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It was the day after the double funeral had taken its sad path from the gates
of Bonniemeer, and Vaughn sat alone in his study, helpless under the sense of
lonely desolation which no words can paint to him who has never known it,
which no time can efface from the memory of him who has.

One of the commonest impulses of this condition of restless misery is toward
flight—a flight terminating often like his of the song, who, fleeing from his
household demon, heard it call to the wayfarers from the loaded wain, “Aye,
we're all a-flitting!” and so turned back to wrestle with it beneath his own roof-tree,
rather than in the open world.

This impulse toward flight now possessed the widowed Vaughn, and, yielding
to it upon the moment, he rang a bell, and summoned Mrs. Rhee to his presence.

She came, and stood within the door, pale, haggard, wasted, her eyes faded
with incessant tears, her mouth tremulous with ill-suppressed emotion.

Vaughn glanced at her, carelessly at first, then with a steady scrutiny. The
housekeeper returned the look, and the Secret—the Secret that lay between
them, spoke from eye to eye, imploring, refusing, appealing, denying, until the
woman hid her face within her wasted hands, and Vaughn, springing from his
seat, trod as impatiently up and down the room as though he could thus trample
out of sight a past that would not be left behind.

Presently, commanding himself, he said, with measured calmness,

“Sit down, Anita. I wish to speak with you on matters of business alone.”

The housekeeper mutely obeyed.

“I am going abroad, it may be for some years,” pursued Vaughn, no longer
looking at her, but hastening to place his resolution in words binding upon them
both.

“I shall leave business matters in the hands of my lawyers, one of whom
will be appointed my agent here, but to you I wish to entrust the affairs of the
house and the care of the child—of Gabrielle's child. You should be a second
mother to her, Anita.”

He paused, and looked at her with strange significance and yet a strange reluctance.

She looked as steadily at him, and said,

“You may trust me. I will be a mother to the child of Gabrielle, and—you.
I, who have no child, can pity this motherless baby, can love her in place of my
own.”

The unutterable pathos of her voice reached his inmost heart and roused not
sympathy alone, but such a storm of conflicting emotions as swept his very soul
before it and bowed him to the earth. He turned from her, hiding his face, and
through the heavy silence of the room was heard a dull throbbing sound as of
some hidden clepsydra. That sound was the beating of Anita's heart, as standing
with her hands clasped above it, her figure inclined forward, her lips parted,
her eyes glowing, her color faded to an ashy pallor, she watched the man before
her—watched till the crisis should be past and the tenor of her future life declared.

Suddenly Vaughn turned and looked at her. She read his face eagerly as
one might read the page of futurity held open in a wizard's hand. She read
there pity, sympathy, and an inexorable resolution—a resolution based upon the

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very foundations of the man's nature, and no more to be overthrown. She read,
and with a bitter, bitter moan she turned away, the thin hands clasping yet more
fiercely the throbbing heart whose every bound seemed like to be its last. Could
she have doubted his face, the first tones of his voice would have proved to her
that she had not deceived herself.

“If the future looks cold and barren to you, Anita, remember that it is to be
conquered by your own effort. So far as physical well-being is concerned, I can
assure it to you—the rest you must do for yourself. We all have our own fight
to make in one way or another.”

He waited, but she would neither speak nor look, and he went on, resolutely.

“I may be gone a long time. You will hear from me through my business
agent, and I shall wish you to write, through the same medium, of matters connected
with the child or the house that you may wish to communicate.”

He hesitated a moment, and approached a little nearer to where she stood
with drooping head and downcast eyes, one hand resting lightly upon a chair,
the other hanging nervelessly beside her.

“There is one thing that you must promise me, Anita. The child must
never know, must never suspect even so remotely. Can you do it?”

“I promised the same thing two years ago, when you married Gabrielle,”
replied the housekeeper, half scornfully. “Have I ever broken that promise?”

“Never, as I firmly believe. But now you will be alone, and you will love
this little child so much that it will be hard.”

“Is it the only thing in my life that is hard?” asked she, sharply.

“No. I have told you that we have all our own fight to make. If yours is
a hard one through act of mine, may God and you forgive me. Do not fear that
I shall not suffer the full penalty of my own misdoings. Do not doubt that my
own conscience has said and will say all and more than you, or Gabrielle, or even
this new-born child has a right to say. If you suffer, Anita, you do not suffer
alone. And now I will have no more of this. From this moment we speak together
in only our obvious relations. You quite understand my wishes in regard
to the child.”

“Quite, sir. Am I to address her entirely as Miss Vaughn, or will you give
her a Christian name?”

Putting aside the sarcasm without notice, Vaughn replied,

“Certainly she must be named, and she shall have a name expressing her
birthright. Call her Franc; it means free.”

“Not Gabrielle?” asked the housekeeper, impetuously.

“No; Franc, or perhaps Francia is better. Let her be called Francia.”

