p597-014 CHAPTER I. ETHELYN.

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THERE was a sweet odor of clover blossoms in the
early morning air, and the dew stood in great
drops upon the summer flowers, and dripped
from the foliage of the elm trees which skirted the village
common. There was a cloud of mist upon the meadows,
and the windings of the river could be distinctly traced by
the white fog which curled above it. But the fog and the
mists were rolling away as the warm June sun came over
the eastern hills, and here and there signs of life began to
be visible in the little New England town of Chicopee,
where our story opens. The mechanics who worked in the
large shoe-shop half way down Cottage Row had been up
an hour or more, while the hissing of the steam which carried
the huge manufactory had been heard since the first
robin peeped from its nest in the alders by the running
brook; but higher up, on Bellevue street, where the old
inhabitants lived, everything was quiet, and the loamy
road, moist and damp with the dews of the previous night,
was as yet unbroken by the foot of man or rut of passing

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wheel. The people who lived there,—the Mumfords, and
the Beechers, and the Grangers, and the Thorns,—did not
belong to the working class. They held stocks in railroads
and banks, and mortgages on farms, and could afford to
sleep after the shrill whistle from the manufactory had
wakened the echoes of the distant hills and sounded across
the waters of Pordunk Pond. Only one dwelling showed
signs of life, and that the large square building, shaded in
front with elms and ornamented at the side with a luxuriant
queen of the prairie, whose blossoms were turning their
blushing faces to the rising sun. This was the Bigelow
house, the joint property of Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, née
Sophia Bigelow, who lived in Boston, and her sister, Miss
Barbara Bigelow, the quaintest and kindest-hearted woman
who ever bore the sobriquet of an old maid, and was aunt
to everybody. She was awake long before the whistle had
sounded across the river and along the meadow lands; and
just as the robin, whose nest for four summers had been
under the eaves where neither boy nor cat could reach it,
brought the first worm to its clamorous young, she pushed
the fringed curtain from her open window, and with her
broad frilled cap still on her head, stood for a moment looking
out upon the morning as it crept up the eastern sky.

“She will have a nice day for her wedding. May her
future life be as fair,” Aunt Barbara whispered softly; then
kneeling before the window with her head bowed upon the
sill, she prayed earnestly for God's blessing on the bridal to
take place that night beneath her roof, and upon the young
girl who had been both a care and a comfort since the
Christmas morning sixteen years before, when her half sister
Julia had come home to die, bringing with her the little
Ethelyn, then but two years old.

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Aunt Barbara's prayers were always to the point. She
said what she had to say in the fewest possible words, wasting
no time in repetition, and on this occasion she was
briefer than usual, for the good woman had many things
upon her mind this morning. First, there was Betty to
rouse and get into a state of locomotion,—a good half hour's
work, as Aunt Barbara knew from a three years' experience.
There was the “sponge” put to rise the previous night,—
she must see if that had risen, and with her own hands mould
the snowy breakfast rolls which Ethelyn liked so much.
There were the chambers to be inspected a second time, and
dinner to be prepared for the “Van Buren set” expected
from Boston; and last, though far from least, there was
Ethelyn herself to be wakened when the clock should strike
the hour of six, and this was a pleasure which good Aunt
Barbara would not for the world have foregone. Every
morning for the last sixteen years, when Ethelyn was at
home, she had gone to the chamber where her darling
slept, and bending over her had kissed her cheek, and called
her back from the dreamless slumber which otherwise might
have been prolonged to an indefinite time,—for Ethelyn did
not believe in the maxim, “Early to bed and early to rise,”
and always begged for a little more indulgence, even after
the brown eyes unclosed and flashed forth a responsive
greeting to the motherly face bending above them.

This morning, however, it was not needful that Aunt Barbara
should waken her, for long before the robin sang, or
the white-fringed curtain had been pushed aside from Aunt
Barbara's window, Ethelyn was awake, and the brown eyes,
which had in them a strange expression for a bride's eyes to
wear, had scanned the eastern horizon wistfully, ay, drearily
it may be, to see if it were morning; and when the clock in

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the kitchen struck four, the quivering lip had whispered,—
oh, so sadly,—“Sixteen hours more, only sixteen!” and with
a little shiver the bed-clothes had been drawn more closely
around the plump shoulders, and the troubled face had
nestled down among the pillows to smother the sigh which
never ought to have come from a maiden's lips upon her
wedding-day. The chamber of the bride-elect was a pleasant
one, large and airy and high, with windows looking out
upon the Chicopee hills, and from which Ethelyn had many
a time watched the fading of the purplish twilight as, girl-like,
she speculated upon the future and wondered what it
might have in store for her. One leaf of the great book
had been turned and lay open to her view, but she shrank
away from what was written there, and wished so much
that the record were otherwise. Upon the walls of Ethelyn's
chamber many pictures were hung, some in water-colors,
which she had done herself in the happy school days
which now seemed so far away, and some in oil, mementos
also of those days. Pictures, too, there were of people, one
of dear Aunt Barbara, whose kindly face was the first to
smile on Ethelyn when she woke, and whose patient, watchful
eyes seemed to keep guard over her while she slept.
Besides Aunt Barbara's picture there was another one, a
fair, boyish face, with a look not wholly unlike Ethelyn
herself, save that it lacked the firmness and decision which
were so apparent in the proud curve of her lip and the flash
of her brown eyes. Fair-haired and blue-eyed, with something
feminine in every feature, it seemed preposterous that
the original could ever have made a young girl's heart ache
as Ethelyn Grant's was aching that June morning, when,
taking the small oval-framed picture from the wall, she
kissed it passionately, and then thrust it away into the

