+"I had dreamed of becoming a great singer; but I learned that a voice
+alone does not make a great singer.  I needed years of study, and
+this would necessitate the expenditure of large sums of money.  I had
+grown heart-sick and disgusted with the annoyances and vulgarity I
+was subjected to in my position.  When you were four years old a good
+man offered me a good home as his wife.  It was the first honest love
+I had encountered, while scores of men had made a pretence of loving
+me during these years.
+
+"I was hungering for a home where I could claim you and have the joy
+of your daily companionship instead of brief glimpses of you at the
+intervals of months.  My voice, never properly trained, was beginning
+to break.  I resolved to put Mr Irving to a test; I would tell him
+the true story of your birth, and if he still wished me to be his
+wife, I would marry him.
+
+"I carried out my resolve, and we were married the day after he had
+heard my story.  I lived a peaceful and even happy life with Mr
+Irving.  He was devoted to you, and never by look, word or act,
+seemed to remember my past.  I, too, at times almost forgot it, so
+strange a thing is the human heart under the influence of time.
+Imagine, then, the shock of remembrance and the tidal wave of
+memories which swept over me when in the lady you brought to call
+upon me I recognised--the Baroness.
+
+"It is because she threatened to tell you that you were not born in
+wedlock that I leave this manuscript for you.  It is but a few weeks
+since you told me the story of Marah Adams, and assured me that you
+thought her mother did right in confessing the truth to her daughter.
+Little did you dream with what painful interest I listened to your
+views on that subject.  Little did I dream that I should so soon be
+called upon to act upon them.
+
+"But the time is now come, and I want no strange hand to deal you a
+blow in the dark; if any part of the story comes to you, I want you
+to know the whole truth.  You will wonder why I have not told you the
+name of your father.  It is strange, but from the hour I knew of his
+marriage, and of your dawning life, I have felt a jealous fear lest
+he should ever take you from me; even after I am gone, I would not
+have him know of your existence and be unable to claim you openly.
+Any acquaintance between you could only result in sorrow.
+
+"I have never blamed him for my past weakness, however I have blamed
+him for his unholy marriage.  Our fault was mutual.  I was no
+ignorant child; while young in years, I had sufficient knowledge of
+human nature to protect myself had I used my will-power and my
+reason.  Like many another woman, I used neither; unlike the
+majority, I did not repent my sin or its consequences.  I have ever
+believed you to be a more divinely born being than any children who
+may have resulted from my lover's unholy marriage.  I die strong in
+the belief.  God bless you, my dear child, and farewell."
+
+Joy sat silent and pale like one in a trance for a long time after
+she had finished reading.  Then she said aloud, "So I am another like
+Marah Adams; it was this knowledge which caused the rector to write
+me that strange letter.  It was this knowledge which sent him away
+without coming to say one word of adieu.  The woman who sent me the
+message, sent it to him also.  Well, I can be as brave as my mother
+was.  I, too, can disappear."
+
+She arose and began silently and rapidly to make preparations for a
+journey.  She felt a nervous haste to get away from something--from
+all things.  Everything stable in the world seemed to have slipped
+from her hold in the last few days.  Home, mother, love, and now hope
+and pride were gone too.  She worked for more than two hours without
+giving vent to even a sigh.  Then suddenly she buried her face in her
+hands and sobbed aloud:  "Oh, mother, mother, you were not ashamed,
+but I am ashamed for you!  Why was I ever born?  God forgive me for
+the sinful thought, but I wish you had lied to me in place of telling
+me the truth."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+
+Just as Mrs Irving had written her story for her daughter to read,
+she told it, in the main, to the rector a few days before her death.
+
+Only once before had the tale passed her lips; then her listener was
+Horace Irving; and his only comment was to take her in his arms and
+place the kiss of betrothal on her lips.  Never again was the painful
+subject referred to between them.  So imbued had Berene Dumont become
+with her belief in the legitimacy of her child, and in her own
+purity, that she felt but little surprise at the calm manner in which
+Mr Irving received her story, and now when the rector of St Blank's
+Church was her listener, she expected the same broad judgment to be
+given her.  But it was the calmness of a great and all-forgiving love
+which actuated Mr Irving, and overcame all other feelings.
+
+Wholly unconventional in nature, caring nothing and knowing little of
+the extreme ideas of orthodox society on these subjects, the girl
+Berene and the woman Mrs Irving had lived a life so wholly secluded
+from the world at large, so absolutely devoid of intimate
+friendships, so absorbed in her own ideals, that she was incapable of
+understanding the conventional opinion regarding a woman with a
+history like hers.
+
+In all those years she had never once felt a sensation of shame.  Mr
+Irving had requested her to rear Joy in the belief that she was his
+child.  As the matter could in no way concern anyone else, Mrs
+Irving's lips had remained sealed on the subject; but not with any
+idea of concealing a disgrace.  She could not associate disgrace with
+her love for Preston Cheney.  She believed herself to be his
+spiritual widow, as it were.  His mortal clay and legal name only
+belonged to his wife.
+
+Mr Irving had met Berene on a railroad train, and had conceived one
+of those sudden and intense passions with which a woman with a past
+often inspires an innocent and unworldly young man.  He was sincerely
+and truly religious by nature, and as spotless as a maiden in mind
+and body.
+
+When he had dreamed of a wife, it was always of some shy, innocent
+girl whom he should woo almost from her mother's arms; some gentle,
+pious maid, carefully reared, who would help him to establish the
+Christian household of his imagination.  He had thought that love
+would first come to him as admiring respect, then tender friendship,
+then love for some such maiden; instead it had swooped down upon him
+in the form of an intense passion for an absolute stranger--a woman
+travelling with a theatrical company.  He was like a sleeper who
+awakens suddenly and finds a scorching midday sun beating upon his
+eyes.  A wrecked freight train upon the track detained for several
+hours the car in which they travelled.  The passengers waived
+ceremony and conversed to pass the time, and Mr Irving learnt
+Berene's name, occupation and destination.  He followed her for a
+week, and at the end of that time asked her hand in marriage.
+
+Even after he had heard the story of her life, he was not deterred
+from his resolve to make her his wife.  All the Christian charity of
+his nature, all its chivalry was aroused, and he believed he was
+plucking a brand from the burning.  He never repented his act.  He
+lived wholly for his wife and child, and for the good he could do
+with them as his faithful allies.  He drew more and more away from
+all the allurements of the world, and strove to rear Joy in what he
+believed to be a purely Christian life, and to make his wife forget,
+if possible, that she had ever known a sorrow.  All of sincere
+gratitude, tenderness, and gentle affection possible for her to feel,
+Berene bestowed upon her husband during his life, and gave to his
+memory after he was gone.
+
+Joy had been excessively fond of Mr Irving, and it was the dread of
+causing her a deep sorrow in the knowledge that she was not his
+child, and the fear that Preston Cheney would in any way interfere
+with her possession of Joy, which had distressed the mother during
+the visit of the Baroness, rather than unwillingness to have her sin
+revealed to her daughter.  Added to this, the intrusion of the
+Baroness into this long hidden and sacred experience seemed a
+sacrilege from which she shrank with horror.  But she now told the
+tale to Arthur Stuart frankly and fearlessly.
+
+He had asked her to confide to him whatever secret existed regarding
+Joy's birth.
+
+"There is a rumour afloat," he said, "that Joy is not Mr Irving's
+child.  I love your daughter, Mrs Irving, and I feel it is my right
+to know all the circumstances of her life.  I believe the story which
+was told my mother to be the invention of some enemy who is jealous
+of Joy's beauty and talents, and I would like to be in a position to
+silence these slanders."
+
+So Mrs Irving told the story to the end; and having told it, she felt
+relieved and happy in the thought that it was imparted to the only
+two people whom it could concern in the future.
+
+No disturbing fear came to her that the rector would hesitate to make
+Joy his wife.  To Berene Dumont, love was the law.  If love existed
+between two souls she could not understand why any convention of
+society should stand in the way of its fulfilment.
+
+Arthur Stuart in his role of spiritual confessor and consoler had
+never before encountered such a phase of human nature.  He had
+listened to many a tale of sin and folly from women's lips, but
+always had the sinner bemoaned her sin, and bitterly repented her
+weakness.  Here instead was what the world would consider a fallen
+woman, who on her deathbed regarded her weakness as her strength, her
+shame as her glory, and who seemed to expect him to take the same
+view of the matter.  When he attempted to urge her to repent, the
+words stuck in his throat.  He left the deathbed of the unfortunate
+sinner without having expressed one of the conflicting emotions which
+filled his heart.  But he left it with such a weight on his soul,
+such distress on his mind that death seemed to him the only way of
+escape from a life of torment.
+
+His love for Joy Irving was not killed by the story he had heard.
+But it had received a terrible shock, and the thought of making her
+his wife with the probability that the Baroness would spread the
+scandal broadcast, and that his marriage would break his mother's
+heart, tortured him.  Added to this were his theories on heredity,
+and the fear that there might, nay, must be, some dangerous tendency
+hidden in the daughter of a mother who had so erred, and who in dying
+showed no comprehension of the enormity of her sin.  Had Mrs Irving
+bewailed her fall, and represented herself as the victim of a wily
+villain, the rector would not have felt so great a fear of the
+daughter's inheritance.  A frail, repentant woman he could pity and
+forgive, but it seemed to him that Mrs Irving was utterly lacking in
+moral nature.  She was spiritually blind.  The thought tortured him.
+To leave Joy at this time without calling to see her seemed base and
+cowardly; yet he dared not trust himself in her presence.  So he sent
+her the strangely worded letter, and went away hoping to be shown the
+path of duty before he returned.
+
+At the end of three months he came home stronger in body and mind.
+He had resolved to compromise with fate; to continue his calls upon
+Joy Irving; to be her friend and rector only, until by the passage of
+time, and the changes which occur so rapidly in every society, the
+scandal in regard to her birth had been forgotten.  And until by
+patience and tenderness, he won his mother's consent to the union.
+He felt that all this must come about as he desired, if he did not
+aggravate his mother's feeling or defy public opinion by too
+precipitate methods.
+
+He could not wholly give up all thoughts of Joy Irving.  She had
+grown to be a part of his hopes and dreams of the future, as she was
+a part of the reality of his present.  But she was very young; he
+could afford to wait, and while he waited to study the girl's
+character, and if he saw any budding shoot which bespoke the maternal
+tree, to prune and train it to his own liking.  For the sake of his
+unborn children he felt it his duty to carefully study any woman he
+thought to make his wife.
+
+But when he reached home, the surprising intelligence awaited him
+that Miss Irving had left the metropolis.  A brief note to the church
+authorities, resigning her position, and saying that she was about to
+leave the city, was all that anyone knew of her.
+
+The rector instituted a quiet search, but only succeeded in learning
+that she had conducted her preparations for departure with the
+greatest secrecy, and that to no one had she imparted her plans.
+
+Whenever a young woman shrouds her actions in the garments of
+secrecy, she invites suspicion.  The people who love to suspect their
+fellow-beings of wrong-doing were not absent on this occasion.
+
+The rector was hurt and wounded by all this, and while he resented
+the intimation from another that Miss Irving's conduct had been
+peculiar and mysterious, he felt it to be so in his own heart.
+
+"Is it her mother's tendency to adventure developing in her?" he
+asked himself.
+
+Yet he wrote her a letter, directing it to her at the old number,
+thinking she would at least leave her address with the post-office
+for the forwarding of mail.  The letter was returned to him from that
+cemetery of many a dear hope, the dead-letter office.  A personal in
+a leading paper failed to elicit a reply.  And then one day six
+months after the disappearance of Joy Irving, the young rector was
+called to the Cheney household to offer spiritual consolation to Miss
+Alice, who believed herself to be dying.  She had been in a decline
+ever since the rector went away for his health.
+
+Since his return she had seen him but seldom, rarely save in the
+pulpit, and for the last six weeks she had been too ill to attend
+divine service.
+
+It was Preston Cheney himself, at home upon one of his periodical
+visits, who sent for the rector, and gravely met him at the door when
+he arrived, and escorted him into his study.
+
+"I am very anxious about my daughter," he said.  "She has been a
+nervous child always, and over-sensitive.  I returned yesterday after
+an absence of some three months in California, to find Alice in bed,
+wasted to a shadow, and constantly weeping.  I cannot win her
+confidence--she has never confided to me.  Perhaps it is my fault;
+perhaps I have not been at home enough to make her realise that the
+relationship of father and daughter is a sacred one.  This morning
+when I was urging her to tell me what grieved her, she remarked that
+there was but one person to whom she could communicate this sorrow--
+her rector.  So, my dear Dr Stuart, I have sent for you.  I will
+conduct you to my child, and I leave her in your hands.  Whatever
+comfort and consolation you can offer, I know will be given.  I hope
+she will not bind you to secrecy; I hope you may be able to tell me
+what troubles her, and advise me how to help her."
+
+It was more than an hour before the rector returned to the library
+where Preston Cheney awaited him.  When the senator heard his
+approaching step, he looked up, and was startled to see the pallor on
+the young man's face.  "You have something sad, something terrible to
+tell me!" he cried.  "What is it?"
+
+The rector walked across the room several times, breathing deeply,
+and with anguish written on his countenance.  Then he took Senator
+Cheney's hand and wrung it.  "I have an embarrassing announcement to
+make to you," he said.  "It is something so surprising, so
+unexpected, that I am completely unnerved."
+
+"You alarm me, more and more," the senator answered.  "What can be
+the secret which my frail child has imparted to you that should so
+distress you?  Speak; it is my right to know."
+
+The rector took another turn about the room, and then came and stood
+facing Senator Cheney.
+
+"Your daughter has conceived a strange passion for me," he said in a
+low voice.  "It is this which has caused her illness, and which she
+says will cause her death, if I cannot return it."
+
+"And you?" asked his listener after a moment's silence.
+
+"I?  Why, I have never thought of your daughter in any such manner,"
+the young man replied.  "I have never dreamed of loving her, or
+winning her love."
+
+"Then do not marry her," Preston Cheney said quietly.  "Marriage
+without love is unholy.  Even to save life it is unpardonable."
+
+The rector was silent, and walked the room with nervous steps.  "I
+must go home and think it all out," he said after a time.  "Perhaps
+Miss Cheney will find her grief less, now that she has imparted it to
+me.  I am alarmed at her condition, and I shall hope for an early
+report from you regarding her."
+
+The report was made twelve hours later.  Miss Cheney was delirious,
+and calling constantly for the rector.  Her physician feared the
+worst.
+
+The rector came, and his presence at once soothed the girl's
+delirium.
+
+"History repeats itself," said Preston Cheney meditatively to
+himself.  "Alice is drawing this man into the net by her alarming
+physical condition, as Mabel riveted the chains about me when her
+mother died.
+
+"But Alice really loves the rector, I think, and she is capable of a
+much stronger passion than her mother ever felt; and the rector loves
+no other woman at least, and so this marriage, if it takes place,
+will not be so wholly wicked and unholy as mine was."
+
+The marriage did take place three months later.  Alice Cheney was not
+the wife whom Mrs Stuart would have chosen for her son, yet she urged
+him to this step, glad to place a barrier for all time between him
+and Joy Irving, whose possible return at any day she constantly
+feared, and whose power over her son's heart she knew was
+undiminished.
+
+Alice Cheney's family was of the best on both sides; there were
+wealth, station, and honour; and a step-grandmamma who could be
+referred to on occasions as "The Baroness."  And there was no
+skeleton to be hidden or excused.
+
+And Arthur Stuart, believing that Alice Cheney's life and reason
+depended upon his making her his wife, resolved to end the bitter
+struggle with his own heart and with fate, and do what seemed to be
+his duty, toward the girl and toward his mother.  When the wedding
+took place, the saddest face at the ceremony, save that of the groom,
+was the face of the bride's father.  But the bride was radiant, and
+Mabel and the Baroness walked in clouds.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+
+Alice did not rally in health or spirits after her marriage, as her
+family, friends and physician had anticipated.  She remained nervous,
+ailing and despondent.
+
+"Should maternity come to her, she would doubtless be very much
+improved in health afterward," the doctor said, and Mabel,
+remembering how true a similar prediction proved in her case, despite
+her rebellion against it, was not sorry when she knew that Alice was
+to become a mother, scarcely a year after her marriage.
+
+But Alice grew more and more despondent as the months passed by; and
+after the birth of her son, the young mother developed dementia of
+the most hopeless kind.  The best specialists in two worlds were
+employed to bring her out of the state of settled melancholy into
+which she had fallen, but all to no avail.  At the end of two years,
+her case was pronounced hopeless.  Fortunately the child died at the
+age of six weeks, so the seed of insanity which in the first Mrs
+Lawrence was simply a case of "nerves," growing into the plant
+hysteria in Mabel, and yielding the deadly fruit of insanity in
+Alice, was allowed by a kind providence to become extinct in the
+fourth generation.
+
+This disaster to his only child caused a complete breaking down of
+spirit and health in Preston Cheney.
+
+Like some great, strongly coupled car, which loses its grip and goes
+plunging down an incline to destruction, Preston Cheney's will-power
+lost its hold on life, and he went down to the valley of death with
+frightful speed.
+
+During the months which preceded his death, Senator Cheney's only
+pleasure seemed to be in the companionship of his son-in-law.  The
+strong attachment between the two men ripened with every day's
+association.  One day the rector was sitting by the invalid's couch,
+reading aloud, when Preston Cheney laid his hand on the young man's
+arm and said:  "Close your book and let me tell you a true story
+which is stranger than fiction.  It is the story of an ambitious man
+and all the disasters which his realised ambition brought into the
+lives of others.  It is a story whose details are known to but two
+beings on earth, if indeed the other being still exists on earth.  I
+have long wanted to tell you this story--indeed, I wanted to tell it
+to you before you made Alice your wife, yet the fear that I would be
+wrecking the life and reason of my child kept me silent.  No doubt if
+I had told you, and you had been influenced by my experience against
+a loveless marriage, I should to-day be blaming myself for her
+condition, which I see plainly now is but the culmination of three
+generations of hysterical women.  But I want to tell you the story
+and urge you to use it as a warning in your position of counsellor
+and friend of ambitious young men.
+
+"No matter what else a man may do for position, don't let him marry a
+woman he does not love, especially if he crucifies a vital passion
+for another, in order to do this."  Then Preston Cheney told the
+story of his life to his son-in-law; and as the tale proceeded, a
+strange interest which increased until it became violent excitement,
+took possession of the rector's brain and heart.  The story was so
+familiar--so very familiar; and at length, when the name of BERENE
+DUMONT escaped the speaker's lips, Arthur Stuart clutched his hands
+and clenched his teeth to keep silent until the end of the story
+came.
+
+"From the hour Berene disappeared, to this very day, no word or
+message ever came from her," the invalid said.  "I have never known
+whether she was dead or alive, married, or, terrible thought, perhaps
+driven into a reckless life by her one false step with me.  This last
+fear has been a constant torture to me all these years.
+
+"The world is cruel in its judgment of woman.  And yet I know that it
+is woman herself who has shaped the opinions of the world regarding
+these matters.  If men had had their way since the world began, there
+would be no virtuous women.  Woman has realised this fact, and she
+has in consequence walled herself about with rules and conventions
+which have in a measure protected her from man.  When any woman
+breaks through these conventions and errs, she suffers the scorn of
+others who have kept these self-protecting and society-protecting
+laws; and, conscious of their scorn, she believes all hope is lost
+for ever.
+
+"The fear that Berene took this view of her one mistake, and plunged
+into a desperate life, has embittered my whole existence.  Never
+before did a man suffer such a mental hell as I have endured for this
+one act of sin and weakness.  Yet the world, looking at my life of
+success, would say if it knew the story, 'Behold how the man goes
+free.'  Free!  Great God! there is no bondage so terrible as that of
+the mind.  I have loved Berene Dumont with a changeless passion for
+twenty-three years, and there has not been a day in all that time
+that I have not during some hours endured the agonies of the damned,
+thinking of all the disasters and misery that might have come into
+her life through me.  Heaven knows I would have married her if she
+had remained.  Strange and intricate as the net was which the devil
+wove about me when I had furnished the cords, I could and would have
+broken through it after that strange night--at once the heaven and
+the hell of my memory--if Berene had remained.  As it was--I married
+Mabel, and you know what a farce, ending in a tragedy, our married
+life has been.  God grant that no worse woes befell Berene; God grant
+that I may meet her in the spirit world and tell her how I loved her
+and longed for her companionship."
+
+The young rector's eyes were streaming with tears, as he reached over
+and clasped the sick man's hands in his.  "You will meet her," he
+said with a choked voice.  "I heard this same story, but without
+names, from Berene Dumont's dying lips more than two years ago.  And
+just as Berene disappeared from you--so her daughter disappeared from
+me; and, God help me, dear father--doubly now my father, I crushed
+out my great passion for the glorious natural child of your love, to
+marry the loveless, wretched and UNNATURAL child of your marriage."
+
+The sick man started up on his couch, his eyes flaming, his cheeks
+glowing with sudden lustre.
+
+"My child--the natural child of Berene's love and mine, you say; oh,
+my God, speak and tell me what you mean; speak before I die of joy so
+terrible it is like anguish."
+
+So then it became the rector's turn to take the part of narrator.
+When the story was ended, Preston Cheney lay weeping like a woman on
+his couch; the first tears he had shed since his mother died and left
+him an orphan of ten.
+
+"Berene living and dying almost within reach of my arms--almost
+within sound of my voice!" he cried.  "Oh, why did I not find her
+before the grave closed between us?--and why did no voice speak from
+that grave to tell me when I held my daughter's hand in mine?--my
+beautiful child, no wonder my heart went out to her with such a gush
+of tenderness; no wonder I was fired with unaccountable anger and
+indignation when Mabel and Alice spoke unkindly of her.  Do you
+remember how her music stirred me?  It was her mother's heart
+speaking to mine through the genius of our child.
+
+"Arthur, you must find her--you must find her for me!  If it takes my
+whole fortune I must see my daughter, and clasp her in my arms before
+I die."
+
+But this happiness was not to be granted to the dying man.  Overcome
+by the excitement of this new emotion, he grew weaker and weaker as
+the next few days passed, and at the end of the fifth day his spirit
+took its flight, let us hope to join its true mate.
+
+It had been one of his dying requests to have his body taken to
+Beryngford and placed beside that of Judge Lawrence.
+
+The funeral services took place in the new and imposing church
+edifice which had been constructed recently in Beryngford.  The quiet
+interior village had taken a leap forward during the last few years,
+and was now a thriving city, owing to the discovery of valuable stone
+quarries in its borders.
+
+The Baroness and Mabel had never been in Beryngford since the death
+of Judge Lawrence many years before; and it was with sad and bitter
+hearts that both women recalled the past and realised anew the
+disasters which had wrecked their dearest hopes and ambitions.
+
+The Baroness, broken in spirit and crushed by the insanity of her
+beloved Alice, now saw the form of the man whom she had hopelessly
+loved for so many years, laid away to crumble back to dust; and yet,
+the sorrows which should have softened her soul, and made her heart
+tender toward all suffering humanity, rendered her pitiless as the
+grave toward one lonely and desolate being before the shadows of
+night had fallen upon the grave of Preston Cheney.
+
+When the funeral march pealed out from the grand new organ during the
+ceremonies in the church, both the Baroness and the rector, absorbed
+as they were in mournful sorrow, started with surprise.  Both gazed
+at the organ loft; and there, before the great instrument, sat the
+graceful figure of Joy Irving.  The rector's face grew pale as the
+corpse in the casket; the withered cheek of the Baroness turned a
+sickly yellow, and a spark of anger dried the moisture in her eyes.
+
+Before the night had settled over the thriving city of Beryngford,
+the Baroness dropped a point of virus from the lancet of her tongue
+to poison the social atmosphere where Joy Irving had by the merest
+accident of fate made her new home, and where in the office of
+organist she had, without dreaming of her dramatic situation, played
+the requiem at the funeral of her own father.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+
+Joy Irving had come to Beryngford at the time when the discoveries of
+the quarries caused that village to spring into sudden prominence as
+a growing city.  Newspaper accounts of the building of the new
+church, and the purchase of a large pipe organ, chanced to fall under
+her eye just as she was planning to leave the scene of her
+unhappiness.
+
+"I can at least only fail if I try for the position of organist
+there," she said, "and if I succeed in this interior town, I can hide
+myself from all the world without incurring heavy expense."
+
+So all unconsciously Joy fled from the metropolis to the very place
+from which her mother had vanished twenty-two years before.
+
+She had been the organist in the grand new Episcopalian Church now
+for three years; and she had made many cordial acquaintances who
+would have become near friends, if she had encouraged them.  But
+Joy's sweet and trustful nature had received a great shock in the
+knowledge of the shadow which hung about her birth.  Where formerly
+she had expected love and appreciation from everyone she met, she now
+shrank from forming new ties, lest new hurts should await her.
+
+She was like a flower in whose perfect heart a worm had coiled.  Her
+entire feeling about life had undergone a change.  For many weeks
+after her self-imposed exile, she had been unable to think of her
+mother without a mingled sense of shame and resentment; the adoring
+love she had borne this being seemed to die with her respect.  After
+a time the bitterness of this sentiment wore away, and a pitying
+tenderness and sorrow took its place; but from her heart the twin
+angels, Love and Forgiveness, were absent.  She read her mother's
+manuscript over, and tried to argue herself into the philosophy which
+had sustained the author of her being through all these years.
+
+But her mind was shaped far more after the conventional pattern of
+her paternal ancestors, who had been New England Puritans, and she
+could not view the subject as Berene had viewed it.
+
+In spite of the ideality which her mother had woven about him, Joy
+entertained the most bitter contempt for the unknown man who was her
+father, and the whole tide of her affections turned lavishly upon the
+memory of Mr Irving, whom she felt now more than ever so worthy of
+her regard.
+
+Reason as she would on the supremacy of love over law, yet the bold,
+unpleasant fact remained that she was the child of an unwedded
+mother.  She shrank in sensitive pain from having this story follow
+her, and the very consciousness that her mother's experience had been
+an exceptional one, caused her the greater dread of having it known
+and talked of as a common vulgar liaison.
+
+There are two things regarding which the world at large never asks
+any questions--namely, How a rich man made his money, and how an
+erring woman came to fall.  It is enough for the world to know that
+he is rich--that fact alone opens all doors to him, as the fact that
+the woman has erred closes them to her.
+
+There was a common vulgar creature in Beryngford, whose many amours
+and bold defiance of law and order rendered her name a synonym for
+indecency.  This woman had begun her career in early girlhood as a
+mercenary intriguer; and yet Joy Irving knew that the majority of
+people would make small distinctions between the conduct of this
+creature and that of her mother, were the facts of Berene's life and
+her own birth to be made public.
+
+The fear that the story would follow her wherever she went became an
+absolute dread with her, and caused her to live alone and without
+companions, in the midst of people who would gladly have become her
+warm friends, had she permitted.
+
+Her book of "Impressions" reflected the changes which had taken place
+in the complexion of her mind during these years.  Among its entries
+were the following:-
+
+
+People talk about following a divine law of love, when they wish to
+excuse their brute impulses and break social and civil codes.
+
+No love is sanctioned by God, which shatters human hearts.
+
+Fathers are only distantly related to their children; love for the
+male parent is a matter of education.
+
+The devil macadamises all his pavements.
+
+A natural child has no place in an unnatural world.
+
+When we cannot respect our parents, it is difficult to keep our ideal
+of God.
+
+Love is a mushroom, and lust is its poisonous counterpart.
+
+It is a pity that people who despise civilisation should be so
+uncivil as to stay in it.  There is always darkest Africa.
+
+The extent of a man's gallantry depends on the goal.  He follows the
+good woman to the borders of Paradise and leaves her with a polite
+bow; but he follows the bad woman to the depths of hell.
+
+It is easy to trust in God until he permits us to suffer.  The
+dentist seems a skilled benefactor to mankind when we look at his
+sign from the street.  When we sit in his chair he seems a brute,
+armed with devil's implements.
+
+An anonymous letter is the bastard of a diseased mind.
+
+An envious woman is a spark from Purgatory.
+
+The consciousness that we have anything to hide from the world
+stretches a veil between our souls and heaven.  We cannot reach up to
+meet the gaze of God, when we are afraid to meet the eyes of men.
+
+It may be all very well for two people to make their own laws, but
+they have no right to force a third to live by them.
+
+Virtue is very secretive about her payments, but the whole world
+hears of it when vice settles up.
+
+We have a sublime contempt for public opinion theoretically so long
+as it favours us.  When it turns against us we suffer intensely from
+the loss of what we claimed to despise.
+
+When the fruit must apologise for the tree, we do not care to save
+the seed.
+
+It is only when God and man have formed a syndicate and agreed upon
+their laws, that marriage is a safe investment.
+
+The love that does not protect its object would better change its
+name.
+
+When we say OF people what we would not say TO them, we are either
+liars or cowards.
+
+The enmity of some people is the greatest compliment they can pay us.
+
+
+It was in thoughts like these that Joy relieved her heart of some of
+the bitterness and sorrow which weighed upon it.  And day after day
+she bore about with her the dread of having the story of her mother's
+sin known in her new home.
+
+As our fears, like our wishes, when strong and unremitting, prove to
+be magnets, the result of Joy's despondent fears came in the scandal
+which the Baroness had planted and left to flourish and grow in
+Beryngford after her departure.  An hour before the services began,
+on the day of Preston Cheney's burial, Joy learned at whose rites she
+was to officiate as organist.  A pang of mingled emotions shot
+through her heart at the sound of his name.  She had seen this man
+but a few times, and spoken with him but once; yet he had left a
+strong impression upon her memory.  She had felt drawn to him by his
+sympathetic face and atmosphere, the sorrow of his kind eyes, and the
+keen appreciation he had shown in her art; and just in the measure
+that she had been attracted by him, she had been repelled by the
+three women to whom she was presented at the same time.  She saw them
+all again mentally, as she had seen them on that and many other days.
+Mrs Cheney and Alice, with their fretful, plain, dissatisfied faces,
+and their over-burdened costumes, and the Baroness, with her cruel
+heart gazing through her worn mask of defaced beauty.
+
+She had been conscious of a feeling of overwhelming pity for the
+kind, attractive man who made the fourth of that quartette.  She knew
+that he had obtained honours and riches from life, but she pitied him
+for his home environment.  She had felt so thankful for her own happy
+home life at the time; and she remembered, too, the sweet hope that
+lay like a closed-up bud in the bottom of her heart that day, as the
+quartette moved away and left her standing alone with Arthur Stuart.
+
+It was only a few weeks later that the end came to all her dreams,
+through that terrible anonymous letter.
+
+It was the Baroness who had sent it, she knew--the Baroness whose
+early hatred for her mother had descended to the child.  "And now I
+must sit in the same house with her again," she said, "and perhaps
+meet her face to face; and she may tell the story here of my mother's
+shame, even as I have felt and feared it must yet be told.  How
+strange that a 'love child' should inspire so much hatred!"
+
+Joy had carefully refrained from reading New York papers ever since
+she left the city; and she had no correspondents.  It was her wish
+and desire to utterly sink and forget the past life there.  Therefore
+she knew nothing of Arthur Stuart's marriage to the daughter of
+Preston Cheney.  She thought of the rector as dead to her.  She
+believed he had given her up because of the stain upon her birth,
+and, bitter as the pain had been, she never blamed him.  She had
+fought with her love for him and believed that it was buried in the
+grave of all other happy memories.
+
+But as the earth is wrenched open by volcanic eruptions and long
+buried corpses are revealed again to the light of day, so the
+unexpected sight of Arthur Stuart, as he took his place beside Mabel
+and the Baroness during the funeral services, revealed all the pent-
+up passion of her heart to her own frightened soul.
+
+To strong natures, the greater the inward excitement the more quiet
+the exterior; and Jay passed through the services, and performed her
+duties, without betraying to those about her the violent emotions
+under which she laboured.
+
+The rector of Beryngford Church requested her to remain for a few
+moments, and consult with him on a matter concerning the next week's
+musical services.  It was from him Joy learned the relation which
+Arthur Stuart bore to the dead man, and that Beryngford was the
+former home of the Baroness.
+
+Her mother's manuscript had carefully avoided all mention of names of
+people or places.  Yet Joy realised now that she must be living in
+the very scene of her mother's early life; she longed to make
+inquiries, but was prevented by the fear that she might hear her
+mother's name mentioned disrespectfully.
+
+The days that followed were full of sharp agony for her.  It was not
+until long afterward that she was able to write her "impressions" of
+that experience.  In the extreme hour of joy or agony we formulate no
+impressions; we only feel.  We neither analyse nor describe our
+friends or enemies when face to face with them, but after we leave
+their presence.  When the day came that she could write, some of her
+reflections were thus epitomised:
+
+
+Love which rises from the grave to comfort us, possesses more of the
+demons' than the angels' power.  It terrifies us with its
+supernatural qualities and deprives us temporarily of our reason.
+
+Suppressed steam and suppressed emotion are dangerous things to deal
+with.
+
+The infant who wants its mother's breast, and the woman who wants her
+lover's arms, are poor subjects to reason with.  Though you tell the
+former that fever has poisoned the mother's milk, or the latter that
+destruction lies in the lover's embrace, one heeds you no more than
+the other.
+
+The accumulated knowledge of ages is sometimes revealed by a kiss.
+Where wisdom is bliss, it is folly to be ignorant.
+
+Some of us have to crucify our hearts before we find our souls.
+
+A woman cannot fully know charity until she has met passion; but too
+intimate an acquaintance with the latter destroys her appreciation of
+all the virtues.
+
+To feel temptation and resist it, renders us liberal in our judgment
+of all our kind.  To yield to it, fills us with suspicion of all.
+
+There is an ecstatic note in pain which is never reached in
+happiness.
+
+The death of a great passion is a terrible thing, unless the dawn of
+a greater truth shines on the grave.
+
+Love ought to have no past tense.
+
+Love partakes of the feline nature.  It has nine lives.
+
+It seems to be difficult for some of us to distinguish between
+looseness of views, and charitable judgments.  To be sorry for
+people's sins and follies and to refuse harsh criticism is right; to
+accept them as a matter of course is wrong.
+
+Love and sorrow are twins, and knowledge is their nurse.
+
+The pathway of the soul is not a steady ascent, but hilly and broken.
+We must sometimes go lower, in order to get higher.
+
+That which is to-day, and will be to-morrow, must have been
+yesterday.  I know that I live, I believe that I shall live again,
+and have lived before.
+
+Earth life is the middle rung of a long ladder which we climb in the
+dark.  Though we cannot see the steps below, or above, they exist all
+the same.
+
+The materialist denying spirit is like the burr of the chestnut
+denying the meat within.
+
+The inevitable is always right.
+
+Prayer is a skeleton key that opens unexpected doors.  We may not
+find the things we came to seek, but we find other treasures.
+
+The pessimist belongs to God's misfit counter.
+
+Art, when divorced from Religion, always becomes a wanton.
+
+To forget benefits we have received is a crime.  To remember benefits
+we have bestowed is a greater one.
+
+To some men a woman is a valuable book, carefully studied and
+choicely guarded behind glass doors.  To others, she is a daily
+paper, idly scanned and tossed aside.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+
+While Joy battled with her sorrow during the days following Preston
+Cheney's burial, she woke to the consciousness that her history was
+known in Beryngford.  The indescribable change in the manner of her
+acquaintances, the curiosity in the eyes of some, the insolence or
+familiarity of others, all told her that her fears were realised; and
+then there came a letter from the church authorities requesting her
+to resign her position as organist.
+
+This letter came to the young girl on one of those dreary autumn
+nights when all the desolation of the dying summer, and none of the
+exhilaration of the approaching winter, is in the air.  She had been
+labouring all day under a cloud of depression which hovered over her
+heart and brain and threatened to wholly envelop her; and the letter
+from the church committee cut her heart like a poniard stroke.
+Sometimes we are able to bear a series of great disasters with
+courage and equanimity, while we utterly collapse under some slight
+misfortune.  Joy had been a heroine in her great sorrows, but now in
+the undeserved loss of her position as church organist, she felt
+herself unable longer to cope with Fate.
+
+"There's no place for me anywhere," she said to herself.  Had she
+known the truth, that the Baroness had represented her to the
+committee as a fallen woman of the metropolis, who had left the city
+for the city's good, the letter would not have seemed to her so
+cruelly unjust and unjustifiable.