“Yes, sir,” said the housekeeper, her voice as coldly submissive as his was
coldly determined.

“Chloe, of course, will be her nurse, and you will guarantee Chloe's silence,
as heretofore, I presume.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I believe that is all, then. I shall see you again upon some household matters
not yet decided.”

“What is to be done with the other little girl, sir? The child of the woman
found dead on the beach.”

“Ah. I had forgotten. Is she an intelligent and well-formed child, healthy
and bright?”

“Yes, sir, I should judge so.

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“Let her be educated with Francia, then, and precisely in the same manner.
Regard her as my adopted daughter, and make no difference between them in
any way. I will never commit the cruelty of rearing a child beneath my roof to
a condition of dependence and sycophancy. The finest nature must become debased
or crushed by such a life. Educate her in every respect as if she were
Francia's sister, and let her story be kept a secret from her as long as possible.
Look to this, if you please.”

“Yes, sir.”

“She must be named, also.”

“She is named already, sir. At least the word Neria is pricked into her
shoulder with Indian ink, and I take it to be her name,” said Mrs. Rhee, somewhat
contemptuously.

“Neria? The mermaids must have named her before they left her on the
shore. Well, it is a pretty name. Let it belong to her. Was there nothing
about the mother to tell who she was or where she came from?”

“Nothing, sir. She looked like a lady, although her clothes were poor and
worn. She had a wedding ring, and wore a curious bracelet, but neither of them
were marked, nor were any of her clothes. James has inquired at Carrick, but
no one saw her pass through, except an old man, who remembers that some one
asked if Mr. Vaughn lived near here, and he directed her to this house; but it
stormed so that he did not notice much how she looked, or ask any questions as
to where she came from, or anything.”

“Probably she wanted help, and had been referred to me,” said Vaughn,
quietly settling in his own mind a question that should not have been so readily
answered. “Where is the bracelet of which you speak?”

“Here, sir. I brought it to give into your own charge, as it appears very
valuable.”

She laid it in his hand as she spoke. A golden serpent, his scales delicately
wrought in the old Venetian style, and so subtly jointed as to writhe at every
motion with all the graceful convolutions of his kind. The flattened head was
set with an emerald crest and diamond eyes, while between the distended jaws
flickered a flame-like tongue carved from a single ruby.

Vaughn, who had a luxurious fancy for rare gems, looked with delight at the
exquisite toy coiled upon his hand, vibrating with every throb of its pulses, and
flashing back the sunlight from its diamond eyes with a cold glitter half diabolical
in its life-likeness.

“It must be an heir-loom of some old family,” said he. “Our paltry goldsmiths
do not conceive such exquisite fancies. And the workmanship is the
Venetian style of the last century—genuine, too; it is no modern imitation. Is
there no mark upon it of any kind?”

“No, I believe not,” replied the housekeeper, wearily, while through her mind
glanced the question,

“Can he really care more for this toy than for the anguish devouring my
heart!”

“Yet, but there is. See here.” And unheeding the swimming eyes that
sought his own, Vaughn showed where, upon the serpent's throat, one scale was
marked in tiny characters with the initials “F. V., 1650.” Upon the scale above
was traced the outline of a crest, but so faintly that Vaughn failed to make it out
by the minutest scrutiny.

“`F. V.' Why, those are my little Francia's initials,” said he, musingly.

“It must be an heir-loom of some old family,” said he.-- [figure description] 451EAF. Illustration page. A man, seated at a table and holding a family heirloom, and a woman, standing next to the man and holding a hand on her heart, somberly reside in a living room.[end figure description]

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“Who knows but this precious bracelet is actually a family jewel of our own,
You say the woman was inquiring for me. I must see the old man you speak
of before I leave.”

“He knows no more than I told you, sir. I have seen him myself. I did
not suppose you would be able to speak with him so soon—”

She glanced at him half reproachfully as she spoke, and a shadow crossed
his face.

“Yes, I know,” said he, hurriedly, “I do not forget my loss in caring for the
living. This child is now my charge, and I shall attend to her interests as carefully
as to those of my own daughter. The bracelet I shall put away until Neria
is old enough to wear it; and before leaving home I shall make all possible inquiries
concerning her mother's story. And now, Anita, good-by. I shall not
see you alone again until time has done so much for both of us that we need not
fear to meet.”

He took her hand, looked down into the dark eyes raised to his with such an
ocean of anguish in their depths, and then, half drawn by them, half impelled
by his own tender nature, he stooped and kissed her.

A vivid scarlet stained her cheeks, a wild joy lighted her eyes; and as she
slowly withdrew her hand and left the room, every line of her supple figure,
every motion of her graceful head, so expressed the new life burning in her
veins that Vaughn, watching her, muttered, as she closed the door,

“It was folly, it was inconsistent. But it is the last. Never again, Anita,
never again.”

And Fate, listening, smiled a scornful smile, whispering,

“Yet once more Frederic Vaughn, yet once more, and in your own despite.”