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bureau drawer, which held other relics than the oval frame.
It was, in fact, the grave of Ethelyn's buried hopes,—the
tomb she had sworn never to unlock again; but now, as her
fingers lingered a moment amid the mementos of the years
when, in her girlish ignorance, she had been so happy, she
felt her resolution giving way, and sitting down upon the
floor, with her long hair unfastened and falling loosely
about her, she bowed her head over these buried treasures,
and dropped into their grave the bitterest tears she had
ever shed. Then, as there swept over her some better impulse,
whispering of the wrong she was doing to her promised
husband, she said:

“I will not leave them here to madden me again some
other day. I will burn them, every one.”

There were matches within her reach, while the little
fire-place was not far away, and, sitting just where she was,
Ethelyn Grant burned, one after another, letters and notes,
some directed in school-boy style, and others showing a
manlier hand, as the dates grew more recent, and the envelopes
bore a more modern and fashionable look. Over
one Ethelyn lingered a moment, her eyes growing dark
with passion, and her lips twitching nervously as she read:

“Boston, April —.

“Dear Ethie—I reckon mother is right, after all. She
generally is, you know, so we may as well be resigned,
and believe it wicked for cousins to marry each other.
Of course I can never like Nettie as I have liked you, and
I feel a twinge every time I remember the dear old times.
But what must be must, and there's no use fretting. Do
you remember old Colonel Markham's nephew, from out
West,—the one who wore the short pants and the rusty

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crape on his hat when he visited his uncle in Chicopee,
some years ago? I mean the chap who helped you over
the fence the time you stole the colonel's apples. He has
become a member of Congress, and quite a big gun for the
West; so, at least, mother thinks. He called on her to-day
with a message from Mrs. Woodhull, but I did not see
him. He goes up to Chicopee to-morrow, I believe. He
is looking for a wife, they say, and mother thinks it would
be a good match for you, as you could go to Washington
next winter and queen it over them all. But don't, Ethie,
don't, for thunder's sake! It fairly makes me faint to
think of you belonging to another, even though you may
never belong to me.—Yours always,

There was a dark, defiant look in Ethelyn's face as she
applied the match to this letter, and then watched it
blacken and crisp upon the hearth. How well she remembered
the day when she received it,—the dark, dismal
April day, when the rain, which dropped so fast from the
leaden clouds, seemed weeping for her, who could not weep
then, so complete was her humiliation, so utter her desolation.
That was not quite three months ago, and so much
had happened since then as the result of that M. C.'s visit
to Chicopee. He was there again this morning, an inmate
of the great yellow house, with the old-fashioned brass
knocker; and, by putting aside her curtain, Ethelyn could
see the very window of the chamber where he slept. But
Ethelyn had other matters in hand, and if she thought at
all of that window, whose shutters were rarely opened except
when Colonel Markham had, as now, an honored
guest, it was with a faint shudder of terror; and she went
on destroying mementos which were only a mockery of

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the past. One little note, the first ever received from
Frank, after a memorable morning in the huckleberry hills,
she could not burn. It was only a line, and, if read by a
stranger, would convey no particular meaning; so she laid
it aside with the lock of light, soft hair which clung to her
fingers with a kind of caressing touch, and brought to her
hot eyelids a mist which cooled their feverish heat. And
now nothing remained of the treasures but a tiny tortoise
shell box, where, in its bed of pink cotton, lay a little ring
with “Ethie” marked upon it. It was too small for the
finger it once encircled, for Ethie was but a child when
first she wore it. Her hands were larger now, and it would
not pass the second joint of her finger, though she exerted
all her strength to push it on, taking a kind of savage delight
in the pain it caused her, and feeling that she was
revenging herself on some one, she hardly knew or cared
whom. At last, with a quick jerking motion she drew it
off, and covering her face with her hands, moaned bitterly.

“It hurts! it hurts! just as the bonds hurt which are
closing around my heart. Oh! Frank, it was cruel to
serve me so.”

There was a step in the hall below. Aunt Barbara was
coming to waken Ethelyn, and, with a spring, the young
girl bounded to her feet, swept her hand across her face,
and, shedding back from her forehead her wealth of bright,
brown hair, laughingly confronted the good woman, who,
in the same breath, expressed her surprise that her niece
was up once without being called, and her wonder at the
peculiar odor pervading the apartment.

“Smells as if all the old newspapers in the barrel up
garret had been burnt at once,” she said; but the fire-place,
which lay in shadow, told no tales, and Aunt Barbara

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never suspected the pain tugging at the heart of the girl,
whose cheeks glowed with an unnatural red as she dashed
the water over neck and arms and face, playfully plashing
a few large drops upon her aunt's white apron, and asking
if there was not an old adage, “Blessed is the bride the
sun shines on.” “If so, I must be greatly blessed,” she
said, pushing open the eastern shutter, and letting in a
flood of yellow sunlight.