+
+Bitter as had been her suffering at the loss of Arthur Stuart from
+her life, she had found it possible to understand his hesitation to
+make her his wife.  With his fine sense of family pride, and his
+reverence for the estate of matrimony, his belief in heredity, it
+seemed quite natural to her that he should be shocked at the
+knowledge of the conditions under which she was born; and the thought
+that her disappearance from his life was helping him to solve a
+painful problem, had at times, before this unexpected sight of him,
+rendered her almost happy in her lonely exile.  She had grown
+strangely fond of Beryngford--of the old streets and homes which she
+knew must have been familiar to her mother's eyes, of the new church
+whose glorious voiced organ gave her so many hours of comfort and
+relief of soul, of the tiny apartment where she and her heart
+communed together.  She was catlike in her love of places, and now
+she must tear herself away from all these surroundings and seek some
+new spot wherein to hide herself and her sorrows.
+
+It was like tearing up a half-rooted flower, already drooping from
+one transplanting.  She said to herself that she could never survive
+another change.  She read the letter over which lay in her hand, and
+tears began to slowly well from her eyes.  Joy seldom wept; but now
+it seemed to her she was some other person, who stood apart and wept
+tears of sympathy for this poor girl, Joy Irving, whose life was so
+hemmed about with troubles, none of which were of her own making; and
+then, like a dam which suddenly gives way and allows a river to
+overflow, a great storm of sobs shook her frame, and she wept as she
+had never wept before; and with her tears there came rushing back to
+her heart all the old love and sorrow for the dead mother which had
+so long been hidden under her burden of shame; and all the old
+passion and longing for the man whose insane wife she knew to be a
+more hopeless obstacle between them than this mother's history had
+proven.
+
+"Mother, Arthur, pity me, pity me!" she cried.  "I am all alone, and
+the strife is so terrible.  I have never meant to harm any living
+thing!  Mother Arthur, GOD, how can you all desert me so?"
+
+At last, exhausted, she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
+
+She awoke the following morning with an aching head, and a heart
+wherein all emotions seemed dead save a dull despair.  She was
+conscious of only one wish, one desire--a longing to sit again in the
+organ loft, and pour forth her soul in one last farewell to that
+instrument which had grown to seem her friend, confidant and lover.
+
+She battled with her impulse as unreasonable and unwise, till the day
+was well advanced.  But it grew stronger with each hour; and at last
+she set forth under a leaden sky and through a dreary November rain
+to the church.
+
+Her head throbbed with pain, and her hands were hot and feverish, as
+she seated herself before the organ and began to play.  But with the
+first sounds responding to her touch, she ceased to think of bodily
+discomfort.
+
+The music was the voice of her own soul, uttering to God all its
+desolation, its anguish and its despair.  Then suddenly, with no
+seeming volition of her own, it changed to a passion of human love,
+human desire; the sorrow of separation, the strife with the emotions,
+the agony of renunciation were all there; and the November rain,
+beating in wild gusts against the window-panes behind the musician,
+lent a fitting accompaniment to the strains.
+
+She had been playing for perhaps an hour, when a sudden exhaustion
+seized upon her, and her hands fell nerveless and inert upon her lap;
+she dropped her chin upon her breast and closed her eyes.  She was
+drunken with her own music.
+
+When she opened them again a few moments later, they fell upon the
+face of Arthur Stuart, who stood a few feet distant regarding her
+with haggard eyes.  Unexpected and strange as his presence was, Joy
+felt neither surprise nor wonder.  She had been thinking of him so
+intensely, he had been so interwoven with the music she had been
+playing, that his bodily presence appeared to her as a natural
+result.  He was the first to speak; and when he spoke she noticed
+that his voice sounded hoarse and broken, and that his face was drawn
+and pale.
+
+"I came to Beryngford this morning expressly to see you, Joy," he
+said.  "I have many things to say to you.  I went to your residence
+and was told by the maid that I would find you here.  I followed, as
+you see.  We have had many meetings in church edifices, in organ
+lofts.  It seems natural to find you in such a place, but I fear it
+will be unnatural and unfitting to say to you here, what I came to
+say.  Shall we return to your home?"
+
+His eyes shone strangely from dusky caverns, and there were deep
+lines about his mouth.
+
+"He, too, has suffered," thought Joy; "I have not borne it all
+alone."  Then she said aloud:
+
+"We are quite undisturbed here; I know of nothing I could listen to
+in my room which I could not hear you say in this place.  Go on."
+
+He looked at her silently for a moment, his cheeks pale, his breast
+heaving.  Before he came to Beryngford, he had fought his battle
+between religion and human passion, and passion had won.  He had cast
+under his feet every principle and tradition in which he had been
+reared, and resolved to live alone henceforth for the love and
+companionship of one human being, could he obtain her consent to go
+with him.
+
+Yet for the moment, he hesitated to speak the words he had resolved
+to utter, under the roof of a house of God, so strong were the
+influences of his early training and his habits of thought.  But as
+his eyes feasted upon the face before him, his hesitation vanished,
+and he leaned toward her and spoke.  "Joy," he said, "three years ago
+I went away and left you in sorrow, alone, because I was afraid to
+brave public opinion, afraid to displease my mother and ask you to be
+my wife.  The story your mother told me of your birth, a story she
+left in manuscript for you to read, made a social coward of me.  I
+was afraid to take a girl born out of wedlock to be my life
+companion, the mother of my children.  Well, I married a girl born in
+wedlock; and where is my companion?"  He paused and laughed
+recklessly.  Then he went on hurriedly:  "She is in an asylum for the
+insane.  I am chained to a corpse for life.  I had not enough moral
+courage three-years ago to make you my wife.  But I have moral
+courage enough now to come here and ask you to go with me to
+Australia, and begin a new life together.  My mother died a year ago.
+I donned the surplice at her bidding.  I will abandon it at the
+bidding of Love.  I sinned against heaven in marrying a woman I did
+not love.  I am willing to sin against the laws of man by living with
+the woman I do love; will you go with me, Joy?"  There was silence
+save for the beating of the rain against the stained window, and the
+wailing of the wind.
+
+Joy was in a peculiarly overwrought condition of mind and body.  Her
+hours of extravagant weeping the previous night, followed by a day of
+fasting, left her nervous system in a state to be easily excited by
+the music she had been playing.  She was virtually intoxicated with
+sorrow and harmony.  She was incapable of reasoning, and conscious
+only of two things--that she must leave Beryngford, and that the man
+whom she had loved with her whole heart for five years, was asking
+her to go with him; to be no more homeless, unloved, and alone, but
+his companion while life should last.
+
+"Answer me, Joy," he was pleading.  "Answer me."
+
+She moved toward the stairway that led down to the street door; and
+as she flitted by him, she said, looking him full in the eyes with a
+slow, grave smile, "Yes, Arthur, I will go with you."
+
+He sprang toward her with a wild cry of joy, but she was already
+flying down the stairs and out upon the street.
+
+When he joined her, they walked in silence through the rain to her
+door, neither speaking a word, until he would have followed her
+within.  Then she laid her hand upon his shoulder and said gently but
+firmly:  "Not now, Arthur; we must not see each other again until we
+go away.  Write me where to meet you, and I will join you within
+twenty-four hours.  Do not urge me--you must obey me this once--
+afterward I will obey you.  Good-night."
+
+As she closed the door upon him, he said, "Oh, Joy, I have so much to
+tell you.  I promised your father when he was dying that I would find
+you; I swore to myself that when I found you I would never leave you,
+save at your own command.  I go now, only because you bid me go.
+When we meet again, there must be no more parting; and you shall hear
+a story stranger than the wildest fiction--the story of your father's
+life.  Despite your mother's secretiveness regarding this portion of
+her history, the knowledge has come to me in the most unexpected
+manner, from the lips of the man himself."
+
+Joy listened dreamily to the words he was saying.  Her father--she
+was to know who her father was?  Well, it did not matter much to her
+now--father, mother, what were they, what was anything save the fact
+that he had come back to her and that he loved her?
+
+She smiled silently into his eyes.  Glance became entangled with
+glance, and would not be separated.
+
+He pushed open the almost closed door and she felt herself enveloped
+with arms and lips.
+
+A second later she stood alone, leaning dizzily against the door;
+heart, brain and blood in a mad riot of emotion.
+
+Then she fell into a chair and covered her burning face with her
+hands as she whispered, "Mother, mother, forgive me--I understand--I
+understand."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+
+The first shock of the awakened emotions brings recklessness to some
+women, and to others fear.
+
+The more frivolous plunge forward like the drunken man who leaps from
+the open window believing space is water.
+
+The more intense draw back, startled at the unknown world before
+them.
+
+The woman who thinks love is all ideality is more liable to follow
+into undreamed-of chasms than she who, through the complexity of her
+own emotions, realises its grosser elements.
+
+It was long after midnight when Joy fell into a heavy sleep, the
+night of Arthur Stuart's visit.  She heard the drip of the dreary
+November rain upon the roof, and all the light and warmth seemed
+stricken from the universe save the fierce fire in her own heart.
+
+When she woke in the late morning, great splashes of sunlight were
+leaping and quivering like living things across the foot of her bed;
+she sprang up, dazed for a moment by the flood of light in the room,
+and went to the window and looked out upon a sun-kissed world smiling
+in the arms of a perfect Indian summer day.
+
+A happy little sparrow chirped upon the window sill, and some
+children ran across the street bare-headed, exulting in the soft air.
+All was innocence and sweetness.  Mind and morals are greatly
+influenced by weather.  Many things seem right in the fog and gloom,
+which we know to be wrong in the clear light of a sunny morning.  The
+events of the previous day came back to Joy's mind as she stood by
+the window, and stirred her with a sense of strangeness and terror.
+The thought of the step she had resolved to take brought a sudden
+trembling to her limbs.  It seemed to her the eyes of God were
+piercing into her heart, and she was afraid.
+
+Joy had from her early girlhood been an earnest and sincere follower
+of the Christian religion.  The embodiment of love and sympathy
+herself, it was natural for her to believe in the God of Love and to
+worship Him in outward forms, as well as in her secret soul.  It was
+the deep and earnest fervour of religion in her heart, which rendered
+her music so unusual and so inspiring.  There never was, is not and
+never can be greatness in any art where religious feeling is lacking.
+
+There must be the consciousness of the Infinite, in the mind which
+produces infinite results.
+
+Though the artist be gifted beyond all other men, though he toil
+unremittingly, so long as he says, "Behold what I, the gifted and
+tireless toiler, can achieve," he shall produce but mediocre and
+ephemeral results.  It is when he says reverently, "Behold what
+powers greater than I shall achieve through me, the instrument," that
+he becomes great and men marvel at his power.
+
+Joy's religious nature found expression in her music, and so
+something more than a harmony of beautiful sounds impressed her
+hearers.
+
+The first severe blow to her faith in the church as a divine
+institution, was when her rector and her lover left her alone in the
+hour of her darkest trials, because he knew the story of her mother's
+life.  His hesitancy to make her his wife she understood, but his
+absolute desertion of her at such a time, seemed inconsistent with
+his calling as a disciple of the Christ.
+
+The second blow came in her dismissal from the position of organist
+at the Beryngford Church, after the presence of the Baroness in the
+town.
+
+A disgust for human laws, and a bitter resentment towards society
+took possession of her.  When a gentle and loving nature is roused to
+anger and indignation, it is often capable of extremes of action; and
+Arthur Stuart had made his proposition of flight to Joy Irving in an
+hour when her high-wrought emotions and intensely strung nerves made
+any desperate act possible to her.  The sight of his face, with its
+evidences of severe suffering, awoke all her smouldering passion for
+the man; and the thought that he was ready to tread his creed under
+his feet and to defy society for her sake, stirred her with a wild
+joy.  God had seemed very far away, and human love was very precious;
+too precious to be thrown away in obedience to any man-made law.
+
+But somehow this morning God seemed nearer, and the consciousness of
+what she had promised to do terrified her.  Disturbed by her
+thoughts, she turned towards her toilet-table and caught sight of the
+letter of dismissal from the church committee.  It acted upon her
+like an electric shock.  Resentment and indignation re-enthroned
+themselves in her bosom.
+
+"Is it to cater to the opinions and prejudices of people like THESE
+that I hesitate to take the happiness offered me?" she cried, as she
+tore the letter in bits and cast it beneath her feet.  Arthur Stuart
+appeared to her once more, in the light of a delivering angel.  Yes,
+she would go with him to the ends of the earth.  It was her
+inheritance to lead a lawless life.  Nothing else was possible for
+her.  God must see how she had been hemmed in by circumstances, how
+she had been goaded and driven from the paths of peace and purity
+where she had wished to dwell.  God was not a man, and He would be
+merciful in judging her.
+
+She sent her landlady two months' rent in advance, and notice of her
+departure, and set hurriedly about her preparations.
+
+
+Twenty-five years before, when Berene Dumont disappeared from
+Beryngford, she had, quite unknown to herself, left one devoted
+though humble friend behind, who sincerely mourned her absence.
+
+Mrs Connor liked to be spoken of as "the wash-lady at the Palace."
+Yet proud as she was of this appellation, she was not satisfied with
+being an excellent laundress.  She was a person of ambitions.  To be
+the owner of a lodging-house, like the Baroness, was her leading
+ambition, and to possess a "peany" for her young daughter Kathleen
+was another.
+
+She kept her mind fixed on these two achievements, and she worked
+always for those two results.  And as mind rules matter, so the
+laundress became in time the landlady of a comfortable and
+respectable lodging-house, and in its parlour a piano was the chief
+object of furniture.
+
+Kathleen Connor learned to play; and at last to the joy of the
+lodgers, she married and bore her "peany" away with her.  During the
+time when Mrs Connor was the ambitious "wash-lady" at the Palace,
+Berene Dumont came to live there; and every morning when the young
+woman carried the tray down to the kitchen after having served the
+Baroness with her breakfast, she offered Mrs Connor a cup of coffee
+and a slice of toast.
+
+This simple act of thoughtfulness from the young dependant touched
+the Irishwoman's tender heart and awoke her lasting gratitude.  She
+had heard Berene's story, and she had been prepared to mete out to
+her that disdainful dislike which Erin almost invariably feels
+towards France.  Realising that the young widow was by birth and
+breeding above the station of housemaid, Mrs Connor and the servants
+had expected her to treat them with the same lofty airs which the
+Baroness made familiar to her servants.  When, instead, Berene
+toasted the bread for Mrs Connor, and poured the coffee and placed it
+on the kitchen table with her own hands, the heart of the wash-lady
+melted in her ample breast.  When the heart of the daughter of Erin
+melts, it permeates her whole being; and Mrs Connor became a secret
+devotee at the shrine of Miss Dumont.
+
+She had never entertained cordial feelings toward the Baroness.  When
+a society lady--especially a titled one--enters into competition with
+working people, and yet refuses to associate with them, it always
+incites their enmity.  The working population of Beryngford, from the
+highest to the lowest grades, felt a sense of resentment toward the
+Baroness, who in her capacity of landlady still maintained the airs
+of a grand dame, and succeeded in keeping her footing with some of
+the most fashionable people in the town.
+
+Added to these causes of dislike, the Baroness was, like many
+wealthier people, excessively close in her dealings with working
+folk, haggling over a few cents or a few moments of wasted time,
+while she was generosity itself in association with her equals.
+
+Mrs Connor, therefore, felt both pity and sympathy for Miss Dumont,
+whose position in the Palace she knew to be a difficult one; and when
+Preston Cheney came upon the scene the romantic mind of the motherly
+Irishwoman fashioned a future for the young couple which would have
+done credit to the pen of a Mrs Southworth.
+
+Mr Cheney always had a kind word for the laundress, and a tip as
+well; and when Mrs Connor's dream of seeing him act the part of the
+Prince and Berene the Cinderella of a modern fairy story, ended in
+the disappearance of Miss Dumont and the marriage of Mr Cheney to
+Mabel Lawrence, the unhappy wash-lady mourned unceasingly.
+
+Ten years of hard, unremitting toil and rigid economy passed away
+before Mrs Connor could realise her ambition of becoming a landlady
+in the purchase of a small house which contained but four rooms,
+three of which were rented to lodgers.  The increase in the value of
+her property during the next five years, left the fortunate
+speculator with a fine profit when she sold her house at the end of
+that time, and rented a larger one; and as she was an excellent
+financier, it was not strange that, at the time Joy Irving appeared
+on the scene, "Mrs Connor's apartments" were as well and favourably
+known in Beryngford, if not as distinctly fashionable, as the Palace
+had been more than twenty years ago.
+
+So it was under the roof of her mother's devoted and faithful mourner
+that the unhappy young orphan had found a home when she came to hide
+herself away from all who had ever known her.
+
+The landlady experienced the same haunting sensation of something
+past and gone when she looked on the girl's beautiful face, which had
+so puzzled the Baroness; a something which drew and attracted the
+warm heart of the Irishwoman, as the magnet draws the steel.  Time
+and experience had taught Mrs Connor to be discreet in her treatment
+of her tenants; to curb her curiosity and control her inclination to
+sociability.  But in the case of Miss Irving she had found it
+impossible to refrain from sundry kindly acts which were not included
+in the terms of the contract.  Certain savoury dishes found their way
+mysteriously to Miss Irving's menage, and flowers appeared in her
+room as if by magic, and in various other ways the good heart and
+intentions of Mrs Connor were unobtrusively expressed toward her
+favourite tenant.  Joy had taken a suite of four rooms, where, with
+her maid, she lived in modest comfort and complete retirement from
+the social world of Beryngford, save as the close connection of the
+church with Beryngford society rendered her, in the position of
+organist, a participant in many of the social features of the town.
+While Joy was in the midst of her preparations for departure, Mrs
+Connor made her appearance with swollen eyes and red, blistered face.
+
+"And it's the talk of that ould witch of a Baroness, may the divil
+run away with her, that is drivin' ye away, is it?" she cried
+excitedly; "and it's not Mrs Connor as will consist to the daughter
+of your mother, God rest her soul, lavin' my house like this.  To
+think that I should have had ye here all these years, and never known
+ye to be her child till now, and now to see ye driven away by the
+divil's own!  But if it's the fear of not being able to pay the rint
+because ye've lost your position, ye needn't lave for many a long day
+to come.  It's Mrs Connor would only be as happy as the queen herself
+to work her hands to the bone for ye, remembering your darlint of a
+mother, and not belavin' one word against her, nor ye."
+
+So soon as Joy could gain possession of her surprised senses, she
+calmed the weeping woman and began to question her.
+
+"My good woman," she said, "what are you talking about?  Did you ever
+know my mother, and where did you know her?"
+
+"In the Palace, to be sure, as they called the house of that imp of
+Satan, the Baroness.  I was the wash-lady there, for it's not Mrs
+Conner the landlady as is above spakin' of the days when she wasn't
+as high in the world as she is now; and many is the cheerin' cup of
+coffee or tay from your own mother's hand, that I've had in the
+forenoon, to chirk me up and put me through my washing, bless her
+sweet face; and niver have I forgotten her; and niver have I ceased
+to miss her and the fine young man that took such an interest in her
+and that I'm as sure loved her, in spite of his marrying the Judge's
+spook of a daughter, as I am that the Holy Virgin loves us all; and
+it's a foine man that your father must have been, but young Mr Cheney
+was foiner."
+
+So little by little Joy drew the story from Mrs Connor and learned
+the name of the mysterious father, so carefully guarded from her in
+Mrs Irving's manuscript, the father at whose funeral services she had
+so recently officiated as organist.
+
+And strangest and most startling of all, she learned that Arthur
+Stuart's insane wife was her half-sister.
+
+Added to all this, Joy was made aware of the nature of the reports
+which the Baroness had been circulating about her; and her feeling of
+bitter resentment and anger toward the church committee was modified
+by the knowledge that it was not owing to the shadow on her birth,
+but to the false report of her own evil life, that she had been asked
+to resign.
+
+After Mrs Connor had gone, Joy was for a long time in meditation, and
+then turned in a mechanical manner to her delayed task.  Her book of
+"Impressions" lay on a table close at hand.
+
+And as she took it up the leaves opened to the sentence she had
+written three years before, after her talk with the rector about
+Marah Adams.
+
+
+"It seems to me I could not love a man who did not seek to lead me
+higher; the moment he stood below me and asked me to descend, I
+should realise he was to be pitied, not adored!"
+
+
+She shut the book and fell on her knees in prayer; and as she prayed
+a strange thing happened.  The room filled with a peculiar mist, like
+the smoke which is illuminated by the brilliant rays of the morning
+sun; and in the midst of it a small square of intense rose-coloured
+light was visible.  This square grew larger and larger, until it
+assumed the size and form of a man, whose face shone with immortal
+glory.  He smiled and laid his hand on Joy's head.  "Child, awake,"
+he said, and with these words vast worlds dawned upon the girl's
+sight.  She stood above and apart from her grosser body, untrammelled
+and free; she saw long vistas of lives in the past through which she
+had come to the present; she saw long vistas of lives in the future
+through which she must pass to gain the experience which would lead
+her back to God.  An ineffable peace and serenity enveloped her.  The
+divine Presence seemed to irradiate the place in which she stood--she
+felt herself illuminated, transfigured, sanctified by the holy flame
+within her.
+
+When she came back to the kneeling form by the couch, and rose to her
+feet, all the aspect of life had changed for her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+
+Joy Irving had unpacked her trunks and set her small apartment to
+rights, when the postman's ring sounded, and a moment later a letter
+was slipped under her door.
+
+She picked it up, and recognised Arthur Stuart's penmanship.  She sat
+down, holding the unopened letter in her hands.
+
+"It is Arthur's message, appointing a time and place for our
+meeting," she said to herself.  "How long ago that strange interview
+with him seems!--yet it was only yesterday.  How utterly the whole of
+life has changed for me since then!  The universe seems larger, God
+nearer, and life grander.  I am as one who slept and dreamed of
+darkness and sorrow, and awakes to light and joy."
+
+But when she opened the envelope and read the few hastily written
+lines within, an exclamation of surprise escaped her lips.  It was a
+brief note from Arthur Stuart and began abruptly without an address
+(a manner more suggestive of strong passion than any endearing
+words).
+
+
+"The first item which my eye fell upon in the telegraphic column of
+the morning paper, was the death of my wife in the Retreat for the
+Insane.  I leave by the first express to bring her body here for
+burial.
+
+"A merciful providence has saved us the necessity of defying the laws
+of God or man, and opened the way for me to claim you before all the
+world as my worshipped wife so soon as propriety will permit.
+
+"I shall see you at any hour you may indicate after to-morrow, for a
+brief interview.
+
+"ARTHUR EMERSON STUART."
+
+
+Joy held the letter in her hand a long time, lost in profound
+reflection.  Then she sat down to her desk and wrote three letters;
+one was to Mrs Lawrence; one to the chairman of the church committee,
+who had requested her resignation; the third was to Mr Stuart, and
+read thus:
+
+
+"My Dear Mr Stuart,--Many strange things have occurred to me since I
+saw you.  I have learned the name of my father, and this knowledge
+reveals the fact to me that your unfortunate wife was my half-sister.
+I have learned, too, that the loss of my position here as organist is
+not due to the narrow prejudice of the committee regarding the shadow
+on my birth, but to malicious stories put in circulation by Mrs
+Lawrence, relating to me.
+
+"Infamous and libellous tales regarding my life have been told, and
+must be refuted.  I have written to Mrs Lawrence demanding a letter
+from her, clearing my personal character, or giving her the
+alternative of appearing in court to answer the charge of defamation
+of character.  I have also written to the church committee requesting
+them to meet me here in my apartments to-morrow, and explain their
+demand for my resignation.
+
+"I now write to you my last letter and my farewell.
+
+"In the overwrought and desperate mood in which you found me, it did
+not seem a sin for me to go away with the man who loved me and whom I
+loved, before false ideas of life and false ideas of duty made him
+the husband of another.  Conscious that your wife was a hopeless
+lunatic whose present or future could in no way be influenced by our
+actions, I reasoned that we wronged no one in taking the happiness so
+long denied us.
+
+"The last three years of my life have been full of desolation and
+sorrow.  From the day my mother died, the stars of light which had
+gemmed the firmament for me, seemed one by one to be obliterated,
+until I stood in utter darkness.  You found me in the very blackest
+hour of all--and you seemed a shining sun to me.
+
+"Yet so soon as my tired brain and sorrow-worn heart were able to
+think and reason, I realised that it was not the man I had worshipped
+as an ideal, who had come to me and asked me to lower my standard of
+womanhood.  It was another and less worthy man--and this other was to
+be my companion through time, and perhaps eternity.  When I learned
+that your insane wife was my sister, and that knowing this fact you
+yet planned our flight, an indescribable feeling of repulsion awoke
+in my heart.
+
+"I confess that this arose more from a sentiment than a principle.
+The relationship of your wife to me made the contemplated sin no
+greater, but rendered it more tasteless.
+
+"Had I gone away with you as I consented to do, the world would have
+said, she but follows her fatal inheritance--like mother like
+daughter.  There were some bitter rebellious hours, when that thought
+came to me.  But to-day light has shone upon me, and I know there is
+a law of Divine Heredity which is greater and more powerful than any
+tendency we derive from parents or grandparents.  I have believed
+much in creeds all my life; and in the hour of great trials I found I
+was leaning on broken reeds.  I have now ceased to look to men or
+books for truth--I have found it in my own soul.  I acknowledge no
+unfortunate tendencies from any earthly inheritance; centuries of
+sinful or weak ancestors are as nothing beside the God within.  The
+divine and immortal ME is older than my ancestral tree; it is as old
+as the universe.  It is as old as the first great Cause of which it
+is a part.  Strong with this consciousness, I am prepared to meet the
+world alone, and unafraid from this day onward.  When I think of the
+optimistic temperament, the good brain, and the vigorous body which
+were naturally mine, and then of the wretched being who was my
+legitimate sister, I know that I was rightly generated, however
+unfortunately born, just as she was wrongly generated though legally
+born.
+
+"My father, I am told, married into a family whose crest is traced
+back to the tenth century.  I carry a coat-of-arms older yet--the
+Cross; it dates back eighteen hundred years--yes, many thousand
+years, and so I feel myself the nobler of the two.  Had you been more
+of a disciple of Christ, and less of a disciple of man, you would
+have realised this truth long ago, as I realise it to-day.  No man
+should dare stand before his fellows as a revealer of divine
+knowledge until he has penetrated the inmost recesses of his own
+soul, and found God's holy image there; and until he can show others
+the way to the same wonderful discovery.  The God you worshipped was
+far away in the heavens, so far that he could not come to you and
+save you from your baser self in the hour of temptation.  But the
+true God has been miraculously revealed to me.  He dwells within; one
+who has found Him, will never debase His temple.
+
+"Though there is no legal obstacle now in the path to our union,
+there is a spiritual one which is insurmountable.  I NO LONGER LOVE
+YOU.  I am sorry for you, but that is all.  You belonged to my
+yesterday--you can have no part in my to-day.  The man who tempted me
+in my weak hour to go lower, could not help me to go higher.  And my
+face is set toward the heights.
+
+"I must prove to that world that a child born under the shadow of
+shame, and of two weak, uncontrolled parents, can be virtuous,
+strong, brave and sensible.  That she can conquer passion and
+impulse, by the use of her divine inheritance of will; and that she
+can compel the respect of the public by her discreet life and lofty
+ideals.
+
+"I shall stay in this place until I have vindicated my name and
+character from every aspersion cast upon them.  I shall retain my
+position of organist, and retain it until I have accumulated
+sufficient means to go abroad and prepare myself for the musical
+career in which I know I can excel.  I am young, strong and
+ambitious.  My unusual sorrows will give me greater power of
+character if I accept them as spiritual tonics--bitter but
+strengthening.
+
+"Farewell, and may God be with you.
+
+"Joy Irving."
+
+
+When the rector of St Blank's returned from the Beryngford Cemetery,
+where he had placed the body of his wife beside her father, he found
+this letter lying on his table in the hotel.
+
+
+
+
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" />
+<title>An Ambitious Man</title>
+</head>
+<body>
+<h2>
+<a href="#startoftext">An Ambitious Man, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox</a>
+</h2>
+<pre>
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Ambitious Man, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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+Title: An Ambitious Man
+
+Author: Ella Wheeler Wilcox
+
+Release Date: April, 2005  [EBook #7866]
+[This file was first posted on May 28, 2003]
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+</pre>
+<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p>
+<h1>AN AMBITIOUS MAN</h1>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Preston Cheney turned as he ran down the steps of a handsome house
+on &ldquo;The Boulevard,&rdquo; waving a second adieu to a young woman
+framed between the lace curtains of the window.&nbsp; Then he hurried
+down the street and out of view.&nbsp; The young woman watched him with
+a gleam of satisfaction in her pale blue eyes.&nbsp; A fine-looking
+young fellow, whose Roman nose and strong jaw belied the softly curved
+mouth with its sensitive darts at the corners; it was strange that something
+warmer than satisfaction did not shine upon the face of the woman whom
+he had just asked to be his wife.</p>
+<p>But Mabel Lawrence was one of those women who are never swayed by
+any passion stronger than worldly ambition, never burned by any fires
+other than those of jealousy or anger.&nbsp; Her meagre nature was truly
+depicted in her meagre face.&nbsp; Nature is ofttimes a great lair and
+a cruel jester, giving to the cold and vapid woman the face and form
+of a sensuous siren, and concealing a heart of volcanic fires, or the
+soul of a Phryne, under the exterior of a spinster.&nbsp; But the old
+dame had been wholly frank in forming Miss Lawrence.&nbsp; The thin,
+flat chest and narrow shoulders, the angular elbows and prominent shoulder-blades,
+the sallow skin and sharp features, the deeply set, pale blue eyes,
+and the lustreless, ashen hair, were all truthful exponents of the unfurnished
+rooms in her vacant heart and soul places.</p>
+<p>Miss Lawrence turned from the window, and trailed her long silken
+train across the rich carpet, seating herself before the open fireplace.&nbsp;
+It was an appropriate time and situation for a maiden&rsquo;s tender
+dreams; only a few hours had passed since the handsomest and most brilliant
+young man in that thriving eastern town had asked her to be his wife,
+and placed the kiss of betrothal upon her virgin lips.&nbsp; Yet it
+was with a sense of triumph and relief, rather than with tenderness
+and rapture, that the young woman meditated upon the situation&mdash;triumph
+over other women who had shown a decided interest in Mr Cheney, since
+his arrival in the place more than eighteen months ago, and relief that
+the dreaded r&ocirc;le of spinster was not to be her part in life&rsquo;s
+drama.</p>
+<p>Miss Lawrence was twenty-six&mdash;one year older than her fianc&eacute;;
+and she had never received a proposal of marriage or listened to a word
+of love in her life before.&nbsp; Let me transpose that phrase&mdash;she
+had never before received a proposal of marriage, and had never in her
+life listened to a word of love; for Preston had not spoken of love.&nbsp;
+She knew that he did not love her.&nbsp; She knew that he had sought
+her hand wholly from ambitious motives.&nbsp; She was the daughter of
+the Hon. Sylvester Lawrence, lawyer, judge, state senator, and proposed
+candidate for lieutenant-governor in the coming campaign.&nbsp; She
+was the only heir to his large fortune.</p>
+<p>Preston Cheney was a penniless young man from the West.&nbsp; A self-made
+youth, with an unusual brain and an overwhelming ambition, he had risen
+from chore boy on a western farm to printer&rsquo;s apprentice in a
+small town, thence to reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent,
+and after two or three years of travel gained in this manner he had
+come to Beryngford and bought out a struggling morning paper, which
+was making a mad effort to keep alive, changed its political tendencies,
+infused it with western activity and filled it with cosmopolitan news,
+and now, after eighteen months, the young man found himself coming abreast
+of his two long established rivals in the editorial field.&nbsp; This
+success was but an incentive to his overwhelming ambition for place,
+power and riches.&nbsp; He had seen just enough of life and of the world
+to estimate these things at double their value; and he was, beside,
+looking at life through the magnifying glass of youth.&nbsp; The Creator
+intended us to gaze on worldly possessions and selfish ambitions through
+the small end of the lorgnette, but youth invariably inverts the glass.</p>
+<p>To the young editor, the brief years behind him seemed like a long
+hard pull up a steep and rocky cliff.&nbsp; From the point to which
+he had attained, the summit of his desires looked very far away, much
+farther than the level from which he had arisen.&nbsp; To rise to that
+summit single-handed and alone would require unremitting effort through
+the very best years of his manhood.&nbsp; His brain, his strength, his
+ability, his ambitions, what were they all in the strife after place
+and power, compared to the money of some commonplace adversary?&nbsp;
+Preston Cheney, the native-born American directly descended from a Revolutionary
+soldier, would be handicapped in the race with some Michael Murphy whose
+father had made a fortune in the saloon business, or who had himself
+acquired a competency as a police officer.</p>
+<p>America was not the same country which gave men like Benjamin Franklin,
+Abraham Lincoln and Horace Greeley a chance to rise from the lower ranks
+to the highest places before they reached middle life.&nbsp; It was
+no longer a land where merit strove with merit, and the prize fell to
+the most earnest and the most gifted.&nbsp; The tremendous influx of
+foreign population since the war of the Rebellion and the right of franchise
+given unreservedly to the illiterate and the vicious rendered the ambitious
+American youth now a toy in the hands of aliens, and position a thing
+to be bought at the price set by un-American masses.</p>
+<p>Thoughts like these had more and more with each year filled the mind
+of Preston Cheney, until, like the falling of stones and earth into
+a river bed, they changed the naturally direct current of his impulses
+into another channel.&nbsp; Why not further his life purpose by an ambitious
+marriage?&nbsp; The first time the thought entered his mind he had cast
+it out as something unclean and unworthy of his manhood.&nbsp; Marriage
+was a holy estate, he said to himself, a sacrament to be entered into
+with reverence, and sanctified by love.&nbsp; He must love the woman
+who was to be the companion of his life, the mother of his children.</p>
+<p>Then he looked about among his early friends who had married, as
+nearly all the young men of the middle classes in America do marry,
+for love, or what they believed to be love.&nbsp; There was Tom Somers&mdash;a
+splendid lad, full of life, hope and ambition when he married Carrie
+Towne, the prettiest girl in Vandalia.&nbsp; Well, what was he now,
+after seven years?&nbsp; A broken-spirited man, with a sickly, complaining
+wife and a brood of ill-clad children.&nbsp; Harry Walters, the most
+infatuated lover he had ever seen, was divorced after five years of
+discordant marriage.</p>
+<p>Charlie St Clair was flagrantly unfaithful to the girl he had pursued
+three years with his ardent wooings before she yielded to his suit.&nbsp;
+Certainly none of these love marriages were examples for him to follow.&nbsp;
+And in the midst of these reveries and reflections, Preston Cheney came
+to Beryngford, and met Sylvester Lawrence and his daughter Mabel.&nbsp;
+He met also Berene Dumont.&nbsp; Had he not met the latter woman he
+would not have succumbed&mdash;so soon at least&mdash;to the temptation
+held out by the former to advance his ambitious aims.</p>
+<p>He would have hesitated, considered, and reconsidered, and without
+doubt his better nature and his good taste would have prevailed.&nbsp;
+But when fate threw Berene Dumont in his way, and circumstances brought
+about his close associations with her for many months, there seemed
+but one way of escape from the Scylla of his desires, and that was to
+the Charybdis of a marriage with Miss Lawrence.</p>
+<p>Miss Lawrence was not aware of the part Berene Dumont had played
+in her engagement, but she knew perfectly the part her father&rsquo;s
+influence and wealth had played; but she was quite content with affairs
+as they were, and it mattered little to her what had brought them about.&nbsp;
+To be married, rather than to be loved, had been her ambition since
+she left school; being incapable of loving, she was incapable of appreciating
+the passion in any of its phases.&nbsp; It had always seemed to her
+that a great deal of nonsense was written and talked about love.&nbsp;
+She thought demonstrative people very vulgar, and believed kissing a
+means of conveying germs of disease.</p>
+<p>But to be a married woman, with an establishment of her own, and
+a husband to exhibit to her friends, was necessary to the maintenance
+of her pride.</p>
+<p>When Miss Lawrence&rsquo;s mother, a nervous invalid, was informed
+of her daughter&rsquo;s engagement, she burst into tears, as over a
+lamb offered on the altar of sacrifice; and Judge Lawrence pressed a
+kiss on the lobe of Mabel&rsquo;s left ear which she offered him, and
+told her she had won a prize in the market.&nbsp; But as he sat alone
+over his cigar that night, he sighed heavily, and said to himself, &ldquo;Poor
+fellow, I wish Mabel were not so much like her mother.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;Baroness Brown&rdquo; was a distinctive figure in Beryngford.&nbsp;
+She came to the place from foreign parts some three years before the
+arrival of Preston Cheney, and brought servants, carriages and horses,
+and established herself in a very handsome house which she rented for
+a term of years.&nbsp; Her arrival in this quiet village town was of
+course the sensation of the hour, or rather of the year.&nbsp; She was
+known as Baroness Le Fevre&mdash;an American widow of a French baron.&nbsp;
+Large, voluptuous, blonde, and handsome according to the popular idea
+of beauty, distinctly amiable, affable and very charitable, she became
+at once the fashion.</p>
+<p>Invitations to her house were eagerly sought after, and her entertainments
+were described in column articles by the press.</p>
+<p>This state of things continued only six months, however.&nbsp; Then
+it began to be whispered about that the Baroness was in arrears for
+her rent.&nbsp; Several of her servants had gone away in a high state
+of temper at the titled mistress who had failed to pay them a cent of
+wages since they came to the country with her; and one day the neighbours
+saw her fine carriage horses led away by the sheriff.</p>
+<p>A week later society was electrified by the announcement of the marriage
+of Baroness Le Fevre to Mr Brown, a wealthy widower who owned the best
+shoe store in Beryngford.</p>
+<p>Mr Brown owned ten children also, but the youngest was a boy of sixteen,
+absent in college.&nbsp; The other nine were married and settled in
+comfortable homes.</p>
+<p>Mr Brown died at the expiration of a year.&nbsp; This one year had
+taught him more of womankind than he had learned in all his sixty and
+nine years before; and, feeling that it is never too late to profit
+by learning, Mr Brown discreetly made his will, leaving all his property
+save the widow&rsquo;s &ldquo;thirds&rdquo; equally divided among his
+ten children.</p>
+<p>The Baroness made a futile effort to break the will, on the ground
+that he was not of sound mind when it was drawn up; but the effort cost
+her several hundred of her few thousand dollars and the increased enmity
+of the ten Brown children, and availed her nothing.&nbsp; An important
+part of the widow&rsquo;s third was the Brown mansion, a large, commodious
+house built many years before, when the village was but a country town.&nbsp;
+Everybody supposed the Baroness, as she was still called, half in derision
+and half from the American love of mouthing a title, would offer this
+house for sale, and depart for fresh fields and pastures new.&nbsp;
+But the Baroness never did what she was expected to do.</p>
+<p>Instead of offering her house for sale, she offered &ldquo;Rooms
+to Let,&rdquo; and turned the family mansion into a fashionable lodging-house.</p>
+<p>Its central location, and its adjacence to several restaurants and
+boarding houses, rendered it a convenient place for business people
+to lodge, and the handsome widow found no trouble in filling her rooms
+with desirable and well-paying patrons.&nbsp; In a spirit of fun, people
+began to speak of the old Brown mansion as &ldquo;The Palace,&rdquo;
+and in a short time the lodging-house was known by that name, just as
+its mistress was known as &ldquo;Baroness Brown.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Palace yielded the Baroness something like two hundred dollars
+a month, and cost her only the wages and keeping of three servants;
+or rather the wages of two and the keeping of three; for to Berene Dumont,
+her maid and personal attendant, she paid no wages.</p>
+<p>The Baroness did not rise till noon, and she always breakfasted in
+bed.&nbsp; Sometimes she remained in her room till mid-afternoon.&nbsp;
+Berene served her breakfast and lunch, and looked after the servants
+to see that the lodgers&rsquo; rooms were all in order.&nbsp; These
+were the services for which she was given a home.&nbsp; But in truth
+the young woman did much more than this; she acted also as seamstress
+and milliner for her mistress, and attended to the marketing and ran
+errands for her.&nbsp; If ever a girl paid full price for her keeping,
+it was Berene, and yet the Baroness spoke frequently of &ldquo;giving
+the poor thing a home.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It had all come about in this way.&nbsp; Pierre Dumont kept a second-hand
+book store in Beryngford.&nbsp; He was French, and the national characteristic
+of frugality had assumed the shape of avarice in his nature.&nbsp; He
+was, too, a petty tyrant and a cruel husband and father when under the
+influence of absinthe, a state in which he was usually to be found.</p>
+<p>Berene was an only child, and her mother, whom she worshipped, said,
+when dying, &ldquo;Take care of your poor father, Berene.&nbsp; Do everything
+you can to make him happy.&nbsp; Never desert him.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Berene was fourteen at that time.&nbsp; She had never been at school,
+but she had been taught to read and write both French and English, for
+her mother was an American girl who had been disinherited by her grandparents,
+with whom she lived, for eloping with her French teacher&mdash;Pierre
+Dumont.&nbsp; Rheumatism and absinthe turned the French professor into
+a shopkeeper before Berene was born.&nbsp; The grandparents had died
+without forgiving their granddaughter, and, much as the unhappy woman
+regretted her foolish marriage, she remained a patient and devoted wife
+to the end of her life, and imposed the same patience and devotion when
+dying on her daughter.</p>
+<p>At sixteen, Berene was asked to sacrifice herself on the altar of
+marriage to a man three times her age; one Jacques Letellier, who offered
+generously to take the young girl as payment for a debt owed by his
+convivial comrade, M. Dumont.&nbsp; Berene wept and begged piteously
+to be spared this horrible sacrifice of her young life, whereupon Pierre
+Dumont seized his razor and threatened suicide as the other alternative
+from the dishonour of debt, and Berene in terror yielded her word and
+herself the next day to the debasing mockery of marriage with a depraved
+old gambler and <i>rou&eacute;.</i></p>
+<p>Six months later Jacques Letellier died in a fit of apoplexy and
+Berene was freed from her chains; but freed only to keep on in a life
+of martyrdom as servant and slave to the caprices of her father, until
+his death.&nbsp; When he was finally well buried under six feet of earth,
+Berene found herself twenty years of age, alone in the world with just
+one thousand dollars in money, the price brought by her father&rsquo;s
+effects.</p>
+<p>Without education or accomplishments, she was the possessor of youth,
+health, charm, and a voice of wonderful beauty and power; a voice which
+it was her dream to cultivate, and use as a means of support.&nbsp;
+But how could she ever cultivate it?&nbsp; The thousand dollars in her
+possession was, she knew, but a drop in the ocean of expense a musical
+education would entail.&nbsp; And she must keep that money until she
+found some way by which to support herself.</p>
+<p>Baroness Brown had attended the sale of old Dumont&rsquo;s effects.&nbsp;
+She had often noticed the young girl in the shop, and in the street,
+and had been struck with the peculiar elegance and refinement of her
+appearance.&nbsp; Her simple lawn or print gowns were made and worn
+in a manner befitting a princess.&nbsp; Her nails were carefully kept,
+despite all the household drudgery which devolved upon her.</p>
+<p>The Baroness was a shrewd woman and a clever reasoner.&nbsp; She
+needed a thrifty, prudent person in her house to look after things,
+and to attend to her personal needs.&nbsp; Since she had opened the
+Palace as a lodging-house, this need had stared her in the face.&nbsp;
+Servants did very well in their places, but the person she required
+was of another and superior order, and only to be obtained by accident
+or by advertising and the paying of a large salary.&nbsp; Now the Baroness
+had been in the habit of thinking that her beauty and amiability were
+quite equivalent to any favours she received from humanity at large.&nbsp;
+Ever since she was a plump girl in short dresses, she had learned that
+smiles and compliments from her lips would purchase her friends of both
+sexes, who would do disagreeable duties for her.&nbsp; She had never
+made it a custom to pay out money for any service she could obtain otherwise.&nbsp;
+So now as she looked on this young woman who, though a widow, seemed
+still a mere child, it occurred to her that Fate had with its usual
+kindness thrown in her path the very person she needed.</p>
+<p>She offered Berene &ldquo;a home&rdquo; at the Palace in return for
+a few small services.&nbsp; The lonely girl, whose strangely solitary
+life with her old father had excluded her from all social relations
+outside, grasped at this offer from the handsome lady whom she had long
+admired from a distance, and went to make her home at the Palace.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Berene had been several months in her new home when Preston Cheney
+came to lodge at the Palace.</p>
+<p>He met her on the stairway the first morning after his arrival, as
+he was descending to the street door.</p>
+<p>Bringing up a tray covered with a snowy napkin, she stepped to one
+side and paused, to make room for him to pass.</p>
+<p>Preston was not one of those young men who find pastime in flirtations
+with nursery maids or kitchen girls.&nbsp; The very thought of it offended
+his good taste.&nbsp; Once, in listening to the boastful tales of a
+modern Don Juan, who was relating his gallant adventures with a handsome
+waiter girl at a hotel, Preston had remarked, &ldquo;I would as soon
+think of using my dinner napkin for a necktie, as finding romance with
+a servant girl.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Yet he appreciated a snowy, well-laundried napkin in its place, and
+he was most considerate and thoughtful in his treatment of servants.</p>
+<p>He supposed Berene to be an upper servant of the house, and yet,
+as he glanced at her, a strange and unaccountable feeling of interest
+seized upon him.&nbsp; The creamy pallor of her skin, colourless save
+for the full red lips, the dark eyes full of unutterable longing, the
+aristocratic poise of the head, the softly rounded figure, elegant in
+its simple gown and apron, all impressed him as he had never before
+been impressed by any woman.</p>
+<p>It was several days before he chanced to see her again, and then
+only for a moment as she passed through the hall; but he heard a trill
+of song from her lips, which added to his interest and curiosity.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;That girl is no common servant,&rdquo; he said to himself, and
+he resolved to learn more about her.</p>
+<p>It had been the custom of the Baroness to keep herself quite hidden
+from her lodgers.&nbsp; They seldom saw her, after the first business
+interview.&nbsp; Therefore it was a matter of surprise to the young
+editor when he came home from his office one night, just after twelve
+o&rsquo;clock, and found the mistress of the mansion standing in the
+hall by the register, in charming evening attire.</p>
+<p>She smiled upon him radiantly.&nbsp; &ldquo;I have just come in from
+a benefit concert,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and I am as hungry as a bear.&nbsp;
+Now I cannot endure eating alone at night.&nbsp; I knew it was near
+your hour to return, so I waited for you.&nbsp; Will you go down to
+the dining-room with me and have a Welsh rarebit?&nbsp; I am going to
+make one in my chafing dish.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The young man hid his surprise under a gallant smile, and offering
+the Baroness his arm descended to the basement dining-room with her.&nbsp;
+He had heard much about the complicated life of this woman, and he felt
+a certain amount of natural curiosity in regard to her.&nbsp; He had
+met her but once, and that was on the day when he had called to engage
+his room, a little more than two weeks past.</p>
+<p>He had thought her an excellent type of the successful American adventuress
+on that occasion, and her quiet and dull life in this ordinary town
+puzzled him.&nbsp; He could not imagine a woman of that order existing
+a whole year without an adventure; as a rule he knew that those blonde
+women with large hips and busts, and small waists and feet, are as unable
+to live without excitement as a fish without water.</p>
+<p>Yet, since the death of Mr Brown, more than a year past, the Baroness
+had lived the life of a recluse.&nbsp; It puzzled him, as a student
+of human nature.</p>
+<p>But, in fact, the Baroness was a skilled general in planning her
+campaigns.&nbsp; She seldom plunged into action unprepared.</p>
+<p>She knew from experience that she could not live in a large city
+and not use an enormous amount of money.</p>
+<p>She was tired of taking great risks, and she knew that without the
+aid of money and a fine wardrobe she was not able to attract men as
+she had done ten years before.</p>
+<p>As long as she remained in Beryngford she would be adding to her
+income every month, and saving the few thousands she possessed.&nbsp;
+She would be saving her beauty, too, by keeping early hours and living
+a temperate life; and if she carefully avoided any new scandal, her
+past adventures would be dim in the minds of people when, after a year
+or two more of retirement and retrenchment, she sallied forth to new
+fields, under a new name, if need be, and with a comfortably filled
+purse.</p>
+<p>It was in this manner that the Baroness had reasoned; but from the
+hour she first saw Preston Cheney, her resolutions wavered.&nbsp; He
+impressed her most agreeably; and after learning about him from the
+daily papers, and hearing him spoken of as a valuable acquisition to
+Beryngford&rsquo;s intellectual society, the Baroness decided to come
+out of her retirement and enter the lists in advance of other women
+who would seek to attract this newcomer.</p>
+<p>To the fading beauty in her late thirties, a man in the early twenties
+possesses a peculiar fascination; and to the Baroness, clothed in weeds
+for a husband who died on the eve of his seventieth birthday, the possibility
+of winning a young man like Preston Cheney overbalanced all other considerations
+in her mind.&nbsp; She had never been a vulgar coquette to whom all
+men were prey.&nbsp; She had always been more or less discriminating.&nbsp;
+A man must be either very attractive or very rich to win her regard.&nbsp;
+Mr Brown had been very rich, and Preston Cheney was very attractive.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He is more than attractive, he is positively <i>fascinating</i>,&rdquo;
+she said to herself in the solitude of her room after the t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te
+over the Welsh rarebit that evening.&nbsp; &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know
+when I have felt such a pleasure in a man&rsquo;s presence.&nbsp; Not
+since&mdash;&rdquo;&nbsp; But the Baroness did not allow herself to
+go back so far.&nbsp; &ldquo;If there is any fruit I <i>detest</i>,
+it is <i>dates</i>,&rdquo; she often said laughingly.&nbsp; &ldquo;Some
+people delight in a good memory&mdash;I delight in a good forgettory
+of the past, with its telltale milestones of birthdays and anniversaries
+of marriages, deaths and divorces.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mr Cheney said I looked very young to have been twice married.&nbsp;
+Twice!&rdquo; and she laughed aloud before her mirror, revealing the
+pink arch of her mouth, and two perfect sets of yellow-white teeth,
+with only one blemishing spot of gold visible.&nbsp; &ldquo;I wonder
+if he meant it, though?&rdquo; she mused.&nbsp; &ldquo;And the fact
+that I <i>do</i> wonder is the sure proof that I am really interested
+in this man.&nbsp; As a rule, I never believe a word men say, though
+I delight in their flattery all the same.&nbsp; It makes me feel comfortable
+even when I know they are lying.&nbsp; But I should really feel hurt
+if I thought Mr Cheney had not meant what he said.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t
+believe he knows much about women, or about himself lower than his brain.&nbsp;
+He has never studied his heart.&nbsp; He is all ambition.&nbsp; If an
+ambitious and unsophisticated youth of twenty-five or twenty-eight does
+get infatuated with a woman of my age&mdash;he is a perfect toy in her
+hands.&nbsp; Ah, well, we shall see what we shall see.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+And the Baroness finished her massage in cold cream, and put her blonde
+head on the pillow and went sound asleep.</p>
+<p>After that first t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te supper the fair widow
+managed to see Preston at least once or twice a week.&nbsp; She sent
+for him to ask his advice on business matters, she asked him to aid
+her in changing the position of the furniture in a room when the servants
+were all busy, and she invited him to her private parlour for lunch
+every Sunday afternoon.&nbsp; It was during one of these chats over
+cake and wine that the young man spoke of Berene.&nbsp; The Baroness
+had dropped some remarks about her servants, and Preston said, in a
+casual tone of voice which hid the real interest he felt in the subject,
+&ldquo;By the way, one of your servants has quite an unusual voice.&nbsp;
+I have heard her singing about the halls a few times, and it seems to
+me she has real talent.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, that is Miss Dumont&mdash;Berene Dumont&mdash;she is not
+an absolute servant,&rdquo; the Baroness replied; &ldquo;she is a most
+unfortunate young woman to whom my heart went out in pity, and I have
+given her a home.&nbsp; She is really a widow, though she refuses to
+use her dead husband&rsquo;s name.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A widow?&rdquo; repeated Preston with surprise and a queer
+sensation of annoyance at his heart; &ldquo;why, from the glimpse I
+had of her I thought her a young girl.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So she is, not over twenty-one at most, and woefully ignorant
+for that age,&rdquo; the Baroness said, and then she proceeded to outline
+Berene&rsquo;s history, laying a good deal of stress upon her own charitable
+act in giving the girl a home.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;She is so ignorant of life, despite the fact that she has
+been married, and she is so uneducated and helpless, I could not bear
+to see her cast into the path of designing people,&rdquo; the Baroness
+said.&nbsp; &ldquo;She has a strong craving for an education, and I
+give her good books to read, and good advice to ponder over, and I hope
+in time to come she will marry some honest fellow and settle down to
+a quiet, happy home life.&nbsp; The man who brings us butter and eggs
+from the country is quite fascinated with her, but she does not deign
+him a glance.&rdquo;&nbsp; And then the Baroness talked of other things.</p>
+<p>But the history he had heard remained in Preston Cheney&rsquo;s mind
+and he could not drive the thought of this girl away.&nbsp; No wonder
+her eyes were sad!&nbsp; Better blood ran in her veins than coursed
+under the pink flesh of the Baroness, he would wager; she was the unfortunate
+victim of a combination of circumstances, which had defrauded her of
+the advantages of youth.</p>
+<p>He spoke with her in the hall one morning not long after that; and
+then it grew to be a daily occurrence that he talked with her a few
+moments, and before many weeks had passed the young man approached the
+Baroness with a request.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have become interested in your prot&eacute;g&eacute;e Miss
+Dumont,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;You have done so much for her that
+you have stirred my better nature and made me anxious to emulate your
+example.&nbsp; In talking with her in the hall one day I learned her
+great desire for a better education, and her anxiety to earn money.&nbsp;
+Now it has occurred to me that I might aid her in both ways.&nbsp; We
+need two or three more girls in our office.&nbsp; We need one more in
+the type-setting department.&nbsp; As <i>The Clarion</i> is a morning
+paper, and you never need Miss Dumont&rsquo;s services after five o&rsquo;clock,
+she could work a few hours in the office, earn a small salary, and gain
+something in the way of an education also, if she were ambitious enough
+to do so.&nbsp; Nearly all my early education was gained as a printer.&nbsp;
+She tells me she is faulty in the matter of spelling, and this would
+be excellent training for her.&nbsp; You have, dear madam, inspired
+the girl with a desire for more knowledge, and I hope you will let me
+carry on the good work you have begun.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Preston had approached the matter in a way that could not fail to
+bring success&mdash;by flattering the vanity and pride of the Baroness.&nbsp;
+So elated was she with the agreeable references to herself, that she
+never suspected the young man&rsquo;s deep personal interest in the
+girl.&nbsp; She believed in the beginning that he was showing Berene
+this kind attention solely to please the mistress.</p>
+<p>Berene entered the office as type-setter, and made such astonishing
+progress that she was promoted to the position of proof-reader ere six
+months had passed.&nbsp; And hour by hour, day by day, week by week,
+the strange influence which she had exerted on her employer, from the
+first moment of their meeting, grew and strengthened, until he realised
+with a sudden terror that his whole being was becoming absorbed by an
+intense passion for the girl.</p>
+<p>Meantime the Baroness was growing embarrassing in her attentions.&nbsp;
+The young man was not conceited, nor prone to regard himself as an object
+of worship to the fair sex.&nbsp; He had during the first few months
+believed the Baroness to be amusing herself with his society.&nbsp;
+He had not flattered himself that a woman of her age, who had seen so
+much of the world, and whose ambitions were so unmistakable, could regard
+him otherwise than as a diversion.</p>
+<p>But of late the truth had forced itself upon him that the woman wished
+to entangle him in a serious affair.&nbsp; He could not afford to jeopardise
+his reputation at the very outset of his career by any such entanglement,
+or by the appearance of one.&nbsp; He cast about for some excuse to
+leave the Palace, yet this would separate him in a measure from his
+association with Berene, beside incurring the enmity of the Baroness,
+and possibly causing Berene to suffer from her anger as well.</p>
+<p>He seemed to be caught like a fly in a net.&nbsp; And again the thought
+of his future and his ambitions confronted him, and he felt abashed
+in his own eyes, as he realised how far away these ambitions had seemed
+of late, since he had allowed his emotions to overrule his brain.</p>
+<p>What was this ignorant daughter of a French professor, that she should
+stand between him and glory, riches and power?&nbsp; Desperate diseases
+needed desperate remedies.&nbsp; He had been an occasional caller at
+the Lawrence homestead ever since he came to Beryngford.&nbsp; Without
+being conceited on the subject, he realised that Mabel Lawrence would
+not reject him as a suitor.</p>
+<p>The masculine party is very dull, or the feminine very deceptive,
+when a man makes a mistake in his impressions on this subject.</p>
+<p>That afternoon the young editor left his office at five o&rsquo;clock
+and asked Miss Lawrence to be his wife.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Preston Cheney walked briskly down the street after he left his fianc&eacute;e,
+his steps directed toward the Palace.&nbsp; It was seven o&rsquo;clock,
+and he knew the Baroness would be at home.</p>
+<p>He had determined upon heroic treatment for his own mental disease
+(as he regarded his peculiar sentiments toward Berene Dumont), and he
+had decided upon a similar course of treatment for the Baroness.</p>
+<p>He would confide his engagement to her at once, and thus put an end
+to his embarrassing position in the Palace, as well as to establish
+his betrothal as a fact&mdash;and to force himself to so regard it.&nbsp;
+It was strange reasoning for a young man in the very first hour of his
+new r&ocirc;le of bridegroom elect, but this particular groom elect
+had deliberately placed himself in a peculiar position, and his reasoning
+was not, of course, that of an ardent and happy lover.</p>
+<p>Already he was galled by his new fetters; already he was feeling
+a sense of repulsion toward the woman he had asked to be his wife: and
+because of these feelings he was more eager to nail himself hand and
+foot to the cross he had builded.</p>
+<p>He was obliged to wait some time before the Baroness came into the
+reception-room; and when she came he observed that she had made an elaborate
+toilet in his honour.&nbsp; Her sumptuous shoulders billowed over the
+low-cut blue corsage like apple-dumplings over a china dish.&nbsp; Her
+waist was drawn in to an hourglass taper, while her ample hips spread
+out beneath like the heavy mason work which supports a slender column.&nbsp;
+Tiny feet encased in pretty slippers peeping from beneath her silken
+skirts looked oddly out of proportion with the rest of her generous
+personality, and reminded Preston of the grotesque cuts in the humorous
+weeklies, where well-known politicians were represented with large heads
+and small extremities.&nbsp; Artistic by nature, and with an eye to
+form, he had never admired the Baroness&rsquo;s type of beauty, which
+was the theme of admiration for nearly every other man in Beryngford.&nbsp;
+Her face, with its infantine colouring, its large, innocent azure eyes,
+and its short retrouss&eacute; features, he conceded to be captivatingly
+pretty, however, and it seemed unusually so this evening.&nbsp; Perhaps
+because he had so recently looked upon the sharp, sallow face of his
+fianc&eacute;e.</p>
+<p>Preston frequently came to his room about this hour, after having
+dined and before going to the office for his final duties; but he seldom
+saw the Baroness on these occasions, unless through her own design.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You were surprised to receive my message, no doubt, saying
+I wished to see you,&rdquo; he began.&nbsp; &ldquo;But I have something
+I feel I ought to tell you, as it may make some changes in my habits,
+and will of course eventually take me away from these pleasant associations.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He paused for a second, and the Baroness, who had seated herself on
+the divan at his side, leaned forward and looked inquiringly in his
+face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are going away?&rdquo; she asked, with a tremor in her
+voice.&nbsp; &ldquo;Is it not very sudden?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, I am not going away,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;not from
+Beryngford&mdash;but I shall doubtless leave your house ere many months.&nbsp;
+I am engaged to be married to Miss Mabel Lawrence.&nbsp; You are the
+first person to whom I have imparted the news, but you have been so
+kind, and I feel that you ought to know it in time to secure a desirable
+tenant for my room.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Again there was a pause.&nbsp; The rosy face of the Baroness had
+grown quite pale, and an unpleasant expression had settled about the
+corners of her small mouth.&nbsp; She waved a feather fan to and fro
+languidly.&nbsp; Then she gave a slight laugh and said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I must confess that I am surprised.&nbsp; Miss Lawrence
+is the last woman in the world whom I would have imagined you to select
+as a wife.&nbsp; Yet I congratulate you on your good sense.&nbsp; You
+are very ambitious, and you can rise to great distinction if you have
+the right influence to aid you.&nbsp; Judge Lawrence, with his wealth
+and position, is of all men the one who can advance your interests,
+and what more natural than that he should advance the interests of his
+son-in-law?&nbsp; You are a very wise youth and I again congratulate
+you.&nbsp; No romantic folly will ever ruin your life.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There was irony and ridicule in her voice and face, and the young
+man felt his cheek tingle with anger and humiliation.&nbsp; The Baroness
+had read him like an open book&mdash;as everyone else doubtless would
+do.&nbsp; It was bitterly galling to his pride, but there was nothing
+to do, save to keep a bold front, and carry out his r&ocirc;le with
+as much dignity as possible.</p>
+<p>He rose, spoke a few formal words of thanks to the Baroness for her
+kindness to him, and bowed himself from her presence, carrying with
+him down the street the memory of her mocking eyes.</p>
+<p>As he entered his private office, he was amazed to see Berene Dumont
+sitting in his chair fast asleep, her head framed by her folded arms,
+which rested on his desk.&nbsp; Against the dark maroon of her sleeve,
+her classic face was outlined like a marble statuette.&nbsp; Her long
+lashes swept her cheek, and in the attitude in which she sat, her graceful,
+perfectly-proportioned figure displayed each beautiful curve to the
+best advantage.</p>
+<p>To a noble nature, the sight of even an enemy asleep, awakes softening
+emotions, while the sight of a loved being in the unconsciousness of
+slumber stirs the fountain of affection to its very depths.</p>
+<p>As the young editor looked upon the girl before him, a passion of
+yearning love took possession of him.&nbsp; A wild desire to seize her
+in his arms and cover her pale face with kisses, made his heart throb
+to suffocation and brought cold beads to his brow; and just as these
+feelings gained an almost uncontrollable dominion over his reason, will
+and judgment, the girl awoke and started to her feet in confusion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, Mr Cheney, pray forgive me!&rdquo; she cried, looking
+more beautiful than ever with the flush which overspread her face.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I came in to ask about a word in your editorial which I could
+not decipher.&nbsp; I waited for you, as I felt sure you would be in
+shortly&mdash;and I was so <i>tired</i> I sat down for just a second
+to rest&mdash;and that is all I knew about it.&nbsp; You must forgive
+me, sir!&mdash;I did not mean to intrude.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Her confusion, her appealing eyes, her magnetic voice were all fuel
+to the fire raging in the young man&rsquo;s heart.&nbsp; Now that she
+was for ever lost to him through his own deliberate action, she seemed
+tenfold more dear and to be desired.&nbsp; Brain, soul, and body all
+seemed to crave her; he took a step forward, and drew in a quick breath
+as if to speak; and then a sudden sense of his own danger, and an overwhelming
+disgust for his weakness swept over him, and the intense passion the
+girl had aroused in his heart changed to unreasonable anger.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Miss Dumont,&rdquo; he said coldly, &ldquo;I think we will
+have to dispense with your services after to-night.&nbsp; Your duties
+are evidently too hard for you.&nbsp; You can leave the office at any
+time you wish.&nbsp; Good-night.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The girl shrank as if he had struck her, looked up at him with wide,
+wondering eyes, waited for a moment as if expecting to be recalled,
+then, as Mr Cheney wheeled his chair about and turned his back upon
+her, she suddenly sped away without a word.</p>
+<p>She left the office a few moments later; but it was not until after
+eleven o&rsquo;clock that she dragged herself up two flights of stairs
+toward her room on the attic floor at the Palace.&nbsp; She had been
+walking the streets like a mad creature all that intervening time, trying
+to still the agonising pain in her heart.&nbsp; Preston Cheney had long
+been her ideal of all that was noble, grand and good, she worshipped
+him as devout pagans worshipped their sacred idols; and, without knowing
+it, she gave him the absorbing passion which an intense woman gives
+to her lover.</p>
+<p>It was only now that he had treated her with such rough brutality,
+and discharged her from his employ for so slight a cause, that the knowledge
+burst upon her tortured heart of all he was to her.</p>
+<p>She paused at the foot of the third and last flight of stairs with
+a strange dizziness in her head and a sinking sensation at her heart.</p>
+<p>A little less than half-an-hour afterwards Preston Cheney unlocked
+the street door and came in for the night.&nbsp; He had done double
+his usual amount of work and had finished his duties earlier than usual.&nbsp;
+To avoid thinking after he sent Berene away, he had turned to his desk
+and plunged into his labour with feverish intensity.&nbsp; He wrote
+a particularly savage editorial on the matter of over-immigration, and
+his leaders on political questions of the day were all tinctured with
+a bitterness and sarcasm quite new to his pen.&nbsp; At midnight that
+pen dropped from his nerveless hand, and he made his way toward the
+Palace in a most unenviable state of mind and body.</p>
+<p>Yet he believed he had done the right thing both in engaging himself
+to Miss Lawrence and in discharging Berene.&nbsp; Her constant presence
+about the office was of all things the most undesirable in his new position.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I might have done it in a decent manner if I had not lost
+all control of myself,&rdquo; he said as he walked home.&nbsp; &ldquo;It
+was brutal the way I spoke to her; poor child, she looked as if I had
+beat her with a bludgeon.&nbsp; Well, it is just as well perhaps that
+I gave her good reason to despise me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Since Berene had gone into the young man&rsquo;s office as an employ&eacute;