“The day bids fair to be hot and sultry. I hope it will
grow cool by evening. A crowded party is so terrible
when one feels heated and uncomfortable, and the millers
and horn-bugs come in so thickly, and I always get so red
in the face. Please, auntie, you twist up my hair in a flat
knot,—no matter how. I don't seem to have any strength
in my arms this morning, and my head is all in a whirl.
It must be the weather,” and, with a long, panting breath,
Ethelyn sank, half fainting, into a chair, while her frightened
aunt ran for water, and camphor, and cologne, hoping
Ethelyn was not coming down with fever, or any other dire
complaint, on her wedding-day.

“It is the weather, most likely, and the amount of sewing
you've done these last few weeks,” said Aunt Barbara;
and Ethelyn suffered her to think so, though she herself
had a far different theory with regard to that almost fainting-fit,
which served as an excuse for her unusual pallor,
and her want of appetite, even for the flaky rolls, and the
delicious strawberries, and thick, yellow cream which Aunt
Barbara put before her.

She was not hungry, she said, as she turned over the
berries with her spoon, and pecked at the snowy rolls.
By and by she might want something, perhaps, and then
Betty would make her a slice of toast to stay her stomach

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till the late dinner they were to have on Aunt Van Buren's
account,—that lady always professing to be greatly shocked
at the early dinners in Chicopee, and generally managing,
during her visits there, to change entirely the ways and
customs of Aunt Barbara Bigelow's well-ordered household.

“I wish she was not coming, or anybody else. Getting
married is a bore!” Ethelyn exclaimed, while Aunt Barbara
looked curiously at her, wondering, for the first time, if the
girl's heart were really in this marriage, which for weeks
had been agitating the feminine portion of Chicopee, and
for which so great preparations had been made.

Wholly honest, and truthful, and sincere herself, Aunt
Barbara seldom suspected wrong in others; and so when
Ethelyn, one April night, after a drive around the road
which encircles Pordunk Pond, came to her and said,
“Congratulate me, auntie, I am to be Mrs. Judge Markham,”
she had believed all was well, and that as sister
Sophie Van Buren, of Boston, had so often averred, there
was not, nor ever had been, anything serious between
dandyish Frank, Mrs. Van Buren's only son, who parted
his curly hair in the middle, and the high-spirited,
impulsive Ethelyn, whose eyes shone like stars as she told
of her engagement, and whose hand was icy cold as she held
it up in the lamp-light to show the large diamond which
flashed from the fourth finger as proof of what she said.
The stone itself was a very fine one, but the setting was
old, so old that a connoisseur in such matters might wonder
why Judge Markham had chosen such a ring as the
seal of his betrothal. Ethelyn knew why, and the softest,
kindliest feeling she had experienced for her promised husband
was awakened when he told her of the fair young

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sister whose pet-name was Daisy, and who for many years
had slept on the western prairie beneath the blossoms whose
name she bore. This young girl, loving God with all her
heart and soul, loved, too, all the beautiful things He had
made, and rejoiced in them as so much given her to enjoy.
Brought up in the far West, where the tastes of the people
were then simpler than those of our eastern neighbors, it
was strange, he said, how strong a passion she possessed for
gems and precious stones, especially the diamond. To
have for her own a ring like one she once saw upon a grand
Chicago lady was her great ambition, and knowing this the
brother carefully hoarded his earnings, until enough was
saved to buy the coveted ring, which he brought to his young
sister on her fourteenth birthday. But death even then
had cast its shadow around her, and the slender fingers
soon grew too small for the ring, which she nevertheless kept
constantly by her, admiring its brilliancy, and flashing it in
the sunlight for the sake of the rainbow hues it gave. And
when, at last, she lay dying in her brother's arms, with her
golden head upon his breast, she had given back the ring,
and said, “I am going, Richard, where there are far more
beautiful things than this, `for eye hath not seen, neither
hath it entered into the heart of man, the things prepared
for those who love Him,' and I do love Him, brother, and
feel His arms around me now as sensibly as I feel yours. His
will stay after yours are removed, and I am done with
earth; but keep the ring, brother Dick, and when in after
years you love some pure young girl as well as you love
me, only differently,—some girl who will prize such things,
and is worthy of it,—give it to her, and tell her it was Daisy's;
tell her of me, and that I bade her love you as you deserve
to be loved.”

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All this Richard Markham had told to Ethelyn as they
stood for a few minutes upon the beach of the pond, with
its waters breaking softly upon the sands at their feet, and
the young spring moon shining down upon them like
Daisy's eyes, as the brother described them when they last
looked on him. There was a picture of Daisy in their best
room at home, an oil-painting made by a travelling artist,
Richard said, and some day Ethelyn would see it, for she
had promised to be his wife, and the engagement-ring,—
Daisy's ring,—was on her finger, sparkling in the moonbeams,
just as it used to sparkle when the dead girl held it
in the light. It was a superb diamond. Even Frank, with
all his fastidiousness, would admit that, Ethelyn thought,
her mind more, alas! on Frank and his opinion than on
what her lover was saying to her of his believing that she
was pure and good as Daisy could have desired, that Daisy
would approve his choice, if she only knew, as perhaps she
did. He could not help feeling that she was there with
them, looking into their hearts,—that the silvery light resting
so calmly on the water was the halo of her invisible
presence blessing their betrothal. This was a good deal for
Richard Markham to say, for he was not given to poetry,
or sentiment, or imagery; but Ethelyn's face and Ethelyn's
eyes had played strange antics with the staid, matter-of-fact
man of Western Iowa, and stirred his blood as it had
never been stirred before. He did fancy that his angelsister
was there; but when he said so to Ethelyn, she
started with a shiver, and asked to be driven home, for she
did not care to have even dead eyes looking into her heart,
where the fires of passion were surging and swelling like
some hidden volcano struggling to be free. She knew
she was doing wrong,—knew she was not the pure maiden