+her good taste and another reason had caused her to avoid him as much
+as possible in the house.&nbsp; He seldom saw more than a passing glimpse
+of her in the halls, and frequently whole days elapsed that he met her
+only in the office.&nbsp; The young man never suspected that this fact
+was due in great part to the suggestion of jealousy in the manner of
+the Baroness toward the young girl ever after he had shown so much interest
+in her welfare.&nbsp; Sensitive to the mental atmosphere about her,
+as a wind harp to the lightest breeze, Berene felt this unexpressed
+sentiment in the breast of her &ldquo;benefactress&rdquo; and strove
+to avoid anything which could aggravate it.</p>
+<p>With a lagging step and a listless air, Preston made his way up the
+first of two flights of stairs which intervened between the street door
+and his room.&nbsp; The first floor was in darkness; but in the upper
+hall a dim light was always left burning until his return.&nbsp; As
+he reached the landing, he was startled to see a woman&rsquo;s form
+lying at the foot of the attic stairs, but a few feet from the door
+of his room.&nbsp; Stooping down, he uttered a sudden exclamation of
+pained surprise, for it was upon the pallid, unconscious face of Berene
+Dumont that his eyes fell.&nbsp; He lifted the lithe figure in his sinewy
+arms, and with light, rapid steps bore her up the stairs and in through
+the open door of her room.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If she is dead, I am her murderer,&rdquo; he thought.&nbsp;
+But at that moment she opened her eyes and looked full into his, with
+a gaze which made his impetuous, uncontrolled heart forget that any
+one or anything existed on earth but this girl and his love for her.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>One of the greatest factors in the preservation of the Baroness&rsquo;s
+beauty had been her ability to sleep under all conditions.&nbsp; The
+woman who can and does sleep eight or nine hours out of each twenty-four
+is well armed against the onslaught of time and trouble.</p>
+<p>To say that such women do not possess heart enough or feeling enough
+to suffer is ofttimes most untrue.</p>
+<p>Insomnia is a disease of the nerves or of the stomach, rather than
+the result of extreme emotion.&nbsp; Sometimes the people who sleep
+the most profoundly at night in times of sorrow, suffer the more intensely
+during their waking hours.&nbsp; Disguised as a friend, deceitful Slumber
+comes to them only to strengthen their powers of suffering, and to lend
+a new edge to pain.</p>
+<p>The Baroness was not without feeling.&nbsp; Her temperament was far
+from phlegmatic.&nbsp; She had experienced great cyclones of grief and
+loss in her varied career, though many years had elapsed since she had
+known what the French call a &ldquo;white night.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But the night following her interview with Preston Cheney she never
+closed her eyes in sleep.&nbsp; It was in vain that she tried all known
+recipes for producing slumber.&nbsp; She said the alphabet backward
+ten times; she counted one thousand; she conjured up visions of sheep
+jumping the time-honoured fence in battalions, yet the sleep god never
+once drew near.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am certainly a brilliant illustration of the saying that
+there is no fool like an old fool,&rdquo; she said to herself as the
+night wore on, and the strange sensation of pain and loss which Preston
+Cheney&rsquo;s unexpected announcement had caused her gnawed at her
+breast like a rat in a wainscot.</p>
+<p>That she had been unusually interested in the young editor she knew
+from the first; that she had been mortally wounded by Cupid&rsquo;s
+shaft she only now discovered.&nbsp; She had passed through a divorce,
+two &ldquo;affairs&rdquo; and a legitimate widowhood, without feeling
+any of the keen emotions which now drove sleep from her eyes.&nbsp;
+A long time ago, longer than she cared to remember, she had experienced
+such emotions, but she had supposed such folly only possible in the
+high tide of early youth.&nbsp; It was absurd, nay more, it was ridiculous
+to lie awake at her time of life thinking about a penniless country
+youth whose mother she might almost have been.&nbsp; In this bitterly
+frank fashion the Baroness reasoned with herself as she lay quite still
+in her luxurious bed, and tried to sleep.</p>
+<p>Yet despite her frankness, her philosophy and her reasoning, the
+rasping hurt at her heart remained&mdash;a hurt so cruel it seemed to
+her the end of all peace or pleasure in life.</p>
+<p>It is harder to bear the suffocating heat of a late September day
+which the year sometimes brings, than all the burning June suns.</p>
+<p>The Baroness heard the click of Preston&rsquo;s key in the street
+door, and she listened to his slow step as he ascended the stairs.&nbsp;
+She heard him pause, too, and waited for the sound of the opening of
+his room door, which was situated exactly above her own.&nbsp; But she
+listened in vain, her ears, brain and heart on the alert with surprise,
+curiosity, and at last suspicion.&nbsp; The Baroness was as full of
+curiosity as a cat.</p>
+<p>It was not until just before dawn that she heard his step in the
+hall, and his door open and close.</p>
+<p>An hour later a sharp ring came at the street door bell.&nbsp; A
+message for Mr Preston, the servant said, in answer to her mistress&rsquo;s
+question as she descended from the room above.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Was Mr Preston awake when you rapped on his door?&rdquo; asked
+the Baroness.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, madame, awake and dressed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mr Preston ran hurriedly through the halls and out to the street
+a moment later; and the Baroness, clothed in a dressing-gown and silken
+slippers, tiptoed lightly to his room.&nbsp; The bed had not been occupied
+the whole night.&nbsp; On the table lay a note which the young man had
+begun when interrupted by the message which he had thrown down beside
+it.</p>
+<p>The Baroness glanced at the note, on which the ink was still moist,
+and read, &ldquo;My dear Miss Lawrence, I want you to release me from
+the ties formed only yesterday&mdash;I am basely unworthy&mdash;&rdquo;
+here the note ended.&nbsp; She now turned her attention to the message
+which had prevented the completion of the letter.&nbsp; It was signed
+by Judge Lawrence and ran as follows:-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;My Dear Boy,&mdash;My wife was taken mortally ill this morning
+just before daybreak.&nbsp; She cannot live many hours, our physician
+says.&nbsp; Mabel is in a state of complete nervous prostration caused
+by the shock of this calamity.&nbsp; I wish you would come to us at
+once.&nbsp; I fear for my dear child&rsquo;s reason unless you prove
+able to calm and quiet her through this ordeal.&nbsp; Hasten then, my
+dear son; every moment before you arrive will seem an age of sorrow
+and anxiety to me.&nbsp; &ldquo;S. LAWRENCE.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>A strange smile curved the corners of the Baroness&rsquo;s lips as
+she finished reading this note and tiptoed down the stairs to her own
+room again.</p>
+<p>Meantime the hour for her hot water arrived, and Berene did not appear.&nbsp;
+The Baroness drank a quart of hot water every morning as a tonic for
+her system, and another quart after breakfast to reduce her flesh.&nbsp;
+Her excellent digestive powers and the clear condition of her blood
+she attributed largely to this habit.</p>
+<p>After a few moments she rang the bell vigorously.&nbsp; Maggie, the
+chambermaid, came in answer to the call.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Please ask Miss Dumont&rdquo; (Berene was always known to
+the other servants as Miss Dumont) &ldquo;to hurry with the hot water,&rdquo;
+the Baroness said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Miss Dumont has not yet come downstairs, madame.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Not come down?&nbsp; Then will you please call her, Maggie?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Baroness was always polite to her servants.&nbsp; She had observed
+that a graciousness of speech toward her servants often made up for
+a deficiency in wages.&nbsp; Maggie ascended to Miss Dumont&rsquo;s
+room, and returned with the information that Miss Dumont had a severe
+headache, and begged the indulgence of madame this morning.</p>
+<p>Again that strange smile curved the corners of the Baroness&rsquo;s
+lips.</p>
+<p>Maggie was requested to bring up hot water and coffee, and great
+was her surprise to find the Baroness moving about the room when she
+appeared with the tray.</p>
+<p>Half-an-hour later Berene Dumont, standing by an open window with
+her hands clasped behind her head, heard a light tap on her door.&nbsp;
+In answer to a mechanical &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; the Baroness appeared.</p>
+<p>The rustle of her silken morning gown caused Berene to turn suddenly
+and face her; and as she met the eyes of her visitor the young woman&rsquo;s
+pallor gave place to a wave of deep crimson, which dyed her face and
+neck like the shadow of a red flag falling on a camellia blossom.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Maggie tells me you are ill this morning,&rdquo; the Baroness
+remarked after a moment&rsquo;s silence.&nbsp; &ldquo;I am surprised
+to find you up and dressed.&nbsp; I came to see if I could do anything
+for you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are very kind,&rdquo; Berene answered, while in her heart
+she thought how cruel was the expression in the face of the woman before
+her, and how faded she appeared in the morning light.&nbsp; &ldquo;But
+I think I shall be quite well in a little while, I only need to keep
+quiet for a few hours.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I fear you passed a sleepless night,&rdquo; the Baroness remarked
+with a solicitous tone, but with the same cruel smile upon her lips.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I see you never opened your bed.&nbsp; Something must have been
+in the air to keep us all awake.&nbsp; I did not sleep an hour, and
+Mr Cheney never entered his room till near morning.&nbsp; Yet I can
+understand his wakefulness&mdash;he announced his engagement to Miss
+Mabel Lawrence to me last evening, and a young man is not expected to
+woo sleep easily after taking such an important step as that.&nbsp;
+Judge Lawrence sent for him a few hours ago to come and support Miss
+Mabel during the trial that the day is to bring them in the death of
+Mrs Lawrence.&nbsp; The physician has predicted the poor invalid&rsquo;s
+near end.&nbsp; Sorrow follows close on joy in this life.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>There was a moment&rsquo;s silence; then Miss Dumont said: &ldquo;I
+think I will try to get a little sleep now, madame.&nbsp; I thank you
+for your kind interest in me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Baroness descended to her room humming an air from an old opera,
+and settled to the task of removing as much as possible all evidences
+of fatigue and sleeplessness from her countenance.</p>
+<p>It has been said very prettily of the spruce-tree, that it keeps
+the secret of its greenness well; so well that we hardly know when it
+sheds its leaves.&nbsp; There are women who resemble the spruce in their
+perennial youth, and the vigilance with which they guard the secret
+of it.&nbsp; The Baroness was one of these.&nbsp; Only her mirror shared
+this secret.</p>
+<p>She was an adept at the art of preservation, and greatly as she disliked
+physical exertion, she toiled laboriously over her own person an hour
+at least every day, and never employed a maid to assist her.&nbsp; One&rsquo;s
+rival might buy one&rsquo;s maid, she reasoned, and it was well to have
+no confidant in these matters.</p>
+<p>She slipped off her dressing-gown and corset and set herself to the
+task of pinching and mauling her throat, arms and shoulders, to remove
+superfluous flesh, and strengthen muscles and fibres to resist the flabby
+tendencies which time produces.&nbsp; Then she used the dumb-bells vigorously
+for fifteen minutes, and that was followed by five minutes of relaxation.&nbsp;
+Next she lay on the floor flat upon her face, her arms across her back,
+and lifted her head and chest twenty-five times.&nbsp; This exercise
+was to replace flesh with muscle across the abdomen.&nbsp; Then she
+rose to her feet, set her small heels together, turned her toes out
+squarely, and, keeping her body upright bent her knees out in a line
+with her hips, sinking and rising rapidly fifteen times.&nbsp; This
+produced pliancy of the body, and induced a healthy condition of the
+loins and adjacent organs.</p>
+<p>To further fight against the deadly enemy of obesity, she lifted
+her arms above her head slowly until she touched her finger tips, at
+the same time rising upon her tiptoes, while she inhaled a long breath,
+and as slowly dropped to her heels, and lowered her arms while she exhaled
+her breath.&nbsp; While these exercises had been taking place, a tin
+cup of water had been coming to the boiling point over an alcohol lamp.&nbsp;
+This was now poured into a china bowl containing a small quantity of
+sweet milk, which was always brought on her breakfast tray.</p>
+<p>The Baroness seated herself before her mirror, in a glare of cruel
+light which revealed every blemish in her complexion, every line about
+the mouth and eyes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You are really hideously pass&eacute;e, mon amie,&rdquo; she
+observed as she peered at herself searchingly; &ldquo;but we will remedy
+all that.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Dipping a soft linen handkerchief in the bowl of steaming milk and
+water, she applied it to her face, holding it closely over the brow
+and eyes and about the mouth, until every pore was saturated and every
+weary drawn tissue fed and strengthened by the tonic.&nbsp; After this
+she dashed ice-cold water over her face.&nbsp; Still there were little
+folds at the corners of the eyelids, and an ugly line across the brow,
+and these were manipulated with painstaking care, and treated with mysterious
+oils and fragrant astringents and finally washed in cool toilet water
+and lightly brushed with powder, until at the end of an hour&rsquo;s
+labour, the face of the Baroness had resumed its roseleaf bloom and
+transparent smoothness for which she was so famous.&nbsp; And when by
+the closest inspection at the mirror, in the broadest light, she saw
+no flaw in skin, hair, or teeth, the Baroness proceeded to dress for
+a drive.&nbsp; Even the most jealous rival would have been obliged to
+concede that she looked like a woman of twenty-eight, that most fascinating
+of all ages, as she took her seat in the carriage.</p>
+<p>In the early days of her life in Beryngford, when as the Baroness
+Le Fevre she had led society in the little town, Mrs Lawrence had been
+one of her most devoted friends; Judge Lawrence one of her most earnest,
+if silent admirers.&nbsp; As &ldquo;Baroness Brown&rdquo; and as the
+landlady of &ldquo;The Palace&rdquo; she had still maintained her position
+as friend of the family, and the Lawrences, secure in their wealth and
+power, had allowed her to do so, where some of the lower social lights
+had dropped her from their visiting lists.</p>
+<p>The Baroness seemed to exercise a sort of hypnotic power over the
+fretful, nervous invalid who shared Judge Lawrence&rsquo;s name, and
+this influence was not wholly lost upon the Judge himself, who never
+looked upon the Baroness&rsquo;s abundant charms, glowing with health,
+without giving vent to a profound sigh like some hungry child standing
+before a confectioner&rsquo;s window.</p>
+<p>The news of Mrs Lawrence&rsquo;s dangerous illness was voiced about
+the town by noon, and therefore the Baroness felt safe in calling at
+the door to make inquiries, and to offer any assistance which she might
+be able to render.&nbsp; Knowing her intimate relations with the mistress
+of the house, the servant admitted her to the parlour and announced
+her presence to Judge Lawrence, who left the bedside of the invalid
+to tell the caller in person that Mrs Lawrence had fallen into a peaceful
+slumber, and that slight hopes were entertained of her possible recovery.&nbsp;
+Scarcely had the words passed his lips, however, when the nurse in attendance
+hurriedly called him.&nbsp; &ldquo;Mrs Lawrence is dead!&rdquo; she
+cried.&nbsp; &ldquo;She breathed only twice after you left the room.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Baroness, shocked and startled, rose to go, feeling that her
+presence longer would be an intrusion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Do not go,&rdquo; cried the Judge in tones of distress.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Mabel is nearly distracted, and this news will excite her still
+further.&nbsp; We thought this morning that she was on the verge of
+serious mental disorder.&nbsp; I sent for her fianc&eacute;, Mr Cheney,
+and he has calmed her somewhat.&nbsp; You always exerted a soothing
+and restful influence over my wife, and you may have the same power
+with Mabel.&nbsp; Stay with us, I beg of you, through the afternoon
+at least.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Baroness sent her carriage home and remained in the Lawrence
+mansion until the following morning.&nbsp; The condition of Miss Lawrence
+was indeed serious.&nbsp; She passed from one attack of hysteria to
+another, and it required the constant attention of her fianc&eacute;
+and her mother&rsquo;s friend to keep her from acts of violence.</p>
+<p>It was after midnight when she at last fell asleep, and Preston Cheney
+in a state of complete exhaustion was shown to a room, while the Baroness
+remained at the bedside of Miss Lawrence.</p>
+<p>When the Baroness and Mr Cheney returned to the Palace they were
+struck with consternation to learn that Miss Dumont had packed her trunk
+and departed from Beryngford on the three o&rsquo;clock train the previous
+day.</p>
+<p>A brief note thanking the Baroness for her kindness, and stating
+that she had imposed upon that kindness quite too long, was her only
+farewell.&nbsp; There was no allusion to her plans or her destination,
+and all inquiry and secret search failed to find one trace of her.&nbsp;
+She seemed to vanish like a phantom from the face of the earth.</p>
+<p>No one had seen her leave the Palace, save the laundress, Mrs Connor;
+and little this humble personage dreamed that Fate was reserving for
+her an important r&ocirc;le in the drama of a life as yet unborn.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Whatever hope of escape from his self-imposed bondage Preston Cheney
+had entertained when he began the note to his fianc&eacute;e which the
+Baroness had read, completely vanished during the weeks which followed
+the death of Mrs Lawrence.</p>
+<p>Mabel&rsquo;s nervous condition was alarming, and her father seemed
+to rely wholly upon his future son-in-law for courage and moral support
+during the trying ordeal.&nbsp; Like most large men of strong physique,
+Judge Lawrence was as helpless as an infant in the presence of an ailing
+woman; and his experience as the husband of a wife whose nerves were
+the only notable thing about her, had given him an absolute terror of
+feminine invalids.</p>
+<p>Mabel had never been very fond of her mother; she had not been a
+loving or a dutiful daughter.&nbsp; A petulant child and an irritable,
+fault-finding young woman, who had often been devoid of sympathy for
+her parents, she now exhibited such an excess of grief over the death
+of her mother that her reason seemed to be threatened.</p>
+<p>It was, in fact, quite as much anger as grief which caused her nervous
+paroxysms.&nbsp; Mabel Lawrence had never since her infancy known what
+it was to be thwarted in a wish.&nbsp; Both parents had been slaves
+to her slightest caprice and she had ruled the household with a look
+or a word.&nbsp; Death had suddenly deprived her of a mother who was
+necessary to her comfort and to whose presence she was accustomed, and
+her heart was full of angry resentment at the fate which had dared to
+take away a member of her household.&nbsp; It had never entered her
+thoughts that death could devastate <i>her</i> home.</p>
+<p>Other people lost fathers and mothers, of course; but that Mabel
+Lawrence could be deprived of a parent seemed incredible.&nbsp; Anger
+is a strong ingredient in the excessive grief of every selfish nature.</p>
+<p>Preston Cheney became more and more disheartened with the prospect
+of his future, as he studied the character and temperament of his fianc&eacute;e
+during her first weeks of loss.</p>
+<p>But the net which he had woven was closing closer and closer about
+him, and every day he became more hopelessly entangled in its meshes.</p>
+<p>At the end of one month, the family physician decided that travel
+and change of air and scene was an imperative necessity for Miss Lawrence.&nbsp;
+Judge Lawrence was engaged in some important legal matters which rendered
+an extended journey impossible for him.&nbsp; To trust Mabel in the
+hands of hired nurses alone, was not advisable.&nbsp; It was her father
+who suggested an early marriage and a European trip for bride and groom,
+as the wisest expedient under the circumstances.</p>
+<p>Like the prisoner in the iron room, who saw the walls slowly but
+surely closing in to crush out his life, Preston Cheney saw his wedding
+day approaching, and knew that his doom was sealed.</p>
+<p>There were many desperate hours, when, had he possessed the slightest
+clue to the hiding-place of Berene Dumont, he would have flown to her,
+even knowing that he left disgrace and death behind him.&nbsp; He realised
+that he now owed a duty to the girl he loved, higher and more imperative
+by far than any he owed to his fianc&eacute;e.&nbsp; But he had not
+the means to employ a detective to find Berene; and he was not sure
+that, if found, she might not spurn him.&nbsp; He had heard and read
+of cases where a woman&rsquo;s love had turned to bitter loathing and
+hatred for the man who had not protected her in a moment of weakness.&nbsp;
+He could think of no other cause which would lead Berene to disappear
+in such a mysterious manner at such a time, and so the days passed and
+he married Mabel Lawrence two months after the death of her mother,
+and the young couple set forth immediately on extended foreign travels.&nbsp;
+Fifteen months later they returned to Beryngford with their infant daughter
+Alice.&nbsp; Mrs Cheney was much improved in health, though still a
+great sufferer from nervous disorders, a misfortune which the child
+seemed to inherit.&nbsp; She would lie and scream for hours at a time,
+clenching her small fists and growing purple in the face, and all efforts
+of parents, nurses or physicians to soothe her, served only to further
+increase her frenzy.&nbsp; She screamed and beat the air with her thin
+arms and legs until nature exhausted itself, then she fell into a heavy
+slumber and awoke in good spirits.</p>
+<p>These attacks came on frequently in the night, and as they rendered
+Mrs Cheney very &ldquo;nervous,&rdquo; and caused a panic among the
+nurses, it devolved upon the unhappy father to endeavour to soothe the
+violent child.&nbsp; And while he walked the floor with her or leaned
+over her crib, using all his strong mental powers to control these unfortunate
+paroxysms, no vision came to him of another child lying cuddled in her
+mother&rsquo;s arms in a distant town, a child of wonderful beauty and
+angelic nature, born of love, and inheriting love&rsquo;s divine qualities.</p>
+<p>A few months before the young couple returned to their native soil,
+they received a letter which caused Preston the greatest astonishment,
+and Mabel some hours of hysterical weeping.&nbsp; This letter was written
+by Judge Lawrence, and announced his marriage to Baroness Brown.&nbsp;
+Judge Lawrence had been a widower more than a year when the Baroness
+took the book of his heart, in which he supposed the hand of romance
+had long ago written &ldquo;finis,&rdquo; and turning it to his astonished
+eyes revealed a whole volume of love&rsquo;s love.</p>
+<p>It is in the second reading of their hearts that the majority of
+men find the most interesting literature.</p>
+<p>Before the Baroness had been three months his wife, the long years
+of martyrdom he had endured as the husband of Mabel&rsquo;s mother seemed
+like a nightmare dream to Judge Lawrence; and all of life, hope and
+happiness was embodied in the woman who ruled his destiny with a hypnotic
+sway no one could dispute, yet a woman whose heart still throbbed with
+a stubborn and lawless passion for the man who called her husband father.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>More than two decades had passed since Preston Cheney followed the
+dictates of his ambition and married Mabel Lawrence.</p>
+<p>Many of his early hopes and desires had been realised during these
+years.&nbsp; He had attained to high political positions; and honour
+and wealth were his to enjoy.&nbsp; Yet Senator Cheney, as he was now
+known, was far from a happy man.&nbsp; Disappointment was written in
+every lineament of his face, restlessness and discontent spoke in his
+every movement, and at times the spirit of despair seemed to look from
+the depths of his eyes.</p>
+<p>To a man of any nobility of nature, there can be small satisfaction
+in honours which he knows are bought with money and bribes; and to the
+proud young American there was the additional sting of knowing that
+even the money by which his honours were purchased was not his own.</p>
+<p>It was the second Mrs Lawrence (still designated as the &ldquo;Baroness&rdquo;
+by her stepdaughter and by old acquaintances) to whom Preston owed the
+constant reminder of his dependence upon the purse of his father-in-law.&nbsp;
+In those subtle, occult ways known only to a jealous and designing nature,
+the Baroness found it possible to make Preston&rsquo;s life a torture,
+without revealing her weapons of warfare to her husband; indeed, without
+allowing him to even smell the powder, while she still kept up a constant
+small fire upon the helpless enemy.</p>
+<p>Owing to the fact that Mabel had come as completely under the hypnotic
+influence of the Baroness as the first Mrs Lawrence had been during
+her lifetime, Preston was subjected to a great deal more of her persecutions
+than would otherwise have been possible.&nbsp; Mabel was never happier
+than when enjoying the companionship of her new mother; a condition
+of things which pleased the Judge as much as it made his son-in-law
+miserable.</p>
+<p>With a malicious adroitness possible only to such a woman as the
+second Mrs Lawrence, she endeared herself to Mrs Cheney, by a thousand
+flattering and caressing ways, and by a constant exhibition of sympathy,
+which to a weak and selfish nature is as pleasing as it is distasteful
+to the proud and strong.&nbsp; And by this inexhaustible flow of sympathetic
+feeling, she caused the wife to drift farther and farther away from
+her husband&rsquo;s influence, and to accuse him of all manner of shortcomings
+and faults which had not suggested themselves to her own mind.</p>
+<p>Mabel had not given or demanded a devoted love when she married Preston
+Cheney.&nbsp; She was quite satisfied to bear his name, and do the honours
+of his house, and to be let alone as much as possible.&nbsp; It was
+the name, not the estate, of wifehood she desired; and motherhood she
+had accepted with reluctance and distaste.</p>
+<p>Never was a more undesired or unwelcome child born than her daughter
+Alice, and the helpless infant shared with its father the resentful
+anger which dominated her unwilling mother the wretched months before
+its advent into earth life.</p>
+<p>To be let alone and allowed to follow her own whims and desires,
+and never to be crossed in any wish, was all Mrs Cheney asked of her
+husband.</p>
+<p>This r&ocirc;le was one he had very willingly permitted her to pursue,
+since with every passing week and month he found less and less to win
+or bind him to his wife.&nbsp; Wretched as this condition of life was,
+it might at least have settled into a monotonous calm, undisturbed by
+strife, but for the molesting &ldquo;sympathy&rdquo; of the Baroness.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Poor thing, here you are alone again,&rdquo; she would say
+on entering the house where Mabel lounged or lolled, quite content with
+her situation until the tone and words of her stepmother aroused a resentful
+consciousness of being neglected.&nbsp; Again the Baroness would say:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I do think you are such a brave little darling to carry so
+smiling a face about with all you have to endure.&rdquo;&nbsp; Or, &ldquo;Very
+few wives would bear what you bear and hide every vestige of unhappiness
+from the world.&nbsp; You are a wonderful and admirable character in
+my eyes.&rdquo;&nbsp; Or, &ldquo;It seems so strange that your husband
+does not adore you&mdash;but men are blind to the best qualities in
+women like you.&nbsp; I never hear Mr Cheney praising other women without
+a sad and almost resentful feeling in my heart, realising how superior
+you are to all of his favourites.&rdquo;&nbsp; It was the insidious
+effect of poisoned flattery like this, which made the Baroness a ruling
+power in the Cheney household, and at the same time turned an already
+cold and unloving wife into a jealous and nagging tyrant who rendered
+the young statesman&rsquo;s home the most dreaded place on earth to
+him, and caused him to live away from it as much as possible.</p>
+<p>His only child, Alice, a frail, hysterical girl, devoid of beauty
+or grace, gave him but little comfort or satisfaction.&nbsp; Indeed
+she was but an added disappointment and pain in his life.&nbsp; Indulged
+in every selfish thought by her mother and the Baroness, peevish and
+petulant, always ailing, complaining and discontented, and still a victim
+to the nervous disorders inherited from her mother, it was small wonder
+that Senator Cheney took no more delight in the r&ocirc;le of father
+than he had found in the r&ocirc;le of husband.</p>
+<p>Alice was given every advantage which money could purchase.&nbsp;
+But her delicate health had rendered systematic study of any kind impossible,
+and her twentieth birthday found her with no education, with no use
+of her reasoning or will powers, but with a complete and beautiful wardrobe
+in which to masquerade and air her poor little attempts at music, art,
+or conversation.</p>
+<p>Judge Lawrence died when Alice was fifteen years of age, leaving
+both his widow and his daughter handsomely provided for.</p>
+<p>The Baroness not only possessed the Beryngford homestead, but a house
+in Washington as well; and both of these were occupied by tenants, for
+Mabel insisted upon having her stepmother dwell under her own roof.&nbsp;
+Senator Cheney had purchased a house in New York to gratify his wife
+and daughter, and it was here the family resided, when not in Washington
+or at the seaside resorts.&nbsp; Both women wished to forget, and to
+make others forget, that they had ever lived in Beryngford.&nbsp; They
+never visited the place and never referred to it.&nbsp; They desired
+to be considered &ldquo;New Yorkers&rdquo; and always spoke of themselves
+as such.</p>
+<p>The Baroness was now hopelessly pass&eacute;e.&nbsp; Yet it was the
+revealing of the inner woman, rather than the withering of the exterior,
+which betrayed her years.&nbsp; The woman who understands the art of
+bodily preservation can, with constant toil and care, retain an appearance
+of youth and charm into middle life; but she who would pass that dreaded
+meridian, and still remain a goodly sight for the eyes of men, must
+possess, in addition to all the secrets of the toilet, those divine
+elixirs, unselfishness and love for humanity.&nbsp; Faith in divine
+powers, too, and resignation to earthly ills, must do their part to
+lend the fading eye lustre and to give a softening glow to the paling
+cheek.&nbsp; Before middle life, it is the outer woman who is seen;
+after middle life, skilled as she may be by art and however endowed
+my nature, yet the inner woman becomes visible to the least discerning
+eye, and the thoughts and feelings which have dominated her during all
+the past, are shown upon her face and form like printed words upon the
+open leaves of a book.&nbsp; That is why so many young beauties become
+ugly old ladies, and why plain faces sometimes are beautiful in age.</p>
+<p>The Baroness had been unremitting in the care of her person, and
+she had by this toil saved her figure from becoming gross, retaining
+the upright carriage and the tapering waist of youth, though she was
+upon the verge of her sixtieth birthday.&nbsp; Her complexion, too,
+owing to her careful diet, her hours of repose, and her knowledge of
+skin foods and lotions, remained smooth, fair and unfurrowed.&nbsp;
+But the long-guarded expression in her blue eyes of childlike innocence
+had given place to the hard look of a selfish and unhappy nature, and
+the lines about the small mouth accented the expression of the eyes.</p>
+<p>It was, despite its preservation of Nature&rsquo;s gifts, and despite
+its forced smiles, the face of a selfish, cruel pessimist, disappointed
+in her past and with no uplifting faith to brighten the future.</p>
+<p>The Baroness had been the wife of Judge Lawrence a number of years,
+before she relinquished her hopes of one day making Preston Cheney respond
+to the passion which burned unquenched in her breast.&nbsp; It had been
+with the idea of augmenting the interests of the man whom she believed
+to be her future lover, that she aided and urged on her husband in his
+efforts to procure place and honour for his son-in-law.</p>
+<p>It was this idea which caused her to widen the breach between wife
+and husband by every subtle means in her power; and it was when this
+idea began to lose colour and substance and drop away among the wreckage
+of past hopes, that the Baroness ceased to compliment and began to taunt
+Preston Cheney with his dependence upon his father-in-law, and to otherwise
+goad and torment the unhappy man.&nbsp; And Preston Cheney grew into
+the habit of staying anywhere longer than at home.</p>
+<p>During the last ten years the Baroness had seemed to abandon all
+thoughts of gallant adventure.&nbsp; When the woman who has found life
+and pleasures only in coquetry and conquest is forced to relinquish
+these delights, she becomes either very devout or very malicious.</p>
+<p>The Baroness was devoid of religious feelings, and she became, therefore,
+the most bitter and caustic of cynical critics at heart, though she
+guarded her expression of these sentiments from policy.</p>
+<p>Yet to Mabel she expressed herself freely, knowing that her listener
+enjoyed no conversation so much as that of gossip and criticism.&nbsp;
+A beautiful or attractive woman was the target for her most cruel shafts
+of sarcasm, and indeed no woman was safe from her secret malice save
+Mabel and Alice, over whom she found it a greater pleasure to exercise
+her hypnotic control.&nbsp; For Alice, indeed, the Baroness entertained
+a peculiar affection.&nbsp; The fact that she was the child of the man
+to whom she had given the strongest passion of her life, and the girl&rsquo;s
+lack of personal beauty, and her unfortunate physical condition, awoke
+a medley of love, pity and protection in the heart of this strange woman.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The Baroness had always been a churchgoing woman, yet she had never
+united with any church, or subscribed to any creed.</p>
+<p>Religious observance was only an implement of social warfare with
+her.&nbsp; Wherever her lot was cast, she made it her business to discover
+which church the fashionable people of the town frequented, and to become
+a familiar and liberal-handed personage in that edifice.</p>
+<p>Judge Lawrence and his family were High Church Episcopalians, and
+the second Mrs Lawrence slipped gracefully into the pew vacated by the
+first, and became a much more important feature in the congregation,
+owing to her good health and extreme desire for popularity.&nbsp; Mabel
+and Alice were devout believers in the orthodox dogmas which have taken
+the place of the simple teachings of Christ in so many of our churches
+to-day.&nbsp; They believed that people who did not go to church would
+stand a very poor chance of heaven; and that a strict observance of
+a Sunday religion would ensure them a passport into God&rsquo;s favour.&nbsp;
+When they returned from divine service and mangled the character and
+attire of their neighbours over the Sunday dinner-table, no idea entered
+their heads or hearts that they had sinned against the Holy Ghost.&nbsp;
+The pastor of their church knew them to be selfish, worldly-minded women;
+yet he administered the holy sacrament to them without compunction of
+conscience, and never by question or remark implied a doubt of their
+true sincerity in things religious.&nbsp; They believed in the creed
+of his church, and they paid liberally for the support of that church.&nbsp;
+What more could he ask?</p>
+<p>This had been true of the pastor in Beryngford, and it proved equally
+true of their spiritual adviser in Washington and in New York.</p>
+<p>Just across the aisle from the Lawrences sat a rich financier, in
+his sumptuously cushioned pew.&nbsp; During six days of each week he
+was engaged in crushing life and hope out of the hearts of the poor,
+under his juggernaut wheels of monopoly.&nbsp; His name was known far
+and near, as that of a powerful and cruel speculator, who did not hesitate
+to pauperise his nearest friends if they placed themselves in his reach.&nbsp;
+That he was a thief and a robber, no one ever denied; yet so colossal
+were his thefts, so bold and successful his robberies, the public gazed
+upon him with a sort of stupefied awe, and allowed him to proceed, while
+miserable tramps, who stole overcoats or robbed money drawers, were
+incarcerated for a term of years, and then sternly refused assistance
+afterward by good people, who place no confidence in jail birds.</p>
+<p>But each Sunday this successful robber occupied his high-priced church
+pew, devoutly listening to the divine word.</p>
+<p>He never failed to partake of the holy communion, nor was his right
+to do so ever questioned.</p>
+<p>The rector of the church knew his record perfectly; knew that his
+gains were ill-gotten blood money, ground from the suffering poor by
+the power of monopoly, and from confiding fools by smart lures and scheming
+tricks.&nbsp; But this young clergyman, having recently been called
+to preside over the fashionable church, had no idea of being so impolite
+as to refuse to administer the bread and wine to one of its most liberal
+supporters!</p>
+<p>There were constant demands upon the treasury of the church; it required
+a vast outlay of money to maintain the splendour and elegance of the
+temple which held its head so high above many others; and there were
+large charities to be sustained, not to mention its rector&rsquo;s princely
+salary.&nbsp; The millionaire pewholder was a liberal giver.&nbsp; It
+rarely occurs to the fashionable dispensers of spiritual knowledge to
+ask whether the devil&rsquo;s money should be used to gild the Lord&rsquo;s
+temple; nor to question if it be a wise religion which allows a man
+to rob his neighbours on weekdays, to give to the cause of charity on
+Sundays.</p>
+<p>And yet if every clergyman and priest in the land were to make and
+maintain these standards for their followers, there might be an astonishing
+decrease in the needs of the poor and unfortunate.</p>
+<p>Were every church member obliged to open his month&rsquo;s ledgers
+to a competent jury of inspectors, before he was allowed to take the
+holy sacrament and avow himself a humble follower of Christ, what a
+revolution might ensue!&nbsp; How church spires would crumble for lack
+of support, and poorhouses lessen in number for lack of inmates!</p>
+<p>But the leniency of clergymen toward the shortcomings of their wealthy
+parishioners is often a touching lesson in charity to the thoughtful
+observer who stands outside the fold.</p>
+<p>For how could they obtain money to convert the heathen, unless this
+sweet cloak of charity were cast over the sins of the liberal rich?&nbsp;
+Christ is crucified by the fashionable clergymen to-day more cruelly
+than he was by the Jews of old.</p>
+<p>Senator Cheney was not a church member, and he seldom attended service.&nbsp;
+This was a matter of great solicitude to his wife and daughter.&nbsp;
+The Baroness felt it to be a mistake on the part of Senator Cheney,
+and even Judge Lawrence, who adored his son-in-law, regretted the young
+man&rsquo;s indifference to things spiritual.&nbsp; But with all Preston
+Cheney&rsquo;s worldly ambitions and weaknesses, there was a vein of
+sincerity in his nature which forbade his feigning a faith he did not
+feel; and the daily lives of the three feminine members of his family
+were so in disaccord with his views of religion that he felt no incentive
+to follow in their footsteps.&nbsp; Judge Lawrence he knew to be an
+honest, loyal-hearted, God and humanity loving man.&nbsp; &ldquo;A true
+Christian by nature and education,&rdquo; he said of his father-in-law,
+&ldquo;but I am not born with his tendency to religious observance,
+and I see less and less in the churches to lead me into the fold.&nbsp;
+It seems to me that these religious institutions are getting to be vast
+monopolistic corporations like the railroads and oil trusts, and the
+like.&nbsp; I see very little of the spirit of Christ in orthodox people
+to-day.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Meanwhile Senator Cheney&rsquo;s purse was always open to any demand
+the church made; he believed in churches as benevolent if not soul-saving
+institutions, and cheerfully aided their charitable work.</p>
+<p>The rector of St Blank&rsquo;s, the fashionable edifice where the
+ladies of the Cheney household obtained spiritual manna in New York,
+died when Alice was sixteen years old.&nbsp; He was a good old man,
+and a sincere Episcopalian, and whatever originality of thought or expression
+he may have lacked, his strict observance of the High Church code of
+ethics maintained the tone of his church and rendered him an object
+of reverence to his congregation.&nbsp; His successor was Reverend Arthur
+Emerson Stuart, a young man barely thirty years of age, heir to a comfortable
+fortune, gifted with strong intellectual powers and dowered with physical
+attractions.</p>
+<p>It was not a case of natural selection which caused Arthur Stuart
+to adopt the church as a profession.&nbsp; It was the result of his
+middle name.&nbsp; Mrs Stuart had been an Emerson&mdash;in some remote
+way her family claimed relationship with Ralph Waldo.&nbsp; Her father
+and grandfather and several uncles had been clergymen.&nbsp; She married
+a broker, who left her a rich widow with one child, a son.&nbsp; From
+the hour this son was born his mother designed him for the clergy, and
+brought him up with the idea firmly while gently fixed in his mind.</p>
+<p>Whatever seed a mother plants in a young child&rsquo;s mind, carefully
+watches over, prunes and waters, and exposes to sun and shade, is quite
+certain to grow, if the soil is not wholly stony ground.</p>
+<p>Arthur Stuart adored his mother, and stifling some commercial instincts
+inherited from the parental side, he turned his attention to the ministry
+and entered upon his chosen work when only twenty-five years of age.&nbsp;
+Eloquent, dramatic in speech, handsome, and magnetic in person, independent
+in fortune, and of excellent lineage on the mother&rsquo;s side, it
+was not surprising that he was called to take charge of the spiritual
+welfare of fashionable St Blank&rsquo;s Church on the death of the old
+pastor; or that, having taken the charge, he became immensely popular,
+especially with the ladies of his congregation.&nbsp; And from the first
+Sabbath day when they looked up from their expensive pew into the handsome
+face of their new rector, there was but one man in the world for Mabel
+Cheney and her daughter Alice, and that was the Reverend Arthur Emerson
+Stuart.</p>
+<p>It has been said by a great and wise teacher, that we may worship
+the god in the human being, but never the human being as God.&nbsp;
+This distinction is rarely drawn by women, I fear, when their spiritual
+teacher is a young and handsome man.&nbsp; The ladies of the Rev. Arthur
+Stuart&rsquo;s congregation went home to dream, not of the Creator and
+Maker of all things, nor of the divine Man, but of the handsome face,
+stalwart form and magnetic voice of the young rector.&nbsp; They feasted
+their eyes upon his agreeable person, rather than their souls upon his
+words of salvation.&nbsp; Disappointed wives, lonely spinsters and romantic
+girls believed they were coming nearer to spiritual truths in their
+increased desire to attend service, while in fact they were merely drawn
+nearer to a very attractive male personality.</p>
+<p>There was not the holy flame in the young clergyman&rsquo;s own heart
+to ignite other souls; but his strong magnetism was perceptible to all,
+and they did not realise the difference.&nbsp; And meantime the church
+grew and prospered amazingly.</p>
+<p>It was observed by the congregation of St Blank&rsquo;s Church, shortly
+after the advent of the new rector, that a new organist also occupied
+the organ loft; and inquiry elicited the fact that the old man who had
+officiated in that capacity during many years, had been retired on a
+pension, while a young lady who needed the position and the salary had
+been chosen to fill the vacancy.</p>
+<p>That the change was for the better could not be questioned.&nbsp;
+Never before had such music pealed forth under the tall spires of St
+Blank&rsquo;s.&nbsp; The new organist seemed inspired; and many people
+in the fashionable congregation, hearing that this wonderful musician
+was a young woman, lingered near the church door after service to catch
+a glimpse of her as she descended from the loft.</p>
+<p>A goodly sight she was, indeed, for human eyes to gaze upon.&nbsp;
+Young, of medium height and perfectly symmetry of shape, her blonde
+hair and satin skin and eyes of velvet darkness were but her lesser
+charms.&nbsp; That which riveted the gaze of every beholder, and drew
+all eyes to her whereever she passed, was her air of radiant health
+and happiness, which emanated from her like the perfume from a flower.</p>
+<p>A sad countenance may render a heroine of romance attractive in a
+book, but in real life there is no charm at once so rare and so fascinating
+as happiness.&nbsp; Did you ever think how few faces of the grown up,
+however young, are really happy in expression?&nbsp; Discontent, restlessness,
+longing, unsatisfied ambition or ill health mar ninety and nine of every
+hundred faces we meet in the daily walks of life.&nbsp; When we look
+upon a countenance which sparkles with health and absolute joy in life,
+we turn and look again and yet again, charmed and fascinated, though
+we do not know why.</p>
+<p>It was such a face that Joy Irving, the new organist of St Blank&rsquo;s
+Church, flashed upon the people who had lingered near the door to see
+her pass out.&nbsp; Among those who lingered was the Baroness; and all
+day she carried about with her the memory of that sparkling countenance;
+and strive as she would, she could not drive away a vague, strange uneasiness
+which the sight of that face had caused her.</p>
+<p>Yet a vision of youth and beauty always made the Baroness unhappy,
+now that both blessings were irrevocably lost to her.</p>
+<p>This particular young face, however, stirred her with those half-painful,
+half-pleasurable emotions which certain perfumes awake in us&mdash;vague
+reminders of joys lost or unattained, of dreams broken or unrealised.&nbsp;
+Added to this, it reminded her of someone she had known, yet she could
+not place the resemblance.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, to be young and beautiful like that!&rdquo; she sighed
+as she buried her face in her pillow that night.&nbsp; &ldquo;And since
+I cannot be, if only Alice had that girl&rsquo;s face.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And because Alice did not have it, the Baroness went to sleep with
+a feeling of bitter resentment against its possessor, the beautiful
+young organist of St Blank&rsquo;s.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Up in the loft of St Blank&rsquo;s Church the young organist had
+been practising the whole morning.&nbsp; People paused on the street
+to listen to the glorious sounds, and were thrilled by them, as one
+is only thrilled when the strong personality of the player enters into
+the execution.</p>
+<p>Down into the committee-room, where several deacons and the young
+rector were seated discussing some question pertaining to the well-being
+of the church, the music penetrated too, causing the business which
+had brought them together, to be suspended temporarily.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is a sin to talk while music like that can be heard,&rdquo;
+remarked one man.&nbsp; &ldquo;You have found a genius in this new organist,
+Rector.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The young man nodded silently, his eyes half closed with an expression
+of somewhat sensuous enjoyment of the throbbing chords which vibrated
+in perfect unison with the beating of his strong pulses.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Where does she come from?&rdquo; asked the deacon, as a pause
+in the music occurred.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Her father was an earnest and prominent member of the little
+church down-town of which I had charge during several years,&rdquo;
+replied the young man.&nbsp; &ldquo;Miss Irving was scarcely more than
+a child when she volunteered her services as organist.&nbsp; The position
+brought her no remuneration, and at that time she did not need it.&nbsp;
+Young as she was, the girl was one of the most active workers among
+the poor, and I often met her in my visits to the sick and unfortunate.&nbsp;
+She had been a musical prodigy from the cradle, and Mr Irving had given
+her every advantage to study and perfect her art.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was naturally much interested in her.&nbsp; Mr Irving&rsquo;s
+long illness left his wife and daughter without means of support, at
+his death, and when I was called to take charge of St Blank&rsquo;s,
+I at once realised the benefit to the family as well as to my church
+could I secure the young lady the position here as organist.&nbsp; I
+am glad that my congregation seem so well satisfied with my choice.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Again the organ pealed forth, this time in that passionate music
+originally written for the Garden Scene in <i>Faust</i>, and which the
+church has boldly taken and arranged as a quartette to the words, &ldquo;Come
+unto me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It may be that to some who listen, it is the divine spirit which
+makes its appeal through those stirring strains; but to the rector of
+St Blank&rsquo;s, at least on that morning, it was human heart, calling
+unto human heart.&nbsp; Mr Stuart and the deacons sat silently drinking
+in the music.&nbsp; At length the rector rose.&nbsp; &ldquo;I think
+perhaps we had better drop the matter under discussion for to-day,&rdquo;
+he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;We can meet here Monday evening at five o&rsquo;clock
+if agreeable to you all, and finish the details.&nbsp; There are other
+and more important affairs waiting for me now.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The deacons departed, and the young rector sank back in his chair,
+and gave himself up to the enjoyment of the sounds which flooded not
+only the room, but his brain, heart and soul.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Queer,&rdquo; he said to himself as the door closed behind
+the human pillars of his church.&nbsp; &ldquo;Queer, but I felt as if
+the presence of those men was an intrusion upon something belonging
+personally to me.&nbsp; I wonder why I am so peculiarly affected by
+this girl&rsquo;s music?&nbsp; It arouses my brain to action, it awakens
+ambition and gives me courage and hope, and yet&mdash;&rdquo;&nbsp;
+He paused before allowing his feeling to shape itself into thoughts.&nbsp;
+Then closing his eyes and clasping his hands behind his head while the
+music surged about him, he lay back in his easy-chair as a bather might
+lie back and float upon the water, and his unfinished sentence took
+shape thus: &ldquo;And yet stronger than all other feelings which her
+music arouses in me, is the desire to possess the musician for my very
+own for ever; ah, well! the Roman Catholics are wise in not allowing
+their priests and their nuns to listen to all even so-called sacred
+music.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was perhaps ten minutes later that Joy Irving became conscious
+that she was not alone in the organ loft.&nbsp; She had neither heard
+nor seen his entrance, but she felt the presence of her rector, and
+turned to find him silently watching her.&nbsp; She played her phrase
+to the end, before she greeted him with other than a smile.&nbsp; Then
+she apologised, saying: &ldquo;Even one&rsquo;s rector must wait for
+a musical phrase to reach its period.&nbsp; Angels may interrupt the
+rendition of a great work, but not man.&nbsp; That were sacrilege.&nbsp;
+You see, I was really praying, when you entered, though my heart spoke
+through my fingers instead of my lips.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You need not apologise,&rdquo; the young man answered.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;One who receives your smile would be ungrateful indeed if he
+asked for more.&nbsp; That alone would render the darkest spot radiant
+with light and welcome to me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The girl&rsquo;s pink cheek flushed crimson, like a rose bathed in
+the sunset colours of the sky.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I did not think you were a man to coin pretty speeches,&rdquo;
+she said.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your estimate of me was a wise one.&nbsp; You read human nature
+correctly.&nbsp; But come and walk in the park with me.&nbsp; You will
+overtax yourself if you practise any longer.&nbsp; The sunlight and
+the air are vying with each other to-day to see which can be the most
+intoxicating.&nbsp; Come and enjoy their sparring match with me; I want
+to talk to you about one of my unfortunate parishioners.&nbsp; It is
+a peculiarly pathetic case.&nbsp; I think you can help and advise me
+in the matter.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was a superb morning in early October.&nbsp; New York was like
+a beautiful woman arrayed in her fresh autumn costume, disporting herself
+before admiring eyes.</p>
+<p>Absorbed in each other&rsquo;s society, their pulses beating high
+with youth, love and health; the young couple walked through the crowded
+avenues of the great city, as happily and as naturally as Adam and Eve
+might have walked in the Garden of Eden the morning after Creation.</p>
+<p>Both were city born and city bred, yet both were as unfashionable
+and untrammelled by custom as two children of the plains.</p>
+<p>In the very heart of the greatest metropolis in America, there are
+people who live and retain all the primitive simplicity of village life
+and thought.&nbsp; Mr Irving had been one of these.&nbsp; Coming to
+New York from an interior village when a young man, he had, through
+simple and quiet tastes and religious convictions, kept himself wholly
+free from the social life of the city in which he lived.&nbsp; After
+his marriage his entire happiness lay in his home, and Joy was reared
+by parents who made her world.&nbsp; Mrs Irving sympathised fully with
+her husband in his distaste for society, and her delicate health rendered
+her almost a recluse from the world.</p>
+<p>A few pleasant acquaintances, no intimates, music, books, and a large
+share of her time given to charitable work, composed the life of Joy
+Irving.</p>
+<p>She had never been in a fashionable assemblage; she had never attended
+a theatre, as Mr Irving did not approve of them.</p>
+<p>Extremely fond of outdoor life, she walked, unattended, wherever
+her mood led her.&nbsp; As she had no acquaintances among society people,
+she knew nothing and cared less for the rules which govern the promenading
+habits of young women in New York.&nbsp; Her sweet face and graceful
+figure were well known among the poorer quarters of the city, and it
+was through her work in such places that Arthur Stuart&rsquo;s attention
+had first been called to her.</p>
+<p>As for him, he was filled with that high, but not always wise, disdain
+for society and its customs, which we so often find in town-bred young
+men of intellectual pursuits.&nbsp; He was clean-minded, independent,
+sure of his own purposes, and wholly indifferent to the opinions of
+inferiors regarding his habits.</p>
+<p>He loved the park, and he asked Joy to walk with him there, as freely
+as he would have asked her to sit with him in a conservatory.&nbsp;
+It was a great delight to the young girl to go.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It seems such a pity that the women of New York get so little
+benefit from this beautiful park,&rdquo; she said as they strolled along
+through the winding paths together.&nbsp; &ldquo;The wealthy people
+enjoy it in a way from their carriages, and the poor people no doubt
+derive new life from their Sunday promenades here.&nbsp; But there are
+thousands like myself who are almost wholly debarred from its pleasures.&nbsp;
+I have always wanted to walk here, but once I came and a rude man in
+a carriage spoke to me.&nbsp; Mother told me never to come alone again.&nbsp;
+It seems strange to me that men who are so proud of their strength,
+and who should be the natural protectors of woman, can belittle themselves
+by annoying or frightening her when alone.&nbsp; I am sure that same
+man would never think of speaking to me now that I am with you.&nbsp;
+How cowardly he seems when you think of it!&nbsp; Yet I am told there
+are many like him, though that was my only experience of the kind.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, there are many like him,&rdquo; the rector answered.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;But you must remember how short a time man has been evolving
+from a lower animal condition to his present state, and how much higher
+he is to-day than he was a hundred years ago even, when occasional drunkenness
+was considered an attribute of a gentleman.&nbsp; Now it is a vice of
+which he is ashamed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then you believe in evolution?&rdquo; Joy asked with a note
+of surprise in her voice.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I surely do; nor does the belief conflict with my religious
+faith.&nbsp; I believe in many things I could not preach from my pulpit.&nbsp;
+My congregation is not ready for broad truths.&nbsp; I am like an eclectic
+physician&mdash;I suit my treatment to my patient&mdash;I administer
+the old school or the new school medicaments as the case demands.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It seems to me there can be but one school in spiritual matters,&rdquo;
+Joy said gravely&mdash;&ldquo;the right one.&nbsp; And I think one should
+preach and teach what he believes to be true and right, no matter what
+his congregation demands.&nbsp; Oh, forgive me.&nbsp; I am very rude
+to speak like that to you!&rdquo;&nbsp; And she blushed and paled with
+fright at her boldness.</p>
+<p>They were seated on a rustic bench now, under the shadow of a great
+tree.</p>
+<p>The rector smiled, his eyes fixed with pleased satisfaction on the
+girl&rsquo;s beautiful face, with its changing colour and expression.&nbsp;
+He felt he could well afford to be criticised or rebuked by her, if
+the result was so gratifying to his sight.&nbsp; The young rector of
+St Blank&rsquo;s lived very much more in his senses than in his ideals.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps you are right,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;I sometimes
+wish I had greater courage of my convictions.&nbsp; I think I could
+have, were you to stimulate me with such words often.&nbsp; But my mother
+is so afraid that I will wander from the old dogmas, that I am constantly
+checking myself.&nbsp; However, in regard to the case I mentioned to
+you&mdash;it is a delicate subject, but you are not like ordinary young
+women, and you and I have stood beside so many sick-beds and death-beds
+together that we can speak as man to man, or woman to woman, with no
+false modesty to bar our speech.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A very sad case has come to my knowledge of late.&nbsp; Miss
+Adams, a woman who for some years has been a devout member of St Blank&rsquo;s
+Church, has several times mentioned her niece to me, a young girl who
+was away at boarding school.&nbsp; A few months ago the young girl graduated
+and came to live with this aunt.&nbsp; I remember her as a bright, buoyant
+and very intelligent girl.&nbsp; I have not seen her now during two
+months; and last week I asked Miss Adams what had become of her niece.&nbsp;
+Then the poor woman broke into sobs and told me the sad state of affairs.&nbsp;
+It seems that the girl Marah is her daughter.&nbsp; The poor mother
+had believed she could guard the truth from her child, and had educated
+her as her niece, and was now prepared to enjoy her companionship, when
+some mischief-making gossip dug up the old scandal and imparted the
+facts to Marah.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The girl came to Miss Adams and demanded the truth, and the
+mother confessed.&nbsp; Then the daughter settled into a profound melancholy,
+from which nothing seemed to rouse her.&nbsp; She will not go out, remains
+in the house, and broods constantly over her disgrace.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It occurred to me that if Marah Adams could be brought out
+of herself and interested in some work, or study, it would be the salvation
+of her reason.&nbsp; Her mother told me she is an accomplished musician,
+but that she refuses to touch her piano now.&nbsp; I thought you might
+take her as an understudy on the organ, and by your influence and association
+lead her out of herself.&nbsp; You could make her acquaintance through
+approaching the mother who is a milliner, on business, and your tact
+would do the rest.&nbsp; In all my large and wealthy congregation I
+know of no other woman to whom I could appeal for aid in this delicate
+matter, so I am sure you will pardon me.&nbsp; In fact, I fear were
+the matter to be known in the congregation at all, it would lead to
+renewed pain and added hurts for both Miss Adams and her daughter.&nbsp;
+You know women can be so cruel to each other in subtle ways, and I have
+seen almost death-blows dealt in church aisles by one church member
+to another.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, that is a terrible reflection on Christians,&rdquo; cried
+Joy, who, a born Christ-woman, believed that all professed church members
+must feel the same divine spirit of sympathy and charity which burned
+in her own sweet soul.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No, it is a simple truth&mdash;an unfortunate fact,&rdquo;
+the young man replied.&nbsp; &ldquo;I preach sermons at such members
+of my church, but they seldom take them home.&nbsp; They think I mean
+somebody else.&nbsp; These are the people who follow the letter and
+not the spirit of the church.&nbsp; But one such member as you, recompenses
+me for a score of the others.&nbsp; I felt I must come to you with the
+Marah Adams affair.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Joy was still thinking of the reflection the rector had cast upon
+his congregation.&nbsp; It hurt her, and she protested.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, surely,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;you cannot mean that I
+am the only one of the professed Christians in your church who would
+show mercy and sympathy to poor Miss Adams.&nbsp; Surely few, very few,
+would forget Christ&rsquo;s words to Mary Magdalene, &lsquo;Go and sin
+no more,&rsquo; or fail to forgive as He forgave.&nbsp; She has led
+such a good life all these years.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The rector smiled sadly.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You judge others by your own true heart,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;But I know the world as it is.&nbsp; Yes, the members of my church
+would forgive Miss Adams for her sin&mdash;and cut her dead.&nbsp; They
+would daily crucify her and her innocent child by their cold scorn or
+utter ignoring of them.&nbsp; They would not allow their daughters to
+associate with this blameless girl, because of her mother&rsquo;s misstep.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is the same in and out of the churches.&nbsp; Twenty people
+will repeat Christ&rsquo;s words to a repentant sinner, but nineteen
+of that twenty interpolate a few words of their own, through tone, gesture
+or manner, until &lsquo;Go and sin no more&rsquo; sounds to the poor
+unfortunate more like &lsquo;Go just as far away from me and mine as
+you can get&mdash;and sin no more!&rsquo;&nbsp; Only one in that score
+puts Christ&rsquo;s merciful and tender meaning into the phrase and
+tries by sympathetic association to make it possible for the sinner
+to sin no more.&nbsp; I felt you were that one, and so I appealed to
+you in this matter about Marah Adams.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Joy&rsquo;s eyes were full of tears.&nbsp; &ldquo;You must know more
+of human nature than I do,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but I hate terribly
+to think you are right in this estimate of the people of your congregation.&nbsp;
+I will go and see what I can do for this girl to-morrow.&nbsp; Poor
+child, poor mother, to pass through a second Gethsemane for her sin.&nbsp;
+I think any girl or boy whose home life is shadowed, is to be pitied.&nbsp;
+I have always had such a happy home, and such dear parents, the world
+would seem insupportable, I am sure, were I to face it without that
+background.&nbsp; Dear papa&rsquo;s death was a great blow, and mother&rsquo;s
+ill health has been a sorrow, but we have always been so happy and harmonious,
+and that, I think, is worth more than a fortune to a child.&nbsp; Poor,
+poor Marah&mdash;unable to respect her mother, what a terrible thing
+it all is!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, it is a sad affair.&nbsp; I cannot help thinking it would
+have been a pardonable lie if Miss Adams had denied the truth when the
+girl confronted her with the story.&nbsp; It is the one situation in
+life where a lie is excusable, I think.&nbsp; It would have saved this
+poor girl no end of sorrow, and it could not have added much to the
+mother&rsquo;s burden.&nbsp; I think lying must have originated with
+an erring woman.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Joy looked at her rector with startled eyes.&nbsp; &ldquo;A lie is
+never excusable,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and I do not believe it ever
+saves sorrow.&nbsp; But I see you do not mean what you say, you only
+feel very sorry for the girl; and you surely do not forget that the
+lie originated with Satan, who told a falsehood to Eve.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Ever since early girlhood Joy Irving had formed a habit of jotting
+down in black and white her own ideas regarding any book, painting,
+concert, conversation or sermon, which interested her, and epitomising
+the train of thought to which they led.</p>
+<p>The evening after her walk and talk with the rector of St Blank&rsquo;s,
+she took out her note-book, which bore a date four years old under its
+title &ldquo;My Impressions,&rdquo; and read over the last page of entries.&nbsp;
+They had evidently been written at the close of some Sabbath day and
+ran as follows:-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Many a kneeling woman is more occupied with how her skirts hang than
+how her prayers ascend.&nbsp; I am inclined to think we all ought to
+wear a uniform to church if we would really worship there.&nbsp; God
+must grow weary looking down on so many new bonnets.</p>
+<p>I wore a smart hat to church to-day, and I found myself criticising
+every other woman&rsquo;s bonnet during service, so that I failed in
+some of my responses.</p>
+<p>If we could all be compelled by some mysterious power to <i>think
+aloud</i> on Sunday, what a veritable holy day we would make of it!&nbsp;
+Though we are taught from childhood that God hears our thoughts, the
+best of us would be afraid to have our nearest friends know them.</p>
+<p>I sometimes think it is a presumption on the part of any man to rise
+in the pulpit and undertake to tell me about a Creator with whom I feel
+every whit as well acquainted as he.&nbsp; I suppose such thoughts are
+wicked, however, and should be suppressed.</p>
+<p>It is a curious fact, that the most aggressively sensitive persons
+are at heart the most conceited.</p>
+<p>I wish people smiled more in church aisles.&nbsp; In fact, I think
+we all laugh at one another too much and smile at one another too seldom.</p>
+<p>After the devil had made all the trouble for woman he could with
+the fig leaf, he introduced the French heel.</p>
+<p>It is well to see the ridiculous side of things, but not of people.</p>
+<p>Most of us would rather be popular than right.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>To these impressions Joy added the following:-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>It is not the interior of one&rsquo;s house, but the interior of
+one&rsquo;s mind which makes home.</p>
+<p>It seems to me that to be, is to love.&nbsp; I can conceive of no
+state of existence which is not permeated with this feeling toward something,
+somebody or the illimitable &ldquo;nothing&rdquo; which is mother to
+everything.</p>
+<p>I wish we had more religion in the world and fewer churches.</p>
+<p>People who believe in no God, invariably exalt themselves into His
+position, and worship with the very idolatry they decry in others.</p>
+<p>Music is the echo of the rhythm of God&rsquo;s respirations.</p>
+<p>Poetry is the effort of the divine part of man to formulate a worthy
+language in which to converse with angels.</p>
+<p>Painting and sculpture seem to me the most presumptuous of the arts.&nbsp;
+They are an effort of man to outdo God in creation.&nbsp; He never made
+a perfect form or face&mdash;the artist alone makes them.</p>
+<p>I am sure I do not play the organ as well at St Blank&rsquo;s as
+I played it in the little church where I gave my services and was unknown.&nbsp;
+People are praising me too much here, and this mars all spontaneity.</p>
+<p>The very first hour of positive success is often the last hour of
+great achievement.&nbsp; So soon as we are conscious of the admiring
+and expectant gaze of men, we cease to commune with God.&nbsp; It is
+when we are unknown to or neglected by mortals, that we reach up to
+the Infinite and are inspired.</p>
+<p>I have seen Marah Adams to-day, and I felt strangely drawn to her.&nbsp;
+Her face would express all goodness if it were not so unhappy.&nbsp;
+Unhappiness is a species of evil, since it is a discourtesy to God to
+be unhappy.</p>
+<p>I am going to do all I can for the girl to bring her into a better
+frame of mind.&nbsp; No blame can be attached to her, and yet now that
+I am face to face with the situation, and realise how the world regards
+such a person, I myself find it a little hard to think of braving public
+opinion and identifying myself with her.&nbsp; But I am going to overcome
+such feelings, as they are cowardly and unworthy of me, and purely the
+result of education.&nbsp; I am amazed, too, to discover this weakness
+in myself.</p>
+<p>How sympathetic dear mamma is!&nbsp; I told her about Marah, and
+she wept bitterly, and has carried her eyes full of tears ever since.&nbsp;
+I must be careful and tell her nothing sad while she is in such a weak
+state physically.</p>
+<p>I told mamma what the rector said about lying.&nbsp; She coincided
+with him that Mrs Adams would have been justified in denying the truth
+if she had realised how her daughter was to be affected by this knowledge.&nbsp;
+A woman&rsquo;s past belongs only to herself and her God, she says,
+unless she wishes to make a confidant.&nbsp; But I cannot agree with
+her or the rector.&nbsp; I would want the truth from my parents, however
+much it hurt.&nbsp; Many sins which men regard as serious only obstruct
+the bridge between our souls and truth.&nbsp; A lie burns the bridge.</p>
+<p>I hope I am not uncharitable, yet I cannot conceive of committing
+an act through love of any man, which would lower me in his esteem,
+once committed.&nbsp; Yet of course I have had little experience in
+life, with men, or with temptation.&nbsp; But it seems to me I could
+not continue to love a man who did not seek to lead me higher.&nbsp;
+The moment he stood before me and asked me to descend, I should realise
+he was to be pitied&mdash;not adored.</p>
+<p>I told mother this, and she said I was too young and inexperienced
+to form decided opinions on such subjects, and she warned me that I
+must not become uncharitable.&nbsp; She wept bitterly as she thought
+of my becoming narrow or bigoted in my ideas, dear, tender-hearted mamma.</p>
+<p>Death should be called the Great Revealer instead of the Great Destroyer.</p>
+<p>Some people think the way into heaven is through embroidered altar
+cloths.</p>
+<p>The soul that has any conception of its own possibilities does not
+fear solitude.</p>
+<p>A girl told me to-day that a rude man annoyed her by staring at her
+in a public conveyance.&nbsp; It never occurred to her that it takes
+four eyes to make a stare annoying.</p>
+<p>Astronomers know more about the character of the stars than the average
+American mother knows about the temperament of her daughters.</p>
+<p>To some women the most terrible thought connected with death is the
+dates in the obituary notice.</p>
+<p>As a rule, when a woman opens the door of an artistic career with
+one hand, she shuts the door on domestic happiness with the other.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The rector of St Blank&rsquo;s Church dined at the Cheney table or
+drove in the Cheney establishment every week, beside which there were
+always one or two confidential chats with the feminine Cheneys in the
+parsonage on matters pertaining to the welfare of the church, and occasionally
+to the welfare of humanity.</p>
+<p>That Alice Cheney had conceived a sudden and consuming passion for
+the handsome and brilliant rector of St Blank&rsquo;s, both her mother
+and the Baroness knew, and both were doing all in their power to further
+the girl&rsquo;s hopes.</p>
+<p>While Alice resembled her mother in appearance and disposition, propensities
+and impulses occasionally exhibited themselves which spoke of paternal
+inheritance.&nbsp; She had her father&rsquo;s strongly emotional nature,
+with her mother&rsquo;s stubbornness; and Preston Cheney&rsquo;s romantic
+tendencies were repeated in his daughter, without his reasoning powers.&nbsp;
+Added to her father&rsquo;s lack of self-control in any strife with
+his passions, Alice possessed her mother&rsquo;s hysterical nerves.&nbsp;
+In fact, the unfortunate child inherited the weaknesses and faults of
+both parents, without any of their redeeming virtues.</p>
+<p>The passion which had sprung to life in her breast for the young
+rector, was as strong and unreasoning as the infatuation which her father
+had once experienced for Berene Dumont; but instead of struggling against
+the feeling as her father had at least attempted to do, she dwelt upon
+it with all the mulish persistency which her mother exhibited in small
+matters, and luxuriated in romantic dreams of the future.</p>
+<p>Mabel was wholly unable to comprehend the depth or violence of her
+daughter&rsquo;s feelings, but she realised the fact that Alice had
+set her mind on winning Arthur Stuart for a husband, and she quite approved
+of the idea, and saw no reason why it should not succeed.&nbsp; She
+herself had won Preston Cheney away from all rivals for his favour,
+and Alice ought to be able to do the same with Arthur, after all the
+money which had been expended upon her wardrobe.&nbsp; Senator Cheney&rsquo;s
+daughter and Judge Lawrence&rsquo;s granddaughter, surely was a prize
+for any man to win as a wife.</p>
+<p>The Baroness, however, reviewed the situation with more concern of
+mind.&nbsp; She realised that Alice was destitute of beauty and charm,
+and that Arthur Emerson Stuart (it would have been considered a case
+of high treason to speak of the rector of St Blank&rsquo;s without using
+his three names) was independent in the matter of fortune, and so dowered
+with nature&rsquo;s best gifts that he could have almost any woman for
+the asking whom he should desire.&nbsp; But the Baroness believed much
+in propinquity; and she brought the rector and Alice together as often
+as possible, and coached the girl in coquettish arts when alone with
+her, and credited her with witticisms and bon-mots which she had never
+uttered, when talking of her to the young rector.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If only I could give Alice the benefit of my past career,&rdquo;
+the Baroness would say to herself at times.&nbsp; &ldquo;I know so well
+how to manage men; but what use is my knowledge to me now that I am
+old?&nbsp; Alice is young, and even without beauty she could do so much,
+if she only understood the art of masculine seduction.&nbsp; But then
+it is a gift, not an acquired art, and Alice was not born with the gift.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>While Mabel and Alice had been centring their thoughts and attentions
+on the rector, the Baroness had not forgotten the rector&rsquo;s mother.&nbsp;
+She knew the very strong affection which existed between the two, and
+she had discovered that the leading desire of the young man&rsquo;s
+heart was to make his mother happy.&nbsp; With her wide knowledge of
+human nature, she had not been long in discerning the fact that it was
+not because of his own religious convictions that the rector had chosen
+his calling, but to carry out the lifelong wishes of his beloved mother.</p>
+<p>Therefore she reasoned wisely that Arthur would be greatly influenced
+by his mother in his choice of a wife; and the Baroness brought all
+her vast battery of fascination to bear on Mrs Stuart, and succeeded
+in making that lady her devoted friend.</p>
+<p>The widow of Judge Lawrence was still an imposing and impressive
+figure wherever she went.&nbsp; Though no longer a woman who appealed
+to the desires of men, she exhaled that peculiar mental aroma which
+hangs ever about a woman who has dealt deeply and widely in affairs
+of the heart.&nbsp; It is to the spiritual senses what musk is to the
+physical; and while it may often repulse, it sometimes attracts, and
+never fails to be noticed.&nbsp; About the Baroness&rsquo;s mouth were
+hard lines, and the expression of her eyes was not kind or tender; yet
+she was everywhere conceded to be a universally handsome and attractive
+woman.&nbsp; Quiet and tasteful in her dressing, she did not accentuate
+the ravages of time by any mistaken frivolities of toilet, as so many
+faded coquettes have done, but wisely suited her vestments to her appearance,
+as the withering branch clothes itself in russet leaves, when the fresh
+sap ceases to course through its veins.&nbsp; New York City is a vast
+sepulchre of &ldquo;past careers,&rdquo; and the adventurous life of
+the Baroness was quietly buried there with that of many another woman.&nbsp;
+In the mad whirl of life there is small danger that any of these skeletons
+will rise to view, unless the woman permits herself to strive for eminence
+either socially or in the world of art.</p>
+<p>While the Cheneys were known to be wealthy, and the Senator had achieved
+political position, there was nothing in their situation to challenge
+the jealousy of their associates.&nbsp; They moved in one of the many
+circles of cultured and agreeable people, which, despite the mandate
+of a M&lsquo;Allister, formed a varied and delightful society in the
+metropolis; they entertained in an unostentatious manner, and there
+was nothing in their personality to incite envy or jealousy.&nbsp; Therefore
+the career of the Baroness had not been unearthed.&nbsp; That the widow
+of Judge Lawrence, the stepmother of Mrs Cheney, was known as &ldquo;The
+Baroness&rdquo; caused some questions, to be sure, but the simple answer
+that she had been the widow of a French baron in early life served to
+allay curiosity, while it rendered the lady herself an object of greater
+interest to the majority of people.</p>
+<p>Mrs Stuart, the rector&rsquo;s mother, was one of those who were
+most impressed by this incident in the life of Mrs Lawrence.&nbsp; &ldquo;Family
+pride&rdquo; was her greatest weakness, and she dearly loved a title.&nbsp;
+She thought Mrs Lawrence a typical &ldquo;Baroness,&rdquo; and though
+she knew the title had only been obtained through marriage, it still
+rendered its possessor peculiarly interesting in her eyes.</p>
+<p>In her prime, the Baroness had been equally successful in cajoling
+women and men.&nbsp; Though her day for ruling men was now over, she
+still possessed the power to fascinate women when she chose to exert
+herself.&nbsp; She did exert herself with Mrs Stuart, and succeeded
+admirably in her design.</p>
+<p>And one day Mrs Stuart confided her secret anxiety to the ear of
+the Baroness; and that secret caused the cheek of the listener to grow
+pale and the look of an animal at bay to come into her eyes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There is just one thing that gives me a constant pain at my
+heart,&rdquo; Mrs Stuart had said.&nbsp; &ldquo;You have never been
+a mother, yet I think your sympathetic nature causes you to understand
+much which you have not experienced, and knowing as you do the great
+pride I feel in my son&rsquo;s career, and the ambition I have for him
+to rise to the very highest pinnacle of success and usefulness, I am
+sure you will comprehend my anxiety when I see him exhibiting an undue
+interest in a girl who is in every way his inferior, and wholly unsuited
+to fill the position his wife should occupy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Baroness listened with a cold, sinking sensation at her heart</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am sure your son would never make a choice which was not
+agreeable to you,&rdquo; she ventured.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He might not marry anyone I objected to,&rdquo; Mrs Stuart
+replied, &ldquo;but I dread to think his heart may be already gone from
+his keeping.&nbsp; Young men are so susceptible to a pretty face and
+figure, and I confess that Joy Irving has both.&nbsp; She is a good
+girl, too, and a fine musician; but she has no family, and her alliance
+with my son would be a great drawback to his career.&nbsp; Her father
+was a grocer, I believe, or something of that sort; quite a common man,
+who married a third-class actress, Joy&rsquo;s mother.&nbsp; Mr Irving
+was in very comfortable circumstances at one time, but a stroke of paralysis
+rendered him helpless some four years ago.&nbsp; He died last year and
+left his widow and child in straitened circumstances.&nbsp; Mrs Irving
+is an invalid now, and Joy supports her with her music.&nbsp; Mr Irving
+and Joy were members of Arthur Emerson&rsquo;s former church (Mrs Stuart
+always spoke of her son in that manner), and that is how my son became
+interested in the daughter&mdash;an interest I supposed to be purely
+that of a rector in his parishioner, until of late, when I began to
+fear it took root in deeper soil.&nbsp; But I am sure, dear Baroness,
+you can understand my anxiety.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And then the Baroness, with drawn lips and anguished eyes, took both
+of Mrs Stuart&rsquo;s hands in hers, and cried out:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your pain, dear madam, is second to mine.&nbsp; I have no
+child, to be sure, but as few mothers love I love Alice Cheney, my dear
+husband&rsquo;s granddaughter.&nbsp; My very life is bound up in her,
+and she&mdash;God help us, she loves your son with her whole soul.&nbsp;
+If he marries another it will kill her or drive her insane.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The two women fell weeping into each other&rsquo;s arms.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Preston Cheney conceived such a strong, earnest liking for the young
+clergyman whom he met under his own roof during one of his visits home,
+that he fell into the habit of attending church for the first time in
+his life.</p>
+<p>Mabel and Alice were deeply gratified with this intimacy between
+the two men, which brought the rector to the house far oftener than
+they could have tastefully done without the co-operation of the husband
+and father.&nbsp; Besides, it looked well to have the head of the household
+represented in the church.&nbsp; To the Baroness, also, there was added
+satisfaction in attending divine service, now that Preston Cheney sat
+in the pew.&nbsp; All hope of winning the love she had so longed to
+possess, died many years before; and she had been cruel and unkind in
+numerous ways to the object of her hopeless passion, yet like the smell
+of dead rose leaves long shut in a drawer, there clung about this man
+the faint, suggestive fragrance of a perished dream.</p>
+<p>She knew that he did not love his wife, and that he was disappointed
+in his daughter; and she did not at least have to suffer the pain of
+seeing him lavish the affection she had missed, on others.</p>
+<p>Mr Cheney had been called away from home on business the day before
+the new organist took her place in St Blank&rsquo;s Church.&nbsp; Nearly
+a month had passed when he again occupied his pew.</p>
+<p>Before the organist had finished her introduction, he turned to Alice,
+saying:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There has been a change here in the choir, since I went away,
+and for the better.&nbsp; That is a very unusual musician.&nbsp; Do
+you know who it is?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Some lady, I believe; I do not remember her name,&rdquo; Alice
+answered indifferently.&nbsp; Like her mother, Alice never enjoyed hearing
+anyone praised.&nbsp; It mattered little who it was, or how entirely
+out of her own line the achievements or accomplishments on which the
+praise was bestowed, she still felt that petty resentment of small creatures
+who believe that praise to others detracts from their own value.</p>
+<p>A fortune had been expended on Alice&rsquo;s musical education, yet
+she could do no more than rattle through some mediocre composition,
+with neither taste nor skill.</p>
+<p>The money which has been wasted in trying to teach music to unmusical
+people would pay our national debt twice over, and leave a competency
+for every orphan in the land.</p>
+<p>When the organist had finished her second selection, Mr Cheney addressed