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whom Daisy would have chosen,—was not worthy to be
the bride of Daisy's brother; but she must do something
or die, and as she did not dare to die, she pledged her hand
with no heart in it, and hushing the voice of conscience
clamoring so loudly against what she was doing, walked
back across the yellow sand, beneath the spring moonlight,
to where the carriage waited, and, in comparative silence,
was driven to Aunt Barbara's gate.

This was the history of the ring, and here, as well as
elsewhere, we may tell Ethelyn's history up to the time
when, on her bridal-day, she sat with Aunt Barbara at the
breakfast-table, idly playing with her spoon and occasionally
sipping the fragrant coffee. The child of Aunt Barbara's
half-sister, she inherited none of the Bigelow estate
which had come to the two daughters, Aunt Barbara and
Aunt Sophia, from their mother's family. But the Bigelow
blood of which Aunt Sophie Van Buren was so proud was
in her veins, and so to this aunt she was an object of interest,
and even value, though not enough to warrant that
lady in taking her for her own when, sixteen years before
our story opens, her mother, Mrs. Julia Bigelow Grant, had
died. This task devolved on Aunt Barbara, whose great
motherly heart opened at once to the little orphan who had
never felt a mother's loss, so faithful and true had Aunt
Barbara been to her trust. Partly because she did not
wish to seem more selfish than her sister, and partly because
she really liked the bright, handsome child who made
Aunt Barbara's home so cheery, Mrs. Dr. Van Buren of
Boston insisted upon superintending Ethelyn's education;
and so, when only twelve years of age, Ethelyn was taken
from the old brick house under the elms, which Mrs. Dr.
Van Buren of Boston despised as the “district school

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where Tom, Dick, and Harry congregated,” and transplanted
to the highly select and very expensive school
taught by Madame Hernandez, in plain sight of Beacon
street and Boston Common. And so, as Ethelyn increased
in stature, she grew also in wisdom and knowledge, both of
books and manners, and the style of the great world around
her. Mrs. Dr. Van Buren's house was the resort both of
the fashionable and literary people, with a sprinkling of the
religious, for the great lady affected everything which could
affect her interest. Naturally generous, her name was conspicuous
on all subscription-lists and charitable associations,
while the lady herself owned a pew in Trinity Church,
where she was a regular attendant together with her only
son Frank, who was taught to kneel and respond in the
right places and bow in the creed, and then after church
required to give a synopsis of the sermon, by way of proving
that his mind had not been running off after the dancing-school
he attended during the week, under his mother's
watchful supervision. Mrs. Van Buren meant to be a
model mother, and bring up her boy a model man, and so
she gave him every possible advantage of books and teachers,
while far in the future floated the possibility that she
might some day reign at the White House, not as the
President's wife,—this could not be, she knew, for the man
who had made her Mrs. Dr. Van Buren of Boston slept in
the shadow of a very tall monument out at Mount Auburn,
and the turf was growing fresh and green over his head.
So if she went to Washington, as she fondly hoped she
might, it would be as the President's mother; but when
examination after examination found Frank at the foot of
his class, and teacher after teacher said he could not learn,
she gave up the Presidential chair, and contenting herself

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with a seat in Congress, asked that great pains should be
taken to bring out the talent for debate and speech-making
which she was sure Frank possessed; but when even this
failed, and nineteen times out of twenty Frank could get no
farther than “My name is Norval, on the Grampian Hills,”
she yielded the M. C. too, and set herself to make him a
gentleman, polished, refined, and cultivated,—one, in short,
who was au fait with all that fashionable society required;
and here she succeeded better. Frank was perfectly at
home on the dancing-floor or in the saloons of gayety, or the
establishment of a fashionable tailor; so that when Ethelyn,
at twelve, went down to Boston, she found her tall, slender,
light-haired cousin of eighteen a perfect dandy, with a capability
and a disposition to criticise and laugh at whatever
there was of gaucherie in her country manners and country
dress. In some things the two were of mutual benefit to each
other. Ethelyn, who could conquer any lesson, however
difficult, helped the thick-headed, indolent Frank in his
studies, translating his hard passages in Virgil, working out
his problems in mathematics, and even writing, or at least
revising and correcting his compositions, while he in return
gave her lessons in etiquette as practised by the Boston
girls, teaching her how to dance gracefully, so he would
not be ashamed to introduce her as his cousin at the children's
parties which they attended together. It was not
strange that Frank Van Buren should admire a girl as bright
and piquant and pretty as his cousin Ethelyn, but it was
strange that she should idolize him, bearing patiently with
all his criticisms, trying hard to please him, and feeling
more than repaid for her exertions by a word of praise or
commendation from her exacting teacher, who, viewing her
at first as a poor relation, was inclined to be exacting, if

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not overbearing, in his demands. But as time passed on
all this was changed, and the well-developed girl of fifteen,
whom so many noticed and admired, would no longer be
patronized by the young man Frank, who, finding himself
in danger of being snubbed, as he termed Ethelyn's grand
way of putting him down, suddenly awoke to the fact that
he loved his high-spirited cousin, and he told her so one
hazy August day, when they were in Chicopee, and had
wandered up to a ledge of rocks in the huckleberry hills
which overlooked the town.