+the same question to his wife which he had addressed to Alice.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Who is the new organist?&rdquo; he queried.&nbsp; Mabel only
+shook her head and placed her finger on her lip as a signal for silence
+during service.</p>
+<p>The third time it was the Baroness, sitting just beyond Mabel, to
+whom Mr Cheney spoke.&nbsp; &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a very remarkable musician,
+very remarkable,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Do you know anything about
+her?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, wait until we get home, and I will tell you all about
+her,&rdquo; the Baroness replied.</p>
+<p>When the service was over, Mr Cheney did not pass out at once, as
+was his custom.&nbsp; Instead he walked toward the pulpit, after requesting
+his family to wait a moment.</p>
+<p>The rector saw him and came down into the aisle to speak to him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I want to congratulate you on the new organist,&rdquo; Mr
+Cheney said, &ldquo;and I want to meet her.&nbsp; Alice tells me it
+is a lady.&nbsp; She must have devoted a lifetime to hard study to become
+such a marvellous mistress of that difficult instrument.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Arthur Stuart smiled.&nbsp; &ldquo;Wait a moment,&rdquo; he said,
+&ldquo;and I will send for her.&nbsp; I would like you to meet her,
+and like her to meet your wife and family.&nbsp; She has few, if any,
+acquaintances in my congregation.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mr Cheney went down the aisle, and joined the three ladies who were
+waiting for him in the pew.&nbsp; All were smiling, for all three believed
+that he had been asking the rector to accompany them home to dinner.&nbsp;
+His first word dispelled the illusion.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Wait here a moment,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Mr Stuart
+is going to bring the organist to meet us.&nbsp; I want to know the
+woman who can move me so deeply by her music.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Over the faces of his three listeners there fell a cloud.&nbsp; Mabel
+looked annoyed, Alice sulky, and a flush of the old jealous fury darkened
+the brow of the Baroness.&nbsp; But all were smiling deceitfully when
+Joy Irving approached.</p>
+<p>Her radiant young beauty, and the expressions of admiration with
+which Preston Cheney greeted her as a woman and an artist, filled life
+with gall and wormwood for the three feminine listeners.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;What! this beautiful young miss, scarcely out of short frocks,
+is not the musician who gave us that wonderful harmony of sounds.&nbsp;
+My child, how did you learn to play like that in the brief life you
+have passed on earth?&nbsp; Surely you must have been taught by the
+angels before you came.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A deep blush of pleasure at the words which, though so extravagant,
+Joy felt to be sincere, increased her beauty as she looked up into Preston
+Cheney&rsquo;s admiring eyes.</p>
+<p>And as he held her hands in both of his and gazed down upon her it
+seemed to the Baroness she could strike them dead at her feet and rejoice
+in the act.</p>
+<p>Beside this radiant vision of loveliness and genius, Alice looked
+plainer and more meagre than ever before.&nbsp; She was like a wayside
+weed beside an American Beauty rose.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I hope you and Alice will become good friends,&rdquo; Mr Cheney
+said warmly.&nbsp; &ldquo;We should like to see you at the house any
+time you can make it convenient to come, would we not Mabel?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Cheney gave a formal assent to her husband&rsquo;s words as they
+turned away, leaving Joy with the rector.&nbsp; And a scene in one of
+life&rsquo;s strangest dramas had been enacted, unknown to them all.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I would like you to be very friendly with that girl, Alice,&rdquo;
+Mr Cheney repeated as they seated themselves in the carriage.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;She has a rare face, a rare face, and she is highly gifted.&nbsp;
+She reminds me of someone I have known, yet I can&rsquo;t think who
+it is.&nbsp; What do you know about her, Baroness?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Baroness gave an expressive shrug.&nbsp; &ldquo;Since you admire
+her so much,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;I rather hesitate telling you.&nbsp;
+But the girl is of common origin&mdash;a grocer&rsquo;s daughter, and
+her mother quite an inferior person.&nbsp; I hardly think it a suitable
+companionship for Alice.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am sure I don&rsquo;t care to know her,&rdquo; chimed in
+Alice.&nbsp; &ldquo;I thought her quite bold and forward in her manner.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Decidedly so!&nbsp; She seemed to hang on to your father&rsquo;s
+hand as if she would never let go,&rdquo; added Mabel, in her most acid
+tone.&nbsp; &ldquo;I must say, I should have been horrified to see you
+act in such a familiar manner toward any stranger.&rdquo;&nbsp; A quick
+colour shot into Preston Cheney&rsquo;s cheek and a spark into his eye.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The girl was perfectly modest in her deportment to me,&rdquo;
+he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;She is a lady through and through, however humble
+her birth may be.&nbsp; But I ought to have known better than to ask
+my wife and daughter to like anyone whom I chanced to admire.&nbsp;
+I learned long ago how futile such an idea was.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, well, I don&rsquo;t see why you need get so angry over
+a perfect stranger whom you never laid eyes on until to-day,&rdquo;
+pouted Alice.&nbsp; &ldquo;I am sure she&rsquo;s nothing to any of us
+that we need quarrel over her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A man never gets so old that he is not likely to make a fool
+of himself over a pretty face,&rdquo; supplemented Mabel, &ldquo;and
+there is no fool like an old fool.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The uncomfortable drive home came to an end at this juncture, and
+Preston Cheney retired to his own room, with the disagreeable words
+of his wife and daughter ringing in his ears, and the beautiful face
+of the young organist floating before his eyes.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I wish she were my daughter,&rdquo; he said to himself; &ldquo;what
+a comfort and delight a girl like that would be to me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>And while these thoughts filled the man&rsquo;s heart the Baroness
+paced her room with all the jealous passions of her still ungoverned
+nature roused into new life and violence at the remembrance of Joy Irving&rsquo;s
+fresh young beauty and Preston Cheney&rsquo;s admiring looks and words.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I could throttle her,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;I could throttle
+her.&nbsp; Oh, why is she sent across my life at every turn?&nbsp; Why
+should the only two men in the world who interest me to-day, be so infatuated
+over that girl?&nbsp; But if I cannot remove so humble an obstacle as
+she from my pathway, I shall feel that my day of power is indeed over,
+and that I do not believe to be true.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Two weeks later the organ loft of St Blank&rsquo;s Church was occupied
+by a stranger.&nbsp; For a few hours the Baroness felt a wild hope in
+her heart that Miss Irving had been sent away.</p>
+<p>But inquiry elicited the information that the young musician had
+merely employed a substitute because her mother was lying seriously
+ill at home.</p>
+<p>It was then that the Baroness put into execution a desire she had
+to make the personal acquaintance of Joy Irving.</p>
+<p>The desire had sprung into life with the knowledge of the rector&rsquo;s
+interest in the girl.&nbsp; No one knew better than the Baroness how
+to sow the seeds of doubt, distrust and discord between two people whom
+she wished to alienate.&nbsp; Many a sweetheart, many a wife, had she
+separated from lover and husband, scarcely leaving a sign by which the
+trouble could be traced to her, so adroit and subtle were her methods.</p>
+<p>She felt that she could insert an invisible wedge between these two
+hearts, which would eventually separate them, if only she might make
+the acquaintance of Miss Irving.&nbsp; And now chance had opened the
+way for her.</p>
+<p>She made her resolve known to the rector.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am deeply interested in the young organist whom I had the
+pleasure of meeting some weeks ago,&rdquo; she said, and she noted with
+a sinking heart the light which flashed into the man&rsquo;s face at
+the mere mention of the girl.&nbsp; &ldquo;I understand her mother is
+seriously ill, and I think I will go around and call.&nbsp; Perhaps
+I can be of use.&nbsp; I understand Mrs Irving is not a churchwoman,
+and she may be in real need, as the family is in straitened circumstances.&nbsp;
+May I mention your name when I call, in order that Miss Irving may not
+think I intrude?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Why, certainly,&rdquo; the rector replied with warmth.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Indeed, I will give you a card of introduction.&nbsp; That will
+open the way for you, and at the same time I know you will use your
+delicate tact to avoid wounding Miss Irving&rsquo;s pride in any way.&nbsp;
+She is very sensitive about their straitened circumstances; you may
+have heard that they were quite well-to-do until the stroke of paralysis
+rendered her father helpless.&nbsp; All their means were exhausted in
+efforts to restore his health, and in the employment of nurses and physicians.&nbsp;
+I think they have found life a difficult problem since his death, as
+Mrs Irving has been under medical care constantly, and the whole burden
+falls on Miss Joy&rsquo;s young shoulders, and she is but twenty-one.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Just the age of Alice,&rdquo; mused the Baroness.&nbsp; &ldquo;How
+differently people&rsquo;s lives are ordered in this world!&nbsp; But
+then we must have the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, and we
+must have the delicate human flowers.&nbsp; Our Alice is one of the
+latter, a frail blossom to look upon, but she is one of the kind which
+will bloom out in great splendour under the sunshine of love and happiness.&nbsp;
+Very few people realise what wonderful reserve force that delicate child
+possesses.&nbsp; And such a tender heart!&nbsp; She was determined to
+come with me when she heard of Miss Irving&rsquo;s trouble, but I thought
+it unwise to take her until I had seen the place.&nbsp; She is so sensitive
+to her surroundings, and it might be too painful for her.&nbsp; I am
+for ever holding her back from overtaxing herself for others.&nbsp;
+No one dreams of the amount of good that girl does in a secret, quiet
+way; and at the same time she assumes an indifferent air and talks as
+if she were quite heartless, just to hinder people from suspecting her
+charitable work.&nbsp; She is such a strange, complicated character.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Armed with her card of introduction, the Baroness set forth on her
+&ldquo;errand of mercy.&rdquo;&nbsp; She had not mentioned Miss Irving&rsquo;s
+name to Mabel or Alice.&nbsp; The secret of the rector&rsquo;s interest
+in the girl was locked in her own breast.&nbsp; She knew that Mabel
+was wholly incapable of coping with such a situation, and she dreaded
+the effect of the news on Alice, who was absorbed in her love dream.&nbsp;
+The girl had never been denied a wish in her life, and no thought came
+to her that she could be thwarted in this, her most cherished hope of
+all.</p>
+<p>The Baroness was determined to use every gun in her battery of defence
+before she allowed Mabel or Alice to know that defence was needed.</p>
+<p>The rector&rsquo;s card admitted her to the parlour of a small flat.&nbsp;
+The porti&egrave;res of an adjoining room were thrown open presently,
+and a vision of radiant beauty entered the room.</p>
+<p>The Baroness could not explain it, but as the girl emerged from the
+curtains, a strange, confused memory of something and somebody she had
+known in the past came over her.&nbsp; But when the girl spoke, a more
+inexplicable sensation took possession of the listener, for her voice
+was the feminine of Preston Cheney&rsquo;s masculine tones, and then
+as she looked at the girl again the haunting memories of the first glance
+were explained, for she was very like Preston Cheney as the Baroness
+remembered him when he came to the Palace to engage rooms more than
+a score of years ago.&nbsp; &ldquo;What a strange thing these resemblances
+are!&rdquo; she thought.&nbsp; &ldquo;This girl is more like Senator
+Cheney, far more like him, than Alice is.&nbsp; Ah, if Alice only had
+her face and form!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Miss Irving gave a slight start, and took a step back as her eyes
+fell upon the Baroness.&nbsp; The rector&rsquo;s card had read, &ldquo;Introducing
+Mrs Sylvester Lawrence.&rdquo;&nbsp; She had known this lad by sight
+ever since her first Sunday as organist at St Blank&rsquo;s, and for
+some unaccountable reason she had conceived a most intense dislike for
+her.&nbsp; Joy was drawn toward humanity in general, as naturally as
+the sunlight falls on the earth&rsquo;s foliage.&nbsp; Her heart radiated
+love and sympathy toward the whole world.&nbsp; But when she did feel
+a sentiment of distrust or repulsion she had learned to respect it.</p>
+<p>Our guardian angels sometimes send these feelings as danger signals
+to our souls.</p>
+<p>It therefore required a strong effort of her will to go forward and
+extend a hand in greeting to the lady whom her rector and friend had
+introduced.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I must beg pardon for this intrusion,&rdquo; the Baroness
+said with her sweetest smile; &ldquo;but our rector urged me to come
+and so I felt emboldened to carry out the wish I have long entertained
+to make your acquaintance.&nbsp; Your wonderful music inspires all who
+hear you to know you personally; the service lacked half its charm on
+Sunday because you were absent.&nbsp; When I learnt that your absence
+was occasioned by your mother&rsquo;s illness, I asked the rector if
+he thought a call from me would be an intrusion, and he assured me to
+the contrary.&nbsp; I used to be considered an excellent nurse; I am
+very strong, and full of vitality, and if you would permit me to sit
+by your mother some Sunday when you are needed at church, I should be
+most happy to do so.&nbsp; I should like to make the acquaintance of
+your mother, and compliment her on the happiness of possessing such
+a gifted and dutiful daughter.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Like all who sat for any time under the spell of the second Mrs Lawrence,
+Joy felt the charm of her voice, words and manner, and it began to seem
+as if she had been very unreasonable in entertaining unfounded prejudices.</p>
+<p>That the rector had introduced her was alone proof of her worthiness;
+and the gracious offer of the distinguished-looking lady to watch by
+the bedside of a stranger was certainly evidence of her good heart.&nbsp;
+The frost disappeared from her smile, and she warmed toward the Baroness.&nbsp;
+The call lengthened into a visit, and as the Baroness finally rose to
+go, Joy said:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I will take you in and introduce you to mamma now.&nbsp; I
+think it will do her good to meet you,&rdquo; and the Baroness followed
+the graceful girl through a narrow hall, and into a room which had evidently
+been intended for a dining-room, but which, owing to its size and its
+windows opening to the south, had been utilised as a sick chamber.</p>
+<p>The invalid lay with her face turned away from the door.&nbsp; But
+by the movement of the delicate hand on the counterpane, Joy knew that
+her mother was awake.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mamma, I have brought a lady, a friend of Dr Stuart&rsquo;s,
+to see you,&rdquo; Joy said gently.&nbsp; The invalid turned her head
+upon the pillow, and the Baroness looked upon the face of&mdash;Berene
+Dumont.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Berene!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Madam!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The two spoke simultaneously, and the invalid had started upright
+in bed.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mamma, what is the matter?&nbsp; Oh, please lie down, or you
+will bring on another h&aelig;morrhage,&rdquo; cried the startled girl;
+but her mother lifted her hand.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Joy,&rdquo; she said in a firm, clear voice, &ldquo;this lady
+is an old acquaintance of mine.&nbsp; Please go out, dear, and shut
+the door.&nbsp; I wish to see her alone.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Joy passed out with drooping head and a sinking heart.&nbsp; As the
+door closed behind her the Baroness spoke.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;So that is Preston Cheney&rsquo;s daughter,&rdquo; she said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I always had my suspicions of the cause which led you to leave
+my house so suddenly.&nbsp; Does the girl know who her father is?&nbsp;
+And does Senator Cheney know of her existence, may I ask?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>A crimson flush suffused the invalid&rsquo;s face.&nbsp; Then a flame
+of fire shot into the dark eyes, and a small red spot only glowed on
+either pale cheek.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I do not know by what right you ask these questions, Baroness
+Brown,&rdquo; she answered slowly; and her listener cringed under the
+old appellation which recalled the miserable days when she had kept
+a lodging-house&mdash;days she had almost forgotten during the last
+decade of life.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I can assure you, madam,&rdquo; continued the speaker,
+&ldquo;that my daughter knows no father save the good man, my husband,
+who is dead.&nbsp; I have never by word or line made my existence known
+to anyone I ever knew since I left Beryngford.&nbsp; I do not know why
+you should come here to insult me, madam; I have never harmed you or
+yours, and you have no proof of the accusation you just made, save your
+own evil suspicions.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Baroness gave an unpleasant laugh.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is an easy matter for me to find proof of my suspicions
+if I choose to take the trouble,&rdquo; she said.&nbsp; &ldquo;There
+are detectives enough to hunt up your trail, and I have money enough
+to pay them for their trouble.&nbsp; But Joy is the living evidence
+of the assertion.&nbsp; She is the image of Preston Cheney, as he was
+twenty-three years ago.&nbsp; I am ready, however, to let the matter
+drop on one condition; and that condition is, that you extract a promise
+from your daughter that she will not encourage the attentions of Arthur
+Emerson Stuart, the rector of St Blank&rsquo;s; that she will never
+under any circumstances be his wife.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The red spots faded to a sickly yellow in the invalid&rsquo;s cheeks.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Why should you ask this of me?&rdquo; she cried.&nbsp; &ldquo;Why
+should you wish to destroy the happiness of my child&rsquo;s life?&nbsp;
+She loves Arthur Stuart, and I know that he loves her!&nbsp; It is the
+one thought which resigns me to death; the thought that I may leave
+her the beloved wife of this good man.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Baroness leaned lower over the pillow of the invalid as she answered:
+&ldquo;I will tell you why I ask this sacrifice of you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps you do not know that I married Judge Lawrence after
+the death of his first wife.&nbsp; Perhaps you do not know that Preston
+Cheney&rsquo;s legitimate daughter is as precious to me as his illegitimate
+child is to you.&nbsp; Alice is only six months younger than Joy; she
+is frail, delicate, sensitive.&nbsp; A severe disappointment would kill
+her.&nbsp; She, too, loves Arthur Stuart.&nbsp; If your daughter will
+let him alone, he will marry Alice.&nbsp; Surely the illegitimate child
+should give way to the legitimate.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;If you are selfish in this matter, I shall be obliged to tell
+your daughter the true story of her life, and let her be the judge of
+what is right and what is wrong.&nbsp; I fancy she might have a finer
+perception of duty than you have&mdash;she is so much like her father.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The tortured invalid fell back panting on her pillow.&nbsp; She put
+out her hands with a distracted, imploring gesture.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Leave me to think,&rdquo; she gasped.&nbsp; &ldquo;I never
+knew that Preston Cheney had a daughter; I did not know he lived here.&nbsp;
+My life has been so quiet, so secluded these many years.&nbsp; Leave
+me to think.&nbsp; I will give you my answer in a few days; I will write
+you after I reflect and pray.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Baroness passed out, and Joy, hastening into the room, found
+her mother in a wild paroxysm of tears.&nbsp; Late that night Mrs Irving
+called for writing materials; and for many hours she sat propped up
+in bed writing rapidly.</p>
+<p>When she had completed her task she called Joy to her side.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Darling,&rdquo; she said, placing a sealed manuscript in her
+hands, &ldquo;I want you to keep this seal unbroken so long as you are
+happy.&nbsp; I know in spite of your deep sorrow at my death, which
+must come ere long, you will find much happiness in life.&nbsp; You
+came smiling into existence, and no common sorrow can deprive you of
+the joy which is your birthright.&nbsp; But there are numerous people
+in the world who may strive to wound you after I am gone.&nbsp; If slanderous
+tales or cruel reports reach your ears, and render you unhappy, break
+this seal, and read the story I have written here.&nbsp; There are some
+things which will deeply pain you, I know.&nbsp; Do not force yourself
+to read them until a necessity arises.&nbsp; I leave you this manuscript
+as I might leave you a weapon for self-defence.&nbsp; Use it only when
+you are in need of that defence.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The next morning Mrs Irving was weakened by another and most serious
+h&aelig;morrhage of the lungs.&nbsp; Her physician was grave, and urged
+the daughter to be prepared for the worst.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I fear your mother&rsquo;s life is a matter of days only,&rdquo;
+he said.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The Baroness went directly from the home which she had entered only
+to blight, and sent her card marked &ldquo;urgent&rdquo; to Mrs Stuart.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have come to tell you an unpleasant story,&rdquo; she said&mdash;&ldquo;a
+painful and revolting story, the early chapters of which were written
+years ago, but the sequel has only just been made known to me.&nbsp;
+It concerns you and yours vitally; it also concerns me and mine.&nbsp;
+I am sure, when you have heard the story to the end, you will say that
+truth is stranger than fiction, indeed: and you will more than ever
+realise the necessity of preventing your son from marrying Joy Irving&mdash;a
+child who was born before her mother ever met Mr Irving; and whose mother,
+I daresay, was no more the actual wife of Mr Irving in the name of law
+and decency than she had been the wife of his many predecessors.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Startled and horrified at this beginning of the story, Mrs Stuart
+was in a state of excited indignation at the end.&nbsp; The Baroness
+had magnified facts and distorted truths until she represented Berene
+Dumont as a monster of depravity; a vicious being who had been for a
+short time the recipient of the Baroness&rsquo;s mistaken charity, and
+who had repaid kindness by base ingratitude, and immorality.&nbsp; The
+man implicated in the scandal which she claimed was the cause of Berene&rsquo;s
+flight was not named in this recital.</p>
+<p>Indeed the Baroness claimed that he was more sinned against than
+sinning, and that it was a case of mesmeric influence, or evil eye,
+on the part of the depraved woman.</p>
+<p>Mrs Lawrence took pains to avoid any reference to Beryngford also;
+speaking of these occurrences having taken place while she spent a summer
+in a distant interior town, where, &ldquo;after the death of the Baron,
+she had rented a villa, feeling that she wanted to retire from the world.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My heart is always running away with my head,&rdquo; she remarked,
+&ldquo;and I thought this poor creature, who was shunned and neglected
+by all, worth saving.&nbsp; I tried to befriend her, and hoped to waken
+the better nature which every woman possesses, I think, but she was
+too far gone in iniquity.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You cannot imagine, my dear Mrs Stuart, what a shock it was
+to me on entering that sickroom to-day, my heart full of kindly sympathy,
+to encounter in the invalid the ungrateful recipient of my past favours;
+and to realise that her daughter was no other than the shameful offspring
+of her immoral past.&nbsp; In spite of the girl&rsquo;s beauty, there
+is an expression about her face which I never liked; and I fully understand
+now why I did not like it.&nbsp; Of course, Mrs Stuart, this story is
+told to you in strict confidence.&nbsp; I would not for the world have
+dear Mrs Cheney know of it, nor would I pollute sweet Alice with such
+a tale.&nbsp; Indeed, Alice would not understand it if she were told,
+for she is as ignorant and innocent as a child in arms of such matters.&nbsp;
+We have kept her absolutely unspotted from the world.&nbsp; But I knew
+it was my duty to tell you the whole shameful story.&nbsp; If worst
+comes to worst, you will be obliged to tell your son perhaps, and if
+he doubts the story send him to me for its verification.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Worst came to the worst before twenty-four hours had passed.&nbsp;
+The rector received word that Mrs Irving was rapidly failing, and went
+to act the part of spiritual counsellor to the invalid, and sympathetic
+friend to the suffering girl.</p>
+<p>When he returned his mother watched his face with eager, anxious
+eyes.&nbsp; He looked haggard and ill, as if he had passed through a
+severe ordeal.&nbsp; He could talk of nothing but the beautiful and
+brave girl, who was about to lose her one worshipped companion, and
+who ere many hours passed would stand utterly alone in the world.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I never saw you so affected before by the troubles and sorrows
+of your parishioners,&rdquo; Mrs Stuart said.&nbsp; &ldquo;I wonder,
+Arthur, why you take the sorrows of this family so keenly to heart.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The young rector looked his mother full in the face with calm, sad
+eyes.&nbsp; Then he said slowly:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose, mother, it is because I love Joy Irving with all
+my heart.&nbsp; You must have suspected this for some time.&nbsp; I
+know that you have, and that the thought has pained you.&nbsp; You have
+had other and more ambitious aims for me.&nbsp; Earnest Christian and
+good woman that you are, you have a worldly and conventional vein in
+your nature, which makes you reverence position, wealth and family to
+a marked degree.&nbsp; You would, I know, like to see me unite myself
+with some royal family, were that possible; failing in that, you would
+choose the daughter of some great and aristocratic house to be my bride.&nbsp;
+Ah, well, dear mother, you will, I know, concede that marriage without
+love is unholy.&nbsp; I am not able to force myself to love some great
+lady, even supposing I could win her if I did love her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But you might keep yourself from forming a foolish and unworthy
+attachment,&rdquo; Mrs Stuart interrupted.&nbsp; &ldquo;With your will-power,
+your brain, your reasoning faculties, I see no necessity for your allowing
+a pretty face to run away with your heart.&nbsp; Nothing could be more
+unsuitable, more shocking, more dreadful, than to have you make that
+girl your wife, Arthur.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Stuart&rsquo;s voice rose as she spoke, from a quiet reasoning
+tone to a high, excited wail.&nbsp; She had not meant to say so much.&nbsp;
+She had intended merely to appeal to her son&rsquo;s affection for her,
+without making any unpleasant disclosures regarding Joy&rsquo;s mother;
+she thought merely to win a promise from him that he would not compromise
+himself at present with the girl, through an excess of sympathy.&nbsp;
+But already she had said enough to arouse the young man into a defender
+of the girl he loved.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I think your language quite too strong, mother,&rdquo; he
+said, with a reproving tone in his voice.&nbsp; &ldquo;Miss Irving is
+good, gifted, amiable, beautiful, beside being young and full of health.&nbsp;
+I am sure there could be nothing shocking or dreadful in any man&rsquo;s
+uniting his destiny with such a being, in case he was fortunate enough
+to win her.&nbsp; The fact that she is poor, and not of illustrious
+lineage, is but a very worldly consideration.&nbsp; Mr Irving was a
+most intelligent and excellent man, even if he was a grocer.&nbsp; The
+American idea of aristocracy is grotesquely absurd at the best.&nbsp;
+A man may spend his time and strength in buying and selling things wherewith
+to clothe the body, and, if he succeeds, his children are admitted to
+the intimacy of princes; but no success can open that door to the children
+of a man who trades in food, wherewith to sustain the body.&nbsp; We
+can none of us afford to put on airs here in America, with butchers
+and Dutch peasant traders only three or four generations back of our
+&lsquo;best families.&rsquo;&nbsp; As for me, mother, remember my loved
+father was a broker.&nbsp; That would damn him in the eyes of some people,
+you know, cultured gentleman as he was.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Stuart sat very still, breathing hard and trying to gain control
+of herself for some moments after her son ceased speaking.&nbsp; He,
+too, had said more than he intended, and he was sorry that he had hurt
+his mother&rsquo;s feelings as he saw her evident agitation.&nbsp; But
+as he rose to go forward and beg her pardon, she spoke.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The person of whom we were speaking has nothing whatever to
+do with Mr Irving,&rdquo; she said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Joy Irving was born
+before her mother was married.&nbsp; Mrs Irving has a most infamous
+past, and I would rather see you dead than the husband of her child.&nbsp;
+You certainly would not want your children to inherit the propensities
+of such a grandmother?&nbsp; And remember the curse descends to the
+third and fourth generations.&nbsp; If you doubt my words, go to the
+Baroness.&nbsp; She knows the whole story, but has revealed it to no
+one but me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Mrs Stuart left the room, closing the door behind her as she went.&nbsp;
+She did not want to be obliged to go over the details of the story which
+she had heard; she had made her statement, one which she knew must startle
+and horrify her son, with his high ideals of womanly purity, and she
+left him to review the situation in silence.&nbsp; It was several hours
+before the rector left his room.</p>
+<p>When he did, he went, not to the Baroness, but directly to Mrs Irving.&nbsp;
+They were alone for more than an hour.&nbsp; When he emerged from the
+room, his face was as white as death, and he did not look at Joy as
+she accompanied him to the door.</p>
+<p>Two days later Mrs Irving died.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The congregation of St Blank&rsquo;s Church was rendered sad and
+solicitous by learning that its rector was on the eve of nervous prostration,
+and that his physician had ordered a change of air.&nbsp; He went away
+in company with his mother for a vacation of three months.&nbsp; The
+day after his departure Joy Irving received a letter from him which
+read as follows:-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;My Dear Miss Irving,&mdash;You may not in your deep grief
+have given me a thought.&nbsp; If such a thought has been granted one
+so unworthy, it must have taken the form of surprise that your rector
+and friend has made no call of condolence since death entered your household.&nbsp;
+I want to write one little word to you, asking you to be lenient in
+your judgment of me.&nbsp; I am ill in body and mind.&nbsp; I feel that
+I am on the eve of some distressing malady.&nbsp; I am not able to reason
+clearly, or to judge what is right and what is wrong.&nbsp; I am as
+one tossed between the laws of God and the laws made by men, and bruised
+in heart and in soul.&nbsp; I dare not see you or speak to you while
+I am in this state of mind.&nbsp; I fear for what I may say or do.&nbsp;
+I have not slept since I last saw you.&nbsp; I must go away and gain
+strength and equilibrium.&nbsp; When I return I shall hope to be master
+of myself.&nbsp; Until then, adieu.&nbsp; &ldquo;ARTHUR EMERSON STUART.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>These wild and incoherent phrases stirred the young girl&rsquo;s
+heart with intense pain and anxiety.&nbsp; She had known for almost
+a year that she loved the young rector; she had believed that he cared
+for her, and without allowing herself to form any definite thoughts
+of the future, she had lived in a blissful consciousness of loving and
+being loved, which is to the fulfilment of a love dream, like inhaling
+the perfume of a rose, compared to the gathered flower and its attending
+thorns.</p>
+<p>The young clergyman&rsquo;s absence at the time of her greatest need
+had caused her both wonder and pain.&nbsp; His letter but increased
+both sentiments without explaining the cause.</p>
+<p>It increased, too, her love for him, for whenever over-anxiety is
+aroused for one dear to us, our love is augmented.</p>
+<p>She felt that the young man was in some great trouble, unknown to
+her, and she longed to be able to comfort him.&nbsp; Into the maiden&rsquo;s
+tender and ardent affection stole the wifely wish to console and the
+motherly impulse to protect her dear one from pain, which are strong
+elements in every real woman&rsquo;s love.</p>
+<p>Mrs Irving had died without writing one word to the Baroness; and
+that personage was in a state of constant excitement until she heard
+of the rector&rsquo;s plans for rest and travel.&nbsp; Mrs Stuart informed
+her of the conversation which had taken place between herself and her
+son; and of his evident distress of mind, which had reacted on his body
+and made it necessary for him to give up mental work for a season.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I feel that I owe you a debt of gratitude, dear Baroness,&rdquo;
+Mrs Stuart had said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Sad as this condition of things is,
+imagine how much worse it would be, had my son, through an excess of
+sympathy for that girl at this time, compromised himself with her before
+we learned the terrible truth regarding her birth.&nbsp; I feel sure
+my son will regain his health after a few months&rsquo; absence, and
+that he will not jeopardise my happiness and his future by any further
+thoughts of this unfortunate girl, who in the meantime may not be here
+when we return.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The Baroness made a mental resolve that the girl should not be there.</p>
+<p>While the rector&rsquo;s illness and proposed absence was sufficient
+evidence that he had resolved upon sacrificing his love for Joy on the
+altar of duty to his mother and his calling, yet the Baroness felt that
+danger lurked in the air while Miss Irving occupied her present position.&nbsp;
+No sooner had Mrs Stuart and her son left the city, than the Baroness
+sent an anonymous letter to the young organist.&nbsp; It read:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;I do not know whether your mother imparted the secret of her
+past life to you before she died, but as that secret is known to several
+people, it seems cruelly unjust that you are kept in ignorance of it.&nbsp;
+You are not Mr Irving&rsquo;s child.&nbsp; You were born before your
+mother married.&nbsp; While it is not your fault, only your misfortune,
+it would be wise for you to go where the facts are not so well known
+as in the congregation of St Blank&rsquo;s.&nbsp; There are people in
+that congregation who consider you guilty of a wilful deception in wearing
+the name you do, and of an affront to good taste in accepting the position
+you occupy.&nbsp; Many people talk of leaving the church on your account.&nbsp;
+Your gifts as a musician would win you a position elsewhere, and as
+I learn that your mother&rsquo;s life was insured for a considerable
+sum, I am sure you are able to seek new fields where you can bide your
+disgrace.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A WELL-WISHER.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Quivering with pain and terror, the young girl cast the letter into
+the fire, thinking that it was the work of one of those half-crazed
+beings whose mania takes the form of anonymous letters to unoffending
+people.&nbsp; Only recently such a person had been brought into the
+courts for this offence.&nbsp; It occurred to her also that it might
+be the work of someone who wished to obtain her position as organist
+of St Blank&rsquo;s.&nbsp; Musicians, she knew, were said to be the
+most jealous of all people, and while she had never suffered from them
+before, it might be that her time had now come to experience the misfortunes
+of her profession.</p>
+<p>Tender-hearted and kindly in feeling to all humanity, she felt a
+sickening sense of sorrow and fear at the thought that there existed
+such a secret enemy for her anywhere in the world.</p>
+<p>She went out upon the street, and for the first time in her life
+she experienced a sense of suspicion and distrust toward the people
+she met; for the first time in her life, she realised that the world
+was not all kind and ready to give her back the honest friendship and
+the sweet good-will which filled her heart for all her kind.&nbsp; Strive
+as she would, she could not cast off the depression caused by this vile
+letter.&nbsp; It was her first experience of this cowardly and despicable
+phase of human malice, and she felt wounded in soul as by a poisoned
+arrow shot in the dark.&nbsp; And then, suddenly, there came to her
+the memory of her mother&rsquo;s words&mdash;&ldquo;If unhappiness ever
+comes to you, read this letter.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Surely this was the time she needed to read that letter.&nbsp; That
+it contained some secret of her mother&rsquo;s life she felt sure, and
+she was equally sure that it contained nothing that would cause her
+to blush for that beloved mother.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Whatever the manuscript may have to reveal to me,&rdquo; she
+said, &ldquo;it is time that I should know.&rdquo;&nbsp; She took the
+package from the hiding place, and broke the seal.&nbsp; Slowly she
+read it to the end, as if anxious to make no error in understanding
+every phase of the long story it related.&nbsp; Beginning with the marriage
+of her mother to the French professor, Berene gave a detailed account
+of her own sad and troubled life, and the shadow which the father&rsquo;s
+appetite for drugs cast over her whole youth.&nbsp; &ldquo;They say,&rdquo;
+she wrote, &ldquo;that there is no personal devil in existence.&nbsp;
+I think this is true; he has taken the form of drugs and spirituous
+liquors, and so his work of devastation goes on.&rdquo;&nbsp; Then followed
+the story of the sacrilegious marriage to save her father from suicide,
+of her early widowhood; and the proffer of the Baroness to give her
+a home.&nbsp; Of her life of servitude there, her yearning for an education,
+and her meeting with &ldquo;Apollo,&rdquo; as she designated Preston
+Cheney.&nbsp; &ldquo;For truly he was like the glory of the rising day
+to me, the first to give me hope, courage and unselfish aid.&nbsp; I
+loved him, I worshipped him.&nbsp; He loved me, but he strove to crush
+and kill this love because he had worked out an ambitious career for
+himself.&nbsp; To extricate himself from many difficulties and embarrassments,
+and to further his ambitious dreams, he betrothed himself to the daughter
+of a rich and powerful man.&nbsp; He made no profession of love, and
+she asked none.&nbsp; She was incapable of giving or inspiring that
+holy passion.&nbsp; She only asked to be married.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I only asked to be loved.&nbsp; Knowing nothing of the terrible
+conflict in his breast, knowing nothing of his new-made ties, I was
+wounded to the soul by his speaking unkindly to me&mdash;words he forced
+himself to speak to hide his real feelings.&nbsp; And then it was that
+a strange fate caused him to find me fainting, suffering, and praying
+for death.&nbsp; The love in both hearts could no longer be restrained.&nbsp;
+Augmented by its long control, sharpened by the agony we had both suffered,
+overwhelmed by the surprise of the meeting, we lost reason and prudence.&nbsp;
+Everything was forgotten save our love.&nbsp; When it was too late I
+foresaw the anguish and sorrow I must bring into this man&rsquo;s life.&nbsp;
+I fear it was this thought rather than repentance for sin which troubled
+me.&nbsp; Well may you ask why I did not think of all this before instead
+of after the error was committed.&nbsp; Why did not Eve realise the
+consequences of the fall until she had eaten of the apple?&nbsp; Only
+afterward did I learn of the unholy ties which my lover had formed that
+very day&mdash;ties which he swore to me should be broken ere another
+day passed, to render him free to make me his wife in the eyes of men,
+as I already was in the sight of God.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yet a strange and sudden resolve came to me as I listened
+to him.&nbsp; Far beyond the thought of my own ruin, rose the consciousness
+of the ruin I should bring upon his life by allowing him to carry out
+his design.&nbsp; To be his wife, his helpmate, chosen from the whole
+world as one he deemed most worthy and most able to cheer and aid him
+in life&rsquo;s battle&mdash;that seemed heaven to me; but to know that
+by one rash, impetuous act of folly, I had placed him in a position
+where he felt that honour compelled him to marry me&mdash;why, this
+thought was more bitter than death.&nbsp; I knew that he loved me; yet
+I knew, too, that by a union with me under the circumstances he would
+antagonise those who were now his best and most influential friends,
+and that his entire career would be ruined.&nbsp; I resolved to go away;
+to disappear from his life and leave no trace.&nbsp; If his love was
+as sincere as mine, he would find me; and time would show him some wiser
+way for breaking his new-made fetters than the rash and sudden method
+he now contemplated.&nbsp; He had forgotten to protect me with his love,
+but I could not forget to protect him.&nbsp; In every true woman&rsquo;s
+love there is the maternal element which renders sacrifice natural.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Fate hastened and furthered my plans for departure.&nbsp;
+Made aware that the Baroness was suspicious of my fault, and learning
+that my lover was suddenly called to the bedside of his fianc&eacute;e,
+I made my escape from the town and left no trace behind.&nbsp; I went
+to that vast haystack of lost needles&mdash;New York, and effaced Berene
+Dumont in Mrs Lamont.&nbsp; The money left from my father&rsquo;s belongings
+I resolved to use in cultivating my voice.&nbsp; I advertised for embroidery
+and fine sewing also, and as I was an expert with the needle, I was
+able to support myself and lay aside a little sum each week.&nbsp; I
+trimmed hats at a small price, and added to my income in various manners,
+owing to my French taste and my deft fingers.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was desolate, sad, lonely, but not despairing.&nbsp; What
+woman can despair when she knows herself loved?&nbsp; To me that consciousness
+was a far greater source of happiness than would have been the knowledge
+that I was an empress, or the wife of a millionaire, envied by the whole
+world.&nbsp; I believed my lover would find me in time, that we should
+be reunited.&nbsp; I believed this until I saw the announcement of his
+marriage in the press, and read that he and his bride had sailed for
+an extended foreign tour; but with this stunning news, there came to
+me the strange, sweet, startling consciousness that you, my darling
+child, were coming to console me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I know that under the circumstances I ought to have been borne
+down to the earth with a guilty shame; I ought to have considered you
+as a punishment for my sin&mdash;and walked in the valley of humiliation
+and despair.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But I did not.&nbsp; I lived in a state of mental exaltation;
+every thought was a prayer, every emotion was linked with religious
+fervour.&nbsp; I was no longer alone or friendless, for I had you.&nbsp;
+I sang as I had never sung, and one theatrical manager, who happened
+to call upon my teacher during my lesson hour, offered me a position
+at a good salary at once if I would accept.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I could not accept, of course, knowing what the coming months
+were to bring to me, but I took his card and promised to write him when
+I was ready to take a position.&nbsp; You came into life in the depressing
+atmosphere of a city hospital, my dear child, yet even there I was not
+depressed, and your face wore a smile of joy the first time I gazed
+upon it.&nbsp; So I named you Joy&mdash;and well have you worn the name.&nbsp;
+My first sorrow was in being obliged to leave you; for I had to leave
+you with those human angels, the sweet sisters of charity, while I went
+forth to make a home for you.&nbsp; My voice, as is sometimes the case,
+was richer, stronger and of greater compass after I had passed through
+maternity.&nbsp; I accepted a position with a travelling theatrical
+company, where I was to sing a solo in one act.&nbsp; My success was
+not phenomenal, but it <i>was</i> success nevertheless.&nbsp; I followed
+this life for three years, seeing you only at intervals.&nbsp; Then
+the consciousness came to me that without long and profound study I
+could never achieve more than a third-rate success in my profession.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I had dreamed of becoming a great singer; but I learned that
+a voice alone does not make a great singer.&nbsp; I needed years of
+study, and this would necessitate the expenditure of large sums of money.&nbsp;
+I had grown heart-sick and disgusted with the annoyances and vulgarity
+I was subjected to in my position.&nbsp; When you were four years old
+a good man offered me a good home as his wife.&nbsp; It was the first
+honest love I had encountered, while scores of men had made a pretence
+of loving me during these years.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I was hungering for a home where I could claim you and have
+the joy of your daily companionship instead of brief glimpses of you
+at the intervals of months.&nbsp; My voice, never properly trained,
+was beginning to break.&nbsp; I resolved to put Mr Irving to a test;
+I would tell him the true story of your birth, and if he still wished
+me to be his wife, I would marry him.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I carried out my resolve, and we were married the day after
+he had heard my story.&nbsp; I lived a peaceful and even happy life
+with Mr Irving.&nbsp; He was devoted to you, and never by look, word
+or act, seemed to remember my past.&nbsp; I, too, at times almost forgot
+it, so strange a thing is the human heart under the influence of time.&nbsp;
+Imagine, then, the shock of remembrance and the tidal wave of memories
+which swept over me when in the lady you brought to call upon me I recognised&mdash;the
+Baroness.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is because she threatened to tell you that you were not
+born in wedlock that I leave this manuscript for you.&nbsp; It is but
+a few weeks since you told me the story of Marah Adams, and assured
+me that you thought her mother did right in confessing the truth to
+her daughter.&nbsp; Little did you dream with what painful interest
+I listened to your views on that subject.&nbsp; Little did I dream that
+I should so soon be called upon to act upon them.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But the time is now come, and I want no strange hand to deal
+you a blow in the dark; if any part of the story comes to you, I want
+you to know the whole truth.&nbsp; You will wonder why I have not told
+you the name of your father.&nbsp; It is strange, but from the hour
+I knew of his marriage, and of your dawning life, I have felt a jealous
+fear lest he should ever take you from me; even after I am gone, I would
+not have him know of your existence and be unable to claim you openly.&nbsp;
+Any acquaintance between you could only result in sorrow.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I have never blamed him for my past weakness, however I have
+blamed him for his unholy marriage.&nbsp; Our fault was mutual.&nbsp;
+I was no ignorant child; while young in years, I had sufficient knowledge
+of human nature to protect myself had I used my will-power and my reason.&nbsp;
+Like many another woman, I used neither; unlike the majority, I did
+not repent my sin or its consequences.&nbsp; I have ever believed you
+to be a more divinely born being than any children who may have resulted
+from my lover&rsquo;s unholy marriage.&nbsp; I die strong in the belief.&nbsp;
+God bless you, my dear child, and farewell.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Joy sat silent and pale like one in a trance for a long time after
+she had finished reading.&nbsp; Then she said aloud, &ldquo;So I am
+another like Marah Adams; it was this knowledge which caused the rector
+to write me that strange letter.&nbsp; It was this knowledge which sent
+him away without coming to say one word of adieu.&nbsp; The woman who
+sent me the message, sent it to him also.&nbsp; Well, I can be as brave
+as my mother was.&nbsp; I, too, can disappear.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She arose and began silently and rapidly to make preparations for
+a journey.&nbsp; She felt a nervous haste to get away from something&mdash;from
+all things.&nbsp; Everything stable in the world seemed to have slipped
+from her hold in the last few days.&nbsp; Home, mother, love, and now
+hope and pride were gone too.&nbsp; She worked for more than two hours
+without giving vent to even a sigh.&nbsp; Then suddenly she buried her
+face in her hands and sobbed aloud: &ldquo;Oh, mother, mother, you were
+not ashamed, but I am ashamed for you!&nbsp; Why was I ever born?&nbsp;
+God forgive me for the sinful thought, but I wish you had lied to me
+in place of telling me the truth.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Just as Mrs Irving had written her story for her daughter to read,
+she told it, in the main, to the rector a few days before her death.</p>
+<p>Only once before had the tale passed her lips; then her listener
+was Horace Irving; and his only comment was to take her in his arms
+and place the kiss of betrothal on her lips.&nbsp; Never again was the
+painful subject referred to between them.&nbsp; So imbued had Berene
+Dumont become with her belief in the legitimacy of her child, and in
+her own purity, that she felt but little surprise at the calm manner
+in which Mr Irving received her story, and now when the rector of St
+Blank&rsquo;s Church was her listener, she expected the same broad judgment
+to be given her.&nbsp; But it was the calmness of a great and all-forgiving
+love which actuated Mr Irving, and overcame all other feelings.</p>
+<p>Wholly unconventional in nature, caring nothing and knowing little
+of the extreme ideas of orthodox society on these subjects, the girl
+Berene and the woman Mrs Irving had lived a life so wholly secluded
+from the world at large, so absolutely devoid of intimate friendships,
+so absorbed in her own ideals, that she was incapable of understanding
+the conventional opinion regarding a woman with a history like hers.</p>
+<p>In all those years she had never once felt a sensation of shame.&nbsp;
+Mr Irving had requested her to rear Joy in the belief that she was his
+child.&nbsp; As the matter could in no way concern anyone else, Mrs
+Irving&rsquo;s lips had remained sealed on the subject; but not with
+any idea of concealing a disgrace.&nbsp; She could not associate disgrace
+with her love for Preston Cheney.&nbsp; She believed herself to be his
+spiritual widow, as it were.&nbsp; His mortal clay and legal name only
+belonged to his wife.</p>
+<p>Mr Irving had met Berene on a railroad train, and had conceived one
+of those sudden and intense passions with which a woman with a past
+often inspires an innocent and unworldly young man.&nbsp; He was sincerely
+and truly religious by nature, and as spotless as a maiden in mind and
+body.</p>
+<p>When he had dreamed of a wife, it was always of some shy, innocent
+girl whom he should woo almost from her mother&rsquo;s arms; some gentle,
+pious maid, carefully reared, who would help him to establish the Christian
+household of his imagination.&nbsp; He had thought that love would first
+come to him as admiring respect, then tender friendship, then love for
+some such maiden; instead it had swooped down upon him in the form of
+an intense passion for an absolute stranger&mdash;a woman travelling
+with a theatrical company.&nbsp; He was like a sleeper who awakens suddenly
+and finds a scorching midday sun beating upon his eyes.&nbsp; A wrecked
+freight train upon the track detained for several hours the car in which
+they travelled.&nbsp; The passengers waived ceremony and conversed to
+pass the time, and Mr Irving learnt Berene&rsquo;s name, occupation
+and destination.&nbsp; He followed her for a week, and at the end of
+that time asked her hand in marriage.</p>
+<p>Even after he had heard the story of her life, he was not deterred
+from his resolve to make her his wife.&nbsp; All the Christian charity
+of his nature, all its chivalry was aroused, and he believed he was
+plucking a brand from the burning.&nbsp; He never repented his act.&nbsp;
+He lived wholly for his wife and child, and for the good he could do
+with them as his faithful allies.&nbsp; He drew more and more away from
+all the allurements of the world, and strove to rear Joy in what he
+believed to be a purely Christian life, and to make his wife forget,
+if possible, that she had ever known a sorrow.&nbsp; All of sincere
+gratitude, tenderness, and gentle affection possible for her to feel,
+Berene bestowed upon her husband during his life, and gave to his memory
+after he was gone.</p>
+<p>Joy had been excessively fond of Mr Irving, and it was the dread
+of causing her a deep sorrow in the knowledge that she was not his child,
+and the fear that Preston Cheney would in any way interfere with her
+possession of Joy, which had distressed the mother during the visit
+of the Baroness, rather than unwillingness to have her sin revealed
+to her daughter.&nbsp; Added to this, the intrusion of the Baroness
+into this long hidden and sacred experience seemed a sacrilege from
+which she shrank with horror.&nbsp; But she now told the tale to Arthur
+Stuart frankly and fearlessly.</p>
+<p>He had asked her to confide to him whatever secret existed regarding
+Joy&rsquo;s birth.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There is a rumour afloat,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;that Joy
+is not Mr Irving&rsquo;s child.&nbsp; I love your daughter, Mrs Irving,
+and I feel it is my right to know all the circumstances of her life.&nbsp;
+I believe the story which was told my mother to be the invention of
+some enemy who is jealous of Joy&rsquo;s beauty and talents, and I would
+like to be in a position to silence these slanders.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So Mrs Irving told the story to the end; and having told it, she
+felt relieved and happy in the thought that it was imparted to the only
+two people whom it could concern in the future.</p>
+<p>No disturbing fear came to her that the rector would hesitate to
+make Joy his wife.&nbsp; To Berene Dumont, love was the law.&nbsp; If
+love existed between two souls she could not understand why any convention
+of society should stand in the way of its fulfilment.</p>
+<p>Arthur Stuart in his role of spiritual confessor and consoler had
+never before encountered such a phase of human nature.&nbsp; He had
+listened to many a tale of sin and folly from women&rsquo;s lips, but
+always had the sinner bemoaned her sin, and bitterly repented her weakness.&nbsp;
+Here instead was what the world would consider a fallen woman, who on
+her deathbed regarded her weakness as her strength, her shame as her
+glory, and who seemed to expect him to take the same view of the matter.&nbsp;
+When he attempted to urge her to repent, the words stuck in his throat.&nbsp;
+He left the deathbed of the unfortunate sinner without having expressed
+one of the conflicting emotions which filled his heart.&nbsp; But he
+left it with such a weight on his soul, such distress on his mind that
+death seemed to him the only way of escape from a life of torment.</p>
+<p>His love for Joy Irving was not killed by the story he had heard.&nbsp;
+But it had received a terrible shock, and the thought of making her
+his wife with the probability that the Baroness would spread the scandal
+broadcast, and that his marriage would break his mother&rsquo;s heart,
+tortured him.&nbsp; Added to this were his theories on heredity, and
+the fear that there might, nay, must be, some dangerous tendency hidden
+in the daughter of a mother who had so erred, and who in dying showed
+no comprehension of the enormity of her sin.&nbsp; Had Mrs Irving bewailed
+her fall, and represented herself as the victim of a wily villain, the
+rector would not have felt so great a fear of the daughter&rsquo;s inheritance.&nbsp;
+A frail, repentant woman he could pity and forgive, but it seemed to
+him that Mrs Irving was utterly lacking in moral nature.&nbsp; She was
+spiritually blind.&nbsp; The thought tortured him.&nbsp; To leave Joy
+at this time without calling to see her seemed base and cowardly; yet
+he dared not trust himself in her presence.&nbsp; So he sent her the
+strangely worded letter, and went away hoping to be shown the path of
+duty before he returned.</p>
+<p>At the end of three months he came home stronger in body and mind.&nbsp;
+He had resolved to compromise with fate; to continue his calls upon
+Joy Irving; to be her friend and rector only, until by the passage of
+time, and the changes which occur so rapidly in every society, the scandal
+in regard to her birth had been forgotten.&nbsp; And until by patience
+and tenderness, he won his mother&rsquo;s consent to the union.&nbsp;
+He felt that all this must come about as he desired, if he did not aggravate
+his mother&rsquo;s feeling or defy public opinion by too precipitate
+methods.</p>
+<p>He could not wholly give up all thoughts of Joy Irving.&nbsp; She
+had grown to be a part of his hopes and dreams of the future, as she
+was a part of the reality of his present.&nbsp; But she was very young;
+he could afford to wait, and while he waited to study the girl&rsquo;s
+character, and if he saw any budding shoot which bespoke the maternal
+tree, to prune and train it to his own liking.&nbsp; For the sake of
+his unborn children he felt it his duty to carefully study any woman
+he thought to make his wife.</p>
+<p>But when he reached home, the surprising intelligence awaited him
+that Miss Irving had left the metropolis.&nbsp; A brief note to the
+church authorities, resigning her position, and saying that she was
+about to leave the city, was all that anyone knew of her.</p>
+<p>The rector instituted a quiet search, but only succeeded in learning
+that she had conducted her preparations for departure with the greatest
+secrecy, and that to no one had she imparted her plans.</p>
+<p>Whenever a young woman shrouds her actions in the garments of secrecy,
+she invites suspicion.&nbsp; The people who love to suspect their fellow-beings
+of wrong-doing were not absent on this occasion.</p>
+<p>The rector was hurt and wounded by all this, and while he resented
+the intimation from another that Miss Irving&rsquo;s conduct had been
+peculiar and mysterious, he felt it to be so in his own heart.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is it her mother&rsquo;s tendency to adventure developing
+in her?&rdquo; he asked himself.</p>
+<p>Yet he wrote her a letter, directing it to her at the old number,
+thinking she would at least leave her address with the post-office for
+the forwarding of mail.&nbsp; The letter was returned to him from that
+cemetery of many a dear hope, the dead-letter office.&nbsp; A personal
+in a leading paper failed to elicit a reply.&nbsp; And then one day
+six months after the disappearance of Joy Irving, the young rector was
+called to the Cheney household to offer spiritual consolation to Miss
+Alice, who believed herself to be dying.&nbsp; She had been in a decline
+ever since the rector went away for his health.</p>
+<p>Since his return she had seen him but seldom, rarely save in the
+pulpit, and for the last six weeks she had been too ill to attend divine
+service.</p>
+<p>It was Preston Cheney himself, at home upon one of his periodical
+visits, who sent for the rector, and gravely met him at the door when
+he arrived, and escorted him into his study.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I am very anxious about my daughter,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;She has been a nervous child always, and over-sensitive.&nbsp;
+I returned yesterday after an absence of some three months in California,
+to find Alice in bed, wasted to a shadow, and constantly weeping.&nbsp;
+I cannot win her confidence&mdash;she has never confided to me.&nbsp;
+Perhaps it is my fault; perhaps I have not been at home enough to make
+her realise that the relationship of father and daughter is a sacred
+one.&nbsp; This morning when I was urging her to tell me what grieved
+her, she remarked that there was but one person to whom she could communicate
+this sorrow&mdash;her rector.&nbsp; So, my dear Dr Stuart, I have sent
+for you.&nbsp; I will conduct you to my child, and I leave her in your
+hands.&nbsp; Whatever comfort and consolation you can offer, I know
+will be given.&nbsp; I hope she will not bind you to secrecy; I hope
+you may be able to tell me what troubles her, and advise me how to help
+her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>It was more than an hour before the rector returned to the library
+where Preston Cheney awaited him.&nbsp; When the senator heard his approaching
+step, he looked up, and was startled to see the pallor on the young
+man&rsquo;s face.&nbsp; &ldquo;You have something sad, something terrible
+to tell me!&rdquo; he cried.&nbsp; &ldquo;What is it?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The rector walked across the room several times, breathing deeply,
+and with anguish written on his countenance.&nbsp; Then he took Senator
+Cheney&rsquo;s hand and wrung it.&nbsp; &ldquo;I have an embarrassing
+announcement to make to you,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is something
+so surprising, so unexpected, that I am completely unnerved.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;You alarm me, more and more,&rdquo; the senator answered.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;What can be the secret which my frail child has imparted to you
+that should so distress you?&nbsp; Speak; it is my right to know.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The rector took another turn about the room, and then came and stood
+facing Senator Cheney.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Your daughter has conceived a strange passion for me,&rdquo;
+he said in a low voice.&nbsp; &ldquo;It is this which has caused her
+illness, and which she says will cause her death, if I cannot return
+it.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And you?&rdquo; asked his listener after a moment&rsquo;s
+silence.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I?&nbsp; Why, I have never thought of your daughter in any
+such manner,&rdquo; the young man replied.&nbsp; &ldquo;I have never
+dreamed of loving her, or winning her love.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Then do not marry her,&rdquo; Preston Cheney said quietly.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Marriage without love is unholy.&nbsp; Even to save life it is
+unpardonable.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The rector was silent, and walked the room with nervous steps.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I must go home and think it all out,&rdquo; he said after a time.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Perhaps Miss Cheney will find her grief less, now that she has
+imparted it to me.&nbsp; I am alarmed at her condition, and I shall
+hope for an early report from you regarding her.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The report was made twelve hours later.&nbsp; Miss Cheney was delirious,
+and calling constantly for the rector.&nbsp; Her physician feared the
+worst.</p>
+<p>The rector came, and his presence at once soothed the girl&rsquo;s
+delirium.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;History repeats itself,&rdquo; said Preston Cheney meditatively
+to himself.&nbsp; &ldquo;Alice is drawing this man into the net by her
+alarming physical condition, as Mabel riveted the chains about me when
+her mother died.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;But Alice really loves the rector, I think, and she is capable
+of a much stronger passion than her mother ever felt; and the rector
+loves no other woman at least, and so this marriage, if it takes place,
+will not be so wholly wicked and unholy as mine was.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The marriage did take place three months later.&nbsp; Alice Cheney
+was not the wife whom Mrs Stuart would have chosen for her son, yet
+she urged him to this step, glad to place a barrier for all time between
+him and Joy Irving, whose possible return at any day she constantly
+feared, and whose power over her son&rsquo;s heart she knew was undiminished.</p>
+<p>Alice Cheney&rsquo;s family was of the best on both sides; there
+were wealth, station, and honour; and a step-grandmamma who could be
+referred to on occasions as &ldquo;The Baroness.&rdquo;&nbsp; And there
+was no skeleton to be hidden or excused.</p>
+<p>And Arthur Stuart, believing that Alice Cheney&rsquo;s life and reason
+depended upon his making her his wife, resolved to end the bitter struggle
+with his own heart and with fate, and do what seemed to be his duty,
+toward the girl and toward his mother.&nbsp; When the wedding took place,
+the saddest face at the ceremony, save that of the groom, was the face
+of the bride&rsquo;s father.&nbsp; But the bride was radiant, and Mabel
+and the Baroness walked in clouds.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Alice did not rally in health or spirits after her marriage, as her
+family, friends and physician had anticipated.&nbsp; She remained nervous,
+ailing and despondent.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Should maternity come to her, she would doubtless be very
+much improved in health afterward,&rdquo; the doctor said, and Mabel,
+remembering how true a similar prediction proved in her case, despite
+her rebellion against it, was not sorry when she knew that Alice was
+to become a mother, scarcely a year after her marriage.</p>
+<p>But Alice grew more and more despondent as the months passed by;
+and after the birth of her son, the young mother developed dementia
+of the most hopeless kind.&nbsp; The best specialists in two worlds
+were employed to bring her out of the state of settled melancholy into
+which she had fallen, but all to no avail.&nbsp; At the end of two years,
+her case was pronounced hopeless.&nbsp; Fortunately the child died at
+the age of six weeks, so the seed of insanity which in the first Mrs
+Lawrence was simply a case of &ldquo;nerves,&rdquo; growing into the
+plant hysteria in Mabel, and yielding the deadly fruit of insanity in
+Alice, was allowed by a kind providence to become extinct in the fourth
+generation.</p>
+<p>This disaster to his only child caused a complete breaking down of
+spirit and health in Preston Cheney.</p>
+<p>Like some great, strongly coupled car, which loses its grip and goes
+plunging down an incline to destruction, Preston Cheney&rsquo;s will-power
+lost its hold on life, and he went down to the valley of death with
+frightful speed.</p>
+<p>During the months which preceded his death, Senator Cheney&rsquo;s
+only pleasure seemed to be in the companionship of his son-in-law.&nbsp;
+The strong attachment between the two men ripened with every day&rsquo;s
+association.&nbsp; One day the rector was sitting by the invalid&rsquo;s
+couch, reading aloud, when Preston Cheney laid his hand on the young
+man&rsquo;s arm and said: &ldquo;Close your book and let me tell you
+a true story which is stranger than fiction.&nbsp; It is the story of
+an ambitious man and all the disasters which his realised ambition brought
+into the lives of others.&nbsp; It is a story whose details are known
+to but two beings on earth, if indeed the other being still exists on
+earth.&nbsp; I have long wanted to tell you this story&mdash;indeed,
+I wanted to tell it to you before you made Alice your wife, yet the
+fear that I would be wrecking the life and reason of my child kept me
+silent.&nbsp; No doubt if I had told you, and you had been influenced
+by my experience against a loveless marriage, I should to-day be blaming
+myself for her condition, which I see plainly now is but the culmination
+of three generations of hysterical women.&nbsp; But I want to tell you
+the story and urge you to use it as a warning in your position of counsellor
+and friend of ambitious young men.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;No matter what else a man may do for position, don&rsquo;t
+let him marry a woman he does not love, especially if he crucifies a
+vital passion for another, in order to do this.&rdquo;&nbsp; Then Preston
+Cheney told the story of his life to his son-in-law; and as the tale
+proceeded, a strange interest which increased until it became violent
+excitement, took possession of the rector&rsquo;s brain and heart.&nbsp;
+The story was so familiar&mdash;so very familiar; and at length, when
+the name of <i>Berene Dumont</i> escaped the speaker&rsquo;s lips, Arthur
+Stuart clutched his hands and clenched his teeth to keep silent until
+the end of the story came.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;From the hour Berene disappeared, to this very day, no word
+or message ever came from her,&rdquo; the invalid said.&nbsp; &ldquo;I
+have never known whether she was dead or alive, married, or, terrible
+thought, perhaps driven into a reckless life by her one false step with
+me.&nbsp; This last fear has been a constant torture to me all these
+years.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The world is cruel in its judgment of woman.&nbsp; And yet
+I know that it is woman herself who has shaped the opinions of the world
+regarding these matters.&nbsp; If men had had their way since the world
+began, there would be no virtuous women.&nbsp; Woman has realised this
+fact, and she has in consequence walled herself about with rules and
+conventions which have in a measure protected her from man.&nbsp; When
+any woman breaks through these conventions and errs, she suffers the
+scorn of others who have kept these self-protecting and society-protecting
+laws; and, conscious of their scorn, she believes all hope is lost for
+ever.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The fear that Berene took this view of her one mistake, and
+plunged into a desperate life, has embittered my whole existence.&nbsp;
+Never before did a man suffer such a mental hell as I have endured for
+this one act of sin and weakness.&nbsp; Yet the world, looking at my
+life of success, would say if it knew the story, &lsquo;Behold how the
+man goes free.&rsquo;&nbsp; Free!&nbsp; Great God! there is no bondage
+so terrible as that of the mind.&nbsp; I have loved Berene Dumont with
+a changeless passion for twenty-three years, and there has not been
+a day in all that time that I have not during some hours endured the
+agonies of the damned, thinking of all the disasters and misery that
+might have come into her life through me.&nbsp; Heaven knows I would
+have married her if she had remained.&nbsp; Strange and intricate as
+the net was which the devil wove about me when I had furnished the cords,
+I could and would have broken through it after that strange night&mdash;at
+once the heaven and the hell of my memory&mdash;if Berene had remained.&nbsp;
+As it was&mdash;I married Mabel, and you know what a farce, ending in
+a tragedy, our married life has been.&nbsp; God grant that no worse
+woes befell Berene; God grant that I may meet her in the spirit world
+and tell her how I loved her and longed for her companionship.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The young rector&rsquo;s eyes were streaming with tears, as he reached
+over and clasped the sick man&rsquo;s hands in his.&nbsp; &ldquo;You
+will meet her,&rdquo; he said with a choked voice.&nbsp; &ldquo;I heard
+this same story, but without names, from Berene Dumont&rsquo;s dying
+lips more than two years ago.&nbsp; And just as Berene disappeared from
+you&mdash;so her daughter disappeared from me; and, God help me, dear
+father&mdash;doubly now my father, I crushed out my great passion for
+the glorious natural child of your love, to marry the loveless, wretched
+and <i>unnatural</i> child of your marriage.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>The sick man started up on his couch, his eyes flaming, his cheeks
+glowing with sudden lustre.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My child&mdash;the natural child of Berene&rsquo;s love and
+mine, you say; oh, my God, speak and tell me what you mean; speak before
+I die of joy so terrible it is like anguish.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So then it became the rector&rsquo;s turn to take the part of narrator.&nbsp;
+When the story was ended, Preston Cheney lay weeping like a woman on
+his couch; the first tears he had shed since his mother died and left
+him an orphan of ten.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Berene living and dying almost within reach of my arms&mdash;almost
+within sound of my voice!&rdquo; he cried.&nbsp; &ldquo;Oh, why did
+I not find her before the grave closed between us?&mdash;and why did
+no voice speak from that grave to tell me when I held my daughter&rsquo;s
+hand in mine?&mdash;my beautiful child, no wonder my heart went out
+to her with such a gush of tenderness; no wonder I was fired with unaccountable
+anger and indignation when Mabel and Alice spoke unkindly of her.&nbsp;
+Do you remember how her music stirred me?&nbsp; It was her mother&rsquo;s
+heart speaking to mine through the genius of our child.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Arthur, you must find her&mdash;you must find her for me!&nbsp;
+If it takes my whole fortune I must see my daughter, and clasp her in
+my arms before I die.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But this happiness was not to be granted to the dying man.&nbsp;
+Overcome by the excitement of this new emotion, he grew weaker and weaker
+as the next few days passed, and at the end of the fifth day his spirit
+took its flight, let us hope to join its true mate.</p>
+<p>It had been one of his dying requests to have his body taken to Beryngford
+and placed beside that of Judge Lawrence.</p>
+<p>The funeral services took place in the new and imposing church edifice
+which had been constructed recently in Beryngford.&nbsp; The quiet interior
+village had taken a leap forward during the last few years, and was
+now a thriving city, owing to the discovery of valuable stone quarries
+in its borders.</p>
+<p>The Baroness and Mabel had never been in Beryngford since the death
+of Judge Lawrence many years before; and it was with sad and bitter
+hearts that both women recalled the past and realised anew the disasters
+which had wrecked their dearest hopes and ambitions.</p>
+<p>The Baroness, broken in spirit and crushed by the insanity of her
+beloved Alice, now saw the form of the man whom she had hopelessly loved
+for so many years, laid away to crumble back to dust; and yet, the sorrows
+which should have softened her soul, and made her heart tender toward
+all suffering humanity, rendered her pitiless as the grave toward one
+lonely and desolate being before the shadows of night had fallen upon
+the grave of Preston Cheney.</p>
+<p>When the funeral march pealed out from the grand new organ during
+the ceremonies in the church, both the Baroness and the rector, absorbed
+as they were in mournful sorrow, started with surprise.&nbsp; Both gazed
+at the organ loft; and there, before the great instrument, sat the graceful
+figure of Joy Irving.&nbsp; The rector&rsquo;s face grew pale as the
+corpse in the casket; the withered cheek of the Baroness turned a sickly
+yellow, and a spark of anger dried the moisture in her eyes.</p>
+<p>Before the night had settled over the thriving city of Beryngford,
+the Baroness dropped a point of virus from the lancet of her tongue
+to poison the social atmosphere where Joy Irving had by the merest accident
+of fate made her new home, and where in the office of organist she had,
+without dreaming of her dramatic situation, played the requiem at the
+funeral of her own father.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Joy Irving had come to Beryngford at the time when the discoveries
+of the quarries caused that village to spring into sudden prominence
+as a growing city.&nbsp; Newspaper accounts of the building of the new
+church, and the purchase of a large pipe organ, chanced to fall under
+her eye just as she was planning to leave the scene of her unhappiness.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I can at least only fail if I try for the position of organist
+there,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;and if I succeed in this interior town,
+I can hide myself from all the world without incurring heavy expense.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So all unconsciously Joy fled from the metropolis to the very place
+from which her mother had vanished twenty-two years before.</p>
+<p>She had been the organist in the grand new Episcopalian Church now
+for three years; and she had made many cordial acquaintances who would
+have become near friends, if she had encouraged them.&nbsp; But Joy&rsquo;s
+sweet and trustful nature had received a great shock in the knowledge
+of the shadow which hung about her birth.&nbsp; Where formerly she had
+expected love and appreciation from everyone she met, she now shrank
+from forming new ties, lest new hurts should await her.</p>
+<p>She was like a flower in whose perfect heart a worm had coiled.&nbsp;
+Her entire feeling about life had undergone a change.&nbsp; For many
+weeks after her self-imposed exile, she had been unable to think of
+her mother without a mingled sense of shame and resentment; the adoring
+love she had borne this being seemed to die with her respect.&nbsp;
+After a time the bitterness of this sentiment wore away, and a pitying
+tenderness and sorrow took its place; but from her heart the twin angels,
+Love and Forgiveness, were absent.&nbsp; She read her mother&rsquo;s
+manuscript over, and tried to argue herself into the philosophy which
+had sustained the author of her being through all these years.</p>
+<p>But her mind was shaped far more after the conventional pattern of
+her paternal ancestors, who had been New England Puritans, and she could
+not view the subject as Berene had viewed it.</p>
+<p>In spite of the ideality which her mother had woven about him, Joy
+entertained the most bitter contempt for the unknown man who was her
+father, and the whole tide of her affections turned lavishly upon the
+memory of Mr Irving, whom she felt now more than ever so worthy of her
+regard.</p>
+<p>Reason as she would on the supremacy of love over law, yet the bold,
+unpleasant fact remained that she was the child of an unwedded mother.&nbsp;
+She shrank in sensitive pain from having this story follow her, and
+the very consciousness that her mother&rsquo;s experience had been an
+exceptional one, caused her the greater dread of having it known and
+talked of as a common vulgar liaison.</p>
+<p>There are two things regarding which the world at large never asks
+any questions&mdash;namely, How a rich man made his money, and how an
+erring woman came to fall.&nbsp; It is enough for the world to know
+that he is rich&mdash;that fact alone opens all doors to him, as the
+fact that the woman has erred closes them to her.</p>
+<p>There was a common vulgar creature in Beryngford, whose many amours
+and bold defiance of law and order rendered her name a synonym for indecency.&nbsp;
+This woman had begun her career in early girlhood as a mercenary intriguer;
+and yet Joy Irving knew that the majority of people would make small
+distinctions between the conduct of this creature and that of her mother,
+were the facts of Berene&rsquo;s life and her own birth to be made public.</p>
+<p>The fear that the story would follow her wherever she went became
+an absolute dread with her, and caused her to live alone and without
+companions, in the midst of people who would gladly have become her
+warm friends, had she permitted.</p>
+<p>Her book of &ldquo;Impressions&rdquo; reflected the changes which
+had taken place in the complexion of her mind during these years.&nbsp;
+Among its entries were the following:-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>People talk about following a divine law of love, when they wish
+to excuse their brute impulses and break social and civil codes.</p>
+<p>No love is sanctioned by God, which shatters human hearts.</p>
+<p>Fathers are only distantly related to their children; love for the
+male parent is a matter of education.</p>
+<p>The devil macadamises all his pavements.</p>
+<p>A natural child has no place in an unnatural world.</p>
+<p>When we cannot respect our parents, it is difficult to keep our ideal
+of God.</p>
+<p>Love is a mushroom, and lust is its poisonous counterpart.</p>
+<p>It is a pity that people who despise civilisation should be so uncivil
+as to stay in it.&nbsp; There is always darkest Africa.</p>
+<p>The extent of a man&rsquo;s gallantry depends on the goal.&nbsp;
+He follows the good woman to the borders of Paradise and leaves her
+with a polite bow; but he follows the bad woman to the depths of hell.</p>
+<p>It is easy to trust in God until he permits us to suffer.&nbsp; The
+dentist seems a skilled benefactor to mankind when we look at his sign
+from the street.&nbsp; When we sit in his chair he seems a brute, armed
+with devil&rsquo;s implements.</p>
+<p>An anonymous letter is the bastard of a diseased mind.</p>
+<p>An envious woman is a spark from Purgatory.</p>
+<p>The consciousness that we have anything to hide from the world stretches
+a veil between our souls and heaven.&nbsp; We cannot reach up to meet
+the gaze of God, when we are afraid to meet the eyes of men.</p>
+<p>It may be all very well for two people to make their own laws, but
+they have no right to force a third to live by them.</p>
+<p>Virtue is very secretive about her payments, but the whole world
+hears of it when vice settles up.</p>
+<p>We have a sublime contempt for public opinion theoretically so long
+as it favours us.&nbsp; When it turns against us we suffer intensely
+from the loss of what we claimed to despise.</p>
+<p>When the fruit must apologise for the tree, we do not care to save
+the seed.</p>
+<p>It is only when God and man have formed a syndicate and agreed upon
+their laws, that marriage is a safe investment.</p>
+<p>The love that does not protect its object would better change its
+name.</p>
+<p>When we say <i>of</i> people what we would not say <i>to</i> them,
+we are either liars or cowards.</p>
+<p>The enmity of some people is the greatest compliment they can pay
+us.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>It was in thoughts like these that Joy relieved her heart of some
+of the bitterness and sorrow which weighed upon it.&nbsp; And day after
+day she bore about with her the dread of having the story of her mother&rsquo;s
+sin known in her new home.</p>
+<p>As our fears, like our wishes, when strong and unremitting, prove
+to be magnets, the result of Joy&rsquo;s despondent fears came in the
+scandal which the Baroness had planted and left to flourish and grow
+in Beryngford after her departure.&nbsp; An hour before the services
+began, on the day of Preston Cheney&rsquo;s burial, Joy learned at whose
+rites she was to officiate as organist.&nbsp; A pang of mingled emotions
+shot through her heart at the sound of his name.&nbsp; She had seen
+this man but a few times, and spoken with him but once; yet he had left
+a strong impression upon her memory.&nbsp; She had felt drawn to him
+by his sympathetic face and atmosphere, the sorrow of his kind eyes,
+and the keen appreciation he had shown in her art; and just in the measure
+that she had been attracted by him, she had been repelled by the three
+women to whom she was presented at the same time.&nbsp; She saw them
+all again mentally, as she had seen them on that and many other days.&nbsp;
+Mrs Cheney and Alice, with their fretful, plain, dissatisfied faces,
+and their over-burdened costumes, and the Baroness, with her cruel heart
+gazing through her worn mask of defaced beauty.</p>
+<p>She had been conscious of a feeling of overwhelming pity for the
+kind, attractive man who made the fourth of that quartette.&nbsp; She
+knew that he had obtained honours and riches from life, but she pitied
+him for his home environment.&nbsp; She had felt so thankful for her
+own happy home life at the time; and she remembered, too, the sweet
+hope that lay like a closed-up bud in the bottom of her heart that day,
+as the quartette moved away and left her standing alone with Arthur
+Stuart.</p>
+<p>It was only a few weeks later that the end came to all her dreams,