“They might as well make a sure thing of it,” he said,
in his off-hand way. “If she liked him and he liked her,
they would clinch the bargain at once, even if they were so
young.” And so, when they went down the hill back to the
shadow of the elm trees, where Mrs. Dr. Van Buren sat
cooling herself and reading “Vanity Fair,” there was a tiny
ring on Ethelyn's finger, and she had pledged herself to be
Frank's wife some day in the future.

Frank had promised to tell his mother, for Ethelyn
would have no concealment; and so, holding up her hand
and pointing to the ring, he said, more in jest than earnest,

“Look, mother, Ethie and I are engaged. If you have
any objections, state them now, or ever after hold your
peace.”

He did not think proper to explain either to his mother
or Ethie that this was his second serious entanglement, and
that the ring had been bought for a pretty milliner girl, at
least six years his senior, whose acquaintance he had made
at Nahant the summer previous, and whom he had forgotten
when he learned that to her taste his mother was indebted
for the stylish bonnet she sported every season.
Frank generally had some love affair in hand,—it was a part

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of his nature; and as he was not always careful in his
choice, his mother had occasionally felt a twinge of fear
lest, after all her care, some terrible mesalliance should be
thrust upon her by her susceptible son. So she listened
graciously to the news of his betrothal,—nay, she was
pleased with it, as, for the time being, it would divert his
mind and keep him out of mischief. That he would eventually
marry Ethelyn was impossible, for his bride must be
rich; but Ethelyn answered the purpose now, and could
easily be disposed of when necessary. So the scheming
woman smiled, and said “it was not well for cousins to
marry; that even if it were, they were both too young to
know their minds, and would do well to keep their engagement
a secret for a time,” and then returned to Becky
Sharpe, while Frank went to sleep upon the lounge, and
Ethelyn stole off up stairs to dream over her happiness,
which was as real to her as such a thing could well be to
an impulsive, womanly girl of fifteen summers. She, at
least, was in earnest, and as time passed on Frank seemed to
be in earnest too, and devoted himself wholly to his cousin,
whose influence over him was so great that he was fast becoming
what Aunt Barbara called a man, while his mother
began again to have visions of a seat in Congress, and
brilliant speeches, which would find their way to Boston and
be read and admired in the circles in which she moved.

And so the days and years wore on, until Frank was a
man of twenty-four,—a third-rate practitioner, whose
sign, “Frank Van Buren, Attorney-at-law,” &c., looked
very fresh and respectable in front of the office on Washington
street, and Frank himself began to have thoughts
of claiming Ethelyn's promise and having a home of his
own. He would not live with his mother, he said; it was

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better for young people to be alone. From some things
he had discovered in his bride-elect, he had an uneasy feeling
that possibly the brown of Ethelyn's eyes might not
wholly harmonize with the gray of his mother's, “for
Ethie was spunky as the old Nick,” he argued with himself,
while “for perversity and self-conceit his mother could
not be beaten.” It was better they should keep up two
households, his mother seeing to both, and, if need be,
supplying the wants of both. To do Frank justice, he had
some very correct notions with regard to domestic happiness,
and had he been poor and dependent upon his own
exertions he might have made an average husband; at least
he would have gotten on well with Ethelyn, whose stronger
nature would have upheld his, and been like a supporting
prop to a feeble timber. As it was, he drew many pleasing
pictures of the home which was to be his and Ethie's.
Now it was in the city, near to his mother's, and Mrs. Gen.
Tophevie, his mother's intimate friend, whose house was
the open sesame to the crême de la crême of Boston society;
but oftener it was a rose-embowered cottage, of easy
access to the city, where he could have Ethie all to himself
when his day's labor was over, and where the skies would
not be brighter than Ethie's eyes as she welcomed him
home at night, leaning over the gate in the pale buff muslin
he liked so much, with the rosebuds in her hair. He
had seen her thus so often in fancy, that the picture had
become a reality, and refused to be erased at once from the
mental canvas, when, in January, Miss Nettie Hudson, niece
to Mrs. General Tophevie, came from Philadelphia, and at
once took prestige of everything on the strength of the
one hundred thousand dollars of which she was sole
heiress. The Hudson blood was a mixture of blacksmith's

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

and shoemaker's, and peddler's too, it was said; but that
was far back in the past. The Hudsons of the present day
scarcely knew whether peddler was spelled with two d's
or one. They bought their shoes at the most fashionable
shops, and could, if they chose, have their horses shod
with gold, and so the handsome Nettie reigned supreme as
belle. The moment Mrs. Dr. Van Buren saw her, she recognized
her daughter-in-law, the future Mrs. Frank, and
Ethie's fate was sealed. There had been times when Mrs.
Dr. Van Buren thought it possible that Ethelyn might,
after all, be that most favored of women, the wife of her
son. These times were at Saratoga, and Newport, and
Nahant, where Ethelyn Grant was greatly sought after, and
where the proud woman took pride in talking of “my
niece,” hinting once, when Ethelyn's star was at its height,
of a childish affaire du cœur between the young lady and
her son, and insinuating that it might yet amount to something.
She changed her mind when Nettie came with her
100,000 dollars, and showed a willingness to be admired
by Frank. That childish affaire du cœur was a very
childish affair indeed: she never gave it a moment's
thought herself,—she greatly doubted if Frank had ever
been in earnest, and if Ethelyn had led him into an entanglement,
she would not, of course, hold him to his
promise if he wished to be released. He must have a
rich wife to support him in his refined tastes and luxurious
habits, for her own fortune was not so great as many supposed.
She might need it all herself, as she was far from
being old; and then again it was wicked for cousins to
marry each other. It did not matter if the mothers were
only half sisters; there was the same blood in the veins
of each, and it would not do at all, even if Ethelyn's

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

affections were enlisted, which Mrs. Van Buren greatly
doubted.

This was what Mrs. Dr. Van Buren said to Ethelyn, after
a stormy interview with Frank, who had at first sworn
roundly that he would not give Ethie up, then had thanked
his mother not to meddle with his business, then bidden
her “go to thunder,” and finally, between a cry and a blubber,
said he should always like Ethie best if he married a
hundred Netties. This interview with Frank was in the
morning, and the afternoon train had carried Mrs. Dr. Van
Buren to Chicopee, where Ethelyn's glowing face flashed a
bright welcome when she came, but was white and pallid
as the face of a corpse when the voluminous skirts of Mrs.
Van Buren's poplin dress passed through the gate next
day, and disappeared in the direction of the depot. Aunt
Barbara was not at home,—she had gone to visit a friend in
Albany; and so Ethelyn met and fought with her pain
alone, stifling it as best she could, and succeeding so well
that Aunt Barbara, on her return, never suspected the
fierce storm which Ethelyn had passed through during her
absence, or dreamed how anxiously the young girl watched
and waited for some word from Frank which should say
that he was ready to defy his mother and abide by his first
promise. But no such letter came, and at last, when she
could bear the suspense no longer, Ethelyn wrote herself to
her recreant lover, asking if it were true that hereafter their
lives lay apart from each other. If such was his wish, she
was content, she said, and Frank Van Buren, who could
not detect the air of superb scorn which breathed in every
line of that letter, felt aggrieved that “Ethie was taking it
so easy,” and relieved, too, that with her he should have
no trouble, as he had anticipated. He was getting used to

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

Nettie, and getting to like her too, for her manner toward
him was far more agreeable than Ethie's brusque way of
manifesting her impatience at his lack of manliness. It
was inexplicable how Ethie could care for one so greatly
her inferior, both mentally and physically, but it would
seem that she loved him all the more for the very weakness
which made her nature a necessity of his, and the bitterest
pang she had ever felt came with the answer which Frank
sent back to her letter, and which the reader has seen.

It was all over now, settled, finished, and two days after
she hunted up Aunt Barbara's spectacles for her, and then
sat very quietly while the good lady read Aunt Sophie's
letter, announcing Frank's engagement with Miss Nettie
Hudson, of Philadelphia. Aunt Barbara knew of Ethelyn's
engagement with Frank, but like her sister, at the time of
its occurrence, she had esteemed it mere child's play.
Later, however, as she saw how they clung to each other,
she had thought it possible that something might come of
it, but as Ethelyn was wholly reticent on that subject, it
had never been mentioned between them. When, however,
the news of Frank's second engagement came, Aunt
Barbara looked over her spectacles straight at the girl, who,
for any sign she gave, might have been a block of marble,
so rigid was every muscle of her face, and so even the tone
of her voice, as she said,

“I am glad Aunt Sophie is suited. Frank will be pleased
with anything.”

“She does not care for him, and I am glad, for he is not
half smart enough for her,” was Aunt Barbara's mental
comment, as she laid the letter by for a second reading,
and then told her niece, as the last item of news, that old
Colonel Markham's nephew had come, and they were

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

making a great ado over him, now that he was Member of
Congress, and a Judge too. They had asked the Howells
and Grangers and Carters there to tea for the next day, she
said, adding that she and Ethelyn were also invited. “They
want to be polite to him,” Aunt Barbara continued; “but
for my part, if I was he, I should not care much for politeness
that comes so late. They never noticed his father
when he was living, and didn't wear mourning when he
died; and when this nephew was here, eight years ago, or
such a matter, they acted as if they were ashamed of him.
But titles make a difference. He's an Honorable now, and
the old Colonel is mighty proud of him.”

What Aunt Barbara had said was strictly true, for there
had been a time when proud old Colonel Markham ignored
the brother's family living on the far prairies of the West;
but when the eldest son, Richard, called for him, had be
come a growing man, as boys out West are apt to do,—rising
from Justice of the Peace to a member of the State
Legislature, then to a Judgeship, and finally to a seat in
Congress, and all before he was thirty-two,—the Colonel's
tactics changed, and a most cordial letter addressed to
“My very dear nephew,” and signed “Your affectionate
uncle,” was sent to Washington, urging a visit from the
young man ere he returned to Iowa.