+through that terrible anonymous letter.</p>
+<p>It was the Baroness who had sent it, she knew&mdash;the Baroness
+whose early hatred for her mother had descended to the child.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;And now I must sit in the same house with her again,&rdquo; she
+said, &ldquo;and perhaps meet her face to face; and she may tell the
+story here of my mother&rsquo;s shame, even as I have felt and feared
+it must yet be told.&nbsp; How strange that a &lsquo;love child&rsquo;
+should inspire so much hatred!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Joy had carefully refrained from reading New York papers ever since
+she left the city; and she had no correspondents.&nbsp; It was her wish
+and desire to utterly sink and forget the past life there.&nbsp; Therefore
+she knew nothing of Arthur Stuart&rsquo;s marriage to the daughter of
+Preston Cheney.&nbsp; She thought of the rector as dead to her.&nbsp;
+She believed he had given her up because of the stain upon her birth,
+and, bitter as the pain had been, she never blamed him.&nbsp; She had
+fought with her love for him and believed that it was buried in the
+grave of all other happy memories.</p>
+<p>But as the earth is wrenched open by volcanic eruptions and long
+buried corpses are revealed again to the light of day, so the unexpected
+sight of Arthur Stuart, as he took his place beside Mabel and the Baroness
+during the funeral services, revealed all the pent-up passion of her
+heart to her own frightened soul.</p>
+<p>To strong natures, the greater the inward excitement the more quiet
+the exterior; and Jay passed through the services, and performed her
+duties, without betraying to those about her the violent emotions under
+which she laboured.</p>
+<p>The rector of Beryngford Church requested her to remain for a few
+moments, and consult with him on a matter concerning the next week&rsquo;s
+musical services.&nbsp; It was from him Joy learned the relation which
+Arthur Stuart bore to the dead man, and that Beryngford was the former
+home of the Baroness.</p>
+<p>Her mother&rsquo;s manuscript had carefully avoided all mention of
+names of people or places.&nbsp; Yet Joy realised now that she must
+be living in the very scene of her mother&rsquo;s early life; she longed
+to make inquiries, but was prevented by the fear that she might hear
+her mother&rsquo;s name mentioned disrespectfully.</p>
+<p>The days that followed were full of sharp agony for her.&nbsp; It
+was not until long afterward that she was able to write her &ldquo;impressions&rdquo;
+of that experience.&nbsp; In the extreme hour of joy or agony we formulate
+no impressions; we only feel.&nbsp; We neither analyse nor describe
+our friends or enemies when face to face with them, but after we leave
+their presence.&nbsp; When the day came that she could write, some of
+her reflections were thus epitomised:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Love which rises from the grave to comfort us, possesses more of
+the demons&rsquo; than the angels&rsquo; power.&nbsp; It terrifies us
+with its supernatural qualities and deprives us temporarily of our reason.</p>
+<p>Suppressed steam and suppressed emotion are dangerous things to deal
+with.</p>
+<p>The infant who wants its mother&rsquo;s breast, and the woman who
+wants her lover&rsquo;s arms, are poor subjects to reason with.&nbsp;
+Though you tell the former that fever has poisoned the mother&rsquo;s
+milk, or the latter that destruction lies in the lover&rsquo;s embrace,
+one heeds you no more than the other.</p>
+<p>The accumulated knowledge of ages is sometimes revealed by a kiss.&nbsp;
+Where wisdom is bliss, it is folly to be ignorant.</p>
+<p>Some of us have to crucify our hearts before we find our souls.</p>
+<p>A woman cannot fully know charity until she has met passion; but
+too intimate an acquaintance with the latter destroys her appreciation
+of all the virtues.</p>
+<p>To feel temptation and resist it, renders us liberal in our judgment
+of all our kind.&nbsp; To yield to it, fills us with suspicion of all.</p>
+<p>There is an ecstatic note in pain which is never reached in happiness.</p>
+<p>The death of a great passion is a terrible thing, unless the dawn
+of a greater truth shines on the grave.</p>
+<p>Love ought to have no past tense.</p>
+<p>Love partakes of the feline nature.&nbsp; It has nine lives.</p>
+<p>It seems to be difficult for some of us to distinguish between looseness
+of views, and charitable judgments.&nbsp; To be sorry for people&rsquo;s
+sins and follies and to refuse harsh criticism is right; to accept them
+as a matter of course is wrong.</p>
+<p>Love and sorrow are twins, and knowledge is their nurse.</p>
+<p>The pathway of the soul is not a steady ascent, but hilly and broken.&nbsp;
+We must sometimes go lower, in order to get higher.</p>
+<p>That which is to-day, and will be to-morrow, must have been yesterday.&nbsp;
+I know that I live, I believe that I shall live again, and have lived
+before.</p>
+<p>Earth life is the middle rung of a long ladder which we climb in
+the dark.&nbsp; Though we cannot see the steps below, or above, they
+exist all the same.</p>
+<p>The materialist denying spirit is like the burr of the chestnut denying
+the meat within.</p>
+<p>The inevitable is always right.</p>
+<p>Prayer is a skeleton key that opens unexpected doors.&nbsp; We may
+not find the things we came to seek, but we find other treasures.</p>
+<p>The pessimist belongs to God&rsquo;s misfit counter.</p>
+<p>Art, when divorced from Religion, always becomes a wanton.</p>
+<p>To forget benefits we have received is a crime.&nbsp; To remember
+benefits we have bestowed is a greater one.</p>
+<p>To some men a woman is a valuable book, carefully studied and choicely
+guarded behind glass doors.&nbsp; To others, she is a daily paper, idly
+scanned and tossed aside.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>While Joy battled with her sorrow during the days following Preston
+Cheney&rsquo;s burial, she woke to the consciousness that her history
+was known in Beryngford.&nbsp; The indescribable change in the manner
+of her acquaintances, the curiosity in the eyes of some, the insolence
+or familiarity of others, all told her that her fears were realised;
+and then there came a letter from the church authorities requesting
+her to resign her position as organist.</p>
+<p>This letter came to the young girl on one of those dreary autumn
+nights when all the desolation of the dying summer, and none of the
+exhilaration of the approaching winter, is in the air.&nbsp; She had
+been labouring all day under a cloud of depression which hovered over
+her heart and brain and threatened to wholly envelop her; and the letter
+from the church committee cut her heart like a poniard stroke.&nbsp;
+Sometimes we are able to bear a series of great disasters with courage
+and equanimity, while we utterly collapse under some slight misfortune.&nbsp;
+Joy had been a heroine in her great sorrows, but now in the undeserved
+loss of her position as church organist, she felt herself unable longer
+to cope with Fate.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no place for me anywhere,&rdquo; she said to
+herself.&nbsp; Had she known the truth, that the Baroness had represented
+her to the committee as a fallen woman of the metropolis, who had left
+the city for the city&rsquo;s good, the letter would not have seemed
+to her so cruelly unjust and unjustifiable.</p>
+<p>Bitter as had been her suffering at the loss of Arthur Stuart from
+her life, she had found it possible to understand his hesitation to
+make her his wife.&nbsp; With his fine sense of family pride, and his
+reverence for the estate of matrimony, his belief in heredity, it seemed
+quite natural to her that he should be shocked at the knowledge of the
+conditions under which she was born; and the thought that her disappearance
+from his life was helping him to solve a painful problem, had at times,
+before this unexpected sight of him, rendered her almost happy in her
+lonely exile.&nbsp; She had grown strangely fond of Beryngford&mdash;of
+the old streets and homes which she knew must have been familiar to
+her mother&rsquo;s eyes, of the new church whose glorious voiced organ
+gave her so many hours of comfort and relief of soul, of the tiny apartment
+where she and her heart communed together.&nbsp; She was catlike in
+her love of places, and now she must tear herself away from all these
+surroundings and seek some new spot wherein to hide herself and her
+sorrows.</p>
+<p>It was like tearing up a half-rooted flower, already drooping from
+one transplanting.&nbsp; She said to herself that she could never survive
+another change.&nbsp; She read the letter over which lay in her hand,
+and tears began to slowly well from her eyes.&nbsp; Joy seldom wept;
+but now it seemed to her she was some other person, who stood apart
+and wept tears of sympathy for this poor girl, Joy Irving, whose life
+was so hemmed about with troubles, none of which were of her own making;
+and then, like a dam which suddenly gives way and allows a river to
+overflow, a great storm of sobs shook her frame, and she wept as she
+had never wept before; and with her tears there came rushing back to
+her heart all the old love and sorrow for the dead mother which had
+so long been hidden under her burden of shame; and all the old passion
+and longing for the man whose insane wife she knew to be a more hopeless
+obstacle between them than this mother&rsquo;s history had proven.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Mother, Arthur, pity me, pity me!&rdquo; she cried.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I am all alone, and the strife is so terrible.&nbsp; I have never
+meant to harm any living thing!&nbsp; Mother Arthur, <i>God</i>, how
+can you all desert me so?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>At last, exhausted, she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.</p>
+<p>She awoke the following morning with an aching head, and a heart
+wherein all emotions seemed dead save a dull despair.&nbsp; She was
+conscious of only one wish, one desire&mdash;a longing to sit again
+in the organ loft, and pour forth her soul in one last farewell to that
+instrument which had grown to seem her friend, confidant and lover.</p>
+<p>She battled with her impulse as unreasonable and unwise, till the
+day was well advanced.&nbsp; But it grew stronger with each hour; and
+at last she set forth under a leaden sky and through a dreary November
+rain to the church.</p>
+<p>Her head throbbed with pain, and her hands were hot and feverish,
+as she seated herself before the organ and began to play.&nbsp; But
+with the first sounds responding to her touch, she ceased to think of
+bodily discomfort.</p>
+<p>The music was the voice of her own soul, uttering to God all its
+desolation, its anguish and its despair.&nbsp; Then suddenly, with no
+seeming volition of her own, it changed to a passion of human love,
+human desire; the sorrow of separation, the strife with the emotions,
+the agony of renunciation were all there; and the November rain, beating
+in wild gusts against the window-panes behind the musician, lent a fitting
+accompaniment to the strains.</p>
+<p>She had been playing for perhaps an hour, when a sudden exhaustion
+seized upon her, and her hands fell nerveless and inert upon her lap;
+she dropped her chin upon her breast and closed her eyes.&nbsp; She
+was drunken with her own music.</p>
+<p>When she opened them again a few moments later, they fell upon the
+face of Arthur Stuart, who stood a few feet distant regarding her with
+haggard eyes.&nbsp; Unexpected and strange as his presence was, Joy
+felt neither surprise nor wonder.&nbsp; She had been thinking of him
+so intensely, he had been so interwoven with the music she had been
+playing, that his bodily presence appeared to her as a natural result.&nbsp;
+He was the first to speak; and when he spoke she noticed that his voice
+sounded hoarse and broken, and that his face was drawn and pale.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I came to Beryngford this morning expressly to see you, Joy,&rdquo;
+he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;I have many things to say to you.&nbsp; I went
+to your residence and was told by the maid that I would find you here.&nbsp;
+I followed, as you see.&nbsp; We have had many meetings in church edifices,
+in organ lofts.&nbsp; It seems natural to find you in such a place,
+but I fear it will be unnatural and unfitting to say to you here, what
+I came to say.&nbsp; Shall we return to your home?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>His eyes shone strangely from dusky caverns, and there were deep
+lines about his mouth.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;He, too, has suffered,&rdquo; thought Joy; &ldquo;I have not
+borne it all alone.&rdquo;&nbsp; Then she said aloud:</p>
+<p>&ldquo;We are quite undisturbed here; I know of nothing I could listen
+to in my room which I could not hear you say in this place.&nbsp; Go
+on.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He looked at her silently for a moment, his cheeks pale, his breast
+heaving.&nbsp; Before he came to Beryngford, he had fought his battle
+between religion and human passion, and passion had won.&nbsp; He had
+cast under his feet every principle and tradition in which he had been
+reared, and resolved to live alone henceforth for the love and companionship
+of one human being, could he obtain her consent to go with him.</p>
+<p>Yet for the moment, he hesitated to speak the words he had resolved
+to utter, under the roof of a house of God, so strong were the influences
+of his early training and his habits of thought.&nbsp; But as his eyes
+feasted upon the face before him, his hesitation vanished, and he leaned
+toward her and spoke.&nbsp; &ldquo;Joy,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;three
+years ago I went away and left you in sorrow, alone, because I was afraid
+to brave public opinion, afraid to displease my mother and ask you to
+be my wife.&nbsp; The story your mother told me of your birth, a story
+she left in manuscript for you to read, made a social coward of me.&nbsp;
+I was afraid to take a girl born out of wedlock to be my life companion,
+the mother of my children.&nbsp; Well, I married a girl born in wedlock;
+and where is my companion?&rdquo;&nbsp; He paused and laughed recklessly.&nbsp;
+Then he went on hurriedly: &ldquo;She is in an asylum for the insane.&nbsp;
+I am chained to a corpse for life.&nbsp; I had not enough moral courage
+three-years ago to make you my wife.&nbsp; But I have moral courage
+enough now to come here and ask you to go with me to Australia, and
+begin a new life together.&nbsp; My mother died a year ago.&nbsp; I
+donned the surplice at her bidding.&nbsp; I will abandon it at the bidding
+of Love.&nbsp; I sinned against heaven in marrying a woman I did not
+love.&nbsp; I am willing to sin against the laws of man by living with
+the woman I do love; will you go with me, Joy?&rdquo;&nbsp; There was
+silence save for the beating of the rain against the stained window,
+and the wailing of the wind.</p>
+<p>Joy was in a peculiarly overwrought condition of mind and body.&nbsp;
+Her hours of extravagant weeping the previous night, followed by a day
+of fasting, left her nervous system in a state to be easily excited
+by the music she had been playing.&nbsp; She was virtually intoxicated
+with sorrow and harmony.&nbsp; She was incapable of reasoning, and conscious
+only of two things&mdash;that she must leave Beryngford, and that the
+man whom she had loved with her whole heart for five years, was asking
+her to go with him; to be no more homeless, unloved, and alone, but
+his companion while life should last.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Answer me, Joy,&rdquo; he was pleading.&nbsp; &ldquo;Answer
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>She moved toward the stairway that led down to the street door; and
+as she flitted by him, she said, looking him full in the eyes with a
+slow, grave smile, &ldquo;Yes, Arthur, I will go with you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>He sprang toward her with a wild cry of joy, but she was already
+flying down the stairs and out upon the street.</p>
+<p>When he joined her, they walked in silence through the rain to her
+door, neither speaking a word, until he would have followed her within.&nbsp;
+Then she laid her hand upon his shoulder and said gently but firmly:
+&ldquo;Not now, Arthur; we must not see each other again until we go
+away.&nbsp; Write me where to meet you, and I will join you within twenty-four
+hours.&nbsp; Do not urge me&mdash;you must obey me this once&mdash;afterward
+I will obey you.&nbsp; Good-night.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>As she closed the door upon him, he said, &ldquo;Oh, Joy, I have
+so much to tell you.&nbsp; I promised your father when he was dying
+that I would find you; I swore to myself that when I found you I would
+never leave you, save at your own command.&nbsp; I go now, only because
+you bid me go.&nbsp; When we meet again, there must be no more parting;
+and you shall hear a story stranger than the wildest fiction&mdash;the
+story of your father&rsquo;s life.&nbsp; Despite your mother&rsquo;s
+secretiveness regarding this portion of her history, the knowledge has
+come to me in the most unexpected manner, from the lips of the man himself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>Joy listened dreamily to the words he was saying.&nbsp; Her father&mdash;she
+was to know who her father was?&nbsp; Well, it did not matter much to
+her now&mdash;father, mother, what were they, what was anything save
+the fact that he had come back to her and that he loved her?</p>
+<p>She smiled silently into his eyes.&nbsp; Glance became entangled
+with glance, and would not be separated.</p>
+<p>He pushed open the almost closed door and she felt herself enveloped
+with arms and lips.</p>
+<p>A second later she stood alone, leaning dizzily against the door;
+heart, brain and blood in a mad riot of emotion.</p>
+<p>Then she fell into a chair and covered her burning face with her
+hands as she whispered, &ldquo;Mother, mother, forgive me&mdash;I understand&mdash;I
+understand.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The first shock of the awakened emotions brings recklessness to some
+women, and to others fear.</p>
+<p>The more frivolous plunge forward like the drunken man who leaps
+from the open window believing space is water.</p>
+<p>The more intense draw back, startled at the unknown world before
+them.</p>
+<p>The woman who thinks love is all ideality is more liable to follow
+into undreamed-of chasms than she who, through the complexity of her
+own emotions, realises its grosser elements.</p>
+<p>It was long after midnight when Joy fell into a heavy sleep, the
+night of Arthur Stuart&rsquo;s visit.&nbsp; She heard the drip of the
+dreary November rain upon the roof, and all the light and warmth seemed
+stricken from the universe save the fierce fire in her own heart.</p>
+<p>When she woke in the late morning, great splashes of sunlight were
+leaping and quivering like living things across the foot of her bed;
+she sprang up, dazed for a moment by the flood of light in the room,
+and went to the window and looked out upon a sun-kissed world smiling
+in the arms of a perfect Indian summer day.</p>
+<p>A happy little sparrow chirped upon the window sill, and some children
+ran across the street bare-headed, exulting in the soft air.&nbsp; All
+was innocence and sweetness.&nbsp; Mind and morals are greatly influenced
+by weather.&nbsp; Many things seem right in the fog and gloom, which
+we know to be wrong in the clear light of a sunny morning.&nbsp; The
+events of the previous day came back to Joy&rsquo;s mind as she stood
+by the window, and stirred her with a sense of strangeness and terror.&nbsp;
+The thought of the step she had resolved to take brought a sudden trembling
+to her limbs.&nbsp; It seemed to her the eyes of God were piercing into
+her heart, and she was afraid.</p>
+<p>Joy had from her early girlhood been an earnest and sincere follower
+of the Christian religion.&nbsp; The embodiment of love and sympathy
+herself, it was natural for her to believe in the God of Love and to
+worship Him in outward forms, as well as in her secret soul.&nbsp; It
+was the deep and earnest fervour of religion in her heart, which rendered
+her music so unusual and so inspiring.&nbsp; There never was, is not
+and never can be greatness in any art where religious feeling is lacking.</p>
+<p>There must be the consciousness of the Infinite, in the mind which
+produces infinite results.</p>
+<p>Though the artist be gifted beyond all other men, though he toil
+unremittingly, so long as he says, &ldquo;Behold what I, the gifted
+and tireless toiler, can achieve,&rdquo; he shall produce but mediocre
+and ephemeral results.&nbsp; It is when he says reverently, &ldquo;Behold
+what powers greater than I shall achieve through me, the instrument,&rdquo;
+that he becomes great and men marvel at his power.</p>
+<p>Joy&rsquo;s religious nature found expression in her music, and so
+something more than a harmony of beautiful sounds impressed her hearers.</p>
+<p>The first severe blow to her faith in the church as a divine institution,
+was when her rector and her lover left her alone in the hour of her
+darkest trials, because he knew the story of her mother&rsquo;s life.&nbsp;
+His hesitancy to make her his wife she understood, but his absolute
+desertion of her at such a time, seemed inconsistent with his calling
+as a disciple of the Christ.</p>
+<p>The second blow came in her dismissal from the position of organist
+at the Beryngford Church, after the presence of the Baroness in the
+town.</p>
+<p>A disgust for human laws, and a bitter resentment towards society
+took possession of her.&nbsp; When a gentle and loving nature is roused
+to anger and indignation, it is often capable of extremes of action;
+and Arthur Stuart had made his proposition of flight to Joy Irving in
+an hour when her high-wrought emotions and intensely strung nerves made
+any desperate act possible to her.&nbsp; The sight of his face, with
+its evidences of severe suffering, awoke all her smouldering passion
+for the man; and the thought that he was ready to tread his creed under
+his feet and to defy society for her sake, stirred her with a wild joy.&nbsp;
+God had seemed very far away, and human love was very precious; too
+precious to be thrown away in obedience to any man-made law.</p>
+<p>But somehow this morning God seemed nearer, and the consciousness
+of what she had promised to do terrified her.&nbsp; Disturbed by her
+thoughts, she turned towards her toilet-table and caught sight of the
+letter of dismissal from the church committee.&nbsp; It acted upon her
+like an electric shock.&nbsp; Resentment and indignation re-enthroned
+themselves in her bosom.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Is it to cater to the opinions and prejudices of people like
+<i>these</i> that I hesitate to take the happiness offered me?&rdquo;
+she cried, as she tore the letter in bits and cast it beneath her feet.&nbsp;
+Arthur Stuart appeared to her once more, in the light of a delivering
+angel.&nbsp; Yes, she would go with him to the ends of the earth.&nbsp;
+It was her inheritance to lead a lawless life.&nbsp; Nothing else was
+possible for her.&nbsp; God must see how she had been hemmed in by circumstances,
+how she had been goaded and driven from the paths of peace and purity
+where she had wished to dwell.&nbsp; God was not a man, and He would
+be merciful in judging her.</p>
+<p>She sent her landlady two months&rsquo; rent in advance, and notice
+of her departure, and set hurriedly about her preparations.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Twenty-five years before, when Berene Dumont disappeared from Beryngford,
+she had, quite unknown to herself, left one devoted though humble friend
+behind, who sincerely mourned her absence.</p>
+<p>Mrs Connor liked to be spoken of as &ldquo;the wash-lady at the Palace.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Yet proud as she was of this appellation, she was not satisfied with
+being an excellent laundress.&nbsp; She was a person of ambitions.&nbsp;
+To be the owner of a lodging-house, like the Baroness, was her leading
+ambition, and to possess a &ldquo;peany&rdquo; for her young daughter
+Kathleen was another.</p>
+<p>She kept her mind fixed on these two achievements, and she worked
+always for those two results.&nbsp; And as mind rules matter, so the
+laundress became in time the landlady of a comfortable and respectable
+lodging-house, and in its parlour a piano was the chief object of furniture.</p>
+<p>Kathleen Connor learned to play; and at last to the joy of the lodgers,
+she married and bore her &ldquo;peany&rdquo; away with her.&nbsp; During
+the time when Mrs Connor was the ambitious &ldquo;wash-lady&rdquo; at
+the Palace, Berene Dumont came to live there; and every morning when
+the young woman carried the tray down to the kitchen after having served
+the Baroness with her breakfast, she offered Mrs Connor a cup of coffee
+and a slice of toast.</p>
+<p>This simple act of thoughtfulness from the young dependant touched
+the Irishwoman&rsquo;s tender heart and awoke her lasting gratitude.&nbsp;
+She had heard Berene&rsquo;s story, and she had been prepared to mete
+out to her that disdainful dislike which Erin almost invariably feels
+towards France.&nbsp; Realising that the young widow was by birth and
+breeding above the station of housemaid, Mrs Connor and the servants
+had expected her to treat them with the same lofty airs which the Baroness
+made familiar to her servants.&nbsp; When, instead, Berene toasted the
+bread for Mrs Connor, and poured the coffee and placed it on the kitchen
+table with her own hands, the heart of the wash-lady melted in her ample
+breast.&nbsp; When the heart of the daughter of Erin melts, it permeates
+her whole being; and Mrs Connor became a secret devotee at the shrine
+of Miss Dumont.</p>
+<p>She had never entertained cordial feelings toward the Baroness.&nbsp;
+When a society lady&mdash;especially a titled one&mdash;enters into
+competition with working people, and yet refuses to associate with them,
+it always incites their enmity.&nbsp; The working population of Beryngford,
+from the highest to the lowest grades, felt a sense of resentment toward
+the Baroness, who in her capacity of landlady still maintained the airs
+of a grand dame, and succeeded in keeping her footing with some of the
+most fashionable people in the town.</p>
+<p>Added to these causes of dislike, the Baroness was, like many wealthier
+people, excessively close in her dealings with working folk, haggling
+over a few cents or a few moments of wasted time, while she was generosity
+itself in association with her equals.</p>
+<p>Mrs Connor, therefore, felt both pity and sympathy for Miss Dumont,
+whose position in the Palace she knew to be a difficult one; and when
+Preston Cheney came upon the scene the romantic mind of the motherly
+Irishwoman fashioned a future for the young couple which would have
+done credit to the pen of a Mrs Southworth.</p>
+<p>Mr Cheney always had a kind word for the laundress, and a tip as
+well; and when Mrs Connor&rsquo;s dream of seeing him act the part of
+the Prince and Berene the Cinderella of a modern fairy story, ended
+in the disappearance of Miss Dumont and the marriage of Mr Cheney to
+Mabel Lawrence, the unhappy wash-lady mourned unceasingly.</p>
+<p>Ten years of hard, unremitting toil and rigid economy passed away
+before Mrs Connor could realise her ambition of becoming a landlady
+in the purchase of a small house which contained but four rooms, three
+of which were rented to lodgers.&nbsp; The increase in the value of
+her property during the next five years, left the fortunate speculator
+with a fine profit when she sold her house at the end of that time,
+and rented a larger one; and as she was an excellent financier, it was
+not strange that, at the time Joy Irving appeared on the scene, &ldquo;Mrs
+Connor&rsquo;s apartments&rdquo; were as well and favourably known in
+Beryngford, if not as distinctly fashionable, as the Palace had been
+more than twenty years ago.</p>
+<p>So it was under the roof of her mother&rsquo;s devoted and faithful
+mourner that the unhappy young orphan had found a home when she came
+to hide herself away from all who had ever known her.</p>
+<p>The landlady experienced the same haunting sensation of something
+past and gone when she looked on the girl&rsquo;s beautiful face, which
+had so puzzled the Baroness; a something which drew and attracted the
+warm heart of the Irishwoman, as the magnet draws the steel.&nbsp; Time
+and experience had taught Mrs Connor to be discreet in her treatment
+of her tenants; to curb her curiosity and control her inclination to
+sociability.&nbsp; But in the case of Miss Irving she had found it impossible
+to refrain from sundry kindly acts which were not included in the terms
+of the contract.&nbsp; Certain savoury dishes found their way mysteriously
+to Miss Irving&rsquo;s <i>m&eacute;nage</i>, and flowers appeared in
+her room as if by magic, and in various other ways the good heart and
+intentions of Mrs Connor were unobtrusively expressed toward her favourite
+tenant.&nbsp; Joy had taken a suite of four rooms, where, with her maid,
+she lived in modest comfort and complete retirement from the social
+world of Beryngford, save as the close connection of the church with
+Beryngford society rendered her, in the position of organist, a participant
+in many of the social features of the town.&nbsp; While Joy was in the
+midst of her preparations for departure, Mrs Connor made her appearance
+with swollen eyes and red, blistered face.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;And it&rsquo;s the talk of that ould witch of a Baroness,
+may the divil run away with her, that is drivin&rsquo; ye away, is it?&rdquo;
+she cried excitedly; &ldquo;and it&rsquo;s not Mrs Connor as will consist
+to the daughter of your mother, God rest her soul, lavin&rsquo; my house
+like this.&nbsp; To think that I should have had ye here all these years,
+and never known ye to be her child till now, and now to see ye driven
+away by the divil&rsquo;s own!&nbsp; But if it&rsquo;s the fear of not
+being able to pay the rint because ye&rsquo;ve lost your position, ye
+needn&rsquo;t lave for many a long day to come.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s Mrs
+Connor would only be as happy as the queen herself to work her hands
+to the bone for ye, remembering your darlint of a mother, and not belavin&rsquo;
+one word against her, nor ye.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So soon as Joy could gain possession of her surprised senses, she
+calmed the weeping woman and began to question her.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My good woman,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;what are you talking
+about?&nbsp; Did you ever know my mother, and where did you know her?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In the Palace, to be sure, as they called the house of that
+imp of Satan, the Baroness.&nbsp; I was the wash-lady there, for it&rsquo;s
+not Mrs Conner the landlady as is above spakin&rsquo; of the days when
+she wasn&rsquo;t as high in the world as she is now; and many is the
+cheerin&rsquo; cup of coffee or tay from your own mother&rsquo;s hand,
+that I&rsquo;ve had in the forenoon, to chirk me up and put me through
+my washing, bless her sweet face; and niver have I forgotten her; and
+niver have I ceased to miss her and the fine young man that took such
+an interest in her and that I&rsquo;m as sure loved her, in spite of
+his marrying the Judge&rsquo;s spook of a daughter, as I am that the
+Holy Virgin loves us all; and it&rsquo;s a foine man that your father
+must have been, but young Mr Cheney was foiner.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>So little by little Joy drew the story from Mrs Connor and learned
+the name of the mysterious father, so carefully guarded from her in
+Mrs Irving&rsquo;s manuscript, the father at whose funeral services
+she had so recently officiated as organist.</p>
+<p>And strangest and most startling of all, she learned that Arthur
+Stuart&rsquo;s insane wife was her half-sister.</p>
+<p>Added to all this, Joy was made aware of the nature of the reports
+which the Baroness had been circulating about her; and her feeling of
+bitter resentment and anger toward the church committee was modified
+by the knowledge that it was not owing to the shadow on her birth, but
+to the false report of her own evil life, that she had been asked to
+resign.</p>
+<p>After Mrs Connor had gone, Joy was for a long time in meditation,
+and then turned in a mechanical manner to her delayed task.&nbsp; Her
+book of &ldquo;Impressions&rdquo; lay on a table close at hand.</p>
+<p>And as she took it up the leaves opened to the sentence she had written
+three years before, after her talk with the rector about Marah Adams.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;It seems to me I could not love a man who did not seek to
+lead me higher; the moment he stood below me and asked me to descend,
+I should realise he was to be pitied, not adored!&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>She shut the book and fell on her knees in prayer; and as she prayed
+a strange thing happened.&nbsp; The room filled with a peculiar mist,
+like the smoke which is illuminated by the brilliant rays of the morning
+sun; and in the midst of it a small square of intense rose-coloured
+light was visible.&nbsp; This square grew larger and larger, until it
+assumed the size and form of a man, whose face shone with immortal glory.&nbsp;
+He smiled and laid his hand on Joy&rsquo;s head.&nbsp; &ldquo;Child,
+awake,&rdquo; he said, and with these words vast worlds dawned upon
+the girl&rsquo;s sight.&nbsp; She stood above and apart from her grosser
+body, untrammelled and free; she saw long vistas of lives in the past
+through which she had come to the present; she saw long vistas of lives
+in the future through which she must pass to gain the experience which
+would lead her back to God.&nbsp; An ineffable peace and serenity enveloped
+her.&nbsp; The divine Presence seemed to irradiate the place in which
+she stood&mdash;she felt herself illuminated, transfigured, sanctified
+by the holy flame within her.</p>
+<p>When she came back to the kneeling form by the couch, and rose to
+her feet, all the aspect of life had changed for her.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Joy Irving had unpacked her trunks and set her small apartment to
+rights, when the postman&rsquo;s ring sounded, and a moment later a
+letter was slipped under her door.</p>
+<p>She picked it up, and recognised Arthur Stuart&rsquo;s penmanship.&nbsp;
+She sat down, holding the unopened letter in her hands.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;It is Arthur&rsquo;s message, appointing a time and place
+for our meeting,&rdquo; she said to herself.&nbsp; &ldquo;How long ago
+that strange interview with him seems!&mdash;yet it was only yesterday.&nbsp;
+How utterly the whole of life has changed for me since then!&nbsp; The
+universe seems larger, God nearer, and life grander.&nbsp; I am as one
+who slept and dreamed of darkness and sorrow, and awakes to light and
+joy.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>But when she opened the envelope and read the few hastily written
+lines within, an exclamation of surprise escaped her lips.&nbsp; It
+was a brief note from Arthur Stuart and began abruptly without an address
+(a manner more suggestive of strong passion than any endearing words).</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;The first item which my eye fell upon in the telegraphic column
+of the morning paper, was the death of my wife in the Retreat for the
+Insane.&nbsp; I leave by the first express to bring her body here for
+burial.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;A merciful providence has saved us the necessity of defying
+the laws of God or man, and opened the way for me to claim you before
+all the world as my worshipped wife so soon as propriety will permit.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I shall see you at any hour you may indicate after to-morrow,
+for a brief interview.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;ARTHUR EMERSON STUART.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Joy held the letter in her hand a long time, lost in profound reflection.&nbsp;
+Then she sat down to her desk and wrote three letters; one was to Mrs
+Lawrence; one to the chairman of the church committee, who had requested
+her resignation; the third was to Mr Stuart, and read thus:</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&ldquo;My Dear Mr Stuart,&mdash;Many strange things have occurred
+to me since I saw you.&nbsp; I have learned the name of my father, and
+this knowledge reveals the fact to me that your unfortunate wife was
+my half-sister.&nbsp; I have learned, too, that the loss of my position
+here as organist is not due to the narrow prejudice of the committee
+regarding the shadow on my birth, but to malicious stories put in circulation
+by Mrs Lawrence, relating to me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Infamous and libellous tales regarding my life have been told,
+and must be refuted.&nbsp; I have written to Mrs Lawrence demanding
+a letter from her, clearing my personal character, or giving her the
+alternative of appearing in court to answer the charge of defamation
+of character.&nbsp; I have also written to the church committee requesting
+them to meet me here in my apartments to-morrow, and explain their demand
+for my resignation.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I now write to you my last letter and my farewell.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;In the overwrought and desperate mood in which you found me,
+it did not seem a sin for me to go away with the man who loved me and
+whom I loved, before false ideas of life and false ideas of duty made
+him the husband of another.&nbsp; Conscious that your wife was a hopeless
+lunatic whose present or future could in no way be influenced by our
+actions, I reasoned that we wronged no one in taking the happiness so
+long denied us.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;The last three years of my life have been full of desolation
+and sorrow.&nbsp; From the day my mother died, the stars of light which
+had gemmed the firmament for me, seemed one by one to be obliterated,
+until I stood in utter darkness.&nbsp; You found me in the very blackest
+hour of all&mdash;and you seemed a shining sun to me.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Yet so soon as my tired brain and sorrow-worn heart were able
+to think and reason, I realised that it was not the man I had worshipped
+as an ideal, who had come to me and asked me to lower my standard of
+womanhood.&nbsp; It was another and less worthy man&mdash;and this other
+was to be my companion through time, and perhaps eternity.&nbsp; When
+I learned that your insane wife was my sister, and that knowing this
+fact you yet planned our flight, an indescribable feeling of repulsion
+awoke in my heart.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I confess that this arose more from a sentiment than a principle.&nbsp;
+The relationship of your wife to me made the contemplated sin no greater,
+but rendered it more tasteless.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Had I gone away with you as I consented to do, the world would
+have said, she but follows her fatal inheritance&mdash;like mother like
+daughter.&nbsp; There were some bitter rebellious hours, when that thought
+came to me.&nbsp; But to-day light has shone upon me, and I know there
+is a law of Divine Heredity which is greater and more powerful than
+any tendency we derive from parents or grandparents.&nbsp; I have believed
+much in creeds all my life; and in the hour of great trials I found
+I was leaning on broken reeds.&nbsp; I have now ceased to look to men
+or books for truth&mdash;I have found it in my own soul.&nbsp; I acknowledge
+no unfortunate tendencies from any earthly inheritance; centuries of
+sinful or weak ancestors are as nothing beside the God within.&nbsp;
+The divine and immortal <i>me</i> is older than my ancestral tree; it
+is as old as the universe.&nbsp; It is as old as the first great Cause
+of which it is a part.&nbsp; Strong with this consciousness, I am prepared
+to meet the world alone, and unafraid from this day onward.&nbsp; When
+I think of the optimistic temperament, the good brain, and the vigorous
+body which were naturally mine, and then of the wretched being who was
+my legitimate sister, I know that I was rightly generated, however unfortunately
+born, just as she was wrongly generated though legally born.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;My father, I am told, married into a family whose crest is
+traced back to the tenth century.&nbsp; I carry a coat-of-arms older
+yet&mdash;the Cross; it dates back eighteen hundred years&mdash;yes,
+many thousand years, and so I feel myself the nobler of the two.&nbsp;
+Had you been more of a disciple of Christ, and less of a disciple of
+man, you would have realised this truth long ago, as I realise it to-day.&nbsp;
+No man should dare stand before his fellows as a revealer of divine
+knowledge until he has penetrated the inmost recesses of his own soul,
+and found God&rsquo;s holy image there; and until he can show others
+the way to the same wonderful discovery.&nbsp; The God you worshipped
+was far away in the heavens, so far that he could not come to you and
+save you from your baser self in the hour of temptation.&nbsp; But the
+true God has been miraculously revealed to me.&nbsp; He dwells within;
+one who has found Him, will never debase His temple.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Though there is no legal obstacle now in the path to our union,
+there is a spiritual one which is insurmountable.&nbsp; <i>I no longer
+love you</i>.&nbsp; I am sorry for you, but that is all.&nbsp; You belonged
+to my yesterday&mdash;you can have no part in my to-day.&nbsp; The man
+who tempted me in my weak hour to go lower, could not help me to go
+higher.&nbsp; And my face is set toward the heights.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I must prove to that world that a child born under the shadow
+of shame, and of two weak, uncontrolled parents, can be virtuous, strong,
+brave and sensible.&nbsp; That she can conquer passion and impulse,
+by the use of her divine inheritance of will; and that she can compel
+the respect of the public by her discreet life and lofty ideals.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;I shall stay in this place until I have vindicated my name
+and character from every aspersion cast upon them.&nbsp; I shall retain
+my position of organist, and retain it until I have accumulated sufficient
+means to go abroad and prepare myself for the musical career in which
+I know I can excel.&nbsp; I am young, strong and ambitious.&nbsp; My
+unusual sorrows will give me greater power of character if I accept
+them as spiritual tonics&mdash;bitter but strengthening.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Farewell, and may God be with you.</p>
+<p>&ldquo;Joy Irving.&rdquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>When the rector of St Blank&rsquo;s returned from the Beryngford
+Cemetery, where he had placed the body of his wife beside her father,
+he found this letter lying on his table in the hotel.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<p>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, AN AMBITIOUS MAN ***</p>
+<pre>
+
+******This file should be named ammn10h.htm or ammn10h.zip******
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