And that was how Richard Markham, M.C., came to be
in Chicopee at the precise time when Ethelyn's heart was
bleeding at every pore, and she was ready to seize upon
any new excitement which could divert it from its pain.
She remembered well the time when he had once before
visited Chicopee. She was a little girl of ten, fleeing across
the meadow-land from a maddened cow, when a tall, athletic
young man had come to her rescue, standing between

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

her and danger, helping her over the fence, picking up the
apron full of apples which she had been purloining from
the Colonel's orchard, and even pinning together a huge rent
made in her dress by catching it upon a protruding splint
as she sprang to the ground. She was too much frightened
to know whether he had been wholly graceful in his endeavors
to serve her, and too thankful for her escape to
think that possibly her torn dress was the result of his
rather awkward handling. She remembered only the dark,
handsome face which bent so near to hers, the brown, curly
head actually bumping against her own, as he stooped to
gather the stolen apples. She remembered, too, the kindly
voice which asked if “her aunt would scold,” while the
large red hands pinned together the unsightly seam, and
she liked the Westerner, as the people of Chicopee called the
stranger who had recently come among them. Frank was
in Chicopee then, fishing on the river, when her mishap
occurred; and once after that, when walking with him, she
had met Richard Markham, who bowed modestly and
passed on, never taking his hands from the pockets where
they were planted so firmly, and never touching his hat, as
Frank said a gentleman would have done.

“Isn't he handsome?” Ethelyn had asked, and Frank
had answered, “Looks well enough, though anybody with
half an eye would know he was from out West. His pants
are a great deal too short; and look at his coat,—at least
three years behind the fashion; and such a hat, with that
rusty old band of crape around it. Wonder if he is in
mourning for his grandmother. Oh my! we boys would
hoot him in Boston. He's what I call a gawky.”

That settled it with Ethelyn. If Frank Van Buren,
whose pants, and coats, and neck-ties, and hats, were

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

always the latest make, said that Richard Markham was a
gawky, he was one, and henceforth, during his stay in
Chicopee, the Western young man was regarded by
Ethelyn with a feeling akin to pity for his benighted condition.
Aunt Barbara's pew was very near to Colonel
Markham's; and Richard, who was not much of a churchman,
and as often as any way lounged upon the faded
damask curtains instead of standing up, often met Ethelyn's
eyes fixed curiously upon him, but never dreamed that she
regarded him as a species of heathen, whom it would be a
pious act to Christianize. Richard rarely thought of himself
at all, or, if he did, it was with a feeling that he “was
well enough;” that if his mother and “the neighbors”
were satisfied with him, as he knew they were, he ought to
be satisfied with himself. So he had no suspicion of the
severe criticism passed upon him by the little girl who
read the service so womanly, he thought, eating caraway
and lozenges between times, and whose face he carried in
memory back to his prairie home.

But he forgot her in the excitement which followed,
when he began to grow rapidly, and we doubt if she had
been in his mind for years, until her name was mentioned
by Mrs. Dr. Van Buren, who saw in him a most eligible
match for her niece. He was well connected,—own nephew
to Colonel Markham, and first cousin to Mrs. Senator
Woodhull, of New York, who kept a suite of servants for
herself and husband, and had the finest turn-out in the
Park. Yes, he would do nicely for Ethelyn; and by way
of quieting her conscience, which kept whispering that she
had not been altogether just to her niece, Mrs. Dr. Van
Buren packed her trunk and took the train for Chicopee
the very day of Mrs. Colonel Markham's tea-party.

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

Ethelyn was going, and she looked very pretty in her
dark
green silk, with the bit of soft, rich lace at the throat
and the scarlet ribbon in her hair. She was not dressed
for effect. She cared very little, in fact, what impression
she made upon the Western Judge, though she did wonder
if, as a Judge, he was much improved from the young man
whom Frank had called a “gawky.” He was standing
with his elbow upon the mantel, talking to Susie Granger,
when Ethelyn entered Mrs. Markham's parlor; one foot
was carelessly crossed over the other, so that only the toe
of the boot touched the carpet, while his hand grasped his
handkerchief rather awkwardly. He was not at ease with
the ladies; he had never been very much accustomed to
their society. He did not know what to say to them, and
Susie's saucy black eyes and sprightly manner evidently
embarrassed and abashed him. That vocabulary of small
talk so prevalent in society, and a limited knowledge of
which is rather necessary to one's getting on well with everybody,
was unknown to him, and he was casting about for
some way of escape from his companion, when Ethelyn
was introduced, and his mind went back to the stolen apples,
and the torn dress which he had pinned together.

Judge Markham was a tall, finely formed man, with deep
hazel eyes, which could be very stern or very soft just as
his mood happened to be. But the chief attraction of his
face was his smile, which changed his entire expression,
making him very handsome, as Ethelyn thought, when he
stood for a moment holding her hand between both his
broad palms, and chatting familiarly with her as with an
old acquaintance. He could talk to her better than to
Susie Granger, for Ethie, though neither very deep nor
learned, was fond of books and tolerably well versed in the

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

current literature of the day. Besides that, she had a
faculty of seeming to know more than she really did; and
so the impression left upon the Judge's mind, when the little
party was over and he was returning from escorting
Ethelyn to her door, was that Miss Grant was far superior
to any girl he had ever met since Daisy died, and like the
Judge in Whittier's “Maud Muller,” he whistled snatches
of an old love tune he had not whistled in years, as he went
slowly back to his uncle's, and thought strange thoughts
for him, the grave old bachelor who had said he should
never marry. He was not looking for a wife, as rumor intimated,
but he dreamed of Ethelyn Grant that night, and
called upon her the next day, and the next, until the villagers
began to gossip, and Mrs. Dr. Van Buren was in an
ecstacy of delight, talking openly of the delightful time her
niece would have in Washington the next winter, and predicting
for her a brilliant career as reigning belle, and even
hinting the possibility of her taking a house so as to entertain
her Boston friends.

And Ethelyn herself had many and varied feelings on the
subject, the strongest of which was a perverse desire to let
Frank know that she did not care, that her heart was not
broken by his desertion, and that there were those who
prized her even if he did not. She had criticised Judge
Markham very severely. She had weighed him in the
balance with Frank, and found him sadly wanting in all
those little points which she considered as marks of culture
and good breeding. He was not a ladies' man; he was
even worse than that, for he was sometimes positively rude
and ungentlemanly, as she thought, when he would open a
gate or a door and pass through it first himself instead of
holding it deferentially for her, as Frank would have done.

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

He did not know how to swing his cane, or touch his hat,
or even bow as Frank Van Buren did; while the cut of his
coat was at least two years behind the times, and he did not
seem to know it either. All these things Ethelyn wrote
against him; but the account was more than balanced by
the seat in Congress, the anticipated winter in Washington,
the great wealth he was said to possess, the high estimation
in which she knew he was held, and the keen pang
of disappointment from which she was suffering. This last
really did the most to turn the scale in Richard's favor, for,
like many a poor deluded girl, she fancied that marrying
was the surest way to forget a past which it was not pleasant
to remember. She respected Judge Markham highly, and
knew that in everything pertaining to a noble manhood he
was worth a dozen Franks, even if he never had been to dancing-school,
and did not obsequiously pick up the handkerchief
which she purposely dropped to see what he would do.
And so, when Aunt Sophie had gone back to the city, and
Judge Markham was about to return to his Western home,
she rode with him around the Pond, and when she came
back the dead Daisy's ring was upon her finger, and she
was a promised wife. A dozen times since then she had
been tempted to write to Richard Markham, asking to be
released from her engagement; for, bad as she has thus far
appeared to the reader, there were many noble traits in her
character, and she shrank from wronging the man of whom
she knew she was not worthy. But the deference paid her
as Mrs. Judge Markham elect, the delight of Aunt Sophie,
the approbation of Aunt Barbara, the letter of congratulation
sent her by Mrs. Senator Woodhull, Richard's cousin,
and more than all, Frank's discomfiture as evinced by the
complaining note he sent her after her engagement was

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

announced, prevailed to keep her to her promise; and
the bridegroom, when he came in June to claim her
hand, little guessed how heavy was the heart of the
young girl who so passively suffered his caresses, but
whose lips never moved in response to the kiss he pressed
upon them.

She was very shy, he thought, more so than when he
saw her last; but he loved her just as well, and never suspected
that, when on the first evening of his arrival he sat
with his arm around her, wondering a little what made her
so silent, she was burning with mortification because the
coat he wore was the very same which she had criticised
last spring, hoping in her heart of hearts that long before
he came to her again it might find its proper place, either
in the sewing society or with some Jewish vendor of old
clothes. Yet here it was again, and her head was resting
against it, while her heart beat almost audibly, and her
voice was even petulant in its tone as she answered her
lover's questions. Ethelyn was making a terrible mistake,
and she knew it, and hated herself for her duplicity, and
vaguely hoped that something would happen to save her
from the fate she so much dreaded. But nothing did happen,
and it was now too late to retract. The bridal trousseau
had been prepared under Mrs. Dr. Van Buren's supervision,
the bridal guests had been bidden, the bridal tour
had been planned, the bridegroom had arrived, and she
would keep her word if she died in the attempt.

And so we find her on her bridal morning wishing nobody
was coming, and denouncing getting married “a
bore,” while good Aunt Barbara looked at her in surprise,
wondering if everything were right. In spite of her ill
humor, she was very handsome that morning in her white

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

cambric wrapper, with just a little color in her cheeks and
her heavy hair pushed back behind her ears and twisted
under the silken net. Ethelyn cared little for her looks,—
at least not then; by and by she might, when it was time
for Mrs. Dr. Van Buren to arrive with Frank and Nettie
Hudson, whom she had never seen. She should want to
look her very best then, but now it did not matter, even if
her bridegroom was distant not an eighth of a mile, and
would in all probability be coming in ere long. She wished
he would stay away,—she would rather not see him till night;
and she experienced a feeling of relief when, about nine
o'clock, Mrs. Markham's maid brought her a little note,
which read as follows:

“Darling Ethie:—You must not think strange if I do
not come to you this morning, for I am suffering from one
of my blinding headaches, and can scarcely see to write
you this. I shall be better by night.

Ethelyn was sitting upon the piazza steps, arranging a
bouquet, when the note was brought to her; and as it was
some trouble to put all the roses from her lap, she sent the
girl for a pencil, and on the back of the note wrote
hastily:

“It does not matter, as you would only be in the way,
and I have something of a headache too.

“Take this to Judge Markham,” she said to the girl, and
then resumed her bouquet-making, wondering if ever bride-elect
were as wretched as herself, or if to any other maiden

p597-042 [figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

of eighteen the world had ever looked so desolate and
dreary as it did to her this morning.